by Rex Miller
All she knew was that they occupied two different worlds—physically, spiritually, and sexually—yet he nudged her at the oddest times in a way that could only be compared to the desire for a guilty pleasure. And it wasn't sex, truly. Sam had been a sensual lover and sufficiently ardent and gentle to keep her content in that department. Mary realized that it was something more than sex or romance, a deep and not insubstantial part of her that was drawn to this man.
That night she dreamed of him, watching herself enter a room where Royce Hawthorne was. She sees herself as a vision, suggesting the best of early Perry Ellis and most inspired Marc Jacobs, the classiest Geoffrey Beene tailored with flashes of striking Armani, the tearoomiest Ralph Lauren with a hint of Ms. Herrera, mixed and matched by the latest kids—the ones with the unpronounceable names—and just a spritz of Fredericks. The vision moves.
His beautiful eyes follow the deep V-cut of the double-breasted black gabardine with the gold buttons, devouring her with his gaze. She feels the heat of his look. The vision at her best, striding through the room in a scented cloud of Opium, Poison, and Serpent's Eve—her special bedroom fragrance that triumphs over Royce's masculine aromas and engulfs the room in heady perfume. Royce, captivated, comes to her.
He offers her his arm and she takes it, seeing his old leather jacket with the worn elbows, imagining his forearms bulging with thick, ropy veins between the ridges of hard muscle, wanting to feel his big hands touch her again.
In the car the vision's tousled hair is the colors of brandy and champagne, streaked with highlights, lips glossy and desirable, and as she turns, the skirt rides up on her legs—which he tells her are “still A-one.” She is in the front seat with Royce, in her cognac-colored wool jacket with the stone white poorboy turtleneck, and she watches him not look at her thighs.
Fear-shackled, tragedy-pinioned guilt speaks to her in a familiar man's voice.
“Mary?” She turns and looks for Sam, treading water, doing her best not to drown in the dizzying, unexpected waves of whatever this emotion is.
Royce wanted to open up to Mary. That was a problem. He couldn't. Not right now—the way things were hanging. Too much was going on. There was too much at stake. He was carrying too much baggage.
How could he ever begin to explain it to her—about the dope? He knew that she knew he'd fallen into the cracks, somewhere along the line. Royce could see it in her eyes sometimes, that how-did-you-let-yourself-get-this-way stare. Where does one start trying to explain a life? Your weakness and your vices and your mistakes look so easy to control when one is on the outside looking in.
He'd grown up in Waterton, just as Mary had. Born in 1962, in a hinterlands bump in the road that hadn't changed since the Second World War—Waterton, Missouri, was an American ghost town. The only thing good about it was, a kid could drive across the river to Tennessee and get illegal schooners of cold beer, vodka-laced watermelons, or home-grown reefer that just about everybody tried at one time or another when they were in their teens.
Grass was no big deal. Some kids smoked wacky-tobacky and some drank. Some—like Royce—did both. It was something to do. You fired up a joint, got in somebody's ride with a half dozen close friends, and cruised.
He'd been withering away. He'd have died if he hadn't gotten out of Waterton. He'd wanted all the sex there was, all the high times he could find, and he'd wanted out. Mary'd had a marriage jones that he felt snaking out for him like a hangman's noose. He'd run. Things had happened. He'd met women. Fast-lane types. Big-city junkies who'd taught him how to get his nose open. He'd never been that crazy about weed anyway. One thing had led to another. No biggie—hell, George Washington had been a hemp farmer.
Royce had gotten jammed up in the worst way and had taken the only way out left to him. That's how he'd got himself inserted into this king-shit jackpot. He knew he was going to have to open up to Mary about it soon. She deserved to know. No. That was bullshit. She most certainly did not deserve any part of his act. But he'd already used their friendship—just because she was there, and handy—and he owed it to her to run the whole thing down. He had to make it right.
He locked the car, a study in pensive concentration and gloomy dope-fiend rumination, his mind far away, as he headed for the door of his cabin. He was not alert.
There was a huge presence in the shadows. Hulking. Silent. A man standing very quietly waiting for Royce Hawthorne.
