Blossom b-5

by Andrew Vachss

  Cyndi flounced up to the booth. "Hi, Mitch! These your friends?"

  "My brother Virgil, and his nephew Lloyd."

  "Pleased to meet you. Mitch, if Virgil is your brother…and Lloyd is his nephew, what's that make him to you?"

  "Close enough," I said. Virgil laughed.

  I had tuna. Virgil had burgers, fries, and a beer. Lloyd ordered exactly what Virgil did.

  The jukebox came on. Jim Reeves. "He'll Have to Go."

  A voice from a booth behind us. "Hey, get your ass over here! We ain't got all day."

  Blossom walked past us, order pad in her hand. I turned. Her booth was full of greasy humans in biker-drag. Big fat slob on the end, wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves cut out over a T-shirt. Weaselly little guy in the middle. Two drones on the end.

  I couldn't hear what they said. Blossom came past us again, two bright red dots on her cheeks.

  Bonnie Tyler on the juke. "It's a Heartbreak."

  Cyndi came back with the food. Leaned over. "See those slobs in the back booth? I told Blossom to watch out for them. Offered to take the table for her. Those boys are trouble."

  Virgil peered over. "They don't look like trouble to me," he said.

  Blossom came by, a tray in each hand.

  I chewed the tuna slowly, thinking about my target.

  A crash from the booth behind us. "Get your hands off me!" Blossom. I turned. The fat one had his hand under Blossom's skirt, laughing as she pounded at his face, warding her off easily with one hand.

  Lloyd was out of the booth like he'd kicked in an afterburner. "Let her go!" Voice cracking and squeaky. Fatso flung Blossom aside with one hand, stood up just as Lloyd charged into him, face against the bigger man's chest, hands pumping like pistons on nitromethane. I whirled out of the booth, feeling Virgil on my back.

  The fat man backed up under Lloyd's attack, grunting at the body-shots. The kid was holding his own until the fat man grabbed the boy's ears, butted him sharply in the face. Lloyd fell back, blood spurting. I grabbed a table with both hands, spun on my right foot, tilted my body parallel to the floor and shot my left boot into Fatso's ribs. He doubled over as I knife-edged my hand and chopped into his neck. Lloyd piled on, pounding with both hands.

  The two guys on the other end started out of the booth just as Virgil slapped the nearest one with an open palm. It sounded like a rifle shot. Virgil flicked his hand. Bloody glass from the ashtray fell out.

  The weasel-face in the middle got to his feet, back arched against the wall. His hand went to his pocket. Click of a switchblade. Smile twisting on his face. "Maybe you like to play with knives," he snarled, crouching and coming forward.

  I backed off, giving him room, shrugging out of my jacket to wrap it around my hand.

  "Try playing with this, boy!" Blossom's voice. A meat cleaver in her hand, face darkened with blood. Trying to push her way past me to get to the knife-man.

  "That's all! Back up!" Leon. A double-barreled twelve-gauge in his hand.

  The fat man got to his feet, breathing hard, one hand on his neck. "This ain't your beef, man," he said to Leon.

  Leon held the shotgun steady. Said the most damning words in our language. "You ain't from around here. Get out. And don't come back."

  They filed past us. Muttering threats they'd never make good on.

  You ain't from around here. I'd heard that all my life. It was the first time I'd heard them shot at someone else.

  We sat back down. Blossom and Cyndi cleaned up the mess. Leon sat by his cash register, watching. Cyndi switched over to him, gave him a big kiss. "You're a hero, Leon!" He turned red. Kept his eyes front.

  Blossom brought some ice wrapped in a dish towel, held it against Lloyd's face. "You're quite a man," she said, her voice husky. The kid's chest swelled. She bent forward, kissed his forehead. Said "Thank you" in that same voice. And walked away.

  Virgil looked over at Lloyd, chuckled, "Son, don't even be thinking about it."

  "What?"

  "One time, I was about your age, I saw this girl get slapped by her boyfriend on the street. I went over, told him to cut it out. We fought. He damn near beat me to death before they broke it up. Then one of my kin broke him up. Well, that girl gave me a kiss like you just got and I spent the rest of that summer looking for girls to rescue. There's easier ways, son."

