The Weight of Glass

by Stuart Heatherington

  “Why can’t you feel sorry for me?” he shouted. “Why in the flyin’ fuck can’t you take a second out of your life to come down here? Fuck it’s been ten years since you were here. It ain’t easy.”

  I sat down if only to keep my voice low. “You listen to me you little piece of shit. Invitations to my house for every Christmas and Thanksgiving known to man were given to you, and all we got were no shows. Hell, I can’t think of when my door wasn’t open. But the only time I’d hear from you was when you needed my help after your screw ups. Bailing you out of jail the night you got drunk and crashed through Lonny Craighead’s yard. You left that rotten shit-bird you drove around in on the bottom of their pool. Who do you think paid for that?” I smacked my hand on the table when he looked away.

  “What?”

  “Having trouble coming up with that one, Paul? It was me, you ass. Did you ever think to pay me back? Not even a goddamned thank you. And you wanna know something else? I think you killed Charles Pritchard. Hell, I bet you hump your nuts off at night thinking about it. You’re a murdering racist and I wanna see you live up to something for once.”

  Paul sat there twisting a cigarette into his mouth, smoke peeling off his lips and eyes as hardened as glue. I laid my head down on the table and took a deep breath, rose from my seat for the second time to leave. A hole had opened up inside me. And at some point I realized I didn’t give a damn anymore. Amy had been wrong.

  “We’ll see you, Paul.” I walked away, not looking back.

  “Charles Pritchard started it!” he hissed. “Dumb ass nigger wouldn’t fuckin’ stop laughin’ at me.”

  I shuddered in my tracks. What did he say? I knew I’d turn around and find him smiling or, worse, laughing as smoke vented around his bald head. But when I turned around there were tears. I hadn’t seen Paul cry since our mother died. Hooking my legs under the picnic table I sat in silence. There was no rush.

  “We’d been drinking all night.” He dried his face on his sleeve. “Shit. I hate crying.”

  I pulled out a handkerchief and pushed it across the table.

  He blew his nose and wadded it into a fist. “Fuller and me picked Dale up from the bowling alley when he got off and headed out to Lori’s place—she always kept beer in the fridge. And whatever she had, we took it all and put in the cooler on Fuller’s truck.” His fingers squeezed the cigarette again, thumping ash on the ground. “Then we got a bag of ice at the Quick Stop and went out to the lake—must’ve been 11:30.”

  “What did you do out there?”

  “Started a fire and sat around mostly. Knocked back a few more beers.”

  “You mean got drunk,” I said.

  “Yeah, well we agreed to keep that between us. Lawyers didn’t wanna give ’em any more than they already had. But that was where everything got fucked up. Dale’s daddy got him that fancy attorney and cut a fuckin’ deal with the DA, so Fuller and me was holding the bag.”

  “How long did you stay at the lake?”

  “Couple hours, I guess. It was the last time I ever went swimming.” His hand dusted the table. “Should’ve stayed there all night. Wished I had.”

  A dark-haired prisoner, with a rutty face, walked by and bent down next to Paul, whispered something in his ear and smiled casually at me as though we were sitting somewhere on a street corner passing time. He leaned in close, hugging him across the back, their hands slapping in a gesture of acceptance.

  “That’s Reggie Davis.” Paul nodded at the prisoner who was now taking a seat next to a woman about thirty yards away. “Shot a man in the face for grabbing his balls in a restroom.”

  The breath in my chest tightened in a swell of irrational fear. Glancing around, I remembered I was sitting with murderers and rapists.

  He pulled out another cigarette, lighting the end of it with the one in his mouth. “You gotta understand something about this place, bro. The people in here, they don’t put up with nothing.”

  “So killing everybody’s....” I couldn’t even finish it.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just keep talking.”

  “You ain’t gotta push. I’m gettin’ around to it.”

  I waved my hand to get him going again. “After you went to the lake….”

  “Fuller drove us back to Lori’s place, to see if she wanted to come out and grab a bite to eat. Second I stepped through the door, I got laid into about the beer. And she was pissed—threw an iron at me.” Paul raised his hand to his forehead where a scar grooved its way along through the hairs that made up his eyebrow. “Let me tell you something—gettin’ hit with a fuckin’ iron hurts. But then we’d get into it once a week.”

  “I remember I bailed you out after you beat her up,” I said.

  “She stabbed me in the fuckin’ ear. That crazy bitch should’ve put the knife down.” He held out his manacled hands. “Law says I’m entitled to defend myself.”

  “Whose laws were you working off then?”

  “All I know is you can’t stab a—”

  “It was a knick, not even that.”

  “You saw my shirt—soaked in blood. I thought she’d cut off my ear or something.”

  “I don’t care. Get back to the story.”

  His tongue punched his cheek out in a ball. “Well, she started throwing things at me. And I gotta admit, I tried knocking the shit out of her, but them exotic dancers can move. She was cussin’ me—”

  “Why did you have Lori Campbell lie on the stand?”

