The Coward

by Jarred McGinnis

  Near me an ancient man was talking to a young teenage girl. He held his knees as he spoke to her, lifting them to punctuate his statements with precise, eloquent gestures. He was wearing a light purple linen suit. His aristocratic face, long and angular, and rod-straight posture stood out from all the others slumped and exhausted around him.

  The pink dye in the teenager’s blonde hair barely tinted the tips. She wore a Ramones t-shirt. She had a hiker’s backpack stuffed so tight that it must have been impossible for her to get on and off alone.

  ‘Look, I know you’ve seen some trouble, young lady. I’m sorry to tell you this, but you ain’t ready for the consequences of your actions.’ He waved his arms as if he conjured the bus idling outside the window and the people stuffing luggage into its belly. ‘You think you’re going to be able to haul that bag of yours on and off them there buses for three days? That’s if it don’t get stolen or the bus don’t drive off without it. What’d you pack? You got wet wipes? First thing you need is wet wipes, guaranteed. The bus is cheap but it’s raggedy. What about food? You’re going get real sick of McDonald’s and paying too much for what they’re selling in the station. You ready for grease breakfast-lunch-dinner? I bet you ain’t even got a pillow. I’m not being cruel here. I don’t want to tell you your business. But, you need one of them five-dollar neck pillows. You’ll see. Best five dollars you’ll ever spend.

  ‘What you’re running from, I don’t want to know. That’s your business and yours alone. If anybody asks you, tell ’em to mind theirs. But here and now, you ain’t ready for this bus ride. You need to stop and think about it. If it’s home that’s trouble, you don’t have to go back there. You got friends, I know you do. You’re too sweet a young lady not to have someone willing to help you out. You got churches you can go to. Ever thought of that? Go there, get your head straight, think about what you’re about to do. If you still think you need to go to the other side of the world to solve your problems, then go. But you said yourself you just got up and went. Didn’t think it out.’

  As the girl listened, she picked at loose threads on her backpack.

  ‘How much you buy your ticket for?’ the man asked. ‘Sell me your ticket. I’m going to buy it from you. Don’t you worry. I’m an old man. I ain’t got nothing I need to save for. It’s not my money anyway. This here comes from your guardian angel; I’m just the delivery boy.’

  I missed the rest of their conversation as the line moved forward and I went to the ticket window.

  ‘Do you still do travel passes?’ I asked the lady with the sherbet hair behind the counter.

  ‘Discovery Pass. How many days? Actually, you should book individual journeys because they have to call in the buses with lifts.’

  ‘Okay, where’s the next bus go to?’

  ‘The six forty-five? That one doesn’t take accessible people.’

  ‘Which one does?’

  ‘You need to book in advance. At least forty-eight hours.’

  55

  Sarah was sitting on her porch with JJ. Seeing her laughing with the remnants of a six-pack on the table threw all my plans into confusion. When she saw me coming up the driveway she smiled, but it quickly dropped. I wheeled toward the back of the house and tapped Marco’s window. Marco squealed my name in response and that made me smile. Sarah was already at the bottom of the ramp when I turned the corner.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  I knew what I should say. The apologies and explanations were there lined up at the fore of my mind ready to go. I had revised over and over in my head what I was going to say. I was going to tell Sarah everything I knew for sure. She was kind, intelligent, wise, beautiful. She was the best person I knew and it made me want to be a good person. Not just to her, but to Jack, to everybody. Her kindness saved me. I didn’t care how ridiculous I sounded. This was what I was prepared to say.

  Instead, other words rushed forward. The easy, hateful words, and I saw everything curl and burn before me.

  ‘Having fun? Going to all those little upstairs haunts you missed.’

  ‘Jarred, you pushed me away, remember? I phoned you a million times. I visited you. I took the hint. I’m not a fuck buddy you put on the shelf until you’re ready to make up your mind. You’re being ugly. JJ is here because I need a friend right now. You think you’re the only one who’s allowed to be lonely?’

  ‘I just came to tell you Jack is dying.’

