In Passing
By Joe Sudar
The
Scarecrow’s voice had no tone. His throat vibrated without a larynx, dragging
the words down a gravel road.
“Fuckin’ stupid, man,” he growled,
“I’m the only one who tries to stop ‘em.”
Mick raised the soggy stub of a hand-rolled
cigarette to his mouth and puffed. “Sure.”
“Yeah. They put two new mics in my
room yesterday. I was waitin’ to catch ‘em but I had to piss.” The Scarecrow
puffed at his own cigarette, pulling drags so quickly he was less smoking and
more evicting the air in his lungs. “By the time I’m back it’s radio chatter fillin’
the room. All this shit ‘bout my schedule, what I do every day. They were even
watchin’ me take a piss. It’s bullshit. I’m not a fuckin’ criminal. Been years
since I ran with a gang. I’ve got the paperwork to prove it.”
“I know, man…” Mick tried to say he
believed him, that he knew his record was clean, that fuck what other people
think, that it’s just a delusion, but The Scarecrow already had the report out.
It was dated 1998, wrinkled like a
favorite work shirt and faded so the writing was as faint as the watermark.
Blue letters at the top proclaimed “Seattle Police Department” followed by
official information and chains of numbers. The bottom portion was empty
beneath a heading that read “No crimes to report.”
“You see, man? You fuckin’ see?” The
Scarecrow waved the police record like a starting flag. “Nothin’. I’m not some
fuckin’ rapist, I never ran with Capone or sold drugs to little kids or any of
that shit.”
“I know, man, I believe you.”
“So why am I the one with wires all
around me? Everyone except you, Mick. They wired everyone in the city to listen
to me except you so they can hear everythin’ I do, all because of that stupid
lying bitch…”
His rant dragged on. Veins like knotted
vines stuck out of his neck with the passion of the speech. He paced in place,
feet scraping in agitation. Cars flew by on the street near the corner they
smoked on, but no one looked their way. From a distance they were just a skinny
old fart and a fat old fart having a smoke on a street corner.
The girl watched as she walked by,
curious until The Scarecrow noticed her. Then her eyes snapped back to the
road. Just walking along… minding her own business. Her hand threaded into her
boyfriend’s which tightened like a padlock to let her know she was safe. The
boyfriend glanced over, eyes shaded by a fitted cap. Just a couple of old men.
Let them look and notice what he was getting.
The Scarecrow looked, but he didn’t
see two college students on their way to the bar. He saw something unique to
him that no one else would believe. When he did, lines appeared on his face and
turned it into a Halloween mask scowl.
Mick felt his guard rise up. He didn’t
know what The Scarecrow heard and saw, but he watched the edges of his mouth
quiver and his shoulders tense. That was enough to guess.
The Scarecrow lurched forward but
Mick caught his arm above the elbow. “No.”
“She won’t fuckin’ let up,” The
Scarecrow snarled. “Out there with some new pretty boy and she keeps sayin’ the
same shit. Called me impotent. Said I’m a patsy and she’s glad I’m fucked. It’s
her fault. It’s all her fault and she doesn’t care.”
Mick knew the girl could hear everything
The Scarecrow said but it didn’t matter. She was with her boy and they were having
an evening. The Scarecrow hadn’t gotten close enough to yell in her face, so
they wouldn’t go home with any stories about “this crazy guy.” The event would
whither and die in their short-term memories.
The Scarecrow dropped the butt of
his cigarette and ground it into a black stain with his heel. He pictured the
girl’s face beneath his shoe, wishing it would be a red stain when he pulled
the foot away, but that was as far as he’d carry the thought. Mick stamped out
his own butt and jerked his head towards their building. The Scarecrow talked
his ear off about the people who wanted to keep him in squalor. Mick nodded and
grunted that he heard. The tirades sapped his strength like a day in the sun,
but he owed him a sympathetic ear. In a month or two or three they’d tag out
and he’d be the one getting held back from telling off a bright young thing who
didn’t know how good she had it.
