Don't Leave Me

by James Scott Bell

  A cold blade was slicing through Chuck then. He had dishonored Julia’s memory after all. Maybe she wouldn’t have wanted this. Maybe her ghost knocked the knife off his lap. This was all just too soon. Only seven months since her death. He shouldn’t have come. When was the last time he actually felt normal? He tried to recall it, and it was like searching for a box in a dark warehouse with all the fuses blown and the lights out. It was somewhere, in a corner maybe, but which one?

  Everybody seemed to sense it, not talking, one of those lulls in a conversation that makes everyone think they’re in an elevator with strangers.

  Thankfully, there was a knock at the door.

  “Excuse me,” Wendy said, getting up from the table.

  “She likes you,” Stan whispered.

  “Enough,” Chuck said.

  “She’s a good cook,” Stan said.

  “Huh?”

  “I could tell her about the specials, and she could cook them for you.”

  “Stan––”

  “Fresh boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a dollar ninety-nine a pound.”

  “How about I skin you, Stan? And make you boneless?”

  “Ha ha, jacky-daw.” That was Stan’s own phrase, had been ever since he’d read a bird book when he was ten and saw jackdaws and figured out the singular rhymed with ha ha. It drove Chuck crazy for awhile, everything was ha ha jacky-daw for months.

  And then Wendy was in the room again. Behind here were the two detectives who’d questioned Chuck earlier at the school. Epperson and Mooney.

  Epperson said, “Charles Samson?”

  Just like his mother used to sound when he was in trouble. Chuck stood. Maybe they had some news about the house.

  “I am placing you under arrest,” she said.

  Stan jumped so fast out of his chair he almost knocked the table over. Two water glasses fell.

  Mooney came at Chuck with the bracelets. “Turn around,” he said.

  “What is this?” Chuck said.

  “You are under arrest for the manufacture of methamphetamine,” Epperson said.

  “What?”

  The next few moments were a haze of insane noise. Stan shouted, Chuck told Wendy to get Stan back to the motel, Wendy said she would, Mooney told everybody to be quiet. Chuck told Wendy to tell Ray Hunt he might miss school tomorrow. She said she’d do that, too. Mooney said be quiet again.

  Then they were out the door, with Mooney squeezing Chuck’s arm hard, pushing him toward the stairwell. Apartment doors opened and people peeked out, like a Whack-a-Mole game.

  Stan’s voice echoed down the hall. “You’ll never get away with this, you dirty coppers! Never!”

  Chapter 16

  In a Topanga station interview room, Chuck listened to Detective Epperson drone, “You’ve been advised of your rights. We cannot ask you any questions, and anything you say can be used against you in court. You can sign this waiver and talk to us, or you can wait to speak to an attorney.”

  Chuck said, “Tell me, honestly, if you think I am a guy who would be dealing drugs.”

  “I’m advising you not to say anything unless you sign this waiver.”

  Chuck paused, looked at the form. He snatched the pen off the desk and held it up to them, like he was showing them a magic wand. Then he signed his name. “All right,” he said. “Now look at me and tell me that you think I’m a drug dealer.”

  “The fire was caused by an explosion in a propane tank in your garage,” Epperson said.

  “I don’t have any propane tanks in my garage,” Chuck said.

  “How do you explain the presence of a propane tank, along with acetone, Freon, sodium hydroxide, sulfuric acid and paint thinner?”

  Chuck stared at her. Pieces of a bizarre puzzle started flying around his brain. “I didn’t have any of that stuff. So somebody must have put it there.”

  Mooney said, “And just a coincidence, I guess, that those are items used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.”

  “Right,” Chuck said. “Which I sell to my fifth graders.”

  Epperson said, “I advise against sarcasm, Mr. Samson.”

  “I advise against any of this crap,” Chuck said. “It’s an obvious set up. Have you done any background on me? Why are you into this anyway? I thought you were homicide. You saying I killed somebody?”

  “Who would go to all that trouble to set you up?” Mooney said. “What would be the purpose of that?”