  He looked over at me. "But the boy sure as hell can hit, can't he, brother? Wasn't for that head butt, I figure Lloyd would've whipped him straight up."

  "No question about it."

  Jack Scott on the jukebox. "My True Love."

  Blossom came back with a little penlight. Tenderly lifted the dish towel from Lloyd's face. He didn't make a sound. She could have done brain surgery on the kid without anesthetic.

  She shined the light into his eyes, asked him some questions. Checking for a concussion. She hadn't been a waitress all her life. "You're going to need a few stitches," she said.

  "It's okay."

  "You get the stitches now. When the girls ask you where you got the scar, you tell them come around here and ask for Blossom. I'll tell them what a man you are."

  The kid's face was a neon rainbow.

  65

  I SPENT THE next day in the library. Closing off the corners. Looking.

  On the way back to the motel, the car phone purred. Sherwood.

  I left his office with a thick manila envelope.

  When I spread the papers out on the motel bed, I found a list of twenty-nine names. Red check-marks next to five of them. Photocopies of rap sheets, FBI investigative reports, reports from local detectives. The five were all members of something called the Sons of Liberty. Three were suspects in vandalizing a synagogue, never formally charged. All on the subscription list for racial hate sheets, mercenary magazines. And mail-order video-porn.

  If the sniper wanted to join a club, he'd have to crawl under the right rock.

  66

  THE CAR PHONE went off the next morning. My pal the real estate broker? I picked it up.

  "Yes?"

  "Mr. Sloane?"

  "Yes."

  "This is Blossom. At the diner?"

  "I'm here." Nothing in my voice. In my mind: how did she get the number?

  "I need to talk with you. Can you come by this afternoon? After closing? I get off at four."

  Not at six, like Cyndi? "Okay," is all I said.

  "Come around to the back. You…"

  "I know where it is."

  67

  I HAD THE WHOLE rest of the day to think about it. Eight hours.

  A day to a citizen, a lifetime to a convict. I was born sad— I don't remember another time. Sadness was never my friend, never coming into me like those electric fear-jolts when I needed them. It was just always there. Ground-fog on my spirit. I'd go deep into myself, the only safe place I knew in the places where I grew up. Dropping so far down nobody could see me. But the sadness would float on gray tendrils too soft to tear, finding its way between the cracks. I'd feel its misty wet weight settle on me. I could never chase it, so I lived in it. Surviving.

  There was something fine about being where I was. Not in Indiana. With my brother. In a place where I wasn't a stranger, an outsider. New York was a rancid underbelly turned on its back— the maggots at home, not running from a sun that would never shine. A city of ambulatory psychopaths, choking on ethno-insanity. Unsafe even for predators.

  A city that taught me whatever ugliness prison left out.

  You want to make obscene calls, you go where the phone book's the thickest.

  68

  SHE WAS STANDING just to the side of the back entrance when I pulled up to the diner. Wearing her white uniform, a canvas sack that looked like a horse's feedbag slung over one shoulder by a thick strap. I wheeled the car around so the passenger door was parallel to the steps. She climbed in without a word. Reached up and snapped her seat belt into place. Tilted her chin toward the highway. I pulled out into the light afternoon traffic.


  "You know how to get to Hammond?"

  She didn't seem surprised when I turned left at the first light. I let the Lincoln find its rhythm inside the knots of cars, not pushing her. A pickup truck rolled past on our left, two high school girls in the back in shorts and T-shirts, their legs draped over the side, giggling girls' secrets.

  Blossom sat straight-backed in her seat, knees together primly under the white skirt. A faint trace of lilac perfume mingled with cooking smells.

  "You mind if we wait until we get to my house?"

  "It's your play."

  She nodded, calm inside herself. Her face straight ahead, eyes sweeping the interior of the Lincoln, the big car as anonymous as a motel room. If she was looking for clues, it was a dead tie at zero.

  Something about the way she sat in the big car. With me, but by herself.

  Just outside Hammond, we drove up on a freestanding drugstore, as big as some supermarkets. "Can you pull up there for a minute? I need a couple of things."

