A Long Crazy Burn

by Jeff Johnson

  I turned the shower on and stripped. There were more stitches on my blackened right ribs, but just two. Not so bad. The sweatpants peeled off my ass with a tug and I used a hand mirror to look at the damage.

  An X had indeed been carved into my right butt cheek. Jane had sewn it up with all the care she had put into my face. I put the mirror on the counter before I dropped it. My hands were shaking that much.

  I stood under the hot water until it started to go cold. The entire time, while I scrubbed my aching body and tried to rinse all the filth off me, I was thinking about one thing.

  I spent two and a half more weeks at Jane’s. The morning after my first shower, she brought me the most unlikely breakfast for dinner when she got home from work: a huge chunk of blue cheese, four hard-boiled eggs, and something that might have been lasagna a week before. I really wished I had my wallet with my bank and credit cards, even though the newspapers she’d left lying around showed that a manhunt was under way. Even ordering a pizza would have put me in lockdown. I wondered how much of a pizza I could ram down before the feds collected their new Unabomber. Probably half of it. I thought about that pizza a lot.

  Jane seemed to enjoy having a half-crippled fugitive on her couch. Someone to talk to when she got home, bitch at in the morning. We played a lot of chess. I did a great deal of thinking, and when I drifted into the dark space between thoughts and zeroed out, she’d bring me a tumbler of that crap whiskey and wait until my eyes focused again. She had a collection of old black-and-white movies we spent many a late night watching. She knew all of the words.

  I wanted to talk to the guys from the Lucky. A drink at the Rooster Rocket, Gomez laughing at one of his rated-G-for-gangster jokes. Flaco’s Tacos, my source of vital nutrients, street gossip, the way it smelled on a cold winter day. Nigel’s sinister company, his moving commitment to redefining the word “shady.” Big Mike’s childish but endearing women problems. Delia was watching my place, I knew, but I missed my cats. I missed her like coal miners miss birds. She’d be worried sick. I missed every part of my old life. But I missed the Lucky Supreme most of all. Every time I thought about it, something like a frozen migraine touched me inside and squeezed so hard I couldn’t breathe.

  After ten days I could do three push-ups. After twelve I could do it again. After two weeks I still looked like hammered shit, but the ringing in my ears was more of a continuous buzz, and my pupils were almost the same size most of the time.

  Jane’s ex-husband or an old boyfriend had left some clothes in the basement, along with a few boxes of assorted crap, including a set of golf clubs. I ran a load of the clothes through her washer and dryer to get the mold out of them. Everything was too big, but it was better than walking out in my underwear with one boot.

  White golf shoes, checkered pants, a green shirt with a big collar, and a sweater vest Mr. Rogers might have liked. A tan trench coat over that. I looked like a beat-up alcoholic circus clown. The last thing I took out of the basement was a golf club, one with metal at the end. The one it looked like you used it to hit something really fucking hard. I used a few twist ties from the trash bag box to fix it into the inside of the coat.

  It was close to midnight and Jane was at work, shaking martinis at the Mallory. She kept a jar of change on the kitchen counter. I had a final shot of her whiskey and then fished out ten quarters. It was all I’d need, one way or the other.

  I went out through the back door and took a deep breath of the night air. My ribs were still incredibly sore, but the sharp, pulsating pain had given way to a dull ache, punctuated by random stabs. I’d taken the strange cast Jane had made for my right hand off earlier. The knuckles in my pinkie still hurt like hell, and the rest of the fingers were a little stiff, but I could make a satisfying fist, as long as I didn’t hit anything bigger than a roll of toilet paper with it.

  The snow was gone and it had rained earlier. The world smelled good and clean after almost three stuffy weeks of old lady and the chemical reek of my own fear. I adjusted the golf club in my baggy jacket and went down the stairs into the dead winter weeds.

  The nearest stop for bus number 20 was about ten blocks away. I took it easy, moving slow and old. The few people that were out looked away when I passed them on the sidewalk. When I got to the bus shelter on Burnside, I lit up one of Jane’s smokes and waited. The bus rolled up in less than ten minutes.

