One

 

 

              I used to be just like you.

              I had no prospects, no potential �" all the makings of a short order cook, a door-to-door salesman or window washer �" though I was too innocent to have known it then. I had nary a thought or worry, for I was blessed and protected by my innocence, in the way that all stupid people are. I used to think that my life (such as it was) was all I’d ever need or want for in this miserable world. I had only that humblest of dreams: the solid, stolid routine of a 5-day 9-to-5, maybe a quick few at the bar on Saturday with the guys, but always always back to wifey and the kids; all the bland splendor of a Norman Rockwell painting. The Good Lord even saw fit in the meantime to bless me with three hots, a cot and an occasional offering of the “old familiar”. I was as contented as a pig in s**t. I toiled admirably for that two-bedroom bungalow, my ironed slacks and mid-level management position; a comfortable, sturdy rope with which to hang myself, there in my backyard with the sun shining through the lemonade and the bees buzzing over my sweet, sleeping head. I used to want for so little, it almost seems funny now. But even this simple, stupid dream turned out to be out of my reach.

              Once a man finds himself bum-rushed by fate, tempted and betrayed by that two-faced, fork-tongued succubus called easy money, in all her glad rags and whispered promises �" betrayed and sacrificed, put under a microscope to be judged by man, woman and child alike; thrown away into a deep, dark hole for almost half of his life �" he quickly finds himself adapting to suit his situation. To play the hand he’s been dealt.

              That is when he learns the meaning of compromise.

 

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              I hadn't been off the train but five minutes �" shaking the dust and the numbness out of my limbs, getting my land legs so to speak �" before the railroad bull had me in his sights. I had a feeling he would, long before he saw me. Say what you like of them and their kind, policemen always have that uncanny knack for smelling the penitentiary on a man �" of seeing it writ large in the scars, the lines and the hollows of his face. He came sidling up to me as I rounded the club car, putting on a clumsy air of casual surprise at my appearance. He had his thumbs hitched in his belt (I assume he wore a belt, though I couldn't have seen it for his massive gut), a pinched smile on his beet-red Irish face. He laughed as if he'd gotten one over on me or something. He was bona fide; a dyed-in-the-wool sonofabitch if ever I’d met one.

              "Who goes there?" he chuckled, jowls ajiggle, full of fat man's mean, savorless mirth. He was dressed neatly in black-and-grey tweed, a bowler hat perched at a cocky angle atop his pointed head. His badge was polished to a high gloss, but his eyes were as cold and dark as winter rain puddles. They said everything that I needed to know about him. He was, as though by necessity of his trade, inured away from anything approximating human sympathy or mercy. He would kill me as soon as sneeze.

              I shoved my hands deep into my pockets, turning slowly to meet him but careful not to look directly into his eyes. I kept my head low, like a dog caught licking the Christmas ham. I opened my mouth a little, let a serene blankness wash over my face �" experience has taught me that the key to dealing with men like him was to make yourself small, to bow and scrape a little if only to avoid putting them on their guard. Submissiveness is always key to dealing with the sadistic mind, as prison had taught me. They want a sport that fights, that begs and weeps a little before the kill �" as it is in the wild, once you’re caught pissing in their scrape, it's only natural to act a little cowy.

              "Hello, sir." I said brightly, with a well-practiced meekness. I spoke to him much the same way I'd spoken to a dozen or so parole officers �" the way any negro would have spoken to a white man in the south. He sized me up with a pouting, haughty look of distaste, made sure I saw him doing it. His hand wandered idly to the baton hanging from his waist. The fingers lingered there, gently tapping.

              "I asked you a question, bub. Let's see some ID." said the sheemie, prodding me with his elbow and bunching up bushy, copper-wire eyebrows. His breath stank of sour mash and cabbage, and his bulbous nose was dripping with sweat despite the morning chill. It took all that I had not to bust out laughing right in his goddamned face. He was a hard case, alright �" the real McCoy �" and I'd have to take every effort not to rub him wrongly. I knew that in the worst-case scenario he'd be showing me the business end of that stick. I knew he would have taken no small pleasure in doing so. I spoke calmly and evenly, though words couldn’t have helped me.

              "I'm truly sorry sir, but I believe I've lost my wallet." I said, offering him empty hands.

              He made a noise in the back of his throat that wasn't quite a chuckle.

              "A likely story."

              I clenched my fists, set my teeth in anticipation of a blow, but he had me by the arm before I knew it.

              "Let's go, sonny." he said.

