Nathan K

“He’s rough, he’s rugged; he’s red-blooded, he’s romantic; he’s righteous, he’s full of shit.”

He sat in the car, engine idling, waiting for his cigarette to burn out. It was bright outside. Hot, too. His sunglasses had been cracked on the last job, otherwise he would’ve been wearing them now. But he wasn’t, and it was bright, and so his head hurt. The cigarette made it worse; he hated smoking. But, as she had pointed out, he was much too set in his ways to quit now. Too set for his own good, much less hers. But that was neither here nor there.

What was here was a stucco-walled, tile-roofed, two-storey house. Walls the color of sand, and grass in the lawn sparse like the haggard hair of a dying animal. The house number read “687,” but there was the weather-stained outline of another number after those that had fallen off at some point. He had to assume it was the digit was “6,” otherwise he had the wrong house. And if he had the wrong house...well, he’d visited the wrong house once, years ago. Hadn’t turned out well. Then again, in his line of work, he didn’t quite know what a job gone well looked like. It just wasn’t the nature of the job. He smirked, and coughed. The nature of the job.

He tapped the ash off of the end of the cigarette and dropped it out of the window. He rolled up the window, thought better of it, and rolled it back down. He stepped out of the car, leaving the engine running in the hot summer day. Just in case.

He knocked on the door and waited. There wasn’t any answer, nor any indication that there would be one. The blinds were drawn, reasonable on a day as hot as this. He stepped around to the side of the house. The house next door had a pool in the backyard and there were a number of children there, too, running and squealing and jumping into the water. He looked around. Only children. There was a fence between the two yards, about shoulder-high. Short enough to climb, but much too high to jump. He looked along the wall of the house and frowned. More windows along the wall, all of them shut, all of the blinds drawn. The air conditioning unit was dead silent. He pressed his hand against the side of it, checking for any shudder or tremor of the machine within. There was none. He looked up, saw, and grimaced. A window directly above the air conditioner. Slightly ajar.

Climbing in through a window. At his age. Imagine that. Charming as the image was, he didn’t much care for it. A last resort, perhaps. He went back around to the front of the house and pounded on the door with the bottom of his fist. No response. He tapped his foot impatiently, even though he knew he wasn’t waiting for anything. He went to the back side of the house and paused at the chain-link fence running around the backyard. He stopped when he saw the dog. After everything he went through today for this job, it was this that made him curse aloud. He hated dogs. The dog yipped at him, scrambling desperately against the fence like he was something tough. It wasn’t even a big dog. Jack-Russell-something, the kind of dog he could punt over a fence if he had a mind to. At the moment, though, he didn’t have a mind to. So the dog remained there, smug little bastard, yet unpunted. It yipped again.

He went back around to the side of the house and looked up at the window. Bracing himself against the brick wall, he eased himself one foot at-a-time onto the air conditioner. He reached up, fingers outstretched, towards the windows. They reached, but only just. Even this didn’t make him curse. He withdrew his pocket knife from its place in his pocket and reached up again. He slipped the end of the blade into the space between the window and the frame and pushed it. It gave, but only a little. He sighed, adjusted his stance, and kept pushing.

It was a good habit, he’d been taught, to stop yourself every once in a while, consider what you’re doing from an outside perspective, and make up an excuse for why you’re doing it--just in case. A window repair man, maybe? Was there such a thing? Someone had to do it, he supposed. A nephew, demanding entry, having lost his key? The neighbor may know if the occupant had extended family. He didn’t know. If you couldn’t think of an excuse, well, work faster.

Then again. The man who’d given him that advice in the first place was dead now--he’d dropped off of the map in Cleveland, only to pop up again in an obituary in Wheeling after kicking it in some dope den thereabouts. No, maybe not the best man to receive advice about stopping yourself. A cautionary tale, maybe.

He heaved to the right, leaned so far that the box twisted under him. The window edged open to the extent of the knife, and he grabbed the edge of the window and pulled it open with his hand. A creaking yawn came loose from the hinge on the window as it opened. A screen behind the window. He stopped, shook his arms, gathered up the patience he’d shed around him. He reached up and pierced the screen with the knife and pushed it out of the way. He grabbed the window sill with his hands and struggled against the wall as he pulled himself up. The notion of buying a pull-up bar flashed in his head, but that was a fantasy and he knew it. He heaved and struggled up.

