by Craig Smith
Like a blackout from the river onwards. She had them sometimes. Just go through the motions and then wake up and wonder what had happened. Sometimes it lasted for the length of a cigarette. Sometimes longer.
Missy studied her house as she sat in her junkyard special. The house had all the appeal of a dose of clap, but the rent was right. For a whole house, right as rain. It had three rooms and a kitchen. The bathroom was smaller than most closets but what could you do? The porch was broken down. You could open the front door with a credit card – or a good kick if the banks didn’t want to give you any credit. The back door was worse. Security was nothing more than a hook on a u-shaped nail. A burglar’s dream, assuming the guy wasn’t dreaming big.
Probably the worst thing about the place was the railroad tracks forty-seven feet off the back step. Once you got used to the trains coming through your bedroom at all hours of the night, even that wasn’t so bad. Better than some sex she had had, actually. At least the ones she could remember. Missy checked her watch. She had sixty hours off. Lugging a case of Bud she had stolen out of the back of the Dog Daze, Missy kicked the storm door open, braced the box between her ample belly and the door frame and unlocked the front door. Stepping in, she snapped the light on. The place was a mess, as usual. The front room had a tattered couch and a couple of cat-frayed easy chairs she had stolen from a Goodwill drop-off. In the next room was her pride: a Harley where a dining room table ought to be. It was as black as a moonless night, its chrome like stars. And fast as a backseat promise. She shuffled through her front room admiring the big bike in the mirrors she had hung around it, hardlyssyр the noticing the newspapers covering her floor or the tumble weed dust balls in the corners of the room. Maybe once before she died she would clean house. Maybe. She kicked a pizza box out of her way and dug into a drawer by the TV for her dope. ‘Come to Mamma,’ she whispered as she brought out a big bag of grass and hit the CD, setting it out of habit for the second band of Terri Clark’s best. ‘Poor, Poor Pitiful Me’ was what passed for the national anthem in Missy’s world.
Sitting on the ratty couch and carefully throwing a pair of men’s underwear to the floor, Missy pulled an oily clump of grass out of the bag. She tossed it on her rolling pan and broke it apart. She sucked up the sweetish scent of it. She scraped the seeds out by letting them roll down the tray while she dragged the leaves up into a neat pile. She pinched three loads into an EZ wider and rolled a fat joint with quick sure fingers. She licked it with the delicacy of a fellatrix and dried it with a lit match. Now she set the tip on fire and blew the smoke out after a long, lazy drag. Best grass she had had in months. One minute she was Missy Worthless. Next she was pulling down dreams out of the sky.
Chapter 16
Darkness.
MISSY WALKED AROUND THE ROOM with the joint smouldering in her fingers. She hit the auto repeat on the Terri Clark song because she wanted to listen to it all night, full blast.
Neighbours might not like it, but they knew better than to complain.
She sang along raucously, ‘ Poor, poor, pitiful... ’
She took a hit. The song went on without her. She blew the smoke out through her nose, hit another and held it until she went dizzy. The stuff leaked out her ears and trickled through her toenails. Good stuff! ‘Caesar! Here, kitty!’ Give the cat a shotgun. Old yellow bastard comes-a-running, nose in the air.
Nothing when I get home, can’t be bothered to get off the bed, thank you, but the minute you offer him the good stuff. Here I am! Here I am. Here am I.
‘You like to get high, Caesar? Sure you do. We all do, hon.’ She took the joint into the curve of her tongue, the fire at the back of her throat. A thick line of white smoke shot out of her mouth and hit the cat. Caesar flinched and recoiled and shook his head, then swooned to the floor and staggered away, one leg crossing the other, front and back.
