EIGHT LIES (About the Truth): A collection of short stories (2 page)

Gravedigger screamed and lunged forward, then caught himself. He trembled as adrenaline coursed through his veins.

Tweedledee stopped laughing and said, “Oh, shit.”

Tweedledum jumped off the casket and out of the grave. “We were just having some fun, man.”

“You’re fired. Both of you.”

“What difference does it make,” said Tweedledee, “dude’s already dead.”

It took all of Gravedigger’s willpower to keep his voice from breaking. “Get the fuck out of my graveyard. Now. Before I hurt you.”

Nigeria is a very bad place to do prison time, especially for a white man. Walter Jackson endured his share of torture, but his cell had a cot and a hole in the floor served as a toilet. Mark Tindall did harder time. The guards beat him daily, sometimes breaking ribs and once breaking his left arm. He was given just enough food and water to keep him alive, and days would sometimes pass between meals. His cell had nothing in it at all, not even a drain in the concrete floor, so he lived in his own filth.

Sometime around the fourth month, the guards took Mark Tindall’s boots away and whipped him on the soles of his feet. His feet soon became infected, purple and swollen and oozing puss. He was given no medical attention and his fever soared. Hallucinations came regularly, and he started to lose himself. Some days he would be lucid, but other days he was stark raving mad, smearing himself with his own shit, howling at the walls and twitching like an epileptic having a seizure. Then he would pass out, and wake up relatively sane again. Until the next time.

On the six-month anniversary of their capture, the guards hauled Mark Tindall from his cell and hosed him down and put him in the cell with Walter Jackson. A man in a crisp military uniform came into the cell.

“Tomorrow morning,” the man said, “one of you will be sent back to America. It is for you to decide which one.” The man handed a pack of Marlboros and a book of matches to Walter Jackson, and left.

Jackson lit a cigarette and put it between Mark Tindall’s lips, then lit one for himself. They smoked in silence for a few minutes.

“You don’t look so good, Golden Boy,” said Jackson.

Mark Tindall let out a crooked smile. “You’re lookin’ a little skinny yourself, Sarge.”

“Hey, I’m livin’ high on the hog. This is the fuckin’ Ritz-Carlton compared to your crib.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty nice. I could stay here awhile.”

Walter Jackson stubbed his cigarette out on the floor and lit another. “Shit. You gonna lose those feet if we don’t get you out of here.”

“Might lose ’em anyway.” The two men nodded at each other, and silent tears began to stream down Mark Tindall’s face.

Jackson slid over and put his arms around the younger man’s shoulders, holding him like a protective father. “When you get out of here tomorrow, put it behind you, Mark. Don’t look back.”

Mark didn’t even try to argue.

Gravedigger Peace woke to the sound of his own voice. “Sorry I sneezed, Sarge.”
Sorry I sneezed. Shit. Sorry I left you behind. Sorry I lived.

The bedside clock said it was just past midnight. He had slept only three hours. After the stoners had left, he’d sumped the water out of Walter Jackson’s grave and covered it with earth by hand, using the spade. He needed to work off the adrenaline. Once the grave was filled, he went home, tossed his ruined suit into the trash, and lay in the bathtub with a long drink. He tried to make himself cry a little, but he hadn’t cried in years and he couldn’t summon the tears. Finally he gave up, finished his drink and went to bed.

Now he was up again, and his nerves felt raw, exposed. He tried to read, couldn’t. He got a beer from the fridge, but didn’t open it. Sat in front of the television, but didn’t turn it on. The rain had stopped at last, and the silence rang in his ears.

Then he heard it. A sound from outside. Voices.

He opened the coat closet and reached for the Mossberg shotgun that he kept there, then reached deeper into the closet and pulled out a machete instead.

The moon was almost full, and Gravedigger’s eyes adjusted to the light as he walked toward Walter Jackson’s grave, holding the machete in his right hand and a flashlight in his left. Tweedledee stood pissing on the grave, then put his dick back in his pants. Beside a nearby mausoleum, Tweedledum stood with a can of spray paint in his hand. Painted on the wall was,
I rode Gravedigger’s bitch!

Gravedigger flicked the flashlight on, and both boys froze. They should have run away. But instead, they charged.

