by Matthew Crow
“I’d like that a lot. Only night time’s tricky for me.”
“A dark horse?”
“Something like that.”
“I bet you’ve got the boys lining up round the block,” he says, now out of the door.
“More braying mob than orderly line.”
He chuckles and lets the weight of the door press against his mighty chest. “Well you just rearrange some dates and find a night for you and me. I could do with a friend in this town. And you may well be a valuable girl to know.”
“I’ll see what I can do. But like I said, I’m a busy woman.”
He shakes his head and looks to the floor, and I can tell that he enjoys how difficult I am making the whole situation for him. “Until next time,” he says quietly, with his back to me, as the door closes behind him.
He doesn’t leave a tip.
“What’s that you got there?” I ask back at the trailer. Eve is crouched on the floor at the side of the bed, studiously rifling through her suitcase. I walk towards her to try to get a better look.
“Nothing. Just some of my things,” she says, slamming the lid and throwing the case deep beneath the bed. “Well, well, well Verity you’re positively glowing. You look like a satisfied woman if ever I saw one.” I kick off my shoes and swoon onto the bed. Eve sits beside me and begins braiding my hair. “Don’t tell me it’s love?”
“No!” I yell, turning onto my back to stare up at her, fully aware that were our roles reversed Eve and her poor Labrador heart would very much consider what J and I have to be some version of love.
“Well then?”
“Like,” I say, finding myself suddenly embarrassed. “Like... with a boy from the coffee shop. He wants to take me on a date.”
“VERITY!” she yells, standing up on the bed and running to the drawers at the farthest corner of the room. There is the sound of a mess being created, clothes being upturned, something knocking against wood, and then Eve skips back towards the bed carrying a half empty bottle of scotch and a full packet of cigarettes. “Who? When? I want to know all.”
“Don’t know yet. He wants to take me out one night.”
“And... ”
“And night time’s too profitable to be squandering on lust.”
“Lust?”
“You know what I mean!”
“Love’s worth any price,” says Eve, glugging her first sip of scotch.
“Rent’s not though. Which reminds me... ”
Eve gives me an old fashioned look and pushes her hands into the back pocket of her jeans. “There,” she says, handing me a fistful of crumpled fifty dollar bills. “Consider it paid. Now, you and I aren’t moving until this bottle’s empty and I’ve been given every last detail of this handsome stranger that’s given you a blush. But first - ” she said, leaning over the bed and pulling a package from the floor, “ - this arrived for you this morning.”
I tore open the package - tiny, magnolia, bound with red ribbon - and pulled out a small printed card, which read, simply:
Sometimes it takes more than the bottle. Let it not be said girls like us aren’t prepared. With love.
At the base of the envelope, still swaying with the weight of its package, was a tiny pewter pistol, heavy with bullets.
All my love,
Verity
Dearest Verity,
The days leading up to my meeting with Michael seemed to pass in spurts; dreamy stretches of the most basic undertakings during which I found myself silent and distant, followed by long periods of contemplation as an acidity swamped my stomach until all I could do was lie, sleepless and anxious, watching the moments pass by until our arranged reunion.
“The coffin dodger been sniffing around my girl again,” said Harlow as we walked back from work. “She says she’s giving thought to moving in with him. Said he has a spare room. Odd jobs need doing around the house and the like. I have a fine idea as to the sort of jobs he needs doing, and it’s no work a lady should be receiving payment for if you catch my drift.”
I muttered a nonsensical noise, if only to prove I was listening. In truth I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“Says she thinks is could be true love. God help the girl, she’s as clueless as I don’ know what. Just worry where it’s leading is all. Those scars on her arms weren’t no household accident if you catch my drift.”
“I guess I could talk to her... ” I said, scanning the horizon blankly.
“You okay boy? Been on a different plane best part of this week. Hope two jobs isn’t causing you bellyache.”
“No sir, not the jobs. I’m just distracted.”
