by Mike McCrary
They never married Remo.
As Anna’s eyes find Remo, her defense mechanism takes over. She drops down into her cubicle looking for cover, shrinking lower and lower as she hears the sounds of Remo on the hunt. She’d dig a hole under the cheap, carefully chosen corporate carpet if she could.
Shit.
This is her worst fear; this guy showing up at work. This motherfucker, here? Anna rarely resorts to f-bombs. Not that she judges those that do, it’s just not her thing. Something about Remo turns her vocabulary into that of a hostile longshoreman.
She stands, closes her eyes, finds the strength to utter a quiet, “Remo.”
He doesn’t hear her and keeps searching the floor like a man possessed. The entire company hates him by now. She swallows big, then tries in a louder voice. “Remo.”
He stops a few rows over. The floor goes silent. Anna locks her eyes firmly on Remo.
Remo knows she’s not happy to see him, but something in him melts all the same. It always did when he saw her. Even when he fucked things up, it never went away.
Remo says, “Anna. You look—”
“What…,” she begins in a burst of anger. Noticing the entire company is watching, she pulls her rage back, begins again. “What do you want?”
“Can I have a word?”
“No.”
“Just a few words. You can count them, then I’ll leave.”
Anna would rather talk to a drooling mental patient armed with a chain saw. With zero desirable options, she points toward a private conference room.
Remo stumbles, shoved into the conference room by Anna. The company’s version of posh is decked out in bad art and a long, polished table surrounded by ten empty Herman Miller chairs. There’s a projection screen at the far end of the room, with a ceiling projector just waiting to beam out PowerPoint genius. Anna slams the door shut.
Remo decides he should try to sooth things first by saying, “Now. I realize—”
Anna doesn’t want to sooth anything. A woman scorned and ready to unleash. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“It’s good to see you Anna—”
“Oh, cut the shit, you complete fucking asshole. We agreed. The courts agreed. This . . . does not happen. No more drunk phone calls at three in the morning. No more just happening to bump into me on the street. No more motherfucking Remo.”
Remo resets. “I understand I’m not your favorite person—”
“Did that just come out of your mouth? Are you fucking kidding me? Get out.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No, really, I do.”
“Really, you don’t. Leave before I call security.” She moves to a phone on the conference table and picks up the receiver.. Remo scrambles for the best way to say what he needs to say.
“I’m dying.”
Anna takes those words in, asks, “What?”
“I’m dying.”
She puts down the phone. Sure she hates this guy, but doesn’t want him dead—well, not literally. “How?”
“It’s not important how, but I don’t have a lot of time.”
She collects herself, her thoughts, and finds her natural feeling toward her ex— animosity— resurfacing. “What the hell I’m I supposed to do with that information? You walk in here after years of shit and tell me, what, you’re dying?”
“You’re feeling mixed emotions, I get that.”
“Fuck you,” she paces. “Fuck you. Fuck you, Remo Cobb. Look at you. I can’t tell if you’re lying, dying or just looking for a pity blow job.”
“I’m not looking for a pity anything. I’m going to die. It’s true. I just want . . .” pauses. Says it. “I’d like to see Sean before I go.”
Anna takes that like a steel-toe boot to the gut. In a way, she knew this day was coming. That some day he was going to want to meet their son. She hoped it wouldn’t, but in the back of her mind she feared it. Carrying that fear just underneath the surface was her baggage, and her baggage was now standing in front of her.
“I’d like to at least meet the kid before I check out. Ya know?”
She fights the conflicting emotions pulsing through her. “You agreed to not be a part of his life, remember?”
Remo knows.
“You asked to not be a part of his life.”
“I know what I said.”
“We don’t need you. We don’t want you.”
Remo recoils. “You hate me.”
“You don’t think I’ve earned the right?”
“Don’t you think he would want to meet his dad?”
“I’m not even sure I believe you’re dying.”
“It’s going to happen. Soon.”
Anna’s bitterness takes over. “He’s already infected with your shit DNA. Nothing I can do about that. Do you really think I’m going to introduce you before you go away? Do you think I would do that to my son?”
Remo takes the hit. It hurts, and Remo’s natural instincts kick in—to cut down whoever is in front of him. “Technically, our son.”
Absolutely the wrong thing to say.
“Please go away,” Anna says, ice in her voice.
“Anna.”
She looks to him, eyes begging. Please, leave us alone.
“I only want to say hello to him.”
She gives her final answer in the only way this guy will understand. “Remo, go away and die.”
Her words cut, hurting even worse because he knows they were completely justified by the years of hurt he’s caused, driven by all the things he’s done to her . . . to Sean.
It’s a crushing moment of realization about the life he’s carved out for himself.
He gathers the battered remains of the hope he had at the coffee shop, thinking he should have known better. It was a fool’s errand while the clock is ticking on his final days, a waste of what little time he has left.
He gives an understanding, accepting nod to Anna as he exits.
Anna hates herself.
20
A prison transport bus rolls across a barren stretch of rural highway, which stretches like black arteries snaking through the land.
