Joe's Black T-Shirt (7 page)

The machine’s feminine-like robot voice announced ‘end of message.’ Mike stood, thinking things over. Maybe he was chasing shadows in the dark. Daniel said he had nothing. Possibly there was nothing to find after all. Sometimes clients got like this. Regardless what you did for them, you cannot make the facts change. If Daniel found nothing by tomorrow night, he resigned himself to accept that this thing with his father was nothing more than a drug-induced fiction.

***

Mike got a good days rest. When he awoke, Mother had readied a meal fit for a king. Fresh garden-picked salad with homemade Italian dressing, handmade sourdough rolls, deep-fried steak cutlets, home cut fries, and green beans with squares thick as scrabble tiles of maple-cured bacon. It was far from a calorie conscious meal, but it was certainly food for the soul. The comfort of each bite more pleasing than the last.

After supper, he had a cigarette. The smoke helped digest the rich foods and made room for desert. Homemade Brown Betty buried under vanilla ice cream.

“Your father used to smoke. Did you know that?”

“No,” Mike said honestly surprised. He never knew of Father having any vices outside of working too much.

“Before you were born, him and his brothers would get together every Sunday. They were all married by then too. We wives would come together in the kitchen frying up chicken and drinking schnapps. The men would be out in the field, shooting targets off the fence line, in between drinks of mason-jar liquor. By the time supper was ready, the whole gang of us were in one hell of a great mood. It would be well after midnight before we would get to bed.”

Mike listened serenely to the story. He never thought much about his parents as people. The idea that they were young once was intriguing.

“As soon as I found out I was pregnant with you, I took the pledge. Your father, the consummate gentleman, jumped on the wagon right along with me. Nine months later, you were the center of the universe to us. It wasn’t until your first birthday either of us realized we hadn’t had a drop in nearly two years. I guess we lost our taste for it. Daddy, though, loved those cigarettes. He got the habit in the service. When we met up, everybody smoked except for me, but it never bothered me one way or another. It was when you were five he quit. Seems you wanted to be like him so bad that you took to picking his butts out of the ashtray, pretending to smoke. That broke his heart.”

It made Mike think as he crushed out his cigarette. He had the habit and couldn’t conceive life without them. The idea that he had been unwittingly imitating his father made him smile. It was weird, especially at a time like this he thought, the things children found in common with their parents.

“He must’ve gained forty pounds quitting, but he did it. I thought his new pot-belly was sexy.”

Mike laughed out loud more from embarrassment than humor.

“Jesus, Mike,” Mother said as her jovial mood turned sullen, “I am going to miss that man so much.”

He leapt from around the table and he held his weeping mother’s head against his chest. Doing his best to comfort her, he couldn’t keep back his own tears.

“Me, too,” he whispered resting his cheek on top his mother’s head.

***

Father was resting comfortably as the new nurse came in tonight. She was much taller and thinner than the other one, but they had identical smiles. Lips pressed together, raised slightly at the corners, and completely anonymous regarding emotion. It was a smile that said nothing, yet somehow reassured family members.

His uncle seemed more tired tonight. His usual lively banter had taken a more somber appeal, like jokes without punch lines. Father had experienced a couple of serious tachycardia incidents on his shift. The closeness of his brother’s waning mortality touched a deeply impacted nerve in the man.

So far tonight on Mike’s shift, all was quiet. The steady rhythm of breathing, the regular measurement of heartbeats accented by the chirps of the ever-watchful equipment was almost lulling. It was business as usual and he could have not been more grateful.

At a quarter of five, Father came awake with a yawn. A rested man, seemingly invigorated by a good night’s sleep, but groggy absent his ritual coffee. Using a Post-It note to bookmark his place, Mike smiled, glad to see the man he remembered.

“Morning, Dad,” Mike said. “How do you feel?”

“How do I feel,” he said reiterating the question as philosophy. “I feel sick to my stomach.”

“I’ll ring the nurse. It’s probably the new medicine.”

“You got an answer for everything, don’t ya?”

The statement made Mike cringe.

