by Thomas, Lee
“He thought you were someone else,” Carl said frantically. “I’m sorry, Ernst. We’ve been drinking and it’s muddled his thoughts. I’m so sorry. He thought you were someone else, someone who died many years ago.”
I put up my hands and back toward the door. A smile moves my lips. Carl smiles in return. The fat man similarly grins with relief.
I embrace the residue of violence like a lost friend, holding it tightly to my chest, where its familiarity warms me.
~ ~ ~
Outside, the night air caresses my face. A band of plum lines the horizon to the west. I lean against the side of the building, smoking a cigarette. The violence is still with me, and I am made peaceful by its swaddling. Few would understand my admiration for conflict. I am no sadist, nor a masochist. If anything I am absolutely sensible about it. It is man’s nature. Some, like the Indian Gandhi, will extol the virtues of peace and passivity. Ridiculous. If man were a soft creature, he would still crawl through the mud. No. Without struggle mankind would be no more interesting than the sunflower plant. Only through violence, rebellion, conflict was our history possible. Nietzsche wrote of this. He rightly points out that deviation fuels progress. Happy people, the truly content, have no cause for revolt, no motive for war, so we are created a dissatisfied and greedy species. Naturally we will also be a violent species, taking what we imagine should be ours, killing for gods we imagine will one day bring us peace. These justifications for conflict are lies – they are imaginings like fairies and witches – but the violence they fuel is true and honest. It is man’s way. To refute this truth is to hate the self.
For many years I knew little but conflict, fighting for ideals that lifted the violence to acts of valor. No more a soldier, I now reject battle and will instigate no discord, though I will not deny it, as my actions in the bar clearly show. Conflict is an opiate but one I no longer crave.
I crush the remains of my cigarette under my shoe and work it into the dirt. I am surprised to find I’m not alone at the side of the bar.
Standing at the corner is the unremarkable-looking man in the dark suit. He looks at me as if concerned. I say hello to the man, but he doesn’t immediately reply. He appears to be forming words in his mind, but they tangle and knot and he cannot speak.
“Will you try to kill me, too?” I ask. It is a joke, but the man’s face blossoms in surprise. His head shakes quickly. “Good,” I say.
“No, I....” His voice is deep but he is not a confident man. Words confound him.
What does he want?
“I was just going to ask you for a cigarette.”
“Ah, good. Yes.” I give him one and take another for myself.
He inhales smoke, again looking at me like I am an injured child. The expression insults me, but I feel I am not interpreting it properly.
“I thought that guy was going to kill you.”
“He was going to kill me. I decided it better he didn’t.”
“Yeah,” this man says with a chuckle. “You look like you can take care of yourself.”
“I’ve seen a number of good fights. This one, tonight, was not so good.”
“What was he calling you?”
“What do men always call each other? He believed I was a thing he hated and he labeled me such. It doesn’t matter if I was this thing or not. He simply wanted an excuse to fight.”
“Did you screw his wife or something?”
“I have no use for women.”
Like many to whom I’ve said these words, his face darkens with confusion. He does not understand my meaning. In the beer halls and brothels and cabarets back home, such an admission surprised no one. It was understood without explanation, but those were places of honesty. Not like this place. These people and their masks, their roles. A man is this. A woman is that. In this place, there is John Wayne and there is Vivien Leigh. They are stories they’ve created for themselves. The truth of them lies buried deep: layered clothing against the cold.
“No use for them?” this man asks.
“Yes. I grew up among men. A soldier.”
This seems to amuse him. He smiles around the cigarette. He pulls it from his mouth and says, “I can think of one use for a woman.”
“And I cannot.”
It is then that I recognize the question he was asking. I have already answered it.
“A lot of people would call that a sickness.”
“What is the difference between a lot of people and a pack of dogs? People are led by ideas, and they believe that if they don’t share the ideas they will be left behind to starve.”
“I don’t follow.”
“People fear being alone.”
“And you don’t?”
“Alone is not so bad.”
“You’re a strange guy.”
“Yes,” I say. “You should be concerned about a man as strange as me.”
“You’re not so bad. Are you?”
“You should get back to your woman,” I tell him.
“She’s not mine. Just a whore looking for a tumble.”
“That’s an ugly word: whore.”
“I thought you had no use for women?”
“I have no use for a lion, but I respect it.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve already said my good nights to her. I was hoping I might find a bar in town, someplace that wasn’t quite so depressing.”
“You go to the Longhorn Tavern. They are happier there.”
“Is that where you’re headed?”
“No. Ernst is going home.”
“Your name is Ernst?”
“Yes.”
The man extends his arm to shake my hand but he does not offer his name. I understand him now. He tries to remain hidden, waiting to be drawn out. It is a tiresome flirtation, but common in this place. If I say nothing, he will go away. His desire means less to him than his role. But he will drive me home if I ask him, and he will come inside and have a beer if I ask him, and he will fuck if I ask him, so when it is finished he can tell himself he is without responsibility for the incident. He is a soldier waiting for orders, though he doesn’t understand the cause for which he fights.