The man was good. Very quiet. As Royce walked by the large trees, the shadows moved. Like a gigantic animal, the watching man stepped out from this hidden nocturnal post, and moved behind Royce.
It was only as the man stepped heavily on a dry twig that Royce realized there was someone behind him. He flashed on the massive apparition he'd seen out on Willow River Road. The presence chilled him and dried his throat. He was frightened to the bone. He'd let all his powers of concentration become lax—what an idiot!
He froze, barely containing himself as he felt fingers of steel grip him from behind.
They say you see your life flash before your eyes. He did not. He only saw huge fingers, a hand, the long arm, squeezing his shoulder and pulling him around. Nearly scaring him to death, as he looked into a frightening scowl. The menacing, bearded face of the ex-boxer, Luis Londoño.
“Hey."
“Jeezus! Man, don't do that!"
“Come on.” The massive head jerking to the side. Body like a small car standing on end. An immovable object.
“Yeah. Sure.” What was he supposed to say—no? I have to take a piano lesson first?
He didn't recognize the car.
“What's Happy been up to?” he said, trying to make conversation. Luis only grunted and drove. Royce was aware of the little toy knife in the holster taped to his leg. He could feel it. He let his knee move slowly, inching his left pant leg back just a bit with the weight of his left hand. No way. First, he would never get it out fast enough, and if he could—what then?
The heavyweight was as tough as nails. He'd picked up both his purple and green wings when he'd been a biker. The green was for having oral sex with a dead woman confirmed as having active gonorrhea at the time of death. Royce had never asked what the purple wings were for. Royce might get his little toad-sticker out and take his shot, and while Luis died, he'd rip his face off and wipe with it.
That had never been the idea. The last thing he was going to do was get into some physical conflict with Happy Ruiz or his goon. The idea was to buy weight. And that was what he would do, or die trying, he thought—humorlessly.
Being summoned by Happy was somewhere on the pleasure scale between eating road kill and struggling with a bad yeast infection, but he had to put the danger completely out of his mind. He wanted to look anxious to talk with Happy when he got wherever they were going. And there'd be no reason for him to be apprehensive—after all, wasn't he the man's business partner? He calmed his mind as they bumped along in the direction, presumably, of The Rockhouse.
He remembered parking in front of the bikers’ “cantina” where Happy and the guys like to hang. Standing between them. Reaching for the money. Louis, again, on his left.
He tried to recall the signs over the back-bar. Carnes Finas—something like that. Some kind of beaner faro game or whatever going on in the corner. Remembering him telling old Fabio he was for real, and getting the jefe treatment. Walking on very thin ice again. This time with megaserious weight in the balance. Killer weight.
They stopped. Got out. He went in first. Vandella not at the bar. The place “after hours” now. Closed sign out front. Junkies and dealers and degenerate gamblers—the clientele.
Once upon a time nookie and sports had been his whole life, and not in that order. He wished it could be like that again, that he could turn back the clock and live it over with the advantage of that twenty-twenty hindsight.
Right now he was going to have to summon up his wits and dazzle Happy with some real fancy broken-field running.
“Yo. Where the f
uck you been, amigo?” Happy was decidedly unhappy.
“Hey, dude. I was gonna ask you. We gonna do a thing or what?” Bluffing like a bandit. See if those head fakes still worked.
Brown. Slot. Motion. Two. Jet. On One.
No pain, no gain. No first and ten—no win.
Gut up, Burt, and play through the hurt. Pray for those key blockers.
“Who the fuck are you to ask me if we gonna do a thing?” Happy had his lapel in hand, and he was whispering his burrito breath in Royce's face. “I already told you twice we had it set. You said go ahead and do it. I do it with my people. I overextend based on your word. The word of a trusted amigo. You gonna carry the big time, you say. I got to come looking for you for my money now? What is this bullshit?"
“Hey, dude—cop some Valium or something. I never stiffed you five dollars five seconds. Can you dig that? Who the fuck are you to come muscling me, man?! All you gotta do is ask and I'm here, Happy!” Letting himself get very righteous and loud. Selling it. It either flies or it doesn't.
