Violence

by Timothy McDougall

  “Aren’t you hungry? Order something.” Anderson urged her.

  “Why, so I can owe you?” Jeannie answered, closing her menu and handing it back to the waitress who bit her lower lip and politely moved away as though she heard nothing untoward.

  There was an uncomfortable silence, then:

  “Your name is Noel, right?” Jeannie asked, but it was more a statement. “’Noel,’ that’s an unusual name.”

  “I was born on Christmas Day.” Anderson answered indifferently.

  “Cool. I’m Jeannie.” She said, seductively making a head movement like a veiled dancer. “I was named after ‘I Dream of Jeannie,’ you know the old TV show, Barbara Eden.” Jeannie modestly pulled down the very top of her tank top blouse revealing a tattoo above her right breast of a blonde female genie rising out of a bottle on a wisp of smoke.

  Anderson gave the decently executed body art a sweeping glance.

  “I probably wouldn’t have gotten it if I knew how much it costs to get it off.” Jeannie groaned, referring to the application of the tattoo, then proffered an explanation for how she got it in the first place. “I used to hang out with a lot of rock and rollers.”

  “Groupie?” Anderson asked.

  “Nothing like that.” Jeannie answered, a bit offended. “I was more of a roadie, helped out. I like music. I work in a vintage record store – ‘Rave.’ We sell clothes, too. It’s decent. I’d really like to be a physical therapist. I heard that pays pretty good but you gotta go to school and train and I’m so old now there’s not really a lot I can do.”

  Anderson stared intently at Jeannie’s overall features as she ruefully sighed. He figured, looking past the piercings and dark dyed hair, she was still comfortably short of thirty.

  “How old are you?” He queried.

  “You’re not supposed to ask that.” She giggled in reply but he was irritated by her coyness. “Okay, I’m 27. No, 28.” She admitted after the slightest hesitation.

  “You can have a fifty percent better life with ten percent more effort.” He stated flatly.

  “If you say so.” Jeannie grumbled skeptically.

  “I’m saying it.” Anderson not so subtly asserted.

  “I’d just like to stop being so, you know, dreadin’ the future.” She wistfully commented. “See, I think about time a lot. Like it’s slipping away. Not that I’m like super hung up on getting older, just that it’s like some rope that’s sort of slipping through my fingers.” She made this remark regretfully, her voice trailing off before she rallied and asked, “You don’t know of any way to stop the aging process, do you?”

  “Kill yourself.” Anderson answered automatically, without thinking.

  Jeannie’s face went slack and ashen.

  Anderson had answered so simply and deadpan but it was clearly a rhetorical question and she wasn’t really expecting an answer. Especially that one.

  Tears immediately formed in Jeannie’s eyes and she looked at him with acute seriousness. “Don’t say that. That hurt my feelings.”

  Anderson was struck momentarily mute. He obviously misjudged her vulnerability.

  Jeannie fixed him with a frown of pure dread.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.” Anderson assured her with real concern. He reached across the table to gently touch her hand when Jack Trax, the Spinal Tap reject, suddenly sat down in the booth next to Jeannie.

  “Hey, Snowflake.” Trax slimily chirped in greeting to Jeannie.

  Jeannie instantly became her gnarly old self again.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Jack.” Jeannie responded, instantly antagonized.

  “So, who’s the Jesus boy?” Trax gaily asked Jeannie, remembering Anderson from the parking lot altercation.

  Jeannie folded her arms in front of her protectively.

  “You buyin’?” Trax inquired of Anderson, turning his head in Anderson’s direction but not meeting his eyes.

  Jeannie was obviously embarrassed. She sighed and stared glumly up at the ceiling.

  Anderson, for his part, was trying to get a read on the situation. He wanted to wait for a clearer cue from Jeannie as to what to do, considering the last time he stepped in and tried to come to her aid with this creep, she ended up screaming at him and comforting Trax.

  Trax picked up two breadsticks from a metal basket next to Jeannie and started drumming on the edge of the table.

