Slivovica Mason

by Clifton L Bullock Jr.

  "I wanted to save you, comrade. I swear I tried," Mason said to himself as he inhaled the smoke from the cigarette. Guilt of death still affected his psyche after all these years later.

  After another pull from the torch and a French inhale, Mason closed his eyes. He held the smoke as long as he could to separate the poison from the nicotine in hopes that it would kill him quickly and then billowed slowly when he could hold it no longer. The slight lightheadedness helped soothe the pain of memories that plagued his mind.

  Mason stripped his pajamas to view his naked body; he detested it. The one thing he hated more than speaking to people was to look at his body and all of its scars. The bullet that he took from one of his own Marines for defending a poor woman pleading for her life that was not spared left a scarred wound. His body physically reminded him of everything his brain would not allow him to forget. As he entered the shower, after ridding the cigarette inside of the toilet, the temperature of the water’s warmth quieted the voices for now. He closed his eyes and heard nothing but the water beating his skin and the tiled floor inside the shower enclosure and the awakening sounds of the city of Philadelphia outside.

  Chapter 2

  As Mason exited the mass transit system of a city with a population of almost two million people and walked the heavily populated streets of downtown to the tribune, he could not escape the constant voice he heard.

  "Avenge me, brother. Please," the voice of the Serbian soldier with eyes Mason would never forget said. They held terror of inevitable death. The voice was loud, but if the sounds of the world were muted, they would fall on deaf ears. Another shake of his head in an attempt to rid himself of the torment was all for naught. The surrender by the enemy was innocent and as a part of a liberating force, he knew that the rules of engagement had to be obliged. Unfortunately, not all of his Marines followed his lead. They failed to at least acknowledge the surrenders of some as people, as human beings with souls.

  "Chandler needs to see you. He has been asking about your whereabouts since he arrived this morning," the receptionist informed Mason as he arrived at the Philadelphia Daily News. He didn’t speak to acknowledge her statement. He only nodded his head as he removed his headphones from his ears and inserted them into his messenger bag. His speech impediment made him so insecure that even the most casual professional interaction was avoided. It made him almost a mute unless it was imperative to speak.

  People that knew him were amazed that a man who could fluently speak Russian, Serbian, Spanish, French and Arabic to perfection would have the greatest challenge with his native tongue. His constant stutter was as if his tongue spoke in cursive, but due to his ASVAB score, the United States Marine Corps provided a waiver for this because they could train an assassin who could learn to speak and understand the tongue of the enemy. Unfortunately, his inability to speak English without the verbal barricades limited him the confidence to speak regardless of how dire the situation.

  People were always curious of him. They only knew that he was a well-dressed and properly groomed veteran who was slightly odd. Since he never spoke, it was always a wonder. “So who was this Mason who sat in a small office near the stairwell and bathroom on the 4th floor?” they would ask.

  "You needed me, Mr. Chandler?" Mason was barely able to speak as he nervously laced his hands behind his back. He was nervous because Mr. Chandler never requested to speak to writers of his level. This made him nauseous. He burped up the taste of orange juice causing bile to burn the back of his esophagus.

  "I don’t need you for anything; understand that right now," Mr. Chandler said in a low, baritone growl.

  Mr. Vernon Chandler was the Editor in Chief at The Daily, a tall man with a muscular stature. His eyes were low with scrunched eyebrows to match his scowl. His age could only be identified by his mustache that was salted with gray.

  "I’m s-s-sorry sir," Mason expressed. When he was nervous, he stuttered but when he was scared, he was incomprehensible.

  “I don’t want your life excuses, Mason, and I sure as hell don’t need them. I had you come see me for a reason. So sit your ass down and shut the hell up," Mr. Chandler said as he pointed to a chair in front of his desk.

  Mason had no idea what was going on, but he knew better than to interrupt Mr. Chandler with a question. Instead he did what he was told.

