The Weight of Glass

by Stuart Heatherington

  “We’ve managed to get ourselves into a little trouble.”

  I interest peaked like a dog hearing a refrigerator open. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Well, it’s really—”

  “Oh, hell, my finger’s stuck in his ass, okay. Are you satisfied?” Mark Jo barked.

  I spewed coffee onto the counter. The feeling of warm liquid hit my chin and throat right before I found the ability to laugh. Then a bizarre sense of wonder came over me. I remembered what I liked about Mary. Always willing to try new things.

  Caleb’s face went beet red. “Couldn’t you just let me tell him?”

  “Sure, meanwhile my finger’s being digested by your asshole.”

  I tried to get hold of myself. “So, I guess asking you to sit down’s completely out of the question?”

  Mary Jo bit the side of her lip and sneered at me. “God, could this be any more humiliating?”

  “I thought something was up, but damn, Caleb. What’s Mary Jo’s finger doing in your ass?”

  Both his hands came up, patting the air. “Can we not do this?”

  “We could, but then what would be the fun in that?”

  “What are you—three, Lee?” Mary Jo turned on the angry eyes, the ones with the built-in squint.

  “No, but need I remind you, it’s not my finger.” I winked at Caleb again. “By the way, which one is it?”

  “Please.”

  My face puckered with that. “What? It’s a logical question.”

  “Her index finger,” Caleb sputtered. “All right?”

  “So what’s the hang up?” I thumbed behind me. “And I’m sorry, but did you want a cup of coffee?”

  “No, we’re good, thanks.” Caleb shook his head like he was turning down illegal campaign contributions.

  I came back to the question of the night. “What about the finger?”

  “It’s fine,” Mary Jo said.

  “I meant, why it won’t come out, not if it’s found a second home with a roomy loft.”

  “We think it’s her ring. It’s…stuck or something.”

  I twisted my brain around the picture of her finger planted between Caleb’s cheeks. “What have you tried?”

  “Everything, it hurts like hell when she pulls.”

  “Any worse than when it went in?”

  Caleb smiled finally. “I don’t know. Can you get it out?”

  “Hell, if I know. Let’s start by having you turn around and lift your coat.”

  Mary Jo rotated herself to the left as Caleb sidled up next to the bar with his belly, her arm stretching down below his waist where a bulge came to rest. Caleb pulled up his jacket and slid down his pants, which fell to his ankles, belt buckle clinking off the tile. I managed not to laugh. Hair covered Caleb’s backside in thin patches of gray, his drooping cheeks a mix of wrinkles and mottled tones. “So tell me, Mary Jo, was it as good for you?” I stared at his bare ass, suddenly remembering the fact that our ages were not too far apart. Thank goodness mine looks better.

  “Funny.”

  “Thank you. I see one of two possibilities.” I placed my hands together rather dramatically. “Simply put, amputation, and while that would be my first choice—maybe a bout of radiation treatment would be in order—there is a rather large lump coming out of your ass.”

  “That’s my arm, you shit,” she rattled off.

  “Exactly, my point.”

  “Lee, please.” Caleb tried to defuse the situation.

  “Oh Christ, Caleb, is there anything else in there?”

  “No. Other than her finger and one big damn ring, nothing.”

  “How big is the band, sixteenth of an inch, eighth of inch, thin, thick, what?”

  Mary Jo thought for a second before saying, maybe an eighth.

  “I’ll be back in a second.” I wanted to say hold that tight but abstained. I grabbed my keys off the hook next to the phone, went to the nearest cabinet drawer and found what I needed.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a big black metal cylinder with a switchy thing I like to call a flashlight.” I switched it on under my chin. “With big projects you need big tools. I refer to this one as the rectum buster.” I lifted my coffee mug as though to say cheers. “There’s some stuff I need out in the clinics building. So sit back and relax, I won’t be long.” I walked out of the kitchen to my room, picked up the jeans from off the floor where I’d left them two hours before and threw on a jacket from the foyer closet. I popped my head back around the walkway before leaving. Both of them stood there, heads down, a simple acknowledgment of the situation, but it spoke to me in some little way. Had I cared more for Mary, I would have felt truly sorry for them.

  When I returned, they hadn’t moved. I carried a couple sets of cutters and snips in my pockets as I sat down beside them, shaking off the cold from the walk back. I plopped the medical instruments out on the table and lined them up.

  “Caleb.” I patted his ass with my hand. “I don’t know of any other way to say this, but grab ’em and spread ’em.” I pushed my glasses back up on my nose and gripped Mary Jo’s wrist easily. Her watch slid back up her arm and her breast fell out of her jacket as she moved sideways. She didn’t bother to recover. And I tried not to stare...much. It was a team effort.

