Wear Your Home Like a Scar, page 6
“Why’d you get off the machine?”
Carl cleared his throat. “Pardon?”
The man looked down at his notepad. “In our interview with Mr. Konawich, he said he saw you get off the forklift a moment before the incident.”
“Terry said that.” In his head, Carl couldn’t tell if he’d said it as a statement or a question. “Is he trying to say that I had something to do with Ricky? You trying to say that?”
The other one shook his head. “Just covering our bases.”
Carl sniffed hard, swallowed the phlegm in his throat. “Ricky wasn’t the smartest guy around, God bless him. I wanted to make sure the manifest was right before we started moving shit around.”
“And was it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it was.”
He stepped outside in the breeze, feeling their eyes on his back, and pulled the cigarette from behind his ear, smiling behind his cupped hands as he lit up. Today wasn’t a good day for work. Anyway, all that talking brought up a mighty thirst in him.
He was close to emptying his fifth glass when the stool beside him scooted back. Gimp saddled up to the bar, waved at Denny for a beer. Carl moved his mouth into something more resembling a blur than a smile.
“You cut out early, too?” He shook his head. “Gerry must be shitting bricks.”
Gimp mmmed, sipped at his can of Boh. “It’s not your fault.”
“Nah, I know that. Gerry’s a pussy, got soft hands. He laid down the law, people wouldn’t leave willy-nilly.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” He squared up to Carl, drummed his fingers on his thigh like he was deciding whether to lay a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
Carl smiled as he swirled the remaining chips of ice in his bourbon. “It’s coming, Gimp.”
“What is?”
He shrugged. “Death. It’s coming for us no matter what. Nothing we can do about it.” He slapped one hand on the bar. “We start here with our mommas, step one, then end up here with our bones.” He slapped his other hand on the bar and knocked over a woman’s beer. “Straight down the line, from one to ten or whatever. However many you can manage.”
Gimp swished some Boh around his mouth, scratched his jowl.
Carl wagged his finger at him, eyes squinted so all the blurry edges came in clear. “Anything in between is what you do. And what you do is what matters. Fighting, fucking, killing, it’s what you do.”
Gimp took a long breath then turned to Denny. “How much this motherfucker had to drink?”
Denny just raised an eyebrow.
Gimp turned back to Carl. “Drink up, buttercup. You need to get your ass home.”
Carl gave that same blurred smile and nodded, fished around inside his pockets for some money and slapped it on the bar. “Need to get my ass.”
He scooted the stool back and wobbled outside.
His fist fell heavy on the back door. It throbbed, and he realized he wasn’t sure how long he’d been knocking. He glanced around the backyard, making sure this was Betty’s house, and as he raised his hand again the door swung open.
“The fuck, Carl?” Betty shoved her head out past him, looking around the yard.
He reached around and grabbed a handful of her ass through her dress. “Heard you got a back door for me.”
“Why the hell you come ’round banging like that? What if Melanie was here?”
Carl looked around. “Is she?”
“She’s at softball but that ain’t the point. We’re supposed to be careful, ain’t that what—”
Carl barged through the doorway, grabbing Betty’s thighs with both hands. He pulled her up onto his waist and crushed his face against hers, bit her bottom lip between his teeth. She grunted, hands fumbling at his waist, trying to unbuckle his belt. She licked his neck, his jaw, rubbed her chest against his. Her hands couldn’t work right so Carl dropped her, ripped off his belt like he was starting a lawnmower, then lifted her leg on the washing machine and bent her over, pulled her dress up and underwear to the side and tried to shove himself in. Betty, moaned, gripped his thigh, dug her fingers into his skin.
She thrust herself back against him, said, “I’ve missed your cock. Come on, baby.”
Carl looked down, saw himself half-mast bending up against her. He gripped his fingers around the base, aiming for her. Bent against her flesh again.
“You don’t have to be gentle, baby. Come on, now.” She rubbed herself against his pelvis.
“Yeah, just wait, girl. Just letting the anticipation grow till you can’t handle it anymore.” He tightened his stomach muscles, tried to get something moving. It laid across his fist. Goddamn bourbon, he thought.
“I don’t need anticipation, Carl. I just need you.” Her breath rolling hard from her mouth, she pulled him close again and asked if he needed the back door.
“I just need you to wait.” He felt a fluttering underneath his balls, thought yeah, Betty, that’s the spot, until he realized she was in fact touching herself and not him.
“Carl, come on. Give it to me hard. Smack me some.”
“Just a damn minute.” A little bounce, standing up from the droop some.
“I need it, Carl. Come on.” Her voice grew ragged as her breathing came harder, hand moved faster.
“Dammit, Betty, just—”
“Choke me, Carl,” she yelled. “Cut off my air before I come.”
The droop returned.
“What?”
Her ass slammed up against his pelvis, butt bone banging against his pubis. “Fucking choke me, you faggot.”
His hands fell on her shoulders and she yelled again, started pissing him off so he wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed like he was testing the ripeness of a cantaloupe.
“A little,” her voice trembled, “little harder.”
