The BOYS
Episode FORTY-EIGHT
Walt pulled the apron over his head
again, tying the drawstrings, and sending down a small prayer of damnation for
the soul of Mr. C… looked towards the grill, looked towards the registers and
Louie handed him a mop.
“Look busy,” the prince of darkness
advised.
“Sure. That hallway,” he pointed, “don’t it look sorta dirty to
you? Need a good washing down with
plenty of ammonia…”
“Christ, no!” the Devil swore. It’ll just make him crazier… dilute it,
please? Get everything sparkly and
maybe it’ll prick his conscience.”
“He’s a prick without a conscience.”
Walt replied “and you can’t appeal to his sense of fairness – he hasn’t
any. The only prick he needs goes up
his ass…”
“Just try not to make things worse,” Satan
began, and then there was terrible commotion from the windowbox… Timmie
screaming, glass shattering and a lunatic teenage voice rising over it all,
bellowing…
“Fire
in the Hole!”
Walt followed Louie to the box as
Timmie stumbled out, hands over his face.
“Hurts,” he whimpered.
Angry red blotches had sprouted on the
back of the kid’s hands and the usual order of burning grease, rotting Slushies
and disinfect was overpowered by a thin, caustic stench… most of which was
rising from either the boy, or from a broken bottle on the floor…
Joe Sybco, wrapping a rag around his
fingers, picked up the bottle by its neck.
“Sonofabitch, it’s acid… I seen this sorta shit in Baghdad…”
Walt doused another rag in the diluted
ammonia at the bottom of the bucket as Mr. C emerged from his office, pissed
off and waving his hands in the air…
“Assholes threw acid at Timmie,” Louie
said…
“You don’t know that!” Barry corrected him. “Don’t touch him, I’m calling the police.”
“Fuck that, man, he’s burning up,” Joe
said, waving Walt over. “Wipe him
down.”
“Don’t you dare..” Barry began, but
before he could finish his threat, the 911 operator answered and Mr. C. said
“Hello? Hello? I want to report a terrorist attack…”
Joe glared at Walt, who’d stopped
winding the rag around his fingers – it was maybe less diluted than he’d
thought. It burned, too…
“Give me your hand,” he finally said,
and daubed a little of the ammonia on the reddest of the red blotches. “Does that hurt?”
“Better…” Timmie coughed. So Walter wiped his face, and Eunice
sprinkled some baking soda over it – gradually Timmie’s sobbing ceased and he
touched his cheek, as if surprised that it was still there. Barry had finished giving directions to the
police and stood there, smoldering himself, ready to tell Joe, Walt, Eunice and
whomever else was in his line of sight to clock out…
“What?” Louie pricked him…
“What if you were wrong?” Mr. C.
scowled. We’d be sued. You’d,” he pointed at the boys and then
stuttered himself, realizing that Walt, Joe, just about everybody else hovering
around like Halloween scarecrows… they’d all be judgment-proof.
Timmie took a deep breath. “I’m OK… I think…”
A siren sounded as Plick and Farley
guided their patrol car into the parking lot, drawing a skein of costumed
lookie-loos in their wake. Police and
Homeland Security equipment jangling from their belts and bandoliers, they blew
through the front door, gaping at the Freddy Kruegers, princesses and
Presidents feeding their face, oblivious… then following their instinct to the
windowbox, where Barry was fairly hopping up and down like a burnt insect.
“Did someone call in a terrorist
incident?” Plick bellowed, and the customers grabbed their suppers and made for
the door.
“Attack!” Barry shrieked. “We’ve been attacked!”
He was too hysterical to be useful, so
Louie explained the circumstances of the attack and, after seeing that Timmie
was in no immediate danger, Farley shook his head. “Not often that I interview Satan as a victim’s witness instead
of the perp… but you’re sure you heard them yellin’ ‘Fire in the Hole’?”
“That’s what I heard,” Louie
said. Walt, Joe Sybco, Eunice and the
rest of the Dog Pound boys and girls nodded.
While Plick asked Timmie, again, if he
felt alright, Farley turned to Mr. C. and lifted both hands, damping him
down. “I don’t suppose you have health
coverage?” he asked…
“What?” Barry screamed back at him,
seeming to overlook the uniforms, the car out front and all the gear that
bespoke his presence within the long arm of the law. “What? Of course we
don’t, who do you think we are.. the fuckin’ Navy?”
“Easy, short eyes,” Farley tamped him
down again, before turning to the still-redfaced but no longer moaning Timmie
as an ambulance pulled into the strip mall.
“Now this is how it’s going to go, the paramedics can transport you to
San Cris General, but it’ll cost a hundred and seventy nine dollars. You don’t have employer coverage, so I want
you to think carefully and then answer… are you alright?”