  “Mary Jo, I want you to pull as tight as you can without hurting him.” I saw just the faintest glimmer of the ring’s band. I grabbed a pair of surgical clamps, slipping one edge between Mary Jo’s finger and the band. A simple click locked them into place. Using a pair of short snips I reached up and cut through the band without much resistance. Mary Jo’s finger slid out easily enough. Next I pushed back the rim of his anus, snipping at a wedge of gold that had caught on the rectum wall. Out popped the ring attached to the clamp. A funny sense of pride filled my chest over a job well done. I should have been a proctologist. And Caleb was right; it was one of the biggest rings I’d ever seen. Several sapphires swirled around an ornamental ball of gold.

  “I’ll just leave this in the sink for…whoever.”

  Caleb reached down and began pulling his pants up as Mary Jo came around to wash her hands, completely exposing both her breasts now, as she dropped her coat to the floor. That cool creeping sensation hit me in the groin, the one that got me into trouble.

  “What? It’s not like you’ve never seen them.”

  I arched my eyes together. “You had a boob job?”

  She looked at Caleb. “I told you so.”

  “Oh, honey, relax,” he said, trying to calm her.

  “I will not relax. My finger has been in your ass for over an hour now.”

  I clamped a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “I never got the finger treatment.”

  “You know, there’s a reason I left you.” She was seething mad when she threw my towel in the sink.

  Taking my glasses off, I tossed them on the counter. “Was it because I threw your clothes out the door or because I told you to get lost? I forget.”

  She pulled her jacket up from the floor, one hand flipping her hair out, her oversized breasts saluting the faucet. “I’ll be at home! You can have your friend bring you back.” She said the word like Caleb hung out with the plague or a long lost cousin to herpes.

  I yelled as she disappeared around the corner, “Unlike Caleb’s ass that doors an exit only for you.” The front entrance slammed tightly back into its frame.

  Caleb sat down in a chair opposite me. He’d grabbed a mug of coffee and was stewing over it. “You really don’t like her much do you?”

  “Caleb, you’re my friend, I love you to death, but you married a gold digger, and not a good one at that.” I paused for a second, eyeing his backside. “Unless, you know, that’s where you keep your gold.”

  He looked down into the cup, hands warming around the fired clay. “I do love her, though.”

  “Congratulations.” And I meant it. “I never could.”

  “I’m sorry about the money, too. I’ll bring you a check
tomorrow to pay you back for what she used.” He stood and tucked his shirt back into his pants.

  Caleb stood around five-eight, the thinning black hair on his head slowly thickening across the mar of temporary scars left by the plugs he’d put in. If Mary Jo couldn’t spend it on herself, she found ways to spend it elsewhere. His face carried a set of angular cheekbones, reminiscent of Willem Dafoe, and an exceedingly thin mustache traversed the space beneath his nose.

  He finished the coffee and carried his cup to the sink. “You have anything stronger than this? I could use a good drink right now.”

  My eyes perked up toward the study. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I poured us each two fingers of my friend Jack over ice, thought about it, and added another for conversation.

  He settled into one side of the couch, elbow propping his arm up, head resting lightly in his hand. “Go ahead and ask. I know you’re dying to. Just whatever we discuss stays in this room, okay?”

  I offered him one of the drinks. “That’s your business. As many times as I’ve been caught running around at parties, I’m the last person who’d care. Remember, I’m the guy who can’t screw anybody without getting busted. You remember Blenda Tuttle, right?”

  He nodded. “How could anyone forget?”

  “Good gracious, she was hot.” I cooed like a baby, holding my hands out in front of my chest to exaggerate the size of hers. “That Christmas party at Thomas Jane’s house, must’ve been 7 or 8 years back, we got—”

  “That wasn’t Thomas Jane’s party.”

  I stared at him, trying to make up my mind if I was wrong. “Are you sure?”

  “It was mine.” He laughed then. “Kory Daniels’ wife was pregnant that year—Charlotte Daniels. Water broke all over the living room floor. And poor Peggy Underwood, God bless her, she’s so old, went to get some towels out of the closet to clean it up. And who do you think she finds on the bathroom floor?”

  I clucked my tongue. “Yeah, and you really shouldn’t hang mistletoe under the bathroom door. It’s like inviting Santa’s helpers to go bump uglies.” I tried laying the blame on Blenda next. “And besides, she had it shaved in the shape of a Christmas tree. Who could resist hanging their balls on that?” My luck with women and parties had become the stuff of either legend or embarrassment. I wasn’t sure which. A bit of both it seemed.

  “You left the door unlocked.”

  “What? It’s not like Peggy didn’t get any towels.”

  “That’s not all she got,” he said. “Seventy year-olds don’t need refresher courses in what you were doing to Blenda.”

  I switched on the TV and CNN blared to life. Coverage of the upcoming eclipse, four days from now, was underway. News reporters were detailing the safety precautions needed to observe it without damaging the retina in the eye. An interview with a local middle school class showed teacher and students preparing handmade solar filters with fully exposed black-and-white film. The class was busy cutting out square-shaped lenses from the film, overlapping them multiple times, and then inserting them into what looked like 3-D movie glasses.

