Love and Other Wounds (11 page)

Frank's thumb, the one with the lump, popped when he picked up his fork. The lump had scared him when it first rose up, enough to send him to the health clinic. The man at the doc-in-a-box called it a Bible cyst and asked if he did a lot of typing. When Frank said he did data entry, the doc had nodded and told him to pay it no mind. Said something about repetitive stress. Said something about workers' comp. That was when Frank had stopped listening. A man who got his typing certificate from JeffCo Prison doesn't take workers' comp for a cyst. He just thanks whoever that it wasn't carpal tunnel, not yet anyway.

“I can't believe you,” the voice said behind him. He tried not to listen. But they talked too loud to ignore.

“Well, you're the one making indefensible arguments.”

The booth behind Frank. College boys. They came across the park to the Dogtown Diner late at night for the cheap coffee. Same as Frank did. They came to read and smoke, same as him too. Frank drank coffee and read anything paperback, because in five dry years he still hadn't figured out how to sleep without booze. A different doc, one at JeffCo, had told him that he'd gone and rewired his brain over twenty years of juicing. That's just the way it was.

Repetitive stress.

“Get off it, Owen. How can you say it's not raining outside? You can see the rain hitting the window.”

Owen was the one sitting right behind Frank. That made him the one smoking the sickly sweet clove cigarette.

“I don't know that's rain, and neither do you.”

Frank hadn't noticed Owen when he sat down, but he'd gotten a pretty clear idea of what his face must look like. That slicked back hair and the scraggly beard, the old clothes that cost more than new clothes did, and a face smug as a freshly wiped asshole. Frank would put a ten-spot on it right now.

“Are you high?” the other guy asked. “I can see the rain hitting the window, just like you can.”

“There are so many wrong things in that little sentence,” Owen said. “First off, you can't know that what you see and what I see are the same. Alienation. It's only been, like, the most important theme of art for the last thirty years. You can't know if I see what you see.”

“Can we just study?”

“Look, you just think it's raining because you've been taught the idea of rain—that when you see liquid fall from the sky that it is rain.”

“Fuck the trig homework, huh?” the other one said, slam
ming shut a book. “All right, fine. I think it's rain because it's always fucking rain.”

“But just because something has always happened in the past doesn't mean that it will happen again. Hume proved that in the eighteenth century.”

Frank nodded at Debbie walking by with a coffeepot. She filled up his cup. He watched her walk away, saw the Band-Aids on the backs of her heels where her shoes rubbed her raw.

Repetitive stress.

“And another thing,” Owen said. “Your whole concept of ‘rain' . . . The word is a symbol. Once you've applied it to the drops of liquid that you insist are falling outside, you've replaced the real with the symbolic. It's your idea of the word that you're talking about, not the real thing that may or may not be happening.”

“Then what's the point of you talking right now?”

“Ha-ha. Words still have a symbolic meaning that can never stand in for reality, which must be experienced through the senses . . . and of course the senses can't be trusted either. That's the realm of the imaginary, and that's not real either.”

“So everything we know is just, what, a seven-layer bean dip of bullshit?”

“Exactly. Unreality piled on top of unreality!” Owen lit another clove. “Look, nothing is certain. Every experiment they've ever done on eyewitnesses and the like prove that our senses can't be trusted. The Heisenberg principle shows that even by observing something, we change it in a way that we'll never fully understand.”

“Christ, Owen . . . it's raining outside.”

“You don't know that.” Owen's gesture shook the back of Frank's seat. “What are you doing in school, man? I mean, in high school they teach you Newton's laws, and then you get
to college and you learn that Einstein and quantum mechanics have shown that Newton was wrong. Antiparticles move backward through time. We don't know anything about things people have been studying for thousands of years. And you look through a piece of glass and proclaim you know exactly what is happening out there. Don't be so stupid.”

“Fine, Owen, fine. You win. It isn't raining outside.”

“Fine, Jack, fine,” Owen said. “Run away into sarcasm. But it's just because you can't prove me wrong.”

