Jump Cut

by Ted Staunton

  Al slows the Caddy as Mike rolls on, and we take the left after a transport truck roars by. We’re on a gravel road now. Stones grind and click off the bottom of the car. Inside, we’re silent. I glance into the back. GL has her hand locked in AmberLea’s.

  We pass a little white sign that says Municipal Landfill. AmberLea breaks the quiet. “Is that a bear?” I look toward the dump, but before I spot anything, the Cadillac has crested a hill and on the right is a lake.

  “Jackfish Lake,” GL croaks.

  A little farther on, the bush on either side of the road gives way to a big empty clearing. There are a couple of piles of gravel and stacks of ancient logs and railroad ties. A tired old Honda Civic rests by one of the piles. It could have been there for an hour or a hundred years. Across the bottom of the clearing runs a railroad track, with a line of graffiti-covered freight cars sitting on it. “Pull in here,” says GL. “Go over to the east side.” Her voice has gotten higher and sharper.

  Al eases the Caddy across the ruts toward the deep woods and brings us to a stop, still well away from the trees. “That’s as far as I can get us,” he says.

  “Then we walk from here,” announces GL.

  “Where?” asks AmberLea. Looking back, I see her chin has disappeared as she stares at the bush.

  “Along the railroad tracks,” says GL.

  “Is that safe?”

  “It’s just a siding. We only have to go a little way on the main line.” GL says this as if any fool should know it. “Open the trunk,” she says. “Let’s go.”

  Al pops the trunk. The insects start buzzing as soon as we get out of the car.

  “Get me that bag.” GL snaps her fingers at her plastic bag in the trunk. She pulls out bottles of insect repellent. “Be generous with yourself.”

  We all start slapping the stuff on. It’s incredibly rank and scummy feeling, but it seems to work. Now the bugs just swarm and buzz and dive without ever quite biting. I think of Grandpa’s Marauding Mosquitoes. I look into the bag, hoping she’s brought hazmat suits or something—even hats. Instead, she’s got garden gloves, trimmers and a tin of white spray paint in there.

  “What’s that stuff for?”

  “When we find the grave, we’re going to tidy it up. We’ll paint the cross.”

  “Find the grave? Don’t you—?”

  “First we have to find the cemetery. Come on.”

  “Find the cemetery?”

  “It’s been seventy-five years since my last visit. If you don’t hustle it’s going to be another seventy-five before we get there. Get your camera and hurry up; I don’t have that long.”

  Al gives me the keys. I dive back into the Caddy, grab the video camera and lock the car again. Then off we start for the tracks, dripping insect repellent and helping GL over the uneven ground. Mister Bones trots all over the place. GL is right: at this rate it’ll take us another seventy-five years— if we don’t get eaten by bears or flattened by a train first. Luckily we’re equipped with spray paint, grass clippers, phones with no signals and a Chihuahua; everything you need when you’re looking for the graveyard of a ghost town in the northern bush.

  TWENTY-NINE

  But wait, it gets worse. We’re just going around a pile of railroad ties, almost at the tracks, when we hear a low rumble. It gets louder, then deafening, and for a second I wonder if a train is rolling in. Then two men on giant motorcycles roll into the clearing, their choppers blatting and farting like hungover moose. They pull up and look around. Instinctively, we all duck behind the railroad ties. The engines cut out. In the tingly silence that comes after, a voice gripes, “I haven’t felt my bleeping butt since Wawa.”

  “Nobody wants to bleeping feel your bleeping butt anyway,” says another voice.

  “Bleep bleep smart guy bleep.”

  They didn’t really say bleep, but I’m hoping to keep this mostly PG. I peek around the railroad ties as they get off their bikes. They’re big guys in biker boots, leather pants and sleeveless jean jackets. One guy has a huge droopy mustache to go with his gut. The other is short, but as wide as he is tall. His head is a helmet with an orange beard exploding out the bottom. Al is a big guy. These two make him look like a carrot stick, and me a cardboard match, or worse.

  “Think that’s it?” Mustache says. “Looks like they ditched it.”

  “Gotta bleeping be,” says Beard. “This is bleeping Jackfish and that’s a bleeping white Caddy.”