Missy was still watching the cat when she heard a rattle at her back door. She felt her gut go hollow, and set the joint down. She caught her baseball bat, which she liked to keep in the kitchen, and looked out the cracked glass of the back door. Nothing. But it had sounded like someone checking her door. She popped the hook and pushed the door open. Down the way maybe thirty yards there was a streetlight where the tracks crossed the road. There was a security light at the back end of the college where the fence shut out trespassers. She came off her step and stood listening. Nothing but her imagination.
Back inside, she walked through the house until she came to the front room. She moved a curtain aside and looked out into the blackness just to be sure. Nothing, but then as she pulled away she was sure something had moved. She swore dр th Tce hotly, and looked again. Only the night.
She went to the front door fast. She was sure she was going to catch someone sneaking around the house. As suddenly as she began, Missy stopped herself. She knew who it was. All those years waiting to get out. And now he had come to make good on his promise. Because she had broken hers. Because she had sworn on her very soul...
Tears broke over her cheeks, and without thinking, Missy turned and ran for her bedroom. She dropped her bat as she went. Like a child running from ghosts. Only no ghost had ever scared her like this.
She tasted copper on the back of her tongue. She opened her closet door quietly and then rolled down to her knees and crawled in among her shoes and dirty clothes. She reached back nervously to close the door and listened.
A creaking noise at the back door now. A footstep in the kitchen. The song again: Poor, poor, pitiful me…
Shivering, Missy pulled back deeper into her tiny space. She tried to draw breath, but at the thought of Will standing on the other side of her door, she found herself making odd, spasmodic sounds. Did he hear it? Not a movement, not a sound. He was there, just waiting for her to open the door. ‘ Missy... Missy! ’
The years gone like the snap of her fingers, they start it all over again. Missy feels herself shaking as she lets go her piss. She smothers her sobs with dirty laundry stuffed into her mouth. Even as she does, another sob ratchets out of her.
She is seventeen. She is naked and cold and scared. Beyond the darkness, Will is whispering to her again. ‘ Time to come out and play, Missy. ’
Chapter 17
Sunday 7:30 a.m., March 21.
PASTOR’S CHURCH SITS ATOP A BIG bald hill cut out of a forest. A huge white box crowned with a cross you can see for miles. It has a few acres of parking for the faithful. It is fourteen years old. Pastor built it with the Holy Word of God and other people’s money. God still smiles on them all, but only for a few more days.
‘The sanctuary will hold eight hundred sinners, give or take,’ Pastor announces proudly.
‘Saints,’ he tells Will with a wink, ‘have to go on down the street.’ Almost blushing at the fuss folks have made over him lately, Pastor shows Will the video booth, the three big screens which multiply Pastor’s image. He shows a few seconds of a video in the control booth so that Will can get an idea of how the place will look filled up. Will can feel Pastor’s pride, which extends to more than his pretty sanctuary. Pastor is a movie star who stands in an artificial garden before an adoring crowd.
Will sees all the school rooms, the gymnasium, the vast library. Pastor walks through the building, his building, flipping lights on and off, talking to Will as he goes. Will likes the basement’s dark intimacy. Pastor shows him a beautiful study. Couches, chairs, rug, lamps, a wall of books. There are two steel doors at either end of the room with keyed deadbolts. No windows. A lovely room for the work of God. ‘The youth group meets hetarр th d:re,’ Pastor tells him.
Will feels a shiver of desire. The lights go off; they prepare to go on.
Pastor says he needs to spend some time in his office. He needs time alone before the first service begins. His speech breaks off suddenly. A man and a teenage boy are coming toward them down the long basement corridor. Something cold stirs in Will’s chest. The boy looks to be about sixteen or seventeen. He is tall, lean a
nd dark. He is his father’s image, except that the father has lost most of his hair. They walk like each other, a shambling gait with a joyous little bump to finish every step. The father blinks in the same manner as the son. The man is Pastor’s age but in better condition. Broad shoulders, flat belly. He has a long bumpy nose, a fat bulb at the end. Brown eyes set tight. An athlete’s cockiness.
