by Rex Miller
And in the cold, rattletrap car covered in printing and chalkmarked graffiti, he thinks about this magical moment that lit up a corner of his black life and the total conquest of this magical piece of serendipity with the memorable appellation Co-dee Chase, and it stirs in him again, and he wishes for something else. Dessert. A quickie. A bo would do. A bo like the young one he'd taken off just a couple weeks back. He could oh, oh yes, he could take a sweet young bo now, sixteen like the last one maybe, going back to Muncie or Middletown or someplace like that to face a parole violation and scared to death of doing some time that would leave him with "an asshole the size of a baseball."
He remembers how good it was, but so quick, and how easily he could snuff a young bo right now all filled with his desire and his scarlet fury that never seemed to quite get quenched and how it would heat up this cold and noisy car and how good it would be to have one to put under right here and right now and this is what the monster fantasizes about as he stands in the doorway of the moving boxcar as it pulls into the outskirts of Chicago.
This is a different view than the roadrunner sees from the cab of his eighteen-wheeler, and somewhat different than your perspective from the blacktop. The signposts are a bit different as seen from the rails. He just spotted the top of a barn not long ago that advertised M R L CAVE and as he thinks about the pleasures of a young fugitive hobo his subconscious is automatically analyzing the permutations, MARVEL, MARBLE, MIRACLE CAVE, CAVERN, MURIEL CAVE, MURIEL CAVEAT EMPTOR as his strange and amazing storehouse feeds his twisted terminals. But this is what he hates.
The two guys in UP Car Control are busy swapping gags about a shipper, they can't stand when the big 110-car train comes chugging into the hump, and the one is saying to the other one, finishing up a railroad gag, "So you know how to cheer up a depressed flat?"
"Yeah. Ya' articulate it," the other one says and they're laughing when the car comes by so they don't see the thing in the doorway. The car is at the tail end of a half-dozen boxcars hooked into a string of gondolas and hoppers out of Stockton, originally, and Chaingang has popped the door of this Santa Fe box and now he's tossing out his massive duffel and gritting his teeth as he tumbles out the hatch, hoping just hoping some fucking yard bull will spot him jumping and come try to stick him.
He hits all five hundred pounds on his good leg which is now about as swollen as the bad ankle and he promises himself no more trains as he smacks into the hard, stinging earth. But you don't see this if you spot the big man jumping out of the Sante Fe boxcar, because what you'll see is the sight of a huge man ever so gently—and delicately you might say—dropping from the train and tumbling like an acrobat, rolling so gracefully, jumping and going with the momentum of the train's speed and his bulk and rolling like some great clown man laughing fatso dancing bear jokester. You'd probably think to yourself, isn't he light on his feet. And you not even realizing that's five hundred pounds on the hoof, pal, dropping from a moving boxcar onto the rocks and rolling, and that's a lot of rock-and-roll.
But then when he gets up and starts limping for his duffel, which neither you nor I could even lift off the ground (the sleeping bag alone weighs twenty-two pounds), then you see that it is all he can do to get back on his sore, throbbing ankle. But his mind is already concentrating on the job at hand as he heads unerringly out of the vast railroad confluence and along a side road then crossing a busy thoroughfare until, about nine blocks from the yard, he's reached a county road sign. He looks down the road and sees one of the small utility buildings he's been looking for about two blocks from where he stands now.
He decides to leave his duffel here and go back and get what he needs, but at least he knows now where he will spend the night. He is cold and his ankle keeps sending shock waves toward his brain and he ignores the pain, as always, and continues to concentrate on the matters of priority. First, he gingerly hops over the deep road ditch and hides his duffel in a bed of weeds at the beginning of the adjacent field. He breaks a huge limb off of a nearby tree and using it as a cane begins hobbling back toward a small grocery store.
