Waste (20 page)

Don't interfere. This is what he told them in the hotel room downtown while their mother was treated for third-degree burns; the chain she wore had melted the skin around her neck, a cross branded between her breasts. Jamie remembered emerging from the smoke and that figure on the curb with an ember in his hand. Francis hadn't bothered to wake them up.

It was in that downtown hotel room with the Magic Finger beds that Francis explained why he couldn't interfere. He'd done it once before, and look what had happened. A line of white through his black hair traced the bullet's path, the skin beneath a meaty pink that pulsed like a vein. He pointed to his skull and sat on the hotel balcony, watching toads drown in the hotel pool as the chlorine overwhelmed their systems and burned their porous skin.

“Don't give me that old spiel about it bein' broken. You had it out at Christmas,” Jamie said. “Mom had to tell you to put it away. Do you remember Christmas? Fucking had the TV on the whole time. It'll just be for tonight. And Mom isn't even here, is she?”

“She is. They had a heart attack at the hall. I keep tellin' her she's going to have one if she keeps breathing in that smoke every night. Soot in her lungs like I tell her. She wants to kill herself all slow like that, she's welcome to it.”

The clutch of silence and muted news on the television had seeped into every little room in that row house. It was Janet Garrison who went out and worked, worked until she finally got her pension and could flee as well. The post office set her free after forty years with a fractured disc and collapsed arches in both her feet. Francis Garrison ate whatever she left in the fridge and slept in the living room. He did his own laundry while she was out of the house but washed it in the kitchen sink. Janet did not believe in divorce. It was easier to pretend he was a ghost than file the papers and drag what was left of her husband into a brightly lit courtroom. Everything would be on the record after that. Anyone could access the stenographer's account of their dysfunction.

“Well, I won't bother her. Jesus Christ. Where did you put it now? Is it in the kitchen again? You should just give it up. Throw it away if you don't want me asking for it. I got nowhere to be. I can look for it all night,” Jamie said. “You hear anything from Scott at all?”

Francis Garrison retreated to his chair in the corner.

“So you're going to shut down again?” Jamie asked. “Like a robot. All right, fine.”

Jamie could still see Brock's mouth split open with that little tongue pushing through the fluid like a worm. He could still see the lion mashed under the grille of his car, its vacant eyes. Jamie didn't know what the Lorax had told those two men from the butcher shop. Who else could they be? The Lorax could have said anything with all those mushrooms jammed into his cheeks. Jamie slammed another cupboard and kept looking. He smelled like smoke.

Francis didn't move. On the television screen, a woman bellowed from a pulpit made out of scrap plywood. Homemade signs fluttered behind her in the breeze. The close angle of the camera made her look massive; you could see small black hairs raised along her upper lip. Her teeth gnashed and she paused for effect. The crowd was smaller than it looked, pumped up with occasional banners and one guy in a motorized wheelchair driving around in circles. He looked more lost than angry.

“Leave it alone, Jamie. You can't just take whatever you want,” Francis croaked. “It ain't yours to take. It's like anything else. Like a microwave or a satellite dish. I keep my eye on it.”

“Just tell me where you stashed the gun, and I'll leave you alone to whatever you're doin'. You can do whatever you want with that TV. Mom doesn't use it anyway.”

Jamie found the rifle underneath the sink, held against the wall by pipes and a stack of iron wool. His father crept up behind him in the cramped kitchen, waving his hand at Jamie like it was a talisman. The light passed right through the hole in his palm, a reminder of cows split down the middle and pigs boiled to clear the bristles off their snouts before their throats were cut.

“Just relax, Dad. You need to take a seat before you hurt yourself.”

Jamie had seen this hand routine before, and he still had Brock's broken jack-o'-lantern face floating behind his eyes. He tried to push past his father with the butt of the gun—a Remington Fieldmaster, .22LR caliber. It had belonged to his grandfather first. Francis Garrison held fast against his son, trapping him in the doorway. He hadn't brushed his teeth.

“You're going to make a mess with that thing. Like everything else you do,” Francis said. “I'll throw it out like you want. Just give me it. I'll be the one to throw it out. Things come back at you if you ain't careful.”