“You can say that again. I don’t think your brain and your mouth’s been in the same room since weekend gone.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise, not to me.” Harlow began shifting his weight awkwardly as he walked. His face, usually kind and welcoming, became a kaleidoscope of sharp folds and angry reds. “Hope you don’t mind me suggesting as much... ” he said slowly, as if treading on cracked paving. “But would I be right in thinking you’ve not always lived such a righteous life?”
“Excuse me?” I said, still not entirely engaged.
“What I mean to say is... God damn boy you are somewhere else today. What I’m trying to say, Jonah, is am I right in thinking you’ve served time?”
My thoughts snapped to the present like whiplash and I felt my knees weaken beneath me.
“Now now,” said Harlow, patting me on the back. “I’m not here to judge. Far as I’m concerned whatever went on, you served your time, this is a clean slate you’re working from. With me at least.”
I carried on walking, my head hung and shamed.
“All I meant was that I assume in such instances you make contacts. Acquaintances and such, of likeminded persuasion.”
“I tended to keep my head down.”
“Well knock me down with a feather boy you sure know how to surprise me,” Harlow laughed to himself. “What I’m asking, I suppose - ” he said, shiftily checking to see that the workers’ frogmarch was dispersed enough to allow at least basic privacy between us, “ - is whether or not you’d know of anyone who might... I don’t know... voice my displeasure to a certain gentleman about the company he’s keeping... should the situation ever arise.”
I caught his drift and dismissed it in case it was a trap. “Why don’t you just try talking to him?”
“If you say so. I’m not a violent man Jonah. Never have been never will be. But I’d give my life for those girls. I’d certainly give my freedom if it meant keeping them safe.”
“It won’t come to that. He seems a reasonable enough old man. Besides, at his age he’s working on borrowed time as is. I doubt you’ll have a care in the world come winter.”
“Let’s pray you’re right,” said Harlow. “Let’s pray you’re right.”
I met Michael when he was sixteen-years-old. Already by that point his face was beginning to crack and break into the bloom of adulthood – his jaw line becoming defined where previously it hung loose and gormless, his eyes deepening into their sockets, his forehead only just learning the art of worrying. Though still he was little more than the bare foundations of himself. Enthusiastic, certainly, and as excitable as he is now, only with the benefit of youth, which diluted the menace his impulsiveness now seems to imply. At first his manner bemused me and postponed our inevitable friendship for quite some time. Of course before long I came to find it endearing. We were so different, he and I. Michael was excitable, enthusiastic, erratic. I was reserved, suspicious, demure. He was just so damn happy all the time, no matter how hellish his past or how dire his actions; throughout it all happiness spread like veins through cheese until you couldn’t help warming to him. I suppose to me that’s the main difference between people, the universal which fundamentally separates them. Some people are predisposed to happiness. It is their default setting. The walk through life with a sense of wonderment; each new experience an opportuni
ty for joy, for fulfilment. Others live in a state of constant anxiety and uncertainty; they tread more carefully, as though being forced to live life carrying a priceless and delicate vase that belongs to someone else. They, too, have the ability to feel happiness - they have a capacity for it - but it must be presented to them through some external source; they must be shown something, provided with something, which they then consider and, if lucky, decide to allow themselves to enjoy. I suppose the difference between people is whether they are a dog or a cat. Whether they jump through life wagging their tails until given reason not to, or whether they stalk life’s perimeters, shunning and shying from others and themselves until provided with an enjoyable and fleeting excursion from their usual state of mild depression. I myself am of a feline persuasion. Michael an eternal Labrador.
‘Boy’s a liability,’ said Jack to me the day he became part of our circle. ‘Only reason I let him hang around is he’s crazy as I don’t know what. Like some damn kamikaze pilot or some shit; there’s nothing that boy won’t do.’
Jack was a large man with few morals and a steady aim. He had grown into his own legend almost tacitly, riding the crest of his lineage without ever actually proving his worth as any sort of mastermind. His family’s dealings within the town I had arrived at were legendary and longstanding. He sat atop a heritage of blood and mug shots, and was considered the most volatile of the bunch; his prominence a result of a mass court case two years previous which had culminated in just about every male relative’s temporary incarceration.