 

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              The lockup was a subdued gray affair, much like any other backwoods county intake. I find that most of these half-dead industrial towns never put much though in beautifying their bordellos or their jailhouses (nor of anything that it found particularly distasteful). Everyone decent will naturally shrink away from whatever is considered distasteful, whether they be privies or hoosegows. In a way, I considered myself lucky to have been collared that quickly, for I also knew from experience that if a man wants the dish on any town, the jailhouse was about as good a place as any to start. If there’s one thing that passes the time in jail, it’s talking �" either to yourself or someone else �" though you’ll seldom find a truly penitent man in any penitentiary. True, the holding cells were cramped (with few places to sit) and smelled like an unwashed monkey house �" the toilets appeared to be broken, overflowing onto a floor covered in soggy wads of paper, sleeping wetbrains and striking migrant pea-pickers �" but I couldn’t complain. I was far more accustomed to these accommodations than those of any roadside motel, and I certainly slept better here.

              I was transferred at length to a smaller, somewhat less fragrant cell, alongside a rummy old codger by the name of Whitey Stroad. He was a regular in the place, making merry with the guards and knowing them by name. He also seemed to fit the bill as town drunk, for his face was besieged by angry pink gin blossoms. His teeth were about as rotten-brown as apple cores. He spoke loudly, with a thick eastern accent �" a little too closely for my liking, spitting all the time, and with a whiff of the grave on his stinking breath. He wore an unkempt shock of yellowy-white hair, which haloed a beaming, wrinkled rawhide face. His rheumatism gave one the impression that he was always just on the verge of bursting into tears. I found I enjoyed his company, after a fashion and such as it was. I found he was only too eager to buddy up with me, to tell me his life story �" though I think this might've had more to do with my cigarettes than my welcoming demeanor.

              He confessed to me that he'd lived in this particular podunk hellhole for over half his life, even seemed proud of the fact. Whitey (as he would repeatedly insist I call him, though I only knew him by that name) told me he’d used to serve as coalman on the Pear Blossom Special after the war �" the long south-to-northeast haul �" but had followed tall talk of fortunes west, to the hills of Tahoe. This move was also somewhat fortuitous, as he was then facing a conviction for assault and battery on his ex-wife back in New York. As dreams often did, his amounted to so much nothing �" a handful of fool’s gold. He spent years wandering up and down the Pacific seaboard with no fixed destination, hitching rides on the trains he’d once fueled before finally settling down in California. They ran him out of there when a girl accused him of rape, though he hadn’t much more to say on that matter. Whitey held no grudges, or so he said…he claimed that Modesto was a good panhandling town, always someone there to stake you for a drink or a cigarette. He did complain at length about not being able to hold a job since �" though I think that might've had more to do with his breath than bad luck.

              "Hell, I probably ridden a train or two through here, back in them ‘bo days. It’s nice here, weather's real nice. Nary a cloud in the sky." Whitey said, thoughtfully picking his nose. "Lots of big men, too, lots of cash. Used to be a mining town, back in the ‘oughts. Lots of old money, from back east..."

              We were about halfway through my pack of Lucky Strikes before I finally started to perk up at what he was saying, and the conversation got juicier each time I lit him another cigarette. He told me of one big shot in particular, a Henry Reed �" some threadbare, carpetbagging b*****d down from Pittsburgh way, an ex-banker grown fat on mineral prospects and high-interest loans. He sounded to me like one of those types that's never quite happy with what he's got, who’s built his fortune on the sweat of someone else’s toil. Henry had his greedy little fingers in all kinds of honeypots here in town: politics, unions, police �" hell, the guy was even a Freemason for Christ’s sake. He’d spent years building bridges, shaking the right hands and greasing the right palms, cultivating friends and cleaning up at private, after-hours card games outside the county line. He'd very nearly been elected vice mayor of the town, until it had come out that he was married to a prostitute from South Dakota. It was a real scandal, just about the biggest news to hit the place since westward expansion. Despite having lost favor with the fine, churchgoing biddies on the welcoming committee, he still had the respect and ear of each and every fatcat in town.

              “Wouldn’t mind me a crack at that wife,” Whitey laughed, eyes distant but voice pathetically cheerful.

              He was by now nearly out of breath from the telling, wheezing and sputtering on death’s door. I put him to bed, ever so gently, and wished him sweet dreams of barleycorn. I had some thinking to do, and the smell of raw onion and rye wasn't helping any. I sat up for a while, finishing his cigarette for him.

             

 

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              I stepped out into the sunshine on the courthouse lawn, 25 dollars poorer but feeling as fresh as a daisy. When I hit the sidewalk, someone’s lemon-faced granny tried to wish me a good afternoon. I spit at her feet and walked on.

              I had an address, a destination, and seeing as how Main Street wasn't any longer than ten short blocks, I wouldn't be needing further direction. The buildings were all squat, dull-brown and uniform. The very sight of the place disgusted me. The w***e �" Henry's wife �" worked at a hair salon on Sandusky Avenue. As I didn't look the type to just wander into a beauty parlor, I stopped in at a soda fountain to clean myself up a little first. I sized up the character in the mirror and didn't like what I saw �" it was no small wonder that the bull had sussed me out so quickly.