  She covered her mouth. Tears welled and her face reddened. She ran up the ramp and at the top she turned. ‘Fuck you! You say that shit to hurt me. You’re losing a pathetic little argument with your girlfriend, and you’d rather hurt me than admit you’re wrong. Fuck you!’

  I was almost to the street when JJ called out, ‘Dude!’

  JJ stepped off the porch and approached me.

  ‘What?’ Red veiled the world and JJ.

  ‘She loves you. Stop treating her like shit. Or—’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘I’ll kick your ass.’ JJ tried to make it sound like he was joking.

  I laughed, locked my brakes, and punched JJ in the stomach. When he bent forward, I hit him in the jaw and threw myself out of my chair. Stunned and confused, JJ held me up as I continued punching him without effect. I slid slowly down his body until we both fell. He scrambled to his feet. I was sprawled, awkward and helpless.

  Sarah ran outside and pulled JJ into the house.

  ‘Look at yourself,’ she screamed over her shoulder at me.

  I sat up and spat dirt. I dragged myself along the ground and, after a few graceless attempts, got back into my chair. On the bus ride home, people stared unabashed.

  56

  We stole a bottle of Jack Daniel’s while the car Melissa ordered waited for us outside the liquor store. The driver took us to the address Melissa read from her phone. Fritz’s house was bland and nondescript. The carless driveway was covered in generations of oil stains. The small shrubs had long ago been burnt to bare twigs by the sun and neglect.

  ‘Is Fritz still DJing?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know,’ Melissa said.

  A small man answered the door.

  ‘Is Fritz home?’ Melissa asked.

  The man looked us up and down with exaggerated contempt. It made me giggle. He waited a few beats before saying no, then stared at me.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ she asked.

  ‘Work.’

  ‘Where is work?’

  ‘Who are you again?’

  ‘Friends.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t think so.’ He shut the door.

  ‘Wow. He was a pissy little man. What now?’

  ‘I’m sure he’s at Area.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s go there.’

  The bar’s marquee promised ‘Magnolia Thunderpussy Revue’.

  ‘This will be fun,’ I said. Melissa brightened. She became girlish when I spotted Fritz at the bar. She ran up and they kissed.

  ‘Look who I found.’

  Fritz looked hard; his eyes were having trouble focusing. ‘Jarred? Oh my god. My little punk rocker.’

  He leapt from his stool and we hugged. We talked and they gossiped. I kept ordering drinks, working my way through the specials board, and putting them on Melissa’s tab and Frank’s credit card. It was great to see Fritz, but where Melissa suited adulthood, he had skipped ahead to old age. His hair was stringy and thinning. His face had a greasy sheen to it. He kept rubbing his arm with hands that looked arthritic. At one point, Fritz lined up the orange-uniformed, white-capped soldiers of his medicine bottles. He put his chin on the bar and called their names and ranks: Klonopin 4mg in the morning, 2mg afternoon and evening; Zoloft 50mg twice daily; Wellbutrin 150 mg; Vicodin 5mg; Selzentry 150 mg twice daily. I calculated how old he was: barely thirty.

  Person after person, even Magnolia herself, stopped by and greeted Fritz. He used the same exaggerated excitement he had used to greet Melissa and me. Everyone looked amazing and it was always so
good to see them. When the conversation dried up, he slumped as if exhausted by the effort.

  ‘One minute,’ Fritz announced and disappeared into the bar’s gloom.

  We sat waiting and waiting.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Melissa said.

  ‘Are you drunk? It was the Buttery Nipples. We should have stopped there,’ I said.

  Melissa laughed. ‘What the hell were you ordering? Nasty.’

  ‘Let’s go. Let’s go sit by the water.’

  ‘Are we near water?’

  At the exit, Fritz was talking to the man in the booth, leaning in close to whisper.

  ‘Are you leaving?’ he asked when he saw us.

  ‘We have a plane to catch,’ I said.

  ‘Okay. Have fun. You got my number?’ he said and turned back to the man in the booth.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. He turned back, and we smiled at each other. I touched his cheek, my childhood hero.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. A thank you for all the calming words he spoke to me when we were inpatients, for the love when I needed it most. I gave him all the affection I had for him. I put it all there in that touch and prayed I never saw him again.

