Slice

by Rex Miller

  She rode close to him and her perfume was intoxicating. She seldom failed to arouse him up close like this, and as always, when he glanced over at this lady he could never quite fully believe was his, she stirred that kind of desire and admiration in him. Donna's scent mingled with the car interior making the vehicle smell newer, more luxurious than it was, and her nearness made the lights a little brighter. They had Laurindo playing on the tape deck.

  “That's nice."

  “Just your basic unamplified, six-string, open-face guitar sandwich. He do play."

  “He play good, Laurindo do."

  “I play good too. Wanna play later?"

  “Umm. And I wanna play Saturday too but not what you think exactly.” She snuggled against him. “I want you all to myself all day Saturday."

  “I'll have to look at my calendar. I have a very busy schedule. My dance card is very full at this time of the season. I'll check."

  “You do that little thing. Make room in your busy schedule for Donna. All day Saturday. Really."

  “Okay. Whatcha got planned?"

  “Just something,” she told him mysteriously.

  “I don't like surprises. Tell me."

  “I won't tell. You can do anything you want and I won't talk."

  “Are you saying your lips are sealed?"

  “I won't go THAT far.” She giggled a womanly giggle. “I mean let's not get crazy here. I won't say that my lips are sealed but I won't spoil my surprise. Just be mine alone all day Saturday."

  “I'll see if I can clear the decks. Tell Racquel and Heather I just don't have time for them Saturday."

  “You're too kind to me. Whatta guy."

  “I know."

  When Saturday came she woke him up with kisses and fresh juice and coffee and they had breakfast in bed.

  “I made you a card.” And she handed him a card with the legend HAPPY BIRTHDAY written across the front and then he remembered it was his birthday. “I hope you like homemade greeting cards because I couldn't find one I liked.” He told her he did and opened it and inside a drawing of a big heart she'd written his birthday message. He read it out loud.

  “I love you, my husband. You have made my life a dream that I thought would never come true. When you are away from me I feel the way you hold me and when I make up our bed it makes me tingle just to see your imprint in the sheets. I love you a lot and I will be yours forever. You are the best man I've ever known. All my love.” And he turned and they kissed over the Xs drawn across the bottom of the card.

  “That's enough. That's for later,” she said, drawing away from him. He looked at her with such love and in that second he couldn't imagine that he'd ever bad a life without her.

  “You drive a hard bargain,” he told her. “So. Get dressed and come into the Official Birthday Room.” The Official Birthday Room was the living room. There was a box, a large, beautifully wrapped box, and he opened it. There was a beat-up baseball and two well-used gloves, together with a note.

  This is the old-time saturday you told me about. Remember the way it was when you were a kid? Playing catch with your dad? Going to Shepherd's Drugstore with your pals? Then reading a comic book out under the trees? Going to the double feature at the Orpheum? Have fun! Love—xxx, Donna.

  “I'll be your dad. I get the catcher's mitt, so—let's go, son,” she said. She had a little trouble keeping the cap on all that hair. Finally she hairpinned it in place somehow, a Mets cap that had been a gift to Eichord from a guy he'd worked with once, and he followed her out into the yard.

  “Burn it in there,” she said. She had on one of his old shirts and a pair of shorts you couldn't see somewhere under the shirt tail. “Burn one in to your old dad."

  “Hate to say this but you don't look anything like old dad.” She pushed out even the voluminous shirt front.

  “Cut the talk, son, ‘n burn one in."

  “Okay.” He pitched one to her.

  “Come on, boy,” she told him, “you can throw harder than that. I'm not no sissy girl."

  “Right, Dad.” He threw another.

  She hopped around blowing on her hand. “Okay,” she said, “that wraps up the catch game. Besides I gotta get these rented gloves back.” He laughed. “You made Dad's hand sting. Later you can kiss it and make it well."

  “I aims to please."

  “I hear that. Okay. It's time to read our comic book under the tree.” She went and returned with a sack in her hand, motioning for him to come with her. They sat under a red maple.

  “Look what came in the mail."