*
There
were six capsules in the “evening” slot of Mick’s pill carrier. One treated his
symptoms, the other six treated the symptoms of the first pill. The chemicals
in his blood played tug-of-war, pulling away from hallucinations, towards
weight gain, back to hot flashes, steering past a snap temper, on and on
approaching equilibrium and normal life.
Mick and The Scarecrow lived in a
group home. One wing had careful supervision with three times daily check-ins.
Another wing had no staff unless the emergency buzzers were pulled. Theirs had
private rooms with staff at a desk who trolled the hallways making sure no one
was talking to the wrong voice.
Each resident’s life read like a
different novel in the same genre. Similar plots: a young man or woman had a
normal upbringing, growing up with all the awkwardness or cushiness or poverty
of the children around them. Similar themes: conflict became harder to avoid,
fights were nastier or louder than for other kids, someone would whisper in
their ear when no one was around. Different details: some made it years without
a mental break. Some were in the hospital before they could legally drink. Some
heard voices. A few smelled things that weren’t there. Many thought someone was
out to get them, or aliens were transmitting thoughts, or they’d come from the
future, or they were the messiah, or they were doctors, or they had to save the
world.
On the good days or when the
medication was right, the symptoms went away, and the residents returned to the
lives they’d lived before their condition. The stories changed genres. The
characters once again became laborers, clerks, welders, nurses, caretakers,
students, sons, daughters, parents, and members of the community. On those
days, no one from the outside would know what happened inside.
Every now and then, the staff at the
group home forgot there were people behind the doors and that they didn’t
choose to be crazy. Then the smiles came off and candid talk came out. Mick had
heard those conversations many times, but only one stuck with him.
“Why can’t they keep clean?” Said
Staff the Younger.
“Depends,” replied Staff the Elder,
“In schizophrenia, there’s damage to the frontal lobe. It takes out ambition
and drive for a lot of behavior we think is normal.”
“Okay.”
“That’s what the doctors say, at
least. I think there’s something else going on.”
“Like what?”
“A dirty place is a busy place. Keep
trash and trinkets around and you’ve always got something to distract you from
bad memories. Look through a dirty mirror and you’ll see yourself without all
the scars and shit that’s worn into you. Clean places are for healthy minds.
They’re for people who want to be alone with their thoughts.”
Staff the Elder’s words wouldn’t
have stuck if they didn’t hurt, and they wouldn’t have hurt if they were false.
Through his dirty mirror, Mick saw
his face without the scar from a knife fight he couldn’t remember. He could
ignore how the tiredness and age had worn a map of intricate lines across his
face. The blubbery pocket of fat that had collected under his chin became invisible
as long as he kept his hands away.
His room was no different. The piles
of trash smudged up the reflections of events along his timeline. When there
were no distractions, his head snapped back on itself like a mousetrap,
remembering the times when he’d made mistakes without domain over his mind,
when he’d changed from Mick to The Behemoth: a snarling hunk of fat, too big to
tell no and too dangerous to be ignored.
One time he’d changed to The
Behemoth in a record setting heat wave. He had a bottle of water and was going
for a walk, heading towards a new park downtown. He’d never been but it was all
over the papers. The route was three miles and he’d been fat with creosoted
lungs for years. It was worth the sweat to get outside and see the world a
little bit and have a memory to pin to the articles he read on the front page.
Help
me.
The voice stopped him cold. It was
so high, a squeak like a rusty hinge that had barely sounded like words. He
looked left and right, searching for the speaker, then down.
Please,
I’m so thirty.
It was a baby girl, eyes beginning
to glaze as she looked up at Mick. Little feet kicked once in a flowered pink
onesie. Sweat stains soaked through the soft fabric. He looked around for a
parent, calling out and asking whose baby was out in the heat alone. No one
answered, and he understood.
Please
help.
