Crimes in Southern Indiana (8 page)

They probably want to borrow Stanley's new mower. Carl, he lives across the street. He's the reason Stanley bought a new mower. Aft er Carl borrowed his old mower, he didn't check the oil and
burned the mower up. Blew it up, actually. Then Carl borrowed the weed eater. Ran the choke full throttle. Sounded similar to Leatherface sawing up a corpse in
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
. Caught it on fire. Smoked the entire neighborhood. Just because a person's deaf doesn't mean they're dumb. The entire neighborhood smelled the smoke. Someone even called the fire department. A week later Carl
fell asleep smoking a cigarette and burned his back porch down.

Now if a person lives in this neighborhood they are considered a “high risk” on their homeowner's insurance policy. That Carl, he's a son of a bitch.

To Stanley, Brent looks like an enormous firefly leading his swarm of other fireflies with their big Maglites, walking from their yards to Stanley's.

Stanley doesn't have time for
small talk, his wife is missing and he has a yard to mow. Things to do. To figure out.

Brent steps away from the pack, starts shining his Maglite in Stanley's eyes. The mower is idling and Stanley thinks, He's wasting my time. The light must be a halogen, all Stanley can see is a silhouette. His outline.

“Hey,” Stanley says, “if you want to help, follow me with the light so I can see better.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Brent asks.

Stanley shakes his head, thinking, This Brent is one guy you do not want as your charades partner. And Stanley says, “Well, I'm not testing my allergies. What does it look like, I'm mowing my lawn.”

“Stanley,” Brent says, “it's two in the morning and people are trying to sleep.”

“Oh, I see, now everybody else's life is more important than mine.”

Distancing himself from Brent and the other neighbors, the mower still running, one step is no longer a step, it's a slip. A fall. With his foot under the mower what he experiences is one swipe of pain followed by a feeling of stupefaction. With the operator-presence control bar tied down so he doesn't have to hold it all the time and the drive-control lever in the downward position, the lawn mower
proceeds forward. Mowing the lawn without Stanley. It's on autopilot.

Looking down at his foot, everything is blue, green, and yellow spots surrounded by black mass. Brent, standing above him—at least he thinks it's Brent—blinding Stanley with the Maglite.

Stanley says, “Get that damn light out of my face.”

His ass is wet with dew, he's blinking his eyes trying to see the severed pieces of
his shoe. His toes cut, not off but close to it. His foot is wet and warm. Brent is touching Stanley's shoulder and he says, “Stay calm.”

Stanley says, “I'm fine, just quit touching me.”

Stanley can hear the mower in another yard. Mowing someone else's lawn. And to think he was nearly finished.

“Are you all right?” Brent asks.

Stanley tells him, “Aside from maybe losing my toes and not knowing
where my wife is at, sure, I enjoy sitting here like a gimp. Spending quality time with my nosy neighbors.”

Stanley thinks this is what having neighbors gets you. Sometimes you just want to poke out someone's eye with an ink pen. Not a Bic. But a Paper Mate FlexGrip, thick and comfortable. Stanley says, “Why don't you go wake Carl up and we can burn my house down, or better yet let him burn up
my new mower.”

The mower is becoming more and more distant. Motion lights are lighting yard after yard.

Looking down at Stanley, Brent says, “Stanley, Earleen left. She's gone. You don't have to find her. She's taking care of her father.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your father-in-law and the elevator,” Brent says slowly. “They blame you for him losing his arm. You know this, Stanley.”

Stanley wanted to pretend he was someone else. Pretend what had happened was one big accident. But in his state of mind, that wouldn't work. He had to accept that his wife wasn't on her way home and his father-in-law didn't love him like his own son. Instead Stanley looked up at Brent and the neighbors corralling around him and everything turned black. And he wondered, Will any of these nosy neighbors
ever call an ambulance?

Here was a time when the shell shock of war was ignored. What the repercussions of warfare did to a man's brain. The seeing, hearing, and participating. And like the war, the abusing of a woman was overlooked. People pretended it never happened. This was a time when till-death-do-us-part was an enforced rule of matrimony. When wives didn't leave their husbands. They obeyed
them.

