There was another imaginary string holding together a narrative that led from the death of Frank Vuchovich to the chapel to Haskell Brown’s murder to here. It was a line of perplexing coincidences and good fortune that I grabbed hold of to pull myself out of my perpetual tailspin. This line was red too. I didn’t believe in God. I’m not sure I ever did, but if he did exist, I wondered if he would send angels and omens in the form of blood and bullet wounds.
“Gun Church, indeed,” I whispered aloud and walked on.
I didn’t get fifty feet before I felt a strong hand latch on to my bicep. I gasped and my ribs barked at me. It was the maintenance guy, rake against his shoulder, lit cigarette dangling from his lips.
“We need to talk, you and me, Professor,” he said, letting go of me.
“What about?”
His head was on a swivel, looking around, behind him, over my shoulder. “Not here.”
“Then where?”
“Not your house either.”
“Okay, not my house,” I said. “How about the Dew Drop Inn? I’m going over there in a little while to get something to eat. It’s usually pretty empty this time of day.”
“I’ll be there in an hour or so.”
That was it. He walked away from me without another word and didn’t look back. I didn’t know what it was all about, but I could guess. He had some nasty things to say about Jim and he figured I’d be a good audience. He was right, but I didn’t give it much thought as I turned to the student union.
At the student union, I picked up the paper and threw my change on the counter just as I had that September afternoon when all of this began. I found I was no longer thinking of the late Frank Vuchovich or the maintenance man, but of shooting in the woods with Jim. I would miss it. I would miss Jim’s company too. I would miss the sweaty-handed, heart-thumping rush of the chapel. I didn’t regret my decision to walk away from it, but I had no doubt that the junkie in me would always be tempted to put a gun back in my hand. In the end, some of Jim’s wacky notions about the essential nature of the handgun proved true. Although I tried to hold myself apart from the other people at the chapel, I had been seduced. I had proven myself in a way most people in the regular world never dare try. I was special. Staring down the barrel of a loaded handgun imparts a certain kind of wisdom unobtainable through most other means.
Even armed with that wisdom, the temptation would always remain. I once had a girlfriend who lived by what she called the three-doughnut rule. She had weird food allergies and trouble regulating her blood sugar, but knew she could safely eat two doughnuts without having her body go batshit. Still, on occasion, she would eat three. When I asked her why, she said, “Because sometimes it’s just worth it.” I’d come to realize that we all have our own versions of the three-doughnut rule. I knew that if I stayed in Brixton, I would eventually have ashes dabbed on my forehead to step back into the chapel, to eat that third doughnut.
On my way to the Dew Drop, I stopped at the hardware store in town to buy a package of light bulbs. My ribs were sore and I was short of breath, so I sat down on a stack of bags of rock salt. I guess I was too preoccupied by my pain to notice I had unwanted company.
“What’s the matter, pussy, your ribs hurtin’ you?” It was Stan Petrovic. He had a bag of screws in his hand and a cold, drunken stare on his face. “I played whole fucking games in the NFL with broken ribs and two wrecked knees.”
“Good for you, Stan. Maybe they’ll throw you a parade someday.”
I wasn’t in the mood or in shape for one of our little skirmishes, but since he’d hurt Renee and hit me in the back of the head, I had no patience for his bullshit.
“What’s the matter, your asshole hurt from letting Jim stick his fist up there? You ain’t such a hero without a gun in your hand, huh? Think you have the balls to vest-shoot with me?”
That got my attention. One thing I’d found over the last few months was that the people who showed up at the chapel kept their mouths shut tight about it. Over that period of time, whether on the street or in school, I’d crossed paths with everyone who had ever been to the chapel. The only time I’d mentioned it was to Meg and I felt guilty about that. Even the maintenance guy hadn’t alluded to the chapel when he pulled me aside not twenty minutes earlier. Not once did any of them even hint at our connection. There wasn’t a nod, a wink, or a gesture. Nothing. And now this drunken fool was standing in the aisle of the hardware store talking about the chapel like it was common knowledge.
“Keep it down, Stan. You know the rules.”
“Fuck you and fuck the rules.”
“Shut your mouth.”
His saw-toothed smile was raw and cruel. “Why don’t you do it for me, cunt?”
I thought to speak, but instead I planted my left fist into Stan’s groin. It wasn’t the hardest punch I’d ever thrown. It didn’t have to be. Petrovic groaned, grabbed his balls, and fell to his knees. He teetered for a second or two and collapsed backwards into the shelves that held boxes and bags of nails and screws. A few of the boxes crashed to the floor.
“Don’t fuck with me again, Stan,” I growled, standing over him. “Fuck with me again and I’ll kill you.”
When I turned to leave, I noticed everyone watching. Half of them looked about ready to applaud. I just wanted to go get something to eat and read the paper in peace.
Thirty-Three
The Dew Drop Inn was what you might have expected: a seedy and frayed hole in the wall, a working man’s bar. There were two beer pulls, one for light beer and one for regular. There was one kind of scotch, one kind of bourbon, one kind of vodka. No one ordered mojitos. Even the burger choices were limited: with or without cheese, with or without fries. If you wanted avocadoes or roasted poblano strips, you were shit out of luck. As I anticipated, the place was pretty empty except for Richie the barman and a few stubborn flies that forgot it was December. Richie nodded hello. I nodded back.
“I’ll have a burger with cheese and fries and a ginger ale,” I said, making my way to a back booth.
I settled in and unfolded the paper. The Brixton Banner was birdcage lining, as local as local papers get. It featured articles on subjects as diverse as advances in coal-mining technology, belt tightening in the lumber industry, and who had won the charity pierogi-eating contest at St. Stanislaus Church. The war in Afghanistan was reduced to a few inches worth of body counts buried between the car ads and obits. At the end of things with Janice Nadir, reading the Banner in bed became my way of telling her we were done for the day, that it was time for her to run along back home to Jerry.
My favorite things in the Banner were the letters to the editor. No highfalutin’ horseshit in Brixton, just conspiratorial paranoia at its most rabid. Distrust and hatred for government-federal, state, and local-ran deep around here and with it came the usual substrains of white supremacy, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, et cetera. I loved the letters that tried to tie all of these things into one tidy, hateful little package. My all-time favorite had been this one letter from a woman who claimed that the area coal mining was just a government cover for digging secret shafts. That the shafts were to be used to protect the Jews’ money during the nuclear war being instigated by the dark races in order to wipe out the Aryan peoples. Now, I’m sure letters of this nature get sent to the New York Times on a daily basis-the difference being that the Banner actually published them, and frequently.
Just as I unfurled the paper and began to scan the letters, Richie arrived with my ginger ale. He asked me how I was doing, why I hadn’t been in lately. I said something generic about being busy and watching my weight. That seemed to satisfy him and he left, saying my burger would be up in a few minutes. When I turned back to the paper, my eyes drifted to a column to the left of the letters with a heading: Murdered (continued from page 1).