Whoever it was living here must’ve been deaf or dead already; he fell into the room in such a clatter of noise that it certainly would have stirred any living, hearing occupant. Then again, he hadn’t exactly been polite in his way of knocking on the door. He looked around.

His graceless landing had stirred loose an atmosphere of dust that hovered now in the air like a slow-motion swarm. He was penned in on all sides by cardboard boxes, every one of them sagging with the weight they contained. A shaft of sunlight was burning in through the window, but otherwise the room was dark. A door on the far side of the small room. Shut, quite possibly locked. He lifted the flap of one of the boxes and peered inside. 50 Classic Christmas Songs for Piano. A copy of something similar beneath it. A box full of them. He shrugged and moved on. Other boxes, most of them larger. A pervasive scent of mothballs and dust. Old, flaking paper. Like the back closet of an antique store. He stepped through the collection to the other side of the room. The floor creaked and groaned with each step. The far wall. Cobwebs on the light switch.

He opened the door. Well, he tried to. It gave only a few inches. A weight on the other side. Had the bastard blocked him in? Heard his landing and put a chair under the handle? It was possible, sure. Unlikely. All while he wasted time on the box. Well, it was only a waste because he hadn’t found anything, and he hadn’t found anything because there was nothing to find--and he only knew that there wasn’t anything to find because he’d searched and hadn’t found anything. What had he expected to find? A box full of crack and guns? People didn’t keep those in cardboard boxes in attics. He knew where people kept such things. It wasn’t in attics. Then again--there were other boxes. Was he really going to check them all? The police would be here before he’d finished, if the bastard had in fact called them. Then again, who knows what he would find? He took a breath.

Open the goddamn door.

He stepped hard into it with his shoulder and the door gave freely all of a sudden. Another box toppled, contents spilled forward across the thick, dry carpet. A stack of paperback novels tumbling forward. Another box of them beneath that, which had been against the door. He checked down the hallway. Boxes. Stacks. Piles. Collections. He stopped in the doorway, just breathing in the musty air. He could hear a voice. Faintly, but constant. A television or something.

He padded down the hall as quietly as he could, nearly tripping over a book or box of silverware more than once. He made it to the top of the stairs and stopped again. The hallway proved a challenge. The stairs, by the looks of them, would prove a nightmare. Each step was filled with, what he could only describe as, crap. Sundries. China sets, towels, picture frames, a vase, more books. He could see another larger room at the bottom of the stairs. A voice was coming from it. He got down on one knee and peered as best as he could into the room. A couch. A foot. He got down further and saw a leg--two, in fact. Motionless. He shook his head.

“Hey,” he called softly. He bit his tongue as soon as he said it. Called himself an idiot. He imagined the legs swinging around, catching eyes, the man running across the room to a phone and calling the police. All while he stumbled and slipped his way down the stairs before he could get to him. The man would run across the house, fling the back door open, and take off across the yard. The dog would run in after him. That damn dog.

But, that didn’t happen. He called softly, and the legs didn’t move. Nothing did, save for the tiny particles of dust that hung in the air. He put one hand on the railing.

“Hey, mister,” he called again, “are you alright?”

No response.

He reached down and, with his right foot, kicked hard at a stack of boxes resting at the top of the stairs. They leapt off of the carpet and flew through the air down the staircase, crashing and rolling to a stop, contents shattered, at the bottom of the stairs. He peered at the legs. They did not move. Gripped with fear, perhaps. That, or rigor mortis.