  “What on earth?” It looked like one of the old-time comic books that he used to subscribe to. Sure enough, there was an old mailing sticker on the familiar brown paper with his name and his address where he'd grown up. “Where in hell—"

  “I'll never tell.” She had found an old copy of Children's Activities Magazine and soaked his mailing label off the cover and glued it to the wrapper she'd made for the comic. He removed it gently from the container and opened it.

  “MY GOD! Walt Disney's Comics & Stories! I haven't seen one of those in thirty years. Where on earth?"

  “Some guy up in Missouri sells old comic books. I remembered you telling me about the covers."

  “Huey and Dewey and Louie with Uncle Donald,” he said, smiling one of the biggest smiles she'd ever seen on his face. The nephews were watching Donald about to go skiing. But two rows of tiny animals, birds, and assorted hangers-on had lined up on the back of each of Donald's skis. “That's the way I remember them. I got this one, and Tarzan and Red Ryder. Three comics a month from the same company—I'll never forget it."

  “I know—I know. I wrote it all down. I thought about getting you a Tarzan, too, but I didn't know how you'd feel about my selling the car, so I held off on that one.” They laughed.

  “Okay,” Donna told Jack when he'd finished perusing the adventures of the ducks. “Let's go to the drugstore.” They went off to the side of the house and there was something about the size of a Volkswagen parked in the space between the Eichord's house and the next-door neighbor's.

  Eichord said, “I think I can guess. By the size of it you've purchased a time machine and we're going to get in and go back to 1947?"

  “That's right,” she said, going “Tadaaaaaaaa” as she pulled the sheets off the surprise.

  “Oh, NO!” He laughed. “Where on earth did you get THESE?"

  “That's a long story. When we were in Dallas I remembered you talking about the drugstore, and drooling about the old days at the drugstore, and those sundaes and the ice water after the bad game, and your description of the big fan overhead, and the little wire chairs with the heart shapes, and the marble table. Anyway, I saw an ad for the table and chairs at a garage sale, so I got ‘em for us."

  “Perfect."

  “Well, the table is wood and not marble but you can pretend."

  “Yeah.” He sat down on the tiny chair with great care.

  “Wait there,” she told him. She returned from the kitchen with a sundae, complete with fudge topping, nuts, whipped cream, and a cherry.

  “AHA,” he yelled in recognition as she also placed a glass of water in front of him.

  “Yes, sir. Only the best for my darlin'. A genuine Coca-Cola glass full of old-time ice water."

  “I love it,” he said with heartfelt feeling, taking a delicious, incredible bite of the ice-cream concoction and a sip of the cold water. “Just as I remember. Wonderful."

  “Okay."

  “Fabulous. Pure essence of Shepherd's Drugstore.” He finished in a wave of nostalgic contentment. Some wife.

  “So far so good. Let's see—the game of catch. The comic book. I got ‘em out of order but anyway—then the drugstore. Okay. Time to go to the show.” She pulled him back into the house and led him to his easy chair in front of the television in the living room and picked his feet up, sliding an ottoman up under his legs, then slipping his bedroom shoes off. He was still dressed in slacks, T-shirt, and
his old Leo Gorcey pinback hat that he'd worn to play catch in. Nobody's perfect, he thought wryly.

  She sat a small box in his lap.

  “You're KIDDING! A CRIME CLUB movie! A serial! MY GOD IS THIS REALLY THE GREEN HORNET! FROM 1939?” He read the tape labels out loud. “How in hell did you find these?"

  “Same guy I got the comic book from.” She took one of the tapes from him and went over to their video machine. “I've been practicing. Watch.” She had learned how to insert the tape. She pushed play. “Have fun. I'm going shopping,” she said, leaving Jack Eichord mesmerized in front of a buzzing hornet's image as his childhood began to flash before his eyes.

  He watched four chapters of the old Green Hornet movie, wishing there was someone he could talk to who would understand the delight of the experience. Somebody he could tell about Al Hodge, whose voice had been synched to the lead character's speech. Al Hodge, out of the time warp on Eichord's happy birthday. He was halfway through the Crime Club movie when he heard the car pull up.

