A feeling I could only describe as lingering ickiness stayed with me as I climbed into my truck. Mira was right. Something felt off about the day. The goose bumps on my arms refused to go away, and I felt as if I had swallowed a fifty-pound lead weight. Neither of those signs ever heralded anything good.
I sat for long moments, weighing the pros and cons of taking my katana with me. The cons won out, knowing that I couldn’t afford to repair a broken window when some jerk broke into my truck to steal the sword. And really, what was I going to do with it, besides stand out in the storm and do my lightning rod impression?
As I pulled onto the highway and headed north, I kept waiting for flashing blue lights in my rearview mirror, but they never came. Twice, I saw cop cars cruising up on my tail, but while I held my breath and kept both hands at ten and two, they sped on by, intent on some other miscreant. I couldn’t believe that Verelli hadn’t gone to the police, but why weren’t they coming after me? I wasn’t exactly hard to find.
What the hell was I going to do if they arrested me? Mira was going to be so pissed, not to mention how much work I’d be missing. My income from It wasn’t much, but those paychecks made the difference between scraping by and breathing a bit easier. There were bills that still needed paying, and her car needed new tires and…
Worry settled between my shoulders and got quite comfortable, the muscles there knotting up painfully. I forced my hands to relax on the wheel and tried to meditate, the low hum of tires on pavement as soothing as any mantra. My thoughts refused to be soothed, and instead they took a forced march through some of the darker parts of my life.
The first line of the Hagakure says that the way of the samurai is found in death. It goes on to say that you should instantly choose death if it benefits your cause, because integrity is more important than life.
That was the part I had a hard time with. Sure, I was accepting of death. I mean, no one escapes it in the end, so why be afraid of it? And living honorably is very important to me. Sometimes, honor is all you have.
Bushido says that to lay down your life for your beliefs is a noble death that few can understand. It is the way of the warrior. But when it comes down to it, if I ever truly have to make the choice between dying to achieve my goal, and living on to fight another day. .. I wonder if I could really do it. I wonder if I really believe it.
They had a lot of absolutes, those ancient samurai, and they never talked about having multiple goals. My short-term goal may be saving the next guy’s soul, but what about my long-term goals? What about growing old with Mira, or seeing my daughter graduate from college? What about being a grandpa someday? If I succeeded in one but failed in the others, did I come out on the losing end, anyway?
Sometimes-a lot of the time, really-I’m a pretty lousy samurai.
Pondering death on a day like today just had to be a bad omen. I turned up the radio to drown out the gloom and watched the sky.
The low-hanging clouds were dark with unshed rain, and the wind came in fits and gusts, threatening to goose the unwary right off the road. There was no thunder yet, but I could feel it coming, down in that deep primeval instinctive place all humans still have. You know, that place where you are secretly still afraid of the dark no matter how old you get.
Yes, we were definitely in for some bad weather.
20
I wanted it to rain. Maybe if it rained the tension in the air would snap and we could all breathe again.
There were no theme songs for the day. Instead, Kristyn and I kept the radio tuned to a local station for weather updates. The store was nearly deserted. In the three hours I’d been at work, we’d seen two customers. Perhaps two dozen people had walked past the door in total. Sierra Vista looked like a ghost town. No one was willing to brave the ominous clouds, even though no actual precipitation seemed forthcoming.
My punk-haired boss grumbled. “I feel bad calling you in. If I’da known we’d be this dead…”
“You’re not supposed to be here alone. You know that.” We were victims of corporate policy. No one worked the store solo. I think it was supposed to cut down on employee theft or something.
“I shoulda known he was too good to be true.” All morning, she’d been beating herself up for hiring Paulo, our no-show of the day. “He was probably illegal-I never could get him to put his social on the paperwork.”
I had other reasons for cursing Paulo. If fleeing from me in the Wal-Mart hadn’t made him look guilty of something, refusing to show up and face me again certainly did. I had a lot of questions, and very few available answers. Therefore, it was with a heavy heart that I decided to commit that greatest of mortal sins, nosiness.
Under the pretense of reworking next week’s schedule for Kristyn, I set up camp in the small closet that served as her office. Flipping on the turquoise lava lamp for light, I began rifling through the employee files. Later, I would have to point out to her that she should really lock that cabinet, but for the moment it worked to my advantage.
My own file was in the folder marked O -for “old dude,” I presume. Paulo’s was under T for “temporary.” In our high-turnover world, no one counted as a permanent employee until they lasted through two paychecks. “Well well, Senor Riaz. Let’s see what I can find out about you.” I kept an ear out for the thud of Kristyn’s boots as I perused his paperwork.
There wasn’t much to know. The application was filled out in neat block lettering with a sketchy ballpoint pen. Paulo listed no social security number, as Kristyn said, and when I tried the phone number, it went to the car dealership across the highway. The only address was a street name, no number, and he hadn’t even bothered to write down the zip code. And she hired him with only this information? Kristyn baffled me-often.
My superior’s hiring ethics aside, there was no doubt in my mind that Paulo had been hiding something. Sure, all the omissions could have been explained as laziness or maybe even a language barrier (though I’d rate that as a stretch), but when the gut tells you it’s hinky, it usually is. Without Paulo there to interrogate, I wondered if I would ever find out the truth.
Putting the paperwork neatly back in place, I shut the cabinet up tight and scribbled down a rough draft of the schedule for Kristyn’s approval. I even remembered to pencil myself in for some time off in two weeks.
Once I returned to the front, Kristyn and I busied ourselves with putting out new stock, and when that was done, we shot paperclips at each other in a running rubber-band fight through the store. She called an end to it after the third time she scored a hit on me because I was staring out the plate glass window into the growing darkness.
“It’s no fun playing with you if you’re not paying attention.”
“Sorry.”
She came to stand next to me, tugging on a lock of violently purple hair. “It looks nasty out there.”
“Yeah. We’re gonna get nailed.” I hoped Mira and Anna had gone to Dixie’s. The lack of a basement was the one thing I hated about our house. In this area of the country, a basement is almost a necessity.
The wind whipped up a small dust devil amidst the construction debris. I watched it dance across the open grassy courtyard and bend the new saplings nearly in half. Just as abruptly, it spent itself in a fit of dusty pique and vanished.
“You can go home if you want. Go make sure Mira and Annabelle are okay.”
“Then you’d be alone. Mira’s tough. She can take care of anything. I’ll stay here with you.” In the distance to the northwest, I could see flickers of light in the towering clouds. “Lightning’s coming.”
The phone rang, a jarring sound misplaced against the low throb of the punk music currently playing. We both jumped, then exchanged sheepish chuckles.