She needed him. There was no one
else to help and she was inches from death. Through desperation she’d learned
how to speak so she could beg him for help. It left him no choice. He unscrewed
the cap of his water bottle and poured out a glistening, contoured stream.
The mother’s scream snapped him back
to reality. The baby had sputtered and coughed the whole time he poured into
her mouth, vomiting as water went down the wrong pipes, but all he could think
of was the miracle in front of him. The mother swept up her child, cradling her
as water dribbled out of her mouth.
Too many explanations ran through
Mick’s mind. He wanted to shout that he was sorry. That he didn’t mean to hurt
her. He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought she needed his help.
He wasn’t a bad man. All he could manage was to scream after her, over and over,
“I don’t have domain of my mind. I don’t have domain of my mind.”
He was lucky. The woman had been too
scared or checked out to call the police. A week, terrified in his room,
thinking there would be a knock on his door with grim faces wanting to talk,
then he relaxed. There were a dozen other times when he hadn’t been so lucky.
They stretched out through his life of near misses. Every minute with a clear
mind brought the memories back, so he dirtied his room to dirty his mind with
pleasant clutter.
In the corner, an acoustic guitar.
From a time before the pills, when wooing girls was a priority.
Ticket stub from Mission Impossible
with Tom Cruise. Last movie he went to with mom.
Collection of maple seed pods, the
kind that spin like helicopters. Left around the room where they’d landed after
their dances.
Canvas knapsack with stuffed rabbit
peeking out the top. His bugout bag. If he did the wrong thing when he lost
domain of his mind, at least he’d have the essentials packed.
Cigarettes. The good ones, in packs,
tucked away. The shitty ones, hand wrapped, out where mooches would see and
point when they asked for a smoke. The best ones, green and semi-legal, hidden.
Scraps of paper. Everything laid out
like an exploded timeline: birth certificate, outdated food handler’s permit, wrinkled
and folded social security card, Washington State ID, receipts from 7/11 for
slurpees, jerky, cigarettes, hot pockets, chicken wings, snickers bars, bottled
water, chocolate milk, potato chips, and the last beer he’d had in his life
before the doctor said no more.
Everything fit in a space about ten
feet by eight feet. Staff the Younger had whistled through his teeth the first
time he saw the group home’s rooms, saying he’d seen prison cells that were
bigger, and free. He missed the point though because he’d never used one of
those free cells. You couldn’t leave them. At any time, Mick could go out and
add to the 7/11 receipt pile, or have a cigarette with The Scarecrow, or even
go to the shores of Lake Union and walk to the park. You couldn’t do that in a
luxurious, free prison cell.
*
The
Scarecrow took handfuls of mattress padding and threw them onto his floor. The
few teeth that matched up ground together, flaring the bones of his jaw in
frustration.
Everyone knew the Jews had a
stranglehold on the media. You heard what they wanted you to. You believed what
they told you to. What people didn’t know was how much more they controlled.
When you had the wires in the greasy, baby-soft palm of your accountant hand,
you controlled all the information.
They were the ones who told his mom
about every police report. They were the ones who blocked his calls to her.
Every night they recorded her crying for her wayward son and piped it into his
room as he moaned for sleep. No matter how he scratched and screamed, he
couldn’t find their hidden speakers.
While he flailed around, they took
information from hidden cameras and hidden microphones. Three hundred and
sixty-degrees in every direction at every angle. All the tricks they would ever
need to keep him by the balls, spoon-fed to them by technicians as fat as
whales.
The wire was somewhere in his
mattress. He was getting the feedback. Someone, in laying the bug, had made a
mistake. He could hear them as well as be listened to. Find the bug and it was
proof that someone was listening when they shouldn’t be.
Four
hours now… I think the major should have preliminary estimates…
‘Keep talkin’, you shits,’ The
Scarecrow’s voice even graveled in his head, ‘Almost got you.’
This
dates back to the Lawrence Event. We can’t let something like that go.