              At one time I cut a none-too-unpleasant profile, but the hard times had started to show �" my head, normally full and squared like a boxer's, had succumbed to a steady diet of bakery day-olds and potato rotgut. I was a sad and sorry sight to behold. The skin of my face and right arm had sunburned an deep red-brown from the train ride, and this gave me the appearance of some dusty, busted-assed fieldworker. I also hadn't shaved for nigh on five days, which only made my sunken, hungry face look that much more desperate. My clothes were about fit for washrags. It wasn't going to be easy, but I felt up to a challenge.

 

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              "Howdy," I said, letting her see my big white teeth. Her face was just fine for her line of business, round, pink and lovely, though she was slightly heavier than I liked. Her hair was red, and I've always liked red hair. Her corset was cinched up so tight that her cleavage was almost tickling the underside of her chin. She glanced up from her nails to shoot me an annoyed look, with the palest blue eyes I’ve ever seen, like gin over chipped ice.

              "I'd like to make an appointment for a manicure, please."

              She sighed heavily, to let me know I was interrupting something important, and dragged out a big ledger that looked like a hotel registry. While she scanned the pages, she leaned forward ever so slightly. I think she knew what she was doing.

              "The only opening I have is at three o'clock." she told me, without looking up again.

              "Oh, that's fine." I said.

              She gave me another exasperated sigh and wrote down the name I gave her.

 

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              I killed the two hours at a dive bar down the street from the salon. It wasn’t anything to write about; it must have been a place for war veterans, maybe an Elks Lodge or some damned thing, because there was nobody under fifty in the place. There was a mournful, dust-greyed moose head hung above the bar that surveyed the sorry scene below. The barmaid was a dried-up chippie, loud and brassy with a face that might have been comely twenty years ago, but now looked about two teeth away from caving in completely. She tried making small talk with me when I ordered my drink, but I shut her down cold. The old timers had taken to giving me the stink eye �" probably jealous of all the attention I was getting �" so I chose a quiet, secluded booth near the back of the place. They could sit on their piles, cluck their tongues and suck penny candies for all I cared.

              After a while of half-listening to their cackling tales of bygone youth and dyspeptic belching, I stood and went to the bathroom. I found something scrawled inside the stall about Henry Reed's wife; it was incredibly detailed, a touch blue even for my taste. I'd been trying unsuccessfully to pace myself with the drinking lately, as it had begun to effect my temperament and impair my thinking. It made me do things that I otherwise wouldn’t, made me want to fight strangers. I only wanted to work up a nice, even buzz for when I had to go back to meet her �" you know, liquid courage. I promised myself one more, steeled myself to leave the john. I didn’t want to turn up stinking like some no-account, so juiced that I started sounding off or getting fresh with her. I could already feel the lines starting to blur.

              She reminded me a little of another redhead I'd known, years ago. That redhead had also been a w***e, and someone that I'd greatly cared for. I didn’t linger on her memory for very long, as I'd sooner leave the sentimentality to the old timers back at the bar.

              I paid my tab at a quarter to and didn't tip.

 

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              "Miss Reed?" I asked, playing it dumb.

              "My name’s Sandy. Mrs. Sandy Reed." she informed me, glancing up with narrowed, suspect eyes.

              "Well, Sandy…I'm here for my appointment."

              "Have a seat, Mr. �" I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

              "Harris. Duke Harris."

              I extended her my hand, which she considered briefly with a haughty look of distaste before taking. I kept smiling, tamped down the urge to spit in her face. I took it as a good sign that she felt comfortable enough with me to keep sassing me like that. If she went too far with it, I knew how to cut her back down to size.

              She led me back inside the place after taking her sweet time checking the registry, walking with that side-to-side hipshimmy that only women like her could seem to do. It might have been the booze working, but she now seemed a damned sight better than just OK to me �" true, she was a little big, but only where it counted. There wasn't a whole lot of wobble when she moved, either. She looked more poured than stuffed into her flimsy cotton skirt. I think I was beginning to see what Henry had seen in her, back in her heyday; that rough-and-ready country girl swagger, that vicious crassness. I imagined that with a little work, a little bridling, you could turn that meanness to your advantage. I felt my face grow flush with the possibilities. She was coming on a little more sweetly now she realized I was a paying customer, started giving me just a little honey to go with the vinegar. As I moved past her, smelled her, I had a lightning shock of sense-recognition: the memory of a child, wandering through a summer wheatfield; swimming headlong through clouds of cloyingly sweet summer pollen. The warmth, and that particular way the sunshine had of making everything smell new. It made me imagine of the softness of her skin, her warmness, and I felt my head go a little swimmy.

              "You look like you could use a shave, too." she laughed. Jesus, what a sound...

