Time and Chance (44 page)

I was going to say ‘where’ but thought better and heading for the farm,
I said, “Talk to me.”

She wiped her hair back from her face. “I feel like a million black
nights when nobody wants you, not even God.” She looked up into the sky. “This
is all a dream. Tell me it's a dream, piano man. Tell me your dream is my
nightmare.”

Some time went by and I noticed her take off her boots then felt her
feet on my lap. I glanced. She crossed her arms across her chest and leaned her
head back. I think she was thinking.

While I let her think, my guts hanging there, bleeding, the order
baffling me, I hated hate and why and what for?

A full moon, darting between clouds, cast flashes of metallic light on
the landscape. I listened to her silence and a thought became clear,
I will
kill the pig of more
.

“Why me, why us, why?” She said.

“Could be a song.”

“I'm not in the mood, piano man.”

Winston purring through the night, the air thick and sweet with the
smell of night, the familiar road narrowed into a single lane of thin macadam
and the blackness grew tall along the road, hanging over forming a tunnel and
the droplets of moonlight flashed through tiny holes in patches of the open
leaves.

Can't be
, I thought.

“What?”

“How did you … we're home.” I downshifted and pulled onto the front yard
of Miller Road #26.

We got out and, as I put Winston's top up, she stripped, put her clothes
in a pile, took my Zippo, set them on fire, and we watched them burn.

She said, “I want to
wash my hair with thick suds. I want to lather my body many times until I flush
that scum boss of yours’ sick fish smell down the drain.”

“Keep it a dream.” I
said.

We went inside. She
went to the bathroom.

I sat on the edge of
the bed, the window open, a light breeze coming in, I was thinking: kings kill,
women weep, children die. Then I thought again, I will kill the pig of more.
Strange thoughts. I had never hated as much as I hated and I hated that I hated
… I couldn’t get his name past a gag. I listened to her gargling, then the
water running as she showered. I thought, I should go in there with her then
knew that would be the typical dumb thing only I could do. I slipped off my
boots and leaned back against the headboard.

* * *

After several minutes,
Joyce, drying herself with a white towel, stepped to the bed and, smelling
fresh and a little wet, stretched out beside me.

I touched her and
whispered, “I think they know about this house, Angelo said Snakebite had some
pictures….”

“Let them come, I hope
they come, I want them to come.”

I moved to hold her.

She said, “I need time
to think.”

After some time she
whispered, “Hold me.”

I did and she clung to
me and there was distant lightning and the light from it flashed through the
window and there was far off thunder and we talked and she told me everything.

* * *

Then she was very
still like she wasn't breathing. I put my nose to hers, felt her warm breath
and she was very asleep.

Her breathing deep,
not wanting to wake her, I held her, and closed one eye. Drifting, familiar
with discerning nightmares and hallucinations, this was more like what Aunt
Jane called a vision, I didn’t believe her then, never did but in the present,
rethinking my ‘never did assessment’, I am seeing one play out on the ceiling
now:

Berry takes my hand
and leads me up a narrow mountain path. A brilliant flash of lightning enhances
a large maple tree whose leaves are red and orange with an early autumn. Berry
says, “I got a dream Jack. A dream as big as the sky. One day there'll be only
one big INC. and everybody will work for the INC. and the INC. will give and
the INC. will take away. What efficiency. I have that dream Jack.”

We walk to a cliff
and gaze to a polluted lake below. A lady is swimming. As she begins to sink
she cries out.

I want to help her
but have no arms and I see a sign DEERG and it slowly revolves to read GREED.

Then Berry sucks an
egg that looks like a world globe, throws the empty shell to the ground, and
says, “Forget her Jack, we got bigger fish to fry.” Wiping his lips, he says,
“She's excess baggage on a flight to becoming”

A pack of red
hounds chew at my ankles. I say, “You always win don't you, Berry.”

He smiles, “Look
around.”

I notice an old man
with long hair crawling onto the top of the hill. His hands are bleeding.

Berry sneers, “What
is he, a poet? Har har har. Watch out for those nuts with the long hair.”

A strong wind
begins to blow, I look at the man. He is Professor Strunk. He says, “And where
do dead Mondays go?”

A chorus sings, “As
a species extinct a long time in the land.”

Strunk says, “The
notes, Jack. The music. The symbols. One to one, one to two, two to three,
three to four, open your ears.”

The chorus sings,
“Middle C, Middle C, Middle C.”

Berry says, “Bullshit,”
and runs off down the hill.

Strunk begins to
weep, “And who will say the eulogy at that funeral?”

The chorus sings,
“Who, who, who.”

Berry returns. His
large head on a boy's body, he wears black tennis shoes held loosely by worn
and broken laces and his dirty kneecaps poke through ragged overalls.

I look at my index
finger.

Berry kicks me in
the shins. “Cheater Peter. You're it this time.” He turns and yells down the
hill, “Come on, everybody home free. Jack is it this time. New game.”

I hold my finger up
for Berry to see. “It's just my finger, look.” I point my finger at my temple.
“Everything is going to be okay.” I squeeze and my head disappears.

I see a head stone:

HUMANITY

Last of a species,
a long time in the land

EXTINCT

Then I’m sitting
behind Berry big mahogany desk; I open the top drawer, stop, shout, “THERE’S
NOTHING IN THERE!”

* * *

Sweating, shivering, I
wiped my hand across my forehead and realized I was standing in the middle of
the bed.