He made his way down the stairs, kicking lose any obstacle without care for content nor commotion caused. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he waded through an ankle-deep pile of the dead man’s possessions. He entered the room with the body and regarded the withered mass with a coolness that would have perhaps been unnerving had it come from someone else. Dust had gathered on the man’s shirt. The definition of stench. The body was stiff on the sofa, locked into a position of repose. A shortwave radio rested on the night stand behind his head, droning ceaselessly with the stiff banter of a local sports station. He peered at the stiff gray face and inspected it. He did not touch it. The head was intact. The eyes were closed. The skin was pulled thin and taut over the bones. Emaciated. He looked at the floor around the sofa. No bottle, no gun. Nothing. The hands were clasped on the man’s chest, like the Egyptian royal dead. Dead, but not killed. Passed away. He supposed the dead man, when he had been alive, would have preferred to go like this. Certainly more than the alternative.

As he stepped around the body, inspecting it, he heard the sound of the dog yipping from the back yard. He left the house. The front door was not locked.

The air outside the house was intoxicatingly fresh. Clean and full, even in the blistering heat. There was a rattling sound from under the hood. What it was he did not know, but of the fact that it had not been there before he was certain. He elected to ignore it until he reached the city, at which point he would likely continue ignoring it until the car eventually died. He recognized the problem and was distantly aware of the solution, but there was a path between the two points that to him was unclear and unappealing. He was, after all, so set in his ways. He shook his head and kept driving.

The bar where he was sure he would find the Boss was a dump by necessity. No respectable establishment would consider hosting the Boss or his business, certainly if they knew anything about it. It was a Saturday night and the lot next to the place was nearly empty. He pulled his car into a space next to the Boss’s and got out. This time he killed the engine and made sure to lock the doors as well. It was not quite dark yet but the light of day was slipping, fading, and the clouds were thinning and strafing across the sky like cotton swabs in water.

The inside of the bar was noisy with the sound of a single patron. The Boss was standing up at his booth in the back and harassing the bartender, who at the moment was not in the room. As he finished his string of expletives and wiped another of spittle away from his mouth, he turned towards the man who entered.

“Howard, you’re here,” the Boss said, “about goddamn time. C’mere. Let’s get started.”

Howard went to the booth and sat opposite the Boss. The Boss didn’t sit. Made him feel trapped, he said. Some of the guys joked that it was because he had hemorrhoids, but the guys who made jokes like that (especially about the Boss) typically didn’t last very long. Howard left the joke-making to the Boss.

“So, you do the thing?” he asked.

“The thing is done, though not by me,” Howard answered. The Boss frowned. He had an active sort of face, one to match his temper.

“What the Hell does that mean? Who was it?”

“I don’t know--it means that when I got there, the guy was already dead,” Howard explained.

“Who got him?” The Boss asked. His eyes were walking back and forth, working things out in his head. “Or did he get himself?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a doctor,” Howard said. The bartender reappeared. The Boss threw his glare over him and the skinny man flinched.

“Not a doctor, huh?” the Boss said impatiently. “Well, were his brains blown out? Wrists cut open? Shit like that, Howard? Did you see anything like that?”

“No, nothing like that,” he answered.

“Didja check?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, what the hell for?” the Boss said, and stepped away from the table. “You’re...you’re sure he’s dead, though?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it,” Howard told him. Dust upon the corpse’s shirt. “And for a while, too.”

“Well, as long as he’s dead, I guess,” the Boss said, slowing down. “You ready for the next one?”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” he said. “Don’t have anything else going on.”

“Oh yeah? How about you and that Amie girl?” the Boss said. “Don’t tell me there’s nothing happening there.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you that,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“Well, alright, then,” the Boss said. “I’ve got a file put together around here somewhere. The guy’s name is Tucker McDiarmid. Folks call him the ‘Chicken-king of South Dakota.’”

“What do they call him that for?”

“Owns a lotta chickens, I don’t know,” the Boss said, “point is, he’s rich. He’s got a mansion around Rapid City. Not too hard to find.”

“Okay,” Howard said.

“It’d better be, this one’s important,” the Boss clarified, “so you’ll make it look like an accident. No guns, no knives. Overdose, if you can.”

“I can,” Howard said.

“I know you can. And, I know you will.” The Boss stepped towards the table again and offered Howard his hand. “Thank you, Howard. We’re doing real important work here, Howard. I hope you understand that.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard,” he said, in a typical tone of non-commitment. He shook the Boss’s hand anyway, and walked away from the table. In the reflection of the door he saw the Boss wave his finger over towards the bartender and shouted, “Oh, and another thing!”

