Murders Among Dead Trees

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  Everybody wants to stare at Jerry but they don’t, except for Jack. That’s another reason Jack makes me fidgety. He seems immune to social conventions. He does what we all want to do. He stares into the chaos of Jerry’s lopsided fang-filled grin and the ball of skin hanging from the end of his nose. His face is an accident you feel guilty for gawking at so you peek and look away, peek and look away. I get queasy if I look directly at Jerry when he talks, but fortunately his utterances are rare. We steal our glances, are revolted and feel guilty for the sick pleasure staring brings. We look and become fascinated with our wristwatches. Moments pass and we look again with fresh horror.

  In the circle, most of us have pale, drawn faces which, I think, reflect my thoughts. We all need more sleep. We can’t keep a job but our insurance doesn’t provide enough money. We look for meaning in our affliction but, unlike other diseases, there’s never much to be found.

  If you have a heart attack, that’s God telling you to live more, get off your ass and take better care of yourself. Cancer? Live deeply and savour life’s joys and contemplate the mysteries. Extreme tinnitus doesn’t have much meaningful to share. All I’ve come up with is, “Oh my God. Oh my God. What if the noise gets worse? I’ll kill myself…but at least I’m not Jerry. Hey, what?”

  Dr. Percy gazes at me. His face says he’s asked a question.

  “Sorry?”

  “I said, we haven’t heard from you since your first meeting. Why don’t you share with us?”

  Oh, sweet Christ. Crystal nudges me with a sharp elbow I assume she thinks is good-natured encouragement. It’s the first time a woman has touched me on purpose in two years. I flush and try a joke but it doesn’t come out like a joke. “Well, it’s not a brain tumor. The doctors ruled that out.”

  Percy stares at me, unsatisfied. “That’s true of everyone here. Why don’t you share something about your feelings, Mr. Murphy?”

  “I’m in the middle of a divorce, so…I guess I kind of feel like I’m dealing with this on my own.”

  “Back up. What kind of tinnitus do you have?” a youngish guy in plaid golf pants says from the edge of my peripheral vision. He’s got a braying voice that spends too long on the vowels and he always speaks with authority, like he’s in charge.

  “Pulsatile tinnitus.”

  “Well, that’s much better than sirens. I got sirens. Sounds like a fire engine in my head. I’d take your kind of tinnitus any day.”

  “It’s not a competition,” Dr. Percy says.

  Golf guy bobs his head and says “Of course,” loud and long, like some other bonehead — not he — had suggested it was.

  Percy gives me the nod and I stumble in. “I’ve got two kids at home, a little boy and a teenaged girl. I feel like if I can learn to deal with this, maybe I can deal with all the other stuff better.”

  “Other stuff?” Percy says. He fixes me with his eyes and sticks a fist under his chin in a way that suggests he’s bored but has adopted the “This Is My Listening Pose.” I wonder how bad his back pain is. I hope it’s pretty bad.

  “Well, you know. The divorce, the kids, the mortgage. I gotta pay lawyers and we’ll probably lose the house. I’m out of work and…I guess I’m feeling overwhelmed. Getting out to group is the only break I take.”

  Jack sits up like he’s at attention and, for a second, I see the soldier he was. “You get one night out a week and you come here? Jesus.”

  Percy has no doubt caught Jack’s vibe and looks offended. “Do you think Mr. Murphy is wasting his time here?”

  “That’s up to him, but if I were him, I’d be heading out to a peeler bar. If I only got out one night a week, I’d be using more imagination and make time for fun.”

  I can feel Crystal beside me shift in irritation and she kicks her purse over in the process. “Easy for you to say. He’s got kids at home. It’s really not easy to get out for single parents.”

  Jack looks back, unimpressed. “He manages to make it here. And he said he’s got a teenaged daughter. Let her babysit. It’ll keep her out of trouble and get divorced dad a life.”

  I jump back in, hating that they’re talking about me like I’m not here. “I’m not divorced yet.”

  “That’s interesting,” Percy says, adding his Thinking Face to his Listening Pose. It’s surely meant to convey that something profound is coming, but instead I think of shrinks as depicted in newspaper comic strips. I wonder if his back pain feels like a serrated steak knife twisting into his vertebrae.