  “Thought we’d go do the clubs. Check out some of the bands.” Trax said, biting the end off one of the breadsticks and pointing it in her face.

  “Fuck off!” Jeannie snapped as she slapped the breadstick away.

  “Do that again and I’m going to shove that breadstick up your ass.” Anderson squarely warned Trax without any hesitation now.

  “What’s your problem, Jesus Boy?” Trax asked scornfully.

  “What’s yours? Afraid I’ll steal her away?” Anderson countered.

  “No, man, I just don’t want her picking up your loser karma.” Trax snorted.

  “Don’t fucking do this!” Jeannie upbraided Trax.

  “Shut up, cunt!” Trax spewed, pointing the breadstick in her face again.

  Anderson grabbed at Trax lightning fast but Trax was anticipating Anderson’s chivalric response to his use of the “c” word and jumped out of the booth.

  “Whoa! Hey, love they neighbor, huh, Jesus Boy!” Trax sneered at Anderson as he stepped a safe distance back from the table.

  The other diners around weren’t really aware of any hostilities and Anderson had to measure his response. But he sure would have liked to mop the floor with Trax and Trax would make a good mop.

  “Let’s go.” Trax commanded Jeannie.

  Jeannie, after a flick of a look in Anderson’s direction, mechanically slid out of the booth.

  “You don’t have to go.” Anderson protested.

  “Yeah, well, I better.” Jeannie sighed. “I’ll see you.”

  “Come on, whadaya need, a fucking drumroll?” Trax hissed and strode triumphantly out ahead of Jeannie who dutifully, if not desultorily fell in step behind him.

  Anderson could only stare after her in bewilderment.

  Anderson followed their progress through the diner window where outside he could see Trax remove the lock and chain from his motorcycle and kick-start the engine. Actually, it was hard to label it a motorcycle since it was really only one notch above a moped.

  Once the engine was running, Jeannie sat down behind Trax on the slender seat cushion and put her arms around his middle as Trax tucked away the chain, wheeled the single-cylinder motorcycle about and they sputtered away.

  CHAPTER 21

  The roar of the jet engines was deafening as Anderson’s flight set down on the runway at LaGuardia Airport. All in all, it had been a smooth flight and they were riding the jet stream.

  The pilot reversed thrust on the engines and the plane rumbled to a low rolling speed where the pilot then tapped the brakes and headed the lumbering aircraft towards its assigned gate.

  Anderson looked pensively through the airplane window at the Manhattan skyline in the distance. It was between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The dim winter sunlight made it hard to tell what time of day it was. He had caught an early morning flight from Chicago and it was still barely mid-morning here with the one-hour time change.

  New York’s first snowfalls of the season were followed by several above-freezing days, but frigid days in the last week had refrozen the melting drifts and now the ground was covered with mostly soot-covered ice.

  They say a person’s favorite time of year is the time around their birthday and Noel was no exception. He didn’t care for the cold weather in the North at that time of year but he did enjoy the mood. That is, he liked it when he lived in hope and had a family. Now it just gave him a nauseous feeling of dread, like a constantly lowering ceiling.

  Since Karen and Tristan’s deaths, Anderson decided to mark the “holidays” differently, if only to keep his mind off what used to be
and have a chance at “surviving the season.” He looked at things in terms of “light” or the “return of the light.”

  Yes, the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere occurred on the winter solstice around the 21st of the December each year. However, the earliest sunset happened about a week or so into December and the latest sunrise took place around a week into January.

  Anderson saw that in the Roman Catholic Church the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (the celebration of the belief that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin) was celebrated on the 8th of December or what was around the same time the sunsets would cease occurring earlier each day.

  He also saw that the Epiphany (the celebration of the manifestation of Jesus’ divine nature to the Gentiles) had its Feast on January 6th or around the same time that the sunrise would once again be starting earlier each morning. This was no coincidence as far as Anderson was concerned. These feasts, and that included Christmas, had to have their origins in the primal desire for illumination.

