Zombie, Illinois (6 page)

I beat a quick retreat out of the Trump Tower and head for the nearest train.

Once outside, I realize the snow is not so bad. It's not even sticking.

So at least there's that.

The El ride back to my neighborhood is noisy and cold. I stare out the windows when the train goes above ground. The buildings are just visible through a blue-orange haze of streetlights and snowflakes. The wind is picking up, and sometimes it rocks the train a little. I find the sensation pleasant and calming.

I exit at the California Avenue stop and walk down the salted metal staircase connecting the platform to the street below. My neighborhood, normally bustling, is almost deserted. The few people I do see are scurrying here and there in heavy coats. (Maybe the forecast has changed and a blizzard is now predicted.) A weird tension pervades. Nobody is stopping to chat with anybody. I'm guessing they're hitting the grocery one last time before the snow starts piling. Or maybe the liquor store.

I ponder whether or not I am still in a beer and pizza mood. I decide, no. I'll just head home. Maybe pull up the SBVD web page and see if there is a “Photos” section.

Creeper, indeed.

I trek down a couple of side streets tracing the familiar path to my apartment. My block is relatively quiet. My footprints are alone in the virgin snow-slush underfoot.

I turn a corner by Palmer Square Park—almost home—and finally see another person. He's a frustrated-looking African-American guy, maybe in his late 60s, wearing a long brown trench coat. He's holding a tire iron and standing next to an immaculate Chrysler with a flat tire. It's right in front of my apartment building.

He notices me approaching, and his expression changes.

“Hello, my friend,” he says with a smile.

“Hi,” I respond tentatively.

“I wonder...could you give me a hand?”

And boom: I have that reaction where you're sure it's going to be some kind of grift.

I mean, this guy has an actual flat tire. He's not making
that
up. But I still feel like I'm a mark. That this is—somehow, someway— going to be a request for money. A new variation on the guy who roams the neighborhood with an empty gas can, saying he ran out and his wallet's at home and could he please just have $5.

I am going to get
taken.

“Um, maybe I could give you a hand” I manage. “This flat tire is stuck onto these bolts,” he says, kicking it. “Maybe frozen on.”

He seems genuinely frustrated.

“So you can't remove it to put on the spare?” I ask cautiously. “Exactly. Would you be able to give me a hand? Maybe if two people pull together . . .”

I kind of relax a little. Okay. This is feeling less like a grift. “Yeah, man,” I say. “I can do that”

“I keep slipping in the snow,” he tells me. “Can't get my leverage right.”

“Let's both try,” I say, putting on my gloves.

I join him at the side of the car. He's got it jacked up, and the offending tire spins freely. We grip it together and prepare to pull. I just have time to imagine a nightmare scenario in which the jack slips in the slush and we are both crushed under the stylish automobile.

“Okay,” he says, “one . . . two . . . three!”

We pull as hard as we can. The tire spins a little in our collective grip, but does not come loose. It is almost impossible to get a good footing in this snow. After just a few seconds of pulling, I can tell we aren't going to get it.

“Okay, stop,” I say. “This thing is stuck.”

We step back and examine the situation.

“Shoot,” the man says. “I could call AAA, but I'm on my way to something important.”

“And they take an hour to come when it snows like this,” I observe.

“Shoot,” the man says again, looking skyward in exasperation.

“Wait,” I tell him. “I got it.”

The man cautiously raises an eyebrow.

“What about hitting it with something? I bet you could smack it from behind—like from the inside—and knock the tire loose.”

“That might work,” the man agrees.

“I've got an old sledgehammer up in my apartment. Want me to go get it?”

He looks at his watch and shrugs.

“Yeah,” he allows. “What the hey? Best to give it a shot.”

I leave the man alone by his car and open the gate to my building. I trudge upstairs (third floor walkup) and find the ancient hammer; rusted, and with the handle covered in black duct tape. I wonder if the man is even expecting me to return? Maybe he has already called AAA. Maybe he thinks this was a pretense to get away from him.

