We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night

by Joel Thomas Hynes

  Open the fucken register! Hey! Fucken money, come on! Smokes too!

  His heart racing, his legs shaking, the sweat on his back. The girl froze, her jaw gawped open, staring at the nyloned maniac. Johnny slammed the strapping down on the counter again, hard enough to prolly sprain his wrist. He smashed a plastic bottle of five-cent gum, the ones with the stupid comics inside, the ones that taste like rubber dogshit after a minute’s chew. Bubble gum went everywhere. She stood there. He let out a roar, grabbed her by the shirt collar and pulled her towards him, her string of wooden beads bursting and bouncing, scattering all over the counter and onto the greasy floor.

  You think I wants this? Do ya? Think this is where I wants to be tonight?

  She snaps out of her stupor then and when Johnny lets go of her shirt collar she falls back onto the cigarette stand. It’s not . . . ah fuck, there’s nothing graceful about none of it. The impulse is there to go around the counter and help steady her on her feet. But the clock is ticking. Johnny told her a carton of Rothmans kings, the blue ones, even though that’s not what he normally smokes when he’s flush. He knew what button to push on the mouth of the register, cleaned out all the twenties and tens and fives, a few rolls of loonies. A couple of fives hit the floor. She handed him the cigarettes. She didnt blink. She didnt cry. Johnny grabbed the cordless phone and smashed it in half on the edge of the counter. A piece of the plastic casing struck the poor girl in the forehead and she made the first sound since Johnny’d stormed the store, a low masculine grunt, very unladylike, thought Johnny. But she didnt cry. At least she didnt start blubbering.

  I’m sorry girl, about that, about all this. I am.

  And Johnny ran then, ducked down with his legs bent like a man crossing a battlefield, or the way you see folks in the movies running towards a helicopter. Hauls that nylon off his face. Down over Bates Hill first, then up the alleyway to his right where he ditched the black windbreaker. He split the carton of cigarettes in half and tucked each half into his left and right pockets. One thing about the old suits—lots of deep pockets for stashing stuff away. Johnny knew there might be a dog, and that he had likely less than ten minutes. He crossed Duckworth and took his time on the steps to George Street. George Street was hopping with young university White Russian guzzlers and a few business suits and hey, that bouncer outside the Sundance must have really messed up his hand on that guy’s forehead. Gaggles of smokers out on the street. Hot dog guy. Johnny kept from making eye contact with anyone, and at the end of the street there was Gulliver’s cab stand and Johnny jumped in the back of a minivan whose driver was nodding off at the wheel and only snapped to attention when Johnny slammed the door. Johnny wanted LeMarchant Road, near St Clare’s. The sleepy-eyed cabbie talked about the coming weather. A scratchy story on the radio about human feet washing up on the shores in BC. Johnny shot the driver a ten outside Christine’s Place on LeMarchant, made like he was going in for a drink, then crossed the road to the bus stop as soon as the cabbie was out of sight. Johnny waited in the glass shelter, waited. Here came the sirens. A cruiser burned down the road with lights a-blazing. Maybe eight minutes had passed since he left the store. Maybe a little more. Johnny dropped the nylon into a recycling bin. There was a thick, healthy dark hair off Johnny’s head tangled in the mouth of the nylon. Lucky Johnny, lucky you never ditched it with the windbreaker. The bus arrived and Johnny jumped on, cool and calm. Number 4 headed downtown. Johnny sat in his seat, his face pressed to the window as the bus cruised past Queen’s Road Store. Four rigs—two cruisers, that matte-red Charger and the paddy wagon. Johnny saw an all-black German shepherd crossing the road towards the top of Bates Hill. He caught a glimpse of the big blond girl crumpled against the side of the store, crying. An officer was holding a cloth to her head and Johnny thought there might be blood. Wrong shift girl, sorry about that. The old guy with the Nevada tickets was back, yakking at a female cop, shrugging and nodding and waving his arms. Johnny felt the crumpled wad of bills in his pocket and knew they had nothing. He let the bus do the loop up Portugal Cove Road and down Prince Philip Drive until it came to the mall, where he got off.

