With Death Laughing

by Peter Plate

Rudy butts in. “Sugar Child?”

  “What?”

  “You talking to yourself?”

  “No.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “Sure, I’m sure.”

  “Then who you talking to?”

  “Don the policeman.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “My boyfriend. We’re having a fight.”

  “You and him squabble a lot?”

  “All the time. We’ve been at it for days now.”

  “When you ain’t fighting, he treat you good?”

  “No, never has.”

  “Why are you with him then?”

  “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “That bad, huh? Sometimes you have to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

  “You should be a psychiatrist.”

  “Damn straight. And you know what else? I’m going to Los Angeles. Gonna take the Greyhound there.”

  “How come?”

  “To get away from this mess. Maybe go to the beach. Work on my tan. Meet some movie stars. Only problem is, the bus takes a million hours.”

  “I want to go, too.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Gangs at the beach, they’ll punk your ass.”

  “I ain’t afraid. I’m from Muscoy. And I can’t even swim.”

  “That your secret weapon?”

  “It is.”

  “People are weird in Los Angeles.”

  “And what are we?”

  I look at him through Prolixin eyes. “Different.”

  I take leave of Rudy and plod up E Street. Pigeons wing to and fro above the palm trees. The overheated air jumps with mosquitos and flies. The sun beats on my head with a violence that makes me doubt I am alive—it’s possible without my knowledge or permission I have died. And this is the underworld: pickup trucks with gun racks. Pedestrians stooped from heat fatigue. Smog thicker than ice cream. Don the policeman guffaws: you don’t know anything. You’re retarded.

  I brood about daddy—if only he were handsome. Don the policeman crows: I heard that. You think the baldheaded motherfucker is better than me? Wrong. No one will put up with your shit the way I do. Who was with you in jail? Who was there at the halfway house? And in lockdown? Do I have to spell it out? Without me, you ain’t nada. Plain and simple.

  The Prolixin has failed to stop Don—it’s done little to suppress his appetite for abusive repartee. Somehow, I’ve got to rid myself of his madness—if just for a day. That’s not much to ask for, but it’s too much to think about right now.

  My caseworker Rick? He doesn’t know what to do with me. He says: treatment. I’ve seen people after treatment. After the twenty-eight-day program. Twenty pounds overweight from eating surplus government commodities. Medicated to the gills on mood elevators and psychotropics. Hands shaking like birds’ wings. Forget treatment.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I stare blindly through the bus window as SWAT guards in flak vests wave us by the Base Line checkpoint. My seatmate, a Catholic schoolboy, susses me: “You okay, Pastor?”

  I cannot stop trembling.

  My block is status quo when I get there. Outside the halfway house a social worker counsels a female consumer swaddled in a ratty chenille bathrobe. “Look, princess, you can’t be down on yourself. You’re doing great. You’ve made a lot of friends in this place. Your discharge papers are in order. And you’re gonna get into the treatment program you want. You’re fine. It’ll be a great Christmas this year.”

  Maybe the social worker is right. It will be a good Christmas. But my homecoming is marred by a letter from the offices of Dougal and White. I rip open the manila envelope it comes in. I blaze through the missive:

  this is your final warning. if you persist in illegally retaining property that does not belong to you, our clients at blessed world will have no other recourse than to turn this matter over to their security division. the normal procedure is for their investigators to contact you in person. your parole officer has been advised of the situation. thank you.

  I tear the letter into shreds and toss it out the window. An updraft captures the paper, propelling it into the air. Up and down, round and around.

  At dinnertime I wash my hands in the kitchenette sink like there’s no tomorrow. Then I trudge into the other room. I turn on the overhead lights. I’m rewarded with a gruesome sight—my hands are crusted with blood. It’s a case of obsessive compulsive stigmata.

  As a bonus, the upstairs neighbor is beating his dog again, something he does with alarming regularity. The mutt keens with an agonized howl that rips through floors and walls. My mood takes an unexpected dip, shifting from black to blacker. Maybe it’s the killings I saw today. Or the letter from Dougal and White. Maybe I don’t need a reason.

