by Lee Deadkeys
He nodded and she was out the door before he could say another word.
Day 3, Late Morning
Jessica Walker
Dick’s U-Store-It
Jessica Walker slammed into the empty parking space beside her father’s truck at the U-Store-It and tried to get herself under control. She felt disjointed, her nerves jangling as a stomach full of butterflies fought it out with knives and bats. Prying her hands from the steering wheel, she shook them to get the blood flowing again.
That cop had sideswiped her with questions about Jacob and Angel, questions which brought back haunting memories, reigniting a quiet storm within that felt both comforting and terrifying. She shook her head, tried not to think about it. She tried every day and failed every day.
At Jacob’s funeral, her hands had been squeezed by wet-eyed men and she was pulled into forced embraces by tearful women. Her father told her they meant well and she was sure they did, after all, Jacob and Angel had been loved by many.
People quoted Scripture at her, told her he was in a better place and that while she would always feel the loss, it would fade over time, become bearable. People assaulted her with their own examples of loss; miscarriages, car accidents, heart attack, it went on and on. These comparisons enraged Jess, cheapening her loss by equating it with their own.
“Don’t do that!” She remembered screaming at a woman who’d lost her 70-year-old brother to alcoholism. “It’s not the same! My brother was ripped from this world, murdered! And unless your brother was stabbed to death by a bottle of booze, don’t put yourself in my place!”
The woman was terrified; backing away from Jess as other mourners came to the woman’s rescue, their once sympathetic faces now twisted in disgust. Then her father was there, holding her tightly, the pain in his face worse than anything she’d ever seen.
People began to avoid her. She heard whispers about her sanity, words like breakdown and snapped replacing grief-stricken and heartbroken, and more than a few said she needed to talk to someone, a professional, someone who could help her work through it.
She had tried. No one could say she hadn’t. She allowed Ox, her and Jacob’s longtime friend and just about the only person still speaking to her, to drag her to a Victims of Violent Crime meeting. What she witnessed during that meeting only made it worse.
She’d sat beside Ox on an uncomfortable metal chair and listened as people told their tearful, sob-choked stories. And always, as each one neared the end of their fifteen-minute summary on how the world is a little greyer since so-and-so was taken from it, the blame game began. She had to admit, people got very creative when playing it.
A couple to Jess’s left blamed God and were corrected by an older woman who stated it was really Satan’s fault. The first couple rolled their eyes and said God and Satan both could go “F” themselves. Horror-struck, the lady crossed herself and said she would pray for them. This didn’t sit well with the couple, or the Atheist who quickly pointed out that they were all idiots and it was the fault of overbearing, racist white Christians cramming their superstitions down everyone’s throat.
A large woman with a buzz cut shouted that it was man-made global warming to blame. She quickly recounted how her life-partner had been mauled to death by a polar bear after it successfully resisted their attempts to save it from drowning. After killing three of the rescuers, the bear was shot dead by their guide. She wiped at a tear remembering her life-partner’s last words had been, “Vanilla, NO!”
A middle-aged man stood and loudly proclaimed that the woman’s life-partner was dead because she was a dumbass and demanded to know why she was even at this meeting.
The counselor had to interject, reminding them that pointing fingers was not what this session was for and that this was part of the healing process.
This brought a gruff laugh from an old man who had lost his wife to a drunken Mexican-illegal driving a stolen truck. Apparently this was the Mexican’s ninth offense, and the old man reminded everyone that it was really the fault of crooked Politicians and their refusal to crack down on criminals, because it would mean losing more than half of their votes.
Jess had agreed with the old man but remained quiet as the group droned on and blamed full moons, poisons, knives, guns. They wondered tearfully why these things weren’t illegal, why these things were allowed in a civilized society.
Jess watched their faces contort with rage, fear, grief; curious if they would ever figure it out, if they would ever put it together. Put a gun or knife on a table, nothing. Put a spoon on a table next to ill-intentioned human and the human will find a way to use it against you; whether that means eating the last bit of pie or spooning out your eyes, just to hear what kind of sound it makes. People got creative in their atrocities against one another and their instruments were limitless.
The counselor interjected once again, explaining the dangers of putting all the blame at the feet of the people who had committed these crimes, and how in many cases the school system had failed these people from an early age, how socio-economic problems and society at large had forced some of these people into a life of crime to survive.
“It’s really no one’s fault,” the counselor had said. “Blaming people is not conducive to—”
This brought Jess to her feet, the chair flying out behind her. “What?” she nearly screamed, taking a step towards the counselor. “Are you saying it’s not the fault of the criminal, the murderer, you stupid piece of shi—”
Ox had seized her by the arm and was hauling her toward the door as the counselor cowered in her seat. Someone yelled for the police as the door slammed shut, cutting them off.
Ox dropped her arm as soon as they were out the door and walked to his truck without turning back. Jess followed, knowing he was pissed. She got in the passenger side and waited. Ox stared out the windshield for a full minute.
“Where to?” he asked, his voice flinty.
“There’s another meeting in ten minutes across town.”
Ox slowly turned to look at her. “Not funny, Jess.”