He could feel the thin bones of her throat, feel the vibrations as she spoke. He felt a wetness on her skin and looked down, realized his cock was throbbing, and threw himself forward. She screamed and her hand went ballistic. They fell down onto a pile of dirty laundry, her pelvis writhing up against his. He smelled old sweat and dirt on the clothes.
After she came again she stilled, nestled into the crescent of Carl’s body. He was still fully-hard inside her for a few minutes more, but it felt like guilt manifested more than any notion of arousal. He rolled away from her to grab a cigarette from his flannel and she fake-pouted.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “Just need to get my head together.”
“Light me one.”
He sat cross-legged on the clothes, his balls resting on a pair of gray sweatpants stained with period blood. She righted herself and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.
“Sorry if I scared you, baby.” She took a drag. “Sometimes I just need a little to get over that hump, you know?”
He nodded and said he did, then brushed her hair aside and kissed her forehead. It tasted of salt. Cocking her head, she gave him a little smile, and when she did he noticed the bright red marks on her neck that his hands had left.
When their cigarettes were finished, she patted his knee and said that Melanie would be home from softball soon. Little Carl took his cue and shuffled on pants and his flannel. He was halfway out the basement door when she asked when they’d see each other again.
“Soon, sweetheart.” He wondered if that was true.
“Seems like I see you less now than I did before.” She tucked her hair behind her ears.
He nodded and kissed her cheek, unsure of how to respond.
Rounding the corner from the alley to the sidewalk, he cupped his hand around another smoke when he heard his name. He looked up and saw Terry standing next to his truck, lunch bag in one hand, six-pack in the other. Just getting off work.
“What happened to you today?” he said. “Could’ve used another body to move the freight.”
“Didn’t feel so good.” He looked at the smoke in his hand, wondered if he should now put it out.
“Sorry to hear that.” Terry looked over Carl’s shoulder up to Betty’s house then back at Carl, and squinted his eyes. Carl wasn’t sure if it was from the reflection of the sun in the windows or if he was thinking, so he just smoked. Terry gave a short wave. “Feel better, hear?”
The next morning Carl dropped his grape juice on the floor. It spilled purple over the yellowed linoleum. He thought about Betty’s neck from yesterday, about the way her voice threatened to slice him open, about the way her hands would tremble when she recounted all the ways Rick beat her as Carl held her in his arms and made silent threats against the man, about the way Rick had laughed years ago when recounting what a firecracker his new girl was in bed. Carl had a headache from all the afternoon-bourbon yesterday and thinking only made it worse. He ripped paper towels from the roll and mopped up the grape juice. He left his lunch in the fridge and went to work.
Carl watched the blades of the ceiling fan spin, slicing through the candles’ glow. Betty’s skin stuck to his when she readjusted her leg over his thigh. She pulled at his chest hair, smoothed it down. The red mark around her wrist was still bright red. She’d been face-down on the bed, wrists and ankles bound to each post of her bed. Waiting. He’d been more surprised to see she could fasten the last restraint with only one hand than to see that pretty little thing staring at him when he came in. A skill like that, it must take some practice.
He lit another smoke for himself, felt blood thrum through his skull.
“I don’t mean to be weird or anything,” he started, then stopped.
She lifted herself up on an elbow. Her breast hung low in the shadow. “Baby, you can tell me anything.”
“You been,” he took a drag, “into this kind of thing for a while?”
She smiled and stroked his chest. “Every girl’s got her fantasies.”
“No, I get that. I like that. A lot. What you do.” He took another drag, still debating whether he really wanted an answer. Everything was going well, aside from having to sneak around for another couple months, and he knew that not knowing would keep everything going well. Still, that idea kept flitting around his skull like a moth trying to touch the light inside the bulb.
“What’s on your mind, Carl?”
“Were you always like this?” The words came out before his brain could comprehend them. The words hung in the air like smoke.
She rolled off her elbow, sat with her legs crossed. “What do you mean?”
He exhaled smoke, waved around his hands inarticulately. “All this. The cuffs and spanking and choking.”
“A woman’s got needs, too, Carl.” She snatched his cigarette and took a long inhale. “Ain’t no different from a man’s.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Betty.” He propped himself up against the wall. “I’m happy to help you with your needs. It’s just—”
“You want to know if I’m a slut? Is that what you’re asking me?”
“I want to know if you and Rick did this.”
She sucked hard on the cigarette. The cherry burned the same color as her wrists. “I’m not with Rick now. I’m with you.”
“You know what I’m saying, Betty.”
A long, considered stare was all Carl got in response. When she finished that smoke, he lit another one for each of them. A conversation such as this felt better with a cigarette in hand.
She looked up at the ceiling fan. “You remember what you said that night Rick was out at The Box with Gimp and them? That bar-top shuffleboard thing that went until five, six in the morning? When I knew he’d come home with angry fists after losing all his money.”
“Believe so.”
“Melanie was at a sleepover. We were in the living room dancing to Waylon.”
“Yeah.” Carl felt a smile trying to surface, but he bit it in half, swallowed it down to his gut. “I remember that.”
“What’d you say?”
“I remember what I said.”
She rolled her head to face him. “Then where the fuck’s that now?”
