The Orchid Eater

by Marc Laidlaw

  “You’ll get the key?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, the key.”

  Hawk went back to the car, leaving the door open, a spill of light and voices following him to the street. He got behind the wheel and shook his head, aiming the chrome cross at the night, as if for target practice.

  It took only seconds to reach Sal’s house. Hawk shut off the engine and coasted to a stop at the curb. Music and the sounds of a party came from inside. Maybe a victory party.

  “Dusty, you got the gun. Stoner, give him some camouflage. Not too subtle, though.”

  He climbed out of the jeep and strolled slowly up the driveway, past Sal’s sleek black van, which looked a million times better kept than Dusty’s. From the doorstep, he glanced back at the jeep. Stoner was leaning against the bed of the truck, grinning. The shotgun barrel poked out from under his armpit.

  Hawk rang the bell, heard chimes inside the house. A few seconds later the door opened a few inches and Sal looked out.

  Hawk said, “I need to talk to you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I heard my boys have been giving you some trouble.”

  “They tell you everything or just the parts they think you’ll like?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out. I don’t have a gripe with you, Sal. I’d just as soon we never had call to see each other. So can we iron this out right now?”

  “You alone?”

  “Not exactly. But I left my friends at the car.”

  Sal leaned out and peered around the door. Stoner raised his arm to wave, revealing Dusty crouched in back with the shotgun.

  Sal stiffened and started to withdraw, but Hawk caught him by the arm—or thought he had. Before his fingers could close on Sal’s arm, it snaked up inside his reach and swept him back. Hawk stumbled on the edge of the stoop and nearly fell on his ass. Off balance, he threw himself at the door before Sal could shut it. Sal must have stood aside at the last instant because his plunge carried him into the house, meeting no resistance till he banged into the wall, bruising his shoulder. Straightening up, he found himself surrounded.

  He was in the middle of a party. All the guests were male, most of them fairly young. They didn’t look particularly menacing.

  Except, possibly, for Sal, who waited by the door. He looked more relaxed now that Hawk was inside, on his territory.

  “What it comes down to, Hawk, is that my friends and I don’t like being called names. Names don’t hurt us, we just don’t like them. I don’t see why we should put up with that shit. Would you?”

  “What kind of names are you talking about?”

  Sal grinned. “They didn’t tell you that part, did they? You want me to repeat them?”

  “No, I can imagine. Look . . . on their behalf, I apologize. They’re a bunch of smartasses, we both know that. You know how kids think. They don’t know shit.”

  “I just want to be left in peace, Hawk. I want to be able to have my friends over without the local chapter of the KKK, like your cute little ‘S.S.’ boys, coming around my door—and then running away when we put up a little fight.”

  “I don’t even mind the names,” said Randy, who stood in the door to the kitchen, wearing rubber gloves and holding a sponge. “What gets me is this mess.”

  He pointed to a wet green stain on the wall opposite the door. He wiped at it with the sponge, but apparently he had removed all he could. The plaster had sucked it up.

  “Who did that? What is it?”

  “One of your boys—with an avocado. I’m going to have to paint.”

  Hawk reached for his wallet, but Sal stopped him.

  “Forget it, Hawk. You want to make peace, I’ll accept that. But can you make your goons stick to it?”

  “I can tell them that any more trouble they get themselves into with you . . . I won’t be bailing them out.”

  “Anyway,” said Marilyn, inspecting his nails, “we wouldn’t have hurt them, even if we caught them. It was enough to see them run.”

  A ripple of laughter went through the room.

  “That’s good to hear,” Hawk said. “I thought maybe it was something like that. But you know, these little games you play . . . some people don’t necessarily take it as lightly as you’d think. Sometimes the game goes too far. You know what I’m saying?”

  The record that had been playing ended suddenly. Hawk was surrounded by silence; his words hung there in the middle of the room. Everyone watched him.

  “I’m talking about the key,” Hawk said.

  The silence stretched on.

  “The key?” Hawk repeated.

  Sal shrugged. “So you said. What key?”

  “You know what key. The one that got left in the lock. Now, the kid it belongs to isn’t one of my boys, and he’s shitting bricks right now, thinking his mother is going to find out what he was up to.”