For a second, just the sound of silverware scraping on plates. Frank rubbed the lump on his thumb, then the lump in his pocket, where the knife was.

“Look, dude, let's get back to trig.”

“Pure mathematics, Jack. No problem.”

Frank got up and paid at the counter, enjoying Debbie's twisted front tooth as she bit her bottom lip counting out change.

“Keep it,” he said. “Slow night, huh?”

“It's the rain,” Debbie said.

“I know.”

Frank waited in the back of the gravel parking lot of the diner for the time it took him to smoke three cigarettes, looking into the diner at the two college students. Flicking his knife blade open and closed. He'd been right on the money about Owen. Only thing he'd missed were the thick-rimmed glasses.

Right about when Frank tossed the third butt onto the wet gravel the two young men closed their books and paid up. The one named Jack left the diner and headed south into Dogtown. Owen headed north, toward the bridge over the freeway into Forest Park. Frank followed.

Away from I-40, Forest Park was silent, and the trees above blocked out the moonlight. Here in the heart of the park at three in the morning, you could fool yourself into thinking you
were in the middle of a real forest. Frank sped up, staying quiet, until he was close enough to touch Owen.

“Hey there,” Frank said. Owen froze.

Frank kicked the back of Owen's knee. Owen skidded down ass-first onto the wet grass.

“Is it raining?” Frank asked. He straddled Owen, sitting on his stomach. “Tell me, Owen. Is it raining?”

“What are you doing?” Owen twisted back and forth under Frank. He slapped up at Frank with soft hands. Frank had the mount. Frank had him cold.

“The problem with you,” Frank whispered in the dark, “is that for you nothing's ever really touched you. You don't have any scars.”

He broke Owen's nose. He waited for the screaming to stop before he spoke again. “That's how it works out here, Owen. Action, reaction. Good old Newton.

“Can you trust your senses? Can you look at this,” he said, flicking his knife open, “and trust that it is a knife? A real knife, a thing that cuts? And if you don't trust your eyes, will you trust your nerves?” He moved the knife under Owen's eyeball, the point just touching the lid under the arc of the orb.

“Is this real, Owen? Is it? Can you feel the rain on your face? Could I scoop out your eye? Does your life feel real?”

A beat passed.

“Is it raining, Owen?”

They sat together, one atop the other, on the wet grass.

“Yes.”

Frank got off Owen. Owen stayed flat on his back, rain beading on his upturned face. Frank knew that Owen was feeling it, every drop as it landed and rolled on him.

“You were right about one thing tonight,” Frank called back. “Sometimes, just being observed can change everything.”

Shermer hits the Huntsville yard hard as teen love. He peels off the shirt to let the tats do the talking. Everyone on the big yard knows his jacket the moment he touches turf. Day one and he's famous. Wait, fuck famous. Henry Shermer is goddamn notorious. Hair-on-the-ceiling, brains-on-the-wall, evening-news notorious. Cons shoot side looks at him—no eyefucking allowed.

His skin is a textbook of white power numerology. A “14 WORDS” inked across his stomach, read as: we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. An “88” on his throat—88 equals HH equals Heil Hitler. Between his shoulder blades, “28” as in BH as in Blood and Honor. An Othala rune like a vertical Jesus-fish swimming on top of his heart. And Shermer knows he has heart—check the five blue
lightning bolts on his shoulder. He got them done in county during the trial by a con who'd strung together a sweet homemade rig. Five bolts means five bodies laid low on an Aryan Steel greenlight.

He scans the yard, classifies and organizes. The yard is Mexi Heaven. The Texas Syndicate rules Huntsville. But Shermer isn't worried about their numbers. They're too busy beefing with California transplant Eme soldiers to bother a white man. Besides, the wetbacks have mucho splinter factions. Raza Unitas: they look clean and play dirty. Hermandad de Pistoleros Latinos: crazy as anybody, their faces inked with handgun tats.

