Dead Nolte

by Borne Wilder

  “Well, we’ll just have to buy it back.” Charlie offered with the generosity, only a man down to his last hundy, would know.

  “What if the asshole they sell it to, doesn’t want to sell it back?”

  It suddenly dawned on Charlie. “I know why he’s back early-----one of those bitches prayed over his sorry ass. Who found him?”

  Ron refolded the piece of paper. “Martha found him, the fucking church lady. She may have fucked us over good. The clock is running, the crazy lady’s lawyers told me she wanted the coin no later than three days after his time of death. His ass is back, so maybe it’s too late. The witch is willing to pay a million five for this thing, and those corn mash cunts will probably trade it for a case of beer and two NASCAR tickets.” Ron pinched the bridge of his nose to help him think. It didn’t work.

  “The nasty fucker shit on my couch!”

  ***

  Ron couldn’t fathom why someone, who could afford to pay a million five for an old hexed coin, would choose to live in a flood-ravaged wasteland. He sat in his car and surveyed the ruined neighborhood. Katrina had really put the hurts on it, the entire area looked war-torn and empty. Plumbing remnants snubbed into the air among the weeds, short cracked sidewalks led to concrete porch shaped gravestones and partial foundations.

  Scattered among the empty lots, here and there, were small cracker box houses, each with a door and a single window on the front and one or two down the sides. He tried to imagine the entire area filled with these tiny boxes, the image he conjured was as strange as the one he was actually seeing. The American Dream didn’t fit either one, and neither seemed fitting for a Voodoo witch, priestess or whatever she was called. Crazy rich woman still seemed befitting to Ron. He could picture a Voodoo priestess in the crazy tourist traps, down in the French Quarter, but this was crack head central, or probably used to be. Maybe she was incognito, on the down low, Ron told himself, to justify why he had his pride and joy parked in front of a shoebox with a roof, in the middle of a festering shithole. Maybe, she’s the real deal. Maybe, they ran her out of the Quarter for zombifing her competition and killing chickens on Fat Tuesday.

  Had Ron ever met her in person, he would probably have believed she had somehow hypnotized him into imagining Nolte in an absurd ghost form, but there had been no personal contact between the two. She had sent a lawyer, complete with an appraisal of the coin, a prominence and a copy of the contract to be finalized on delivery. All of it had checked out. The firm, the prominence from a Jerusalem auction house, and the German appraisers. Once Fat Ron, Ron’s own lawyer, had told him everything was legit, he was, though he hated the cliché, in it to win it. He just had to wait for Nolte to die.

  Nothing ever seems to go as planned, Nolte was back. Her lawyer had told him; he would have a three-day window before the unholy miracle. As miraculous as the situation was, with a million five at stake, Ron wasn’t interested in the why’s, or how’s of it, he wanted to know if they still had a deal, he would express his ooh’s, and ah’s, and oh my goodness’s, once he had his hands on the cash.

  Charlie had been convinced it would happen, from the get-go. He believed in angels and demons, he was absolutely sure, a homeless man he had tripped over outside of a convenience store, in Phoenix, had been an angel. Though he told the story often, he would never reveal what gave him the indication the man was supernatural.

  Charlie was also convinced that seeing demons was as easy as a dose of bad acid, or ingesting various cactus flowers. “Dark shit is just as real as the light; the evil is just easier to get your hands on.” He’d told him. Well, Ron wasn’t even sure the “light” shit existed and remembered thinking Charlie was bat shit crazy and should probably step away from the Bible, and perhaps, schedule a reality check. Ron had just assumed the coin was about greed and nothing else. Everything was.

  He couldn’t see any cars, but he could see, even though it was midday, the bulb in the porch light was lit. She’d said it would be, when she had given him the address over the phone, a voodoo priestess’ version of a secret signal.

  The lawyer had been indignant and acted as if Ron had asked him for his first born, instead of a simple contact number for the witch. It had taken several hours for him to get the okay from her and return his call. Had this world really gone so far into the shitter that witches needed lawyers? He asked himself. Maybe, once all this nonsense was over and he had the money, he and Charlie could go on a unicorn hunt.