But when the Mechanic beat the woman, violation rattled the opposite room's walls. The woman's body bounced from wall to wall like a winning pinball. There were no electronic harmonies for a high score. Just her thick pleas of sorry with no pity in reply. Just savagery. And with the door closed to the eight-by-eight box of a bedroom, violation traveled through the Sheetrock walls, arrived
and infected the living room. Where, on a couch worn down to comfortable seating, two girls' adolescent eyes stayed glued to the black-and-white television. A television that decorated a corner with Tom and Jerry. With their own cartoon addictions to violence, displayed for a child's entertainment. Their slamming of doors on each other's various body parts. Shattering of dishes over each other's
skull. Wooden mallets matching the fist pounding on flesh in the opposite bedroom.

It was something the beautiful and bright wallpaper couldn't hide. All that ugly in the air. The girls knew that any attempt to defend the woman, their mother, would get them the same treatment. The rapture of ten knuckles divided by two fists.

Those thoughts took root through their innocent minds, became part
of their daily living like inhaling air. They were the accepted norm of life.

Their eyes never blinked and their hands were never tempted to touch the coffee table before them, to dig into the glass bowl of the Mechanic's hard red unwrapped cinnamon candy in the center. It was an unannounced rule. Don't touch what belongs to the Mechanic.

On the television, Jerry slammed a wooden mallet down
on Tom's head.

The bedroom door opened with the weeping pleas of their mother, and the Mechanic approached the coffee table, his body damp from the downpour of his abusive actions, stopped and scooped a handful of cinnamon from the dish. Filled his mouth. Shook his head, his laughter following his footsteps into another room.

In the kitchen a tin of beer popped. Then the savoring sound of lips
to foam. The girls' eyes glued to the television, concealing their fears. Their mother still moaning. The Mechanic said, “Hope the two of you don't turn out like her. Irresponsible. Disrespectful.” No reply. Not a word. Hiding their fear, the girls had their underage poker faces on.

“Two of you hear what I'm saying?”

Not a word, just their mother's weeping pain dying down in that box of a bedroom.
Their tiny fists, images of squeezing them tight in their minds. Knuckles like peanut shells popping open. Those images hiding their fear.

The Mechanic yelled, “Two of you get married, supper is ready when your old man walks through that front door after busting his body down all day.”

On the television, Tom choked Jerry.

With no reply, the Mechanic turned it up another notch. “Answer me.
Quit acting like your irresponsible mother in the other room.”

In unison, the girls glanced up at the Mechanic's face and, nodding, they said, “Yes, Daddy.”

On the television Tom was squeezing Jerry's life to the limit. Then at the last minute Jerry spat in Tom's eyes. Tom dropped Jerry.

On the couch, the girls glanced at each other with identical thoughts in the black void of their eyes. Their
inner jaws salivating and storing. Gauging their distance.

Grabbing another handful of cinnamon, the Mechanic went back into the bedroom. Slammed the door behind him.

Quick to take aim, from the girls' mouths to open air, two fountains of weak water pressure, taking turns, they spat and spat. Aiming into the dish and coating the candy, only stopping to mix their saliva into it. Every so often
the Mechanic would take a break from the beating, grab a handful of candy. Their spit went unnoticed, and he'd return to the bedroom while they sat defenseless. But internally they laughed at the Mechanic's ingesting, his savoring and swallowing of their spit. But externally, nothing could drown out or stop the soundtrack of their mother's abuse, which sometimes kept them up until sunrise.

There
were other times the Mechanic came home, evicted everyone from the house to the yard until dark. Bedtime. And even an evening when the girls' dog, Lucky, wouldn't stop his barking and the Mechanic shot him dead. The Mechanic's reasoning: he'd a bad day at work.

It took years and years before the mother built up the courage to ignore the understood rule of matrimony. Divorced the Mechanic. Got
remarried, to a man she referred to as “crazier than a loon,” but who adored her with respect, love. Not ten knuckles. And he let her sleep through the morning sunrise. Wake up to
The Price Is Right
while spooning Taster's Choice coffee into her mug of hot water without the bark of violence.