“You were never anywhere near the Mopkin’s place. From eight p.m. until the following morning, you and Minnie Porter were snug as two bugs in a rug. All evening watching TV with her folks, then spending the night over there due to the storm. Quite the airtight alibi if I do say so myself.”

Would this goddamn one-man play never stop, Mike thought.

“Maybe the sheriff is more than willing to swallow that ol’ horseshit story, but I’m not. I don’t need a new Cadillac nor do I owe a heap of back taxes on my land. I wouldn’t give a shit if my family had to live out on the streets if it meant having to take your dirty money.

The truth be told, I can’t prove nothing, but if it takes me my whole life, I swear I’ll show folks. I don’t know how, but I will. No matter who you get to cheat, lie or steal for you, I won’t rest until the whole world knows that Rodney David MacArthur II is nothing but a child-murdering rapist not fit to walk the streets. I hope when folks know, they pull you from limb-to-limb and beat you with the bloody stumps. That they drag your Daddy from that big house he bought by selling whores and blackmailing the men who used them and let him watch you die like a dog in the street. Let him see it all and then burn that goddamn mansion of his to the ground with him in it.”

Stunned, Mike could not speak or so much as swallow to quench his dry throat.

“I suggest you pack your bags. Leave town before sunset tonight. If you don’t, my brothers and I are going to find you. When we do, we’ll skin you alive and feed you to the sows. That’s a promise, not a threat.” His eyes fluttered as the exhaustion grabbed hold of Father once more. In a voice suddenly present and desperate, he weakly reached for Mike’s hand, asking, “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Dad,” Mike said as the life in his father’s eyes retreated from his body again.

It was a secret code after all. Written in a language from one lawman to another. All his life, his father made light of his work. Speeders, drunks, and the Saturday night fights were his only claims to jurisprudence. He should have known better. All men, should they live long enough, have regrets. Should they liver even longer, they might have a chance to absolve the past by preparing for the future.

***

At 9:04 a.m., with Uncle Henry, Mother, and Mike gathered at his bedside, Father gently found his eternal rest. They had loved him the greatest that another person could and he in return shared the same with each of them, every moment of everyday.

***

Father Gabriel gave his father’s eulogy and conducted a service fit more for a president than a humble county sheriff. No man could have hoped for more.

At the wake, amongst the dozens of law enforcement officials, Father Gabriel found Mike. He had left the receiving line, his right hand numb from condolences. The priest placed a hand on Mike’s knee as he sat in the folding chair next to him.

“I’ve made a decision Father Gabe,” Mike said.

“Times such as these do that to a man.”

“The District Attorney is looking for a good prosecutor. I think I’m the man for the job.”

“A man who follows his heart can never go wrong,” Father Gabriel said. “Of course, there isn’t much money in that line of work. It’s more a calling than a job, but you know that already, don’t you?”

“If my father taught me one thing,” Mike said placing his hand over Father Gabriel’s “is that money is the least important thing of all.”

###

Take It Or Leave It

The alarm clock woke me at one-thirty in the morning. I slammed my hand in the dark trying my damnedest to silence the hellish screech. Unable to put a stop to the annoyance, I became fully awake and turned on the lamp. The red illuminated digits peered at me from the floor. My vision still blurry made it impossible to clearly see the numbers. I deliberately stomped on it, finally shutting it up before stepping into the john to piss. Pee hit the bowl, the seat, and the floor. A motherfucker of a hangover squealed inside my brain, lending me no mercy for my bad habits.

I brushed my teeth with Listerine, taking the scum off that had built up from cigarettes and beer before passing out. It was the same thing every morning, seven days a week. I spat the brown liquid down the drain followed by a large hunk of lung cheese.

The man I saw in the mirror hadn’t changed; a scrubby three-day growth of beard, hair short enough that it was unnecessary to comb, and two bloodshot red eyes with black dots that didn’t seem to see anything. I would shower after I got home. My hygiene wasn’t an issue. I worked alone.