  “Let’s do this,” he told himself out loud, as he got out of the car. “You got this.” He coached himself, as he walked up the small driveway. He tried to look a hell of a lot more collected than he felt but knew that if the witch saw him talking to himself, his cover of coolness would be blown.

  “You’ll never find my nest egg, Nancy Boy.” Ron spun on his heel, expecting to find Nolte’s naked ass, but there was nothing. The old man could really fuck everything up if he popped up now.

  “Don’t worry, White Boy, he not welcome in here.” Ron spun again to find an ancient black woman watching him through the screen door. “I been lookin’ der at you for some time, Boy. Been watchin’ you try to convince yourself, you not crazy, ta to.” The woman pushed the door open, revealing the age in her face the screen door had hidden. “Enter in here, White Boy. I want to show you dis thing you wanna know.” She turned and disappeared into the small house. Ron caught the door before the spring could suck it closed and followed.

  The room was empty other than an upside down, rusty bucket positioned in the corner. The woman walked to the bucket and sat down, emitting a slight groan as she planted herself. Her knees popped like a like a bag of marbles. “You stand, White Boy, I only have dis one chair.” The dust on the floor was thick enough to show footprints, but the lime green dress the old woman wore was bright and spotless.

  “You’re not really what I expected,” Ron said, trying to think of something to do with his hands. He stuck them in his pockets.

  “You dunna know what you ‘spected, Boy, other un money.” The old woman tilted her ear up to the air. “You hear dat, White Boy? You daddy try to listen through.” Her voice strained as she bent to pick a short candle from the floor. “Go away nigger, dis thing ain’t for you ear.” She spun the wheel on a worn Zippo and lit the candle. “Pardon, I get my jimmy goin’, den I show you dis thing.”

  Reaching into the pocket on the front of her dress, she produced a toothpick and a small black ball of opium. She rolled the ball carefully between her finger and thumb, before sticking it on the end of the toothpick. A smell of cheap perfume filled her corner of the room, as she passed the candle back and forth under the small black wad. When it began to trail smoke, she sucked it from the air noisily. She looked at Ron from the corner of her eye as she sucked at another tendril of smoke. Blowing out the candle with a thin blue stream of smoke, her full attention finally rested on Ron. “Dis opium be bunk, da chikenshit dat sell me dis, gonna lose his dick. It gonna fall off.” The look on her face told Ron that she meant every word. “Hear dis thing, White Boy, I say dis thing one time. Twenny year ago, you daddy put it to a girl in ‘Nawlins and she tell him a secret thing, she tell him how I roll da Voodoo an make wimmens to mens. She tell him I make mens inna chillren. She tell him I make mens live forever.” The witch relit the candle with her lighter and put the flame back under her opium. After sucking at another thin stream of blue smoke she lowered her voice and continued. “You daddy ask me if I do a thing. He say he skert ta die. Done bad shit he cain’t claim before da Lord. He ask me can I do dis thing, ta to.” She peered up into Ron’s eyes. “You know da story of da Lord, Boy? He got fucked over wit thirty pieces a silver money”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen the movie.”

  “I find you daddy a silver money from da devil’s deal. Da money dat betray da Lord and pay for da potter’s land.”

  “The fucking coin Nolte has, is one of the thirty pieces of silver? Judas’ money?” Ron asked, once again getting feeling that his ass
was being played for a mark.

  “Don’t you doubt me, White Boy, I make you dick fall off in you hand! You shut you fuckin’ mouth and listen to dis thing. Dat silver money got de soul a Judas innit. Scratch hisself put it there.” The woman turned and yelled to the back of the house. “Go away nigger, dis ain’t for you ear!” She turned back to smile at Ron.

  He was at this point; pretty sure, even if she was a hand to god witch, she was a crazy as fuck, hand to god witch.

  “You daddy buy dis thing. He cut a deal wit da Trumpet Fixer and put his soul on da books.” She stopped talking a moment to examine the end of her toothpick. “Da white boy bring me da thing an I cut a piece outta his soul. I take a tiny slice of his ass an put it in da Judas money.” The old woman chuckled. “I bet Judas be pissed off as fo’ muffuckers, when I do dat.”

