Needle Freak, page 18
What did he see? What was so distracting?
Perhaps at the moment it was nothing but soft disturbances of light and air. Maybe illusions wrapped in enigmas pretending to be dust motes. But what might they become? Might they gain form and learn to cast shadows? Learn to laugh the way insects creep? Develop speech like nails on a chalkboard? Put on a smile full of baby cat teeth and discover a talent for juggling?
Jack hoped not, but like any sickness, insanity could be contagious. He had seen it happen before. Children got it from parents, parents gave it to each other, girlfriends and boyfriends and neighbors and friends. The people they loved; the people they touched every day.
He feared he was giving it to Shane and he was sorry.
“Wrapped up and ready to deliver, yessir,” Phineas whispered in Jack’s ear. “It’s oh so easy-peasy.”
Jack was at the register at Donovan Automotive and it was a slow day. Shane and the two guys working, Josh and Norman, kept busy out in the shop, but it had been almost an hour since the last customer had come inside. Shane kept a radio on a shelf to the left of the register beneath the clock and it was tuned to a local classic rock station, but Jack found it hard to tune Phineas out when he had nothing else to do.
“I think I’m giving it to him,” he told the clown.
“Giving him what?” Phineas asked, like he didn’t already know. Like he didn’t already know everything before Jack said it aloud.
“I’m passing you to him,” Jack said. “Like some kind of flu bug.”
Phineas laughed. “Incurable and terminal, yes indeed.”
“Or are you doing it?” Jack said bitterly.
“I?” Phineas asked incredulously. “I don’t think so. You’re the mad one, not me.”
The buzzer at the front of the store sounded as the door opened and someone entered. Their footsteps carried them immediately from the front door to the counter where Jack sat without pausing to look at anything. Thirteen steps and a long stride, running shoes with padded soles for comfort. Jack cocked his head and looked up as a man’s shadow fell over him.
“Hello, can I help you?” he asked.
The man didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He cleared his throat. Finally, he said, “I’d like to make an appointment to get the oil changed in my car.”
Jack’s heart jumped and an icy sheet of fear and shock washed over him. He knew that voice. He would have known that voice anywhere. Even blind, there was no mistaking the owner of that voice. Like whiskey and rock salt. In his mind he heard him say, You did good, Jack.
“Well, look who it is,” Phineas said in a gleeful whisper. “Our good buddy Steve. Isn’t he supposed to be dead?”
“Ah… would you like that for today?” Jack heard himself ask. “We’re not that busy, I could probably get you in right now and it’ll only take about half an hour.”
“No, that’s okay. I was thinking I’d come back later in the week and get it done. If you’ve got a free time for me.”
Jack frowned and tried to convince himself that he was wrong. This wasn’t Steve. It couldn’t be Steve because Steve was dead. Jack had killed him. If he hadn’t killed him though, if Steve had managed to survive the blow to the head, what would he be doing in White Castle, Louisiana? And why wouldn’t he say hello or yell at Jack or… anything?
“Steve?” Jack asked. He wanted to see so badly then that his eyes hurt with the futile strain of his desire. If he could only see for himself then he would know. “Is that you?”
The guy who sounded exactly like Steve laughed (it sounded exactly like Steve’s laugh) and said, “No, sorry. My name’s Ben. Ben Watterson. Don’t know any Steves. Anyway, maybe Thursday or Friday?”
“What?” Jack said dumbly. “Oh, right. Your oil change. Sure, we can get you in at one o’clock or at three on Thursday.”
“I’ll take the three o’ clock then.”
“He’s lying, you know,” Phineas said. “If his name is Ben anything and not Steve Walker, I’ll eat my wig. My, but he sure does look pleased to see you, too.”
“All right. Steve—I mean, um, sorry—Ben Watterson for three o’clock, Thursday.”
“Ain’t you gonna write it down?” the man asked.