  "I have the inside track on a story that I want you to cover; the operative word here Mason is “want.” I want you to cover the murder of a Marine killed in the Pennsauken Township who was shot execution style, once in the back of the head and then shot twice more on each side of his temple. I can’t believe one of our nation’s finest warriors could be murdered this way. Some crazy fuck has no regard for human life, the sick son of a bitch! I want you to cover this story, and I want you to get out there now."

  Mr. Chandler, a former Green Beret in Vietnam, seemed to take a personal exception anytime a service member was murdered domestically after surviving conflict abroad. It really brought out the patriot in him.

  “I want you to get with Orinda Costa once you leave my office, and I want the two of you to make your way to Pennsauken immediately. An investigator will be waiting for you specifically."

  Mason wanted to ask Mr. Chandler why he was chosen, but he knew that Chandler’s patience with him was especially thin with everything going on that he wouldn’t let him finish.

  "Why are you still sitting in my office, Mason?! Get the hell out of here, and get with Orinda. Now! Straighten up, Marine! As you were!" Mr. Chandler yelled as Mason hurried out of his office.

  Many questions were racing in Mason’s mind of which Chandler would provide no answers. They were along the lines of, "Why do I need to cover this story? Why do I have to work with Orinda? Why will an investigator be waiting for me? I’m not a cop. I’m only a writer for a newspaper." All questions would be answered in due time. As Mason walked down the hall making his way to the elevator, he heard a familiar voice in his head again that uttered the same words time and time again. He shook his head to rid the voice of the fallen Serbian soldier, but time and time again the words echoed.

  The elevator doors opened to the 4th floor where his desk was located. It was also the floor where Orinda Costa was as well. She sat on the southwest side and Mason the northeast, so they rarely saw each other. They made eye contact a few times in passing but, that was only in common areas like the hallway and the elevator. He always thought she was beautiful with her long, silky, wavy brown hair highlighted with a hint of auburn. She had a voluptuous figure. When she wore heels, she was abnormally tall. She always wore earth tone colors paired with tortoise plastic frame glasses that made her look like a Spanish teacher that Mason had many years back; he could never forget her. She was especially nice to him because he was her best student but also because she felt for him. Other students treated him with such cruelty because he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak.

  He was infatuated with her; sometimes he would stay after class and speak Spanish with her clearly as her friends would. Mason could never tell his teacher how he felt but if he could have, he would have told her that he was in love.

  "O-or-Orinda?" Mason said shyly as he approached her desk. The smell of brewed lavender filled the air from her flameless candle burner.

  "Good Morning, Mason. I see you talked to Chandler," Orinda said. Her accent was as strong and Latin as she was.

  “Y-ye, yes I d-d-did. We have to-to work-work toget-ther on an assign-ma-ma-ment," Mason said. His face felt twenty degrees warmer, so warm that sweat began building up on his forehead. He was nervous, he was smitten.

  "Yes, we have to head over to Camden County and meet up with a naval criminal investigator at a Pennsauken Industrial Park. They found the body of a Marine who was murdered, and we were called to cover the story. If the Inquirer puts this out first, Chandler will lose his shit. We have to get there before word gets out to the public. Do you want to drive or should I?" she asked turning around in her chair to face hi
m. Mason could barely concentrate because he was in engulfed in her beauty. Her breasts protruded from her chest so perfectly that it caught his eye which also caught hers.

  “I don’t have a c-c-c-ar. Is it o-o-okay if you-you drive-drive?” Mason struggled to ask. “Ok great, I’ll drive. Did you get some coffee yet?"

  "No I-I-I haven’t, but I ne-need something to calm my ner-nerves. Can I sit d-d-down-down and take my medicine really qui-quickly?" he asked.

  "No problem, Mason. It’s a bit of a drive away, and I still have to make a few calls. I will come over to your desk when I’m ready. Is that ok?”

  “Sh-sh-sure th-thing, Orinda," Mason said, before he made his way to his desk.