Timmie might not have been the smartest
dog in the DP, but he could do the math.
“I’m… I’m OK,” he sniffled.
Barry nodded. “See? He’s OK… in fact, he’s well enough to go
back to work. So why don’t you just go
out and catch whoever’s been doing this?”
“Oh, we will,” Farley promised. “This is a serious escalation… crap started
with some kids… bored, rich… got it off the internet, they say. Now it’s become one of the stations of gang
initiation. Can you provide a
description of the boys… the persons… who did this?” he asked Timmie…
“Didn’t see. Eyes hurt… it was a big car.
Black, dark red?”
Plick asked whether he’d seen the
license plate… Louie volunteered that the vehicle might’ve been captured on one
of the surveillance cameras as it circled the DP so, while Farley was pulling the
videotapes, Tex sidled up to Plick…
“Hey like this guy…”: he nodded
towards Barry, “he won’t give us our checks.
Can’t you make him pay us for our work. That’s sort of like… like
slavery?”
“Sorry,” the plump officer shook his
head. “Sounds like a civil matter. But you…” he nodded at Mr. C. “in the
future, I’d be more careful about using the word ‘terror’ – I know that you’re
upset, and you’re concerned about your people, but it pushes buttons…”
“Well, if it isn’t terror,” Barry
complained, “just what the hell do you call it?”
“We call it crime. Good ol’ generic crime, common as
hotdogs.” Farley raised up the
videotape he was holding and motioned for his partner to leave. Plick seemed to be thinking whether it was
appropriate to score free food, decided against it and pointed to Louie…
“If we can’t get ahold of the germs,”
he suggested, “maybe we should bring in this guy. They always say the Devil made them do it…”
“Funny!” Satan waved and the cops took
off.
“You want your checks,” Barry addressed
his staff, “well, just make sure that shit like this doesn’t happen. You’ll get paid when I’m ready for you to get paid… it’s all his fault…”
He thrust a finger out towards Timmie,
who began to cry. Exasperated, Mr. C.
stomped back to his office and did not emerge, again, until two minutes to
six. He held the envelopes up, shouting
“Coming through. Don’t push. Don’t crowd… don’t leave your register,
Fermeley, I’m still the boss here, for two more minutes.”
The cashier turned back to her waiting
customers – a young couple picking up a couple of snacks on their way to an
adult party… she in lingerie, he in assless leather chaps. “So – what the fuck are you here for?”
“Lotta good this does us now,” said
the normally reticent Musgrove from the griddle. “Banks’ll have closed by the time we get out of here…”
“Then you should do as I have advised
– time and time again,” Barry lectured, holding the checks even higher up out
of reach. “That’s what I do…”
“I used to have a direct deposit,” Joe
told Walt, “back when I had a computer and an internet account…”
“Me, too,” Walt admitted.
“Stop crowding!” Barry charged, once
more. “Alright, I know that some of you
who are not on your shifts have been waiting, so I’ll begin in alphabetical
order… Avakian, Sara?”
One of the weekend temps emerged from
the throng – a shadow who had suddenly found her voice. “Aren’t you going to say something,” Barry
leered… she was older than Miley, but not by much… “something like thank you,
Mr. C?”
“For a piece of useless paper? Banks are closed, my weekend’s shot…”
Barry mimed crying. “Boo-hoo!
Consider yourself lucky to have a job.
For your information, the Title Pawn is open until eight… I am sure that
Mister Spicotti will let all of you on the night shift take your breaks before
then. OK? Next, Bard, Lula…”
As the clock tolled the fatal six PM
and banks from Seattle to Calexico were closing and locking their doors, a
family… all duded up as rabbits… entered the DP and proceeded to the register
bank where Fermeley, with a sigh, took their orders and Walt reflected on how
it was a goddam shame, there had to be more to life than a holiday dinner at a
third-tier fast-food joint. But at
least they were a family – presumably intact under the white flannel and floppy
ears, and he was going to be broke all weekend, unless he paid the Title Pawn’s
check cashing toll… Barry tolled off the boys and girls and handed them their
pay: Edison (a part-timer), Ensign (another – not present, although Mr. C. made
a show of calling out the kid’s name twice, before shuffling the check to the
back of the stack), Fales.
Instinctively, Walt snatched his paycheck as he looked up at the clock –
six oh four- then gravitated back to the mop and bucket, just standing there,
watching – until Barry called out Suvari (Achmed had clocked out around two,
come back at five to hang around for a few minutes until it was clear that
Barry wouldn’t be handing out checks anytime soon, then split) then “Sybco,
Joe…”
“I got a fuckin’ overdraft because of
you,” Joe confronted the Roach. “You
could given me my check in time to get down to the bank, you chose not to. Even if I don’t pay the title pawn fee, I’m out thirty-five
bucks… also, they’re probably gonna turn off my gas…”
As he sputtered, thinking of anything
else to say, a high, grating voice squalled over the squawkbox… a voice of
crotchety authority somehow familiar to Walt.
