by Tim McBain
The road cares not. The meat brings it neither sadness nor satisfaction. The traffic never slows, not really. It all goes on and on. More people come along to replace the fallen. It never ends.
Chapter 7
I sit in the Taurus outside of the church. For the purposes of discretion, the car rests across the street from the building, pulled over into the grass perimeter encasing a field of unharvested corn, all papery and wispy. I put for sale signs in the windshield and rear passenger side window. It looks like your basic piece of shit used car on display over here, right? Might that draw attention? Ah, but I’m one step ahead of you. I wrote $1,800 in huge block letters with a sharpie on each sign. Nobody would come sneak a peek at a 1993 Ford Taurus at that price. Nobody.
The church looks empty, at least for the most part. There’s only one car in the lot. I don’t recognize it, so I figure it’s unlikely to be the man I’m looking for. No lights shine in the windows or anything like that, though it’s the middle of the day, so that’s not a shock.
The church docket showed nothing doing today according to their website, but I wait and watch anyway. I can be patient. Like a spider off in the shadows waiting for that little tug on the strand of web it clings to. Ready to leap into action, to kill, over the tiniest movement.
I’ve been here for a while every day this week. I know a time will come when Farber arrives here alone. Flocks of people surround him most of the time--he lives on a commune, for example--but for certain things--say a spur of the moment meeting called by him to announce something important--he would be early, and he would be alone. He’s a showman first. He would never allow others to see him arrive for something like that. He would always work from a position of power.
My stomach growls for a long time, interrupting my thoughts. The grumble jumps an octave into a squeal at the end, trailing off on that up note, so it sounds like it’s asking a question. I’ve got a guess as to what that query might be: “Are you ever going to feed me, dumbshit?”
Fine. Point taken, stomach.
I get so wired when I do this stuff, I keep forgetting to grab something to eat. Dumb. I mean, that’s what a stakeout is, right? You watch nothing happen for a long time, gorging yourself with food. Chips. Soft drinks. Pretzels. Snack cakes. Coffee. Those horrible little apple pies from the convenience store. Then something happens, and you go do your thing. After it’s done, you celebrate with more food, probably the leftover apple pie you didn’t want to eat before. Anyway, it’s a very straightforward setup, and I’m failing to get it done.
But it’s OK. That will be my next stop. I have another place I want to go, another place I know where to look for Farber, but I will grab something to eat on the way there. Crisis averted.
First, however, I will wait and see who the driver of this PT Cruiser is, and my digestive tract will just have to deal with it. This might be a chance to learn something.
I tap my thumb and finger on the slatted heating vent on the far left, switching from super fast kick and snare beats to slower, more elaborate ones. My other hand rests, draped through the bottom of the steering wheel.
I watch.
The wind blows every few minutes, pretty good gusts, and dead leaves kick up and shoot across the church lawn like they’ve been fired from a rocket launcher. The corn stalks scrape out sounds behind me, their voices dry and harsh.
It’s dull, yes, but I feel no restlessness. I can wait.
Was that movement? I sit forward.
The front door swings open part of the way, hesitates there for a moment, and then spreads the rest of the way. A man walks through, maybe in his early 60’s. Short. Bald. He wears a navy blue work shirt with a white name patch sewed to the breast that I can’t read from here. A toolbox dangles from his right hand, a large steel one. Black.
He pulls the door closed behind him and gives the knob a twist and pull that looks firm considering the way the effort jolts his frame. The door is unfazed by his thrust. Checking if it’s locked, I guess?
Apparently satisfied, he turns and walks to his car. His head sinks down so his chin hangs below his shoulders. Terrible posture, his back shaped faintly like a capital letter C. His scrawny neck connects to one of those fleshy torsos swaddled with considerable bulk considering how skinny the rest of him remains. Lumpy.
As he tosses the toolbox into the passenger seat and climbs into the Cruiser, my brain pieces all of this together – the toolbox, the shirt. This guy is a plumber, most likely. Maybe an electrician. He probably doesn’t play an important role in my story.