  “You say you aren’t divorced yet. Do you think it’s not going to happen?”

  “Well, no. She’s moved a couple thousand miles away, so that’s it.”

  “She abandoned you and her children, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was this after you developed tinnitus?” Percy says, leaning forward. “She left you because of this?”

  “No. The tinnitus came afterward. We’d done a lot of fighting before then, mostly about money. She left to go live with some guy who owns a beach house.”

  “Oh,” he says. The bastard actually looks disappointed, like if Josy had left me because of the tinnitus, it would have had significance to the group. As it was, I didn’t fit the script so I was a therapeutic dead end.

  “Bad bounce. Bad bounce, hey what?” Jerry says and Dr. Percy shrugs and looks at Jerry and looks his watch.

  We take an early break. The donuts are stale and the coffee is burnt. We mill around, talking little and mostly listening to the unique sounds that only each of us can hear.

  After the break, we go to the high school’s language lab. We sit in rows of little wooden booths and wear big headphones. At first, the empty headphones seem to amplify the drumming in my ear. Then Dr. Percy’s voice comes through and he talks to us in a fake, breathy voice he must imagine is soothing. We’re about to hear music played at very low volume. We’re supposed to ignore the sirens and the shrieking and the pounding in our ears. Instead, we focus on the music playing quietly below the din. I wonder if Dr. Percy has cancer of the spinal cord and if it’s eating him, not yet diagnosed, but rotting him to a puddle until he is boneless.

  The music is there, like a slow moving whale swimming deep, oblivious to the typhoon raging above it. An hour goes by and at first all I can think about is the pounding in my ear that matches my pulse. The pounding comes so hard that it’s not just an irritating noise that’s always there. I feel each beat as actual pressure and I wonder if the doctors got it wrong. Maybe it is a tumor. Maybe it’s not just Dr. Percy who will die crying in a place of relentless pain, in a misery beyond what drugs can reach and ease.

  I concentrate on the whale and, for a little while, the pressure recedes. Just when I think I’m getting the hang of it and the pulsing is going away, Dr. Percy is in my ear again. “Thank you for coming in. See you all next week and we’ll pick up where we left off. For any of you who want to stay, the chronic pain group next door has invited us to join them for their potluck night. Apparently they all brought too much to eat and have generously invited our group to join them down the hall in Room 222.”

  Before Dr. Percy clicks off his microphone, there’s a protest of electronic feedback that sets my teeth on edge and several people shoot up, clawing their headsets off.

  “Gee-zuzz Chriiiiist!” Golf Guy brays.

  I hate Golf Guy and, despite the pain in my ear, I grin. I get my face back under control when Jack and Crystal stand and they catch my pleased look. I try to cover up my sadism by being mean to Dr. Percy.

  “Bravo, doctor!” I say heavily and give him the slow clap. The others join me and I can see him waving at us from the glass booth at the end of the room, proudly accepting our applause, oblivious to sarcasm.

  “Moron,” Jack says.

  “Shithead,” says Crystal.

  “Hey, what?” Jerry says, bobbing his head in agreement and making the hairless scrotum bob and swing independent of his head. My stomach is a sick acid clump so I’m not in the mood for Chronic P
ain Potluck.

  The others seem to move as one slow amorphous glob toward the promise of free food, but Jerry, Jack, Crystal and I head to exit. Jack hangs back a little, maybe to watch Crystal’s tight ass as she sashays out. Jerry’s right behind me, treading heavily under the weight of his massive backpack. I feel like he’s chasing me out.

  “Hey, Murph!” says Jack.

  “Yeah?”

  “I hope you didn’t take what I said too personal, man. I mean, I was just saying that you should get out more besides coming out to Percy’s circle jerk.”

  I blush, shrug and mutter, “I dunno.” I keep my eyes on the door and keep walking, falling in step with Crystal. It’s a thrill to walk beside her.

  “Jack’s right,” she says. “You should get out more. We should all get out. I’ve got a little girl at home. I know it’s hard to be a single parent, but if we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t take care of our kids. Like the oxygen mask on the airplane: Put your mask on first so you can help your kid so everybody can be awake for the fiery crash into a mountainside. We don’t want to miss that. Life’s too short for this shit.”