  When nobody answered, Sal took a stab. “Okay, boys, we’re looking for a little peace here. Cooperation. If one of you has this kid’s key . . .”

  Someone nosed the needle back onto the album, pumping the room full of noise.

  “Take it off!” Sal shouted. The speakers screeched. The silence was more tense than before.

  Hawk looked around. There were faces he knew, but more he didn’t. A few older men were mixed in with the younger; Sal must have been entertaining some of his customers tonight.

  “Who has it?” Sal said.

  “We didn’t see any key,” said Randy. “Someone would have said if they’d found it.”

  “Hey, Sal,” said a kid Hawk didn’t know. “What about your brother? He was there.”

  “Lupe?” Sal looked puzzled. “Yeah, where is he?”

  “He didn’t come back with us, but he hit that house first. Like, he was tracking Hawk’s boys without us. If there was a key, he’s the one would have seen it.”

  “So where is this guy, this Lupe?” Hawk asked, though it already seemed clear from what they’d been saying.

  Nobody knew.

  8

  The painted moon was pretty but it gave no light. Mike sat in the dark, listening to feet pounding up and down the stairs. Mad-Dog’s howls echoed through the empty rooms. He sighed and sank his head between his knees. After trying to keep everything under control, warning the others about smudging the white walls, he had finally given up and sought what peace he could in solitude.

  The door opened suddenly. The light switched on. Mad-Dog stood in the doorway. “Hey, guy. Heard there’s avocados somewhere around here.”

  Mike gestured toward the walk-in closet. “Help yourself.”

  Mad-Dog went out with an armful of avocados, already peeling the woody skin of one with his snaggle teeth. He left the door wide open. After a moment Scott came in and dropped down heavily in a corner, followed by Edgar, who sat cross-legged in the center of the room.

  “Don’t worry about your key,” said Edgar. “Hawk’ll take care of it.”

  Just then, the doorbell rang. By the time they got upstairs, Kurtis was opening the front door. Craig and Howard rushed in laughing.

  “So what happened?” Kurtis said.

  “Man, he just murdered Sal!” Howard said.

  “Murdered him?” Mike repeated.

  “You guys missed the fight of the century!”

  They congregated in the living room. Craig nodded his agreement to Howard’s breathless account: “We got there right as Hawk was going up to the door. Man, you should have seen it. Dusty was back in the jeep with a shotgun—”

  “A shotgun?” Kurtis said.

  “Yeah! Him and Stoner standing there grinning, Hawk goes up to the door and bam-bam-bam! Wails on it! Sal opens the door, just an inch, and he’s like—‘Please don’t hurt me, Mister Hawk!’”

  “Scared shitless,” Craig concurred.

  “But Hawk whips around, snags him, wham!, he’s pulling him out of the house, then bang!, he barrels back inside with him and slams the door. You could hear all these guys howling in
side, glass breaking—”

  “So what are Dusty and Stoner doing all this time?” Kurtis asked. “Standing around?”

  “No way! Dusty’s got a gun, remember? They run to the door, Stoner kicks it in, and they crash inside. There’s two shots, blam-blam, just like that.”

  Cold rushed through Mike. “They shot somebody?”

  “Naw, just scared ’em, I think. But you could hear the place turning upside down. Stoner’s laughing like—like Mad-Dog. All of a sudden someone comes flying through the glass upstairs, spinning right over the balcony, and lands on the sidewalk. It was Sal, man. Hawk threw him right into the street!”

  “Sal?”

  “You shoulda been there, man, it was infuckingcredible!”

  “Liked it, huh?” said Hawk.

  They turned around suddenly. Hawk was standing in the front door; he had come in quietly while Howard was jabbering.

  “Uh, yeah, Hawk,” Howard said. “I was just telling them how you took care of Sal.”

  “How I threw him through a window?” Hawk took a few steps into the house. “I appreciate the legends, Howie, really I do. But I think the truth has more staying power.”

  If Howard had had a tail he would have tucked it between his legs.