“One Big Bucket of Salty Dogs and a Lemon Slushie…”
There were only two of the fishwiches
under the DP’s heatlamp – they’d been sunning themselves there for an hour or
so – so, leaving Timmie in the box to contend with the nasty old voice, Walt
stepped into the cooler, dug his fist into a box of the unbreaded fish sticks…
shaped rather like those chopped off fingers favored by the Japanese Mafia,
cold and gray as death… and, since Joe and Barry were still arguing –
intensely, now – lay them out on the counter, shook the canister of crumbs,
salt and spices over them, swept the Salties into the wire fryer basket and
dropped it into the oily depths, heading back towards the windowbox.
“Be a couple of minutes,” he said.
“Sir, we will have your order in a
couple of minutes,” Timmie repeated.
“Could you pull your car up and come inside to pick up your order?”
“What?” the voice bawled over a chorus
of honking horns behind the customer – driving a big, old black Caddy, of
course – “I want one Big Bucket of Salty Dogs, and a Lemon Slushie, goddamit!”
Timmie looked up to Walter, who looked
back at the poor, scalded retard and shrugged.
Joe Sybco was shouting, now, and Barry… pretending to ignore him… called
out “Zamora? Come pick up your check,
Zamora…”
“You and I both know Zamora only comes
in Tuesdays. Bottom line… Mister C…”
Joe added, in a tone that made the rest of the curious turn and wander back to
their stations, rather than become involved in something nasty, “you… because
of you, I’m shafted. I got bills I can
barely pay when I do get paid, and I ain’t got nothing left. You took it all, you bastards, and I want my
thirty five made up, back from you, or Mr. Z… I don’t fuckin’ care…”
“Well hurry up,” said the old man on
the squawkbox, “I haven’t got all fuckin’ day…”
“’Scuse me while I disappear,” Walt
told Timmie, squeezing out of the windowbox and past the engaged Joe and aloof
dayboss, glancing out over the registers to Louie, in his Devil mask, watching
from the salad bar whose sneezeguard he was pretending to wipe. Satan shrugged. Walt shrugged… and made for the cooler, figuring that he could
waste a few more minutes pretending to look for more of the vile little
fishsticks. So he was standing by a
shelf, contemplating a damp, brown box with writing that said “CHOPPED and
FORMED – MAY BE PRODUCE of ICELAND, PERU or THAILAND…
“You have something left, boy, you have
your job,” he heard Barry lecturing outside in the hallway, by the frypit. “A lot of people don’t – and it doesn’t go
so very well for them, and… if you don’t get back to work, you’re not going to
have a job any more, and then you’ll really have something to whine about…
“So hop, boy! Hop!
Hop! Hop!…”
Hiding in the cooler, Walt didn’t see
the blow, so… when he said so to the police, he wasn’t lying, technically. He was staring disgustedly at the raw, gray,
unbreaded and unsalted Salties when he heard a sound that sounded sort of like
“Thwock!” Tex and Musgrove were
watching the dogs sizzle on the grill, the cashiers were looking out at the
customers who were looking back at the cashiers or up at the signs above the
register bank. (Quite a few had come in
over the last few minutes, but they were useless as witnesses because either
the edge of the windowbox or the grill blocked their line of vision to the
frypit, or they just weren’t paying attention.) And the Devil was morosely contemplating the shriveled state of
the olives in the saladbar, the implications of his age crashing down upon him
like the tin sheeting of a trailer in a tornado.
(Or maybe it was just that most of the customers were in costume - there was a geriatric Aquaman holding Receipt 71 for three Slushies, no food, a fat, grim Bill Clinton holding 72, three secretaries dolled up as 20’s era flappers on their way to the bars, stopping off for a Big Bucket of little wieners to line their stomachs before a night of drinking and, perhaps, Mr. Right. There was no 74… a frazzled, pissed-off Eunice had, uncharacteristically, double-keyed the secretaries’ order… Receipt 75 for one cup of coffee – small - was being held aloft by the laid-off, masturbatory Colonel from Freedomland in his now-tattered uniform.)