  “The stuff better be in there. Let’s find out and get outta here.” They’re waving away the bugs as they look around the clearing. As they turn, I see the backs of their jean jackets feature a big capital letter A with a circle over it, like a halo, maybe. I duck back, then peek again as their boots crunch toward Al’s car. Beside me, Al is moaning softly, “Aw no, no!”

  “Who are they?” I hiss.

  “They must be the bikers that were part of the deal,” Al hisses back. “I told ya: it’s some kind of three-way setup: the Wings, some street gang and bikers. I was supposed to pick up drugs for Rocco and his boys to deliver. Word was, they were going to deal ’em to this whaddyacallit—posse, that’s it— outta state, so they could deal the stuff to bikers for god knows what; guns, I think. Something like that anyway. But if these are the bikers, how did they know to come here?”

  I look carefully over the woodpile. Mustache is yanking at a door handle. “Let’s do the top,” he growls. He pulls something from a pocket, flicks it, and there’s the biggest knife I’ve ever seen.

  “Nah,” Orange Beard says, “I’ll get it.” He raises one gigantic biker-booted foot and kicks the trunk lock with his heel. CLUNK. A big dent creases the white metal, way bigger than the ones GL made with her cane back in Buffalo.

  “Aw, noooo!” Al again.

  “Why don’t you just give them the drugs?” AmberLea whispers.

  “Because it’s icing sugar!”

  “In a pig’s eye,” snaps GL. “Cut the crap. Give them the fairy dust and we’ll get on with our business. This isn’t what we’re here for.”

  CLUNK. “Hurry up. The bugs are nuts here.” Sounds like Mustache.

  “We don’t even have a gun,” Al whines. “What did you ditch my gun for?”

  “Fat lot of good it would do you anyway,” huffs GL.

  CLUNK. Over by the car a voice says, “Let’s just use the can opener.” Then there’s a flat crack, like the one I heard back in the Buffalo parking lot. Al winces as if he got shot himself.

  I peek out again. Orange Beard has a gun in his fist. The trunk lid has popped up a few inches. Both bikers are too busy waving away blackflies to open it all the way yet. As Orange Beard reaches for the lid, a black Lincoln Navigator roars into the clearing, pulling a skid stop that puts it sideways to the bikers. Out the far side tumble the Wings boys, KK and AB, guns drawn across the hood of the SUV. “Get away from the car,” one of them shouts.

  THIRTY

  Orange Beard and Mustache have spun around as the SUV barrels in. Now they dive behind the Cadillac and they shout back something with a lot of bleeps in it. Then there are five or six cracks and pops. One bullet dings the Cadillac’s fender, there’s a spurt of gravel near the SUV, and I’m pretty sure one shot whangs a tag on a freight car. Who knows where the rest go? Either these guys are hopeless shots or real shooting isn’t the way it is in movies and games.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” sighs GL, as there’s more swearing and shouting. “I’ve got to sit down if this is going to take long. Help me, Amby.”

  Then the shouting changes. There’s something going on at the SUV. AB Wings calls out, “All right, who are you guys?”

  There’s a pause; then voices come from behind the Cadillac. Orange Beard shouts, “Angels. Mimico Angels. There’s something in the car belongs to us. Who are you?”

  “Buffalo,” calls AB Wings, “and it doesn’t belong to you yet.”

  Beside me, Al gives a quiet little groan.

  “Buffalo?” Now AmberLea squints ar
ound the far end of the woodpile. “Them? How did they get here? You said we lost them in Torrance, when the outhouse blew up.”

  “In Torrance?” Al says. “They were in Torrance. Sheesh, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Never mind,” I say. “I’ll tell you later.” I keep on looking out, wondering how did they get here?

  “It belongs to us now,” calls Orange Beard. “This was supposed to go down in Toronto. The posse told us you were here. Why? Somebody’s bleeping jerking us around, either you or the posse, and we don’t like it. We kept our side of the deal. Now we get what’s ours.”

  “We had a guy go offside on us. He ran it to here. We just got here ourselves.”

  “Well, you’re too bleeping late. It’s ours now.”

  “Not without cash or merchandise.”

  “Get it from the bleeping posse.”

  “We’ll take it from you.”

  “Fine. Take it.” Another shot cracks out. This one smacks the Navigator’s glass behind the back door. The glass doesn’t break.

  There’s quiet while the Wings boys shuffle behind the SUV. “Well,” says GL, “if that’s that, let’s just toddle along while they’re busy. Help me up.” None of us move. I wonder if her hearing aid is on. I find myself taking out my camera.