  Two men came in after Hawk. One was dark and bony in a grubby sleeveless T-shirt, with tattooed arms and a few gold teeth. The other was built like a refrigerator, so tall he had to stoop in the doorway.

  Mike held back from Hawk. He was anxious to get his key, but Hawk seemed unpredictable. Better to wait until he offered it.

  “All right, fellows, gather round,” Hawk said. “It’s time we had a little man-to-man.”

  Hawk gestured toward the dining room with its small square of gold carpet, and everybody slowly flocked toward it. Mike sensed a scolding in the air, at which his mood soured further. Who was this guy anyway, to chew them out? He wasn’t their father, for God’s sake.

  Hawk stood in the middle of the thick yellow carpet as if he were taking center stage. The boys sat down in a loose ring around him, leaning back against the mirrored wall or the counter that divided them from the kitchen. Mad-Dog started wolfing down another avocado, green sludge showing whenever he grinned. Hawk’s two cronies crossed their arms and took posts near the door, like bodyguards.

  Hawk smiled, narrowing his eyes, looking down at them. “Okay. We’re all cool here, right? We’re all so fucking cool ice won’t melt on our tongues.”

  Mike thought he looked a bit like a wolf, the Big Bad one, leering at them with some secret knowledge hidden behind his slit eyes.

  “Yeah. We’re a bunch of hip, dangerous dudes, so don’t mess with us.” Hawk began to imitate a strut, swaggering in place down an imaginary street. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep on trucking. Cool, ain’t it? Cool, cool, cool.”

  Howard and Craig glanced at each other and shrugged.

  “Yeah, Hawk,” Howard said, “we’re cool.”

  Hawk let his mask slip; underneath it was nothing but disgust. “Not cool,” he said. “Fools is what you are, trucking your way straight to Hell. That’s another one-way trip, boys. One-way in the wrong direction.”

  He jabbed a finger at the carpet.

  “You know what I mean? The ground cracks open, fire licks up, and down you plunge. Sound okay to you? Think your cool is gonna matter when you’re down there? You think you can stay cool when everything else is on fire?”

  “Snowball in hell,” the big blond Neanderthal said, and guffawed.

  Hawk turned around and stared at him. “Thanks, Stoner, for that brilliant and original comparison. That is pure poetry.”

  Stoner fell silent, hiding his smirk while Hawk shook his head.

  “Sometimes I think you guys don’t hear a word I say. I don’t know why you bother hanging around me, let alone why I put up with you. Am I fooling myself thinking I can make a difference in your lives? Is it totally asinine to think I can teach you anything from my experience, or steer you away from the mistakes I made? Am I wasting my time with you guys?”

  Edgar spoke up. “Uh, maybe, Hawk . . . maybe we think that, you know, if we want to be like you, we gotta go through the shit that made you what you are. It’s sort of like a paradox, right?”

  Hawk looked surprised and then disappointed by this logic. Suddenly Mike saw Hawk as another typical adult saying the same old stuff: I’m so disappointed in you kids . . . It was the same speech he got from his mother when he’d done something wrong, now that he was too old to whack with a hairbrush. But at least she had a right to say what she wanted, being his mother and all. But now here was this Hawk, this nobody, trying to make Mike listen to everything he had to say, trying to shake him up. And at the end of the lecture, when Mike was supposed to be limp and grateful for Hawk’s assistance, philosophical and otherwise, Hawk would finally hand over the key.

  Recognizing the routine sapped it of all possible impact. The boys weren’t just trying to be like Hawk—he was trying to be like one of them. Mike saw it all the time: teachers indulging in the latest slang, pretending to be “one of the gang,” as if that would earn them kids’ respect. It was the kind of hypocrisy that drove him nuts. You’re not one of us! he wanted to shout at Hawk.

  Instead he stifled a yawn and gave his mind permission to wander. Hawk seemed to have no straight answer to Edgar’s question. It was cleverly posed, Mike thought. Chalk one up for the boys.

  Mad-Dog finished one avocado and began gnawing on the pit, eyes rapt on Hawk. Shreds of whitish matter dribbled from his mouth and onto the floor, next to a pile of green skin. Mike would have to go over the whole house later, cleaning up after these guys, hiding their tracks. Hawk’s boots were crusted with dirt; crumbs of it speckled the bright, freshly shampooed carpet. His mother would think he’d led an army in here. Which was closer to the truth than he wanted her to know.