  “Da money be tied to dis world, White Boy, by da thing da Lord died for, but it be open by da soul of Judas, for da shit he done. Dat’s how I catch the white boy’s soul. I put it in da hole inna money. When he cross over his soul catch da dark light, an snap back here. Da white boy git spit da fuck out, ‘cuz a Judas, ta to? Judas have no place of rest. You daddy, now have da form a da next world in this world.” The woman blew out the candle and tossed it on the floor at her feet; hot wax splattered and rolled in the dust. “You got less than three days ta get me dat silver money, Boy, or you never be rid of him. He gonna live forever.” She stared at Ron unblinking.

  “How does the coin pull him back, because of Judas?”

  “I jes told you, Judas is da missin’ soul, Boy. All da souls be counted fo’ ‘cept Judas’. The Heaven don’t want it cuz he fuck over da Lord an Scratch cain’t have it cuz Judas kill his own ass, before Jesus come on back an have a chance ta save it.” The old woman pointed a crooked finger toward the door. “You got two and one half days, White Boy. On da third day you daddy be able to pick it up, da silver money. Right now, it be fuckin’ wit him, he cain’t touch it. On the third day he become good ta go. You git my silver money, an you git da big money.”

  “Can I ask you, why you are willing to pay so much for this coin,” Ron asked, trying to figure out why this frail old woman scared him so much?

  “My bidness is my bidness, White Boy.”

  Ron turned to leave, but paused at the door, “Can I ask you one more thing?” He knew he was pushing it. “Who the fuck is the Trumpet Fixer?”

  “Dat be Baal, White Boy. Stay away, cuz he will fuck you shit up. He may not look like much now, but he will fuck you shit up, ta to. He a dubious muffucker.” The old woman stood up surprisingly quick. “Dat motherfucker find out dis thing be da Judas money he got fooled on, we gone pay in dis world an dat world. He know how ta bend the rules, ta to.

  7

  Charlie hated the bus with every ounce of his heart and soul. Buses were great for public transportation, five minutes here, fifteen minutes there, but anyone willing to submit themselves to more than a few hours on one of these growling bastards, as far as he was concerned, was Navy SEAL tough, or out of their fucking mind.

  Charlie knew he was on the bus because he was too broke for a plane ticket. A quick glance around at the other passengers told him, that the rest of his fellow sufferers, were all out of their fucking minds. Extended periods of boredom, at mind altering levels, had left them all with thousand yard stares, longing for something sharp, with which to end it all.

  Having left home at seventeen, and carless, Charlie had been forced to include the bus in his early travels. Hitchhiking, which was a misleading word for walking, had lost its allure very quickly. Not only was the method unreliable and time costly, but a rather unpleasant experience with a large, armed black man with a lisp, who had requested to see Charlie’s pee-pee at gunpoint, had opened Charlie’s eyes to the disadvantages of catching rides with good old-fashioned stranger danger. Busses weren’t much better, and until now, he had thought he’d sworn them off for good. A five-hour stint next to a screaming baby, owned by a mother who was obviously trying to get every penny’s worth out of her kid’s Pampers, had given him an entirely new perspective on stranger danger.

  He wouldn’t be making this trip on a bus unless he absolutely had to. He could hold it together for another four or five hours considering what was at stake. At the end of this week, he would be rich or cursed. Rich if he found the coin before the greedy bitches. Cursed, if the bus he was riding on persisted on stopping at every, fucking tumbleweed that resembled a building.

  The schedule told him he had four hours to go, but he was fairly certain, cutting out the tumbleweed visits, that he could make it in three on a good bicycle. Charlie closed his eyes, trying to force sleep; it was the only way to remain sane, between tumbleweeds.

  After Ron had called him about Nolte, Charlie had thrown some clothes in a bag, locked the house up tight and went out to check the oil in his ride, a piss yellow 1976 Caprice, only to find it gone. Nothing left but a half a quart of oil that had puddled in the driveway, where he had parked it the night before. The car was stumbling around on its last leg, and was so far down on the “most frequently stolen cars” list, that Charlie no longer bothered to remove the keys from the ignition. He had seen nicer cars sent to the crusher.

  “What the fuck? What kind of a depraved motherfucker steals a two-hundred-dollar car?” He’d asked himself, shuddering at the desperation that must have inspired the act. A quick look in his wallet and it was clear a bus ride was in his future.