  He smiled. ‘See you.’

  The car dropped us off under the bright yellow moons of street lamps that hovered over the marina. The masts nodded, bobbed and their rigging chirped like roosting birds. Calm came to me with each deep breath of the night’s air. Melissa said she had learned how to sail last year in Qatar. I had the idea to steal a boat.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, I have a friend who has a boat. He won’t mind if we use it.’ She pointed to a yacht, the largest one by far, with swoops of white paint and a yellow wood deck that glowed against the night. ‘I think it’s this one.’

  ‘Who has that kind of money? That’s insane. It’s disgusting, actually.’

  ‘You get used to it very quickly.’

  ‘It’s got a hot tub. A hot tub on a boat?’ I pushed a button on the enamelled tub. It rumbled to life and frothed the water. ‘Shall we?’

  She gave a coy smile and nodded.

  I started to undress. ‘This is your friend’s boat?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  A light came on in the cabin. She ran off giggling, still stumbling from the drinks, and I followed with my shoes and shirt in my hands.

  57

  I was sitting in front of the cardiac unit of the hospital smoking a cigarette. An old man sitting beside me was reading a newspaper. He had a face made for the portrait of a civil war veteran: leathered, crosshatched skin stretched over a skull and eyes like smudges. An ancient burn scar interrupted the unkempt grey beard crawling down his neck. He wore a hospital gown. In the crook of his elbow a streak of dried blood sneaked out from the tape and gauze where he had pulled out an IV. The old man looked at me and said, ‘Buy the ticket, See the show,’ and tugged at his half-ear.

  I thought it had been a few days since I punched JJ. I wasn’t sure. Patrick had come by in the morning to check on me, but I went out the back door and around the house before he saw me. I needed to talk to Jack. I didn’t want him to die. I drew deeply on my cigarette and hoped it gave me courage. People went in and out, ignoring the man arguing with his newspaper and the wheelchair guy beside him.

  ‘Carl don’t like this. They’re crazy if they think the people will stand for this. Crazy!’ He flipped the page violently, put his nose close to the paper and tsked.

  Sarah walked along the sidewalk toward me. A blast of wild flowers poked out of her handbag and nodded with her bouncing steps. Her walk had the skip of a little girl in it. It was one more thing that made her perfect.

  ‘Long time no see,’ she said.

  I tried to take a drag from my cigarette, but the shaking made it hard. I stared at my hand, turning it over and over, sending sea horses of smoke tumbling.

  ‘You don’t look good. You okay?’ Sarah asked. She held my hand. I raised the other and she took that one too.

  ‘I’m getting asked that a lot these days.’

  She let go. I showed her that the shake had stopped. Here was my chance to say what she deserved to hear.

  ‘The Mexicans! Ho! Carl’s got more problems than Mexicans. I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you. A farmer hires an illegal; the government should take the farm and give it to the illegal. That’ll solve the so-called immigration problem. Ho!’

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘More of a mentor, really.’

  ‘I hate hospitals. They have that smell. When I was little, Marco would disappear and return smelling like hospital. I used to hide from him. He hated it. He’d howl and howl, but I couldn’t be near him when he had that hospital smell. I hate that I did that. I was a horrible child.’

  ‘You didn’t know any better. You want to sit down?’ She started crying. ‘No. You’re an asshole. I’m visiting Jack, not you.’

  ‘Ho! Liars!’ The man stood abruptly, thrust the newspaper into Sarah’s hands. ‘Quick, take this from me. It’s driving Carl crazy!’ He stamped off.

  Sarah threw the newspaper away and disappeared into the hospital. I fought the urge to follow. Anger rose up my spine, but I finished my cigarette to let her have her time with Jack. Two old ladies, walking side by side with their arms threaded, gave a startled jump when they passed me. I took a deep breath and went inside. I searched for Jack past the staff-administered procedural kindness and their soft words saying no (it’s always no), past babies trying to work themselves into a tantrum while their mothers hushed them, past the bloodied and dazed expressions of the waiting room, the repeated tableaux over and over, framed by hospital curtains, of two people – one in bed, one standing at their side, both trying out words that they hoped would suffice or at the least pass the time – and past police, always in twos, walking the halls. Shooting stars danced in the hallways. I heard the ocean. I felt a sea breeze and tasted its salt.