  Donna blew in with her arms loaded down.

  “Need a hand?” he said, revealing no intention to move from his seated position.

  “I think I'll be able to manage. You having a good time?"

  He smiled and nodded.

  About fifteen minutes passed and he heard a radio playing or some music coming faintly from the bedroom. Another ten minutes or so and the movie ended, so he shut the equipment off and got up, then went into the bedroom to tell her how much he was enjoying his day.

  “Mmmmmm,” he said. Donna was in a wispy thing that covered her shoulders and most of her large, high breasts. Matching wisp of a bikini. “Nice.” God, she looked good.

  “Fire-engine red."

  “Yeah,” he said, his heart in his throat.

  “Come on over."

  “Okay,” he said, wasting no time.

  “Do I know what you like or what?"

  “You know what I like."

  “Do I know the way you like it?"

  “Nnnn.” He tried to answer but his mouth was busy.

  She took him through the sex just as she had the rest of his birthday surprises. Making it all for him, leading him, orchestrating it so their lovemaking would be just the way HE wanted it, just the way any man would like it. Biology and Mother Nature took over and when she was through he was spent, spread-eagled across the bed in blissful, or so it appeared, immobility.

  But inside his copper core that thing that was with him all the time now remained cold and untouched. It was loathsome, whatever it was, because it had diminished the joy of the day and made fabulous sex routine, and the thing was all the more annoying because he couldn't put a handle on it.

  He labeled it as apprehension, and Jack suspected that Jimmie was bringing this down on him, but when Jack felt apprehensive about something he could normally isolate the reasons why and do something about the emotion. This was something else and it was dogging him all the time now. A dark, unidentifiable silhouette of something too far away to see with clarity.

  Neither the Hornet nor Kato nor Donna Eichord's tastiest ice-cream treats could manage to dispel the sense of foreboding he carried. A shadowy thing that he knew would be taking form soon. A paranoiac, ominous suspicion and dread that made Eichord unfit for the company of lovable ducks.

  STOBAUGH COUNTY

  By midafternoon they had reached Stobaugh, and they crossed over the county line. Chaingang was totally tuned out as the girl hummed and sang contentedly with the radio. He was physically as well as mentally in another time and place. He was back in Southeast Asia with Michael Hora.

  What would Sissy have thought had she known the truth or even vestiges of it? Could she have begun to comprehend that this thing beside her with the deep voice and the huge girth and the strange mannerisms and the bandaged face—that this man was a true genius of sorts? A genius of assassination? He had been discovered on death row in Marion, most fearsome of our federal prisons. A security arm of the intelligence community, as it is laughingly called, had found him and in the sensitive early years of the war created a small, secret unit around this unlikely figure.

  He had been tested, and a gamble was taken. He was sent to Vietnam along with other similar individuals, programmed—or so they hoped—to work in covert, counterinsurgency assassination teams. And he had performed his function better than they had ever dreamed. Bunkowski was a unique entity. Godzilla and the shark from Jaws or its human counterpart and the Pillsbury Doughboy all in one remarkable, bestial, freak mutation. A human being who truly lived for only one reason: to kill. A killing machine.

  In Southeast Asia he killed the little people with a mad fury, both “good guys” and VC alike. In truth he saw no distinction. And there come a time when the security masters tried to terminate the members of the anomalous band that was fast becoming a dangerous potential liability. Chaingang and Michael Hora were two of the only survivors of this execution attempt, and they escaped.

  They had not been close or even casual buddies. In fact, both of them were friendless, dangerous, self-contained killers who lived only for number one. Chaingang did not particularly respect Hora's abilities as a fighter, and Hora of course viewed Bunkowski as a monster or a total maniac, but they shared the common enemy and that had been enough for at least a begrudging relationship. During this time Daniel had learned of Hora's “place” south of Chicago. For a price, he was sometimes willing to shelter those on the run from the law. It was a piece of minutia to be filed away for possible future retrieval.