He's still standing there, though, when I emerge from my building with the sledge.

“You want me to do it?” I ask him.

“Sure, it's your sledge.”

“Yeah, but it's your car,” I tell him.

“I trust you.”

I creep to the edge of the wheel well and take a knee. Chopping from the side—long and slow, like a batter in an on-deck circle—I hit the side of the tire as hard as I can. It jostles loose and bounces up and down on its bolts. Success.

“Hot damn!” says the man.

“That should do it,” I say, pleased with the result.

The man grips the tire and easily lifts it off the car. He sets it on the ground next to the nuts and bolts.

“I appreciate this, friend,” he says. “Look, can I give you a couple of dollars?”

Here I had been afraid this was going to be a swindle, and now the guy is offering
me
money. Man, I am some kind of fuck.

“No,” I tell him, privately embarrassed. “This was my good deed for the day.”

“Well then,” he says, extending his glove to me. “Thank you.”

We shake hands, and he begins to replace the tire.

A few minutes later, I am upstairs at my desk with a cup of hot chocolate and a browser window containing Google Image results for “Strawberry Brite Vagina Dentata drummer.” The results look pretty good.

I hear the car outside slowly pull away.

And that's when I realize I have forgotten to bring the sledgehammer back up with me.

Fuck. Back into the cold once more.

Reluctantly, I leave the appealing search results behind and put my coat on. I trudge down the stairs and walk back outside into the winter chill.

The hammer has been thoughtfully propped against an oak next to the sidewalk, a final kindly gesture on the part of the man with the flat.

I walk over and pick up the hammer. Then I stop dead in my tracks.

Standing in front of my building is a young woman in a thin yellow dress. She has pleasing features and pale skin with a few freckles. She could be one of my neighbors from the building next door, but I can't place her face. Though underdressed for the weather, she doesn't shiver. Her skin is unmarked by goosebumps or windburn.

She also has what appears to be a baby's half-eaten arm dangling from her mouth. The front of her dress is covered in blood. (In the first instant, I had mistaken the crimson blotches for an artistic pattern woven in, but when she approaches I see that it's definitely blood.) She is looking at me. Her eyes are an unnatural milky-white, as if colored by layers of cataract. She takes one shambling step forward, continuing to masticate the arm like a carnival treat on a stick. Her expression is placid and curious.

“Is that a Halloween costume?” I whisper. (I'm afraid to say anything loud. Afraid to alert the universe. Afraid to make it real.

The young woman takes another shuddering step toward me...then another. She draws nearer, and nearer still. Then the baby arm drops from her mouth and her hands stretch forward as if to strangle me. Her mouth gapes and shows me hideous cruor teeth. Her lips curl into a smile.

My adrenaline surges. Fight or flight, I wonder?

Then I remember that I'm holding a sledgehammer.

Without thinking, I raise the hammer. (I've never been a strong guy, but I'm, you know, big. I can knock somebody down when I have to. In this instant of calculation, I feel confident I can take out this waifish woman, especially if I can just get my weight behind the hammer.) At the same time, she lunges forward and tries to scratch my face with her long fingernails.

I flinch back—reacting without thinking—and send the sixteen-pound hammer careening down into her.

If I had not flinched, the hammer might have obliterated her head. Instead, it enters her chest up to the handle. There is a moment of resistance when the head of the hammer meets her ribs, but only a moment. It smashes through them and sinks deep inside her chest cavity.

I am speechless. I release my grip on the cedar handle and take a step back.

The bloody woman does not fall.

She does not wince.

She does not scream.

Her legs buckle for a moment, adjusting to the weight of the hammer, but then she gains her footing once more, and takes another step toward me, the handle still protruding from her chest.

That's when I realize something is very, very wrong.

I arrive late.

My car is running on the donut, which has almost no traction in the snow.

Yes, I had a flat, but let's be honest, I'm late because I fucked off and went to Merrillville. I'm late because I chose to be selfish and put my own pleasure over being present and available for my flock, which is supposed to be part of a pastor's job. Maybe if I hadn't driven to Merrillville, the tire wouldn't have gone flat.