  “Why not?”

  “She didn’t have the sense of a jackass trying to get out of the rain. Actually, using Lori’s name in the same sentence as Jackass might be unfair to all the smart minded Jackasses on the planet.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight, I didn’t see her ’cause she was the brightest star in the sky—and trust me when I tell you that—but you put her on a pole an’ shove a few Washington’s in her pants…son, she could be sweet on you.” A grin mellowed out his face.

  “I talked to Kenneth Michaels. Remember him? Guy that prosecuted you? He still laughs about the tube-top Lori wore on the stand.”

  Paul’s face grew cross at the memory of it. “I told her to dress up an’ not wear any of that crap from the club. My damn life’s on the line an’ she comes in there dressed like a two-dollar handjob.”

  “Whose idea was it for her to get breast enlargements right before the trial?”

  “Hell if I know. Probably Wilson Porter, that sleazy son-of-a-bitch.” Paul clinched his teeth. Wilson Porter ran Spanky’s, the only strip club in town at the time.

  “So you just left?”

  “I didn’t beat her up if that’s what you think. They drug me out of there. My eye was half closed up and the blood was making it hard to see. Dale gave me some ice from the cooler outside. And I wanted to go back and kill her after I saw it in the mirror.”

  “That when you went to Mackie’s?”

  “I reckon. They were hungry and wanted something eat. And by the time we got there, Dale had to help me climb out of the truck. I couldn’t see in that eye.”

  “I bet.”

  He nodded. “Anyway, they grabbed a booth at the back an’ I stumbled to the bathroom to clean up. Blood was all over the place, down my neck and throat, in my clothes. On top of that I was so drunk I peed all over myself.” Paul straightened in his seat. “Hell, I couldn’t half see right. But it didn’t change the fact that I was wearin’ piss when I came out of there. Pants leg’s soaked in it. Let me tell you something, smell of beer piss don’t go away.”

  “I bet.”

  “Yeah, well I get back to the booth and Lila Tate’s takin’ orders. And she gets one look at me….” He ran his hands across his face like he was trying to erase the memory of it.

  “Piss you off?”

  He chuckled then. “Found out Fuller told her all about it. The whole damned this and that. Mark my words—she was the one that said something. Stupid little fuck!”

  “And Char
les Pritchard worked there?”

  “If that’s what you wanna call it. Loaded up dishes, scrubbed the bathrooms, whatever else they could get a nigger to do, which ain’t much.”

  “How ’bout watch your mouth?” I was tired of hearing it.

  “I touch a nerve, bro?”

  “You’ve touched a lot of nerves over the years,” I replied.

  “Charles Pritchard was a useless piece of shit.” An invitation hung on his lips for something more.

  “Why do you hate black people so much?”

  “You wanna solve me? That what you want?”

  “I don’t want to solve anything—it’s too late for that.” I looked at my watch like I needed to be somewhere. “I just want to know why.”

  “Look here, bro, I no more cared what a nigger did than the man on the moon.” His eyes opened up. “But that all changed when I got enlightened.”

  I leaned over, feeling the need to get closer. Talking to him was like reaching into a reflection pool to grab at something and not quite measuring the distance right to get my hand on it. “Enlightened? You mean jail?”

  Paul laughed in an ah shucks sorta way that made him seem easy going. “Jail was just the vehicle for learning.” He snapped his fingers repeatedly, searching for a word. “Like you with college. That’s what happened to me. Found out what niggers were all about. Up close and personal. How they took whatever they wanted.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “You don’t know shit!” His eyebrows fused together. “You hadn’t seen half the mess I’ve gone through. You never wrote me. You never called.”

  “Save the sob story and just tell me.”

  Paul grabbed the edge of the table. “Jefferson Dupree!”

  “Jefferson Dupree? Who’s that?”

  He looked away then. “The fucking nigger that raped my ass so many times it looked like cooked sausage.”

  My hand went up and covered the space around the bridge of my nose. It was a nervous reaction I never lost as a child. Looking away, my eyes stumbled across the table and found the ground, as if weighted down by the revelation he’d shared. I couldn’t speak.

  “Yeah, that’s right. A three hundred pound rapist laid the pipe down my ass with some spit and hair grease. You wanna know why I hate niggers? Jefferson Dupree. That’s your damn answer right there.”

  I honestly never expected the excuse he gave me and it uprooted the foundation of what I believed was the truth. Left me wondering what else, in the estimation of my brother, I had gotten wrong. I always assumed it would be something else entirely different. Rape wasn’t even on the radar. And it made things clearer in understanding what brought my brother to this place.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “It’s not something you share at the table, when you’re breaking bread.” Pain defined his face. “It lasted awhile. Way I figured it, one of three choices had to be made—continue getting raped by Dupree, which I didn’t really see as a likely option, buy protection from a gang, or try joining one. I didn’t have any money and I was pretty sure nobody’d watch my ass on credit.”

