Kill 'Em With Kindness, page 11
“Chief,” was all he could say.
“Do the right thing, Nick. You’re such a helpful guy, help this son of a bitch out.”
Kurt’s eyes bugged out of his head. His mouth worked for words he didn’t have the air to speak. His red face was turning purple.
“Do the right thing for the guy dug out your wife and put a baby in her belly. And then left the mess for you! What kind of man does that? A cowardly man is who. And a cowardly man deserves the coward’s way out.”
Part of Nick wanted to move. But that part was quieted again by his imagination. He wasn’t walking away a good guy no matter what.
“Do the right thing.” Chief grinned, gave the convulsing Kurt a swinging push. “Whee.”
“You can’t do this! No one’s going to believe that he hung himself over some weed!”
“You’re right, but if I found something else in that locker, something like pornography that depicted children? Like all the stuff I have stored in evidence? People would understand that. Probably like it better that way.”
Nick saw the horror in Kurt’s eyes and knew he heard the things Chief was suggesting.
“This isn’t what I wanted!”
“Yes it is,” Chief said. “Yes it is.”
Chief stopped the cruiser in front of Nick’s place, as Kimmy had just hours before.
“Nick, I’m not one to comfort people, but you don’t need to worry about anything, you do right by me. When I saw you, when Chad asked me to scoop you up, I saw what he saw: a man devoid of purpose and full of potential. Chad pulled you in because you stepped in his circle. Now I’m yanking you out because that’s what you want. You got the desire boy, but not the will. So I’m going to force will on you. You’re going to like how it fits.
“You can come out as clean or dirty as you want. You want to guess who to listen to if you want out clean? Let me tell you something about me, Nick: I never hurt a woman who didn’t deserve it; but I hurt every man I can, just give me the chance. So here it is, my chance. And yours if you want it. You got the reason, your life, that girl, her little one, whatever your reason it’s enough. I give you the will.” Chief and Nick looked at one another for just a moment. “Or I can shoot you right here.”
Nick nodded and got out of the car, headed up the walk to his door.
“See if you don’t feel better after you go visit that boy in Iron Mountain. You tell me you aren’t in a better place. Hoo boy!”
TWELVE
THE TRIP WAS six hours north of Horton and the pair got an early start. Sheldon Party Store on the edge of town was the first detour and Nick began to understand what kind of meeting it was to be when the “road snacks” included a fifth of Hennessy, a pint of peach schnapps, beers, and Dr. Peppers. He didn’t know if she expected him to keep pace or if total obliteration was her game. Either way he was left to play grown up for the both of them on this journey to Iron Mountain. The quest to visit the ex-boyfriend in prison, the statutory rapist who was forever gone, excepting one hour a year Chad granted him life.
“I even went once,” Chad had told him the previous evening, “first year in. Oh shit. You’ll have a time. Ha!”
Nick carried the beer and a bag of corn chips to the counter. Kimmy asked for the bottles.
In the checkout a couple of guys, farm-strong in Carhartt jackets and shit kickers, started jawing at them.
“You do that to her?” one of them asked.
“I know you hear us,” his friend said.
Nick turned and eyed the pair. They were bigger, best step lightly. “No.”
“Sweet thing?” The first boy asked. “He do that?”
“What if he did?” she said. “Just kidding. But I have a question: Is it just you or does it smell like cow shit in here?”
Nick felt his stomach drop, a feeling he was getting used to and the realization angered him. He turned on them. “Assholes. It’s her fucking business.” Nick barked well and the men were taken aback. Nick paid for the booze to the sound of their muttered threats and walked out of the store with Kimmy in tow. Kimmy laughed as she followed behind fast as she could manage.
“You’re going to get me killed,” Nick said, and stepped into the dark lot.
“Those guys? Pfffft.”
“Hey!” a familiar voice called out into the dark. The double clack cowboy footsteps hit heavy on the concrete.
“Fucking shit.” Nick made for the car but gave up and spun, and caught the lead boy in the head with Kimmy’s bottle of Hennessy.