  “You’re the detectives. You tell me.” Chuck watched them both stiffen and didn’t care if they did.

  “If you’re in the clear,” Epperson said, “just answer a few questions for us.”

  “While I’m sitting here under arrest? Real friendly like?”

  “Why not?”

  “Then get on with it.” Chuck was worried about Stan. Wendy would be with him but he knew his brother wouldn’t be calm until they were together again. Maybe if he calmed down himself, got reasonable, they’d spring him.

  Right. And pots of gold are sniffed by unicorns at the end of rainbows.

  “You can just come clean about making the drugs,” Mooney said. “I mean, your life hasn’t exactly been a financial success.”

  Chuck shot him a look. Mooney shot one right back. It was a regular love fest around here, and Mooney was some sort of TV-cop wannabe.

  Chuck said, “I’ve got a job, okay? I teach fifth grade. I like my job. I get along. I want to keep doing that. I’m not going to make meth in my freaking garage. I have a brother I take care of. I’m not going to do anything to mess that up.”

  “Real noble,” Mooney said.

  As Chuck’s fists clenched, Epperson said, “Mr. Samson, are you still on call as a Navy chaplain?”

  “No.”

  “Any reason why not?” Epperson asked.

  “I don’t need my head shrunk, okay? I didn’t do what you think I did. That’s all you need to know.”

  “That’s a great defense,” Mooney said.

  Throwing up his hands, Chuck said, “Get me a lawyer.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mooney said.

  Epperson said, “You want private or the PD?”

  Chuck had exactly $2,323 in combined checking and savings. He was not getting anything from Uncle Sam because of that paperwork snafu on his DD214 discharge form. He wasn’t going to be getting any superstar attorney. But he was not guilty of anything and even a freshly scrubbed law grad should be able to clear things up.

  “PD,” Chuck said.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Epperson said.

  “What about my phone call?”

  “Yes, you can have one phone call.”

  Chuck called Royce Horne. He’d know what to do.

  Chapter 17

  His given name is Dragoslav Zivkcovic, first name Serb for glory, but there has been no glory for him in his twenty-eight years. And so he prefers the name he was called since coming to America, Dag Kovak, and even what some others call him, The Dog. That would be a name of respect and fear, but he knows he has not truly earned either, not in the eyes of his father, the only eyes that matter to him.

  The ones who work for his father will call him Dog to his face but behind his back he suspects they mock him. They fear him only because he is the son of Svetozar Zivkcovic, now Steven Kovak. A father who has killed more men and women than he ever will, because there is no honor in America, there is no ethnic cleansing. So he, The Dog, is the weak one, who drinks too much and is protected by his father’s money. But it cannot buy honor or respect.

  He hates the tears that sting his eyes and blur his vision, but he guns his Escalade through the canyon. Winding toward the ocean, windows down to smell the air, the scent of coastal sage and scrub oak, red shank and buckwheat, and his beloved Manzanita. It is a plant that is hard and twisted and sharp when dry, as he is hard and twisted, as he has made himself to be. But it is not enough and his tears shame him because his father knows that he is not as hard inside as he should be, but soft like the sand on the
beaches of Malibu. There is nothing he can do to change his father’s mind except to become like him and learn to kill without a thought, and that is why he carries the Manzanita branch in his car, it will teach him.

  And so he drives. Down to Pacific Coast Highway, turning left, tears flowing faster, almost turning his SUV into headlights coming the other way, that would be a nice quick way to go, maybe a good heroic way to go, choosing his own destiny. He can see––no, it’s more a sense––people laughing and eating and drinking in places that line the neon night. They are chasing dreams as he is running from nightmares and he hates them all. He can hate well.

  Soon he pulls off the road and onto the shoulder, at a place where the beach is darkest. He has a place he comes to in the night to cleanse himself. With him he brings his twisted Manzanita branch, and with it he climbs over the rocks down to the sand and the branch stays with him as his companion as he whips it through the air, slashing the air as one would a fencing foil, hearing the sound.

