Little Crew of Butchers

by Francine Pascal

  “Hey, whatta doin’ there?!” he yelled. Leaning out of his booth, he waved over the two policemen standing at the opposite ends of the road. “Hey, Pete, get that guy outta there!”

  Pete, the cop, and his partner made their way quickly across the eight lanes to where Luke was swooping up the last sixteen bucks before taking off at top speed toward the bridge.

  The two cops cut through the traffic and gave chase. After some minutes of hide-and-seek around the cars, the cops were beginning to close in. They had Luke squeezed in and cornered alongside a Jeep; one blocked the front while the other held the back. But just ahead were open spaces where the traffic was thinning and beginning to move.

  Only one way to get there.

  Luke took it. Making the break, he scrambled up the back of the Jeep and onto the roof, which by good chance left him exactly at the height of a truck passing on his left. He made the leap, grabbing onto a vertical bar jutting from the back of the truck. His legs swung out as the truck found an opening in the traffic and picked up speed.

  Holding tight, Luke pulled in his legs and shimmied up the bar, dropping his feet down and planting himself securely on the narrow ledge at the rear. From there he could reach the metal door handle in the center. With one foot wedged against a steel eyebeam protruding over the bumper, he had enough purchase to lift the door up the few inches he needed to jam his foot underneath.

  With one hand on the handle and his foot lifting upward, fighting the speed of the truck all the while, he slid the door open wide enough to allow him to squeeze his body into the darkness of the truck’s interior. The police, on foot, were easily outdistanced.

  Inside the truck, Luke threw himself back onto what felt like a pile of large, bulging burlap sacks. Thin lines of sunlight breaking here and there through the truck’s paneled sides cut the blackness. The air was cold, but felt delightfully cool to Luke’s overtaxed, overheated body. He was exhausted, still shaking from the overload of adrenaline shooting through his veins. But he was safe, and it made him smile, the way he’d done it.

  He loved the tollbooth scam. He’d always had a creative talent, he just had to find the right channel for it. And New York was going to be the place. And he’d be safe. For now, anyway.

  Content to have made it cross-country with just the right amount of excitement, he lay back and made himself as comfortable as he could against the cold, lumpy sacks.

  Something sharp struck his back.

  An instant later, what felt like a nip just below his shoulder sent Luke leaping to his feet. He spun, searching the darkness for a glimpse of whatever had bitten him. Something was alive in here. Shit!

  One of the thin lines of striated sunlight cut lengthwise across the sack he’d been using as a pillow. Even in that little flash, he could see that the sack was moving. Gingerly, Luke leaned in close enough to make out what looked like the point of a greenish-black claw jutting though the torn burlap, viciously snapping its claw jaws open and shut as it worked its way further out through the hole. Swooping down, Luke grabbed the sack by its closed ruffled top and swung it as far away from himself as he could. It hit the far wall of the truck.

  The power of the slam split the sides of the sack, sending what looked like a million angry crabs exploding into wild freedom. They scurried with mad speed, sending the panicked Luke scampering to the top of another pile of sacks. But crabs can climb. Luke couldn’t see them, but he could hear their hard bodies scratching the floor of the truck as they advanced on him from all directions.

  He had to see his enemy. He jumped down from the crest of the sacks and leaped to the sliding door, scrambling for the handles. The crabs nipped at his fingers, but he found the metal bar and, with a great heave, hauled it up far enough to let in the light.

  The place was alive with frantic crabs racing and turning every which way, sinking their claws into anything they could find. At least three were hanging onto the bottom of his jeans. He tried to shake them off but they stayed attached. The sons of bitches were nipping at his ankles! Luke ripped them off with his hands and flung them out of the truck onto the highway.

  There were too many. He jumped back and, using another sack as a broom, he swept the loose crabs from the truck. Then he tossed the sack.

  In the light he could see frenzied movement in the other sacks. No way was he sitting in here with these menacing monsters threatening to break loose. Swinging freely, he emptied the truck of the other sacks.