Jack had taken to wearing sunglasses and he was wearing them now. People who knew him knew they were to hide damaged eyes, but people who didn’t most of the time probably thought he forgot to take them off inside. He touched a finger to the nosepiece and slid the glasses down to reveal his eyes. He would not normally have done such a thing, but he took great satisfaction in the man’s indrawn surprised breath at what he saw. Jack knew damn well that Ben Watterson was an invention of Steve Walker’s, he just didn’t know what kind of game Steve was playing with him yet.
Phineas was many things, ugly, awful things, but he was not a liar.
“I have a pretty good memory,” Jack said. “I’ll tell the boss and he’ll write it down. See you Thursday, Mr. Walker.”
“Yeah, okay,” Steve said.
Jack smiled and pushed his glasses back up his nose. Steve left the store and Jack turned the radio up. Kurt Cobain’s ragged voice and “Pennyroyal Tea”.
“That was interesting,” Phineas said.
Jack lit a cigarette and said nothing.
That evening when they got home, Grandma Chloe was there waiting for them. She had a key, so she had let herself in and the house smelled like warm, good food. She had made crawfish étouffée and baked snickerdoodle cookies. She hugged Jack a little too hard and a little too long. He allowed it and hoped like hell she wouldn’t start crying. He was getting sick of the crying and he hadn’t even taken the time to have a good long cry of his own about it.
“How are you doing, honey?” she asked him. She didn’t sound like she was crying, just sounded sad and Jack could hardly fault her for that.
“I’m good, Grandma,” he said.
“Shane, baby, you look like hell,” she said, turning her attention and affection on him. “Now, I made supper. You boys sit right down here and let’s eat. I ain’t seeing nearly enough of the two of you these days to suit me.”
They sat down to dinner and Grandma Chloe said grace. The food was good and the cookies were wonderful; Jack ate three of them and made himself stop. Shane did the dishes and Grandma Chloe sat down with them in the living room afterward. Jack dozed off on the sofa with the dog while they were talking. He woke up after only a little while and they were talking about him, so he lay there pretending to still be asleep.
“He hasn’t said nothing else about it?” Grandma Chloe asked.
“He don’t outright refuse to talk about it, but no. He doesn’t say much except that he got in a fight with some guy. Some friend. Probably a boyfriend,” Shane said. “Doesn’t want to talk about the rest, I expect. You think it’s pretty bad, whatever it is, don’t you?”
“Can’t imagine how it could be anything good, can you?”
Shane didn’t say anything, but he shifted; shrugging.
“Only so many things it could be. You said he was on bad drugs when he first come home. You know what kind of things people on them drugs do, baby. I ain’t judging him for it. I’m not even that surprised, tell you the truth. The two of you have had a rough time of it and I’m sorry for that.”
“None of that was ever your fault, Grandma.”
“Maybe not, but I feel like it is anyway. But maybe not.”
“I asked him why he came back now, you know. But then I didn’t push him about it. I guess… Hell, I don’t know. I think maybe I’m a little scared of what he might say.”
Grandma Chloe reached over and touched his arm, comforting. “Would it matter?” she asked.
Shane thought about it. “Not much,” he decided. “No, it wouldn’t.”
“Then it don’t matter,” she said. “Let it go. He’ll tell you in his own time if he can.”
“I guess,” Shane said. “Things are just… weird right now.”
Before Shane could slip up and tell their grandmother or give her any hints as to precisely why things were weird between them at the moment, Jack stirred and pretended to wake, cutting their conversation short. He wasn’t ashamed of it and he didn’t want Shane to be ashamed of it either, but it was nobody’s business and there were some things their grandmother did not need or want to know. The nature of her grandsons’ relationship with one another was one of them.
Grandma Chloe yawned and got to her feet. “Well, it sure is getting late, isn’t it? My eyes ain’t what they used to be either. I really don’t like driving after dark, so I think I best get home.”
“You can stay if you want to,” Shane said. “It’s your house, after all.”
“No, it’s not. It’s your house now, baby,” Grandma Chloe said. She picked up her purse off the coffee table and started for the door. “I’ll be all right. You two should come by and see me more than you do. A woman my age gets lonely, you know.”