A car of young women slows as they near him and he can see them looking at him and laughing and the driver honks the horn and they speed by him. He got a look at the one on the passenger side. A chipmunk- cheeked high school girl of fifteen. He thinks how he could tape her mouth shut so she couldn't scream and the different ways he could make her pass out before he took her under like the way he'd tie her hands and then hang her up nude so he could work on her, hang her up there with those nice tan legs all spread open and those little nipples are erect and how he'd start pinching them real easy and then fingers like vise grips like steel tempered steel pliers pinching and twisting and ripping this little cunt nipples and clitoris off tearing that pink skin bleeding ripping that shit off her front there as she twisted and fainted and tearing at the skin on the inside of her upper thighs and peeling down peeling her skin like you would peel a ripe fruit and he smiles and almost laughs out loud at the prospect of such a thing.
He has a case of fragmentation grenades in his duffel. He starts to fantasize about some of the things he could do to the girls in that automobile—as he limps painfully toward the little store. He thinks how pleasant it would be to grade and brand that little USDA prime trim that just whizzed by him, stamp a brand on it then, a hot brand to mark the U.S. Government Inspected Prime and watch a hot iron burn its shape deep into the tortured, bleeding rawness of the jerking, squirming pink flesh, that pampered, untouchable young flesh and how he'd like to give it his special brand. Something to get their attention as they hung there like meat waiting for him to take his turn with each of them, letting his wild imagination invent new games to play with their bodies and souls and how easily and pleasing it would be then, later, to take their young, tender hearts.
He steps to the side of the building that advertises STRAWBERRY SODA and PROFFER'S BRAND MEATS, pushing on the dented metal door marked GENTS and letting it stand open behind him as he extricates his penis and for no reason begins urinating on the sink then guiding the stream of awful-smelling urine across the room and into the wastepaper can where it pounds like a hammer and only his inability to arc his stream that high prevents him from pissing on the empty towel dispenser. He walks back around to the front of the building, a combination grocery/package store/gas station, and pushes on the tin strip that says RAINBOW IS GOOD BREAD and lets the door slam behind him as he strides toward the food.
"Hah-dee," a wrinkled, middle-aged woman says from the shadows behind the counter where he can hear a vapid game-show host mouthing some vocal feces and he ignores her as he grabs the first packages he can reach out of the refrigerated tray, a large box of pasteurized American cheeze and a package of sliced ham and he rips the ham open with his teeth and tears the top off the cheese dropping the cardboard into the vegetable tray beside him and pinching the end off the foil, ripping a huge four-inch hunk of cheese off and wadding it up in the slices of ham and swallowing about half of it instantly, pulling a bag of something resembling potato chips off a nearby shelf absentmindedly and stabbing a finger into it then ripping it open and shoving a pawful of something into his mouth, just about ODing on sodium and preservative as he swallows a great mouthful of an awful chip of some kind, slamming one of the refrigerator doors open and grabbing a half gallon of milk and draining four-fifths of the half gallon in one long gurgling, ravenous chug-a-lug.
"Ah-gols-ah swear ah never have seen nobody drink thet much milk all at a time like that! Ah swear!" she says nervously as he continues to ravage and plunder the shelves, ripping open some cookies and another pair of meat-and-cheese combinations, walking toward her as he crams an entire package of sliced swiss and bologna in his maw, scarcely taking time to chew before he swallows and says:
"Where's 'a beer?" coming toward her like a human King Kong, this human garbage disposal that nearly hits his head on the ceiling of the room now swilling the last of the milk as she says:
"R
at there inna frig, ova' to the rat." Wrinkled old cunt, he thinks as he lets out a loud belch and opens a Michelob on his teeth the way he always likes to do when somebody is watching him and spitting the cap off, letting it hit the floor as she looks at him and says halfway under her breath:
"Ah hope yew kin pay fer all that food," but thank God he doesn't hear or pay any attention to her as he chugs the cold beer and belches most offensively again, taking a quart of Wild Turkey off the shelf and spitting it on the counter. She no longer worries about the bill as this last item legitimizes his movements, and not only is he apparently going to pay, this is the first thing he has done that resembles the actions of an ordinary human, actually picking out something and not consuming it there in the store. She looks up at this mastadon and with the luck of the stupid says:
"Gols, yet a stout one. Whatcha' weigh there?" He looks down at her like she is a dog turd he has just stepped in. For just one second her life is in some serious danger but she says it again, "How much d'ya weigh? Ah betcha go ovah three hunnert 'n fifty?" He can't help it, a blast of noise explodes from him, the monstrous balls of this wrinkled old prune-faced hag, Chaingang can't restrain himself he actually laughs, saving her life as he goes off to get canned goods saying over his shoulder:
"Four thousand pounds, Lucky." He rumbles good-naturedly. He likes the old crone. Also he doesn't want to have to relocate as he has a nice place to crash tonight all picked out. Very safe. Still, as he steals food from the shelves, he thinks how amusing it would be to take one of the large cans of V-8 juice there and pound it into her temple until she died and how easily he could snuff out her dull existence. Perhaps he'll come back tomorrow and do the old bitch a favor. Put her out of her misery.
