by Micah Nathan
“Right here,” the old man said.
“What’s going on?” Ben asked.
The old man rolled up his sweatshirt sleeve. He exhaled sharply and laughed. He winked at Ben. He kissed his left pinky and Delilah handed him the silver coffee tray, along with a kitchen knife, as he placed his hand flat on the tray.
Ben raised his voice. “What the hell is going on?”
“Payment long overdue,” the old man said. “Charlie gave it up twice before, Red once. I never did—always had someone else to bleed for me. Not this time. Not now. Ben, look me in the eye.”
He did as the old man said.
“I’ll bleed for you,” Ben said.
“I know you would,” the old man said with a sad smile, and suddenly Ben saw blood pattering on the floor. He saw a pinky, small and silly, sitting all by itself on the silver coffee tray. He saw the knife with a crescent moon of blood clinging to the blade. He saw the two men sitting on the couch smile and thump their canes and the first man asked, “Is it done?” and the old man sighed and said, “Good Lord, yes it is,” and then Ben saw nothing.
9.
en awoke in the back of the Caddy as the sun shot low through the forest, creamy orange washed over the pine needles and curled leaves. His shirt stuck to his skin. The back of his head itched, and when he touched it, pain blossomed.
The old man looked over the front seat. He wore his aviators with the missing arm. He grinned. “You fainted like a little girl. Nearly split your skull on the coffee table. But that’s okay, because it gave me some time to think.”
Ben sat up. He touched the back of his head again and scraped at the hairs, dark grains of blood flaking off. He looked out the window, at the forest. A bird swooped to the ground. It fluttered to a stop and pecked at the dirt.
“We don’t have the goods for what needs to be done.” The old man held up his bandaged left hand, gauze soaked through with dark red. “I need pain medication. And cash. Plenty of cash. Hank won’t give her up for nothing.”
Ben searched for something to say. Nothing came to mind except ridiculous questions. He felt displaced, as if half of his body was rooted in a former life—his apartment above Manchurian House, his nostalgia for Jessica, his crazy mom, his ghost of a dad—and here was a new life, a dizzying, dreamlike life, where a beautiful blonde with a scar above her lip had asked him to sleep with her. Where he ate, drank, and fought with bikers. Where blind old men gave prophecy in exchange for pinkies. Where Elvis had never died, but lived in a vinyl-sided box in a Polish suburban neighborhood ten minutes outside of Buffalo.
Ben thought back to the crying boy in the orange shorts. One minute sitting in the sprinkler, holding his knee, tears mixed with sprinkler water, lips trembling. The next minute, eyes still red but now he laughed, back arched, hands overhead. Fingers spread, wedges of blue sky between them. My entrance into this world, Ben thought. Tears to laughter. Pain to pleasure. Just like that. The old man like a light switch. Dark to light. Insane to wise. Just like that.
Ben leaned his head against the window and saw Delilah shuffling down the driveway toward them, carrying a pickling jar.
“The oracle doesn’t take money,” the old man began, staring out the windshield. “Offer a million and they’d laugh in your face. I’ve known men paid with their lives to find out why their kids are fucked up or whether their wife ever cheated on them.”
Ben laughed quietly. “The oracle. Are you listening to yourself?”
“Course I am.”
“You just chopped off your pinky. Doesn’t that, I don’t know—bother you?”
“If chopping off my pinky means I can find where that sonofabitch took my granddaughter, then I got the better of the deal. It’s a pinky, for Christ’s sake. What the hell I need a pinky for, at my age?”
“And here comes that crazy lady with a jar. Great. We have three more pinkies between us, so maybe—”
“Calm down, son.”
Ben rubbed his face. “The mall wasn’t so bad, you know. Or I could’ve worked at a summer camp. Cute counselors, playing with kids—”
“This is more important. You understand. That’s why you came along.”
“I came along because I needed the money.”
“And because you understand.”
“No.” Ben shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this.”