  I reach under the wingback’s fusty cushions for the .25. The pistol gleams like a toy squirt gun in the light. I check the clip—to make sure it’s full. I flick off the safety. Next, I stick the muzzle in my mouth and curl my index finger around the trigger.

  Nobody knows what happens when we circle the drain. Possibly we leave this existence for paradise. Or maybe we don’t. If I squeeze the trigger, I hope my destination is pleasant.

  Diagrammatically, the bullet will tear through my palate, the short journey ending in my brain. I won’t die—the .25’s slugs are too puny. I’ll merely collapse to the floor without ceremony or pomp. Blinded. Unable to talk. Incapable of movement. A vegetable. I won’t remember Sugar Child getting hogtied. I won’t know who Rhonda is. For the rest of my days I’ll be sequestered at General Hospital.

  August 2000. I’m in General Hospital with shingles. The guy in the next bed is a Hells Angel named Frank. He shattered his leg—his panhead crashed into a tree in Del Rosa. He’s a cool dude, generous with his Newport cigarettes. He also has a portable AM radio. Together we listen to Thin Lizzy, Marvin Gaye, and Sammy Hagar. His mother and two younger brothers visit him every day. The brothers are a pair of hulking blond cats in black leather vests and engineer boots. Miniature versions of Frank. Their mom is a blue-collar madonna with bleached ringlets and a pierced nose. She chainsmokes her own brand, mentholated Marlboros. Nice people.

  Much of my life is behind me now. Memories delude me into thinking there’s more to come. But the only thing I can rely on is the past, and even that’s turning into quicksand. I pluck the .25 from my mouth. I put it on the coffee table. In all honesty, I don’t want to kill myself. I just think I do.

  The donations bucket watches me from its spot under the chair. It curses: you pathetic asshole. I want more money.

  I pay no attention to the bucket. Instead I gaze out the window. The North Star shines brighter than a disco ball in the polluted black sky. The moon waxes over Mount San Gorgonio.

  □ □ □

  The hands that play the tambourine. The eyes that saw Dalton shoot a man dead. The tongue that reveled in Rhonda’s private parts. The ears that listened to the better-dressed donations solicitor say I was fucked. The mouth that chants, help the poor. The nose the SWAT security cops bashed into the pavement. The nerves that shake whenever I go through a checkpoint. The stomach that lives on carrots and nonfat yogurt. The hair that fell out in prison. The neck Dalton chokeholded. The skin scabrous from the desert wind. The brain that thinks about death. The lips Sugar Child kissed. The heart that beats frantically. This is a hymn for my body.

  I go downstairs and step outside for a breath of fresh air. I start coughing—the northwesterly wind brims with creosote and smoke from the Devil Canyon fire. To deter looters—the mall was vandalized the other night—a camouflaged SWAT armored personnel carrier is parked by El Pueblo. I stand on the sidewalk, motionless, numb, snug inside my cocoon of woe.

  As I reenter the hotel two cats shoulder past me into the lobby. One is tall and black, the other short and white. The short cat wheezes at me: “My name’s Rick. I’m a caseworker for Blessed World. This guy,” he gestures at the other man, “that’s Andrew. He just got his me
ds and needs to start taking them. So who are you, the security guard? If you don’t mind, we’re in a hurry to get inside and begin his paperwork.”

  Andrew holds a Walgreens bag of prescription drugs, his passport to a better world than the one he’s coming from. I want to explain to him there is no better world. As usual, I’m wrong. I simper: “Rick? You know where you’re going?”

  “Sure do. This is the halfway house, isn’t it?”

  I take in the lobby’s potted cacti, the desk clerk giving me the evil eye. I look at the sky varnished by smog. I witness a shooting star over Cajon Pass. I make a wish on that star, that one day everyone will find their way home.

  “No, it isn’t. The halfway house is next door.”

  I go upstairs and pad into my rooms. I take a moment to dwell on the life of Italian theoretician and writer Antonio Gramsci. He served a long stretch in the pen. His wife waited for his release. Rhonda was not interested in that kind of lifestyle. Alonzo says she’s currently residing in posh Santa Monica—scored herself a rent-controlled condo near the beach. On that note, I shut the lights and hit the sack. Hopefully, my father will visit me tonight.