He takes a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Spaghetti and Meatballs off the shelf and puts it in his left hand with the other cans he'll pay for, then slips a jar of deluxe olives, a can of Bush's Best hot chili beans, and a large can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew into the voluminous chain pocket of his coat. He goes back to the cold section and gets a quart of milk, as he puts fourteen-dollars' worth of various meats and cheeses into his other pocket. He goes up to her and pays for $6.95 worth of food, a quart of beer, and the quart of Turkey, and walks out with another twenty in canned and packaged— foods. As a—shoplifter he has no equal.
He has a large sum of money in his pocket but he never or seldom ever pays for everything. It is, as he sees it, a matter of principle. He loves to steal and is an accomplished thief. Had he not opted to be a murderer and let his warped life gravitate around crimes of violence he would have been a spectacular major thief. He knows everything about antiques and collectibles, fine art, numismatic coinage and precious metals and, stones, stamps, weaponry, both arms and edged, music, virtually any field in which memorabilia is of value falls under the omnivorous umbrella of his computer retrieval system and general expertise. The thing is he has no interest in material goods or money.
Waddling along, a little less uncomfortable now that he's taken the edge off his enormous appetite, he heads back to the fence row where his duffel is hidden. Carefully, very carefully, he reaches under the duffel bag and his viselike fingers get a firm grip on the spoon of the 'nade that is wedged under the corner of the bag. Carefully he eases it back out and with the fingers of a skilled surgeon slowly slides the pin back in the retaining apertures, bending the cotter pins back with a fingertip as you would bend a wet straw. That done he shoulders his burden and limps on down the road to his private cabana.
His accommodations for the night will be cramped but secure. He is burglarizing a concrete block building owned by Ma Bell, sometimes referred to by the misnomer utility building, used as an equipment repeater station. It is carried on the Illinois Bell Systems books as RS-724-B, and locally referred to as Repeater Hut 724,- 724 is a middle-aged hut and has a fairly sophisticated security system which is buried straight down under the ground with Ma's long lines, he building being used to boost signal for tolls.
If you take a crowbar and pry the heavy steel door open, a silent alarm is activated in Chicago Central and the dispatcher calls the boys in blue to investigate. Depending on the time of day and the fates, you have anywhere from two minutes to half an hour before you're in the backseat of a patrol car. Ma can't take a joke when it comes to screwing around with her repeater stations.
Of course you can get lucky. About once in every thousand times somebody does any work on the equipment they forget to hook the alarm back in after it has been disabled and that would be a free ticket to ride, roughly the equivalent of winning $100,000 playing Blackjack in northern Nevada.
Chaingang knows things like this and so he removes a small black case from his duffel. It contains a full set of Deluxe Taylor Picks, a set of homemade picks and levers, a small mini-key unit, a massive ring with 250 masters for everything from old time skeletons to the latest GMs, house keys, ornate keys, you name it. His case contains half a dozen jimmies and slim jims and pry bars. He also carries a cold chisel and a small sledge which he sometimes kills with when it suits him.
