The Hitman: Dirty Rotters (2 page)

Two altar boys come out in the front.
I watch them. They walk around lighting large candles. They’re
awkward. Young kids, probably ten or twelve years old. Nervous,
too. They separate and begin preparations. I remember being that
age. A part of me wants to walk up to those kids and tell them to
stay young for as long as they can. But they’re altar boys, I tell
myself. Maybe their innocence was already compromised. It’s not a
world for the innocent. People aren’t always who they appear to
be.

I hear a woman whisper a few feet
behind me, then the priest responds. He tells her that he has time
for a few more confessions. I picture him smiling to her,
reassuring her. She sounds worried. Must’ve done something bad.
Probably took her kid’s cat to the cleaners, permanently. Something
harmless, do doubt. No killings. Not like me.

Not at all like me.

I turn my head slightly to look over
my left shoulder back at the priest. Bald on top. Thin white hair
around the sides and back, cut short of course. I smile and turn
forward.

Time to go.

I wait until I hear him get back into
his part of the booth. The door opened and shut softly. I picture
him in my head gently easing into his chair, grabbing his warm cup
of tea right away, catching his breath, praying for me silently. I
wait for the second door to open and shut with someone else’s
problems to occupy his mind. Then I rise. I take a long look at the
cross fixed high on the wall straight ahead of me. I say a prayer
for Pamela, for Little B, and for my mom, take a long deep whiff of
the vanilla in the air next to me, rise and walk for the
door.

I believe God understands. He has to.
I refuse to believe that He doesn’t hear us, even if He refuses to
answer. He has to accept. He has to understand.

I made peace.

Time to go.

I grab the polished brass handle and
yank the heavy door back swiftly, greeting the city air with a
sigh. I already miss the quietness of the church. It reminds me of
being a kid again, living in the country. No traffic, no smog. A
lot of fields and trees, and nothing but fresh air. It feels like
such a long time ago. Another lifetime, that’s for sure. I continue
on towards the black El Camino SS waiting, thoughts drifting back
to when everything began, head lowering towards the ground, eyes
watering from the cool November wind. One foot after the other.
Sign of the cross, as always.

As always, I tell myself that I’m
never coming back.

As always, I hear Little B telling me
it’s the only way.

I hear her often.

I miss her.

That Dirty
Rotter.

Chapter 2

Twenty-one years ago.

It was the seventh day of July and hot
as hell. The beat-up black 1970 El Camino was packed, inside and
out, every square inch conceivable. Everything we had, which wasn’t
that much really. Not compared to the average American family with
one steady income. Except for that wasn’t us by a long shot. It was
me and my mother Rose, first of all. My father had died when I was
two years and three months old. He was a good dad, so I had been
told. I remember nothing about him. I barely remember what he
looked like. When I was five my mother began dating and pictures of
him were taken down and set someplace. Out of sight, out of mind.
Rose didn’t talk about him, and I didn’t ask. I was never that
curious. He wasn’t around, and that was all that
mattered.

Second, we currently had no income. Or
home for that matter. Two weeks ago the factory my mother had spent
the past ten years working at closed. Trickledown effect from what
I understood. Large vehicle manufacturing plants all around the
city were closing down and those creating parts for them were now
suffering. Thousands without jobs. All forced to find another way
to make ends meet. A recession starting. It was all over the
news.

“
Want to take one last walk
through?” Rose asked. Her voice was filled with disbelief. She had
remained strong in front of me, but I knew at night she cried.
Hard, last night. Her eyes were still bloodshot.

“
Go ahead.”

I was busy digging a hole in the front
seat for me to sit, moving the black garbage bags full of clothes
over as much as I could, shuffling the large sandwich bags full of
silverware under the seat and in the glove box, pushing and shoving
and cramming myself in. We took everything we could fit into the
car for one load. The house was empty. It hadn’t been that full to
begin with. But in the last few days we sold the bigger items, ones
that we wouldn’t be needing, like the microwave and refrigerator
and the sofa and the dining table and the chairs and our beds. We
needed the extra money, she said. But really, we had no way of
moving them.

My last walk through the house felt
good. The house seemed bigger empty. I had all the memories I cared
to take with me now and I was ready to go. I didn’t care to look
back. Nothing was going to change the fact that we were moving on.
Best to rip the Band-Aid off quickly.

I slammed the door shut hard. Had to.
I needed it to help wedge the bags at my feet in place. I was going
to sit uncomfortably now for the next two hours. I had to set a bag
of clothes on my lap and I could barely see out of any window.
Anyone passing by might look in and see a ton of stuffed garbage
bags and think my mother was a crazy hoarder, and then find my head
and scream. They would want to take a picture to show their
friends. I had planned on giving them my best terrified
look.

As I took the set of steak knives off
the dash I made eye contact with my mother. I knew then that she
wanted to cry. It was hard leaving home, especially when she had no
promise of having another one any time soon. Jobs were scarce, even
in the city. She had worked hard to get what little we had. Now it
must have felt like it was all time wasted. No one likes to work.
They like to work towards something.

I knew starting over was killing her.
It was in her eyes, her sagging shoulders, slightly stooped as if
she didn’t have enough will to stand erect. I don’t think she had
eaten anything all week. And that wasn’t her style.

She was hurting. There was no
misunderstanding that.

“
I’ll be just a minute.
Okay?” she told me.

I nodded. I gave her the time to be
alone and to let go. That much she deserved.

I continued to push things around to
get more comfortable as she slowly made the trip down memory lane
one last time. It was a small two bedroom, one story on a two acre
lot in the middle of nowhere. Farm country. Woods and fields,
steams and ponds. Quiet. I was going to miss that. It was
everything I knew.