Did I learn anything at all? I guess I learned that there may have been a plumbing or electrical issue at this church that a professional may or may not have corrected.
This may or may not have been a waste of time. Off to the next stop.
Chapter 8
I pull up to the diner. Bucky’s, the one where the weirdos hang out. Not much has changed. The brick facade is still crumbling, and they’re still advertising the chocolate chip pancakes, and I still want them. And something flashes in my head. Am I forgetting something?
Maybe it’s just the pang of nostalgia. The diner reminds me of Glenn, of course. The trucker hats, the crowd filing out once they realized who I was.
That seems so long ago.
It reminds me of Louise. This is where we met. She sported a lime green shirt and giggled at pretty much everything I said and did. I hadn’t thought about her in a while, to be honest. Maybe doing so was painful, and I learned to bury it.
It occurs to me for the first time that Louise and Amity are total opposites. The best illustration of this is their distinct takes on the other world, I think. Amity wants to believe it all so bad. She wants to believe that it is all for a reason, definitively. Don’t take that wrong. She is not gullible. Her faith is the opposite of blind, I’d say. She considers all of the angles. Sees the confusion and everything. But she embraces faith nonetheless. She leaps into it head first.
Louise didn’t buy any of it. I remember feeling like she couldn’t fathom the idea of even partially believing it, even considering the notion at all. To her, the world is concrete. That’s all there is.
I am somewhere between the two, I guess. I mean, these phenomena are happening. I believe that, and that’s an important distinction. I don’t know what they mean, though, or if they mean anything. I don’t know if they happen for any reason, and I think there surely would be a scientific explanation. I mean, science explains what happens, so of course there would be. Even if science says, “This happens. We don’t know why yet.” That’s something, right?
But I think that quantum physics stuff Glenn described makes sense. The energy in us that makes us alive is connected to that same energy in everyone else. That makes sense to me.
Anyway, I’m not at all ruling out any other interpretation or further explanation. Maybe there is an overtly spiritual element in addition to the energy. I mean, I totally hope there is, but I can’t jump into it the same way. Amity is smarter than me, and it makes me glad that she believes it. It makes it seem more plausible somehow. It relieves me in some way. Like I know that it keeps her safe.
My body interrupts this thought. My stomach wails out some kind of sasquatch scream, all raw and aggressive. Shit. I forgot to get food again. That’s the thing I was forgetting.
Yep. I am the worst.
I bring my hand to the key resting in the ignition. Might as well go grab something and come back, right? The diner seems pretty dead anyhow. Mostly empty tables. A couple at a booth, and a pair of lone wolves sitting on stools at opposite ends of the counter.
But then black movement flutters in the corner of my eye. And there he is. Riston Farber strides from the back room, the door swinging shut behind him. He looks as gaunt as ever, his pale skin emitting some purpled undertone from beneath the surface. The flesh on his face pulls taut all over, looks all thin like paper, and sinks into dark folds around his eyes.
He sits at the same table where I
watched him hover a spoon and then flicker out of existence. More memories, I guess. I still can’t decide if those were merely illusions or tricks he picked up in the other world. Glenn seemed quite convinced of the former, but he read Farber wrong much of the time.
Farber sits alone. The waitress brings him an ice water, but he barely looks up at her, doesn’t speak. Eventually he lifts the glass, sips at it, puts it back. His movements are robotic, not so much in a stiff way as a calculated way, a cold way. After a while, I realize that he has yet to blink so far. Not once. He sips the water again and keeps his head down, staring at the table top. He looks tired, tense. The energy in the set of his shoulders reminds me of a pit bull about to rip a burglar’s throat out.
An itch comes over me, crawling skin that creeps down my arms and up my legs. It seems to tingle strongest at my lower back. Ah, yes. My companion wants to weigh in on all of this. She wants to say a few choice words on the matter. Shh... Just wait, my precious. Not yet.