  “Life’s too long for us to put up with this shit in our ears forever,” Jack adds.

  “Yeah,” says Jerry, so lost in thought he doesn’t seem to have the energy to add his tagline. We all wait for him to say it and, as soon as it’s clear he won’t, the three of us chorus, “Hey, what?”

  For a moment, I hold my breath and then Jerry starts laughing a long, gasping, seesawing wheeze and we join in. The sac on the end of his nose shudders with each hitching gasp as he laughs harder and harder. It’s as if we’re seeing the guy behind the gruesome mask of affliction for the first time. We’re seeing past his nose.

  We’re still laughing — Crystal has a fetching snort — when we hit the parking lot. We slow down, anxious to get out of the high school, but not so anxious to leave each other and separate into the night.

  “Tonight’s the first time we’ve laughed here,” Crystal says.

  “Percy’s useless otherwise, so we should be going to a comedy club instead of to group,” Jack says.

  “Then the peeler bar,” Crystal suggests. She looks my way as she says it. Warmth washes over me, mostly embarrassed but titillated, too.

  “You know what I think?” Jack lights a cigarette. “I think we should try to act as normal as possible. Percy’s therapy — the talk therapy, anyway — feels like a bath in the pity pool. We’d do just as well looking for some fun and forgetting our troubles. That, or I find a new therapist who gives me something more to do.”

  “What do you suggest?” Crystal asks, her eyes on me. I shift from side to side.

  “I don’t know.” There are no stars to stare at. Since Josy left, I spend a lot of time pretending I’m interested in other things besides who stands in front of me. If I gaze in Crystal’s eyes, she’ll know I want her. She’ll have power over me. I’m not sure I’m ready for that again.

  Crystal takes a step closer, daring me to step up and talk to her like a man talks to a woman when he’s not afraid. “You’re a family man. What do you do with your kids?”

  “You know…feed them, clothe them…mostly clean up after them.”

  “That’s the basics,” Crystal says. “What else?”

  “I used to coach my son’s soccer team.”

  “Cool!” Jack decrees, surprising me. “I coach soccer. How come it’s ‘used to’ for you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just got swallowed up by everything after Josy left.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “About two years.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jack says. “That’s a lot of time lost. Are you going to let her get away with three years of your life? Four? The rest of it?”

  “It’s not like that.” I’m just about to leave when Crystal pulls at my elbow. That’s twice I’ve been touched by a woman on purpose tonight, although each touch was just elbow-related.

  “What is it like for you?” she asks.

  I can tell she is open to whatever I might say. “When I went to my doctor about the pounding in my ear, I was pretty strung out. He told me there was nothing I could do and, at the time, I had so much on my plate, I guess his advice was a relief. Now I’d like to think I could do something that could distract me. I mean, if the pulse in my ear is going to be wailing away until my heart stops, I’d like something to — ”

  “Hey, what?” Jerry says. “Look at that!” He points to the rear of the school parking lot. Three dark forms lurk in the darkness.

  “Somebody probably just locked himself out of his car and they’re trying to get in with a coat hanger.”

  Crystal goes white. “Nuh-uh! That’s my fucking car!”

  “Let’s go in and call the police!” My voice shakes.

  “They’ll be driving it away long before the cops show,” Jack says. “Relax, Hoss. This is just what the doctor ordered.”

  “Mm-hmm! Just what the doctor ordered,” Jerry echoes.

  Jack walks fast. Dr. Percy parked his car by the entrance to the school. It’s a old, rusty sedan. I knew it was his because I’d seen him drive up in it, but the bumper sticker that read, “Tame your Id” was also a pretty good clue.

  As he passes the car, Jack reaches out and grabs the antenna. With a short, swift blow with the side of his hand, he breaks it free from its base. Jack doesn’t slow for an instant and stalks toward the figures. We are pulled in Jack’s wake, as if he holds a rope that tugs us by our belts.

  “Careful,” I say, but he looks back with a disgusted sneer.

  The three dark forms turn into two large teenage boys and one skinny, harsh-looking girl. “What do you want?” the girl says.