  I followed the sterile right angles of the hospital to Jack’s room. Sarah’s flowers were in a vase on his sink, but she wasn’t there. Jack was sleeping. His sheets were thrown off, exposing thin, almost hairless legs, the colour of fish bellies. I adjusted his dressing gown to cover the exposed buttocks and put the blanket back on him. I held this old man’s hand. He kicked off the sheets again and rolled over, grumbling in his sleep.

  ‘What now?’ I said. ‘What now?’

  ‘Jarred?’ Patrick stood at the doorway with his wife and children behind him.

  ‘What now?’ I pointed at the children. I slapped my face.

  Patrick looked at his wife and, without a word, she nodded and disappeared with the children.

  ‘Jarred, what’s happened?’ Patrick asked.

  I grabbed my hair and jerked my head down to my shoulder. I raised my fist, clumps of hair sprouting between my fingers. I opened my hand and watched the strands fall to the ground. I heard the rushing, pounding sound of a train.

  ‘He’s dead. You’re only ever here when they die.’

  ‘Jarred, stop shouting. He’s just sleeping.’

  ‘You had the best of both of them.’

  ‘Jarred!’

  ‘When did you ever – they sent you to college. Bought you a car. They wanted you.’ I tasted blood.

  ‘Dad has done everything for you,’ Patrick said, surprised by his own anger. It made me laugh. He dodged the thrown vase of flowers and stepped forward to block the exit. He grabbed my wrists.

  Nurses and security swarmed into the room. Golden light flooded my vision to burn out Patrick’s face, the hands restraining, the coolness of the floor tasting of chemicals, the shouts.

  I heard Jack’s voice: ‘Leave him alone!’

  58

  When it happens, there is no taking of measurements or calculation of import. This event. The minimal change in velocity when the weight of steel and glass encounter flesh and bone is just another event in a series. This event that destroys everything. An event that cuts your life into two strands, before and after. The m
ind encounters it with the same mechanical disinterest as all the other events of the evening. It is the instant when the world wheels, the transfer of momentum, the impolite shove of a silver VW Golf. The noise of brakes doesn’t register. Only after everything is at rest, a horrible stillness where even the wind holds its breath, does sound return. The first sound heard is the driver’s repetition of ‘Oh god!’ blurring to a stutter as he paces behind the car, occasionally looking up at you and Melissa. His hands holding his head as it shakes violently. After the event, the continuity of time breaks into flashes of scenes and impressions. Melissa’s skirt has ridden up and you expect her to adjust it to hide the perfect, tanned thighs you had been stealing glances at all evening. The mind doesn’t reflect on the grave significance of Melissa’s body or the gore of her face. That all comes later in pounding, bruising, unrelenting waves when you lie in the hospital praying for the next dose of morphine to push it away. You move your mouth, working the jaw, feeling your tongue, and spit blood onto your chin. Your body doesn’t move. You can’t get up. You lift your head to look down to command your legs, but they ignore you. Your left arm, it’s hard to lift. A knife of bone has cut through a surprisingly bloodless pink gash. You put your finger on its tip. Should you push it back in? You turn your head and watch Melissa and beg for movement. Someone come and help us. You know you need help. That she needs help. Someone please help. Why won’t that man by the car help? Please help. He’s walking away. No, he’s flagging an ambulance. Why did they park so far away? Why aren’t they helping Melissa? Go help Melissa. Who is screaming? You are screaming. That. What.

  59

  It’s going to hurt. Ready? One . . . two . . . three.

  A curtain rail framed the ceiling of the hospital room. Jack stood beside my bed.

  ‘Jack? You okay?’

  ‘Me? I’m up and moving around. It feels like they threw in a box of mouse traps before sewing me up.’ Jack pulled down his t-shirt to show the central line for intravenous antibiotics attached to his chest. ‘Look, I’m a bagpipe.’