  Now, these many years later, Chaingang Bunkowski looked at some old notes in the back of his “bible,” a ledger of escape plans he had worked on while in prison, and he saw the map of how to find Hora, assuming the man were still alive and the property still his. The thing that kept Bunkowski one step ahead of his adversaries made him feel confident Michael Hora would be there.

  “Well, it won't be long now,” he told the girl, and presented her with an item from the trunk. She brightened when she saw the sack of magazines. “I think it's important for you to study for an hour or so. Read up on all these stars so you can learn their ways.” He handed her some of the schlock grocery-store tabloids and movie magazines.

  “Sure. Great.” She was delighted and he knew she'd stay riveted to her important homework while he checked out the lay of the land.

  “I should be back in an hour or less. But just wait here. You can sit over there"—he pointed—"or stay in the car. But stay nearby. Okay?"

  She nodded.

  He moved with the curious grace of the very heavy. That peculiar flat-footed, splayed, deceptively easy gliding movement that is somewhere between lumbering and waddling. From the distance his vast upper torso appeared to be propelled by the great tree-trunk legs, arms swinging slightly as he moved. Only when he was tired and his bad ankle could not fully support the bulk could you discern the slight limp.

  The field ended with a tree line and he eased over some long-forgotten, rusting barbed-wire fence that had broken and been slowly crushed down by the unstoppable tide of vetch and poison ivy and creeper vine and pigweed and honeysuckle and multifloral rose and God only knows what kind of grass and weed and abomination of Mother Nature. And he was through the trees and weeds and in an overgrown parcel of pastureland that backed up to the property.

  He moved steadily and on a perfectly straight line, thinking of nothing in particular but with the mixture of awareness that he carried right beneath his mental surface feeding his on-line terminals. Telling him the field was full of snakes. A few would be poisonous. There were cattle milling off somewhere in the wooded acreage to his right, and water nearby. And he knew there would be dogs. People. The taped tractor chain swung against his leg, the heavy weight a comforting presence.

  The junk began before he had cleared the far edge of the pasture. He'd seldom seen anything like it. A panorama of blight. Huge, rust-encrusted mounds of everything imaginable. Filth-covered bedsprings and the guts from a hu
ndred junked television sets. Ancient pumps and what was left from an old hay saw. Broken I-beams and cracked engine blocks and parts of tools and discarded appliances. Pieces of transient lives and memories and throwaways and investments gone bad and farms gone sour and marriages gone awry and a thousand broken, burst, busted, bummed-out vestiges of the American Dream left to mold and mildew and oxidize and collect weeds in the hot sun and cold winters of the great midwestern pastureland. All the white, gray, gunmetal, blue, silver, chrome, oilslick shades and hues and paint jobs had been worn and ground down to the same color—an ugly, ferruginous brownish shit red.

  But this is not what he saw as he walked through the snaky weeds. He did not see broken dreams and bedsprings. He did not care about tanks, transmissions, trucks, clodbusters, cultivators, combines, planters, Plymouths, plows, rippers, rollers, refrigerators gutted to make pump houses and left to turn to rust. He saw hiding places, coffins, burial grounds, camouflage, ambush sites, killing zones, field expedient resupply, death and torture and escape and evasion.

  He was Chaingang then, not Daniel, walking through the tall fescue and the creeper vine, the heavy chain swinging against a tree-trunk leg, and if you crossed him out here, out in all this overgrown world of desolate junk, you dropped. You disappeared. You bought it. Because this was a world he could relate to. The kind of things he gravitated toward. Junkyard dogs and snakes and lonely, frightening places with no one around to hear a cry for help. Nobody near to blunder onto a freshly dug grave. This was snuffie country.

  He was aware of Michael Hora's presence then. Not that be thought Hora was watching him through a scope or anything. It was just a subliminal feeling that there was a dangerous man somewhere nearby. He was close now. And as he walked, guided by that inexplicable compass inside him, never hesitating for even that fraction of a fleeting second, one saw what Chaingang saw as he moved toward his destination, homing in on human heartbeat.