But the Mechanic wasn't out of the picture. He had visitation every other weekend with his two girls.
One summer the Mechanic picked the girls up from summer school unannounced. Took them out west on a vacation to see the Grand Canyon. Mount Rushmore. Yellowstone Park. Unknown to their mother; she wasn't asked. All she could do was file a complaint with the local law enforcement and wait. For three weeks the girls wore the same clothes they'd gone to school in that day. It was a hostage vacation.

 

These were the stories the younger daughter, Sue, told her son, Frank. She referred to them as her early childhood memories. They were the stories she told Frank after seeing the Old Mechanic at the grocery, gas station, or bank. And Frank always questioned her. Why are we running away from him? Is he gonna attack us?

Pregnant, Sue had married out of high school. It wasn't long after Frank's
birth when the calls started, then the letters from the Old Mechanic wanting to visit, to meet his grandson. She couldn't get the memories out of her mind, the hatred and fear she held against this man she viewed as a monster, not her father. Her husband, Will, couldn't fathom a boy not knowing his grandfather, let alone a daughter who detested her father. Will had lost his own father at an early
age to cancer, grew up without that influence, wanted his son to have it. He just couldn't understand. And she told him if his father had made his mother spit blood every other day for years on end, he would understand. More words ensued along with back-and-forth arguments about life and the stress that it brought, bills, food, quality time, and how there never seemed to be enough of any of it,
until neither Will nor Sue could hold it together. She didn't want Frank growing up in a home of raised voices and clashes of any kind. She filed for divorce after five years.

Sue focused on her son. Will had every other weekend.

Sue tried to raise Frank with a life devoid of conflict, tried to keep him away from the violence she'd known. Keeping it normal. With toys, a bicycle, and a swing
set. It was a life that forbade contact with the Old Mechanic. Aft er nine years had passed, punctuated with more unreturned phone calls, unacknowledged letters and cards from the Old Mechanic, Sue's sister, Mary, approached her. Their father had spoken with her about Sue and wanting to meet Frank. Mary told Sue she should give their father a chance because she had, and he'd changed. He was harmless
now. Though he had never apologized for anything he'd done all those years ago, Mary thought Frank deserved to meet his grandfather. He was old enough to make his own judgment about the man.

Aft er weeks of rationalizing, Sue told Frank, “Your grandfather wants to meet you. Take you on a little trip.”

In Frank's mind, running away and joining the fair and living out of garbage cans didn't sound
bad. Other than the stories and seeing him in town, the grandfather was present only in the Hallmark cards, on Christmas and birthdays, offering many Lincolns or a check made out from him to Frank.

Frank asked Sue, “Why do you call him the Old Mechanic instead of Dad? And why didn't you let me meet him before now?”

Sue told him, “He worked for the Army Corps of Engineers and later became a diesel
mechanic who could do most anything mechanical. He was good with his hands. And I never let you 'cause I didn't want you around him after all I seen him do to your grandmother.”

“What does he want to do to me, I mean with me?”

Frank imagined a road trip where the Old Mechanic would threaten him with those fists from the stories. Force Frank to gather up roadkill from the side of old country
back roads. Hold him hostage until nightfall. Tie the dead, decaying animals from the trees of people the Old Mechanic holds a grudge against.

When the Old Mechanic had told Sue what he wanted to do with Frank, where he wanted to take him, she bit her tongue and let the fear pass. “He wants to take you to the Gun and Knife Show. Then out to dinner. Get to know you.”

“And you agreed to this?
Can't you come with us?”

Sue doesn't let on that it scared her at first and says, “Yes, Frank. He deserves a chance. And no, I'm not coming with you. For God's sake, you're fourteen. I'm thirty-two, it's high time I put the past in the past, let you meet your grandfather. He's an old man now. He's harmless. And it's not healthy to live like this.”