“Hey!” she said, mourning her lost booze.
The lead boy dropped cold where he was hit and his partner slowed up just enough for Nick to pull the Makarov and put it in his face. The boy stopped, hands up. Nick could see that he was still a boy covered in a layer or two of baby fat.
“If you knew who she was,” Nick said, “you’d want to forget us.” He stepped back and dropped the weapon. Pushed Kimmy to her side of the car. “Wish I could!” he added as he climbed into the car.
“You broke my bottle!”
“I’ll get you another goddamn bottle,” Nick said. In the rearview Baby Face was talking into his phone, possibly taking a plate, calling for an ambulance if he was smart. Even if he called the police, he’d get Chief. Nick would like to see the big man’s face upon getting the description of the assailant and his beautiful gimp.
They hit the 131 north and drove silently after another pit stop at a drive-thru liquor and porn in Reed City. Kimmy sipped on the bottle, nursing it and using a warm Dr. Pepper chaser. She passed the bottle and Nick drank. The mixture held a grip on his tongue like an intensely sweet white-trash Port. He drank again and passed the bottle back.
“I’m going to get that girl back in my arms and we are leaving this shit-forsaken cunt of a town. This place is going to die, it’ll choke to death on its own cock. You watch.”
“I’ll pass,” Nick said, reaching for one of the beers on the floor between Kimmy’s feet. He faux-accidentally put the cold beer on Kimmy’s thigh for a second and she squealed.
“Sorry,” he said. “For snapping at you. I’ve known assholes like that my whole life.”
“Me too,” Kimmy said. “Perk of living here.”
Nick cracked the can and drained half of it. He took down the rest to be rid of it and tossed the can out the window.
“What’s your favorite tree?” Kimmy said.
Nick looked out the window, at the overcast black sky turning white-gray on the horizon, a thin strip between the sky and the dark expanse of pine forest. “I don’t know,” he said. He knew too many to pick a favorite. “I like sycamores I guess.”
“Mine’s the strangler fig,” Kimmy said.
“Of course it is.”
“What’s that mean?” she frowned.
“You said it was your favorite. Set me straight.”
“I just like how they reproduce. How they can just take over and smother the other tree. The old ones are hollow.”
“From the dead host’s rot. I know them.”
“Okay, so why did you say ‘of course it is?’ You think I’m a parasite or something?”
He hesitated, not because it was true, which it was, but because he knew that the death that followed her was as good a reason for the association, and she didn’t see it first. But there was also the innocuous beginnings of both the strangler’s life cycle and their own relationship to this point. Equate a squirt of bird shit for a ride home, a dead tree robbed of its nutrients to the wonderful squeeze he was in and Nick realized he had a regular analogy. He decided not to get into all that muck.
“Death is all I mean,” Nick said and left it at that. Kimmy fumbled with the radio, switched it to AM and dialed through the talk and tinny music of yesteryear. Unable to find anything, and still playing sour, she sat back with a huff.
“People think the worst of me a lot,” she said. “I assume they know too much, share my insights into myself. ’Cause I think the worst of me some days.
“My mom for sure,” she went on. “Bring the men in. Let ’em have their way with one of us, both. Not all of them. Some of them were nice and did the dad thing for a few weeks. Other ones just wanted someone to kick around.” She laughed and looked out the window into the dark. “And I’m the rotten parent?” She took another long drink to wash down a few more valium. “I’m the one deemed unfit.” Another pull from the bottle and a Dr. Pepper chaser and she was quiet. She leaned her head against the window glass and watched the scenery pass. Nick drove on. Traffic picked up as he approached the larger of the bergs in between long expanses of intermittent farmland and forest. He remembered a story he’d read for a course at State. The story was about a girl who introduced invasive species of plants and insects into the native biome. One of them was a strangler fig. Another was the tiny wasp that was the only thing in the world that could pollinate the tree. She incubated them all, hundreds of thousands of them under the nose of her biology department. Generation after generation collected and released. The birds ate the fruit and did their job. Eating and shitting fig seeds all over the forest.