  There was a random cop car outside the entrance to the mall and even though Johnny instinctively knew it had nothing to do with him, as a precaution he tossed the cigarettes into a dumpster outside the gym. Then for a meal of real Italian pasta in a dark little booth. When he reached for his money he found in the corner of his pants pocket one little brown wooden bead from the girl’s necklace. He pinched it between his thumb and index finger and then began to shake all over, a deep telltale crash and burn shake that started in his ankles and shot violently up his torso until his teeth chattered. He tossed the bead into the light fixture above his booth. He counted out the money and laughed out loud. Fucken right man. Three hundred and twenty-five bucks. Six vodka and orange with his meal, doubles. Steady the nerves. Then to the liquor store with not five minutes to spare. Large bottle of Grey Goose. Large.

  Five, six days later and Johnny’s slumped at Shiner’s table with a framing hammer, huffing for breath. Swear a bomb went off in Shiner’s apartment. Glass coffee table and end tables are smashed in bits. Shower curtain speared into the TV screen. Johnny even opened up the fridge and started bludgeoning the shelves of mouldy Tupperware containers and cruddy ketchup, mayo, mustard bottles and Eversweet butter, Tang. He pounded and roared until the light was gone and big gaping holes showed through the inside walls of the fridge. Then he saw the dozen eggs and closed the fridge door, softly. He slung the eggs across Shiner’s living room, slammed the whole carton off the far wall. Most of the mess stayed inside the carton. Poured a full gallon jug of Javex onto Shiner’s black satin bedspread. Slung chairs at the walls, gouging big trenches in the plaster, and smashed the breadbox into the dirty dishes, picked another chair up by the seat and jammed it, legs first, into the sink. Kicked the cupboard doors in, booted the back of the toilet until it cracked and gave and exploded across the floor in one cold wave of rusty sludge water. No pills in the cabinet. Shiner too slick for that. Johnny’d already been more quietly through the place lookin for Shiner’s stash. Nothing. Not so much as a rum bottle under the sink. He ripped the cabinet off the wall and slammed it into the bathtub.

  The funeral blurs in Johnny’s head. Cant remember what was said about her, cant remember what the priest had to say. Some people nodded at him. Wasnt hardly no one there anyhow. McFlabberguts in the corner bawlin her eyes out and lookin around every once in a while to see if anyone was payin attention to her. Johnny drooped at a table with a tray of sandwiches and eating every last one of them and then out heaving the works up in the grass off Gear Street. A bottle belonging to someone snatched out of Johnny’s hand before he even had it to his mouth. A hard shoulder to the back and Johnny is on the pavement in Caul’s parking lot. A good crisp dart to the small of his back and someone muttering something about Johnny not showing his face at the club and something else about his time coming around. Walkin down Barter’s onto Cabot and hearing Shiner roaring laughing in someone’s backyard. The smell of roasting hamburger. Cops shaking him down somewhere on Duckworth Street and pretending they didnt know who he was. A seat at Ches’s and reaching into his pocket to pay for his feed and coming up a dollar short, thinkin he was three hundred bucks ahead the whole while. Lookin out the window at the cops crawling up Freshwater Road. Johnny knockin on the window at the cops after they were gone and some young family gettin up to change seats and the waitress asking him to please go home. Johnny falling into her shoulder and asking for one kiss, one kiss. Just let me smell your hair. Asking for a cigarette outside the Peter Easton and some battered granny spitting at him from between the gap in her teeth. Having some kind of slurred talk with his next-door neighbour, the one with his shit together, taking out the garbage, that fella. Johnny stuttering and blubbering, sayin how sorry he was for getting on with all that shit, how he never meant it, how his girlfriend died, and have you got anything to drink? All the while the
ceramic urn under his arm, and then suddenly the big twenty-two-ounce framing hammer in the other hand, pounding down on Shiner’s doorknob until it fell to the porch floor, shouldering the heavy door in.