The old man sighed. He stared out the windshield, bandaged hand resting atop the steering wheel. “Never said it was going to be easy. Have faith and follow my lead. I’m a field general in the valley of the strange.”
The old man tossed Ben the keys with his good hand, just as Delilah reached the driver’s-side window. She held out the jar. Ben saw the pinky floating in yellow liquid.
“I remember how sweet your voice was,” she said, her mouth like a hole in a dried apple. “I always found it strange because your voice was so sweet but you were so sad.”
The old man took the jar. “I’m still sad, darling. And a little less sweet.”
Delilah turned her head in Ben’s direction. “How’s the boy?”
Ben forced a smile, then stopped because he remembered she couldn’t see. “I’m okay.”
“He reminds me of you,” she said to the old man, and she shuffled away, dust kicking up in clouds lit yellow by the setting sun. Once she’d disappeared behind the bend of trees, the old man opened the door and set the jar gently on the dirt.
“Those demons would crack her bones and suck out the marrow, they found out I welched,” he said.
Ben climbed over the seat and started the car. They pulled from the driveway, driving into the gloaming as the old man sang, “So long, little pinky. So long.”
Fitchville, Tennessee. Moths collected in the pale of the pharmacy sign and Ben found himself walking under buzzing fluorescent lights, among rows of toothpaste, hemorrhoid creams, shoelaces, and allergy relief. He stopped at the pharmacist’s counter, where the old man spoke with a pharmacist named Dean.
Dean shook his head, arms folded across his chest. “I’m sorry, Mr. Barrow, but without a prescription there is nothing I can do for you.” He was thin and bald with small eyes hidden behind his wire-rims. His fingernails were freshly manicured.
“Man, look at my hand. I’m dying here.”
“Again, I recommend you bring yourself to a hospital, where a doctor will be more than happy to write you a script.”
“We don’t have the time for all that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry don’t stop this pain.”
“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do.”
The old man leaned forward. He nodded at the white shelving stocked with pills. “Vicodin. I can see it from here. Fifteen-milligram tabs. You hand me seven of those and we’ll be on our way.”
“Sir, I cannot do that.”
“Generic, then. Not that I trust those goddamn Canadians but—”
“Sir, I cannot do that, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Leave?”
Dean looked at the old man but found he couldn’t match his stare, so he inspected his polished nails. “That’s right.”
“Ben, get the sack of money from the trunk,” the old man said, and he rested his bloodied, bandaged hand on the counter and rolled his three remaining fingers.
Dean sighed. “I will call the police, sir. No amount of money—”
“Just get the goddamn sack, Ben. I’ll worry about good old Dean.”
Ben shoved through the pharmacy doors. The night was warm. He listened to the crunch of gravel under his sneakers. He jangled the keys in his pocket. The Caddy shone the color of the moon, low and gleaming like a spike of polished bone.
I could leave now, Ben thought. The old man would be safe. Take half of the five grand and keep walking. Leave a note on the dashboard, below the keys. Sorry, couldn’t go on. Keep the rest of the money and good luck finding Nadine.
Instead he opened the trunk and his cell twitter
ed. He answered without looking at it.
“Ben?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Jess.”
He saw two shotguns, an AR-15 carbine, and boxes of ammunition lying atop a spare tire. He saw holstered handguns and something that looked like a flak vest.
“What are you doing?” Jess asked.
“I’m standing in a parking lot in Fitchville, Tennessee. Looking at a bunch of guns in the trunk of our 1965 Cadillac.”
“You’re funny. Are you still with that crazy old man?”
He saw a burlap sack that read Basmati Rice on the side, lying next to a hunting rifle with a mounted scope. It was stuffed with crinkled hundreds and twenties.
“Hello?” Jessica asked. “Are you okay? You sound weird.”
He leaned back against the rear bumper and closed his eyes, holding his cell with his other hand pressed to his forehead. He thought of a summer day in some park, standing at the top of a hill with his dad. His dad had held him, making his arms into the shape of barrel, and they rolled down, little Ben screaming with laughter and terror.