‘You must be Will Booker!’ the man announces with a Midwestern bawl of good cheer.
He has a quick smile, broad flat lips. In his eyes he is deciding Will’s guilt or innocence. He believes he is a practical man, a man of the world. A businessman almost certainly, Will decides. Yet he dreams of peeking into another man’s soul to know him. Will dislikes him for that. The feeling is passionate and immediate. Pastor is speaking. Pastor’s voice purrs solicitously. Will does not know this tone. He has never known Pastor to purr to anyone. Pastor talks to God man-to-man. What mortal could possibly inspire him to ingratiate himself? ‘…Ben Lyons,’ he says with gravity, ‘and his son Benny.’
Old Ben shakes Will’s hand. It is so good to see justice finally win out! Will glances at Ben Lyons’s boy. Boy Ben has his father’s shoulders and vanity. Not yet the hypocrisy.
Chapter 18
Sunday 10:30 a.m., March 21.
PASTOR IS BORN FOR THE pulpit. He loves his small stage for the power it gives him and for the vanity of his holiness. He prays mightily. He sings of joys and sorrows in the Lord with a voice fit for mountaintops. As he prays, he glows. This is the man Will has known for the better part of the last decade. Pastor tells his flock about doubt. ‘ The feeling that we are in a room praying... to one big Nobody! A natural response to the life of faith. Natural... but not right! Because he IS there! The proof is sitting right here! ’ He points to Will. ‘ …an innocent man who prayed in the solitude of a Death Row cell that justice would finally win out... ’
Will is inspired by the fact that he is the supreme example of faith. Holiness buzzes in him like a maddening fly. Tamara is beside him. Too tender for taking blood. Like Tabit, who has not enough rage for what he wants. Will is bored with them both. He watches Ben Lyons instead. Proud Ben Lyons. And Boy Ben, who is handsome and seems to watch a certain blonde, who watches him back with careful glances. Will studies their game curiously, but soon finds something far more interesting. She sits between Mother Lyons and Boy Ben. She is a large, lanky girl, trim and muscular like papa. Like Benny, not yet the hypocrite. Bitter as the dawn. Miserable. Angry. He can feel it from here. This is a spirit that wants only…expression! God’s own, this one. God’s own!
‘Does Benny Lyons play sports? madBenth d t Will asks Tamara quietly. These are his first words
since the service has started. Will never talks during worship, but he needs this. He can’t wait.
Tamara stirs; she studies the Lyons family critically. Her breath smells of oatmeal and chocolate. She says she thinks he plays baseball. Tamara obviously does not care. ‘He’s stuck-up,’ she explains. Will smiles to himself. Benny likes the pretty blonde across the way, has never once given Tamara Merriweather his adoring brown eyes.
‘Is that his sister next to him?’ Will whispers.
Tamara warms to Will’s attention. ‘Penny is Benny’s twin. Penny is okay,’ she tells him. ‘She used to swim, but she quit.’
Penny. He likes the name. He likes the girl. There is murder in this one’s heart!
Part III Judgement
And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee.
Judges 3: 19.
Chapter 19
Sunday 2:00 p.m., March 21.
I KNEW A DOZEN GOOD lawyers, but I did not call any of them. I took my breakfast, then my lunch, ready to sit it out until my court appearance Monday, at which I would proudly defend myself and probably get a year in lockup for the crime of self-lawyering. A radical alternative to AA, I’ll admit, but I was in the mood for getting sober without making confessions.
I watched an old priest come through. It was Sunday. He talked to some of the boys, blessed a couple, had a prayer book that he gave one occupant. I just stared at the old man as he passed me by. He had the good sense to keep going. Most of my new acquaintances were out by two o’clock. Parents, friends, bail bondsmen, lawyers: somebody loved them. I hung on like mould, having no one to call. My luck ran out when a jailer took me up to a conference room.
Max Dunn was there, missing only his .45. ‘Are you out of your ever-loving-mind?’ he asked me. The first words he spoke.