She looked at her lap, remorseful. “No. No, it really isn’t.” She heard sirens in the distance, maybe they had called the police. She shrugged, “Take me to the Boomerang.”
They drove in silence to the bar they had once frequented with Jacob and Angel. They drank until they forgot, and then drank some more to kill the memory completely.
* * *
Jess opened her eyes and looked at her watch. She’d been stumbling down memory lane for almost fifteen minutes. She slapped her face once, savoring the sting and left the vehicle.
There were five other cars in the storage parking lot and she recognized one of them as a serious buyer that might run the bids up on the good units. The owners of the vehicles she didn’t recognize were probably just senior citizens hoping for a unit full of knickknacks which they could turn for a few dollars at the local swap meet.
She hurried through the open security gate that separated the parking area from the actual units and manager office. Dick Cropp’s nasally voice drifted through the maze of locked units; the auction had already started. Moving quickly around a long row of units she spotted her father’s broad T-shirted back; his hand rose to signal the auctioneer. Great, he’d started without her.
She slid in beside him and stood on tiptoes to get a look over the crowd and into the open unit. She groaned aloud at the mismatched Tupperware littering the unit’s floor, the clothes leaking from broken boxes. It was all junk, stuff you couldn’t give away. She would have never bid on a unit that had no visible furniture or neatly labeled boxes marked ‘China’ or ‘Fragile’.
Frank paid no such attention to order. Once, he’d spent one hundred dollars on a unit that looked like frat boys had held a week-long kegger inside and then rolled down the door on the mess. Her initial assumption had been half right.
From the nearly endless piles of trash they sifted through, they found a class ring from an out of state high sch
ool along with a few crumpled notes from the young man to his parents, asking for whatever money they could send to get him back home. It seemed life at ASU had ended abruptly after his second DUI landed him in jail.
Her father was sentimental about the contents. He never seemed to see trashy units; he saw people’s lives locked up in cold concrete and steel. Lives that had taken a wrong turn and left them on a strange dark road with no map and no way to find their way back. He felt these things were important enough to put under lock and key, important enough to save and he had told her once that he felt a little dirty, like he was invading their lives for profit.
The bidding was up to twenty dollars when Frank’s hand started to rise again. Jess gripped it firmly and mouthed, no. Frank scowled at her, his strength outmatching hers and shooting both their hands in the air. She jerked her hand back down but the bid had been called.
“Damn it,” she said, trying to keep her voice down, “haven’t you been robbed enough lately?”
A woman in front of Jess turned and shushed her, pointing at the auctioneer and indicating that there was obviously still an auction in progress.
“Bite me, you old biddy,” Jess said. The woman staggered back as if she’d been struck in the face.
Frank grabbed Jess by the wrist and hauled her to the end of the row.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” Frank demanded, still tightly holding her arm. She twisted her wrist inward toward his thumb, a move he had taught her years ago, and broke his grip.
“What the hell has gotten into you? I have to hear from cops that you almost got killed yesterday?”
Frank sagged, he looked at the ground remembering the panic he’d felt in the police station when the Detective had mentioned Jess’s name.
“I was going to tell you when I had an opportunity. I didn’t think this was the time or place.”
She started to protest but he cut her off, “And, I wasn’t robbed and I wasn’t almost killed… I just happened in on the tail end of it.”
“Bullshit. How stupid do you think I am? I wasn’t saying one word to that Hernandez guy until someone told me what happened.”
“All right, that’s enough. How do you think I felt when I learned where Phil got the gun he used to kill a man?” Frank realized he had roughly seized his daughter’s arms again and he let them drop.
He had no idea why he was so angry with her, other than the fact that now she seemed involved with the horrible thing that happened yesterday. He felt unable to protect her, even from herself and it scared him more than anything.
She took a challenging step toward her father and jabbed a finger in his chest. “You listen to me because I’m only going to say this once. That could have been the guy. Did you think of that? He could have been the guy that killed Jacob.”
Frank took a step back; the thought had never crossed his mind, not on a conscious level anyway.
Jess ground her palms into her eyes. “You will not make me feel guilty because Phil and a lot of other people are alive and some sack of shit is dead. It will never happen.” She tried to walk away but Frank stepped in the way.
People were starting to stare at them. She wanted to yell at them, scream at them to mind their own business, but the day’s emotional roller coaster was beginning to wear on her, she didn’t want to fight with him anymore.
“Jess,” he said, gently taking her hands, “don’t you understand? You’re all I have left.”
The defiance fled from her expression, evaporated from her posture. Jess looked up at her father with red-rimmed eyes. “The same goes for me too, and I don’t want to lose you.”
It was an all-too-rare moment of tenderness and Frank felt his heart hurt. He wanted to put his arms around her, hug her and tell her it would all be OK and she could stop being so angry, tell her they could and would get through this pain and loss together. Unfortunately, his experiences with his daughter over the last few months told him that this moment was not only a rarity, but that it would also be brief.
As if reading his mind, she took a step back. “I don’t want to talk about this here, not with all these dillholes gawking at us.”
