“Tell you what. You give me that code and you give me the time when that fence ain’t being watched, I’ll give you half of what this guy’s paying me.”
“How much is that?”
He hesitates. “Two grand.”
Your head buzzes from the number and the notions of what you could do with that money: a couple months of rent, baby food, clothes, eyeglasses, repairs to the house, to the car, a new microwave. The possibilities bloom and recede, bloom and recede.
“Tawrny, man, if you’re paying two grand, I’ll get the shift changes, I’ll draw you a map, I’ll get the code—whatever you need.”
Tawrny nods. “Got yourself a deal then, Keeper. Just a little information and that money’ll be as good as in your pocket.”
You take the next two days to make sure you get everything right. You tell Raquel that Casey hooked you up with the gig. Just some basic masonry work for a couple of rich farmers, you lie. You park out on Route 273 and hoof it down the access road past the tailing pond of the Tuscarawas plant. Squatting in the dark underbrush, you snack on Fritos. The smokestacks glitter in the night. Twin stars blinking from the top of each stack, that orange rocket-fuel color of the lights washing over the water. The shift changes over exactly as you remember. One group of hard-hatted workers slinks in, and soon after, another slinks out. Then quiet. You sidle up to the fence and see a camera perched over the road, and it’s more than you could’ve hoped for: nothing’s changed. Because the camera’s angle is fixed, you approach it from the left, climb a bit of fence, and drape an opaque plastic bag over the lens. No one would think twice about the wind landing it there. You try the lock, and it’s still the same code: 1-9-8-5, the year of the plant’s commission.
You hand over all the information to Tawrny, and as promised he puts a stack of bills in front of you.
“Don’t go telling your woman where it came from.”
“Course. I may be an ex-addict, but I ain’t retarded.”
You already have your plan: Pay this month’s rent and the next. Give Raquel $400 for baby supplies and whatever else she wants. Put $200 in the bank. Save $100 for miscellaneous spending. Blow $100 on a night out with Casey, Levi, and Dick Underwood.
“What’s this business?” A waif of an old woman appears in Tawrny’s kitchen. She is frail, emaciated, and a crumpled nightgown hangs from her skeletal frame. Tawrny moves quickly.
“Betsy, goddamnit. Back to bed.” She looks confused. Strands of white hair float away from a scalp the color of a burlap sack, and she has patches of dry skin all over her face and neck, little white lesions that look like scales. She doesn’t want to be led away, but Tawrny turns her around and moves her quickly back down the hall. The sight of her has made you ill, and when you leave, you wish greatly that you had never seen her.
You tell Raquel the extra work paid off, but you only pay one month’s rent and give her $300. A week later, you and the guys get your Saturday at the bowling alley. They got a deal on Jell-O shots—$1 each—and Levi insists you all put down three before you start bowling. From there it’s pitcher after pitcher. You bowl like shit, partly because you haven’t played in five months, mostly because you’re getting drunk really fast.
“Keeper, you roll like Obama,” Dick Underwood says. He’s in third place, then Casey, then you. Levi’s like a pro. Bowls three or four times a week by himself. Casey’s about at your level but he can hold his liquor better. You buy two rounds of tequila shots to even the field but somehow Levi bowls a 280.
You toss two gutters in a row.
“Jesus, you do roll like a bitch,” says Levi.
You flip him the bird and wander off to buy another pitcher.
Returning to your lane with the beer, you hear Dick Underwood going on about the Ohio Light Foot, his little soldier-playing militia. Every few months a bunch of grown men got dressed up like Navy SEALs and pretended they were fighting off the jackbooted Feds or the Islamic Empire. “We got money coming in now through this partnership,” he explains. “So we go to the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters and explain why we should absorb them under our command structure.” He takes the pitcher from you and pours both of you a glass.
“Didn’t y’all get broken up when those guys shot up the mosque school,” says Casey.
“First off, that wasn’t us. Second of all, that ain’t the whole story and you know it. There’s a lot of people think that was a false flag by the FBI to make some arrests.”
“Killing a bunch of little kids is a false flag?” Casey wonders. “Interesting.”
“You gotta watch where you’re getting information. They were Somalis, and they weren’t kids, they were prime recruiting age. Besides, that guy used smart bullets. Ain’t no hunt to that!”
“Enough,” you tell them. You know Underwood’s looked at you sideways before because you’ve got a Black girlfriend and a mulatto son. When someone put a threatening letter under the door of Raquel’s church, you’re pretty sure Underwood would know the guy from the Ohio Light Foot. “Let’s shut up and play.”
You drink more tequila. You take your turn (three pins on the first roll, gutter on the second), and then stumble back to the bar. Before you can order, you get a call from Raquel.
“Y’all checked the weather?”
“Ain’t no weather in a bowling alley,” you explain.
“Weather says there’s another one of them storms coming in tonight. Get coming back now.”
“Aye, aye.”
You go back to drinking.
You roll a 76. Then a 107. Then a 140. “You’re better when you’re skunk-drunk,” says Levi.
“Suck cock,” you tell him. Then the next few minutes blur. You’re trying to order more from the bar, but the bartender’s saying no. Then you’re angry. Then you’re in the parking lot by Underwood’s truck, and he and Casey are trying to tell you the night’s over. You’re done. Levi’s smoking a cigarette, looking off into the parking lot. Wind ripping around his greasy hair. Levi looking smug. You turn around and open the toolbox in the bed of Underwood’s ride. You root around among the tools, looking for something interesting.
“Keeper, what the fuck, man?” says Casey, sounding exhausted with you. “Let’s just go to another bar.”
You find a pair of pliers. These are interesting. You shove past Casey and Underwood. You throw one forearm into Levi’s chest and take him to the ground. The cigarette flies from his lips. You fall on top of him. Before he knows what’s happened, you’ve pinched the top of his eyelid between your finger and thumb. You’re drunk, sure, but you’re like a surgeon when you’re drunk. “Hold still.” And you slip the needle-nose part of the pliers under his eyelid and clamp down.
He’s screaming. You hear Underwood and Casey come running at the sound.
“Don’t move, Basset. Don’t move,” you hiss at him. “You ain’t been nowhere, Bassy. You ain’t been anywhere. I been places. I know things you ain’t figured out yet.”
The wind blasts over the four of you, struggling there on hard pavement. And you want to rip his eyelid off, jerk it from his socket to see how much of his face will come with it.
Then Underwood’s foot crashes against your ear, and you fall into the side of a car. Levi’s on his feet, holding his eye and shrieking. You hop up and walk off. Casey and Underwood are yelling after you. Fuck them. You find your keys, and then you’re driving.
Gusts of wind thrash your car. The rain is steady but not violent. This is nowhere near as bad as the other storms. And yet on your road, you can see the red and blue emergency lights strobing over the night. You can see smoke billowing from a roof and for a horrified moment you’re sure it is your own. All reason leaves you and you just know God is out for you. Everyone is out for you. Your cheap shitty fucking rental that you never wanted with the son you never wanted with the girlfriend you never wanted, and you want to drive over to Tawrny’s and bash him on the head and dig up every last speck of dope in his place and hole up in a motel and shoot your veins back to their original size when you were a screaming infant.