The Last Bender, Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

At first my eyes felt like smashed oysters. The soft inside all mixed up with the shell. Slivers of light noisily never aligned. My mouth full of blood and tooth chips. A gluey crust between my lips.

            I was afraid to move. Afraid to feel the damage. I didn’t want to reach down to the protruding thigh bone, the fresh stump, swimming in entrails. I was afraid to think of my face stitched together like a baseball, or head thumping on a pillow. Maybe I was a shipwreck, ribs poking up through the sand. Or just a mouth feeding on the drip. The fear grew and grew but I never let on–I just lay there feeling it grow in my gut.

            Now there was a voice. I tried to shut my eyes but they were glazed over and stuck in place. It was not a familiar voice. I didn’t want to hear it. I was too afraid of the voice to listen, too conscious to ignore it. And I was in enough pain to dread more pain. A beating can go on for days or even weeks if it’s done right. They could beat me and let me slowly die of infection or internal injuries. They could leave me in my own urine and vomit.

It would be the cold concrete floor and daily appointments with the bright light and the truncheon. I’ve seen soldiers on the floor, tied to a chair, snuffing blood in and out of the nose, eyes swollen shut and covered with goo. And I’ve been too sick to wipe the flies off and been saved by maggots, who cleaned my wounds.

All night long, the same questions: What is your position? Who are your leaders? Who collaborates in the village? And when we were done, someone had to drag him down the stairs by the feet, head knocking on the steps, and hurl him into the mud and horse shit of the street to be picked over by bums. We didn’t have to put a sign around his neck. Everyone knew what happened to prisoners. Everybody talks. After that, they’re no good to anyone. They die in bed, their heads cut half way off, a live rat stuffed down the throat. For each one we tossed in the street, they tossed out one of ours. There were times when it was just like t.v. and nothing else, except colder. It rained for two years straight. I see myself standing in it, warm and slow or needle thin, in puddles, the tin thundering over head. My hair was long and matted and rank.

            “Don’t sleep on your back Bartell, it makes your glottus flap about like a punching bag.”   I figured if I could hang on long enough Stronghole would show up. If he didn’t get himself iced on the way in. “You’re a tough man to see, Bartell. I been tryin’ all day, but all I get is goof. I’m a man too. I got no time for corporate dick run around. I get a half dozen or so missing person’s reports and they all work for Monozone. Then I get a call from some P.R. slob jacking off about this ‘disaster’ they call it, where ten people don’t show up. Now I’m curious. You understand I’m sure.”

            “Hmmm…” was all I could manage.

            “So I figure since you ain’t been in to work today, or at least don’t return your calls, I’d drop by your house for a little chit chat.

            “You know, I find out more about Monozone watching JR Ivers on t.v. than I do from a horse’s ass who likes to get his corn husked through holes in walls. Anyone who’d rather chow on someone’s rag than talk to me, I figure deserves a little extra lean beef.

            “I figure a lot of things, but not this, not in the home of the brave. The report says you started out as a neck breaker. You graduated from field work to interrogations, and then you became something called a Field Analyst. What the fuck is that Bartell? Farm work? Sounds like a job for a sadistic putz. But what do I know. Why do I have a beef with a brave man like you?”

            It hurt , but I gave it all I had. “Who’d you scare off when you rode up on your white horse?”

            “I took you out Bartell. You were getting ready to flip patties, with one of my men in the bun.”

            I did a little thought experiment. I tried to visualize my position on the floor and then imagined my limbs moving in such a way that I was sitting up, back against the wall. Then I tried to picture the crust on my eyes dissolving enough to allow a little light in.

            Power and sensation returned to my legs and arms but it felt like I had punctured my lung with a broken rib and my head was squashed flat by a truck. He woozed in and out, a celestial cop standing over me.

            I said, “Could you turn off the light? The switch is by the door. Maybe then I can see.”

            He exhaled loudly; it wasn’t a sigh exactly, it was professional exasperation. Then he shook his head and spoke. “Guys like you I don’t bother trying to figure out. And I never rode no white horse, or sucked no cotton pony.”

            “So this is where it starts then?”

            “While you were out, I had a look around. Hope you don’t mind.”

            “Mind? I?”

            He turned off the light and went into the kitchen and ran the water. He knocked about a bit and returned. His shadow moved in the door way and a cold wet towel landed on my face. He put a glass of water down. His knees cracked when he knelt beside me. Gently he moved the cloth over my forehead, cheeks and mouth, each part pulled to pieces. My eyes blew up into flames that hissed against the terrycloth. Deep down in my bones I felt an immense wail gather and stream into my chest. It butted up into my throat but I held it down. I did not allow a single nerve to twitch or eye to wince. I pushed it back down into my chest and pictured it as a dense blue fog. I turned it green, I turned it pink, I turned it white. I made a mist of it and blew to dissipate the wail through the pines and out to sea.

            He held the glass to my lips. A strong taste of chlorine dissolved the blood and circled my tongue. I tried to swallow. I saw more than flickers of light. The big ears, sagging cheeks, and empty grey eyes surrounded by spirals of wrinkled brick. White hair trimmed to the skull. Neck bigger than his shirt collar. He stared into my eyes without fear or pity or concern. There was no hatred, no sadistic calm. Just curiosity.