After the fact, Walt deduced that it
was probably the “Hop! Hop! Hop!…” that pushed matters over the edge…
What he did see was the flash of metal reflected in the chrome trimming of
the cooler door, a brief scintilla of metal and fluorescence. It was a clean cut… the cleanest of cuts…
and so clean, in fact, that there was hardly any blood – at first. What Walt had heard, what he might have been
able to prevent, had he wished, or, at least, order in his head to help out the
police (except for the fact that his head was already muddled by having no home
to go home to, by the varied women in his life who despised him, a son who… he
could not suppress the thought that it might be justifiable… hated him, perhaps
even enough to mutilate him with acid and, above all, that he was a grown man –
a father and grandfather with a university degree, a former millionaire… at
least on paper… now wearing a paper hat with a retarded dog’s head and serving
up tainted sausages to the hookers, slackers and gangbangers who populated this
low-rent strip of San Cris) was… after the “thwok!”… a plop!, another plop! and
then, well, less a fizzle than a crackle to accompany those plops, as if he
were back in Precious Joy of a morning, chasing some of Fran and Elle’s
off-brand Rice Krispies with warm Alka-Seltzer (not so bad a breakfast, come to
think of it)…
And then there was only silence – a
silence lasting maybe a couple of seconds, but seeming stretch out, outwards
and then swirling into the bloody maw of infinity… until a strange, accented
voice called out “I see you!” and the
self-important little man in the Caddy blasted his horn, badgering Timmie for
his supper…
And, good boy as he was… still staring
towards the windowbox… Walt dumped the contents of the basket into a Big
Bucket, sealed it and passed it along to the drooling boy, who, forthwith, held
it up in front of his angry customer…
And Louie… that proud daemon wiping
down the sneezeboard… looking up and saying “I can’t… Barry, man, you… where’s
your head, dude? Where’s your fuckin’ head?”
And that, at last, impelled Walter
Fales to turn, beholding Mister C… or the ninety-percent of him below his
collar… still upright against the wall between the cooler and registers –
opposite the frypit and windowbox… faking the whole Pound out with a cool
magician’s costume, a quick-change illusion, nearly perfect, down to tiny
rivulets of blood trickling… not spurting… trickling
down his collar in tiny, discreet drops, splattering to the floor like mishandled
frankfurters…
“Cool man,” Tex even started to say as
the dayboss began bending at the knees, then suddenly lurching forward until
his magically empty collar struck the edge of the griddle, initiating a jet of
blood, an eruption spraying Tex and Musgrave and washing over the hotdogs on
the griddle like a tsunami, a stinking tidal wave of burning gore…
“Where’s my supper, boy?” the old man
in the Cadillac brayed again, honking and honking and, like an infected airline
passenger, initiating a chain reaction of honking and shouting from the cars
waiting behind. “Don’t you know who I am?” he spat venom towards the
windowbox, “I could have you locked up for the rest of your squalid, little
life…”
“What’s that smell?” piped up a kid in some generic superhero costume, holding
the hand of his older sister in front of the registers… or, maybe, it was his
mother, tricked out in trashy pop-star fishnets, bare midriff, tats and
piercings…
“Twelve dollars, sixty nine,” Timmie
said, placidly, for… with the Big Bucket in his hands… the angry, hungry little
man was under his authority…
“Oh… right!” said the customer,
handing over a Hamilton and three Washingtons, then reaching out to collect his
meal as Timmie turned towards the register.
“Keep the change!” he said and gunned his vehicle away…
Walter had stepped over Mr. C’s fallen
ankles, twitching in white, cotton socks that peeked out beneath his cuffs and…
watching the blood sizzle on the griddle while Tex and Musgrove slapped at
themselves like men fallen upon an anthill… he looked from the stack of empty
Big Buckets to the windowbox and cried out, too late, too late…
“Timmie, no!”
But the transaction was complete,
Timmie holding the money in his fist, mouth open… the taillights of the Caddy
slowing at the periphery of the parking lot as the hungry man who couldn’t even
wait to get home opened his meal…
“Barry, man!” the Devil wheedled,
approaching the registers from the salad bar, “where’s your head?” And then he vomited… Tex and Musgrove did,
too, and as the full implications of the moment whacked Walt across the back of
the head like a two by four, his guts recoiled and spewed waste from both
ends. And then the Dog Pound was a blur
of puke and screams – running feet and fumbling, twittering fingers calling for
the police… Walt staggered out through the swinging door into the restaurant,
then out behind the fleeing patrons into the parking lot where the black Caddy
reposed, door open, the little man waving his hands and shrieking. And then he remembered where he’d seen the
fellow before… he was the judge, Judge Evans (or, was it Evers?) from the
zoning meeting, he’d been hard to recognized without his big, black robes. The judge collapsed – Walter Fales sat down
on the curb with Vampire Mickey looming overhead and police cars streaming into
the strip mall, watching a tiny rivulet of blood trickle out the front door and
downhill towards his anchorage, mind dusted blank, only the number and the days
hurtling along in a strange, prepotent loop…
Seven weeks ago…
Seven
weeks?…
Seven weeks!