But that wasn’t all. The European Swallow Wort choked out life in the understory while simultaneously poisoning several small mammals, white tail fawns included. The girl in the story was a botanist trying to create a market for her particular skill set, invasive species removal and ecological rehab.
And in a way, Nick could apply the same motives to Kimmy’s self-serving cynicism that guided her through life. The thought struck Nick upside the head with an unshakable bout of déjà-vu that lasted for miles and miles as they sped down the empty road. After five hours driving, the replacement bottle of Hennessey, the schnapps, and all but one of the beers, and they saw the big green sign hung over the highway: Mackinac Bridge Five Miles.
Kimmy rolled in her seat like a slippery sack of top heavy drunk, smiling up at Nick as she slouched and slurred. “Remember that lady went over the bridge back in the eighties? My mom knew her. Or it was her cousin or something. Some shit.”
“She was driving a little car like this one,” Nick said. He had meant to be matter of fact, as if the scenario was some imagined hypothetical, but Nick realized he touched something in her. She sat back and said nothing as Nick drove just over the twenty mph speed limit at a strained crawl. The only sound was the rush of cool rubber meeting the road.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Nick said.
“I’m not scared. Just drive, huh?”
Nick kept his eyes on the road after she closed hers. To his right the sun was casting on gray-blue water, the waves were high, and the winds were up. Every so often a gust would give the car a little push toward the rail and Nick knew Kimmy felt it as she winced and clenched her teeth with every sway.
Off the bridge, Kimmy offered Nick the last of the bottle. He declined and she polished it off. When they pulled into the BP for gas, Kimmy went in for snacks as Nick pumped. She returned with nothing but a copy of Barely Legal.
She shook it in Nick’s face. “Didn’t have Not Legal so we need to make do.”
Nick went inside the store. The girl behind the counter looked bored and the few other customers were dressed in Chippewa Correctional Facility uniforms, laughing and talking at the coffee island. Nick handed money to the bored girl and she made change. He pulled out a few more bills from his pocket and dropped them on the counter. “Two packs of Kools.”
He stepped out into the warm sunshine. The glow lasted till the first guard gate at the prison, where a sniffing dog was led in circles around the vehicle, IDs were demanded, intentions questioned, and questioned again, and then finally the wave-through. The road meandered wide but lazy through the expanse of facility property. A fork in the road gave them the choice of nothing and Chippewa Correctional Facility vehicles only.
The fork narrowed to a two-lane twist through a thick stand of pines. To the east, the trees’ narrow white legs let in sunshine that painted the upslope with a trail of gold ending in a blinding eyeful of sun atop the hill. After a slow, twisting mile, the trees broke apart and the facility was before them, nested in valley, surrounded by steep hillside and trees. Not much else was around for thirty miles in any direction.
Inside there were more questions and prods. No one seemed alarmed at Kimmy’s obviously drunken state, but she was quiet and upright as long as Nick supported her. The copy of Barely Legal was confiscated by a smiling bald man of at least seventy. He called it “general contraband” and added that for this particular convict, pornography of any kind was a specific restriction.
Five minutes after one o’clock, the fat guard led them through a series of locked doors and more security, inside to the visiting area—a surprisingly large room with few people. Twenty or so identical, square metal tables bolted to the floor with round metal stools attached. The guard left them at a table in the center of the room.
“He’ll be right out,” the guard said.
Kimmy was nodding off. She’d taken more pills as they left the car and Nick wondered if she’d be able to walk out of the place when their forty minutes was up. Nick looked around the room—an inmate chatted up a pair of older females, opting to lean on the table rather than sit on the small stool. A guard took notice.
“Hey. Off my table!”
The guy appeared to have not heard, but he soon slid back into the seat, level with the wet, red eyes across from him.
Tommy Witterstauter waddled with a slow shuffle that called attention as his slippers brushed against the concrete. He sat across from Nick and gave Kimmy but a passing glance as she snored on the table. His hair was shoulder length and he was clean shaven. His eyes were dusted with glittery green eye shadow and his lips were pink. On his cheek was a burn in the shape of a swastika, not an affiliation. A brand of ownership.