  I wait, wide-eyed in the blistering dark.

  But he never shows up.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The headlining story in the morning’s paper says SWAT’s Lieutenant Chet Dalton has been placed on administrative leave. An inquest into the shooting deaths of Sergeant Rico Cassidy and the bank robber is pending. The robber has not yet been identified. Another article reports the Devil Canyon fire is marauding south into the North End. Wildwood Park is in flames. The golf course, too. The police have ordered the evacuation of upper Valencia Avenue.

  □ □ □

  I stow the stolen bank cash in a food-stained Vons grocery bag. I put the bag by the door. Okay. I’m almost ready to hit the street. Maybe I should take the .25 with me. Just in case of an emergency. There are pros and cons. If I bring it, I might shoot someone. If I don’t, somebody might shoot me. Debating the issue with myself will take all day. I forget about it when the telephone jingles, portending bad juju.

  I lift the receiver in fear. “Yeah?”

  A female voice with a glossy Central American accent unleashes a blitzkrieg of consonants and vowels: “Pastor? Alonzo needs to talk to you. He’s no good. You be nice to him.”

  It’s Alonzo’s wife, a woman from Nicaragua named Josefa. I complain: “I can’t talk now.” Nonetheless, the phone changes hands. Like a malfunctioning satellite, Alonzo flames into my orbit: “What’s up?”

  I nearly shot myself in the head last night. I am violating my parole terms. Self-doubt is my middle name. I tell him, “Not a whole lot. I was just going to work.”

  “Fuck that job. Remember you ain’t getting any younger.”

  “Talking to you is always so uplifting.”

  “Don’t mention it. Hey, you know Sugar Child?”

  “I do. I mean, kind of. I’d like to know her better.”

  “I met her at a party the other night. She’s totally rad.”

  “A party? I’m envious. Where at?”

  “This crib on Wabash. SWAT came and shut it down. I don’t know what happened to Sugar Child.”

  “Were you drinking?”

  “Yeah, I was. I got shit-faced. What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing, nothing. I was just asking.”

  “That Sugar Child is a trip.”

  “How is she? Did she seem okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s been having problems.”

  “Well, I was drunk. I can’t say how she was doing.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Yeah, give me a medal. Listen, I was thinking about your dad. What’s up with him?”

  “He drove his car off the mountain a few weeks ago.”

  “And your mom?”

  “She’s in Patton again.”

  “That’s fucked.”

  We submerge into a protracted silence. My father is newly buried in the cemetery at Highland and Waterman. I’m certain his first night there was unsettling—the place will take some getting used to. And dear old Mom wrote me a letter just before her return to Patton. She said I was a disappointment. A failure. And I would always remain one.

  “You mind if we talk about something else, Alonzo?”

  “Sure thing. Rudy said he ran into you.”

  “More like shrapnel hit me.”

  “Don’t listen to him. He keeps talking about going to Los Angeles. You want my verdict? Rudy has mental health problems. He’s stressing.”

  “He’s stressing on you.”

  “You think? Anyway, here’s the reason I’m calling. I ain’t doing well. I want a stem-cell operation to get rid of the cancer. My doctor said I had to find someone who’s compatible with me. For a tissue donation or whatever. I asked my sister. She was the best candidate. So she gets a blood test. We find out she has hep C. I’m back to square one.”

  “What about Rudy?”

  “He’s got it, too.”

  “Jesus. What’re you gonna do?”

  Alonzo’s uneven breathing is overdubbed with a response so slurred it might as well be a message in a bottle that’s crossed an ocean to reach my ears. “This is my plan. The cancer is getting too aggressive. I have to go back for another round of chemo. But I’ve already done that. The truth is, if I can just have ninety days without doctors or pain, that’s all I need.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “I’ll check out. Leave this crap behind.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What? You need a menu? I’m tired. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I don’t like the sound of it.”

  “Whose life is it? Yours or mine?”

  “Let me guess. Yours.”

  “Exactly. So shut your mouth.”

  “I don’t know about this.”

  “What’s there to know? Please don’t be a pendejo. Can you do that for me?”

