No
. A new ‘no’ now, one more urgent, yet more reserved. One borne of knowing, and fear. One that with all of his soul Jay wished he could make true. A ‘no’ that explained so many things right then. A ‘no’ that posed new questions, too.
No
.
But it was what he saw, and no number of denials could change that. It was right there, hard and real, an upturned and empty five gallon bucket with the Ganello pitted black olives label upside down on its side. It cast a shadow from the waning sun, and so it was real, not just an illusion. This was not Broadway and Wall, but it could have been. It was not the summer of 1989, but what was time, anyway, but the distance between things that were bound to happen?
It was here. He was here.
But where?
“Hey, buddy, would you mind gettin’ off my truck?”
Jay looked to the voice, the old voice of Max the barber who had never cut his hair and called everyone who passed by his shop buddy. He steadied himself on his crutches and came away from the truck.
“Thank you,” Max said, though how much real ‘thanks’ was in there was debatable. He turned to go back in his shop, but Jay stopped him with a question.
“Do...do you know who this...this bucket belongs to?”
Max looked back, at the bucket, and then to Jay. “Nice fella.” The old thin man with big glasses and a small head surveyed the block up and down. “Don’t know where he is. Been out here usually ‘till about eight or so.”
“Doing what?”
“Playin’ his harmonica for change. You know the routine.”
He certainly did. A slightly different routine, maybe, but the particulars likely hadn’t changed that much.
“How long’s he been here?” Jay asked.
“Oh,” Max said, thinking and rubbing his chin. “A few days now, I think. Showed up about Monday, I think.”
“He’s been in town since Monday?”
“Think so. Why, you know him?”
Jay gave a shallow nod. “I think I might.”
“Gave him a clip on Tuesday, I think,” Max said. “Called me Max like he knew me, or somethin’. Told me he was squatting out by the old tire plant. Hard times, you know.”
“Yeah,” Jay said. “The tire plant. Up on Traction?”
“Way up there, you know. The one that closed, you know.”
“Right,” Jay said. “Thanks.”
“If you see him, say Max’ll watch his stool here.” And Max let loose a dry laugh at what he said, some humor in it to him and him alone, and then he went back inside. And Jay?
Jay was moving for all he was worth up Wells Road toward Traction.
Forty Eight
Peace, Nothing
It was almost nine when Jay reached the road to the once proud Jefferson Tire & Rubber Plant, an industrial machine that had employed six hundred people making the small rubber rounds on which airplanes took off and landed, and nothing else. Now, though, there was little left, the mighty presses and ovens and cutting machines that hummed and fired and made the place alive having been sold and shipped off en masse to a place in Venezuela where six hundred others were making the presses and ovens and cutting machines work. Just a shell was left, a big rusting steel shell, with holes cut away to the sky, the pieces scavenged by locals and likely sold for scrap, as had been large sections of the chain link fence that once surrounded the forty acre site. Now it was open, open to the world.
But only two inhabitants of that planet need be here this night, Jay thought, and felt for the gun at the back of his pants. There. Ready. All that was needed was a willing finger to pull the trigger.
And Jay knew where that could be had. No farther than the end of his arm.
He came up the road and over the rise that hid most of the plant from Traction, a thick cake of dust covering the path where workers had come and gone in American cars, but where now there was but a single set of shoe prints, heading in and out several times. Back and forth, to town and back. Well, come back again, Jay thought, and flexed his index finger around the crutch’s grab handle. Getting ready.
It had been him, the bum, the crazy fucking bum all along. How? Why?
Fuck
those two questions, Jay told himself. Fuck any questions and any answers, and fuck anything else but that bum in his sights, because oh, yes, someone was going to die tonight. Tonight, tonight, tonight. Blast that crazy fucking smile off his face, all right. Tear him a new nose, inside out. Fuck him. FUCK
HIM!
Just outside the rusting red skeleton of the dead plant’s main building, Jay stopped, standing on a skim of dirt that covered a parking lot where hellos were once said and goodbyes were once said, and, oh, look, there were footprints tracking across the filth on the lot, and so another goodbye would be said right here this night. Goodbye, Sign Guy, bum, you crazy grinning fuck, or whatever you are. Adios! Bye bye!