The waitress circles back to Farber’s table, pen pressed to her ticket pad. He speaks a single burst of words, nods. I can’t read lips for shit, so I don’t know what he said. If I had to guess, it’d be, “Jarjardoo.” Something like that. I suppose it doesn’t matter. He ordered food or maybe a drink. Makes no difference to me.
And the heat comes over me. It starts in my chest, an undulating flame that washes red hot waves up across my throat, settling in my cheeks. And my eyes stay locked onto him, this sinewy man with sunken eyes, and I pull the gun from my waist band and put it on the passenger seat, and I leave my hand on the metal, my fingers want to feel it, stroking back and forth over the texture of the handle, tickling right along the edge where it tapers down to the trigger, and the man adjusts in his seat, wiggles his shoulders and resets them, almost like he’s been made uncomfortable just now, almost like he can feel my eyes creeping over him, can feel the heat of the hatred radiating off of me, and without thinking I bring the gun to my lap, it’s so warm against my leg from all of this contact with my skin, and my finger slides down, caresses the trigger, and my other hand fingers the door handle, and it’s there, it’s all right there, laid out before me, the end of the story is right there.
My jaw clenches and unclenches over and over again. Breath heaves in and out my nostrils, my chest rising and falling.
I shouldn’t be doing this. What am I thinking? I can’t actually do this.
Can I?
A phone rings and vibrates. It’s close. Inside of the car. Unfamiliar.
And my heart jumps up, skipping a slew of beats. A cold wave of adrenalin washes over me, and I picture Farber in the backseat, somehow having teleported himself into my car. I jerk my head around, and there’s nothing. An empty backseat.
The phone rings again, and I realize the sound doesn’t come from behind me. It’s next to me, wedged down in the crack between the two front seats, muffled. It’s my own stupid phone. Disposable so I didn’t recognize the ring tone.
I am dumb.
Babinaux’s number shows on the display. I don’t answer it. I just hold the phone in my hand for a long moment, looking at it, the vibrations massaging my palm. I close my eyes and breathe. Finally, the phone holds still. I toss it to the passenger seat, and stuff the gun back behind me.
I glance back at the diner, and three men sit with Farber now, all older, all wearing suits. I don’t recognize them, at least from what I can see.
But the moment has passed. The opportunity has passed. The fever is gone for now.
But there will be other days. Other chances. Better ones.
Chapter 9
I balance the drink between my knees, ice cubes jangling and burbling as I round the corner and drive into the back of the parking lot. Heat radiates against my thigh where the bag of food leans into me. I park the Taurus in a shaded spot looking out over the vacant miniature golf course next door, probably closed for the winter. Dead weeds sprout in the gaps between the astroturf and walkways. The blades on the mini windmill rotate in slow motion.
I rip open the bag and let it breathe for a moment like a fine wine. It smells awesome. After this moment of reverent silence, I tear into the food, a jalapeno burger and fries. I periodically press the pause button on the face stuffing to wash half-chewed bites down with Dr. Pepper. The jalapeno thing might have been a mistake, and I should have asked for no ice in the drink. I’m rusty at this kind of thing. At least I remembered to get something to eat, though. That’s the first step, I guess.
I think I’m so hungry that I sort of detach from it all. It feels more like a series of things happening to me rather than an act I’m carrying out.
The burger wrapper crinkles and smears melted cheese onto my chin. Jalapeno slices scorch my palate. Fries swirl themselves in the plastic cup of ketchup and take high dive leaps off of my epiglottis down into my stomach. A straw pipeline adheres itself to my mouth and pumps 1,000 CCs of Dr. Pepper into my system, all fizzy and sweet and acidic. Napkins float along to dab all of the mess away.
While I bite, chew, and swallow as fast as I can, I watch one of those glossy newspaper inserts with coupons for pizza places tumble by in the mini golf course. It catches on a yard gnome’s hat momentarily before ripping free and slamming itself flat against the fence and holding there.