The Lawrence Event. Whoever was in
charge of watching him had done their research. They knew everything back to
that first mistake. But it was in high school. Did they have the wires back
then? Were they listening to everyone and just chanced on him, or did they
always know that he needed to be listened to? Everything had been engineered to
keep him down. They’d shaped everything from the Lawrence Event for forty years
to put him in this room, smaller than a prison cell, so he couldn’t blow the
whistle on them.
Or was it her the whole time? Would
she go through that just to ruin one more life?
It
proved what a danger he was. The girl had to go through more than a decade of
therapy before she could develop a meaningful relationship with another drone.
“It isn’t true,” he growled out loud. Let
them listen. Let them hear the truth even if they wanted to ignore it. “I
didn’t fuckin’ touch her. The other guys were the ones and I said no. I told
‘em to cut it out. I stayed with her and the police caught me because I’m the
only one who cared. You’re all wrong.” His volume climbed as he pulled the last
of the stuffing out and inverted the empty mattress. No wire. His hands went
over the fabric like a seamstress’, searching for evidence. At the end near his
head was a tear, half an inch long, wide enough for a wire to fit through. He
could have made it. And that’s what they could want him to think.
Semen
samples proved that four boys had been involved. If he hadn’t been a minor and
used the insanity plea then he’d have fried for all of them.
“That’s a fuckin’ lie.” He snarled,
whipping around in his room, looking for the wire. “All of you got it wrong.
It’s a cover up. A fuckin’ cover up. You wasted all this time keepin’ me down
while the real monsters stayed out there.”
His fists shook as he screamed to
the tiny microphones, so small he couldn’t find them.
“You’re the ones who’re crazy.”
*
Mick
heard the scream from three doors down and shut his eyes. Time to look for
strength, to pray to God he could make it through. Time for full tilt until The
Scarecrow got better. Then he’d be Paul again. Paul and Mick would pass each
other for a few short weeks as Paul went up and Mick went down and their roles reversed.
Paul would do everything for The Behemoth that Mick did for The Scarecrow.
Until that time, Mick needed vigilance to keep Paul out of the hospital.
The night attendant wouldn’t investigate,
but the day attendant would. When the sun went up it was time to pay attention.
If he could make it to The Scarecrow before he worked himself up to screaming
or acting out, he could bring his mood down. Mick had a few hours to sleep and
rest before he needed to watch The Scarecrow. When that happened it was do or
die. Care, or his friend went away.
He pulled a pinch of precious weed
and added it to the cigarette he was preparing. Tomorrow needed a good night’s
sleep.
*
Staff
at the assisted living facility took threats very seriously. They trusted the
people they worked with, but if they didn’t need watching from time to time
then they wouldn’t live there. If someone brought a weapon onto the campus,
they were gone, no questions asked. When possession was established, they need
to find somewhere else to live. It was the only way to ensure safety for the
other hundred residents.
But they didn’t know about The
Scarecrow’s cane. Once, when he was slipping but not quite gone, he’d asked
Staff the Younger if he knew why he carried the cane. The answer was protection,
and Staff the Younger had raised his eyebrows in a look of acknowledgment but
didn’t do anything else. He’d been threatened for real at his last job, the statement
just sounded like fact.
He didn’t know there was a knife in
the handle. Even Mick didn’t know. The Scarecrow didn’t remember where he’d
gotten the cane. At some point in his life he’d been overseas, and the
intricate carvings in the handle told him it was a gift from somewhere out in
the world. He carried it when the wires chattered and taped at their loudest.
Mick didn’t need to know there was a knife. He knew enough to groan and grind
his teeth when he saw the cane was out.
*
The
autumn day retreated quickly over the group home. Dinner was a symphony of
small talk. People chatted about the Mariners. They wondered whether the sun
would ever show its face. They said whether this movie was supposed to be good
or terrible. They wondered whether the food was going to become edible sometime
soon. They joked with one another about how this staff was doing and whether
they were as good as the old staff.