Joyce sat up. “What's
the matter?”

“Nothing, go back to
sleep.” I lay on my back and she nuzzled up. Her breathing heavy again, I said
thank you and closed my eyes.

She woke me and I
noticed the first light of morning coming through the window. I also noticed
she was up, dressed, and herself again.

She said, “Don't get
up, I have to go.”

From what Sago had
told me, I had an idea where, said, “Where are you going?”

“Unfinished business.”

“I'll go with you.”

“No.”

“I insist.”

“Which leg would you
like broken first?”

She looked like she
meant it and I was sure she could do it. I said, “I love you, be careful.”

CHAPTER 9

Real Time

Nashville, TN, 7:00 A.M., CDT, Wednesday, June 19

His bedside telephone
ringing, Joe Galbo rolled over and answered. A minute later, stunned, he hung
up, quickly dressed, nearly backed his Chrysler through his garage door, and
sped away to TV12.

CHAPTER 10

Jack’s Time

Some time after
Gillian left, drifting in and out of half sleep, her smell everywhere, the
morning stillness drifted through the window and that rooster, down the road,
crowed. I looked out the window. The rising morning light shadowed the elm and
oak and dogwood trees. Like I said before, I never saw such green and the air
could feed a family of ten for a month.

I smelled the pillow
where her head lay. I said a quick silent prayer for Joyce then checked
Blacspain, Wednesday, June 19, 7:31 A.M. I eased out of bed, went to the
bathroom, and splashed water on my face. I ran a comb through my hair then went
to the closet, checked to see, the rifle was gone. I got my clothes, and, in
the kitchen, slipped on by wrinkled Monday uniform.

 
Going out into the cool morning air, the grass
wet with dew, there was that clean fresh smell in the air.

 
I stepped from the front porch to Winston and
noticed a yellow and black spider perched delicately over a lacy web wet with
dew. The dew drops, like pearls, stretched between sharp blades of green grass.
I put Winston's top down, got in and started the engine—throaty in the humid
air.

Not sure what I was
going to do, knowing I had to do it, I headed to TV12.

* * *

After a stop at a
Cracker Barrel restaurant for a coffee to go, the air fresh and crisp, settled
in the left lane of I-65, familiar trip, funny, I thought, how bright the
colors are. I checked the time, 8:02, thought about shaving, but didn't feel
like it.

My thoughts went to
Berry. I wondered what I would do when I saw his face, his eyes, his rug,
smelled his Gucci New York cologne. I wasn't sure. I wondered if I had it in me
to go back to the long time ago we all know, when no matter how select the
bastard breeding the word making is over; the hand shaking is finished; the
wine of decency is spilled on the dusty plain of mistrust and deceit; when all
the symbols, written and verbal, are exhausted, and we go back to the club. It
is in us. It would always be.

That other guy said,
how
do you paint on air? Gather water in a jar made of dust?
To talk. To write.
To listen. To see. To hear. To mingle with matter. To feel the beat. The music.
The meaning. When the symbols fail, the club wins. And then there is nothing
left but a sucking sound as the blanched bones of existence sink into the scum
of eternity.

Both hands on the
wheel, conjugating all that, I remembered the many times Berry belittled Jay
and I remembered the words of a nightmare, hallucination, vision, whatever the
hell it was: As a species extinct, a long time in the land. I wondered what if,
in the big lie, maybe wrong is right. Maybe I was wrong. But knowing if I were,
it would be my wrong and fuck right.

I felt a hotness
condense within me and mingle with what I knew was always there under the slop
of conformity and yes yes yes and what will people say. I felt a loathing for
the greed mutants grabbing space on a crowded planet.

I recalled Wolfe's
thoughts in “You Can't Go Home Again”:

 
“…the
enemy stole the earth, polluted lives, took the bread and left a crust, then
took the crust … the enemy is blind, but has the brutal power of the blind grab
… the enemy is old as time and evil as hell … the enemy is single selfishness
and compulsive greed.”

I took a sip of coffee
and repeated Jay's words: “Biggie wiggie went to market and biggie wiggie found
the market had been sold. Sold to a hog butcher, blood red and dripping.”

* * *

Off the interstate, I
stopped for a red light and rehearsed words to Berry: “You raped her, didn't
you. You rape her every day! What will you do when you suck her dry? You used
her. You used Speaker. You use everything you get your greasy pig hands on. Is
that it? Is that what I have to do to you? Do I have to use you?”

Then I reasoned, but
if I kill you … I kill her and if I kill her I kill me.

I smacked the steering
wheel. “You can't have her anymore. No more the grab. No more the cha-ching in
the night. Use her no more, she's ours!” I heard my voice rise. “I will kill
the pig of more. And if I'm wrong, fuck right!”

My coffee finished, I
threw the cup on the floor, and noticed a guy, window down, in a white BMW,
looking my way. I smiled at him and said, “
Fioco
… WITH FIRE!”

 
He powered his window up and pealed through
the red light.

The light changed
green and I pulled away.

I wondered if I had it
in me to kill.

* * *

Turning into the
parking lot of TV12, the first thing I noticed were the flashing red and blue
lights and a small army of police cars. Then an ambulance zoomed past me, siren
screaming, and exited the parking lot.

Pulling closer, I
noticed Berry's Humvee in his reserved slot. I also saw that Big Joe's Chrysler
was parked by the front entrance. The driver's door open, the lights were on.