Once, I was a captain. I led men. They followed my orders and fought for my cause.
This man would be no different.
~ ~ ~
He lies on my bed. Naked. Face down. I was in the kitchen putting away the beer bottles when he walked into my room. He undressed and lay on the bed. His head is turned away from me, facing the wall. His arms embrace a pillow. The pose and what it suggests disgusts me. He behaves like an animal in the woods, indifferent to the beast that mounts him.
“Nuh,” I tell him. “This is no good.”
“Oh, Christ,” he says. Fear edges his words.
Naturally he misunderstands me.
He hurries from the bed and reaches for his trousers. I circle the bed and stop him. Clasping his unremarkable face in my hands, I hold him tightly and force his face close to mine. The fright in his eyes is saddening. He thinks I mean him harm, and he tries to pull away.
My grasp is too strong. I give him a light shake.
“Look at me,” I tell him. “Look at me.”
“Christ,” he repeats, now a prayer.
I kiss him then. My lips press against his but he does not reciprocate. He struggles even more as if I have tried to bite him. I pull away and shake his head again.
“Look at me,” I say.
“What are you doing?” he asks as if I am a criminal holding a razor to his neck.
“You do what I say. In the end, it is all the same to you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t understand because you don’t want to understand.”
I kiss him again and this time I don’t pull away. I keep my lips to his until he is certain I am not hurting him, and he responds slowly, but eventually his jaw loosens and his lips soften, and his hands slide over my shoulders and hold me tightly. I release his head and embrace him gently. Skin pas
ses beneath my palms. Muscles not yet relaxed meet my touch. I move my mouth to his neck. His head falls back to allow me access to his throat. My tongue traces down his chest and my hand goes to his cock. This is better. This is good.
~ ~ ~
He wakes me from a dream of bullets and leaves of blood and tells me he must go. I tell him that is good and he says that he will stay in Barnard another night and will be back the next week and then again in a few week’s time, and I am confused by the recitation of his schedule as I feel it has nothing to do with me, but he asks if he might call, perhaps tomorrow or during a future visit, and I tell him yes, he may call. I climb out of bed and walk to the kitchen, feeling his gaze on my skin like whispered breath. In the kitchen I write my phone number on a scrap of paper and hand it to him, feeling I have accomplished nothing but the waste of paper and ink. I escort him to the door and he walks into the darkness.
A boy in Munich once said he loved me, and I laughed, imagining he was playing some bedroom game, pretending we were husband and wife, but he played no game and his admission made me cruel. I wish I had understood what his words had meant. So long ago. His name escapes me now, but I wonder where that boy is. Did he find a companion who was not so ignorant as to misinterpret his declaration?
Is he happy? Is he even alive?
Thirteen: Sheriff Tom Rabbit
Sunday morning, Tom Rabbit dressed for church in his best cotton suit. Downstairs, Estella prepared his breakfast. He knotted his tie three times before he finally got it right, and then he cinched it to his collar and smoothed it over the lapel of his shirt. Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw the toll the last five weeks had taken on his face. He looked drawn and dog tired, hardly a full night’s sleep since he’d pulled Harold Ashton out of those woods, and his days had become exhausting rituals of listening to complaints about his competency, writing down inane tip-offs, and interrogating the local Germans in the hope that one of them knew something – or someone – that could bring peace back to Barnard.
He ate his breakfast slowly and drank only half of his normal cup of coffee. The aching knot in his gut hadn’t let up. Most days it chose to be no more noticeable than a dull throb, but today it burned in his belly like a coal, and Tom felt his breakfast hitting that coal like kerosene.
The waiting ate at him. Sure as the sun rose, another boy was going to turn up. If Harold Ashton had been the only victim, Tom could have taken minor consolation in the idea that a drifter had murdered the boy, but after David Williams, Tom felt certain their killer was here to stay, and if Tom didn’t do his job, the killer would find himself another young man to add to his list. Exactly how long this list was Tom didn’t know. They had found two victims but the murderer’s notes put the number at four. Doc Randolph had suggested these additional victims might not have come from Barnard, but could be remnants of an earlier spree carried out in another city or another country. Tom preferred that idea, though was hesitant to believe it.
He pushed a wedge of bread around on his plate, but instead of eating it he dropped the soggy bit on the remains of his eggs and pushed the plate away. Estella patted his shoulder and he turned to find her worried expression.
“Thank you,” Tom said. “It was very good. S’pose I’m not hungry.”
Estella smiled and retrieved the plate. She carried it to the sink and placed it in the basin. Then she turned to Tom and said, “Sheriff Rabbit?”
“Yes,” he replied, not looking up from the table.
“I am going to my mother’s today after church. May I stay there tonight?”
“Of course, Estella,” he said. Only then did he realize that she was speaking, and the fact that her pronunciation was so good took another moment for Tom to process. When it did, he smiled broadly. “You said that very well.”
“Thank you, Sheriff Rabbit,” Estella said. “My aunt teaches me.”