Of course by the time I arrived on the scene Jack and his kin had taken a backseat when it came to direct involvement in any of our jobs, and so he became the pied piper of fallen angels; taking in us lost boys and training us in ways of speedy acquisitions. We were initiated as couriers. Unmarked packages were to be exchanged for cash in alleyways, toilet cubicles, backseats, and bars. Our cut was paltry but enough to survive on. If we proved our worth, or indeed survived unscathed, eventually we would rise through the ranks. We’d graduate to driver, lookout, fall boy, red herring. And then, how proud, we’d become armed.
After this our involvement became vital and our egos massaged to the point where we’d fly so close to the sun our wings could melt clean off and we wouldn’t even notice. Jack would arrange the jobs, mark maps and plans. Each of us a coloured pinpoint on a shoddily drawn diagram. There were stores, bars, houses and the like. Nothing sacred, everything gained. Like most of the boys working with us I had little to lose, only difference was I didn’t care about myself, and so I soon became Jack’s favourite ammunition; fine china removed from its shelf for only the haughtiest of occasions.
Michael entered our upper echelons almost two years later. By this point I must have been circling twenty-one and he was barely scraping adulthood. We’d served one or two jobs together, as part of a group, sometimes individually. Nothing spectacular. We’d pull down our hoods and change into shapes, into fear, into memories that would cloud each life we touched forever, brandishing guns, sneaking through shadows, always leaving heavier than when we arrived.
It was a cold night in November when everything changed.
The Mayhills’ farm was a rumoured goldmine. Mr Mayhill was a wealthy man whose land was for entertainment value only. He’d made his fortune through crops and now tended to plants for he knew no different. Mostly they went to charities, occasionally he would sell them when the mood took him, but on the whole his wealth was established and everything else was just cream.
They were to be an easy and profitable target, and like most things where Jack was concerned they had been carefully selected as if winners of some bastardised lottery. Their lure was that along with their fortune they were but two generations removed from the Amish way of life, yet their sensibilities remained steadfast. Everyone knew Mr Mayhill seldom troubled the bank. Whatever he had was in that house, and according to Jack it was enough to retire from several times over.
We drove three miles out and carried our tools as close to the house as we could get without leaving the mask of the hedgerows that hid us so perfectly. Myself, Michael, Herman and Pete sat and watched as one by one the house lights grew fewer, until we were staring at a black shape in a black night.
As we arranged ourselves into our established formation, Pete strolled to the side of the house, slicing two wires with a hunting knife causing the porch light to buzz loudly once, and then fall dark. We entered the cellar door, which opened so easily our elaborate tools seemed ostentatious, as though we’d arrived at a child’s party in tuxedos. The basement was a basic games room – table tennis, billiards table, a broken old television holding a coat hanger aerial in the crown of its head, and a bar, which on further inspection, Michael declared ‘drier than a nun’s cunt’.
We walked in uniform up the stairs towards the ground floor of the house. The rooms were cavernous and utilitarian even in the dark. From the hallway we dispersed, each taking a different room. I found a locked door, which I would later find out in court was Mr Mayhill’s study, and the source of all that we sought. Herman continued in the living room, tapping floorboards and checking for submerged handles behind the iconography that hung on each wall. Across the hallway Pete took each key from the rack in the kitchen on the off chance they may be of use. Michael stood in an open doorway silently. I saw him enter the room without warning. Curious as to his unlikely restraint I followed him through the door, which had closed silently behind him.
“Found me some treasure of my own,” he said, staring at a small cot in which a girl of no more than ten lay, pristine and oblivious. He made his way towards the edge of the bed and was stopped by my hand, which gripped his shoulder so tight I thought I felt it crack beneath the pressure.
“Oh come on Jonah,” he hissed. “Can’t a guy have a little fun around here? Call it a reward... candy for the boys.”