“Betty, we danced to all the wrong songs. I ain’t no killer.”
“You never even liked him.”
“That doesn’t mean he needed to die.”
“He drank too much and he was a mean son of a bitch.”
“I drink too much, too.” Carl held the smoke inside his lungs, wondered if it was possible to go from smoke inhalation like this. “I ain’t no killer, Betty.”
She breathed a small laugh. “No, you aren’t, because you wouldn’t be complaining so much now.” The candle flickered and threw shards of shadow across her. “But you did, Carl.”
Gerry was waiting in the trailer when Carl walked in. Carl nodded at him and looked around, tried to figure out whether this was some kind of setup. He set his lunch in his locker, shrugged on his vest and grabbed his hardhat. Closing the locker, he nodded at Gerry again then pulled out the coffee pot.
“What kind of idiot are you?” Gerry said.
“Huh?”
“It’s in the middle of brewing, dumbass.”
Carl looked at the coffee dripping onto the burner and shoved the pot back under. Gerry just shook his head.
“That’s why you’re waiting?” Carl looked around again. He felt Rick’s eyes in every corner, peering out from the box of stale doughnuts he used to house. Gerry raised his eyebrows, shrugged.
The percolator sputtered and shot out the last of the coffee. Gerry poured a cup and handed it to Carl. “I wouldn’t put nothing from your jacket into this.” He nodded outside of the trailer. “They’re coming back to talk this afternoon. Three o’clock.”
“Who?” Carl didn’t need to ask, but felt he should keep up appearances.
Gerry apparently didn’t feel that same need and just walked out to the terminal.
Carl stood in the middle of the trailer, listening to silence thrum through his temples. The wipeboard assignments were up already. He went over and switched his name, made Gimp forklift-operator. As he set the marker back on the board, the door swung open again. His hands instinctively went up, expecting either an angry Gerry or hell-bent investigators. Perhaps Betty with a cat o’ nine tails and a blow torch. Instead he saw Terry, who stared at Carl’s outstretched hand by the board, and cocked his head.
“Feeling better?” Terry scratched his stubble.
Carl nodded.
“Don’t look it.” Terry made his way across the trailer and poured some coffee. “Look like you haven’t seen the sun in years.”
“Just tired.”
Terry breathed a laugh. “Bet you are, horsecock.”
“The fuck’s that mean?” Carl half-stepped forward but half-retreated, like some weird dance on the edge of a windy cliff.
“Drink some coffee before your meeting with them boys.” He motioned to the other trailer. “I’ve got dinner with Katie tonight and don’t want your questions to run into mine.”
“They’re talking to you again, too.” Carl meant for it to come out as a question but his voice betrayed him. Instead he raised his cup and opened up the door.
“Don’t worry,” Terry said. “I would’ve done the same.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
Terry just smiled. Carl kept walking.
“You going to be okay with this?” Gimp pointed up at the shipping container lowering before them. “You’re not going all Vietnam, are you?”
“I’m fine.” He ground out his smoke under his boot heel as the container touched ground with a thud, then went to open it. After checking the manifest over, he waved for Gimp to come forward and pick up the first pallet.
“Take this over to bay five.”
While Gimp ferried the pallet away, Carl surveyed the dock. Too many men around to work in the open. He slapped the manifest against the ovens and cursed up a blue storm while moving his hand from the papers to the pallet’s contents with exaggerated motions. Goddamned appliances. Why couldn’t they get in a shipment of marble or granite every once in a while? When he got to the blind-side of the pallet, he flipped the buckle and loosened the restraining buckle. The ovens and double-stack washer/dryers rocked. He thumbed a cigarette to his mouth and went outside the container, watching Gimp drive across the lot.
“Make sure you give this one some ass,” he said. “Bunch of heavy shit on it.”
Gimp gave him a queer look then laughed. “This your first rodeo, too?”
Carl inhaled hard and closed his eyes. He thought to make the sign of the cross out of reflex, but realized he’d given up on the Lord a long time ago. He thought he should say something to Rick, but realized it wasn’t Rick he really missed. Thinking of Betty felt inappropriate, so he thought back to the mutt him and his brother had found in the alleyway that had been shot twice and left for dead, the one they nursed back to health and raised for a number of years.
“The fuck you doing?” Gimp yelled. Carl opened his eyes and saw Gimp pulling away on the lift, pallet wobbling slightly but otherwise intact. “Get yourself together. We need to get all these down the line before three.”
There would be other pallets, other shipments. Other shifts and other opportunities. Other appliances and, maybe if he was lucky, some building stone. As Carl took a long inhale, though, he just looked up at overhead crane number five, lifting another shipping container over the top of him. He stared at the cable, watching it for any signs of fraying, weakness. He focused all his energy on the latches and buckles and bolts. He tried to soften the metal, to disorient the crane operator, to shift the winds into some random and godforsaken gust that toppled the container and crushed his mortal body.
“Damn it, Carl.” Gimp’s voice rang out.
Carl startled and dropped his smoke, realized it had burned out who knows how long ago.
“Seriously, brother. If you need to take a minute, do it. Just get yourself together. I can’t have no shit on my watch.”