  When he reaches the spot where he will be alone he takes his clothes off carefully, ritually, this is his communion. His running shoes and white socks, his jeans and belt, his shirt, he is forming a pile. He slips off his underwear last and is naked in the cool breeze.

  There is a moon out, a large mountain moon, and he looks up at it like a coyote and he is The Dog, but he does not howl. He weeps. And to stop the weeping he takes his branch of Manzanita and whips his own legs and feet, and then his genitals. Then his back, over and over, the sound of the branch and crash of the waves making hymns.

  When he is done and bleeding, he walks slowly to the water and into the brine, his whipped feet stinging, his legs feeling all the salt and cleansing of the Pacific, finally his back, and it burns in the cold of the water. For one brief moment he considers swimming out into the darkness, swimming until he cannot hold himself up, and then sinking to the bottom or maybe his blood will bring sharks and he will fight them before they kill him and that will be a heroic death.

  He goes under the water fully, baptizing himself, and then he knows he will not die here, he is not ready to die. He comes back to shore, exhausted, still holding the branch.

  He is sweeping the sand as he walks with the stick when he sees a form by his clothes, bent over the clothes, butt toward him. In the moonlight he sees the form stand up and turn around, and it looks like a skinny teenager who almost jumps when he sees The Dog. The kid freezes, looking at the naked man who is looking right back at him. The kid has something in his hand. The Dog cannot see what it is but it very clearly came out of his pocket and as the kid begins to run. The Dog knows already what the outcome will be.

  The kid is fast but he is no match for Dragoslav Zivkcovic, who was graced with strong legs like his mother, his mother who was gunned down by Albanian soldiers when he was ten. He catches the teen by the back of the shirt and with one pull yanks him down on the sand. The boy cries out and says he is sorry, sorry, please don’t do anything and The Dog puts his foot on the boy’s throat and holds him down like a butcher might hold down a live chicken.

  The boy squirms and cries and begs for mercy.

  Up in the sky, over the mountains, the moon is bright and glorious.

  “Thank you!” Dag says to the moon.

  Chapter 18

  In his cell, Chuck realized this was his first forced absence from Stan since his brother had come to live with him.

  As kids, Stan stuck to Chuck like cherry powder to a Lik-a-Stix. School had separated them––Stan needed special classes––but they both knew it was temporary. Even when Chuck went to Afghanistan, it wasn’t like being ripped away from his brother. Stan, who was still living with their mom at that time, talked to him every day on the phone in the two weeks before Chuck left. He was proud of his joke––You can’t forget me, Chuck. It’s AfghaniSTAN!

  Yes, it was. His brother was like a landscape for Chuck, a grounding. In the weeks after Julia’s death, there was Stan. His presence was an odd comfort, but comfort it was. They knew without speaking how much they needed each other then. They cried and laughed. Stan peppered him with memorized trivia, things he’d find on the back of cereal boxes or in The National Inquirer.

  More memories buzz-sawed in, but the one that stuck out in full color and sound was the 7-Eleven incident. Chuck was twelve and Stan eight. It was raining that day and Chuck was walking Stan home from his special class at school. Chuck had his bike and the back tire was low, so he went to the Shell station to give it some air, while Stan went into the 7-Eleven.

  When Chuck came in he saw Stan in tears, a store employee holding him by the shirt. Stan was struggling in the grip. He hated to be held like that.

  “What’s this?” Chuck said.

  Another guy stepped around the counter wearing a 7-Eleven shirt. “He tried to steal some candy.”

  “Did not!” Stan cried. “I forgot I had it!”

  “Look,” Chuck said, “I know he didn’t mean––”

  “Forget it. The cops are coming.”

  “Come on, I’ll pay for it. We won’t come back.”

  The counter guy, who looked about forty, poked his finger in Chuck’s chest. “You can leave. He can’t.”

  Before Chuck could answer, Stan screamed and broke free of the other guy’s grasp. He charged the counter guy and head-butted his stomach. It was a beautiful move, Chuck would reflect later, like a fierce lineman putting everything he had into a tackling dummy.