  Behind him on the road, he could hear the awful sound of crunching crustaceans and the screech of tires as cars braked and swerved, trying to avoid the scuttling crabs and lobsters that covered the roadway in all directions.

  Luke’s last look out of the back of the truck was the sight of a Mercedes neatly slicing off the front bumper of another Mercedes as it veered to avoid the splattered carnage on the road. He slammed down the door.

  In the darkness, he trampled every inch of the floor to make certain the truck was completely empty. Satisfied, he pulled his backpack over and, using it as a pillow, lay back, but the lumps in his back pockets kept him from being comfortable so he pulled out his wallet, some useless keys, a pen and a nail clipper and some other pocket crap and shoved it all into his backpack. Exhausted from panic, the monotonous rolling and bumping of the truck quickly put him to sleep.

  He slept for almost two hours and only woke because the truck had stopped. Parked, he figured. Carefully and quietly, Luke slid the door up far enough to squeeze his head out. On one side of the road he could see part of an overgrown empty lot. The other side was wooded, but visible up a long driveway was a sprawling one-story clapboard restaurant with a Seafood and Cocktails sign. It wasn’t hard to figure out that this had to be the delivery point. The problem was that when the driver came around and saw that his truck was empty, he would probably go berserk. Luke slid out of the truck and ducked behind a small clump of bushes.

  He watched as the driver, a solid two-hundred pounder, got out of his truck. The man checked a manifest in his hand, jammed the paper into his breast pocket, and walked around to the back of the truck. Luke felt bad for him. He was going to be mighty upset when he saw the empty truck.

  For a moment, Luke’s conscience twinged. He hadn’t meant to get the driver in trouble, but shit, he couldn’t have those little creatures eating him alive, could he?

  Just as he’d expected, the guy went nuts when he opened the door.

  He couldn’t believe his eyes. He jumped up to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, or not seeing things. But he was right; there wasn’t a lobster or crab in sight. Thirty sacks gone. Disappeared. How could that be? He hadn’t stopped long enough for anyone to steal the load—hell, he hadn’t even stopped for coffee! Maybe he forgot to pack them. But no, he distinctly remembered struggling to find a way to load it one level so none of the crabs and lobsters would get crushed. What the devil happened? And what was this?

  That’s when Luke remembered, he hadn’t taken his backpack.

  The driver picked up the backpack and tore open the zipper. When he saw it was nothing but clothes, he flung it back inside the truck.

  Furious, the driver slammed down the door and, like the proverbial barn door, locked it. Too late. Then he stood, hands on his hips, looking around like he expected to see someone come out of the bushes holding his sacks. Nothing. After a couple of minutes, still steaming mad, he walked back to the driver’s side and got in.

  All of Luke’s earthly possessions—and they weren’t many—were in the back of that truck.

  His only option was to somehow beat the truck to the traffic light ahead and hitch a ride. At least he could find out where the guy was going, then maybe he could find a way to get his stuff back.

  Luke, body sunk low in a crouch, ran along the wooded area toward the traffic light. It was a good four-block run, and he was gasping and in a sweat when he got there. Luckily, the truck s
till hadn’t moved. It looked like the driver was just sitting there, probably trying to figure out his next move.

  Luke got to the light and looked back.

  With his thumb out and the most benign look he could muster on his face, Luke waited. Finally, he saw the truck begin to move. Slowly. Probably he’d spotted Luke and was going to stop for him.

  About a block away the guy put on his left signal and Luke realized he was going to make the left turn before the light. That’s when he started running. But he didn’t make it. The truck took the turn and was two hundred feet down the road by the time Luke got to the corner.

  Every goddamn thing he had left in the world was on that truck. Everything. All his bullshit résumés, his one credit card, his driver’s license, his expired passport, telephone numbers, cell phone, everything. Plus almost five hundred dollars, not counting the sixty-four bucks from the tollbooth. Luke dug into his pockets and came up with a fiver and some change. He was as good as broke. On his ass. Down and out in wherever the hell he was.