Moving in with Little B was going to
flip everything I knew upside down in a hurry.

Sitting in the car I got real hot,
real quick. I could feel the sweat racing down my back, soaking
into my old white T-shirt. My light colored jeans probably didn’t
help to cool me down, but it was all I had left after packing
everything else. If I would have given it some thought at all I
would have set aside a pair of shorts to wear. And sandals, not
sneakers. I could have even rolled the window down before I got all
settled in, unable to move. But I wasn’t known for making good
decisions.

She came out ten minutes later, about
the same time I found the seat belt. I tugged and tugged on it
while she stood outside, staring at everything from the ground to
the sky. When I finally got the belt to click, her door opened with
a groan. She got in the car and took a deep breath. I didn’t want
to look at her. I knew her blue eyes would be streaked red. She was
quiet and calm, breathing slow and deep.

“
We had some good times
here, didn’t we?” she asked. “Well, we had some bad ones too, but I
don’t remember any at the moment.”

“
Me either.” I
lied.

“
Still want to stop at
Wendy’s once we get off the expressway?”

“
Sure, mom. Whatever you
want.”

“
It’s not whatever I want.
We’re in this together.”

“
I know. But whatever you
want.”

“
You’re too agreeable.” She
was quiet for a moment.

So was I.

She sighed deeply, then spoke,
“Alright. Did you get all buckled up? We have a long drive ahead of
us, Buck-O. But we’ll make it. And things will be
better.”

She said it more to convince herself,
I think.

“
Yes, they
will.”

I turned to look at her. She was
giving me her best fake smile. I went with it.

She turned the key, the engine came to
life right away. With no further hesitation, she put it in drive
and off we went. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. The garbage bags
of clothes and the clutter up to my neck kept me from moving at
all.

We were quiet for the first hour. The
radio didn’t work, so each of us were left with our thoughts.
Silence, save for the car itself, the steady hum of the wheels
speeding over the pavement. Once we made it onto the expressway,
the depths of those sounds multiplied by ten it seemed. And at
seventy miles per hour, the car adopted a steady shake to it. My
mother cursed under her breath, and then I felt the car back down a
little. We were probably going five under the speed limit to keep
it safe, and we weren’t making any friends by doing so.

I flirted with the notion of bringing
up conversation, but each time it looked like she had too much
going on upstairs, so I let it alone. In another thirty miles,
according to the green sign we had passed, we would be at our exit
and heading into someplace to eat. Conversations would begin then.
I would wait.

I snuck glances at her every now and
again. Her blond hair was tied in a low ponytail, and the sunlight
reflecting on her face gave it a nice shine. Her lips were a light
red and her smile was missing. Mascara was smeared slightly from
her hand as she had wiped the tears before entering the car. I had
pretended not to notice. She was tall, nearly six feet. Slender and
fit. She wore her peach colored summer dress, knee length of
course, she knew how her mother would feel about anything shorter.
She had a great attitude and personality. She was a rainbow under a
storm cloud.

“
I have a good feeling
about this, mom,” I said. It was a lie. I was more partial to a
neutral side. We’ll either like it or we won’t.

The bag of clothes between us moved
forward slightly and I turned to see her looking at me. She looked
as if the weight of the world was lifted from her weary shoulders.
She smiled truly. “Really?”

I nodded. I held her stare for a
second, keeping my smile, reassuring her as best I could. “Yeah.
Really.”

“
I am happy to hear that.”
She looked like her old self again. Within a few minutes she was
humming and then singing.

Things were going to be okay, I kept
telling myself. The air conditioner was working, and that wasn’t
always the case. The sky was clear and the sun was bright. It was a
positive vibe. It was something we needed to see. Rain would have
probably killed us.

“
You’ve grown so much since
she saw you last,” she said a mile later.

I didn’t have a response. I simply
nodded.

“
Think you’re six feet
now?”

“
I don’t know, mom.
Maybe.”

“
Well, you have to be up
there. Your dad was tall. Did you know that?”

I shook my head. I was suddenly
interested. I don’t know why. “What was he like?”

“
Well, he was a good man. A
lot like you. Calm, aware, funny. He was very forgiving too. And
generous. He would have been proud of you, ya know?”

“
For what?”

“
For being how you are.
You’re a good kid, believe it or not. A lot of parents out there
don’t have it as good as I do. You’ve made things easy for me, ya
know?”

I shrugged. Compliments made me
suspicious.

“
I know he loved his best
boy. You two were inseparable.” She had a twinkle in her eye and
her smile was broad and wondrous. “He was so happy to be a father,
to have a boy. Oh it was all he talked about once we found out.
Everything we bought had to be blue. Blue this, and blue that. My
boy is going to do this, and my boy is going to do that. You made
him happy. When you were born we didn’t watch TV for a month. We
just stared at you. I never saw him happier, and that’s no
lie.”

“
What did he look
like?”

“
Well, he was tall and
strong… and funny.” She laughed then. “He had this monstrous
mustache when we first met. My God it was huge. I didn’t know he
even had lips! It was ridiculous. All my friends made fun of it.
But I liked it. It was him.” She trailed off softly. She had a hand
in her hair, fingers were curling a few strands.

I knew she was missing him.

“
Why did you put all the
pictures of him away?” I said it quickly, without
thinking.

Her posture stiffened. Her smile
shrank to nothing but thin lips. She was quiet for a moment. I
wasn’t sure she was going to answer. I thought that maybe she
hadn’t heard me. But then she took a deep breath, held it for a
moment, and exhaled sharp with something in her voice that grabbed
my attention and shook the boy out of my body.