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  All this and me not fourteen for three or four more months.

  I bent as close as I could, conscious only then of how ragged her breathing was. Her nose made a high pitched scream every time she drew in. She didn’t make much other noise but the pain told out from her eyes. They were blood-shot and bulging. Sweat coursed down her cheeks. The only thing I could think to do was take off my shirt and dab it weakly at her face and forehead. Her hand came up again, settled and squeezed my shoulder.

  She couldn’t raise her voice above a whisper and I leaned so close I felt her lips tickle my ear. That is my last physical memory of her, that tickling. She said she’d been waiting; we had no phone, the neighbors weren’t home. She said she loved me and didn’t know what she could do now. And she died moments later it was like the dog too. One minute she was there and the next, nothing. Her eyes turned as deep and vast as a pit, and she was gone. To this day I have never been anywhere quieter than that room as I held her and cried. When the sobs finally subsided I got up, walked over to the front door, and kicked my book sack out of the way so I could push it closed.

  It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving holidays were to begin. Our street ended in a cul-de-sac, pulling up short before a stretch of concrete and the blocked, forbidding wall of a deserted parking garage covered in layer upon layer of moldy storm runoff and graffiti. Not a breath of wind stirred.

  Perhaps because of the stillness the idea came to me, wafting in out of the clear blue. The neighbors were gone; there were two days until Thanksgiving holiday. It was already apparent no one would help me, or at least no one I would abide living with, even if they would take me in. And even the bare-edged thought of being stuffed into an orphanage with some other castaways hating me as much as I would come to hate them, churned my stomach like cancer. When the idea came it really seemed more logical than morbid because at least it gave me time to think, a little gap in which to formulate some sort of plan. With its appearance it set in like stone and the crying stopped. To this day I have never shed another tear for anyone or anything, alive or dead.

  I walked over to the couch where she lay and (thankfully since she was a small woman) wrestled her into my arms, off the couch into a standing position. My knees almost gave but it was not from her, my life hung like a lead weight just above my ears. When I was finally able I brought her back to the bedroom, kicking another door closed with one foot while I held her to my chest.

  The moment I laid her on the bed I realized how irrevocably everything had changed. My grandmother was no longer here and I was very small in that room. I remember taking a damp washrag and cleaning her face, removing the tight shoes she wore and pushing her legs beneath the covers, tucking her away like a child, as she’d done for me countless times before. As she’d do for me no more. Then I sat in a chair by her nightstand in the corner and waited.

  Night came on like a black sheet of nothingness; Grandma a mere, vague hump in the bed, the only thin shadows leaking from a streetlight which slipped in through the window slats and stuck to the walls near my chair. The enveloping silence swelled into a monster and for a moment I believed we’d both died in the afternoon and now, here, somehow, we both inhabited some bizarre afterlife of boredom. Only, oddly enough, I was still breathing.

  I got up and walked, zombie-like, to my room and slept dreamlessly. I woke up the next morning before the alarm would have gone off if I’d remembered to set it, and dressed quickly before the bathroom mirror. This is another frozen picture I retain: a young kid dressing robotically, his eyes staring into some far reach. Then I went to school on Thursday and Friday like nothing had happened.

  I kept quiet, to myself, answered questions when the task fell my way, didn’t fuck with anybody’s girlfriend. My mind scrubbed clean and me without the slightest idea what to do next. When the last period bell rang on Thursday I didn’t even hear it, but by Friday I was poised on every tick. Because with each one I felt a little more opportunity slip away.