“It’s nice to hear a woman’s voice around here again,” Tom said.
The phone on the wall above his right shoulder rang. The sound of phone bells had become repugnant to Tom since lately the device had brought him nothing but bad news. He closed his eyes at the second ring and took a deep breath, stomach churning like a volcanic pit.
The call came from Big Lenny Elliot, who lived a few blocks off Kramer Lake on San Jose Street. His eldest boy, Little Lenny, sixteen years old and nearly a twin for his daddy, was nowhere to be found.
~ ~ ~
The Elliot household was in an uproar when Tom arrived. Big Lenny threw the door open and ushered Tom inside the untidy home. Clothes, papers, dishes, toys, and kids were everywhere. Big Lenny had married his wife, Kathy, young, and they hadn’t wasted a moment before starting to bring babies into the world. Thirty-three-years old and the man already had eleven children to feed, and Kathy was good and plump with another one. Little Lenny had been the first, and worry boiled beneath his parents’ skin.
Tom stood in the living room, feeling like he had been dropped in the middle of a particularly unkempt schoolhouse. Small faces surrounded him, looking up at him expectantly. Some smiled. Others looked at him like he was a two-headed calf.
“He went to bed at ten, like always,” Big Lenny said. “Always at ten. I don’t care what’s on the radio.”
“Is there any chance he left the house early for some reason?”
“Naw, sir,” Big Lenny said. “I get up before anyone else. The one thing my boy and me don’t share is rising with the sun. He’ll sleep all day if we let him, but he’s young yet.”
“What about last night?” Tom asked. “Could he have slipped out of the house after you folks went to bed?”
“Why on earth would he have done that? And if he did, where is he now?”
A little girl waddled up to Tom and slapped his knee before the toddler giggled and scurried off to her mother’s skirt. Two boys stopped playing with a toy wooden truck on the sofa and started jabbering questions at Tom nonstop, asking about trains and horses and bank robbers and radio programs. Big Lenny looked at Kathy and said, “Would you settle these children down?”
She gave her husband a wounded look and placed her hands on her belly as if protecting the child within from his voice.
“Why don’t you show me the boy’s room,” Tom said. “Maybe we can have a private talk.”
“You’re the sheriff,” Big Lenny said, turning on his heels and leading Tom to the back of the house. They passed through the kitchen and Big Lenny stopped at the threshold of the mudroom. Tom peered inside and saw a simple cot laid out with a pillow and rough woolen blanket. “Little Lenny couldn’t sleep, sharing a room with his four brothers so he took this space here. Been just fine for him the last year.”
“Did you make the bed this morning?”
“Naw, sir,” Big Lenny said. “Everything’s just the way we found it.”
The pillow looked fluffed and the blanket lay neatly over the cot’s shallow mattress. Things appeared neat, orderly. It didn’t look like Little Lenny had been dragged from his bed. Maybe someone he’d known had come to the door and asked him outside, or the Cowboy might have coerced him at gunpoint, but would the killer have waited for Lenny to make his bed?
“Does Little Lenny have a girl in town?” Tom asked.
“Naw, sir,” the man said. “None that I heard about, and he wouldn’t keep something like that quiet.”
“Has he stayed out all night before?” Tom asked. “Maybe stirring up trouble with friends?”
“Naw, sir, and I know what you’re trying to do, Sheriff, and I already thought about this every which way. He’s gone and I know someone took him, and I know you have to get out there and find him before he ends up like that Ashton boy or Deke’s son. You got to find him, because it will kill Kathy if anything happens to that boy.”
Tom noted the hitch in Big Lenny’s voice and saw the moisture at the man’s eyes. He nodded his head and crossed the mudroom. A row of dirty children’s boots stood by the door, arranged smallest to largest.
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“Are Lenny’s boots gone?”
“I didn’t think to check,” Big Lenny said, leaning into the room. He eyed the row of boots and nodded his head. “They aren’t there.”
“Do you know if Lenny kept this back door locked while he was sleeping?”
“Since the Ashton boy and all.”
“Have you called his friends? Just checked to see if he got restless last night.”
“I’m not a complete fool, Sheriff. Of course I called around, but no one seen him, and you know why no one seen him, and you have to find him. I don’t care if you and your men have to search every German house in the city. You best find my boy before he ends up like Harold Ashton and David Williams.”
“Settle down, Lenny,” Tom said. “It looks like his bed was made and he had time to put on his boots. Looks like he left of his own mind, and that’s a good sign. I’ll bet he comes home before the morning is done, but me and my men are going to follow up on this right away, so’s you and Kathy can get back your piece of mind. Now, I want you to write down the names of Lenny’s closest friends and whatever phone numbers you might have for them. He might have said something to them about where he was going.”
“I already told you….”
“Yes, but folks are going to know this is serious business if they’re talking to the sheriff and not the boy’s daddy. Kids’ll cover each other up, but only so much. You get me those names. And I’d appreciate it if you could keep your children out of the backyard until my men have had a chance to look it over.”