‘Who told you I was here?’ I answered.
Max looked away, shaking his head, his voice echoing my words, ‘Who told me you were here? Let’s see. What was her name?’
‘I’m staying until I talk to a judge.’
‘Get off your Cross, Rick. They’re cutting you loose.’
‘They can’t do that.’
‘They already have, and if you raise hell with me, I’ll put you in Crazy Cate’s, where you belong!’
Jails didn’t bother me. Doctors, with their opiates and needles, did. I felt the air running out of me like a blown tire. ‘I don’t appreciate you butting in, Max. It’s none o1emBen I anst he xvf your business what happens to me.’
Max looked away, seriously irritated. ‘She’ll take you back, Rick. To tell you the truth, I don’t think anyone knows you even quit!’
‘She can go to hell.’ I said this evenly, sincerely. Pat Garrat had broken my heart.
Max gave me a speculative look. ‘I’ll do you a favour, buddy, and not tell her you said that.’
‘If I walk out of here, I’m just going to get drunk again.’
‘It’s Sunday, Rick. The only joints open are respectable.’ I swore and looked down at the scars of the table we sat at. Hell is a friend who knows your haunts. ‘What’s under your skin, buddy?’
I looked up in anger. ‘She’s going to let this guy walk without a fight, Max.’
‘Is that what this is about?’
‘Part of it.’
‘Let me ask you something. Why do you even care? It’s one less headache as far as you’re concerned.’ I had no answer. ‘Rick, you’ve got to be tougher than one fight.’
‘Her old man would bury this kid!’
‘HER OLD MAN IS DEAD!’ Max brought his voice back to room temperature. ‘It’s been seventeen years, Rick; when are you going to get that through your thick skull?’
‘I’m tired, Max. I’m tired of wanting things right and finding everything wrong.’
‘What you’re tired of is this binge you’re on. Now why don’t I take you home? You need to get some real food down you and some sleep. Tomorrow you can go into the office and get back to work like nothing at all is the matter.’
‘Just like that?’ I asked, almost laughing at the ease of it.
He gave me his patented gap-toothed grin, ‘Your sins are forgiven, my son.’
Chapter 20
Sunday 2:15 p.m., March 21.
DOO PARKED HIS HARLEY behind Missy Worth’s broken down Buick on Elm Street. Missy had scored some really good grass. She had told him he ought to come by first thing Sunday.
Two-fifteen. Doo gave the grey skies a friendly grin. Two-fifteen was as early as it ever got on a Sunday.
He hit the front door with a hard, quick tap and waited. He heard music inside. Maybe she hadn’t heard him. He hit the door again, a long, loud rattling. He wandered down to the window. The curtain was drawn aside just a bit. The lights were on. Missy’s bag of grass was on the floor out in the open, the stuff all spilled out. There was more sitting on her rolling tray.
A dead joint sat on the ashtray. Doo dropped off the end of the porch and went around to the back. She wasn’t in the yard, but the back door was unhooked. The cat a en I f theout. There appeared, circled nervously, and skittered back out of sight. Doo felt his gut tighten as he went forward tensely, calling Missy’s name. The CD started playing the same song again.
In the dining room Doo slipped around Missy’s Harley and
picked up the baseball bat that lay on the floor. He went back to the kitchen, setting it up next to the doorway. He checked the bathroom to make sure she had not passed out in there. Something was wrong.
He called Missy’s name several times. He watched the cat come out of the bedroom and return. Doo followed it. He checked under the bed. He opened the closet. It was a mechanical motion, simply checking all the possibilities, so he wasn’t ready to see Missy sitting under a pile of dirty clothes. She stared up at him with dark wet eyes. The closet stank of her piss. He started to swear. Then he tried to laugh. What the hell? Then it hit him. She didn’t recognise him.
‘Don’t hurt me,’ she whimpered.