And he is inside standing there very still breathing in the electronic noises and just checking out the vibes, inside Ma's Repeater Hut 724 before you can say in-like-Sean-Flynn. And something is awry. Something doesn't quite, let's say, parse. His astounding mental computer is whirling away a mile a minute, tired as he is, and he is rethinking the last hour of his dark life even as he scans his close quarters for the thing that has disturbed him. Is a hidden, surveillance camera now taking his picture? He blinks and begins to still his vital signs slightly, involuntarily and automatically, putting himself on hold as he scans and excogitates.
It is a presence, a feel that something is out of place. What went undone. What detail was overlooked. What carelessness will be paid for in heavy dues. He senses being watched somehow. It is very strong and he never ignores these things these hunches these vibrations—call them what you will. His strange and amazing instincts that have kept him alive a thousand times in as many ways are nudging him. It is something outside there.
He cracks the door slightly with his killing hand, his right hand, hanging at his side. He flexes the huge, steel cigarlike fingers making a massive claw and then relaxing the hand. He has a grip that cannot be believed. Once, enraged, he squeezed a flashlight battery as you might squeeze an empty beer can. For many years one of his small amusements was to try and squeeze his own hands so hard that it would take him to the edge of his pain threshold, a small eccentricity born in lonely, dark places.
He thinks of little babies before his brain registers the noise and then he realizes what it was—the faraway call of birds flying south and no, no, that's not it—he can hear babies crying now, and then even before he has found the box he knows what it is and he hopes with the part of his soul that is still human that he will not find something bad in there, something that will make his rage go all bright scarlet and bubble over into a sudden kill fury. But when he determines that there are no passersby about he goes over to the large tree next to the hut and peers down into the box. It is a pair of tiny, starved pups of indeterminate lineage, huddling together to try to stay alive as they take heat from each other's tiny, emaciated bodies, shaking and quivering as this huge shadow looms above them.
He allows himself to breathe for the first time in the last sixty seconds or so, and shrugs his great shoulders. He goes back to his duffel and returns to the box. In a couple of swift, sure hand movements he has opened the can of beef stew and he dumps it down into the corner of the box and watches as the starved dogs attack the cold stew with a ravenous hunger. They tear at the food insanely, as starved things always do, and within a few seconds the larger chunks of food are gone. He tries to decide whether or not to open another can, wondering if they will become sick gorging themselves, but he opens a small Vienna Sausage tin and tears the sausages into fragments, mincing them up with his big fingers and dropping them down on the dogs. Some of the sausages go into his mouth.
He goes back inside and spreads his huge sleeping bag out as much as he can in the open area of the but, and then he goes back outside and picks up the little puppies with surprising tenderness, feeling them wiggle in his fingers as they whimper excitedly. He is glad he didn't see the one who dumped them as he could have gone berserk. Once before he saw a man dump an abused dog. First, he had put the dog to sleep, and then done a very bad thing. He had made the man ride with him in the man's old truck back to where he lived and they had gone inside his home. He had tied up the man's wife and two children and made them watch the things he did to the man as he slowly killed them, taking his life inch by inch in his maddened fury.
Inside the repeater hut he spreads a newspaper for the dogs, out of habit from his own tortured childhood, but when he lies down in the bag he pulls the puppies to him and they snuggle next to him still whimpering with joy. He opens a package of meat and cheese and the three of them devour it together, the enormous man whose bulk takes up the entire interior of the small hut, and the two tiny, starved mutts, wiggling all over him as he feeds them bits of his dinner. And that is how they finally go to sleep after they eat, the two little abandoned pups and the man called Chaingang, all huddled together, each of them as close to knowing love as they will ever know in their lives.
In his deep sleep the monster dreams of a beautiful woman with whom he has shared a wonderful and intimate experience, and he thinks of her several times during the night. But in the morning he will wonder if indeed the one named Cody Chase was real or if it was only a fantasy he has dreamed.
Jack and Edie