Jamie knew his father always kept one in the chamber—just in case he got tired of waiting for the end. He saw it when his father cleaned the gun. Sometimes the eventual dissolution of this world was not eventual enough.

“So it came back and bit you in the ass—so what?” Jamie said. “So does everything else. No one is trying to take your TV or your microwave or whatever else you think we want. Not taking anything but this, I swear. Mom needs to put a leash on you. Jesus…”

“You don't know what you're doing with that,” Francis said.

Jamie shoved past his father and found his mother standing in the hallway. She was dressed in the green pantsuit she wore to the bingo halls. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, the ones she wore after a good long cry in the bathroom with the tub running. The stoop of her back was reinforced from years of lifting packages onto conveyor belts and sorting through Christmas letters to Santa Claus.

“Mom, can I use the phone?” Jamie said. “I just gotta make a call and the old man ain't helping. Don't worry, it's not long-distance— let go—and it won't take too long.”

Janet Garrison brushed past her husband. Her eyes didn't even flicker over his hairy face or the rifle clutched in her son's hands. That gun was always bouncing around the house. She had slept with it beneath her bed for the last week before Francis moved it again. Sometimes she wished it would fire once of its own volition.

“Sure. As long as it's not long-distance, you can call whoever,” she said. “You still staying with Scott?”

Janet began to put on her shoes in the kitchen, the large orthopedic ones the doctor advised would reduce the strain on her lower back. Unlike most of her friends, Janet had yet to crumble entirely. She attributed it to a lack of cigarettes and a healthy dose of All-Bran each morning. It was only her feet that looked truly old—like dead roots.

“Scott's gotta sort some shit out with that wife of his, so I'm letting them kinda air everything out,” Jamie said to his mother. “Phone is still in the back bedroom, right?”

“Where do you think you're going, Jan? It's two in the morning!” Francis said.

“They've moved the games to the high school,” Janet said. “I can't sleep after watching Audrey keel over like that, and I'm not staying here to watch the two of you go at it again. I've already seen that before. Many times.

“Its fine, Jamie. You do whatever you need to do, just make sure your father eats something, and for God's sake don't bother returning that thing,” Janet continued, ignoring her husband. “Shoulda been taken out of this house a long time ago. Take the TV too, if you want, but he probably won't go for that. You tell your brother I said hello, okay? We never see enough of him around here, but I understand why. Oh, don't tell him that, though. Just say hi.”

Janet stood up and began stomping out the aches in her feet on the kitchen floor. She pulled her coat on and slammed the door behind her. The wind battered it around the jamb.

“Jamie, you gotta listen to me. You can take the TV, how about that?”

The hallway was short and crowded with black-and-white photos of the dead. Jamie opened the door to his mother's bedroom and sat down on the bed. The walls were crooked, the corners mismatched. Jamie could hear his father grumbling, but he knew the man's muscles had wasted away. Francis couldn't even hold the gun straight anymore. Jamie dialed Don Henley's number.

“Y'allo? Jesus, two in the morning, I coulda been sleeping. Y'allo?”

Don Henley didn't sleep. He napped.

“Donnie, it's Jamie.”

“Oh, man, you gonna bullshit me about shifts again?” Don said. “I told you, I can't get any of the other guys to work. Sunday mornings. There's like no customers anyway.”

“It's not about that, it's—there's too much to explain. Never mind. All right. Listen to me,” Jamie said. “You know two guys, big fuckers with beards. Sometimes they come in the store, I guess? Sound familiar?”

“Look like ZZ Top? Those guys? Should have guitars on them, right?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Jamie said. “They come around a lot or what?”

“They give you trouble? My brother knew them better than me. They been 'round forever, back when we still had bikers in town,” Don said. “They aren't even twins. Irish twins, same year but different birthdays. I think. Their momma musta pumped 'em out real quick, I can tell you that much, and—oh, for fuck's sake Gloria, no I don't need another ice cream sandwich. Just let me talk to J here and then we can get back to—”

“I don't need their whole life story,” Jamie said. “I think I mighta pissed them off a bit today, and then all this weird shit…well, I just wanted an expert opinion.”