Steel mesh is bolted tightly to the security windows. It’s just good old fashioned, federally-funded transportation for psychos and sociopaths. Inmates are cuffed and secured to their seats. Not a word is spoken as they sway and bounce with the roads’ imperfections.
Dutch Mashburn watches the world pass by, seemingly oblivious to what is about to happen.
Frank sits facing the inmates, his mind engulfed in an all-out war. He fights like hell not to show what’s going to happen.
What he’s going to.
What he has to do.
The battle’s raging in his head—right vs. wrong, and all the wrong that will happen to his wife if he doesn’t make things right with Dutch. He grips a shotgun, wipes the sweat from his brow.
Wrong has an impressive win/loss record.
Dutch turns to Frank, flashes a look.
It’s time, shitbird.
Frank knows it's time. Every part of him hates it, but these animals have his wife. Memories of how they met, hot dates, all of their special times together, spiral into and mix with his overactive imagination’s ideas of what they might do to her.
Pushing aside his internal struggle, he takes to his feet and moves down the aisle, passing inmate after inmate. Frank takes them in as passes with unsteady steps. The choices they’ve made…they all deserve to die. Fuck’em, he thinks. His wife doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve this.
The portly bus driver checks his rearview, taking in the monster cargo behind him.
Frank reaches Dutch.
They share a silent moment. It's all over Frank’s face; he's losing his will to do this. Dutch’s granite-gaze coupled with a mocking slash to the neck reminds Frank that his wife will die if he’s not helpful, as in right fucking now.
“Everything all right back
there?” asks the bus driver.
Dutch’s hate-drenched eyes slip to him then back to Frank. You going to answer him, asshole?
“Yeah, it's fine,” replies Frank. He pulls a set of keys, turning his back to the driver.
Frank speaks, low and shaky. “Look in my eyes and tell me she's okay.”
Dutch smiles. “What do you think I am?”
Dutch knows something Frank doesn’t.
He knows that not far from here Ferris is exiting Frank’s home, getting into a stolen roofers van and driving off.
Ferris will check his watch.
Count to five.
Then Frank’s house, along with his little lady, will burst into a fireball.
Dutch is more than comfortable knowing all this—actually hasn’t really given it a lot of thought up until now.
Of course Frank knows none of this as he locks eyes with Dutch, otherwise Frank would blast that shotgun into Dutch’s smiling, knowing face.
Frank thinks he has no other play here so he unlocks Dutch’s cuffs and chains. Stepping back, he gives Dutch a silent finger count.
One . . .
Two . . .
Three.
Frank calls out for the benefit of the other guard and the driver. “Sit down, Dutch!”
Dutch springs up, locking his arm around Frank’s throat, twists his shotgun away. The other guard gets up, trying to level his sidearm.
Blam!
Dutch drops him, blood spray hitting the roof and front row of prisoners.
“No!” screams Frank. The site of his fellow guard being blow away, because of him, is almost too much. Because he was trying to save his own wife, this guard will not be going to his home. Frank pushes that reality to the background, rationalizes something about how we all know the risks and that’s the job.
Inmates scream and cheer like it was NFL Sunday.
“Pull over,” Dutch instructs the driver, calm as can be. The driver's eyes bounce between his rearview mirror and the road. Dutch fires a shot into the roof.
The driver yanks the wheel, pulling over to the side of the road. $30k a year ain’t worth it. Sure, dental’s nice, but fuck it. He’s been thinking of going back to school anyway.
The bus is now complete chaos, escalating by the second. Rocking, bouncing and swaying, shocks and struts put to the test by the inmate's pent up bloodlust. Still fastened to their seats, they tug like rabid animals whipped into a full-blown frenzy. They beg Dutch to set them free, calling out to him as if he’s their Lord and Savior. He ignores their pleas, pushing Frank to the front of the bus.
“Open the cage,” orders Dutch.
The driver looks to Frank, then Dutch.
“Open that door or I kill him and release the freaks on you.”
Again, the math is simple—not worth the trouble. The driver opens the cage door and Dutch pushes Frank through. Without a second thought, Dutch delivers a shotgun blast into the driver’s face.
A roar from the fans in the cheap seats.
Dutch shoves Frank out the bus’s doors, where he rolls into the dirt, reduced to a puddle of emotion. Through rage-induced tears Frank calls out. “We had a deal.”
Something catches Dutch’s eye; a roofers van speeding their way.
“We did.”
“You won't hurt her?”
“I won’t.”
The van pulls up, driver’s window lowering to reveal Ferris at the wheel.
“Or me?” asks Frank.
“I won't,” sneers Dutch, as Ferris fires two .357 slugs into Frank’s forehead.
Frank’s body hasn’t even hit the ground when Dutch enters the van.
The reunited Mashburns speed off, leaving in their wake three dead prison guards and a busload of Satan’s minions, still strapped to their assigned seats. The bus jolts in every conceivable direction, like it was a sack full of wild monkeys trying to fuck a football.
Dutch sits back, letting the wind blow through his rat’s nest of hair. Ferris steals a quick look at his brother, allows a small smile but says nothing.