And the first wave of nausea comes over me. I realize I need to slow down. I’m going to make myself sick dumping all of this garbage into my empty stomach at such a pace. I burp, feel the vomit right there at the back of my throat, itching to burst forth. I rewrap the burger remnant and nestle it back in the bag, sit back in my seat.
I hold my arms out a little as I recline, really conscious of the idea of my elbows pressing into my stomach. Feels like I’d burst if I let that happen. And my gut complains some more, the sasquatch scream from earlier morphing into something I now would call a yeti churn. You can hear juice moving around more so than a full-throated scream, but it’s still angry somehow. Aggressive. Violent.
This is all a far cry from back when Glenn was doing the cooking. We ate delicious meals, homemade, fresh ingredients. Now I’m eating greasy burgers and stuff out of vending machines all day.
I close my eyes and take deep breaths. This seems to help. Isolating myself in the blackness behind my eyelids, calming myself with breathing exercises. I imagine what this must look like from afar and half chuckle, one of those laughs you cut off with a little grinding noise that seems to emit from the place where your throat and nasal cavity meet. For real, though. Imagine watching some guy sitting in a car, pounding down a burger and fries, abruptly stopping and launching into some deep breathing. It probably looks like I stopped for a mid-meal meditation session.
These thoughts fall away, though, and I disappear into the blackness, lulled out of the self consciousness that plagues me whenever I’m awake. I don’t think. I don’t analyze myself. I just sit in the stillness. I drift in empty space.
And then the pictures come to me, vivid and clear and huge, like movies playing on an IMAX screen inside my skull. The body again, face down, the final blade entering the back of the neck, and the snow blows over the tundra in the background, and I hear the wind howl, and I feel the chill grip my limbs first and spread from there, frosty tendrils snaking over all of me.
And then I see Farber alone in the diner, head down, sunken eyes locked in a stare turned down upon the table, unblinking. I see the sweat on his ice water glass, and I hear the radio playing some country song, just barely audible over the hiss and gurgle of the dishwasher changing cycles. And I realize that I am in the room, and the gun crackles in my hand, electric energy surging out of it, flowing into my arm. And I stride toward him and raise the weapon, and he looks up, and he blinks. When he sees me, he blinks.
I snap my eyes open, and it all goes away. All remains calm here in the Taurus as well as outside of it. The windmill blades spinning in the distance provide the only moving piece in my field of vision.
I need to stop working myself
up like this, need to stop picturing myself committing murder over and over again. It’s messing me up. Also, I need to eat. I feel a little lightheaded.
I peel the bag open and pull the burger remnant free. As I unwrap it, I note that it’s a little on the lukewarm side now, but I’m sure I’ve eaten worse. I take a bite, will myself to chew it slowly and completely before I swallow it. Still tastes good as hell to me. I take a sip of Dr. Pepper.
My left hand shakes as I lift the burger to my mouth again, though. Not sure what to make of that. Am I that hungry still? It seems unlikely.
And then the movies play in my head again, even with my eyes open:
Farber blinks, and I do not hesitate. I pull the trigger, that electricity surfing through my veins until I feel it sparking in my clenched teeth. The gun blazes and pops. The bullet enters his throat, making a tiny hole right next to his Adam’s apple and blowing the back of his neck out entirely. Just an explosion of red spray, flecks of neck everywhere. He clutches at the front of his throat, fingertips digging into the wet flaps of red dangling behind. His mouth gags out wet gasps as he tries to breathe, but the tubes are all severed, so it doesn’t quite work like that anymore. Blood pulses like a red fountain in that mess of meat where his neck used to be.
And the interior of the Taurus blurs in front of me, and I slump into the steering wheel face first, my forehead honking the horn once before it slides down and catches on the bottom half of the wheel and hangs there.
As the world around me blackens and winks out, the last thing I see is my burger tumbling to the car floor, splatting and falling apart.
Chapter 10
I wake in the alley again, hung upside down. You know, the usual setup, but this time it’s a relief somehow. My chest quivers as I exhale. Did I just escape something awful?