  Then there’s a new voice from the clearing, shaking, growling and a thousand years old. “Aww-rii-ight, it’s me yuh needa talk ta. I’m Rocco. Lemme tell ya what we’re gonna do. Me and my boys here, and youse over there, we’re all gonna put our heat on top of the cars and walk out into the middle where we can talk this over sensible, like gennelmen. I’m ninety-years-old an’ I don’t move fast, so any double cross, I’ll be the first ta get it. Come on.”

  I focus and pan as Rocco Wings starts out from behind the SUV. He’s still in his red blazer and yellow shirt, and his black hair gleams even brighter than his white shoes. Pushing his walker over the gravel makes him all shaky. You can practically hear his bones rattle. Slowly the others come up from behind the cars. Guns clunk down on metal. “Evvybody keep their hands where evvybody can see ’em,” croaks Rocco Wings. “Mine are busy. Vincent, help me heah.”

  They meet, more or less in the middle. KK Wings helps the old man into the chair seat on his walker. He holds out his gnarly old hand to the bikers. “Rocco Wings.”

  “We’ve heard about you, man,” says Mustache, shaking hands. “Everybody has. You’re a legend.” Orange Beard nods in agreement.

  “Pleased ta hear it,” Rocco Wings says. “So’s you know, I deal hard but fair. Awright. The way I see it, we got two things to settle, and the sooner the better. First, we were supposed ta deal merchandise to this what, Possum gang—what are they?”

  “Fifteenth Street Posse,” says AB Wings.

  “Fifteenth Street Posse,” repeats Rocco. “And they were supposed to deal to you. Am I right?”

  “Right on,” says Mustache.

  “Okay then. Second, do we need them for a three-way deal or can we do a two?”

  They start talking about Toronto and where the money is, and I don’t understand any of it. On the other hand, I’m really not trying. Right now I’m getting a very bad feeling, because I just figured out how they found us.

  I pull out my phone and scroll through my texts, and there it is: a photo of Bunny’s tattoo, a striped number fifteen with a snuffed-out candle beside it. He had said he had to get it to be in the Fifteenth Street Posse. Just before he repeated every single thing I told him in that special way of his. How did my brother end up hanging with a street gang who were in a drug deal with the mob and some bikers? Does he even know he’s hanging with a street gang who are doing a three-way drug deal? Well, I can’t deal with that right now. Besides, Bunny handles stuff better than you’d think. And if he can’t, there’s always Deb. In fact, the posse might not be here because she’s enrolled them in a Plato seminar.

  This is good, because now I realize we have to deal with something a lot more urgent. Rocco Wings is saying, “…so the posse told us to come heah, but they’re not heah. And neither is the one who ran wit’ our product.”

  “Scratch said he was coming,” says Orange Beard. “He’s posse boss.”

  “But he don’t seem to be here, do he?” crackles Rocco. “Look inna trunk.”

  KK Wings and Mustache open the trunk. “It’s here.”

  “It better be classic,” says Orange Beard.

  “It is,” says AB Wings. “Guaranteed.”

  “Sweet,” says Orange Beard. “After we step on it, it’ll be diet.”

  They all laugh and then Rocco Wings gets back to business. “If the product is here, then someone else is too. Let’s have a look aroun’. This would be a nice quiet place to settle everything.”

  It’s going to take them about ten seconds flat to find us. We have to do something, fast.

  “Call nine-one-one,” I hiss to AmberLea.

  “Don’t call nine-one-one,” hisses Al.

  “I can’t anyway,” she hisses back. “There’s no signal.”

  “Is that Rocco Wings out there?” says GL. “Let me deal with him.”

  “No!” Al and I hiss together. “They’ll kill us.”

  “Keep trying to get a signal,” I tell AmberLea, “and keep GL quiet. I’m going to stall them.” There’s only one thing I can think of. I ditch my camera, then reach into GL’s bag and pull out the can of spray paint.

  Out in the clearing, Rocco Wings is saying, “It would make things a lot simpler.” I palm my cell phone, still set on Bun’s tattoo photo, and step out from behind the railroad ties.

  “Let’s make things a lot simpler right now,” I say.