They promised that they would and they hugged her goodbye then stood on the porch outside while she backed out and drove away. Then they went back in the house and Shane went to the kitchen for a beer and Jack sat back down on the sofa.
When Shane returned, they didn’t speak to each other. Jack suspected that Shane was waiting—and probably hoping—for him to go to bed so he could get drunk in peace. Instead, Jack sat there, thinking, trying to come up with the right words.
Sometimes there were no words for what you had to say. Or there were words, but no matter how much you wished it were otherwise, they were cold and hard and there was little you could do to soften the impact when they blew right through you.
Jack broke the silence between them by saying, “I was a whore.”
Shane choked on his beer. He coughed and when he got his breath back he said, “What?”
“Sorry,” Jack said. “Sorry, I guess I should have… but there’s not really a good way to say it.”
Shane didn’t speak for a minute and Jack anxiously waited for him to break the silence. He wished again that he could see. He wanted to know what Shane was doing. How was he looking at Jack? Disgust? Anger? A lethal combination of the two?
“Oh, God, Jack,” he said softly, and Jack hadn’t expected that. He sounded sad. His voice was full of pity and regret. “I wish you would have tried to call us. Tried to come back. Something. Grandma and Grandpa would have helped you, you know.”
“I know,” Jack said. “But I couldn’t. I didn’t belong here.”
Shane sat forward in his chair and took Jack’s hands. The touch was firm and he held on. “That’s not true. Grandpa Gundry was so damn mad about what happened when I finally told them, he wouldn’t talk to Mama. Grandma Chloe started talking to her again just a few years ago after he died, but I don’t know if she ever forgave her either. They would have helped you like they helped me.”
“Okay, Shane, but it doesn’t matter now. And I’m sorry, but I can’t take any of it back. I didn’t want to tell you. I don’t want you to think… you know. About me like that.”
“You heard us talking, didn’t you?” Shane asked. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. You were asleep.”
Jack smiled faintly. “Yeah, I woke up.”
“I guess so,” Shane said.
“There’s something I should tell you about Steve, too,” Jack said.
“He was your boyfriend?” Shane asked. “I don’t care about that. I mean, I figured you were gay, especially after… you know, what happened.”
Jack almost laughed, but he bit it back. He didn’t want Shane to get the wrong idea and think he was laughing at him. “No, he wasn’t my boyfriend. Steve wasn’t—isn’t gay.”
“I thought he was dead,” Shane said. A note of suspicion crept into his voice.
“I thought he was, too. I didn’t lie about that,” Jack said.
“Okay. So what else?”
“He killed people.”
Shane was quiet again, mulling that over. Then he asked, “What do you mean? Accidentally or…?”
“No, he killed people. Women. That was what we got into a fight about.”
“Fuck, Jack. Did you know he killed people?”
That was the part Jack was most reluctant to confess. He almost didn’t. He could lie and Shane would probably never know. He didn’t want to lie to him, but he really did not want to tell him the truth because if anything about Jack was going to disgust him, it was this.
“I knew,” Jack said. He licked his lips and swallowed. He waited for Shane to say something awful or flinch away from him, but he didn’t do either. He was still holding Jack’s hands and that reassured him enough to continue. “I was fucked up, Shane. The world was fucked up. Steve was my friend and he… he was there and maybe… maybe I thought I loved him. Because he was nice to me and he was there all the time and well… Sometimes I helped get the girls.”
“You did what?” Shane asked. His voice was flat, disbelieving. “What do you mean, you helped him get them?”
“Not… I didn’t do anything to them,” Jack said quickly. “I would go with Steve to places, bars and shit mostly, and I’d talk to them. I’d… I flirted with them and bought them drinks and made them like me and… Then Steve would grab them. He injected them with something, I don’t know what it was, then take them back to the motel or the apartment or house or wherever we were staying and he’d—”
“Stop,” Shane said sharply. “I got it. Just stop, Jack.”