He thought of the day he discovered he could kill ants. On the driveway where he had stomped them by the dozens, the cement was covered in little black smears. His dad stepped onto the driveway and his bare feet were huge with hair on the toes, and he asked, What are you doing? and Ben answered, Killing ants.
Why would you want to bother those ants? he remembered his dad saying. They have families just like you.
“Ben?”
“I’m here.”
Jessica sighed. “I was thinking about us.” Her voice pulled through him like barbed wire. “Just old stuff,” she continued. “It doesn’t feel like any of it happened. Like those seven months—”
“Eight months.”
“It’s strange but I can’t even remember what you look like.”
“Like my face is an old photo.”
“I guess. So get this: I don’t have anything to do tonight because I got into a fight with Alan and then Marcy asked me to go with them to Shooters but I just don’t feel—”
“Who’s Alan?”
“Don’t make me answer that. Can I finish my story?”
Crickets chirped in the hedges lining the parking lot. Ben kept quiet.
“It was a boring story anyway,” Jess said.
The old man stalked into the parking lot and tucked his aviators into his sweatshirt pocket. “We’re rolling. Take a left out of here and get me to the corner of Elliott and Vine.”
Ben said Jessica’s name but she was gone.
It was a boring story anyway. His uncle had told him the same thing at his father’s funeral, while they stood under the speckled shadow of a giant tree and mourners shuffled past. He’d been reminiscing about a rafting trip taken with Ben’s father when they were boys, and halfway through he stopped. It was a boring story anyway, his uncle said, squeezing Ben’s shoulder with a hand that felt and looked like his father’s.
It wasn’t true then, Ben thought. And it sure as hell isn’t true now.
The bus stop booth on the corner of Elliott and Vine had cracked windows and lighter burns running up the plastic frame. Low-slung storefronts boarded with curled yellowed posters advertised boxing matches of months and years past: Lucky Luziano vs. Enrique Valdemar; The Escobar Kid vs. Ennison Two-Fist Carter; Joe Irish vs. Hampstead Williams. Ben saw another poster, this one more recent. Elvis Tribute Contest! it read. Little Valley, Tennessee. Saturday, June 10. Cash Prizes, Food, Family Fun!
A girl stood on the corner, leaning against a lamppost. She wore a T-shirt and tight low-rise jeans and she was barefoot with chipped gold nail polish on her toes. The red eye of her cigarette bobbed up and down in the blue-dark.
“Pull over,” the old man said. “Sanctimonious prick told me if I needed painkillers, this was the place to go.”
He rolled down the window. “Hey, sweet thing,” he said, and the girl dropped her cigarette and slinked toward them, slow as a cat on a summer day. She leaned on the windowsill. The scent of smoke and strawberry shampoo filled the car. Her blond hair showed dark roots. She’d plucked her eyebrows too thin. She had narrow eyes and high cheekbones. Ben thought she looked half-Asian.
“Fifty for both,” she said. “Condom for everything including blow jobs. I don’t touch asses, so don’t ask me to put a finger up there.”
“What’s your name?” the old man asked.
“Ginger.”
The old man smiled. “I knew a Ginger once. Long time ago. Get in.”
Ben drove aimlessly, pretending as if he knew where to go. Past brick buildings with broken windows and narrow houses with chain-link fences and overgrown lawns. Ginger was younger than Ben first thought, hard-faced with baby fat on her cheeks and heavy makeup particular to hookers, high schoolers, and the women who worked the makeup counter at the Palisade Mall.
“We’re not looking for sex,” the old man said.
“Well, I don’t do nothing weird,” Ginger said. “No whips, I mean. Or stepping on your balls or changing your diaper or none of that stuff.”
The old man shook his head and held up his bandaged hand. “I need painkillers. This is a legitimate injury. I lost one of my fingers.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Long story,” Ben said.
She shrugged and stretched out across the backseat with her bare feet resting on the door. “This is a cool car. Is this like a classic?”
“It is a classic,” the old man said. “How long you been selling your body?”
“A month.”