None of them could hear the
microphones they wore, except The Scarecrow.
He could hear everything. Endless
chatter in between the words his housemates said. All of it was about him. The
people who owned the wires were honing in, figuring the ways to trick him and
keep him trapped in the group home now that he was getting close to them. They
had his criminal history, his friends and loved ones. They had everything they
needed to keep his parking brake on.
Mick cut off a piece of egg white
omelet with the edge of his fork and watched his friend. He couldn’t see his
face but he saw The Scarecrow’s head jerk up at every sound. He saw his hands
shoot out to the edge of the table when someone dropped a plate. He pulled at
the edge of the wood, flexing and straining the lacquered plank. Then his hand
crept underneath the table and came out holding his cane. Mick’s spine froze
into an icicle.
Pussy
cunt faggot.
“No,” Mick moaned, quiet enough to
get it out of his head but not loud enough for other people to hear, “no, not
yet. Too soon. Stay the hell away from me.”
Worthless,
pussy piece of shit. Little boy fucker. The words crawled into his ear like
a snake, writhing inside so that he wanted to take his knife and jam it inside
until the snake died. But it wasn’t there. He had to believe it wasn’t there.
No
one will ever love a piece of scum like you.
He wanted to flip the table. He
wanted to scream out loud to shut up and leave him alone. They didn’t know him.
They had no idea what he’d been through. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
Fuck who? There was no one there and
he knew it. They were his voices. They were the taunts that teased him into
becoming The Behemoth, and they were coming back.
Silence. He wasn’t The Behemoth yet,
but he didn’t have much time. Days, maybe. He had to make sure The Scarecrow
stayed out of trouble long enough to become Paul again.
“Hey,” Mick brushed The Scarecrow’s
shoulder. “I heard you last night.”
The Scarecrow nodded, eyes darting
back and forth. It was a sign Mick had been looking for. A bad one. “Things are
gettin’ tense. I’m startin’ to figure out what they don’t want me to. Last
night I found one of their microphones but they pulled the wire back before I
could track it.”
“What do you mean?”
The Scarecrow jerked his head towards the
stairs. They shuffled over and headed to The Scarecrow’s room. Mick’s knife
scar turned downward when he saw the mattress stuffing sprayed all over the
floor.
“What the hell happened, man?”
“I heard the fuckers, loud and
clear. In my fucking mattress. They knew though. The mic moved before I could
find it. Too fuckin’ quick.”
Responses penned themselves in
Mick’s head, inked in honest logic. How could they move it without you
noticing? Why would you hear sound through a microphone? None of it would register. Logic had no
footing next to the beliefs in The Scarecrow’s mind.
Mick let his friend rant as he
re-stuffed his mattress. If the day attendant came and saw, The Scarecrow would
be on their watch list. If that happened, there was no helping him. With his
behavior so erratic, the mental health professionals would be called for an
assessment within days. He’d lose months of his life inside the hospital for
reasons he couldn’t help. Mick would follow a few weeks after. Until the
doctors found out why the meds worked for some months and didn’t for others, he
and The Scarecrow needed each other.
The Scarecrow chattered away about
his theories. Mick uh-huhed and sured until silence caught his attention. The
Scarecrow stared down at him with eyes that looked flammable. “What did I just
say to you?”
Mick felt awkwardness flare up
between them. “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying enough attention.”
“Typical. Fuckin’ typical.”
“Well give me a fucking break. I’m stuffing
the shit back into your mattress for you and trying to help out. Sorry if I
can’t hang onto every word.”
“Bullshit. You don’t need to hang
onto every word because you’ve already got it recorded. What did they give
you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit. How did they get you on their
side? Where’s your wire?”
Mick realized the gravity of the
situation right before The Scarecrow brought a lamp down on his head.