  The driver didn’t give me a second glance as I climbed aboard and dropped the quarters in the terminal. He tore off a transfer pass and handed it over while he looked in the side mirror for an opening to pull back into traffic. As soon as I crossed the yellow line, he bullied his way in. I sat down in the first seat and adjusted the golf club.

  Portland is a beautiful city at night, full of wet lights and shining surfaces. The streets were alive with activity, even though a misting rain had begun while I was waiting. No one had an umbrella. We passed the big bookstore and then rolled past Old Town and 6th Street. I closed my eyes then, until the bus started up the Burnside Bridge.

  The river was its glossy, oily usual, a vast, dark conduit sluggishly pumping through the heart of the city. I caught a reflection of my face in the suddenly black window and tried to refocus on the distance, but my pupils weren’t working right and it just made it seem like I was staring at my own blurry ghost. A really beat-up pair of them. I pulled the cord to get off at the next stop.

  “First stop east side,” the driver called. I got out into the mist and the bus rumbled off. Across the street by some small used car place was another shelter, for the number 6 that would take me all the way out to the tiki bar and the Sands. I walked over and sat down in the bus stall. Some asshole had left the paper wrappers and sauce packets from the Taco Bell across the street all over the ground, even though there was a trash can just to the right of the shelter. I reached into my oversized coat and fingered the haft of the golf club. I could feel a bad mood coming on.

  The bus finally came and I flashed my transfer at the driver and sat down. It was empty, except for one middle-aged bald guy on the nod in the back row. I watched the east side roll past. I felt hungry after the smell of the food wrappers. I’d probably lost fifteen pounds in the last three weeks. I closed my right eye because it was starting to throb and all the pretty lights came into some kind of focus. I’d almost had all of it taken away, and the list of people trying to take it could fill up a phone book. Dessel and Pressman had even taken out ad space.

  A fuzzy neon palm tree came into view some time later. I pulled the next-stop cord and the bus slowed to a stop. Normally I thank the driver, but I was rude and just got off.

  My car was gone from the parking lot of the tiki bar. Either it had been impounded or Cheeks had taken it to a chop shop. It didn’t matter, since I didn’t have the keys anyway. I lit up the very last smoke and studied the Sands. It was a shitty night, but the Town Car with the gold spinners was in the parking lot. My new ride.

  I walked across the street with my head down. Just another guy out in the rain, with a limp and exceptionally poor taste in clothes. When I got to the edge of the motel, I leaned up against the wall and looked up with both eyes. The lights in 119 had been on when I got off the bus, but after a minute or so I hit on what I was looking for. A shape moved behind the blinds, and in the distance, over the sound of the street and the rain, I heard the shitty stylings of disco.

  I walked around the side of the building, into the darkness by the dumpsters, and pried the golf club out of my coat. The sight of the stinking metal boxes, overflowing with moist trash, took away any last trace of fear. In a flash, I knew I had somehow gone totally and instantly insane. My chest felt like it was on fire and a rhythmic clicking was all around me. I realized it was my teeth, biting the cold air like a windup toy.

  I clenched my jaw shut and slid the golf club up my right sleeve and held the meaty end in my hand. The oversized coat covered it. My heart was hammering at my aching ribs as I drifted around the corner and quietly walked
up the stairs. When I got to 119, I didn’t bother to knock. I let the golf club slip out of my sleeve and caught the handle. It was nice and warm. I was betting that the door was unlocked, that two huge, heavily armed pimps, with a string of whores about to stop in dropping cash off in the next few minutes, would leave it unlocked so they didn’t have to get up every five minutes.

  I twisted the doorknob and pushed.

  The door opened. So I stepped inside and closed it behind me.

  Cheeks was sitting on the floor by the stereo, a record cover in his giant hands. The fat guy was sitting on the edge of the bed clipping his toenails. Both of them looked up at me with blank expressions, then their faces changed simultaneously. The fat guy looked at the big, gold-plated revolver resting on the nightstand and then back at me, with the face of a man who had just woken from a distorted dream and was trying to figure out if it was good or bad. Cheeks beamed like a kid who had just robbed his first candy store. He reached out and turned the music down a few notches.