The line went quiet for a little and Jamie noticed the gun in his lap. He moved it onto the bed, but didn't like how it looked sitting between the pillows.

“What did you do? They used to do a lot of the booking for the ring, you know, in the backyard, and they do a lot of—well, they got hands in all kinds of things,” Donnie explained. “The Brothers Vine is what my brother liked to call them. They got hands in everything. Brothers Vine. Used to come by for trim.”

“They came by this morning, and I gave them some for hunting bears.”

“Sounds about right. What exactly did you do?” Donnie asked.

Jamie put the gun on the floor and remembered what he said to the Lorax.

“Spit it out, buddy. I got fucking
Rocky II
in the VCR here and it isn't as shit as I thought it'd be,” Don said. “I might even finish watching it tonight. What did you do?”

“I think I, um, ran over their dog. Big-ass dog. In my car last night.”

“You did what?” Donnie asked.

“Dog. Ran it over. Told some guy about it, and then Brock, he ended up like…”

There was a low whistle down the line and some whispering. Don spoke into the phone again. His voice was quieter now. Jamie kicked the gun under the bed. He didn't want to see it.

“You know when I worked back at the warehouse? And when I was running the weekly Toss-Up Throwdowns in the backyard? They had a finger in that, and they needed to or I woulda been done faster than a goose in a trailer park. Blam,” Don said. “Where do you think all the stolen booze from the warehouse went? You think I didn't forget to check off certain containers? Never the number-one brands, of course. Where do you think that would go? Brothers Vine.

“They don't even care about the money. They don't even work for themselves. Used to be hooked up with this real mild, skinny dude. He lived in one of those big apartment buildings off Olive, the ones they wanna condemn now since they're only twenty years old and already falling apart. What I'm saying is, they got fingers in lots of pies and they are dirty fingers—so you don't wanna just say sorry, you know?”

“So what do I do?” Jamie asked. “I can't exactly track them down.”

In his mother's mirror, Jamie saw the body in the bone can, ice crystallizing over the nostrils. It smiled and bobbed in the meaty slush.

“I don't really know. These are major fuckers. Been around forever, they're like a cleaning crew—just dealing with everyone else's mess,” Donnie said. “They don't cause too much of a ruckus—in and out. I had them do security once when we had the ring set up, like a few summers ago, but it was worse than Altamont. They do not fuck around.

“I say lay low, take some time off work, you can borrow a bit of cash off me, but don't tell anyone where you're going. Just be safe. It's just a dog, so they probably won't kill you, but I mean the last kind of—Gloria, I can hear you standing at the door.”

“What if I wanted to apologize? I don't want to have to worry about this chasing me for the rest of my life. How do I do that?”

“Shit, they been living at Da Nasty for like ten years now. Room—uh, shit, hold on a second, I had it from the last time I had to call them. You know they might kick your ass, right? They ain't Santa Claus.”

“I know, I know. You think I'm happy about this?” Jamie said.

“It's Room 227. I think. They been there for years, like I said. Not likely to change.”

“So what should I do? Beg? Bring a new dog?”

“You should really—oh, that is not fair, Gloria, I get one nosebleed and you bring it up fucking now? That was like a year ago. I told you, the dry air and my nose,” Donnie said. “We just need to get a dehumidifier and I am still talking to Jamie, so can you give me—”

Jamie hung up the phone and picked the gun up off the floor. Somewhere one of the next-door neighbors kicked over a kitchen chair and someone in another unit was running up and down the stairs. Jamie didn't like the green wallpaper his mother kept on these walls. It didn't hide the water stains. It didn't hide anything. He strode down the hall, switching the rifle from hand to hand. He'd never really fired it before. He wasn't exactly sure where to buy rounds at two in the morning, either. And there was still that body waiting for him, and it was a sign after all. A calling card. He'd been right. The Lorax was right, everyone was right. Jamie wanted to be wrong for once and have that be the right answer.