  I nosed the Lincoln into the mostly empty parking lot, figuring to stay in the car and wait for her. A car engine roared on my left, freezing Blossom to her seat. Screech of tires. An orange Camaro was leading a black Ford and a blue Nova in a tight circle, pebbles and dirt flying off the blacktop. The Camaro pulled out of the circle, looped back and shot toward the center, bisecting the other two cars. It looked like aerial maneuvers on the ground, the cars peeling off to dive-bomb the center.

  The cars fanned out and we both saw it at the same time. A seagull, one wing extended, dragging on the ground, awkward on its webbed feet. Trapped— beak hanging open, its orange eyes watching the cars.

  I saw a little boy, tears swelling his eyes, his face red from the last slap, backing away from his bunk. Three bigger boys moving in on him. Laughing, taking their time.

  I was inside the gull's mind. Knowing what he knew. Waiting for humans to hurt him. Wanting only to get one good rip in with that beak before they took him down.

  Something crackled in my chest. My hand shot inside my jacket. Found only my pounding heart. I jammed the Lincoln into low, stomped the gas and stormed between the gull and the prancing cars.

  When I hit the apex I jammed the brakes, flinging the Lincoln's rear end around, blocking off the gull.

  I jumped out, hands empty, too much inside the gull to care. Sun bounced off the windshields of the other cars— I couldn't see the drivers.

  The Camaro revved its engine, its nose aimed at where I stood. I heard the Lincoln's door slam behind me. I didn't look back. Spread my legs. Shook my hands at the wrists, breathing through my nose, watching the car doors. If they came out together, I knew what I had to do. Drop the closest one, jump in the car he left behind. And see how the others liked being chased.

  Rubber fought with pavement as all three cars shot out of the lot, leaving me standing there. I watched, expecting them to regroup and come back at me. Taillights winked as they hit the brakes at the end of the lot, but they pulled onto the highway. I turned back to the Lincoln. Blossom was bent at the waist over the Lincoln's fender, her hands inside the big canvas purse.

  The gull hadn't moved. I dropped into a squat, started toward him.

  "Wait!" Blossom's voice. She came up behind me, handed me a pair of thick leather gloves. "Use these. That boy's got a beak like a razor."

  I slipped on the gloves, wondering how she knew what I had to do.

  I moved in again. Duck-walking. One slow step at a time. Feeling the blacktop through the soles of my shoes. Talking softly to the gull.

  "It's okay, pal. The punks took off. We faced them down. You're a hell of a gull. Boss bull of the flock you'll be when we get you fixed up. Everything's okay now. Easy…easy, boy."

  He let me get to about ten feet away, flapped his good wing, and faked a run to his right. I was already moving to my right when the beak lashed out at me. I moved just out of his way, talking to him. He centered himself, watched. I let him have my eyes, willing him to feel the calm. "We're not all alike," my mind called to him.

  My legs were starting to cramp when he moved. Toward me. Dragging the broken wing, eyes stabbing into mine. He was out of gas. Coming to trust or to die. I held out a gloved hand. He took it in his beak, experimentally. I felt the pressure, didn't move. Rubbed the back of his neck. His head bowed, eyes blinked. I reached back for the good wing, pinning it to his body as he flapped the broken one, shrieked his battle cry, and ripped at my gloved hand. I pinned the beak closed, stepped over and smothered the bad wing, holding him close, crooning to him.

  Blossom. She snapped open a roll of Ace bandage. Left it on the ground as she manipulated the gull's bad wing, carefully folding it against his body. I got what she was doing, held him as she wound the bandage around his body. He had most of the leather glove ripped open when Blossom slipped a heavy rubber band around his beak.

  "Hold him— I'll be right back," she said.

  She came trotting out of the drugstore with a carton. It said Pampers on the sides. "Give him to me." I handed her the gull. She cradled it against her. "Take off your shirt— he needs a bed inside the box before we close him up."

  I dropped my jacket to the pavement, unbuttoned my shirt, piled it into a soft cushion on the bottom of the box. Blossom slowly lowered the gull inside, closed the top, leaving him in peaceful darkness.