  After a few minutes the story of the lunar eclipse switched to coverage of a developing standoff in New Mexico, where a religious cult was believed responsible for the deaths of two sheriffs’ deputies. Earlier reports of the shootings were now being confirmed as unprovoked attacks.

  A live feed transmitted from outside a hospital entrance. Text ran across the lower portion of the screen as a relatively middle aged man stepped to a narrow podium. David Henning, it read, was the Sheriff of Chimayo, NM. He was slight in build and tan, a saddened man with red, polished cheeks and a broad expanse of chin. Camera flashes bathed his face in shadows and light almost simultaneously.

  “I have just been informed by the staff of doctors that operated on Deputy Ferrety…” His voice cracked as he spoke and his thumb and index finger on his left hand shot up to his eyes, squeezing at the sudden tears. “…that due to complications with the gunshot wounds he incurred this afternoon upon his arrival, passed away a short time ago.” He appeared agitated at the podium, almost fidgety as he addressed the cameras. It was apparent that the sheriff was a man unaccustomed to the spotlight.

  “My deepest condolences go out to the families of Mark Riche and Kay Farrety, the two officers slain today. It is with deepest sorrow and loss that we say goodbye to these two men, and close friends to many in Chimayo. Without a doubt, the grieving process will be long, but not nearly as long as the lasting memory that both of you brought to our community.

  “And my heart and prayers go out to the Dominguez family as we make our way through the current hostage situation.” A picture flashed across the screen of a broad shouldered Hispanic man, laughing with a little boy in his arms. “May God be with you during this terrible ordeal.

  “My department will continue to aid and assist the FBI to our fullest extent in helping to resolve this conflict and bring to justice the person or persons who perpetrated this terrible act. They were great men—family men, who did not deserve to be shot down in cold blood.”

  Questions from the press followed and were answered as well as could be expected. Sheriff Henning slumped away from the podium after several minutes, visibly shaken in the aftermath of the day’s events.

  “How’s the vet practice holding up?” Caleb tossed back half his whiskey.

  I looked up at the TV, taking in the news with casual interest, blurbs of up-to-date reports rolling across the bottom of the screen after the sheriff finished his press conference. “To be honest, I’m thinking about retiring. Virginia just told me a week ago that she was calling it quits at the end of the year. Quite frankly, she’s the smoke behind the mirrors.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  I stood to pour another glass of whiskey when the reporter cut to a clip of a man holding a Bible beside his head. Late forties, early fifties. The CNN reporter announced the video recording was of the leader of a religious sect known as God’s Arm, which had traded shots with the Sheriff’s deputies yesterday outside a secure compound an hour north of Santa Fe. Displayed across the screen was the Hebrew name of the man identified as Yehoshua, the leader of God’s Arm. Authorities believed fifty or sixty followers resided within the compound, including children. The altercation, as reported, began when a team of Sheriff’s deputies arrived to post a final eviction notice on the property, a privately-held farm sold the previous month at an estate auction. Following repeated efforts to have the residents vacate the premises the ordeal became hostile, leading to the shooting deaths of two of the uniformed officers and the capture of a third.

  Video from an amateur handheld camera showed the man, known as Yehoshua, preaching atop a wall of hand-arranged blocks and a sheet of ply board. A Bible was cupped next to his face as he yelled at a thin crowd of onlookers from his mock pulpit. The camera shot, angular and overexposed, tried to zoom between the heads of those surrounding the preacher and the followers who struggled to pass out unwanted literature. The shaking camera got close enough to follow the preacher’s hands, which were wrapped in tight bandages at the palms. Bright stains of red deepened their seats. He was gaunt, features full of sharpened edges where bones supported skin like a tent crammed full of misplaced poles.

  My joints went cold at the knees and the feeling in my legs disappeared for a breath or two. I collapsed in the office chair, resting the drink on my desk, but picking it back up again almost immediately. He turned out a dead-ringer for his daddy. And I poured whiskey down my throat to chase after the fact he wasn’t dead. “Look at you. Didn’t fall far from the tree, did you?”

  Caleb honed in on the TV. “What did you say?”

  I studied the shaky camera work. “I used to know him.”

  “The guy doing the screaming?”

  “My stepbrother.” The words sounded broken coming out of my mouth. Unfixable things I wanted to put back in the memory box.

 
“I take it the two of you haven’t kept in touch?”

  I crushed ice in my mouth. “It’s hard finding gifts for Christmas. I mean, what do you get the fanatic who has it all?”

  “Not tight, I take it?”

  “Hardly spoke growing up. He ran off after my sister went missing.” My eyes were still caught up in Yehoshua’s fiery display. “A few years ago I hired a couple of private investigators to dig around in Arizona, looking to track him down. But everything dried up.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Darla. Her clothes were found covered in blood on the side of the road. Police classified it as an abduction and her body was never recovered. We had always assumed she was dead.” I turned to Caleb, who was wide-eyed. “You remember my brother getting shot?”