  Shorelane.

  That’s what the road sign said. Where the hell was Shorelane? He started walking. A few hundred feet ahead he saw another sign that pointed to I-495, under which it said “Long Island Expressway.” Luke had never been out East before, but he’d heard about Long Island and Fire Island and the Hamptons. They talked about those places in LA. A lot of the important people he’d met, the ones who originally came from the East and considered themselves intellectuals, had summer homes on Long Island.

  But, though Luke couldn’t have known, not in Shorelane. Shorelane was a small town, about fifteen thousand people in winter and, surprisingly, not many more in the summer. Even though it was on the Great South Bay, it didn’t seem to attract summer tourists, perhaps because no one had built up summer accommodations. A tall hotel would have violated zoning laws; motels would have been permissible, but no new ones had been built in the last twenty-five years. The old ones were marginal, ordinary to shabby, used mostly for daytime trysts by people from bigger towns like Hempstead. It was safe to assume that if you were from any chic place on Long Island, you would not run into anyone you knew in Shorelane.

  Luke walked along the macadam road, now bordered on both sides by acres of flat, neatly rowed farmland. After about a mile, the landscape changed to low-story office buildings interspersed with drive-in fast-food huts, gas stations, used-car lots, and topless bars. He used seventy-five cents to buy a soda at a Shell station.

  It was midafternoon now and the streets were almost empty. The working people were back in their offices and shops, teens were at the beaches, and mothers with babies were catching a quick after-lunch rest before their older children came home and dinner preparations began. Only wanderers, people with no purpose, people like Luke, were on the street, and there were very few of them.

  The street took a slant uphill and became Main Street. As he came closer to the top of the hill, he could look down on the center of the town of Shorelane, a dinky, ordinary town.

  As he came closer, he could see what looked an old five-and-dime from the 1950s. He saw a store exactly like it in LA last year, on a movie set for a TV film set just before the Second World War. He was a “townspeople” extra, so he had plenty of time to wander around.

  The shop today in Shorelane was real and almost identical to the movie set, except it was neat and shabby where the other had been new and shiny. He’d actually been on his way up the street to the bar, but he felt he could use a little sprucing up. For that he needed his comb and toothbrush which, of course, were in his lost knapsack. So he turned into Smilers Cool Shoppe, past a little red-headed girl crouched, as only small children can do, without her bottom touching the sidewalk and her arms wrapped around her knees.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Before Luke has been in the store for two minutes, he has pocketed the perfect comb. Heading for toothbrushes, he passes another counter with hair dyes.

  Sometimes people asked him about the blond streaks in his hair. From the time he was sixteen and his blond hair had begun to darken, he’d always had lighter streaks. When he was out in LA with that powerful sun, they turned yellow. With his tan, they looked great. Even Luke liked them. But now, here in New York, without the California sun … Luke studies the possibilities and finds they have boxes just for streaks.

  “May I help you?”

  The counter girl is the kind you would see in a movie, except this time, she’s real. Tall and slim with perfect out-of-focus Breck-girl blond curls that just touch her shoulders. If she’s wearing makeup, it’s ideal, invisible in itself but magically blushing her cheeks, long brown lashes that encircle oval-shaped eyes, light-brown pupils flecked with yellow, making the fusion hazel to olive. Gentle eyes that you could relax into, and the rest of her face is just as sweet. Her voice suits her with its soft, almost whispery sound.

  Perfect as she appears on close examination, when you pull back, nothing about her face is sharp or strong enough to claim real beauty. Delicate is the definitive word.

  “What do you think?” Luke asks. “What I mean is, can you match me up? The streaks, I mean.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, what did you use before?”

  “Nothing. These are real, but I was in LA. Not going to get that kind of sun in New York, right? What did you say your name was?”

  “Daisy Rumkin.”

  “Lucas Barnes,” saying the first name he could think of. At least he stayed with the initials.