Frank smiled, still basking in the moment and not caring what anyone thought, “Okay, then, or as you would say it, let’s go buy someone else’s abandoned crap.”
* * *
Dick Cropp rolled his eyes as they rejoined the group. “You two finished with your family squabble or do I need to get a hold of Jerry Springer’s people?”
“Yeah, yeah Dick, we don’t like each other, I think everyone gets that,” Jess said.
“Makes me wonder why you always show up,” Dick said as he began leading them through the maze of units.
“Maybe I just enjoy tormenting you.”
“All right, Jess, let’s just get through this,” Frank said as they rounded a corner and came to the last unit for auction.
“My Gawd, what is that smell?” one of the older women said, pinching her nose.
Jess waved a hand in front of her face, “Christ, Dick, did you cut one?”
“No!” Dick wheeled around, fury and embarrassment blazing on his cheeks.
The old women still had her nose pinched between her fingers and a few others were eyeing him suspiciously.
“Honest. These dogs are hanging around and… I’m trying to deal with them. Sorry about the smell.” He conveniently left out that the dogs only hung around this particular unit and that he was sure they could read minds.
A cold chill snaked down his back. People began to lean to one side as if trying to get a look at something behind him.
Slowly, he turned. One of the dogs he’d seen the night before sat there, boring into him with its eyes.
“Ahhhh,” the old lady who’d shushed Jess said cheerfully and stepped around him, hand out toward the dog, making clucking sounds with her tongue.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, lady,” Jess said. The lady gave her an icy stare and continued to coax the dog.
An old man—probably her husband, he looked like he was very adept at following orders—stepped forward. “Mildred, maybe you should listen to the young lady.” Mildred waved him back; he stopped instantly and did not protest again.
Mildred advanced a few more steps until she stood directly in front of unit 2060. The large black dog stood and began to trot over to the small crowd, its nails clicking softly on the asphalt. Dick and few of the others unconsciously took a couple steps away from the advancing dog. Even Mildred ceased her forward progress and glanced quickly back at her husband, her scolding expression replaced with one of mild anxiety.
Frank watched the dog carefully as it covered half the distance, stopped and sat with its pink tongue lolling. Although the animal didn’t appear particularly menacing, he felt a quiet threat in its fearless approach, as if resigned to its fate.
Three more dogs rounded the corner and slowly, heads low, moved into position behind the black one. Mildred hesitated; her initial endearment to the animal seemed thwarted by the appearance of its mates.
“What’s going on here?” Mildred asked to no one.
Someone spoke from the back of the group, farthest from the dogs, “They’re crazy.”
Everyone turned and saw that Dick had quietly slipped to the back of the group and now crouched behind Frank as if using him as a shield. This close to him, Frank realized that Dick looked worse than usual, like he had spent the last few days on a nonstop bender. Dark circles under his eyes and stress lines marked his pudgy face.
Jess turned to the quartet of dogs. “Git!” she yelled, stomping her booted foot. Mildred opened her mouth to scold her but before she could finish the black dog loosed a long mournful howl; his companions join in a heartbeat later.
Frank moved sluggishly toward the front of the group, closer to his daughter and then absently placed a hand on her shoulder. It was difficult to move, like walking through air the consistency of thin Jell-O. The animals’ song played out, ending i
n a few sharp yips that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.
He watched them as they held the group with their eyes and suddenly he felt very tired. He wanted to find a bed, any bed, and sleep for a month. Why am I here? I shouldn’t be here. He started to turn and leave, his hand guiding Jess to follow. She didn’t resist.
Frank took two steps and the small group of people parted before them. His head felt foggy, he had a difficult time remembering where he was, as if he’d been drugged and left in an unfamiliar place. Time slowed and a vague sense of approaching doom tugged at the recesses of his mind.
A high-pitched bark shook him from his stupor, his head popped up as his hand fell away from his daughter. The old woman barked again, this time she followed it with a short growl and a shake of her grey head. The others in the group also looked up, then looked at each other and appeared not to recognize where they were or how they had gotten there. They watched, confused, as the four dogs ran from them and disappeared around the corner.
The old woman, Mildred, blushed and touched her mouth with the back of her hand. “I have no idea why I did that,” she said, embarrassed. A nervous chuckle percolated through the group.
Her husband found her arm and gently tugged her to him. “It’s all right, dear,” he said uneasily, “It must be the heat. I think it’s getting to all of us a little.”
The old man met the eyes of the others, pleading silently for consent. A few people nodded in agreement, though they still seemed to be sloughing off the effects of their own brief dementia.
Frank turned Jess to him. Her face was slack and sleepy, like she was a child again, woken at a rest stop as soon as he cut the engine. When this happened as a child, she would stare straight ahead, seeing nothing until he touched her or said her name. Then, all at once, she would jerk fully awake, somewhat startled and confused to be in a strange place, the day folding into night as she slumbered in oblivion. It used to give him the creeps. It still did.
He gently shook her and said her name. She blinked once, jerked and closed her mouth so hard he heard her teeth click. “You all right?” Frank asked, truly concerned.