And Mark Tindall cut them to pieces.

I often listen to music when I’m writing. I even create iTunes playlists that serve as personal soundtracks as I’m writing my novels (obsessive? My iTunes playlist for
The Trinity Game
ran to six (6) full CDs). But I’ve never written a piece of fiction directly inspired by a piece of music.

Until now.

“Maybe Someday” was inspired by the song of the same name by The Cure, which you can find on their excellent album,
Bloodflowers
.

Of course I took it in my own direction, filtered it through my own ideas about obsession and loneliness, and hopefully found my own truth in it.

“Maybe Someday” also appears in the anthology
Beat To A Pulp: Round
2
, edited by David Cranmer.

A
BOVE ALL ELSE,
it was the taste of her he could not forget. Every day the memory returned. A sense memory, rising spontaneous and unbidden, the taste
right there
on his tongue, as intense and intoxicating as the hot summer night she’d spread her long legs and invited him in.

Every day. And with it came a flood of other memories. Freckled face, beautiful and creased by middle age; proud nose, nostrils like elongated teardrops; hooded eyes, intelligent, perceptive, but also wounded and needy. Slender fingers stroking his cheek, then clutching the hair on the back of his head as he went down.

And every day he picked up his cell phone, brought her number up on the screen, determined to either call or delete the number from its memory. But he couldn’t call, and he couldn’t erase her number from his phone, and above all else, he couldn’t erase the taste of her from his mind.

He didn’t believe in love at first sight. Love at first sight was the stuff of fairy tales and romance novels.

Might as well believe in unicorns.

But something happened in his chest the very first time their eyes met, and from the way she darted her eyes away he could tell it had happened to her also. They were at opposite ends of a long table, in a large group, hadn’t said a word to each other, hadn’t even been introduced. When she looked away she reached for her drink, adjusted her wedding ring with her thumb, bringing the diamond setting upright on her slender finger. An unconscious gesture, like the tell of a poker player. The message was clear:
I’m married.
But was it a signal meant for him, or a reminder to herself? He couldn’t say.

That was their first meeting, in a large group of friends out for drinks after work. One of those things where two circles of friends overlap and then become one. Among the members of the group, the after-work drinking sessions were called “going for herbal tea.” Each Friday around lunchtime, someone would send a mass email to the group:
Who’s going for herbal after work?
If enough people jumped in, they’d meet at Sheffield’s patio, where they’d drink expensive craft beer or single malt scotch while sharing funny stories about their nightmare bosses, commiserating over the ongoing futility of the Cubs, deconstructing the latest novels they’d loved or hated.

Minutes after their eyes first met, someone in the group introduced them and the thing happened in his chest again as he shook her hand and he had no idea what he said or what she said in reply, and the rest of that first night was a blur.

He didn’t want to get involved with a married woman. And he didn’t believe in love at first sight. But the next week, when the email went around and he saw her name on the list of recipients, he felt queasy. And when she responded to the group, saying she’d join them for herbal, goddamn if that thing didn’t happen in his chest again.

It was just a case of sexual chemistry, he told himself. Just pheromones at work, a genetically programmed response to a good breeding partner, and pheromones don’t care who’s married and who’s not. That’s all it was, nothing more. Hell, he didn’t even know the woman. They might not even like each other.

But he joined the group for drinks after work. And they did like each other. She was smart and funny and beautiful, and clearly as disturbed as he by what they both were feeling. She talked a great deal about her husband and her three children, and she kept propping up that damned diamond with her thumb. Even so, she talked mostly to him that night, and he to her. The rest of the group just seemed to melt into the background.

For the next five Fridays, they both attended every herbal and they sat across from each other and talked like old friends, or new lovers. But he never made even the suggestion of a pass, and she never missed an opportunity to mention her family.

On the sixth Friday she seemed nervous as she told—someone else at the table, not him—that her husband had taken the kids camping for the weekend. She avoided his eyes for a good five minutes after that, which told him more than if she hadn’t.

The group stayed late that night. When it was over, he offered to walk her to Belmont and she said yes, and he silently prayed that none of the others were taking the train.

They weren’t.