  Choosing to have Christmas on December 25th had to have been because it was a few days past the shortest day of the year. The connections to pagan solar festivals were probably accurate. When it keeps getting darker and darker, light is a wonderful thing to hold out hope for and as far as Anderson was concerned that was all he could hang on to during the dark half of the year.

  Having a birthday on Christmas was always awkward for Anderson anyway. Karen and Tristan loved Christmas and also got so excited over his birthday, even if he wasn’t so keen on either celebration. They made sure he received separate gifts for each occasion, both Christmas and his birthday, and he even learned to like the day a little, but now, since they were gone, it was a non-event all the way around.

  Anderson had double-checked the almanac that morning and saw the time of sunset had finally leveled off and was going to start occurring later each day now. The light was returning. If only partially true. He just might make it through another “season.” Today, he felt he could see past winter’s grey haze as the plane docked with the passenger jet bridge walkway that would allow him to disembark.

  Inside the airport terminal, Anderson held only a carry-on bag and had several books under his arm, which included the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, as he stepped through the milling passengers searching for his “ride.”

  Anderson edged through a knot of travelers and found a fidgety chauffeur holding up one of those dry-wipe erasable display boards that had the “Kari Show” embossed on top with “Anderson” written below it in black marker.

  Marsha, a pale guest sitting on a raised stage on the set for the “KARI” Show, had tears streaming down her face as the studio audience applauded wildly. Marsha was looking and feeling ashamed as she recounted her “story” to the show’s bouncy female host Kari Taylor.

  “He shot him in cold blood because he was playing his music loud.” Marsha recounted, sobbing. “He’s sick and I know he needs help. I want to forgive him but it’s hard. I have to go on with my life!”

  The show’s director in the video booth ordered, through his headset, one of the studio floor cameramen to push-in tight on Marsha as she broke down on the stage.

  On a monitor in the booth the graphic beneath Marsha read:

  “Marsha – forgives ex-husband who murdered her son.”

  This caption would eventually be seen by millions of viewers when the taping of this syndicated show was aired in two weeks time.

  Subsequently, it was just before Christmas when Derek had one of the surprises of his life as he watched TV in his cell at the Stateville Correctional Center. The graphic under the next guest after Marsha on the “KARI” show read:

  “Noel – forgives man who murdered his wife.”

  Derek, doing bicep curls using the dead weight of a dirty laundry bag, almost choked on his peanut butter packet as he sat up on his lower bunk. He turned up the volume on his TV to hear over the clamor that was a part of life in the Roundhouse, or notorious F House, a five-story circular structure that housed the segregated population of “The ‘Ville,” as prisoners liked to refer to the installation.

  “Turn that fuckin’ shit off!” Derek shouted at his cellmate who was laid out on the upper bunk listening to hip-hop on a radio. The cellmate quickly complied and rolled over to grab an earbud, uninterested in whatever the reason was that Derek had wanted for quiet.

  “Now Noel…” Kari inquired as she paced in front of Anderson who was now seated on the cushioned low back chair on the raised studio stage, “…several years ago your wife and daughter were murdered by three men who were doing work at your house, is that correct?”

  “No.” Anderson answered emphatically. “Just my wife was murdered. My daughter’s death was the result of an accident.”

  Derek leaned his sweaty face right in front of the small TV to see and hear better.

  “You lost me already. I’m sorry.” Kari responded with bewilderment.

  “Only one man was charged with the actual murder of my wife.” Anderson answered with a cool evenness. “Another was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, which was also in relation to my wife’s murder. And one was cleared of all charges. But what happened is not as important as what must take place now, and that is healing.”

  “Aren’t you angry about what those men…” Kari asked, then corrected herself. “…or rather this particular man did to your wife?”