“Don’t stop now, Jack, my boy,” Phineas murmured in his ear. “Hit him again.”
Jack hadn’t lived among average, well-adjusted, working people who were active members of society in a long time, if ever. He still did not count himself among their number. Such people lived normal lives in safety and could allow themselves to have strong morals and deep convictions. Such people could not imagine doing some of the things Jack had done for most of his life or living the way he had lived. They did not survive day-to-day; they had hobbies and co-workers, they had debit cards and Facebook pages and their kids had ballet practice and playdates. Those same people might stand by and videotape a brutal murder on their smartphone instead of trying to intervene, but they would never brutally murder anyone themselves. So they believed and Shane was damaged, but he was one of their kind. Such people believed they knew themselves, but they had no idea what they would do in the darkness until they were cast out into it to survive among its creatures.
Shane extricated his hands from Jack’s and Jack let him go. It hurt to do it, but he did it anyway.
“I don’t expect you to understand—”
Shane interrupted him, “Good, because I can’t understand something like that.”
“I’m just asking you to try,” Jack said.
“I don’t know if I can,” Shane said. “I don’t—Jesus Christ, Jack, you helped some freak murder people! Don’t you fucking get that?!”
Jack told himself not to answer Shane’s anger with his own, though the anger was there. It lit up like gasoline when Shane raised his voice to shout at him. Instead, he clenched his hands into fists in his lap and remained seated on the sofa. Agitated, Shane got up and paced away, started to go into the kitchen, but then came back again.
“You know what happens if anyone finds out?” he demanded. “You said that guy’s not dead after all—I don’t even want to know how you know that—but if he gets caught, what do you think he’s going to fucking do, Jack?”
“He’s not going to get caught,” Jack said.
That was the wrong thing to say.
“Great! That’s just fucking awesome!” Shane shouted. He took a deep breath and made himself speak more softly. “But let’s assume for a minute that this Steve guy isn’t a goddamn genius as well as a psycho. What if he fucks up and gets caught? Do you think he’s not going to say anything about you when the cops start asking him questions? Because I bet you every fucking dollar I have that he tells them everything. After all, you did try to kill the asshole, didn’t you?”
“Well, he’s taking this all rather well, isn’t he?” Phineas asked.
Shane grabbed his keys and started for the door.
“Shane, wait, don’t—”
“Don’t fucking talk to me right now, Jack,” Shane said. “Do not.”
“Where are you going?” Jack called after him as the screen door slammed.
“I’ll be back,” was all Shane said. Then he walked off the porch, got in his truck and drove away.
Jack got up a little while later and closed and locked the front door. For the first time in quite a while Jack started thinking about heroin and the craving rose up inside him strong, almost like it had never gone away. If he’d had any then, he would have taken it, progress and sobriety be damned, but there wasn’t anything stronger than Tylenol in the house and he knew how impossible it was to get heroin out there. Instead, he went to bed and Hank went with him. The fighting had upset him and Jack didn’t mind the company.
Chapter 15
Shane didn’t come back that night, but he was there in the morning to drive Jack to work with him. They did not talk about the fight they’d had or about Steve or the dead girls or Jack being a whore. They didn’t talk much at all, in fact. Shane had crashed at Mark’s place. Mark and his girlfriend, Tammy had a sofa with a pull-out bed and Shane had slept there. Mark had asked him what was wrong, but Shane hadn’t told him. Shane would never tell anyone, it was one of those things Jack knew without needing to hear him say so. Shane was pissed, he was outraged as most good people would have been, but he wasn’t that kind either.
And Shane would forgive him if Jack just gave him time.
“I am sorry, you know,” Jack said in the truck on the drive in to Donovan Automotive.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Jack,” Shane said.
“Shane—”
“Fine, you’re sorry. Good. I got it. Now shut up.”
Jack started to say something angry then, but he knew it wouldn’t do anything but increase the friction between them if he did. Shane was still mad, but he wasn’t yelling at him and if Jack picked a fight, it would only take him longer to get over it.