The clothes I wore were simple. Cargo shorts and a t-shirt during the dog days of summer. Blue jeans and thermal shirts in the winter. Regardless the weather, I wore the same twenty-dollar boots everyday for the last three years. I found the ankle high constriction comfortable. In the slam they made you wear these blue canvas loafers with all white rubber soles. Fifteen years of wearing those goddamn things built a great aversion within me for comfortable footwear. Every time I put my boots on the image of those shoes flashed in my mind until I pulled the laces tight.

It was a cool morning for mid-June but not enough for a jacket. I kept one behind the seat in the van but couldn’t remember the last time I used it. I lit a Marlboro and turned the motor over. The piece of shit had an exhaust leak that made a hell of a racket. I punched the accelerator, deliberately revving the engine loud on the apartment’s parking lot. All fucking day I listened to screaming kids, the boom-boom car systems, and people who seemed never to go have to work in order to pay their rent. It was a childish revenge, and I laughed every time. Maybe it didn’t bother anyone, but then again, maybe it did. I hoped it pissed somebody off.

I had spent three months living in men’s shelters looking for work after my release. The line on the application where it asked if you had ever been convicted of a felony and if so why was easy to answer. With a bold mark, I checked the yes box, and in the space provided wrote one word: manslaughter. If that didn’t answer the fucking question, I didn’t know what else to say.

Occasionally, I would get an interview in spite of my honesty. Like some kind of asshole, I would wear a long-sleeved shirt and tie that I had picked out of the donation bins, trying to make a good impression. In an instant, before I had even sat down or shook a hand, they all judged me. My only visible tats were across my knuckles that read survivor when put together and the ones on my cheeks. Those were always the kiss of death. In spite of the fact that I was not a racist, anti-Semite, or atheist, the swastika on my right cheek and the upside-down cross on my left made an impact. It wasn’t like I couldn’t understand. If the roles were reversed, I think I probably would have felt the same way about me. It wasn’t until I bumped into an old cellie at a used bookstore downtown that I heard about this gig.

***

Cave was a cool dude, who did his time without incident. In the three years we bunked together, we never had a problem with each other. I hadn’t thought much about him since he got early parole for a rape he swore he never committed. Even then, I didn’t really give a fuck if he was innocent but got him wise real fast to quit saying that shit. Nothing pissed off locked-down cons than someone screaming injustice at the top of his lungs. Unless he enjoyed getting stabbed with sharpened toothbrushes, I advised him to let it go. If anything, brag about how you did it, and would do it again if they were stupid enough to let you out. He took my advice and suffered a couple of beat downs, which were inevitable once in a while to everybody.

He laughed when I told him how fucked up things had been going. I laughed too. Seriously, what should I have expected? That’s when he hipped me to this paper route gig. He explained to me that it was good bread and steady as the sun coming up in the East. The big bonus though was no one gave a shit what you looked like as long as you did your job.

Cave vouched for me to his boss Balentine that night and to my surprise he called me in for an interview. I could tell from the jump that he was not to be fucked with. “Cave says you’re a good man. Personally, I don’t give a shit what you did. The bottom line is I got enough problems to fill fucking Busch stadium, and I don’t need another. This is simple work, but it ain’t easy. I expect you to throw papers sick, tired, high, or drunk. They print the paper every day, including Christmas. You miss a day of work, you don’t get paid. You miss two in a row and you’re fired. I pay every week in cash. It ain’t a hell of a lot, but it’ll keep you from starving and going homeless. I’ll give you a van to use. If you wreck it, I’ll shitcan you even if it’s not your fault. Steal it, I’ll hunt you down like a dog and make you regret the day you were born. I’ve had guys delivering the paper with IQs lower than a dog's, and they did okay. If all that don’t bother you then you can start tonight.”

Balentine was right. The job was simple. It only took me a couple of nights to catch on to the routine. A three-ring binder with laminated pages listed the streets, the order in which to drive them, and who got the paper. Balentine changed my route every six months, each one better and usually bigger than the last. I had started in the worst neighborhoods that North St. Louis had to offer. My van had been shot at twice, but it didn’t disrupt me from my appointed duties.