Scan, scan. Crips hold down the weight benches; Bloods seem at peace in the background. Cocaine money keeps the Mau-Maus from going buck-wild at each other too much these days. They set-tripped on the streets but kept the peace inside.

Scan, scan. White men playing handball. But no go—AB tats on a back show them as Aryan Brotherhood: peckerwoods too fucked up on crank and the rep built by better men to be real soldiers. Perry Mashburn broke with the AB ten years ago, sick of setting up meth deals with wetbacks in the name of the white race. He formed Aryan Steel and they built a castle out of corpses. Browns, blacks, skin-traitors, even screws. Each shank-specked corpse another brick in the wall. Shermer needs that wall. He knows brother Steels are on the yard somewhere—scan, scan, scan.

One of the AB brothers cuts Shermer off in the yard. Two more stand behind him. The ABs scope Shermer out and he sees his jacket write itself on their faces—Shermer is goddamn notorious. Shermer killed on a greenlight from Perry Mashburn himself—Shermer's name means massacre.

In his cell Shermer has his clippings from goddamn
Time
magazine.
Time
knew dick-all. Every white con in the world
knows the real score: Zach Dixon got sprung out of Leavenworth owing the Steel money. He'd taken out a loan from Perry Mashburn while doing two years for possession. He'd moved the money outside somehow. Probably the same way he'd moved his meth in: riding the Hatchet Wound Highway under his sister's skirt on visiting day. Then when the Steel showed up looking for his vig he'd turned rat and moved to protective custody. He rode out the last six months of his bit in Snitch City, where Aryan Steel couldn't reach him. Perry Mashburn spread the word when Zach got sprung back into the world. The word was greenlight on the skin-traitor, full brotherhood for the trigger. The greenlight had a condition: leave no witnesses.

Shermer was two years on the outside after his first real bit for armed robbery. He was bone-tired of hauling rebar for shit money. Hauling rebar kept his jailhouse swoll on, and real pussy was better than prison-punk chokefucks every time—but life like a civilian bored his tits off. He'd met some Steel brothers on the inside. Even behind bars they'd had something. Call it honor. Call it brotherhood. Something you couldn't get from wage-slavery. Something Shermer never had in his life. Something Shermer decided he couldn't live without. He cashed his last paycheck and went hunting.

Shermer knew Zach from back in the day. He asked around and learned the lame bought heavy meth from local peckerwoods with the money he'd snuck out of the joint. Zach knew he couldn't stay still. He'd loaded up and gone on the run. Shermer followed. He tracked him down I-44 through Oklahoma. Missed him in Okmulgee. Got the story from a Waffle House waitress with a triple chin and death's-head earrings: every town he went, Zach made the scene at the white power rock shows. He followed Steeltoe H8 on tour, selling meth blasts at the show to pay his way.

Shermer stopped at a truck stop. Grabbed a coin-operated shower, a cheeseburger, and a computer kiosk. He checked the Steeltoe H8 website for coming gigs. He loaded up on black coffee and drove all night. He leapfrogged Zach at Tyler and set up camp in Houston—the local skinheads called it Space City and ate migas while cussing out wetbacks. Typical soft-shell motherfuckers. Shermer knew the warrior blood still flowed through their veins. But it was gone from their faces.

Shermer sat in the parking lot while Steeltoe played their set for a warehouse full of Hammerskins and peckerwoods. Shermer caught sight of Zach. He knew him from his butt-crack chin and his meth-rat eyes. He could have iced him in the parking lot before the show, but the greenlight said no witnesses. Shermer wanted full-tilt brotherhood or nothing at all. The Steel had to know he was a righteous warrior.

He followed Zach from the show to a motel on the edge of Space City. The dude had people inside the room. No witnesses. Fuck waiting. Shermer wasn't a bitch-made bushwhacker. There was more than one way to leave no witnesses. Shermer mounted up with a shotgun and a head full of Viking dreams. He came through the door with the twelve-gauge breakdown in his hands. Five seconds in, Zach looked like Picasso painted him—head over here, arms over there. Two more pumps wiped out his partners. Shermer breathed blood mist. Some little featherwood just picking up some crank made it halfway out the door; a buckshot rip left half of her in the room and the other half rolling down the sidewalk.