  He took off his coat and scarf and placed them on his hand-crafted wooden coat rack and sat with his head in his hands. His head began to pound. The day had not been a good day. In fact, it was worse than yesterday. This week was harder than others because the anniversary of the massacre was approaching. As much as he tried to rid himself of the voices and the guilt, he felt the blood of the enemy was on his conscious. It all could have been prevented if he would have stepped up and saved another man’s life by speaking. Every year as the calendar date neared the same season, the voices became louder and louder, but this year was worse than before.

  He opened his desk drawer to get Ibuprofen for his headache and popped double his prescription dosage of Ativan to ease his anxiety. The thought of being alone in a car with Orinda to cover a story in addition to the haunting voices of his past overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes again and saw the torment and destruction of war, the bodies of men that it had claimed.

  "Avenge me, brother, please," he was reminded again.

  The Ativan needed to hurry with its effect because he was beginning to shiver with anxiety at the most inopportune time. A compilation of fears and confusing thoughts at once began to awaken a new unease within him.

  Why Vernon Chandler chose him to cover the story made some sense, but at the same time it made none at all. For 10 years of his life, the Marine Corps was all that he knew. The Corps allowed him to excel when the world told him that he couldn’t. Uncle Sam waived his disability, but in turn gave him multiple others.

  After his time in linguist school in Monterey, California, he had the ability to speak in aged tongues in addition to the tongue of America’s greatest adversary. Within months, he was deployed to Camp Lejeune for extensive special force combat training. They trained him to kill the enemy after they taught him how to communicate with the enemy; they trained him in how to extract vital information before the kill. They taught him to conquer his enemy using their weaknesses before they taught him to kill. They taught him how to blindly serve, all the skills needed to make him elite but only when performing those tasks.

  The Marine Corps even trained him with real life experiences. Darling imaged President Clinton secretly deployed his unit to the jungle of Guatemala to liberate its people from a notorious drug lord in order to create a bargaining medium with the Guatemalan government. In the brush, US Marines’ secretly combated guerilla soldiers, and that was how Mason was trained to see death. It was the first time that he killed and the first time he saw the power of his training.

  He was able to communicate with the enemy, but ultimately death was their only option.

  "Somos Estados Unidos Marines. Bajen sus armas o ser derribados por la fuerza!” (We are United States Marines. Put your weapons down or be taken down by force!)

  Mason communicated to the guerrillas before his Marines ensued to open fire and take the rebels down. The United States Marines Corps molded him into a killer and taught him how to feel no pain regarding death. This made him deadly, this made him dangerous, but only this allowed him to fit in. When he wasn’t fighting side by side with Marines, he was rejected for the same thing that made him necessary. When not deployed or in a training environment, his impediment became the focus of ridicule and was the reason he was ostracized. It became the reason why he was ignored for his shortcomings and only accepted when he was needed.

  Chapter 3

  "Mason? Are you ready to go? Vamos!" Orinda hastily entreated as she stood behind Mason’s chair. His head was still down trying to settle himself and his nerves.

  Orinda was ready. She had on her hat, gloves, and coat prepared to go out in the elements of the Philadelphia winter but Mason wasn’t.

  "Chandler is going to be out of his meeting shortly. You and I both will be in deep mierda if we aren’t out of here. Are you ready?" she asked.

  She had no idea how infatuated he was with her. He was hypnotized by her scent of vanilla and hibiscus. She must have applied another soft layer before they were supposed to leave the office. Her red lipstick was reapplied as well. He looked at the clock on the wall and realized that he had been sitting idle for at least 45 minutes. In fact, he wasn’t sure where the last almost hour had gone. He hadn’t gotten coffee nor had he checked his email. Over the last few days, he experienced lapses in time that felt as if time stopped while he lived kundalini episodes.

  "I’m s-s-sorry, Orinda. I ca-ca-completely lost track of time. Do you think we-we-we will come back to the office?" he asked sitting up. He forced himself to hurry the statement because he was becoming self-conscious. Over the years his speech impediment taught him to pay attention to the facial expressions of the people that he spoke with. He did this with Orinda as well and as he struggled to get words out, her eyebrows frowned. It was as if she was trying to help him force the words from his mouth.