  Now here at Shiner’s table, pretty much the only piece of furniture in the house left in one piece. Holes everywhere, in all the walls. Every one of Shiner’s tacky mall shirts and three leather jackets slashed to ribbons with a utility knife. A pair of men’s one-piece woollen long underwear, Stanfield’s, still in the package. Might come in handy Johnny? Shiner’s stereo bashed into a thousand and six pieces in the corner, stomped into the floor and finished off with the hammer. Digging the claw of the hammer into Shiner’s four-foot speakers, ripping at the fabric and thinkin about Shiner’s throat.

  Shiner killed Madonna. He killed Madonna. Killed.

  Not much longer now, before someone shows up to find out what all the racket is about. No one’s gonna call the cops, that’s one thing for sure. But someone’s sooner or later gonna come lookin. And think our John-John’s gonna budge? Go get Shiner, go tell him what I’m after doing. Tell him I’m waiting here for him. And then, and then . . . well they’ll be scraping Shiner off what’s left of the walls and it’ll be Johnny on the steps of the shop down the road, covered in blood and skull bits with a half case of beer at his feet, waiting for the fuzz to take him away for good. What difference now, hey Johnny?

  Only a matter of time before Johnny goes down for that robbery. Cant even hardly remember the details no more. God knows who he ran his mouth off about it to. What fucken difference does any of it make now?

  Johnny fixes his tie, Pius’s ancient brown silk tie, and waits. Nothing but his own breathing. Water dripping in the bathroom behind him. Big diesel passing on the street below. Gurgled groan when the fridge tries to cut in. Johnny waiting there, knuckles white around the hammer handle, thinkin about what song he’d like to have playing for when Shiner comes home. Something hardcore, some old Metallica. Kill ’Em All. Or maybe not, maybe something nice and light and feel-good, some old twangy Hank Williams tune. Pius’s Saturday night go-to. Why dont you love me like you used to do? The perfect murder song. Shiner dead and dead before the fiddler scrapes out the final note.

  Johnny waits. Waits, pushing voices out of his head. Pushing reason away. Pius’s gloating, constipated hate face. Tanya’s jowls flappin in Johnny’s head sayin: Johnny wait, Johnny wait. It’s not gone too far. So you smashed his place up, so what? It’s not murder at least, not yet. It’s not murder. You can take off. Go on and hide out for a bit. Shiner’s just a friggin drug dealer, a pimp. No one got nothing on our John-John. It’s not murder, not yet. Youre a free man. Someone somewhere musta been watchin over you for some reason. Certainly not to go mashing someone’s brains out with a hammer?

  And then Johnny’s on his feet, demolishing the face of the table with the hammer, screamin Shut up! Shut up! Shut the fuck fuck fuck up!!! And from the bottom of the stairs he hears a woman’s voice, a real woman, a real voice, sayin Hello??? Is someone there? Hello?

  Johnny takes the stairs like a bull moose, but then stops halfways down when he sees in the porch at the bottom a fulsome older missus in a business kinda suit, with gold earrings dangling and some sorta silky floral scarf around her neck. She backs out onto the street when Johnny approaches. The lingering perfume in the porch enough to gag on. Johnny looks down at his hand and sees no hammer. Madonna’s ashes in his other hand. Package of long underwear tucked under his arm. Johnny hovers in the doorway about to tell the old gal to go fuck herself when she thrusts a thick white envelope into his hand and says: Now, this is more than what he owes you, our Rodney. Now please leave him alone. Leave us alone. I dont care who you are or what youre all about. My husband knows people. So you leave Rodney alone. And she spits at Johnny’s feet then and darts back across the street to heft herself into the passenger seat of a spanking-new F250, her sour-faced husband waiting at the wheel with the engine running. She shoots Johnny the middle finger and the truck tears on up Cabot and Johnny is left flipping through a stack of twenties the likes of which he aint laid eyes on in too long, too long. Easily a thousand, at a glance. Young Rodney’s mother paying off his dope tab! Must be nice.

  Johnny’s mind starts a-swirling. Right across the fucken country. Me and Madonna. Right to that beach she always seemed so smitten with. Toss her into the wind, hey Johnny, out there on that beach she was always on about, what was the name of it? Something religious? Jeremiah? Maybe track down this sister Dana. Danielle? Go Johnny. Go now. Go. Right across the country. Run to a cab stand and get out on the TCH and bloody well vanish.