  THIRTY-ONE

  They all spin around and whip out guns; so much for being “gentlemen.” All the guns are pointed at me, except maybe Rocco’s. His gun is a monster revolver, so big you’d think it would tip him over, and his hand shakes so much it’s hard to tell where the gun is pointed. Also, he doesn’t have his giant glasses on. That’s good, because it comes to me in a flash that he saw me in the TV room at Erie Estates. It doesn’t help me much though. I don’t care how bad the shooters are; when five guns are turned your way, you do not feel like a movie hero. But what I have to do is turn into one.

  “Who the bleep are you?” shouts AB Wings. He sounds like a closet biker.

  I don’t say anything. Instead, I push my glasses up my nose with my cell phone hand and turn my back to them. “Drop it!” someone warns as I raise my hand, but I don’t. I shake the tin of spray paint. The little ball inside it clatters like a rattlesnake. Then I spray a copy of Bunny’s tattoo on the side of the boxcar.

  The only sound is the hiss of the spray can. I inhale the tang of the paint. It’s probably bad for you, but who cares? It might be the last thing I smell; that and insect repellent and creosote. At least I won’t be around if they give me cancer. I’m trying not to imagine what it will feel like to get shot in the back, but I do anyway. Will I hear the shot before it hits me? Will I feel it or be in shock? Will I be dead before my face smacks the freight car? My back muscles are screwed so tight I can hardly lift my arm. My arm is shaking so bad I can hardly point the spray can. But there it is, white on rusty brown: a wobbly, striped number fifteen with what might be a blown-out candle beside it. I turn to the bad guys.

  “You’re Posse?” Orange Beard says. “Fifteenth Street?”

  “That’s right.” I try to keep my voice from being as wobbly as the paint job.

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “Toronto. That’s my car over there.” I nod at the battered Civic.

  “Where’s Scratch?”

  “Busy right now.”

  “Bleeping bleep bleep,” says Orange Beard. He raises his gun.

  “No, wait, man,” says Mustache. “Scratch said they brought in this whacko little white dude. Remember?”

  “That’s me,” I say. “Yup. I’m him.” Shut up, I scream at myself.

  “What’s your name, man?�
�

  Now I have to go with it. “Bunny.”

  “Bunny?”

  “It’s a nickname. You’ve probably got one too.”

  “Yeah.” Mustache grins. “Meat Hook.”

  “Where’s Scratch?” says Orange Beard, still suspicious.

  “Taking care of things,” I say. “There was a problem.”

  “No kiddin’.” says Rocco Wings. “You’re about ta have a bigger one. Where’s my good friend Al Capoli?”

  “Oh, him,” I say. “Outta the picture. Not very good at cooperatin’.” Why am I starting to talk like Rocco Wings? “And it’s not my problem, it’s yours.”

  “How so?” growls Rocco, waving off a blackfly. I want to do the same, but I’m scared they’ll shoot if I wave my arms around.

  “Point o’ fact, you got two problems.” I seem to be stuck with the gangster voice now. “See, he was travelin’ wit’ some people. One of them was our plant, my own brother. There was a girl too, underage. An’ there was a good friend of yours, Mr. Wings, name of Gloria Lorraine.”

  For a second, Rocco Wings turns to stone on his walker seat. Then he starts shaking again, but now his eyes are glittering and his voice is more like a purr; a tiger’s purr, maybe. “Where is she?”

  “Not far. She’s with some of our people. She’s safe—for now. The others? Not so lucky. Boom, boom, boom. All gone.”

  “You zipped your own brother?” says KK Wings.

  I shrug. “It’s business. If he was willin’ to snitch on his friends, maybe he’d rat me out someday.” I don’t know where this is coming from or exactly where it’s going. I seem to be channeling every mobster movie I’ve ever seen. For now I’m going to ignore that none of them have happy endings, because I’ve got the beginning of an idea.

  I’ve almost got it figured out when Mister Bones comes trotting out of the bush. I hadn’t even noticed he’d gone. Now he’s the sole survivor of my made-up massacre unless he trots over to Al and gives everyone else away. He yips and starts toward me, then sees the Wings and starts to growl. I do the only thing I can think of. I dig in my pocket for Al’s car keys. “Mister Bones!” I call. “Mister Bones!” I jingle the keys till he looks at me. “Go get ’em!” Then I throw the keys as far as I can into the bush. As Mister Bones dashes off, I hear a noise behind me that might be Al moaning again.