            “Why don’t you get up Jack. We can talk in the living room.”

            “Sure thing,” I said, getting to my feet as best I could.

            Between the kitchen and the hall is a small living room. On the right hand wall a window faces Mrs. Stantborg’s house. That’s where I put the short couch I found in the trash one day. My father died on the old one and after a while I just couldn’t sit on it anymore. It all happened about the same time, like nuts in nougat. To the left was an old vinyl La-Z-Boy with a lopsided footrest. It used to vibrate, in my grandfather’s day. The couch faced the t.v., and on the wall above it was a picture of me, my father and mother and sister. We’re about hip high to them. It was taken in that big river side park out in Guernsey, where all the families used to go to fly kites and picnic, before Hilda. There’s all this grass and trees. Everyone smiled at Aunt Mathilde winking behind the camera.

            I sat down on the couch. He brought in a kitchen chair and sat on it backwards, facing me. He made it look like a child’s chair.

            I was too sore to sit back and too sick to sit forward, so I started to rock and fidget. That was no good in front of cops.  So I sat back, taking bigger and bigger sips of the water, adding up the change: Three cracked teeth. Two bruised ribs. Multiple contusions to the head and face.

            “So Lt. Detective Bunuel. Find anything interesting I should know about?”

            “Smoke?” he asked, offering me one from a pack of 25’s.

            “No.”

            He shifted forward in the chair. “Bartell, you got ten people missing over at your place. Three people don’t call me. Padraic Stanislau’s boyfriend Peter Lafferty, Benjamin St. Claude’s wife Evalyn, and David Watts’s sister Wanda. Why is that?”

            “Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they went along for the ride.”

            “Well that’s one down. Who do you think did this?” he asked, pointing to the rubble.

            “I thought you did.”

            He lit up one of those long, thin chocolate colored smokes and tapped the ashes on the floor. “Downtown that would earn you one across the face with a sap.”

            “Are you gonna just tell me all the mean horrible things you would do if you were someone else and we were somewhere different?”

            “Crack wise to someone else,” he said. “Now, besides me, who do you think did this?”

            “I dunno.”

            “You ‘dunno’.”

            “Yeah, right. It’s a sort of short hand.”

            “That’s what I figured,” he said. When I didn’t elaborate he just sat there with his chilled grey dots fixed on me till I felt like a rag doll. Finally he asked, “What do the families say? What about other employees?”

            I started to answer but fell down over a lot of yeahs and well I’s cause I hadn’t really talked to anyone.

            “I know you haven’t talked to no one but his wife and that bloodless sack of bones he fucks. I’ve talked to them too. A lot of good it does. Clara Turback escaped snuff movies by a hair on her ass and ends up on the arm of Dr. Suckbucks. She should be burning incense and reading palms in some store front roach parlor instead. I think I understood about two teaspoons of what she said but that was enough to make me wanna earl out the car window.”

            I said, “She may be sky-high but I think she knows where he is.”

            He yawned, ground out the cigarette in the carpet and pulled a flask out of his jacket pocket. The jacket was a nice piece of tailoring work, pink and red plaid, natural fibers. Every ten seconds a rhinestone carnation with a garnet center lit up on the skinny lapel. “It’s port wine,” he said. “Want some?”

            “No thanks,” I said.

            “I don’t need a glass or nothing.”

            “Didn’t think you did.”

            He took a few rapid slugs. The silver flask looked like a lighter. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and put it back. “They pay you much for such eloquence?” he asked.

            “That’s just what I think.”

            “You mean what you think is what you don’t know?”

            “In this instance, I guess that’s how it goes. What about business, Bunuel?”

            “Business? What the fuck do you mean by ‘business’?”

            “Look Bunuel, what’s your theory?”

            He scratched his head. “I don’t have one yet, but that’s what I’m after. Something happened in that lab, and I wanna know what. And I don’t mind catching your balls in the same trap, that’s fine.”

            “I told you we would cooperate.”

            “Who do you work for?”

            “Laraby.”

            “I ask myself, who the fuck is this Laraby? A guy like you is willing to go down for an asshole like that. It doesn’t make sense. Never has.”

            I gave my eyes roll and said, “I’d just like an estimate.”

            “An estimate?” He played at scratching his head. “All right. Monozone is on a big stink, and you don’t want us comin’ in to clean it up. Or maybe what you meant was, what will this cost?”   He sneered. “Like, uh, maybe ten bills? Or a small park? Is that what worries you? Money? That I’ll ask for too much and you’ll get stuck takin’ it to your boss. He dings the plan and then you’re in hot with two parties, one to a side. Tough luck, Bartell. Cause I ain’t takin’ from no Laraby, and you’re still in hot with two sides.”

            “This must be the good news gospel.”

            “Until you come clean, I wouldn’t be looking for any kind of news at all.”   He lifted off the back of the chair and took a relaxed drag off his cigarette. “Tomorrow morning, be prepared to cooperate, at 8 am, or I’m gonna take it out on your face, in front of your boss. I’ll make you both eat shit.”   He stood. “Don’t let me out, Bartell.”   He turned on the light and backed out the door.