  “Muthafucka,” he said, laughing as he got to his feet. “Seems you be the dumbest thing since Clamato.”

  “Easily true,” I confessed. “Now, back to Monique. I’d still like to talk to her.”

  Cheeks shook his head and chuckled. The fat guy did, too.

  “Shit. I don’t like me no white meat, so I didn’t fuck on you last time. Bony ass an’ all. But this time you gonna get some party, white boy.”

  “Muthafucka’s gonna be pregnant we done,” the fat guy sang.

  Cheeks flexed his huge hands.

  “Time to fuck you up, boy,” he purred.

  “I’m already fucked up.”

  Cheeks came at me and I brought the golf club I’d been hiding alongside my leg up in a whistling arc. It bounced off his cheekbone and I sidestepped his falling body and gave him another good crack on the top of his head. The fat guy lunged for the gun and I spun and rapped him across the back of the hand. He whipped the broken hand to his mouth and I cracked him in his upturned elbow.

  When I raised the club again he leaned to one side, so I scooped up the gun and kicked him in the face. He was still sitting on the bed and I had the perfect angle, so I did it again. The fat guy flopped back on the bed after the second kick, and I rapped him hard once across the kneecap to slow him down for the rest of his life. No response.

  Behind me, Cheeks sputtered and managed to roll over onto his back. He coughed and blood burped out of his mouth onto his face. The disco record was still droning on.

  “Fug,” he said.

  Then I started hitting.

  “That”—to the forehead—“is for”—ribs—“the fucking X. And that”—face—“is for the dumpster. And this”—Cheeks moaned—“is because you made me fucking kill you!”

  He tried to raise his hands, but I beat them down with the golf club and got him a few more times in the face. Nose. Chin. Eyebrow. Then I was just hitting, over and over again. I stopped when my arm felt like it was going to fall out of the socket.

  I stood there panting for over a minute, maybe longer, with a gun in one hand and a dripping golf club in the other. The disco record was still spinning. I raised the gun and pointed it at the turntable. When I pulled the trigger, nothing happened. I looked at the side of the gun and realized it must have a safety.

  “Fucking shit,” I wheezed. So I put the golf club to the stereo a few times. Then I had to sit down on the bed next to the unconscious fat guy. Cheeks was still breathing on the floor a few feet away, but he was winding down. The fat guy next to me was snoring, though it sounded weird because I’d broken his nose. I tried to catch my breath and let go of the golf club. I couldn’t do either one. My hand had cramped into a ball on the handle of the club. After a minute I heaved and some air finally went into some closed compartment inside me.

  There was a pack of Camels on the top of the cheap dresser across from the bed. I looked at the gun again and then cracked the fat guy across his broken nose to see what happened. He gargled a little and kept on breathing. I sighed again, as deep as I could. All the excitement had closed my bad eye again, but the double image problem had gone with it.

  I got up, stuck the gun in my coat pocket for the moment since everyone was sleeping, and crossed to the cigarettes. I plucked one out of the nearly full pack and pocketed it, then picked up the Zippo that had been next to it and fired up.

  The room was a mess. As I smoked, an unsavory calm came over me. I thanked a god I didn’t believe in that I hadn’t been able to shoot anything. The cops would have been all over me if I had. I had just enough time between my fifth drag on the cigarette and three a.m., when the stable cabbed in, to get to phase two of the plan I had worked out for the last few weeks.

  The money. And some car keys.

  Cheeks had a roll of eighteen hundred dollars in his right front pocket. The fat guy had eighty-four bucks. I pocketed it all, and the keys to the Lincoln, and then I tossed the place. I found my keys and my blood-crusted wallet in a drawer in the dresser with some other junk. There had to be a stash of dough in there somewhere. I found it about five minutes later. Somewhere around twelve thousand, stuffed into a paper bag that was itself stuffed into a hat that was crammed into the back of the closet. Cheeks had been doing OK, I guess, but pimps didn’t keep bank accounts. Scumbags of his order seldom do, a fact I’d exploited before.