  The bus ride from hell was well into its sixth hour when the bus left the highway for the five hundredth time and bounced into an empty lot between a McDonalds and a small dilapidated convenience store. The fading sign across the front of the small run down building proclaimed itself to be; Fast Mart. Judging by the standing room only traffic of Mickey D’s parking lot, Mayor Mc Cheese was really throwin’ a fuckin’ Fast Mart’s way. It was open, but barely.

  With only one car parked out by the gas pumps, Charlie guessed even the locals had given up shooing Ronald McDonald’s big red boot off the hoses of Fast Mart’s life support and were now waiting for the old girl to walk mercifully into the light.

  “Thirty minutes!” the bus driver yelled back to no one in particular. “Thirty minutes!”

  Charlie waited for the nut-jobs and the crazies to thin before he got up to leave the bus. His ass was already so numb it felt like it belonged to someone else, so a few more minutes weren’t going to make any difference. Charlie looked into the blank, road charred faces of the idiots filing by him. He knew that most of these people had been wholly sane at the time of boarding, their sanity had more than likely, had remained intact up until the fifth or sixth hour into their trip, five or six hours seems to be a tipping point on a bus. That’s when your inner voice, having had enough, starts listing off reasons why you were stupid to buy a bus ticket, when you could have easily walked the seven hundred miles and how it had told you before you got on how bad the seats hurt, and how it never really liked you in the first place, it had always known you were a failure, all the while, singing Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer On the Wall.

  Some of these people were already on the bus when Charlie boarded, and though he didn’t remember any of their faces from when he boarded, he could tell by their eyes, which ones had snapped inside. Several appeared to be doing the twenty-hour shuffle. After twenty hours on a bus, all Slinky’s are bound to kink and that’s when real mental damage occurs. Their inner voices were probably no longer on speaking terms with them and coherent thought, at this juncture, is utterly unobtainable. It would take these poor fools weeks, maybe even months to suppress the memory of seeing America through the eyes of a Greyhound.

  Charlie stumbled off the bus and made his way to the Fast Mart. Ignoring his numb ass, he took a seat on a dangerous looking bench in the front of the store; he was too tired to stand.

  Baling wire held the bench together in several places, where the wood was too rotted for bolts and screws. Next to the bench was a five-gallon pl
astic bucket filled with sand and cigarette butts, a stab to the heart reminder, he had quit smoking two months and two weeks ago. A child-like hand had scrawled APPELS on the side of the bucket in Sharpie. He was pretty sure that whoever had brainstormed such an original name as Fast Mart, had also written on the bucket.

  “Got a light, Nancy?” The voice belonged to Nolte. Charlie turned to see the old man standing next to the rickety bench, naked except for a diaper and plastic shower shoes. Women’s sunglasses, with lenses the same diameter as mayonnaise jars, completed his ‘look’. His hand was buried below the elastic waistband of his diaper, his elbow working like a pump handle, as he scratched his ass. Nolte tilted his sunglasses up to his forehead and bent slightly to inspect the bench for anything tacky. Satisfied it was sticky-free, he reached out and dusted the bench by fanning his hand, the other hand had not stopped scratching. Hand fanning and elbow bouncing, he was really making a show of it. Charlie shook his head; the idiot was even more ridiculous in death.

  Making sure not to exceed the boundaries of his carefully prepared spot, Nolte finally sat. He grinned big around the cigarette in his teeth. “Got a light, Nancy?” he repeated, tapping the unlit end of his cigarette with his finger to make sure Charlie understood what he meant.

  “Are you serious, a fucking diaper?” Charlie asked, ignoring Nolte’s request for a light. “That attire doesn’t look too public friendly, Casper. Is there a rule, you have to wear what you die in for the rest of eternity?”

  “As a matter of fact, I think there is, though I haven’t tested that theory as extensively as I might like to. Who the fuck cares?” Nolte said, flicking his wrist in front of him as if he were dispersing an imaginary crowd. “I’m a fashionista, devoted to dryness and comfort, baby.” He pulled a Bic lighter from the front of his diaper and flicked it several times. “Damn, this one’s still wet. Sometimes I piss myself when I travel, but when I get to where I’m going POOF, a brand new diaper, with only a few squirts in it.”