Four bodies, no regrets. He'd heard you felt things the first time. He didn't feel shit.

He found the featherwood's six-year-old son hiding behind the shower curtain. Sirens on the highway said hurry. A cop car nearby. Shermer's bad luck. The kid cried and cried while
Shermer reloaded. Perry said no witnesses.

If he was a nigger they would have gassed him for it.

Instead they sent him for a ride at Huntsville that would last as long as he did. Life with no parole. The old cons called it “all day.” All day wasn't shit. And neither were these AB lames set to give him a dick-measuring right out in the yard. Shermer checked hands. No shanks—didn't mean shit. Convicts know how to hide, how to stash. Motherfuckers could have a goddamn samurai sword hidden somewhere—Shermer wouldn't see it until the word go.

Shermer weighed odds—best bet said these peckerwoods were straight-up heart-checking. A yard shank was plain stupid. Shanks don't have blades, shanks have points. No throat-cut, no slashes, just stab stab stab. Try to stab a man to death—it ain't easy. Can't slice open the arteries, can't dump guts onto the floor. Stab a man a hundred times and maybe he dies, maybe he doesn't. Doctors work miracles on septic shock and puncture wounds. Stab a man on the yard, pigs in the tower lay you out—and high-powered rifles do kill easy—and your man spends a month in the ward and walks out good as new.

“What's up?” The guy in front, billy goat pubes on his chin, drops the words. It's a greeting, a question, a challenge all in one. Shermer smiles—fuck your sister spelled out in teeth.

They don't swarm. They just want to see what kind of man he is. They're fucking lames. They're heart-checking Shermer.

So Shermer turns it back on them. He drops major eyefucks on them. He dares them to say boo. In a few seconds they're going to have to tangle just on general principle. Shermer saw plenty of yard stompings in his last bit. He knows he just has to hurt one of them bad and not stop fighting when the stomping starts.

“You kill a kid and still call yourself a white man?”

This shit here is why the Brotherhood ain't shit. This shit here is weak. Fucking lames. Fucking punks. Shermer can't say what needs to be said—a Perry Mashburn greenlight gets followed to the letter, and that's what makes us white men and you shit. Fuck the law, fuck life, fuck dead kids, fuck the whole motherfucking world. It is what it is. Shermer can't say it—the words would turn to warrior cries in his mouth. These lames wouldn't understand nohow.

Shermer gets ready to get down. His muscles don't move. It's all in the eyes.

“Hey, now.”

The voice comes from behind the AB lames. Aryan Steel—the cavalry has swastika neck tattoos. Four brothers—Shermer counts quick—eleven blue bolts between them. The one in the lead—he's got a ring of shank scars on his torso like a shark bite. He's got a screaming eagle tat over his heart. He's got four blue bolts on his arm. He's got a name that rings out in every lockdown—Craig Hollington. In the cellblock legends they called him Crazy Craig. Shermer knows the stories. Crazy Craig pushed Blood Nation OG Goldie Webber off a third-floor walkway with a bedsheet noose around his neck—Crazy Craig brought lynching back to Huntsville. He got sprung from death row off some lawyer shit. He rules Huntsville for Perry Mashburn. He's the thick dick in this yard. A Real White Man. The man Shermer came here to meet.

“He's with us, y'all hear?” Crazy Craig talks direct to the one with the billy goat beard. Shermer makes sure to remember billy goat's face—he'll ask the Steel for details later.

“Fuck it, man, you guys stand up for a dude what kills—”

Crazy Craig gets closer to the AB dudes.

“We take care of our own, dog. That's how we do.”

The men stare at each other. The yard smells like burnt
rubber and sweat. It smells like that Space City motel room. Shermer wants to smash/stomp/kick/gouge. Shermer wants to get down.