  I set the bag on the dresser and looked around. The place was totally trashed. Cheeks was still breathing, but it didn’t sound good. The fat guy was snoring through his broken nose. I went into the bathroom and dug a coffee cup out of the trashcan, scooped up some water out of the scummy toilet, and carried it back out. I poured it into the fat guy’s face and backed up and pointed the gun at him. He sputtered and moaned and his eyes opened.

  “They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” I said. “Although the nutritional value of toilet water?” I shrugged. “I dunno. So, Monique.”

  The fat guy reached up and pawed at his nose, then looked at the watery blood on his hand.

  “You fuckin’ broke my face.”

  “Yep. I’m fixing to blow your crotch open with this big-ass gun next. Tell you what there, chubby. I’m pissed at you guys.”

  “Yeah. Fuck.”

  “Try to sit up. You tell me what I want to know, this might work out with you still breathing.”

  The fat guy struggled into a sitting position. I’d really done a number on his face. He spit a tooth out and glared at me.

  “You gonna shoot me? You’re gonna shoot me. I know it.”

  “Likely so,” I said. “But you do have a chance. Now, I’m not saying you have a really good chance. We’re talking Vegas odds. I won’t lie to you.”

  “Fuck you, then.” He coughed and touched his nose. “Aw man, this motherfuckin’ stings. You really pour toilet water on me?”

  “Sure did.” The gun was getting heavy and I was getting dangerously tired. I sat down on a chair I hadn’t broken and rested the gun on my knee with the barrel pointed right between his legs.

  “You left me for dead in a dumpster, you fucking idiot. Toilet water is like holy water in this situation.” I tapped the gun on my knee. “So like I said, I won’t lie to you.” I sighed. My ribs hurt like hell and my good eye was hazy. “What the fuck is your name? I can’t keep calling you chubby.”

  “Clarence.”

  “OK, Clarence. I’m Darby Holland. You already know that, because you took all the money out of my wallet. Since I took it all back with interest, I figure we’re even there. But the whole dumpster thing, the beating, the X one of you motherfuckers carved in my ass, well, let’s even that up, too. Cheeks over there, he’s not going to make it. Can’t talk to him now. What we have there is a vegetable. But Clarence, I get the feeling you might be able to tell me what I need to know.”

  Clarence’s face was swelling up pretty bad. He looked at the gun, then at my face.

  “Shit. OK. Shit. Let me get this straight.” He was tremblin
g now. “Can I get a smoke? Maybe a drink? We got some.”

  “Sounds good to me. I need a break.”

  Clarence rose to his feet and slowly limped over to the nightstand, where there was a bottle of something brown and a pack of Newports. His knee was crackling like a bag of pretzels, but he didn’t seem to notice. Maybe I hadn’t hit that part of him hard enough.

  “Don’t do anything foolish, Clarence,” I cautioned. “I’m not what you’d call a marksman, but this is a small room.”

  He shook his head and grunted.

  “And don’t get any of your bloody toilet snot on that shit. I want some.”

  Clarence carefully unscrewed the cap on the bottle and dumped about five fingers into a glass I hadn’t broken. Then he drained it and shuddered.

  “Sit that bottle and those smokes on the dresser and sit the fuck down.”

  He picked everything up and set them down next to the bag of money. When he saw the cash bag, he wheezed and his shoulders slumped.

  “Yep,” I said. “So fuckin’ sad.”

  He crashed down on the corner of the bed and lit up a Newport with a match.

  “I told Cheeks you wasn’t dead,” he said around the smoke.

  “Get talking, Clarence.” I tapped the gun on my knee a few times. “Got about five seconds to start.”

  “It’s like this.” He took another drag. “Cheeks was gettin’, I dunno, I guess he was gettin’ fucked with. The bitches was gettin’ picked up an’ sweated by the cops. You know the story. Old Town changin’ into some new fuckin’ thang. No room for a pimp to grow, right? As a businessman.” He took another drag.

  “But Cheeks, he a smart fuckin’ niggah. Least he was. Figured he’d upgrade with the times, start hisself a real house. Espresso an’ bitches. Upscale. Like a pussy factory Starbucks. Shit.” He shook his head.