“All I gotta do is ax. Okay, jefe. I'm axin’ you. You got it?"
“Of course I got it! I got my shit covered, mano."
“Uh-huh. Well, where is it?"
“I'll bring it to you in the morning. Will that get it?"
“In the morning.” The serious black eyes stared at him from under the oily Presley-colored hair. He met the gaze, letting his eyebrows come up a little as if to say—yeah? Any problem? A long couple of seconds ticked by.
“Whatever makes everybody happy,” Happy said, smiling. “Let's catch a buzz.” He turned away, and Royce tried not to take a deep breath.
Brown Slot Motion Two Jet had looked a little raggedy from the sidelines, but this time the big guy was ruling it a completion.
20
JACKSON'S GROVE
The night brought a hard, cold blanket of rain. From where he stood, in a copse of trees at the edge of Jackson's Grove some fifteen miles to the east of Waterton, the tiny farmhouses in the distance looked like frightened survivors huddled against the weather, and whatever else might be lurking out there in the cold rain. He smiled his parody of a huge grin at the thought, thinking of himself as the “whatever else.” It always amused him that the worst thing out in the darkness, or the fog, or the great unknown—was him.
Distant fires smoldered on open hearths in sharecropper shacks and small frame, tar-papered rural dwellings. The monkey people were at their most vulnerable at night, but on a morning such as this, he always thought of them as a stupid, terrorized herd, absurdly easy to manipulate and destroy.
The curtain of rain enveloped everything in a stinking veil of wormy fish odor that he did not find unpleasant. The wet stench and the smell of his own scent in his nostrils accentuated the desolate look of these flatlands, broken only by occasional clots of woods and turnrow tree lines, and the little Monopoly-board houses of potential victims. It was his kind of morning.
Near the distant river there were rocks, willows, and a long ribbon of blacktop that fringed the man-made river levee. He thought about the woman and hardened, breathing slowly, savoring the memory of her look. He would have to get a live one next time. That was how he thought of it—a live one. Somewhere at the end of the blacktop, perhaps, she waited for the taking.
The rain increased in intensity, painting the landscape in a misty silver haze, and he gathered the huge tarp around his face and stomped out of the woods to the used Oldsmobile.
Chaingang Bunkowski could not waddle in off the street, reeking of subterranean sewers and dank drainage culverts, and ask to test-drive a new Peugot. He could, but it would be to create an unforgettable and altogether remarkable image. Nor could he wander into his friendly neighborhood BMW dealer's showroom without arousing considerable suspicions. So that was always the initial consideration when he interfaced with the monkeys: his predetermination of which places might allow him to effectively “blend in” and operate in the persona of a more or less “normal” consumer.
The buying of a used car was typical of such acts, and needed to be handled in the most surreptitious manner, with special care toward the selection of dealers. Williams Auto Mart, a lonesome strip of previously owned chrome, iron, and fiberglass just inside the twenty-five-mile barrier reef of so-called safety, looked appropriate.
Handling the prelims via telephone, delineating parameters, testing resistance quotients, probing the acceptable behavior tolerances, assessing risk factors, preselecting product possibilities, he further narrowed his field of choices.
There was a 1982 Cutlass, an “extremely clean” four-door Buick Century. The salesman, Mr. Williams, thought it was a ‘79. And there was the ‘81 Delta, which he ended up taking for pocket change. It didn't look like much, but it ran just fine.
The pink slip and appropriate DMV paperwork, replete with sanitized history and photo-correct laminated rectangle to match his tags (almost certain not to jar any wants-and-warrants priors) all made him as close to street-legal as he could reasonably get.
These formalities additionally paved the way for certain creature comforts like a place of inexpensive lodging, even a rental property, and—if he wanted to push it—financial respectability at the thrift institution of his choice.
It was, to be sure, a world of cars. Cars, trucks, RVs, and bikes were the core of civilized society. If you had a driver's license and a paid-for pink slip, you couldn't be all bad, so the inference seemed to be. And with that magic talisman, matching registration papers, and an engine block with original numbers—you had what it took to earn the Man's theoretical blessing.