  “No amount of anger is going to bring my wife back.” Noel replied, his voice remaining dispassionate. “Do I feel pain? You bet. But I try to transform that energy to a positive place. The world is as you perceive it. Good or evil will expand in your life dependent on your thoughts. Forgiveness is the surest path to divinity, so I pray for this man who actually committed the murder, and the men who were with him when this horrible event took place. It can’t be easy for them, either. In God’s eyes their lives are just as precious as my wife’s life or even my daughter’s life…”

  The studio audience grew increasingly belligerent with every passing utterance of beliefs which Anderson professed.

  Even Kari herself, the normally expressive host, was dumbstruck at the moment and just stared blankly at Anderson.

  “I just pray that maybe something someone says or that I say will touch their hearts and souls in some way.” Anderson declared as many audience members hooted and hollered.

  Derek, for his part, continued to gape open-mouthed at the TV screen in his cell, like a catatonic ape.

  At the same time, 40 miles away, in a seedy bar on the South Side of Chicago, Gabriel Lysander was deep in a game of pool. He took a slug off his beer bottle and was lining up a bank shot when his gaze shifted to the TV that was playing over the bar. He almost dropped his cue stick as he gazed entranced at the Kari Show that was currently being broadcast over the TV screen and where Noel Anderson was in attendance as Kari’s guest.

  “I just want to make sure of something…” Kari said, holding her hand up to Anderson to stop him as she looked for confirmation. “…’touch their hearts’? You’re talking about the men who were involved in your wife’s murder?”

  “Yes.” Anderson answered earnestly.

  “Wow, Noel, this is incredible stuff!” Kari gushed as she turned to the boisterous studio audience behind her. “And as you can see, the natives are getting restless!”

  Kari stepped quickly up a center aisle and put the microphone in front of a fist-waving burly male member of the audience who sprang to his feet.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your family…” The burly man said as he angrily spoke into the mic while fixing on Anderson. “…but if that happened to me I’d kill those guys!”

  The studio audience erupted into raucous cheers and collective applause.

  Gabriel Lysander, mesmerized, never took his gaze off the screen as he walked around the pool table and stood right under the TV to get a better look.

  Kari Taylor, on the TV, moved across the studio aisle and held the micro
phone in front of a wild-eyed female audience member who jumped up, eager to get a turn at the mic.

  “So, if they were here right now…” The female audience member incredulously asked Anderson. “…you’d tell ‘em you forgive them?”

  “As much as it is in my power I forgive them, yes.” Anderson confirmed and voiced an entreaty. “I would hope they’ve seen the wrong they’ve done. I would hope that they’re sorry, and I would ask how I could help them.”

  “Help how?” Kari asked, truly puzzled.

  “Whatever way I could.” Anderson answered, searching for the correct words to convey his message. “Spiritually. Emotionally. Financially-”

  “Give them money?” Kari interjected.

  “Possibly, sure…” Anderson tolerantly explained as the audience grew even more unrestrained. “…as long as they were trying to do something positive with their lives. As long as they would put it to productive use.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Gabriel muttered to himself as he grinned up at the TV screen.

  Meanwhile, inside the Rave Vintage Record Store, Jeannie had been watching in rapt amazement the same Kari Show on a TV behind the counter. Jeannie, at the moment, was absently folding and sorting some second-hand clothing while a quivering, bone-thin woman in the studio audience fiercely put her mouth right up to the mic Kari Taylor was holding:

  “You’re really stupid!” The bone-thin woman shouted, throwing back her stringy hair.

  The studio audience exploded into a foot stomping frenzy.

  “People like you give them scum more power!” The woman continued. “You acting this way makes these creeps just run rampant!”

  Kari shrugged in Anderson’s direction and nodded in agreement with the woman if only to remind the screaming audience members that she was merely a conduit for his controversial message.

  “We need to look at the larger picture.” Anderson calmly stated. “Instead of just asking why, maybe the question we should ask is did we need it? Maybe life is a school. Maybe I wanted this to happen for my personal growth. Maybe my wife and daughter reached perfection and were ready to go to the next realm. Maybe they learned everything they needed to learn in this life and possibly left to teach me something.”