Outside the station, he told her his apartment was just a few blocks away on Melrose and he had a bottle of Talisker and a rooftop deck with a fabulous view of the city.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Just a drink,” he lied, “and some conversation. Nothing more.” He held his breath. Waited.

“I don’t know. I should…” she looked at the entrance to the station, then back at him. “All right.”

They sat on his rooftop deck and drank Talisker and watched thin white mist-clouds drifting across the John Hancock building, and they talked about their lives, and he found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone else. He talked freely of the profound sense of isolation that had been his constant companion, even in childhood, even with his parents, who loved him but never really knew him.

And telling her this, he felt completely exposed, and completely comfortable with it. Not isolated at all.

He realized then, it was far more than sexual chemistry, and had been from the very beginning. It was as if this moment of intimacy had somehow been contained in that very first look. It was the feeling that, when their eyes first met, they had seen right into each other, behind the masks, seen each other fully and truly, and liked what they’d seen. And more, they’d seen themselves being seen by the other, and neither covered up. Yes, they’d looked away, but each time they looked back, they were right there again, willing to see and be seen, unwilling to shut the other out.

She felt it too, right from the very first look, and that night on his rooftop deck, they talked about it. And then she went with him to the bedroom.

But in the morning he woke up alone.

She called the next afternoon and apologized, both for leaving and for leading him on, and he apologized for inviting her to his apartment, for putting her in that situation to begin with. She insisted that she loved her husband, and he believed her. She vowed that she would never allow her children’s lives to be shattered by divorce, and he believed that too. He said he didn’t want to break up her family, and he meant it.

Then she told him the connection they’d shared was real, was maybe even love, but could never happen again. After she hung up, he cried a little. Then he saved her number in his cell phone. He couldn’t help himself.

She stopped coming out for herbals, and after a few weeks he stopped as well. He couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t sit on the patio at Sheffield’s making small talk with the group, staring at the door, hoping for what he knew wasn’t coming.

He got on with his life. Eventually he had other women, other relationships. But he never felt that level of connection with any of them, that sense of truly seeing and being seen, completely exposed and comfortable, not like he’d felt with her, and he just couldn’t see the point without it, and the relationships never worked out.

He told himself that maybe someday she would call again. Maybe someday they could be together. Maybe after her kids were grown and out of the house. Or maybe her husband would get cancer and die—and he hated himself for wishing it, but he
did
wish it just the same. And each time he upgraded to a new cell phone, he transferred her number over, for when the time came.

But
maybe someday
never came. She never called.

He never called.

You don’t break up a family, just because of love.

He sat and stared at the phone, beside the newspaper that lay open on the kitchen table. There was no use calling now, she wouldn’t answer. It occurred to him that he’d been sitting there for hours, unmoving, as the day had darkened to night. He reached for the phone, picked it up. Just like all the previous days since they’d been together, he put the phone back down on the table, hating himself for his lack of will. How hard could it be to simply wipe her number from the phone and never have to look at it again?

The sense memory returned, the taste of her on his tongue.

Every damn day…even now.

He stood and opened the fridge and pushed his face into the cool white light and held it there, feeling his sweat turn cold, breathing through his mouth. He grabbed the last bottle of Old Style from the shelf and returned to the table, not looking at the cell phone or the newspaper, and drank the beer down in one go.

To wash the taste away.

It didn’t.

He lit a cigarette. Picked up the newspaper and read her obituary again.

Maybe someday.

He didn’t believe in an afterlife any more than he believed in love at first sight—the stuff of fairy tales and romance novels.

Might as well believe in unicorns.

He pulled the half-full bottle of Talisker from the cupboard. He’d put it away after their night together, promised himself he’d only bring it out when she came back to him. Hadn’t touched it since.

He took the bottle up to his rooftop deck. It was a hot summer night, like the night they’d been together, years ago. But tonight there was no mist. Tonight everything was clear.

He sat and drank the scotch and remembered. It didn’t wash the taste of her away, but he no longer wanted to wash it away.

After the bottle was empty, he walked slowly to the edge of the rooftop.

He didn’t believe in an afterlife.

Love at first sight.

Fairy tales…romance novels.

Unicorns.

He stepped over the edge, into the empty space beyond.

Someday.