That’s what it would be, and Jay was going to be ready, and so he reached to the back of his pants for the gun that would never kill Mari, that would instead kill the
thing
that had done this, done this, somehow done this, and he was about to pull it and have it at the ready when a light glowed on the rise between Traction and the plant. A light coming up the road. The light of a car coming up the road. A car that crested the rise and was coming at Jay with just one headlight shining.
“Dammit, Mari! No!” He left the gun in his waistband and tossed the crutches aside, and hopped and hobbled toward where the road met the lot, waving his arms at that one white radiant eye, but the car reached there first and stopped in a skid that sent a cloud of dust rolling toward Jay. A brown and gray cloud of dirt and rust that came at him, and surrounded him, and washed past him so that once again he could see the—
“Couldn’t let me have my fun, could you,” the bum said as he came out of the car’s driver’s side, the hat-topped silhouette he cut unmistakable as he passed before the lone headlight and went to the passenger door. There he stopped after opening it and looked to Jay, his form just a blot on the night, the hat atop his head straight and that smile beaming, Though Jay could not see it he knew it was beaming, oh yes. His hand went back and curled round the gun’s grip. But why did he have Mari’s car—
Because he had Mari, Jay realized when the bum dragged a form from the passenger side and walked into the brightness the lone headlight was casting.
“Had to screw with my fun, didn’t you?” the bum said, and flung Mari to the dirty ground at his side. She was bound, hands behind her and legs at the ankles, and something had been tied around her mouth as a gag. Her eyes were open and wild with fear, and it was then that Jay drew the gun and pointed it at the bum.
Jay winced at the force of the number as it hit him, what it was and what it meant exploding in his head like a small atom bomb. The gun dangled for a moment in his grip, jittering uselessly at the ground.
“Got that loud and clear, did you?
Good!
” And then the bum took Mari by the hair and brought her to her knees, exposing the white number blazing on her jersey. “There’s your target, young fella. Right there. So take care of it.”
“NO!” Jay screamed at him, and brought the gun up, keeping one hand over his ears in a useless attempt to keep the numbers out. To keep the bum out. But that would not do it, because there was no hole that led to one’s mind. Just paths through the ether that were marked on no anatomy map. If he wanted in, he could be in. And, well, he was way, way in, Jay now knew, and had been for sometime. “I won’t!”
“Won’t?” the bum repeated incredulously, shaking Mari by the hair. “Won’t? Have we forgotten what happens when we don’t listen to the coins?”
And from Jay’s right side there rose a roar, and a gush, and fine pieces of sand washed over him, and when he turned his head that way the train was
right there
, on top of him!
Only it was not. It could not be. It was only in his head, courtesy of the bum. It had been real once, but was now only a memory, and memory could not hurt you—it could only drive you mad.
“I won’t!” Jay screamed again, and the bum knelt next to Mari.
“He re
fuses
,” he said toward her face. “He thinks some train is going to come again and that he’ll be able to get out of the way, but that’s not going to happen, is it?” And he twisted her hair so her head shook from side to side, her terrified eyes wide at him. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” Up and down, now, he forced her head, making her nod. “And should we tell him?” A nod again at his hand, and the bum looked back to Jay and pointed to the north with his free hand. “Interstate Seventy, young fella—know it?”
Jay sidestepped unsteadily right, putting the hand that had covered his ear in front of his eyes now, trying to shield the car’s light. His other hand held the gun out straight once again, pointing it at the bum. The bum so close to Mari. The bum who was quoting the rules of the coins, and was moving into the section on consequences for non-adherence.
“Of course you do,” the bum continued, standing again and stepping away from Mari, who stayed on her knees sobbing into her gag, her blue, blue eyes pasted on Jay, as if begging him. Begging him to make this stop. “Well, young fella, out there on that interstate right now, coming this way, is a bus from the Great State of Kansas, or the ‘pisshole’ state, as I’ve heard it called...”
Jay ignored his knowing, his almighty knowing, and kept the gun on him, his finger on the trigger, trying to make it pull, willing himself to make it pull, but...