  Me and Madonna on the road, disappearing.

  Johnny stands in the street, gawks up at a crow on the pole on the other side. Puts Johnny in mind of old Wally B’s school bus, down by the slipway. The crow laughs and sniggers down at him and some distant part of Johnny’s head toys with the notion that the crow sees more than Johnny’s gangly form, more than the look on his face, more than the clothes on his back. The crow sees . . . the crow sees . . . Johnny shivers in the drizzle, looks left and then right, checks for bodies on foot or familiar cars coming down Lime Street, then darts onto Cabot towards Goodview.

  How the tables have turned, hey Johnny?

  Have to risk passing the backside of the housing units.

  As he cuts the corner he runs face first into Shiner’s girl, little Susie. She almost falls down over the steps, and when Johnny reaches out to steady her he drops the envelope and the twenties fan out the mouth of it and he sees the look in little Susie’s eyes at the sight of the money when he’s scooping it back up. He shoulders himself around her and as an afterthought, as he passes, he slips her a couple of twenties from the stack and nods gravely, conspiratorially, pleadingly, even though he knows that she’s well armed now, with information that she cannot wait to spew into Shiner’s lap.

  And then he’s gone.

  6

  What’s this, four hundred kilometres or thereabouts? None too shabby, Johnny. Still, gotta get in off the road again soon before you catches your death. Soaked to the bone now, eyeing this four-door Dodge outside the Gander Hotel. Nothing to it Johnny, nothing to it. Start one of them with a fucken Popsicle stick. Cold, mucky fall day spluttering out ahead of him. Calling for flurries later on tonight. Best be in off the road then. Big-rigs thundering past. Compact families with wipers flapping, gawking through blurry windshields, the long spiderweb glow of headlights, and then them cunt taillights.

  Johnny in a suit with a fucken urn tucked under his arm! Not that they’d know.

  First ride was the best, right to Clarenville. Passing by Whitbourne Junction and Johnny spies the battered old Whitbourne Youth Correctional Facility sign and it all comes rushing back. Johnny felt like tellin the driver to pull over so’s he could burn the place to the ground, but he kept quiet instead. A full year in that hellhole when he was fifteen. Turned sixteen inside. Theft-over-five, that time. And that cunty-eyed screw, McGregor, with his sickly, pedo eyes following Johnny down the corridor, and Johnny decking him that night outside the observation room after McGregor had the fucken gall to go and say what he said, about Pius and Tanya, and some guy name Puddester.

  Pork chop dinner at the Irving Big Stop in Clarenville, not bad, not bad. Cant beat Caines down on the east end of Duckworth though, no by fuck. Big shit in the can, then a tidy ride as far as Glovertown with some stuttering wombat from the Northern Peninsula, some bookish type who saw Johnny eating at the restaurant. Years of speech therapy never done much help. Johnny barely could understand a fucken word, robbed a pair of cotton gloves out of the side pocket in the door. A story on the radio about a fella that chopped off some dolly’s head in Corner Brook twenty years back, and now’s up for parole. The wombat says L-l-l-let him r-r-rot. Johnny gets thinkin about his real old man, rotting away in the clink for something he never done. Thinkin on things that happened ten years ago, twenty years ago. Things dead and buried in the ground and sti
ll hopping mad alive. The blast from a thirty-ought-six. Cousin Mikey. Fuck.

  An hour on the side of the road in Glovertown with the drizzle eating through Johnny’s stinking long underwear. The beige suit gone a chocolate brown and his hair pasted to his forehead in thick black strands. From there to Gander with some old salt-and-pepper couple who thought Johnny was a fella they knew and so took pity and broke their golden rule about picking up rapists and murderers. The old fella driving, a wiry mess of grey and black hairs sprouting out of his ears. Taking grooming tips from Pius by the looks of it. Johnny let the old couple go on calling him William for the first five minutes, asking questions about his Uncle Dessy in Calgary.