I get out of the car and stare up at Ms. Washington's house, feeling even more like a bad pastor. It echoes again and again, like a heartbeat in my chest. Bad pastor. Bad pastor. Bad pastor.

I take a deep breath and flap my arms, getting the blood flowing. You can do this, Mack. You can do this.

I walk up to Ms. Washington's front stoop and press the bell. (Just one bell. Ms. Washington inherited the whole place.)

“Oeah?” is the croak that comes back at me through the tiny, tinny speaker. The response is instant, as if she has been sitting next to the intercom, waiting for me, anxious and scared and in need of consultation with a man of God. (Bad pastor. Bad pastor. Bad pastor.)

“Ms. Washington, it's Pastor Mack,” I call back, loudly and clearly. “I got your message on my phone.”

“Oh Pastor,” she responds. “One moment.”

I hear a series of latches being unfastened, and the front door creaks ajar. A wave of smoke spills out, as if announcing the arrival of a denizen of the Pit. But the stout figure before me is no devil. It's just old Ms. Washington, puffing on a menthol and wearing her pink housecoat.

“Ms. Washington,” I say again as she admits me. I receive a smoky, minty kiss on the cheek and am all but physically tugged inside.

“Oh Pastor Mack,” she says. “I'm so glad you could come up north on a snowy night like this.”

We take a seat in her kitchen.

“Yes,” I say as she lights another cigarette. “I would have liked to have come sooner, but I had . . . obligations.”

“Of course you did” Ms. Washington croaks. She offers me a glass of water, which I accept.

“Also, a flat tire,” I say, taking the water.

“My lands!” exclaims Ms. Washington. “In
this
weather!? We should thank the Lord that you made it here in one piece. Don't tell me you tried changing it yourself! In the snow!?”

“I was . . . blessed with a helpful white boy,” I tell her. “It wasn't so bad with two.”

“Pastor, now I feel horrible putting you through all of this,” Ms.Washington says.

She doesn't have to tell me about feeling horrible.

“It's no matter,” I respond. “I'm here now. Please tell me how I can be of service.”

Ms. Washington takes a seat and considers where to begin.

“This isn't about
me
exactly,” Ms. Washington says, taking a pull on her smoke. “This concerns my neighbor, Miss Khan. But Pastor, she needs your help if anybody ever did!”

“Miss Khan?” I ask, as the name is entirely unfamiliar to me. “You haven't mentioned her before.”

“Maybe I haven't,” agrees Ms. Washington. “A young thing. Lives in the apartment next door. Always see her when I'm working in my garden and she's coming back from jogging in the park. She works as a flight attendant, I believe.”

I stare hard into the ample forehead of Ms. Washington. This is a conversation I've had before. My friend—or neighbor—has a problem, Pastor. What should they do, Pastor? What should
we
do?

From what Ms. Washington has said thus far, I'm guessing the problem will be a boyfriend or husband who's physically abusive. That's one I get a lot. Most people can't understand why a woman stays with a man who beats her, but there is always a mitigating circumstance. Always a thing that makes it “not that easy.” She has no finances. She has nowhere else to go. She has had children with him.

If it's not that, then it will almost certainly be a suspected drug habit or drinking problem—likely compounded by a correlating suspicion that children are being neglected. These s uspicions— when they're accurate—are some of the most difficult for me to assist with. (If the troubled person cannot be convinced that they have a problem, then it comes down to a series of difficult binaries; choices where it's either this or that. We either call child protective services, or we don't. We either call the police, or we don't. We stage an intervention, or we wait until something happens again.)

A final possibility—a rare one, but something I still see consistently—will be a request that I use my connections in the community to lobby for some sort of minor municipal change that will benefit the neighbor. Pastor, that bus stop needs to be moved to the other side of the street—all those people right outside the window! Pastor, that traffic light just changes too fast— I can't haul my old bones across the crosswalk in time. Pastor, our new property assessment
can't
be right . . . can it?