“...out there tooling east on good ol’ I Seventy is a bus. A school bus.” Mari looked the bum’s way now, and Jay stopped his shuffle out of the light. “Forty little kiddies off to a summer camp in Arkansas. Fun, fun, fun. Except....” And he pointed again, somewhat easterly now toward the north. “Except coming the other way is this big ol’ gasoline truck. And you know what? Gasoline is flammable. And you know what else? The driver of that truck must really like his job, because he’s getting this big ol’ smile on his face. And you know what smiling drivers of gasoline trucks do, don’t you?” His hand came down. “They cross the median and hit school buses full of little kiddies head on. Can you say...
barbecue?
”
Jay shook his head. “Why are you doing this? Why did you do all of this?”
“Because you stuck your damn nose into my fun, that’s why!” the bum exploded, stabbing a finger at Jay. “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you? I was having my fun, bus crash here, a midair collision there, and you had to ruin it! You had to stick your donzerly light out and snatch life out of certain death! I gave that to you to pick stocks, boy, not interfere with me!” Now the bum gestured at Mari. “And this! All of the little people you saved. Picking the ones that would somehow bring us together again. How you did that I have no idea, but that you even tried pisses the
hell
out of me! Who do you think you are?! You are not running this show.
I
am running this show.” And his arms spread wide toward the sky, as if in his grasp the universe could be held, and held close. “The whole damn show!”
“You are running nothing,” Jay said, the gun pointed at the bum, dead on now, but still...still he couldn’t pull the trigger. Still he saw...
...blaring in his head.
“You are only partly correct,” the bum said to him. “Because you, young fella, are controlling a part of this show. You, you see, have a task to complete, and if you do not, there’s gonna be a hot time on the interstate tonight.
That
is what you are controlling now, young fella. The lives of those children and a few inconsequential adults. Shoot me, boy,” the bum challenged him, spreading his arms wide as if nailed to a cross. “Shoot me and cook up some babies.” One of his fingers straightened at Mari. “Shoot her, and they live. She has the sign, boy, and you know it. You know it. That finger won’t pull that trigger if it’s pointed at me, ‘cause I ain’t got the sign. It’s not on me anywhere. Do you see it?” The bum mocked checking himself, then pointed harshly at Mari again. “Do it, you spineless little child! Put those six bullets through that five on her chest! Every one of them! Do it! Save those children, because that gas truck is getting closer, and closer, and that driver’s grinning up a storm. Do it! Now!”
Mari’s eyes pleaded with Jay, but what did she want him to do? What?
“Do it!”
Fits of tears flooded Jay’s eyes, and he inched the gun toward Mari. She began to nod.
The bum wanted it. Even Mari wanted it. Their reasons divergent, to be certain, but all to the same end. Shoot the mark, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and save the children. Children Jay could not see, but that he knew would be there. The bum, or whatever he really was, was beyond the measure of cruel necessary to conjure such an act. That bus was out there, and the gasoline truck too, and here was his target, a target begging with her eyes to be sacrificed so that the children might be spared. And Jay stood there beneath the dark heavens and hated himself for what it was he feared he might do. Might have to do. But...
...but still could not.
The bum saw this, sensed this, and went back to Mari, kneeling at her side and gripping her hair once more. “He’s having some trouble, me thinks. Don’t you?”
Her puppeted head concurred with a nod.
“Well, let’s see,” the bum said, mocking thought on the matter. “Maybe we can make the choice a bit easier for him. Throw in a bonus. Sweeten the pot.”
The gun jittered in Jay’s grip, pointing just away from Mari.
“I know. I have a good idea.” The bum twisted Mari’s face toward him. “We’ll give him what you’ve already got...if he just does what he has to do.”
“What are you saying?” Jay demanded, shouting.
The bum kept Mari looking his way. “Now, by now you know why your family died.” He nodded mock sympathy as her wet eyes raged at him. “Yes, me. Might as well give credit where credit is due. But...” And now the bum looked to Jay, and turned Mari to face him as well. “...I wonder if the man with the gun would like to know why his family died. Hmm?”