The AB dudes step off. They moonwalk back to the handball court. Shermer slaps hands with Aryan Steel. He meets Crazy Craig and Moonie and John-O and Dag. They compare tats. They walk over to the heavy bag—Aryan Steel's turf. The Steel gather around Shermer. They give him the scoop—long-term truce with the Brotherhood and most of the esses. A war simmers with the smokes—they still got a hate-on for Crazy Craig thanks to Goldie's swan dive.

“I know you ain't no fucking lame,” Crazy Craig tells Shermer. “But we got to see what you got, y'all hear? Get on that bag. Let's see how you gonna take it to the jigs.”

Moonie holds the heavy bag. Shermer wraps his hands with ribbons of cloth. He's got focus. He's a wicked street-fighting southpaw. He goes to work. Right-right-left-right-LEFT-right-right. And again.

Jab-jab-HOOK-jab-cross-HOOK-HOOK. Moonie lets the bag hang free. Shermer sets it swinging. Crazy Craig tells him to move his feet. The Texas sun drinks his sweat. His blood thumps in his head. He punches to its beat. Jab-jab-feint-cross-jab-SHOVEL HOOK. The bag hits back on the swing. Shermer's arms jelly up. He takes a step back to catch his breath.

“Get back in there, son.”

Crazy Craig grins. Shermer reads it: They've seen he's got guns. Now they want to see if he's got heart. He steps back in low: HOOK. Sounds like a shotgun blast. The Steel whistles and hoots. Minutes pass. Jab-jab-HOOK. They want to see how far he can go.

Left-left-right-LEFT. His pulse so hard his eyeballs throb. Minutes stretch out. No one says stop. He shows the guys more.
Jab-jab-jab. He can barely get the arms up. Left-left-left. He trips on his feet. He goes down. He can't breathe fast enough.

The Steel picks him up. They clap his back. Yard time is over. They walk him down the halls. He still can't lift his arms. He still can't catch his breath. Colors come out of nowhere. His heart swells twice as big, and his rib cage feels its every twitch.

“Good job there, Sherm,” Moonie tells him. In a crowded hallway. They stop. Moonie takes the wraps off Shermer's hands. Shermer's fingers can't close. They glow red with rushing blood under the skin. Moonie puts the wraps on himself. He looks at Crazy Craig. Craig nods. Moonie walks down the hall toward the brothers.

“What's—what's happening?” Shermer can barely get it out. His lungs feel rusted.

“Part two of your initiation, brother,” Craig says. “You got your blood pumping?”

“Hell—hell, yes.”

“Well, check this shit out.”

Moonie walks into a crowd of Bloods and swings—a perfect punch, a tripod of feet, fist and skull. The Bloods step back—Moonie stomps—the blacks swarm him. Shermer understands. Moonie's a distraction. For whatever Shermer's next test is. His guess—they want to see him kill. They still got to see his heart. He tries to pick out the biggest smoke in the room for his victim. He hopes his battered hands can still handle a shank.

The guards swarm. They toss Moonie and his opponent to the floor. Before Shermer can see if Moonie is in one piece, Crazy Craig puts a hand on his shoulder, leads him down a hallway Shermer hadn't seen before. John-O and Dag are at his back. He can still hear the hacks screaming, trying to get control.

Shermer calls the distraction accomplished. Now it's his turn. Initiation.

“Y'all got heart, brother,” Crazy Craig tells him. “You truly do. Perry Mashburn sends his regards.” Shermer stands exhausted, triumphant. Ready for baptism in blood. Ready to be born again in brotherhood.

“But,” Craig says, “he says you shoulda known better than to kill that kid.”

Shermer sees John-O and Dag coming at him. Warrior instincts kick in. He grabs for them. Useless. A waste—they'd made sure Shermer had punched himself out. Shermer's mind churns. What are they thinking? He's goddamn notorious. He left no witnesses. He lived the code.

Crazy Craig brings out the shank—looks like a railroad spike. He sticks Shermer in the center of his Othala rune. Under the spike, his heart still beats crazy mad.