“How many men you been with?”
“I don’t know. A dozen. Maybe more.”
The old man whistled, shaking his head. “Now, I’m going to ask you a personal question, and I don’t want you to feel ashamed in front of the young man driving this car. His name is Ben. He’s as loyal as they come.”
Ben waved hello in the rearview. Then he realized how ridiculous it was, so he gripped the steering wheel and made another turn.
“Did you have sex with all those men?” the old man asked.
“Okay, now you’re getting weird.” Ginger sat up and wiped the dirt from the bottom of her feet.
Run away, Ben told himself. Back to Cheektowaga. When you get there lock the doors and bar the windows because you know he’ll come looking for you. Green aviators, red sweatsuit, and that swept-back hair dyed purple-black. He’ll tell you he’s on a mission from God. You’ll rage against the strip malls, the shrieking boulevards, your dead father, and the stupidity of everyone and everything, but the old man won’t care because somewhere in Memphis or Shake or wherever the fuck, there awaits a stripper named Nadine sitting on a throne next to the man who moves mountains with his voice and taught Elvis everything he knew/knows.
“Let me out,” Ginger said.
“Keep driving.” The old man fished his wallet from his sweatsuit pocket and tossed it to her. “What’s in it is yours if you’ll answer my questions.”
She counted the money and stuffed it in her pocket, then pushed the hair off her face with a certain haughtiness. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know how many men you’ve slept with.”
“Not many. Most of them only want blow jobs.”
The old man frowned. “Do you believe in fate?”
Ginger shrugged.
“Well, I’ve seen too much to think this universe operates on accident,” the old man said. “I put an ad in the paper looking for help, and look what the universe sent me—this young man here. World is full of deviants but Ben is no deviant. Some would chalk it up to luck. Not me. I believe every molecule has its own path—some seek death, others love. Some spend their life in destruction, breaking what the rest of us build like a bully kicking over sand castles. But there are a few men, there are a few, Ginger, that sacrifice themselves for the good of others, and you’re looking at two such men. I’m telling you you don’t have to hurt anymore. No more shame. No more u
nspeakable acts that would kill your momma if she ever knew. This is what I’m offering, and if you’ll have it, all you gotta do is take my hand.”
The old man reached his good hand over the backseat. Ginger’s eyes were dark and wide as a doe’s.
It’s too late for all of us, Ben thought.
Ginger blinked and took the old man’s hand. He smiled kindly. “Now,” he said, “tell me where I’d find the kind of medication that would help this poor old hand of mine.”
* * *
“It doesn’t matter if she was drunk. She wouldn’t have asked you if she wasn’t interested.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t go with her. She was so cool. And really good-looking. Hot, actually. Definitely hot. Hottest girl I’ve ever talked to. I’m an idiot for not hooking up with her. Do you think I might be depressed?”
“I think you’re still caught up in Rebecca.”
“You mean Jessica.”
“Jessica. Sorry.”
Ginger lit a cigarette and offered the first puff to Ben but he shook his head. They sat on the curb outside Lou’s Convenience, where the old man told Ben to pull over so he could grab some snacks and use the restroom. Tall boarded buildings stood crooked across the street, weedy lots between them filled with mattresses, rusted shopping carts, and rain-swollen newspapers. The store sign buzzed and flickered red. Moths banged against the neon.
Ben leaned back on his arms and stared at the night sky. “One time I washed Jessica’s car while she was at school. Right on the front lawn of my apartment—it was this piece-of-shit LeBaron, but it was a convertible. Her folks bought it for her.”
“Were they rich?”
“Sort of, in a suburban, country club way. Anyway, so I picked her up after school and she was grateful, and then we’re driving to my place and I put the window down and she freaks out because it wasn’t dry and the water was going to leave streaks on the glass.”
“What a spoiled bitch.”
“But I didn’t say anything back. I just apologized. When we got to my place I used my shirt to wipe the glass clean. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? That’s so ridiculous, if my friend told me that story I couldn’t be friends with him anymore.”