Harmless? Frank thinks to himself. Angry, terrified,
he plays through all of those horror stories. The beatings. The shooting of the dog. The summer kidnapping. Frank imagines the Old Mechanic taking him to some compound guarded by brick walls, razor wire, and booby traps. Inside he'll chain Frank to a wall in his bomb-shelter basement next to his punching bag that's stuffed with the men and women he has disposed of, with those hands flaying,
carving, and grinding their bones into ash remains for whatever madness he found offensive.

 

Shaking Frank's hand, the Old Mechanic has a grip as strong as a vise. Frank believes the Old Mechanic could cave in another man's skull, crush his windpipe with one swipe.

The Old Mechanic, with his swollen belly of red, white, and black checkered flannel trimmed by two strips of red suspenders. Frank
has seen him around town, but never up close. Age has settled upon his frame, sagging his skin like mucus. His hair is peppered with gray, matted down like Ward Cleaver's and hidden by a blue knit-cap reminiscent of what Nicholson wore in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
. A book Frank's read and a movie he's watched with his father. Reinforcing Frank's imagination with the fear of loose-cannon
lunacy. His face is pitted by liver spots. Old engravings of acne from his teenage years. The features remind Frank of some cross between an oversized whiskerless rat and ALF the sitcom alien puppet.

The Old Mechanic asks, “You ready?”

Frank just nods, says, “Sure.”

The mother gives Frank a farewell peck on the cheek. Tells him to enjoy himself, eyes her father, at a loss for compassion or
words, just memories. She tells him, “Be back by six p.m.” Then stresses, “Don't be late.”

 

Frank's blood thins and his heart pulses to an irregular rhythm in the front seat of the Old Mechanic's Dodge truck. The Old Mechanic beats the horn with one hand. Generously offers his displeasure at the navigation skills of the driver in front of him. Frank wonders again why his mother agreed to this.
The Old Mechanic screams, “Drive like this in Tennessee or Texas and your ass'd be into the rail.”

Not thinking, Frank blurts out, “This is Indiana. He's not driving in Tennessee or Texas.”

The Old Mechanic glances at Frank with acidic eyes that corrode his sternum and he says, “See, Frank, you don't got no navigation skills. Can't follow these people poking on the road. They're only holding
you back from your destination.”

Frank frowns and says, “I'm fourteen, can't even drive yet.”

The look in the Old Mechanic's eyes from Frank's comment, combined with the forward motion of his voice, the command and control, supports the fear in Frank's frame. Lets him know the Old Mechanic is feeling him out. And the gun show is a trial run.

 

At the gun show, tables are set up and spread
out like an oversized school cafeteria. Vendors in black Hanes T-shirts with beer guts poking out over military green pants, selling new and used guns and knives. Some of what the Old Mechanic calls pot metal. Used junk. “But also some good deals,” he tells Frank. “Just gotta know your hardware, keep your eyes open.”

They walk between the tables. Up and down the aisles. The Old Mechanic appears
at ease to Frank, happy. In his element. They stop at a table and the Old Mechanic picks up a gun. Frank closes his eyes, somehow fearing he'll load it. Begin a strain of elderly shootings. The Old Mechanic tells him, “See, this is what I'm talkin' about, it's a Beretta Modello, made in '34, used by the Italians before W. W. Two. A real antique.”

Frank's at a loss for words as he watches the
Old Mechanic place it back on the table without taking aim at anyone. They pass more tables. The Old Mechanic shakes his head, points to a table piled with guns and knives, tells Frank, “All that there is cheap knock-offs, used garbage they call antique firearms. More than likely they sat the shit out in the weather, let it rust, tried to make it look old. Not good for anything else.”

Frank keeps
his eyes forward. His mouth shut.

At another table the Old Mechanic picks up a pistol that reminds Frank of the one he's seen in a 007 movie, and the Old Mechanic asks, “Know what crisis this heifer was said to have caused?”

Frank offers, “A bank robbery?”

“No. This was believed to have been used to take out the archduke of Austria. Mr. Ferdinand. Initiated W. W. One. It's an FN Model 1910.”

A vendor butts in, “Well, nobody knows that for certain, it's just—”