  Which meant the gangs. “That where you got all the tattoos?”

  “The big one they made such a ruckus over at the trial was done during my last stretch. I get lots of compliments on it—”

  I held up my hand. “Let me ask you something. Did you even know Charles Pritchard?”

  Paul’s eyes glazed over. “Enough to know he sold pot.”

  My brother was a bigger ass than I gave him credit for. “You bought dope off of him?”

  “He knew his weed.”

  “So, then Lila told him what happened, and Pritchard came out to check?”

  “Had to get himself a front row seat at the show, instead of staying in the balcony where he belonged. And when I asked him what the fuck his problem was, he just said he didn’t have one, and started laughing it up. Said I smelled like I pissed myself. Well no fuckin’ duh Columbo. He’s sayin’ stuff like I better get myself cleaned up before I come out to his place again—like he lived in some palace or something—run down dump with holes in the floor.” He held up his hand, fingers spread wide. “I’d about all I could take off his black ass, what with Fuller and Dale sitting across from me giggling like a bunch of wet lil’girls, and this nigger dressing me down like I’m his bitch or something.”

  “Mackie didn’t do anything?”

  “Oh, he did something. Come stormin’ outta the back with a spatula blazing over his head, saying some shit like, ‘There ain’t gonna be no fighting in my place. You two got a problem, you can take it outside.’”

  “But that never happened?”

  “Ain’t no way I was going outside with him. Mackie would’ve called the law out there so fast I’d been in handcuffs before I got a punch in.”

  “Sure you weren’t scared you’d get your ass kicked?”

  He rubbed under his eye. “I was drunk, not passed out. He wouldn’t have stood a chance if I gotta hold of him good.”

  “Then what?” I pictured him having to stand up against the stall to keep from falling over while he urinated on himself.

  “You don’t gotta believe me.”

  “What I want to know is how you even believe yourself anymore?”

  He stared out in the yard for a second. “Gotta believe in something.”

  “I don’t know what to believe with you,” I said, trying to grasp at the straw house he’d built his life on.

  He snickered. “The truth’s a funny bird, ain’t it?”

  Like a hundred lights clashing together in my head, I was blinded by the ability to think clearly. I was a fighter trying to get off the ropes and taking an unforeseen beating. The only clear thing I could manage to do was dance around the ring and counter with more questions. “So you waited until after he got off work?”

  “When Mackie came out, it got heated. And I told him what I thought of his help, and he kicked us out on our asses. Now you tell me, who’s right an’ who’s wrong? We paid like ever’body else. He didn’t have to kick us out like we was some kinda trash—hell, I know I ain’t no trash,” Paul sounded off. “Only reason Mackie’s place been standing so long’s on account of hard workin’ people like us spending our money up in that slop hole.”

  “You’re an idiot.” I almost laughed out loud at that. “Hard working people like who, Mr. Never-had-a-job longer than a month?”

  Paul just stared through me. “He didn’t have no damn right with what he done. Should’ve served us our food.”

  “That why Fuller and Dale got involved?”

  “Fuller and Dale got involved ‘cause they were pissed. What with that nigger showing off his ass. Anger’ll sober a man up, bro.” He licked his lips. “I was hotter than shit in a tin shed by the time we got outside—Mackie standing at the door threatening to call the sheriff.”

  “But you didn’t leave.”

  “Oh, we left all right, but we came back to teach Charles Pritchard a lesson or two.”

  My eyes drifted up with that. It was his first admission that he had a hand in the tragedy of that night. “Meaning what?”

  “Kicking his black ass.”

  I bit my tongue. “And who decided that?”

  Paul pondered that for a second, stroking his chin. “Hard to say, really. We were all steaming mad. Who’s to say what?”

  I closed my eyes with those words and wanted to disappear into the sound of my head. “But you had a plan.”

  “We had an idea or two.” Paul seemed almost proud of the fact. “Dale was the cool headed one. He waited for Charles to come out. Told him we was real sorry about what happened, but that we wanted to score some pot—could he cover it. An’ I told him, I said ‘Charles, we want enough to get stone, cold high all week long,’ which he didn’t have enough on him, I knew. He’d have to go to his house an’ get it, and we’d drive him. Fuller’s yellin’ ‘Get in the back, Pritchard,’ and Dale offered him a couple of beer
s while he thought about it.”

  “Yet you never went to his house. Nobody heard him come home that night.”

  “Not unless she saw a ghost, bro. He never left our sight.”

  “When did Fuller break his hand?” I asked, trying to speed things along.

  “Out Timberland Road. That’s where we took him. Fuller broke it swinging at him when he wouldn’t come down out of the back of the fuckin’ truck. Hit the top of the tire well and broke three bones.”

  “He didn’t break it beating Pritchard?”