He never hit unconsciousness. If he
had, it would have burned away whatever sympathy he had left. Mick would have
never followed The Scarecrow to try and keep him out of trouble. Their tradeoff
watch would have ended.
Instead things went loopy enough to give
him a clear reflection of things that had happened long ago.
A boy next to Mick called him a cock-sucking
pussy. Mick beat the boy so hard he nearly lost an eye. When no one around him
could defend that he’d been called a name, Mick went to juvy.
Ten years later, he became conscious in a
police cell. The charges were assault and battery. He tried to say someone had
spat fighting words at him. There were no witnesses who could corroborate his
side. When the defendants came into the courtroom on a traction bed, the trial
was over before it began. Mick got five years.
A guard who cared was paying attention
when Mick shouted at a prisoner who hadn’t said a word towards him. Mick
ruptured the man’s spleen and went to solitary. When he got out, the guard was
waiting for him with a doctor. The doctor asked how long he’d been hearing
voices.
Mick went to a hospital, got on Thorazine,
and stopped feeling anything. A few years later they moved him out of the
violent ward and into talk therapy. His medication changed to Clozapine. He
started feeling again, and he was able to tell that the voices weren’t real.
Another year and he was on a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and he was
out.
Out. Free. Able to do what he wanted,
good or bad. With his medication and his therapies and his friends he could do it.
So could Paul. Mick had seen him for those brief periods in passing. He didn’t
want to lose his friend.
Nigger
piece of shit.
Foil glittered beneath The Scarecrow’s
bed. Mick stretched his hand into the darkness as his head throbbed. It was a
daily pill container. Only one of them had been punched, dated a week and a
half ago. The sudden increase of The Scarecrow’s actions sharpened in Mick’s
mind. His obligation to his friend reasserted itself.
Behind him was an open door. He
didn’t know how long he’d been sitting on the floor, dazed, but he hadn’t gone
unconscious. The doctor could wait to look at his head.
Mick was fat, old, and hurt, but he
had a purpose and reason to rush. The Scarecrow was thinner but no younger, and
he was drifting through his delusions, locked in their own strange comfort.
Mick knew where Paul would go because he knew his friend, and he knew he could
catch him.
*
The
Scarecrow hobbled, swaying as the lake breeze whipped by him. Ahead, the
walking trail split off into Gasworks Park: site of the Lawrence Event, where
it all began.
The park’s namesake was a labyrinth
of pipes, boiler kettles, and exhaust towers. Twilight made the brass giants
glow. Once upon a time it had been a natural gas plant. When the city turned it
into a park, they preserved the huge condensers and exhaust ports that had once
belched smoke into the sky. Before that the plant had sat abandoned for fifteen
years. That’s where the Lake Hounds ran.
Joining the Hounds had seemed so
simple. Paul couldn’t play sports. He didn’t have many friends and his parents
didn’t give a shit about him. In the Lake Hounds he had respect because he
could do everything they could, better. No one tagged the way he did, shimmying
up the freeway bridge, hitting walls in broad daylight. When they fought with
other troupes he was the first to charge. It wasn’t until the rape of Ellen
Lawrence that he showed he wasn’t a Hound all the way.
The sound of tearing cotton told him
something was wrong. He stood up from a dice game and wandered over to the base
of one of the huge boilers. They’d gagged her, but it didn’t stop her whimpers
from echoing around the metal walls. Danny, the gang leader, the only one more
respected than Paul, stood up as blood dribbled around his feet. Sweat
glistened on his forehead over glazed eyes. He waved Paul over. His turn.
And Paul had put his foot down. It
wasn’t right. They weren’t this kind of gang. They hurt people who tried to
hurt them, not people who never hurt anyone. Danny had squared off against him.
The rest of the Hounds watched in a circle, waiting to see who would win the
standoff. Ellen whimpered and twitched outside the crowd, her brain retreating
to a happy place.