  “I want you to get away from my fucking car,” Crystal says. Her voice doesn’t quaver but she doesn’t yell, either.

  The kid working the coat hanger doesn’t even look up. “It’s my car tonight. Why don’t you old folks go fuck yourselves if you still can?”

  “The police are on their way,” I offer, wishing I had thought to bring my phone or gone inside to call the police.

  The big kid by the hood of the car looks scared but he doesn’t move. “Are you deaf? Get out of here before something bad happens.”

  “We’re not deaf,” I say, “but we do have a lot of ringing in our ears.”

  Jerry, hanging back, lets go with his wheezing laugh. I’m cheered by it but I don’t have any more jokes or bravado to make this problem go away.

  The big kid crosses his arms across his muscular chest, stiffens and gives us a look that says, I’m a wall. The girl looks back and forth from us to the kid breaking into the car. Clearly, if their leader won’t run, they won’t, either.

  We hear the lock pop and the trio’s leader looks at us happily from under his shaggy hair. Even in the dim evening light, I can see his teeth are black. If I ever see him again, say in a police line up, he’d be easy to spot as long as he’s made to smile.

  “Got it!” he announces. “Finders keepers!”

  Jack surges forward, whipping the antenna up from his side. “Losers weepers!”

  It looks like a magic trick, like a magician’s cane appearing from nowhere. His first strike catches the big kid at the temple, ripping a line of bloody flesh down his cheek all the way to the jaw line in a vicious downward swoop. The kid winces and, when his hand comes away from his cheek, he howls and falls back. He stares at his hand as if that is the source of the blood.

  The girl shrieks, “Jesse! Jesse! Oh my gawd! Are you alright?”

  “He’ll never be pretty!” Jerry announces brightly. “He’ll never be pretty!” He sounds like a parrot.

  I hadn’t seen all this coming but I thought the kids’ bravado would drain away with this show of force. Rather than run, however, the kid with bad teeth runs straight at Jack. Jack manages to whip him with the antenna, catching him at the shoulder. However, the kid comes in low with his tackle and falls on top of Jack. They wres
tle in the dirt for a moment and I stand frozen.

  The girl, who come to Jesse’s side, flies at us. She comes at my face, her hands like claws. I grab her wrists and she kicks me hard in my left shin. Before I can push her away, she winds up for another vicious kick aimed at my groin. Crystal’s bony little fist flashes across the girl’s face and her nose erupts in blood. She steps back, the shock washing over her and, for a moment, she goes cross-eyed to try to look at her injury. Before the girl can run or attack again, Crystal steps close, reaches out and rips the chain hanging from her ear. The wailing reminds me of loons crying as she staggers back and falls over Jesse’s outstretched legs.

  Jack wrestles with the leader and they are covered in dust. The kid has one hand on Jack’s whipping arm, holding it down. He has Jack by the throat with his other hand. That’s what got me moving. Without thinking, I take two short steps and the toe of my shoe catches the kid at the jaw, just below his left ear.

  I thought of all the times I’d coached young kids to be goalies, showing them how to kick the soccer ball halfway up the field. The soccer kick always made a satisfying dull thump when it was done right. The same kick to the thug’s jaw makes a sickening wet crack.

  The would-be car thief lands in a jangled thump beside Jack. “’Bout time you showed up, Hoss,” Jack says, but when he stands, he’s smiling.

  He sticks out his hand to shake. I am trembling. I bend to the still form in the dirt to take his pulse. It’s strong, but he’s unconscious. I roll him over enough to look at his face. His jaw is pushed to one side, pointing off to the right while his nose points straight ahead.

  Jack looks over my shoulder. “Relax, Hoss. Nobody ever died of a broken jaw. He’ll be thinking of you whenever he eats soup, which will be for at least the next eight weeks.”

  “Jesus!”

  The girl bleeds down the side of her head. She tries to staunch the flow with her hand. The big kid by the hood, Jesse, finds his voice. “I’m calling my father! This was assault! We were just hanging out. We go to this school and you psychos attacked us for no good reason! My dad’s a lawyer. You are going to regret this! My dad is going to ruin you!”