  “I’ve told you my story,” Hawk said. “You know I understand you guys. I went through the same shit you did, walked the same fucking streets, all right? Take it from me, I know where the road you’re on leads. I did the drugs, the crimes, all that shit, same as you. The drugs burned my brain, made me stupid, and the crime just got me into jail. One leads to the other, men. And I’m not just talking about jail. I’m talking about Hell. That’s where you’re headed. So you keep right on truckin’!”

  Behind Hawk, Dusty and Stoner exchanged glances. They were laughing, it seemed, but silently.

  Somehow Hawk heard them. He spun around.

  “You think what I’m saying is funny, Stoner?”

  “No, Hawk! No . . . It’s just, well, you’re always preaching.”

  “Is that all I do? Talk? You think I don’t set any good examples by my action?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Hallelujah,” Scott whispered.

  “What kind of examples do you set, Stoner? What’re you going to tell Saint Peter when you get to the pearly gates? What’s your great achievement in this lifetime? What’re you gonna tell him? ‘Well, uh, uh, lemme see . . . duh . . . I dunno, I . . . I swiped a crate of hand grenades from Camp Pendleton!’”

  Everyone, including Stoner, laughed at Hawk’s Stoner imitation.

  “And what about you, Dusty?” Hawk said.

  Dusty stiffened. “I’m not one of your baby boys, Hawk, that you can talk to me like that. I don’t need no preacher-man on my ass. Plenty of shitwipes sitting in jail figure they can get out faster if they start whacking off to the Bible ’stead of beaver magazines. Keep on thumpin’ that ol’ black book, Hawk, I don’t care. But leave me out of it. I’m a good Catholic, man, and you don’t know nothing about us. I got my own road to Heaven.”

  Hawk turned away from him. “I’m glad you do, Dusty, because you sure need it. But these boys here are different. They need role models, especially the primo example of that righteous dude who lived and died for them two thousand years ago. I’m not talking about some magic man who turned water into wine and brought the dead to life; I’
m talking about the real guy those stories are based on. I’m talking about the real life of the straight-talkin’, woman-lovin’, two-fisted fightin’ Jesus.”

  “Hey, Hawk,” Edgar said suddenly, “do you think Jesus had ESP?”

  Hawk said nothing for a minute. He stared at Edgar, and shook his head. That disappointed look again. “Edgar . . . ”

  “It would explain some things, wouldn’t it? Maybe he made people think he was doing miracles without actually doing them. I mean, getting inside their heads and making them see what he saw. That would still be pretty miraculous, wouldn’t it?”

  “Edgar . . . ”

  “Walking on water, and that stuff with Lazarus, I mean maybe he was in like a catatonic state and Jesus just—”

  “Edgar!”

  Edgar fell silent.

  Hawk looked exasperated after yelling; he collected himself, taking a breath before speaking again. Mike was afraid he might go on all night, and he would never get the place cleaned up. The only way they were going to get out of here was if they all pretended to take his lessons to heart. And if that was all it took, it would be worth it. Out-hypocrisy the old hypocrite.

  “I think that’s really, really true,” he said to the other boys. “What Hawk’s been saying.”

  He could see Hawk’s eyes brighten, snapping toward him.

  “We should all learn a lesson from this,” Mike said.

  “Okay, finally, someone’s hearing me,” Hawk said. “What is this, all you guys tired of listening to me? Only makes sense to someone who’s never heard it before?”

  “I’ll bet they get it,” Mike said. “Don’t you, guys?”

  Around the room, warming to his method as if by a closed-circuit telepathy from which Hawk was excluded, the others began to nod. “Yeah, really, Hawk. It’ll never happen again.”

  “Right on.”

  “Yeah, man, we see what you’re saying.”

  “Leave Sal alone,” Hawk said.

  “Sure, man.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “What he does is between him and Heaven, all right? You guys aren’t the ones to pass judgment on him. You should be worried about the judgment someone’s sure as shit going to pass on you.”