“Who are you?” Tommy said, his tongue poking through a hole made by missing teeth as he lifted a cigarette to his mouth.
Nick thumbed to the nearly unconscious girl next to him. “Just a ride.”
“Yeah. I know. She’s always got a ride. Always sleeps through the visit. I asked who you were.”
“I’m nobody. I work for Chad.”
“Got a name or do I call you nobody?”
“Nick.”
“You going to be the one to help us, Nick?”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
The man laughed, tilting his head back and running his painted nails down the length of his smooth throat. “A fifty in my commissary is a start. Kool-Aid packets don’t come cheap.” Tommy pointed to his pink lips for clarification. “A girl can’t get lipstick in here.”
Nick nodded because he didn’t know what else to do. Tommy lost it, laughing hard and eliciting a “quiet down there!” from the guard at the entrance of the visiting room. Tommy quieted and looked at Kimmy’s face for the first time.
“What happened to her face? You do that?”
Nick shook his head.
“I’m kidding. Surprised he could do that. Much as he wanted her for his. But hey, maybe that’s love. It is here.” Tommy began laughing again, dialing it back before the guard could holler again. Tommy lit another cigarette off the first.
“He wanted her to burn down the church in Jessup,” Nick said. “She wouldn’t do it.”
Tommy looked at her again and smiled. He cocked his head and looked at her like a mother. “Oh, Kimmy.” He wiped his eye and looked at Nick. “We were going to get married there.” Tommy laughed again but the tenderness was gone. He cried lightly, looking at nothing. Another inmate walked by, put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy grabbed the hand and looked at the big black man it was attached to.
“Tonight, Ragdoll,” the man said as his fingers slid from Tommy’s grip.
“Tonight, baby,” Tommy sniffled. He looked at Nick again and Nick saw the emptiness in his eyes, a hollowed soul staring out from the glittery green make-up. “’Ragdoll,’ that’s me. I didn’t like it at first, but like they say, if the cock fits. And the cock that fits is the one the Peckerwoods say. That big ‘ol’ piece just walked by, that’s Whitey.” Tommy laughed. “I know, right!? I’m lower than a nigger in here. They’d rather rent me to one of their enemies than protect me from them. I’m currency, man. Just a fucking sponge for all their jizz and disease. And fucking hate.”
Nick didn’t know what to say. It would have been comical if he didn’t want to disappear. If you’d told him two weeks ago that he’d be sitting across from Kimmy Flynn’s tranny ex, playing the sympathetic ear the guy waits all year for, he’d have laughed in your face. But here he was.
“Maybe when you get out? You can look her up? She still loves you.”
“Ha! I got a minimum of ten to go, baby. And I ain’t the same man I was.”
“Who is?” Nick said. “Just try to get back somehow. You were going to marry this girl.”
Tommy shook his head. “Don’t talk like you know. Every time she’s like this. Want to know why? It isn’t the estrogen or the titties it gave me, or the make-up or even the fact that I’ve been passed around this place like a sex toy for seven years. You’re right, Nick; I love her and I could deal with that baggage. She could. But it isn’t just that. You want to know what I mean? You want to know why I just can’t ‘get back’?!”
Nick didn’t respond. But Tommy stood up from the chair, his empty eyes burning like toxic garbage fires as he stared at Nick. “I’m going to show you. Then you’ll see. Hey, maybe you can join me!”
The guard at the door hollered out, “Eighteen! Keep it civil or we’ll cut you short.”
Tommy looked at the guard and back to Nick, wild eyed and giddy. “Hear that? It’s a big fucking joke. You want to see my big fucking joke?” And Nick could only watch as the man stood and pulled his pants down to show a shiny scarred patchwork of skin where his genitals had been. A single, dime sized plot of pubic hair remained. An equally disturbing was the text over the monstrosity, the crudely tattooed words, No Joy. And the sight brought with it the ghostly whiff of burning flesh and hair.