Highways, rest stops, motels; cigarettes smoked on bridges and ash drifting down into a river far below, out of sight. Orange evening and the rush of traffic, morbid traffic around an accident. A car flipped end over end on the side of the road and landed, roof-down, every dimension of the vehicle halved and crumpled like paper. Shards of metal and paint and glass scattered on the roadside like crumbs. The ambulance has already taken the passengers’ bodies away but the pool of blood left behind will linger until the next rain. But the car remains, and the other car, less damaged, has pulled away and the driver is standing next to it with his head in his hands. Cars wrap along the bend in the highway though there is no obstruction on the road. Motorists crane their necks to look at the ruined vehicle, consider the suggestion therein of the dead passengers and the ruined day, the ended lives. They regard the living driver’s grief with a curiosity and perhaps a little empathy, and go on with their lives but now with guilt accompanying each subsequent happy moment. Howard looks, too. But he looks at the blood under the car and not the driver, because the driver’s grief is something known well to him.

--------------

“THE Devil walks among us!” the preacher shouted. “He walks among us, and his vile book is in the hands of Man. You have seen his works, I know you have. But we have our own Book, and we shall cling to it as a man to a raft in a storm. For the storm is now upon us! Fire from the sky rained down, and the works of the Lord upon this Earth were scorched away! And in the heart of Man now dwells a sickness--one that must be burned away, by righteous fire!”

The preacher’s voice rang out in the chapel. The still, dusty air welcomed the voice. The audience heard it, took it in, with an inspired gratitude. It was the old fearmongering of yesteryear, shaken to wakefulness from its place in the dirt by the bombs that fell only a few years ago. There were men and women and children in the chapel who heard the words, breathed quietly the maxims, took into their hearts and minds all the rambling prophecies that the preacher could summon up. Among them were the sick and hungry. Those who had been rich reduced. All of them reduced. Reduced to what? To pilgrims.

Beyond the gray slattern walls of the chapel was a cold and foggy morning. A dreadful foreboding hung heavy in the air, its habitat now for many months. The fog and mist was too thick to be seen through. Sounds came distantly from the other side. Diseased cars rushing down empty roads. Gunshots. Howls of man and beast alike. The birds that yet remained had all forgotten their song. The Earth was possessed by a frightened hush, and in the chapel in the field, the preacher’s voice vaulted among the rafters and shattered windows.

“The hands of the Devil are long, and his eyes many! Beware ye who stray from the path of the Lord, for surely ye will be snatched away from your salvation! Have strength, ye who follow the path set out by the Lord who is our shepherd,” at this, the preacher made the sign of the cross over himself, “so that ye may fight this awful world, tooth and nail, and carve out a place for the Lord’s spirit to return to! For He will return!”

The stamping of feet and murmurs of agreement came from the audience. Some of the children in the audience could not understand the preacher for they did not speak the same English, for they had not been taught in school. But as they did not know the language, so too did they not know of a world without the preacher’s rumbling voice, so they clutched at the safety that echoed against the walls, just as they clutched at the threadbare shawl their mother wore, or at the hair of the strange and transient dog that they had claimed their own. Feral things, both of them. Citizens of a world now marred and warped. A dust-filled ruin of a thing now dead. But not the dog nor the child had seen the thing in life, and so either did not mind or notice the disfigurement.

Perhaps things elsewhere were not so dire. A rumor of a city with walls in the North. The plantations further South had been resurrected, and crops were harvested there beneath the raw Sun much as they had been hundreds of years ago. But here, in the world of fog that surrounded the chapel, a mute and deaf fear from deep in the memory of human beings had come back to haunt. Between the trees it stalked and in the night it ruled in glory. Civilization was dead, and those that remained were the maggots within the corpse.

Perhaps the preacher was right, in a sense. Perhaps the Devil did walk the Earth. For before he had finished speaking, Morgan O’Toole entered the chapel and the fear that was nameless clung about his shadow. He was a man of the world-corpse, rejected by the old world. Upon his coat-tails rode the frightened hush. With him it entered the chapel, and the silence pervaded there, too.