  The guy let out an oomph, but caught the back of Stan’s shirt. He sent Stan flying into the chips rack. Stan cried out and hit the floor, bags of Lays and Fritos tumbling on top of him.

  Filled with instant rage, not thinking at all—except that they’d hurt Stan and he was going to hurt them—Chuck grabbed a pot of coffee off the burner next to him and threw it across the store. It shattered on the floor, hot coffee bursting out in a satisfying explosion.

  The only other customer, an old Hispanic man, watched motionless from in front of the hot dog rollers.

  There were three other pots on the coffee service. Chuck pushed them to the floor with a single motion.

  The store employees came after him.

  “Run, Stan! Run home and tell Mom!”

  Chuck darted down the aisle, toward the drinks case, leading the counter jockeys away from Stan. He snatched bags of corn nuts and cashews along the way, then turned and faced the enemy.

  Chuck had one of the best fastballs in the Tustin Little League. He showed his stuff.

  By his later reckoning he threw four strikes and only two balls at the 7-Eleven All Stars. Two of the strikes got face. But it only delayed the inevitable by a few seconds.

  When the two guys got to Chuck they tried to lay hands on him. Chuck got in a couple of good shin kicks and a back hand across one chest. But soon enough he was on the ground with the older of the two sitting on him.

  But at least Stan was gone. He’d made it out. But when he came back to the store it wasn’t with Mom. It was with Dad, and that was not good.

  His dad had to sort it out with the cops, and apparently did, after he agreed to pay all the damages.

  At home he took it out on Chuck’s bare butt and legs with a nozzled hose. He laid on the stripes as if to transfer all the pain he held inside for being a failure as a father, for being out of work all the time, for having the burden of a son with special needs.

  And Chuck knew then if he tried to whip Stan, Chuck would find his own rod and lay his father out. Then run away with Stan, hop a train, see the country.

  Instead, a couple of days later, his father was gone for good. Last word was he was with a woman he met at a Reno casino and was riding off toward the east in her Mary Kay pink Caddy. They never heard from him again.

  From then on it was only Mom and the two of them, in the little house in Tustin, where the end of the street looked like the beginning of all bad things.

  And it was Chuck looking out for Stan, getting into more fights than he cared to think abo
ut, after every insult hurled at his little brother.

  But now, in the 4 x 6 box, on the hard mattress, staring at the pea green ceiling, Chuck hoped Stan could make it through this night without him.

  He hoped Stan wouldn’t dream about the wolf man.

  Then the shadow dance began again, and Chuck knew he would not sleep. Not for a long time, at least. The figures from the past, traceable only to that war, mocked his remembering, because he could not remember fully, could not see the faces.

  One of them said something. It sounded like Rushton Line.

  What was the Rushton Line? Where was it? Were these figures even real? Had he experienced this scene somehow? Was the VA doc right, that his very memories were traumatized and diffuse? Answers were always just beyond his grasp, and he knew that must be what insanity felt like. Maybe insanity, after all, would be the place he’d end up.

  He fought back. He wouldn’t go nuts, not with Stan to take care of. And not until he got some other answers––about why he was here, and who was after him.

  The shadows danced, the distant booms sounded, and Chuck pounded the wall with his fist. Rhythmically, punching at phantoms, music for the dance.

  Chapter 19

  Jimmy Stone realized his throat was as dry as microwaved cotton. He did not want to give into the fear, or even acknowledge it.

  But the guy in front of him gave off the deadliest vibe he’d ever been around. Jimmy didn’t want to be here. But it was business. No choice.

  Jimmy was about to break to the top of the gangland mountain. A few years ago he was playing Pony League baseball and dealing a little weed on the side. Now here he was, at 22, on the verge of controlling the distribution of H in the Valley, and running the most powerful crew in Los Angeles. Because with the Serbs behind him and his boys, he had the fire power to back up any attempted incursions.

  No white gang had been able to keep Bloods and Crips from biting off territory. That was going to change on Jimmy’s watch.