  “I can try.”

  “And there’s something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you there.”

  “Where?”

  “At my bedside when I go.”

  Alonzo is nominating me to be his designated driver—to row him across the River Styx. Though he’ll never cop to it—he wants me to die with him. It’s understandable. Alonzo dislikes being alone. He keeps talking: “Campus Crusade used to flood my high school with their propaganda. You couldn’t walk down the hallways, there were blizzards of it. It was white-boy hell.”

  Not every public high school is converted into a private evangelical academy. But Campus Crusade has pull in this town. A few years after Alonzo went to the principal’s office with the hand grenade, his school was privatized. I’m not suggesting the grenade had anything to do with it. I am not saying these circumstances pushed Alonzo toward alcoholism. Somebody composed a poem and didn’t finish it—they had Alonzo in mind.

  “Alonzo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You talking to me with a gun in your hand?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Rudy says it’s your thing.”

  “The little snitch. Fuck him.”

  Alonzo and I say goodbye. I have to go to work.

  I take the elevator down to the lobby, and I walk outside into the soul-destroying sunshine. Just past the hotel I’m confronted by sewage from the halfway house. It’s churning through a hole in the sidewalk. The house’s youngest consumer—a skinny cholita in tight brown slacks and a cropped leatherette jacket—inspects the spillage with scientific curiosity. She sagely opines: “This is some creepy shit. I wouldn’t eat it. Not in a million years.”

  We’re joined by an older consumer, a heavyset white woman palsying like a leaf in a wind tunnel. She produces a half-smoked Marlboro cigarette butt and torches it. “Guess what, Pastor? It’s my birthday. I’m forty-seven today. And I’ve got MS. You know what I want? I want to go to Disneyla
nd, the one in Orange County. That would make me happy. I haven’t been there since I was sixteen.”

  I add her to my roster of injured souls.

  □ □ □

  Should something go wrong on the job today—this is my last will and testament. I leave you the .25. An extra clip of bullets. The rent I owe. My sleepless nights. I bequeath the smell of the orange groves. My parole officer’s telephone number. I ask you to remember: I wore my robes in Jesus Christ’s sacred name.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I get a psychotic headband of dizziness when my bus oozes through the Sixth Street checkpoint—and I die a forgettable hypertensive mini-death. I can’t take it no more. I really can’t.

  An undersized, dun-colored coyote with the weathered face of a homeless wino—a Devil Canyon fire refugee—skips in front of the bus. The beat animal skedaddles across E Street, vanishing behind a palm tree. We’re three blocks from the mall.

  I alight from the coach on Fifth Street with the Vons bag, tambourine, and donations bucket. The sun is crapping out in the smog; a moody wind rampages over the sidewalk, driving orange peels and crack vials to El Pueblo’s doorway.

  At Pioneer Park a woman in overalls is serving bowlfuls of vegetarian goulash to a soup kitchen queue of winos, mothers with children, and the undocumented. I sidle over to the first person in line, a lanky white man in a patchwork denim shirt. I reach in the Vons bag and dredge up a sizable chunk of twenties. I offer him the money. When he takes it, I approach the next person, a woman with three kids. She snaps up a mound of bills from my hand. I walk down the line, dishing out more dough. If I believe there’ll be a fairy tale ending here, replete with hosannas, I’m mistaken. As I fork over cash to a Mexican lady, she frowns at the fivers I’ve given her.

  “Pastor, why are you doing this?”

  No way will I tell her the cheese was given to me by a half-insane bank robber. And I won’t say I’m pretty crazy myself—I’ll keep that gem under wraps. But she wants to know my unholy grail?

  I’ve been post-trial in county jail for three months—waiting to get slotted into Muscupiabe. One day I hear a ruckus in the adjacent tank. Three guys affiliated with the Brotherhood have a kid on his hands and knees. A slender young sissy who’s squealing through the athletic sock stuffed in his mouth. One holds him still; the other two are taking turns carving his face with a sharpened toothbrush. Another Brotherhood associate slips behind me, his home-cooked-meth stink breath roiling past my nose: “Mind your own business, pinhead. Unless you want to end up like sissy boy in there.”