  "I’m not sure if we’ll come back to the office, so bring all of your belongings. I can drop you off at home when we return. Pennsauken is not too far away, but traffic on Interstate 95 may be horrible if our return is during rush hour or if we have some bad weather. Either way, we really need to hurry so close your meds, and grab your things so we can leave quickly.”

  "What the hell are you two still doing in my fucking office?! I sent you both on an assignment an hour ago. There had better be a good excuse for you to be here and an even better excuse on why I shouldn’t fire both your asses!" Mr. Chandler yelled as he walked up to them at Mason’s desk. Mason began to sweat and shift uncomfortably in his seat. He couldn’t tell his boss who was already annoyed with him that he had taken an extra sedative and lost track of time. He couldn’t tell him that while resting his eyes in order to calm his anxiety, he had fallen asleep. It was also in his best interest not to talk at all knowing that his stutter would be so bad that Vernon Chandler would flip his wig.

  "Aye, Mr. Chandler, we were just leaving. I told Mason to get coffee and settle because I was working on something regarding this story. I contacted my connect at the NJSP in regards to the same case. He’s in Trenton and has heard nothing about the crime. He also wanted to know why the press from Pennsylvania was being requested to a crime site in New Jersey among a few other things. I gave him your name and told him that you were instructed to have us come out not because we wanted the hot story."

  "Who the hell did you give my name to? You were supposed to do as I said and report to the crime scene as journalists. It’s your civic duty, and it’s your fucking job to report the hot story," Mr. Chandler barked at Orinda. Her face looked as if she took the words as abuse instead of information.

  “M-m- Mister Chandler, we still ha-ha-have to ga-ga get…"

  "Oh, spit it out already, Mason! You’re already late!" Mr. Chandler interrupted Mason who struggled to interject and help Orinda as she did for him, but his words could not escape his crippled tongue fast enough. She noticed his attempt to stand up for her, too.

  "What Mason is trying to say is that we still need to have official permission to access the crime scene. We can’t just walk to a roped off area with the body of a dead Marine inside and get the scoop without having access to the crime scene. You wouldn’t have wanted us to get there and be turned away, right? You should know this."

  Orinda saved Mason from Mason saving her, but she was also right.
Her point of contact at the NJSP was only following the protocol for allowing journalists onto a crime scene. Maybe Mr. Chandler had been in a supervisory role for too long and had forgotten the rules of a beat journalist, but Orinda put her offended feelings to the side and reminded him just in case.

  "You are right, Orinda, and I apologize. Mason, I apologize to you as well. I should not have cut you off the way I did. I’m just overwhelmed, and I want you guys to get to the scene as quickly as possible. I know that out of state journalists must get state level approval to access the scene, but I was informed by federal authorities. I think that overrides your state level connect. Since you both have some time to burn, I will tell you what I now know. While in my meetings, I was given some additional details about the victim that made my blue blood boil. As you know, a United States Marine was murdered, but what you don’t know is how. He was dressed in his full dress blue uniform wearing all of his medals and ribbons earned from service on his chest when he was slain. He was shot in the temples of his head and then once in the back of his head, but the person that did the killing took it one step further. They removed the eagle, globe and anchor lapel from his white cover and collar and replaced them both with an emblem of a double-headed eagle wearing a crown. It’s despicable!"

  "That is despicable, sir. My father was a Marine who served in Vietnam. He had a hard time forgiving the Vietnamese for the death and destruction that happened during that war. He seemed to have a harder time forgiving America for putting so many young men in combat only to bring them home defeated and then to forget their service," Orinda said as she loosened her scarf and began to take off her gloves because she was getting warm. It wasn’t because the office heat was on, and she was wearing layers of wool and polyester winter clothing, but because she was warm—no, angry hot— with thoughts of her father.