              Mrs. Henry Reed sat down at a small metal stool, at eye-level with my midsection, bent forward ever so slightly. Her hands were slender and pale, deliberate in their movements, and I burned to have them touch me. She rummaged at length through a pink vinyl bag until she found what she was looking for.

              "Mind folding your sleeves up, hon? Don't want to get your nice shirt all wet." It wasn't a bad shirt at all, not for the church donation box. It even came with a tie.

              Her voice was warm-poured sweetness. I felt my heart kicking against my chest, found I had to check my breathing every once in a while just to make sure I wasn’t panting. I reminded myself what I was really there for; I fixed my smile, tried to make it appear more friendly than seductive. There was still that ever-present feeling that I had a stone stuck down low in my throat, and it seemed to make my voice sound funny.

              "Take off your jacket while you're at it. What’s the matter, got somewhere else to be?" she said, glancing sidelong at me, just the tiniest of smiles toying at the corner of her mouth. Her red mouth.

              "Been in town long?" she asked me casually, studying my hands for a moment before she touched them. She had a mother’s touch.

              "Why, am I a sore thumb?"

              "No, I've just never seen you around is all. It's a small town...you'd think we'd have run into each other by now."

              She still wasn't quite looking at me, and her voice betrayed a half-concealed impatience. It made me more than a little nervous, her fingertips ever so lightly brushing the hairs on the back of my hands. It was driving me crazy, to tell the truth. If I hadn’t already been drunk, I imagine she would’ve had me in my cups. Who's to say, I could have walked through that door cold sober.

              "Just passing through." I told her honestly.

              I made up my story on the fly, about how I was a travelling salesman on my way to a convention down in Houston �" about how the cross-country ride was wearing my a*s shiny and how I'd decided to climb off the train in this beautiful little burg, just to take in the sights and what-have-yous. I was just another poor working Joe, searching for his port in the storm. Having rolled a drunken salesman more than once in my life, I knew what talkers they could be; they confessed so much to complete strangers that you’d think they were Catholics or something. I told her more than she wanted to know, really �" I even tried to work in mention of a fiancée eagerly awaiting my return to Chicago. Mrs. Reed was caressing my hands, washing them with a sweet-smelling pink soap. If she’d known what I was thinking, she would have scrubbed harder still.

              "Well then, welcome." she said, genially enough, though she still wouldn’t look at me. "Sorry the band wasn't here to greet you."

              I shrugged her comment off and thanked her weakly. I was starting to regret getting soused first, because on top of all my growing fluster I was also having some trouble following the thread, remembering my own name. The more I tried to concentrate, to clear my head and focus my thoughts, the softer and brighter the edges got.

              "Funny you picked this place." she said, finally turning up her eyes �"blue and knife-sharp, about as coldly calculating as any animal’s. "It ain't exactly a tourist trap."

              "Maybe I'm just dopey from lack of sleep…it's a hell of a thing, trying to sleep on a bus."

                “Thought you said you rode in on a train?” she said, smirking again.

                “Right…my mistake.” I muttered. I couldn’t seem to feel my hands.

              She nodded briefly and returned to soaping them.

              We neither of us talked for a while, a little too long a while…there was disquiet in that agonizing silence. I struggled to think of something to say, to fill the space �" I had make sure to keep it light, not to show my growing frustration with her. I couldn’t for the life of me have said why I was getting so hot; it really wasn’t like me at all.  I’d do well to remember my manners, as even w****s appreciate a please and thank you every now and then.

              "Any good places to eat in town?" I finally spit out, tripping a little over my words. My tongue was heavy, numb. I swallowed loudly enough that I knew she must have heard.

              "Not really. There's a greasy spoon over on Oliver St., not that I’m recommending it."

              She'd taken out a long pink emery board and started rhythmically sanding down my ugly yellow calluses and bunged-up fingernails. The feeling was torturous, like metal shavings raking my teeth, and I felt my toes squirming in my shoes. I'd never been so flustered, not even by a cop. I may have been blushing.

              "Well, a cup of hot coffee might be just what I need." I said.

              "I'd say so." she said, stifling a big stage-yawn with the back of her hand. I still didn't care for her tone, not one little bit. There was something teasing in it �" childishly snide, smirking. My c**k was hard enough to just about bust the seams.

              "Okay, lean back.” she said. “Buck up, cowboy…this might hurt a little."

 

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              I paid her with a halfhearted wink and a twenty, trying to let her know she hadn’t put me off. My hands were shaking a little. She tried to hand me back a sawbuck, but I told her to keep it. I would consider it a deposit on our future together.

              My hands felt strange, heavy and clumsy, like they were slick with petroleum. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t speak. I was feeling about set to beeline back to the bar when I realized I didn't have any money left. I turned back and headed up toward Main.