Leaving was finally at hand. The time since Christmas dinner passed with accelerating momentum: each day evaporating faster than the day before it until there was only one tomorrow left. I no longer gave much thought to the death of Lance Mabry and when I did, I felt foolish for ever entertaining my old narcissism. The day I went back to school to clear out my office, I’d hoped to run into the campus maintenance man to apologize for missing him that day at the Dew Drop Inn. I figured that what he had to say couldn’t have been too important, that his wounded arm and wounded pride had finally recovered. Except for my bed and a few miscellaneous items, the van was packed. After the farewell party at the chapel, there would only be sleep. Then, early in the morning, State Highway 87 East and I-95 North.
This close to leaving, it would have been impossible not to look back at my life. Sometimes you look back at the road you’ve taken, but since September it was more like the road had taken me. That I’d simply been the passenger along for the ride. My time in Brixton was now divided into two distinct parts, BV and AV: Before Vuchovich and After Vuchovich. I thought back to how the St. Pauli Girl, dressed in an unzipped brown hoodie and skin-tight jeans, had showed up at my house soon after Frank Vuchovich’s death: how her nipples hardened in the crisp night air, how she’d given me a soft and solitary kiss and handed me a sheet of paper, an invitation into a world I could never have imagined. Now with Renee sitting next to me in the car, a fancy cherrywood case on her lap, I knew where I was headed. The road was no longer my master. I no longer needed an invitation or a set of directions to where I was going.
I turned to look at Renee as I drove over the last hill before reaching Hardentine. We’d spent New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at the MacClaren Arms, a rather grand old hotel across from the state capitol building. It was the most fun I’d had in a very long time. I suspect it was the first time Renee had done anything like it. We did formal dress-up and danced and overate and drank a little too much. When we fell into bed well after midnight, we fucked with half our clothes still on, and passed out. The next morning we finished getting undressed and went at it for hours. A room service breakfast never tasted so good. Being with her, watching her enjoy the things she’d only ever seen in movies made it all worth it. I hoped it would help motivate her to get out of Brixton, to show her there was a world of possibilities, and to want more for herself than to die by the inch as a miner’s lonely wife.
Shooting with Jim using the Python was also a lot of fun. Okay, it wasn’t like half-dressed, drunken sex with Renee, but it was good.
“Kicks like a motherfucker,” he said, firing my Christmas gift and taking off a small tree branch at nearly fifty paces, “but it’s a really accurate revolver if you know what you’re doing. And, Kip, you know what you’re doing. You’re better at this than I ever thought you could be.”
“Thanks, Jim. That’s high praise coming from you.” And it was.
We also talked some about what he was going to do with his life once he got his associate’s degree in June.
“My mom works for Dixon Mining and I could get a job there anytime. But this life, this place isn’t for me and I know that as much as the chapel is everything to me, it’s a dead end, too. I’d die of boredom here, but don’t worry about me, Kip. I’ve got a plan to get out of here that’s working out pretty fair so far.”
I waited for him to give me more details, but none was forthcoming. It seemed he’d said about all he wanted to say on the subject.
Along with shooting and running together, Jim came with me to do all the errands I knew Renee would have hated doing as I prepared to leave. You know, the stuff that meant goodbye was for real and probably forever. He came with me to my old local bank to close my account, to the nearby branch of a mega-bank to open a new one, and to rent the van I’d be driving north in the morning. He came with me to the post office when I filled out the change-of-address form to have my mail forwarded to my new place.
Meg’s assistant had landed me a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of an old Victorian house on a quiet street in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn. The rent, she said, was a steal at about the same rate I was paying for the house in Brixton. Only in New York City would it be considered a steal and I explained to Meg that her definition of quiet didn’t remotely resemble the Brixton definition. There was no quiet in Brooklyn, ever.
Renee had been holding up pretty well until we got to the hangar at the abandoned base. There were no tears, not yet. I had no doubt they would come, but later, in the dark and quiet of my bedroom. That’s when Renee always let down her guard. She was most comfortable letting me see her after I’d been inside her and with the dark obscuring my view. Now her mood seemed to fluctuate between melancholy and edginess.
“Why did you bring this?” she asked me about the Python, handing me the case.
“Jim wants me to show it to everyone. He’s proud that he got it for me. I don’t mind.”
She didn’t say the words, but her expression said them loudly enough: I don’t like it.
There were bound to be many things about that night and the following weeks she wasn’t going to like. The next few weeks were going to be full of painful transitions for everyone involved. I didn’t think myself immune from missing her.
I put the gun case on the hood of the car and held Renee tightly in my arms.
“Come on,” I said. “let’s get this over with so we can be alone.”
With the exception of the maintenance guy, they were all there when we walked in: the whole freak show roster including Stan Petrovic, and even he managed to be civil or what passed for his version of civility. Although it was clear he was already tanked up, he shook my hand and then ignored me. Jim and Renee notwithstanding, I wouldn’t get teary-eyed for any of the chapel losers: not the fat boy, the skater kid, the girl with the bad teeth, the sheriff’s deputy, the security guard, the grill man, et al. Only one thing tied us together and not very tightly, and not for very much longer. They meant no more to me than any other group of ghosts who’d drifted in and out of my life. No more than people who’d stood at the same subway platform with me.
Still, I didn’t like that the maintenance guy wasn’t here. It was one thing not to run into him again the few times I’d been back to campus, but I had fully expected him to be there. That said, I didn’t mention it to anyone, especially not to Jim. He was such a stickler for the rules. How could I explain about the clandestine meeting that never happened? Besides, come the morning, I wouldn’t need to waste an ounce more of energy on the rules or Brixton. The world of Gun Church might’ve gotten its start here, but now it existed on the page and in my head.
It was fucking bizarre. They’d strung a sign above the entrance to the chapel that read GOOD LUCK IN THE BIG APPLE. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that New Yorkers never called New York the Big Apple. There were handshakes, a kiss or two, beers-lots of beers-and even a goodbye cake. The cake part of the festivities felt more surreal than shooting ever had. At least there was no pinata, nor was anyone suggesting we play Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
Once the cake was dispensed with, they began passing my Christmas present around. I was relieved to have their focus shift away from me and to the Python. They were loading it up and taking pot shots into the mattresses at the back wall. Fine by me. I half-hoped one of them would break the thing so I’d have an obvious excuse to leave it behind. As it was, I had arranged for Renee to keep it at the house in Brixton for me until I figured out what I was going to do with it. I knew that stalling for time wasn’t much of a strategy. I figured if I procrastinated long enough, the situation might take care of itself.