  She held the box on her lap as I drove. Told me to turn on McCook Avenue, off 173rd. "The gray house, the one with the shingles…see it?"

  I pulled into the pebbled driveway, up to a closed single-car garage. Followed Blossom around to the back door.

  She put the box on the kitchen table. Left me standing there. Came back with a leather satchel. Filled a copper-bottomed pot with water and put it on to boil.

  "Let's take a look at him," she said, opening the top of the box. I lifted the gull out, carried him to the counter next to the sink. Sound of metal being tossed into the pot. Blossom deftly made a circle of white surgical tape, fastened cotton balls on the inside, and slipped the soft hood over the bird's beak to cover his eyes. She poured off the boiling water. I glanced in the sink. Gleaming surgical tools: scalpel, scissors, probes.

  "I'm going to cut the bandage loose on his bad side. Hold the other wing in place— I need to spread him out, see what the damage is."

  The broken wing covered a good piece of the counter. Blossom talked to the gull as she worked, hands and eyes one perfect unit. "Take it easy, boy. We'll have you chasing girl gulls in a short piece. Let me take a look, now. Don't fuss."

  More probing. "Here it is. A clean break. I can set it after I cut away these little fragments. There!"

  She wrapped the wings together again, tip of her tongue peeking out between her lips as she concentrated. "There's some old birdcage in the basement. Big enough for a parrot or something. In the left corner off the stairs."

  I found the cage. The handle came almost to my chest. I carried it upstairs. "Put it out on the back porch— we'll have to hose it down."

  I did that while Blossom shredded newspapers for the flooring. She handed me a pair of pliers. "Take out all that other stuff— give him some room."

  I removed the perches until the cage was an empty shell. The door wasn't big enough for the gull— I pried the bars apart to make room. Blossom gently lowered him inside. He made no move to fight. Watched us.

  "There's some salmon in the cupboard. Open a can for him while I get him some cover."

  I opened a can, dumped the salmon inside the cage. Filled the empty can with water and put that inside too. Blossom came back with an army blanket. Cut it into strips with the surgical scissors and draped it over the top of the cage.

  "Have yourself a nice rest, boy," she said. "In a couple of weeks, you'll be back to work."

  69

  I SAT AT THE kitchen table. Blossom stood next to me. "Let's have a look at that hand."

  Blood across the knuckles, one finger sliced cleanly. "Wash it off in the sink. Cold water, no soap. Make sure the
blood runs clean."

  She dried off the hand, spraying some stinging stuff across the open cut, put a butterfly bandage in place. "Won't even leave a scar," she said.

  "You were a nurse once?"

  Her turquoise eyes searched my face, a smile rippling across her wide mouth. "No. No more than you're a real estate speculator. Be right back."

  70

  WHEN I HEARD the rush of the shower, I knew she'd be a while. I cracked a wooden match into fire, lit a smoke. No ashtray on the kitchen table. I went looking. Four small clay pots on the windowsill, clogged with thick greenery. Looked like parsley. A twig planted in each one, standing tall and clean above the growth. Looked closer. Thick-bodied black-and-white-striped caterpillars, one in each pot.

  I opened the dishwasher. No ashtrays, but I found a drinking glass. Opened the tap, poured a half inch of water inside. It'd do.

  Blossom came back inside, wearing a tightly belted pink terry-cloth robe, a towel wrapped around her head.

  "You want some coffee?"

  "No, thanks."

  "A beer?"

  "No."

  She busied herself with making coffee, pouring ground beans into a filter. The beans came from a plain white bag, no brand name. Somebody had handwritten Kenya AA on the side.

  A motorcycle snarled in the street. Mother calling her kids inside for dinner. Dogs barked conversationally. Safe sounds.

  She sat across from me, cradling her heavy white coffee mug in both hands, unselfconsciously plucking at the opening of her robe. At home, unhurried.

  Maybe I couldn't mend a broken wing, but I could outwait a stone. Tossed my cigarette into the water glass and settled down into myself.

  "You're not curious?"

  "About what?"

  "About why I asked you to come and talk to me. About what I said about you not being a real estate speculator."

  "Curious enough to take the ride."

  "But…"

  "I can't play a hand until it's dealt."