  “Are you an actor?”

  “Yeah, just starting. Did you see Walking Wonders with Gwyneth Paltrow?”

  Of course, Daisy couldn’t possibly have seen the nonexistent movie he just made up on the spot, but she’s captivated nonetheless. Here she is in Shorelane, Long Island, the dead-end place she hates most in the world, and a movie star comes in and talks to her. Daisy steals a quick glance around, hoping some of the other girls are watching. But no one is.

  “I love Gwyneth Paltrow and I would see anything she’s in. Is it playing here?”

  There he goes again. Luke watches himself easing into the lie. Hey, what was he going to do? Tell her who he really is? An Australian nobody, drifting in from LA? Or worse, running from the LA cops. That would be a winner. He is attracted to this girl, really likes her right away. It’s that kind of electric connection that rarely happens. If it’s big enough, they call it “love at first sight.”

  So, Luke uses the only talent he has—his quick mouth—and by the time he’s finished, he has a date with her for a picnic on the beach tonight.

  “I get off at five.” She says, “You can pick me up here.”

  “Later,” he says. Waving, he walks off, going back to his not-exactly-shopping.

  Meanwhile, at the back of the store, the twin, Benny, from the gang of little kids, is busy pretending to be studying the dental supplies and doesn’t even notice Big Larry come up behind him.

  “Nobody’s around, and you still got nothin’?” Big Larry says shoving him out of the way. “Watch this.”

  Pulling his sweatshirt sleeve down practically over his hand, Larry reaches for the last tube of Crest toothpaste. Just at the same moment, a larger hand shoves his out of the way.

  “Uh-uh, sonny,” Luke says, shoving Larry’s hand away and palming the toothpaste and sliding it off the counter and into his pocket. To make amends, he puts a friendly hand on Larry’s shoulder, winks, and smiles down at him.

  “Hey, mister, get ya hand offa me!” Larry whips himself out from under Luke’s hand, not one bit intimidated by the reprimand of an adult. Especially one who has to shoplift himself.

  “It’s okay, kid, just a joke,” Luke whispers under his breath, then winks like Larry is in on the joke.

  The guy is big, and Larry isn’t about to take any chances, so he shrugs his shoulders in an effort to keep some of his tough-guy dignity in front of his gang and walks
away.

  Luke watches him make his way over to a knot of kids, all of them smaller than him. He can see him telling his friends what happened, even pointing in his direction. The other kids look over at Luke. Even from across the store he can see their faces screwed up into hostile squints.

  Screw ’em, Luke thinks as he heads toward the exit in the front of the store. Just as he’s passing the last counter before the exit, he hears a ruckus behind him and when he turns, he sees that a man in a white shirt, obviously a manager-type, has the big kid and one of the other boys by the shoulders of their sweatshirts. Luke is close enough to see that the man is very angry, and the kids are scared.

  “It’s that guy over there! He said we should! He did it too!” Larry is shouting.

  By now, Lucy, the little redhead from outside, has come into the store. Sensing trouble, she walks over to her brother, Charley.

  “Stop that man!” the manager calls out, and another man, a shopper, and one of the other saleswomen steps in front of Luke, effectively blocking his way to the street.

  “Hey, what’s happening?”

  “You,” the manager says, pointing to Luke, “step over here, please.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Luke immediately starts walking over to the group of kids. As he does, he makes way for a saleswoman to pass in front of him, in the process accidentally bumping into the candy counter and knocking off a few chocolate bars. “Excuse me,” he says to the saleswoman, picking up the fallen items and replacing them on the counter.

  “That guy,” Larry points at Luke, “he made us do it. Said he was gonna give us half price for anything we lifted.”

  Everyone turns to Luke, the stranger, who turns to his accuser. “It’s okay, kid, I said I wouldn’t tell on you, didn’t I?” His voice is calming and gentle. “But I did say you shouldn’t do that anymore.” Now he turns into the stern father. “I told you you were going to get in trouble, and see, you did.”