Hands Dutch the .357.
21
Remo’s pace is that of a dead man walking. Void of any form of expression, his facial muscles hang from his skull. Throngs of busy people rush along with a vibrant pulse that matches their city while Remo moves at a crawl.
You couldn’t find his pulse with a map.
He’s a man who has given up, accepted his fate.
Accepted what the Mashburns are going to do to him and that he can’t do a damn thing about. He remembers the pictures and reports from the numerous assaults and murders the three brothers have committed over the years: blunt force trauma, strangulation, decapitations and—when they’re feeling their Christian side—gunshots. All these thoughts and more string together at random, coming together in a collage of introspection.
Do I deserve to be alive?
What do I have to offer this place?
Not a whole helluva lot.
Church bells ring in the distance.
There’s a Catholic cathedral a few blocks over. Remo’s not exactly a man of tremendous religious discipline, however he does acknowledge his Southern Baptist upbringing—which is to say that his grandmother dragged him to the Lord’s house while his daddy slept one off. They had snacks, he remembers, a wad of bread and shot of grape juice. And not to be a dick, but isn’t church where people go when they’re dying? Where normal people go in an attempt to make peace with the man upstairs before they check out? That kinda thing?
Remo crosses the street, heads in that direction.
A hundred or so men and woman, all dressed in black, stand waiting as a casket is shepherded out of an elegant hearse. He can’t keep from watching the polished oak casket moving along. The care the pallbearers give to it. The care they all share for whoever’s inside that box. It’s pretty damn moving when you think about it—that thing looks fucking heavy.
Remo enters the magnificent house of worship. Stained glass fires off striking beams of colored light. An organ produces a rich soundtrack, letting you know it’s okay for sadness; it’s okay for tears. This is where you grieve. So, please, grieve.
He takes note of the sorrow on the faces of the people paying their final respects to their fallen friend or family member. His body tightens, eyes watering. Not for the poor soul in the handcrafted wooden box; he doesn’t know that man or woman. Nor are his tears for the loved ones left behind to pick up the pieces from this person’s passing.
Remo’s sadness is for himself. He sees the truth of his life and it hurts. There will be nothing like this when bites it. Not even close.
An elderly man passes and Remo grabs his arm to stop him. “Yes?” asks the man.
“How did you know the deceased?”
The man delivers his answer with great warmth, from a special place in his heart. The wrinkles in his face loosen above his glowing, honest smile. Just talking about the departed seems to melt years off the man. “He was great friend to me and my family for years. I’ve known him a long time—”
Remo cuts him off. “You’re going to miss him?”
The question confuses the man. “Terribly.”
Remo moves on, stopping other funeral guests as he goes. Finds a young woman and asks her, “And you, you’ll miss him as well?”
“Of course, he was—”
Not needing the full answer, Remo drifts on, moving to another, and then another. He’s beginning to cause a scene at the funeral he’s crashing. People are staring, starting to take note of the strange and disheveled man asking about the deceased.
Remo’s mind is an emotional taco salad, trying to balance the idea of this amazing mass of people gathered to honor the life of someone they cared about deeply against the crushing reality of the certain, nasty death he’s facing.
The church begins to swirl and twist, the world crashing. He shuffles in no clear direction, speech reduced to the muttering of a crazy person. For a moment he turns in a slow,
small circle. He’s made it completely around the church, back around to the first elderly man, who stops Remo and asks, “May I ask whom you are?”
Remo ignores him, asks the older man the question of Remo’s lifetime. “And when you get your ticket punched, old-timer, people will probably miss you too?”
The old man’s answer is simple and so clear. “I hope so.”
Those three words put Remo’s mental puzzle together, slamming the pieces in place for the first time. People will miss the old man, no need for him to hope so. Remo knows he needs more than hope for people to miss him. In fact, nobody will miss him when he dies—sorry, when he gets viciously killed and left as a bloody mess for wild pigs to feed on.
He’s built an impressive portfolio of reasons for people to not only not miss him, but rejoice when he dies. Hell, they might throw a parade.
Fuckers.
Sure, a few criminals will miss his legal services, but fuck those guys. Really? That’s it, he thinks, that’s the sum of me?
Uncharacteristically, Remo hugs the man for an extended period of time, hoping maybe some of the old man’s good nature will rub off on him. Perhaps the proximity of good people will help. Can’t hurt.
But even the kind old man has his limits. “Could you please release me, son?”
Remo drifts out of the church, all eyes on him. No longer kind, understanding eyes, these are the eyes of men and women who have now joined the long list of people who don’t want anything to do with Remo. He wants to thank them, but we’re past that now. Remo slips out the door, making the long, lonely walk to his deluxe apartment in the sky.
22
There’s a song that rattles around in Remo’s head from time to time. He avoids it on his iPod when he’s sober. When he’s hammered he gives it a listen. By the time the last chords of the song fade away Remo’s usually in a puddle. It’s an obscure Pink Floyd song from one of their lesser-known albums, but Roger’s words cut right through Remo every damn time.