I gripped his shoulder tighter still and he grimaced in pain, his body jerking for release.
“Alright,” he said eventually. “But we already given away our reservations with St Peter. Don’t see what difference it makes.”
I was careful to shut the door behind me as we exited the room.
The cavalry had regrouped in the living room whispering plans when we heard the first shot. Mr Mayhill must have been silent as an assassin as he descended the stairs. The bullet streaked past Pete, taking his ear clean off, and jammed itself into the wall behind my head. Pete fell to the floor. Michael yelped and fumbled for his gun. Mr Mayhill remained stoic in the doorway, his shotgun glinting in the stolen light of the living room. There were more gunshots. The doorway where his daughter slept opened and then shut again. Michael rushed towards him and tried to wrestle the gun from his arm as Herman bent down to check on Pete’s injuries and relieve him of his surplus weapons.
“Woah, Tiger that’s some kit you got there!” yelled Michael, holding the neck of the shotgun as Mr Mayhill struggled in the doorway.
Another bullet flew past me and caused a draft of cold air to blow over the proceedings as a window pane shattered to the ground. Herman stood up and then fell again at the sound of the third bullet, slumping over Peter like a winter blanket.
I ducked behind the couch and pulled my pistol from my pocket, firing blindly into the air. Shrapnel and glass showered me as ornaments erupted into fragments that snagged on the skin of my face. The white innards of the sofa began protruding like boils as something else hit the floor, and then silence.
I stood up slowly, my gun still poised. In the doorway Michael lay groaning on the floor, his face halved and weeping blood. Mr Mayhill pointed the gun at me. In the seconds that followed I noticed that from my stomach a trail of blood ran steadily to the floor as though I were a burst pipe. Then, without words, one final shot rang out.
Mr Mayhill hit the ground still clutching his shotgun, as peaceful as he’d ever be.
I felt myself fall to the floor, grasping desperately at my exposed entrails with one hand as though try
ing to retain each diminishing ounce of myself. My hands soaked and my head became light.
My final conscious act was the one that still haunts me to this day, and one that save the only other survivor of that doomed night you alone are privy to. God help me Verity, I crawled over to where Pete and Herman lay and with some difficulty swapped my gun with Herman’s, doing my best to wipe the streaks of blood and fingerprints from both handles.
I woke two days later, handcuffed to a hospital bed.
So this is how I know Michael. And now, as well as yourself, he remains the only person who knows the true extent of my cowardice, and the sheer scope of my own wickedness.
Of course I was not without blame, even within the manipulated evidence I had created. And if, when barely out of your teens you are shot, you are forever held as a boy, though if at the same age it is you found holding the pistol you are deemed a man and tried as such. So for the sake of a few days I, a grown man, was tried in what became one of the most prominent crimes of the decade.
Luckily I was able to rise from the ashes of my own misdemeanours. The crime itself became further reaching than even I could have contemplated. Jack’s family circle was disbanded and the extent of their wrongdoings examined forensically, until just about every member of his family was held behind bars. The newspapers ran pieces on the dark heart of America, of the world us boys inhabited. And then the magazines latched on. We became symptoms, metaphors, the dark heart of the American Dream. Press coverage grew like tumours until more ink and paper was spent on us than any movie star in the world. The highest lawyers were flown in, fuelled by prestige and publicity which - we were told repeatedly - was worth tenfold their waived salaries. Suddenly both Michael and I found ourselves at the centre of an ugly drama in which the death of two broken boys and one innocent man took a backseat to a national debate on the nature of guilt. It seemed that the whole world became a philosopher during the months of that trial; every moron with access to a pencil had their own idea as to who was to blame, and bar the odd exception it was seldom those with hands of red. We were the media; we were our parents, our upbringings, our incomes, our area codes, our blood types, our diets... just about every single contributing factor was aimed squarely at us like shields, until we became shrouded and immune to the glint of the limelight; surplus to our own carnage.