Open the correct door, say the secret words, and you could then open checking accounts, apply for credit cards, hold your head up high, and walk tall and straight as any other lawful taxpayer.
“C. Woodruff” was a GM man, by golly, and he'd drive this old Delta till the bottom rusted out of it. And if Chaingang Bunkowski slammed his nearly 500 pounds into it too many times, the process might be accelerated, but it made a convenient and affordable throwaway.
The car ran quite well, he thought, although he immediately detected bad brakes, and his sensors filled him with an abiding distrust of the master cylinder.
Such thoughts were far from the top level of his perception as he slowly negotiated the pothole-laden blacktop, the faulty wipers producing a rather pleasing background noise. He was somewhere else at the moment, far from Waterton and Jackson's Grove, Missouri, collating and reassessing tables, lists, logs, balance sheets, and graphs. Analyzing deceits, misstatements, distortions, inventions, falsifications, and an entirely counterfeit spectrum of lies imposed by Uncle's hidden agenda.
The physical Chaingang, a well-oiled dispenser of final solutions, trained to kill with machinelike precision and efficiency, was controlled by his mental computer. That computer, in turn, reacted to a variety of triggers, some of them as inexplicable as the influences and confluences of earth, wind, sky, and water.
This morning it had come to him as cold rain, and the thing—whatever it was—had triggered the computer as the beast slept. He came awake with a violent jolt, full power of concentration locked in, packing his belongings with a vengeance, leaving his apparently safe hideaway in Tinytown for the last time.
With the blanketing rain had come a mysterious honing of the discriminatory faculties, a deepening of the sensory capacities, a sharpening of the perspectives—real-time and historical—an enhancement of creative thought and intuitive analysis, and whatever it was that Dr. Norman defined as “physical precognition."
This data-base-directed logic bomb, this cold-hearted heart-taker, idiot savant killer, mindless monster without redeeming humanity, saw the reality with eyes that few of us are even permitted to open.
He drove, driving on automatic pilot, the sky eyes forgotten, because he knew—understood the larger game. He saw the invisible wires. Comprehended, for the first time, the real plan, of which he was only a disposable extra. Stopped. Stood, hiding
in rain-drenched woods, listening and sensing the busy, invisible world around him:
Under his 15EEEEE feet, ciliated protozoans, minute infusorian organisms, decomposed. Slow-moving tardi-grades, microscopic eight-wheelers, came from their watersheds and mossbanks. His computer sorted assertions, theses, conjecture, hypotheticals, ipse dixits; chose the most likely unproved dictum. Scanned.
And just as the four pairs of microlegs moved the tardi-grades in the direction of the decomposing protozoans, the thing that no one could explain pulled him in the direction of the least resistance.
Who understands—in an earthly sense—the mysteries of faith? There are those phenomena that are unknowable, but made conceivable to reason by one's spiritual soul.
Those who believe in God are in very real touch with the supernatural, mystical, yet incontrovertible truth of a holy divinity. The Lord's invisible but certain presence chums out of the believer's heart, appealing to the noble aesthetic sense that is the sum total of one's inner reality.
For Daniel Bunkowski the inner essence is altogether different. Where someone else has the Immaculate Conception, for example, he has this—the thing that lets him see.
This is the truth of what Chaingang believes: that an unseen, unknown watcher clicks a hidden field cam loaded with Ektachrome 400 stock, shooting with one one-hundredth-second shutter speed at f11, using 200-mm telephoto, and he is going to take those fingers that hold that camera and RIP THEM FROM THE ARMS AND THEN RIP THE ARMS FROM THE HANDS AND THEN RIP THE HANDS FROM THE MONKEY SOCKETS and that is what he truly believes in the madness of this cold, wet dawn.
There is a prison term for a con who has an ability to work himself free from handcuffs—even when “black-boxed.” The phrase sits on Chaingang's mental shoulder and smiles: monkey pawed, such an inmate is called. For a souvenir he will take a pair of these monkey paws. That is Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski's inner reality.