Then the sirens had come. Whoever
had called them, Paul had taken the blame. Danny’s switchblade hit him in the
gut. By the time he came out of shock, Ellen had fingered him to the cops in
her delirium, recognizing his voice even though it was the only one who had spoken
for her. Ever since, the people behind the wires had kept him on their watch
list. A year later he heard the wires for the first time. Every day they got
louder and more invasive. He heard them chatter every second of every day until
it wore him down, turning him from Paul into The Scarecrow.
The park had changed. Grass and
walking paths covered what had once been hard cement. The pipes and tanks were
still there, though a chain link fence sequestered them. The Scarecrow walked
around their perimeter, thinking on how it had all gone wrong half a century
ago on the other side of the fence. All because he’d tried to do the right
thing for a bloodthirsty bitch that wanted to hurt whoever she could.
A high giggle made its way across
the park. It was Ellen. He’d know the voice that ruined him anywhere. She was
still there, gloating over her petty victory. Laughing over the pieces of a
shattered life.
I’m
glad it happened. She said. The Scarecrow followed the voice. It was coming
from the play barn, a maze of pipes and factory innards, brightly colored for
kids but poorly lit for shady activity.
Stupid
sack of shit. I don’t care that he tried to help me. Fuck, I would’ve done it
even if they didn’t tell me to.
The Scarecrow shuffled under the
roof of the play barn. Shadows wrapped around him like a blanket. It was true.
She hadn’t ruined him for them. She’d done it for her.
Wasn’t
the first time. I’d do it again too. Too many guys in this world. I’m just
leveling the playing field, taking them down a notch.
He saw movement in the far corner
and heard a deep moan, packed with meaning.
I’ll
do it to you when this is finished.
The guy plastered to her kept going,
despite her promises. He couldn’t stop. She had him under control. He thought
he was in charge, in love, but it was a trap. The idiot was right where she
wanted him.
I’ll
never stop. My job is to ruin lives and I’m the best there is.
You had to have fallen for her trap
to be immune to it. Everyone else fell too far. Only The Scarecrow could stop
her.
I’d
do it even if they stopped paying me. It’s not work. It’s play.
The Scarecrow slid the knife out of
the cane. It glittered in a patch of moonlight as he stalked through the shadows
towards them. The moaning went on as the boy’s hand went exploring.
Mick caught him from behind. His
hand snapped over The Scarecrow’s mouth. The Scarecrow jerked backwards and the
pill in Mick’s palm hit the back of his tongue. He swallowed instinctively.
The young couple was dead to the
world. They didn’t hear the scuffle or the gravelly voice swearing revenge on
his friend. They didn’t notice as a big shadow dragged a smaller shadow away.
As they rested in afterglow, they remained ignorant of the glittering piece of
steel on the cement floor that pointed towards them.
*
Paul knocked on Mick’s door. “Want to
have a cigarette?”
“Sure,” Mick came out with two of
the good ones in his hand.
“What about those Seahawks?” Paul
asked as they stepped into the cold autumn air.
“They could’ve gone all the way this
year. Ever notice how every time we start to get a foot we wind up playing the
refs and losing?”
“Yeah, man, I notice.”
“I miss the Sonics.”
“You and the rest of the city.
There’s good news though, I hear we’re supposed to be getting the Kings.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“Nah man, it’s real. They’ve got
Paul Allen as a backer now.”
“Wow. I guess the money’s there then.
That’s all it takes is money.”
“Yeah. We shouldn’t have to buy
someone else’s team though. Fuck Oklahoma for taking them in the first place.”
“Fuck Oklahoma.”
Mick brought his cigarette to his
mouth and fanned the end. It smoldered and the red-hot cherry crept closer to
the brown-orange nicotine stains that marked the butt’s place of honor.
“Fuck you, man.” He said.
“What’d I do?”
“You called me a dumbass. What the
hell did I do to you?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it,” Paul said
and pulled on his cigarette as The Behemoth’s hackles rose. Paul smiled and
nodded and listened and apologized for nothing because it was his turn.
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