  Even today it’s strange looking back on this behavior. I surely loved my grandmother, and there was a huge, burning agony in my soul, but it was as if everything had switched to a new, unknown gear. I became predatory; my vision seemed sharper, as did my hearing, my sense of smell. Maybe it’s exaggeration (after all my grandmother had not been professionally tended and of course there is no denying the natural processes which were taking place in her room), but it was a very effective one. By Friday the smell was impossible to ignore. There was scarcely any food left in the house. Twice someone had come to the door and I’d hidden in my bedroom, praying they’d go away. After awhile they did but I knew they’d be back. Soon. More neighbors were around, my window-of-opportunity shivering down another inch. I made a brief appearance on the porch Friday afternoon to quell any rumors of wrongdoing or trouble at our place. But in my mind’s eye those two endless days were that simple, ticking junior high school clock pacing away to my predictable and terrible end.

  Late Friday night I made the decision. I went again into Grandma’s room, twisting my nose against the inherent corruption. I was thankful it was night, that I could not see her face. Her body looked larger than it had when I put her there a little over forty-eight hours before and that is probably what kept me away. I’d intended to walk over and touch her hand but in the end I didn’t. I simply turned from the room and left the house with what I wore, and the small wad of money Grandma had kept hidden at the bottom of her underwear drawer. Then I hit the street.

  Chapter 5:Sautin

  Up until March, 1981 had been a real loser for Aldo Phinneus Sautin. January had begun in Atlanta, but by February he’d sprung free, and not exactly by choice. Another sour spell on a nothing job, a few threats here and there…same old shit, different day. And as it turned out, it’d been best that he’d gone when he had, from the looks of the motherfucker he’d left lying bleeding in the parking lot. Lucky for him he’d picked up the last check before that brawl, Sautin thought acidly, because without it he’d have never gotten the chance to nibble on a dry piece of bread on a Salvation Army cot, smelling the corpse of defeat folding around him like a smallpox blanket. It was then the reality of his situation brought a grimace to the corners of his eyes, and a few crumbs spilled from the corner of his mouth to the dirty floor where he kicked at them savagely with his foot.

  Because, goddammit, he really couldn’t believe it. He’d been born for better things and he knew it. All his life he’d known it; it just hinged on convincing all the other assholes in the world what he took for granted. And one day, oh, one day, a day that crept closer with every sundown, they would take notice.

  He took another bite of bread, imagined it was bones he crunched in his teeth.

  Thunder pounded deep within the concrete floor at his feet. Through the filthy ring of windows which encircled the entire room, he could see moving jabs of lightning, bright stabs of white, slower tendrils of purple. He rocked back on the squeaking mattress, leaned over to extract what was left of his wallet from his equally wornout jeans. Talk about fucking pathetic. When he’d pulled into New Orleans on the Greyhound a couple of days back, fuming over his current circumstances, he’d been so disgusted with himself that he’d thrown his driver’s license into a garbage can on the corner of Canal. And now, hours, days later, things weren’t a whole lot goddamn better.

  He cracked it open and peered inside like some cheap peeping tom sneaking a glance through a teenager’s window. Not much left. He shook his head, thumbed the cash through, counting silently as he went, his lips matching the numbers. It didn’t take long. Less than thirty fuckin dollars, his life’s ransom. He pressed the wallet closed and set it back to its place. A coughing, cigarette-rattled voice burped something incomprehensible into the intercom and he squinted at it menacingly, already knowing he’d do this thing that’d been presented him, regardless of what he’d told the goon. In fact, the only real problem he could see was getting someone else to go along. Even though he’d never done a
nything like it before (lifting items from shop windows and pilfering through garages was not of this league), he believed it’d be best to have someone else’s ass on the line if the shit went south.

  Because this one, like a deep, persistent itch, was a dark hole he couldn’t quite see into. And it wasn’t the violence that had him on edge. No, he could handle that, as goddamn mad as he’d become lately; he just didn’t want to get caught. The idea of doing hard time behind bars was as unappetizing as nibbling a piece of cold, hard bread on a fucking Salvation Army cot, and he already knew that reality. He fingered his shirt pocket, searching out the pack of smokes, scanning the room like a snake easing into a rat hole. All he had to do now was figure out which rat it was gonna be.

  He’d been rooming at the Army for a little less than a week and even in that short time most of the faces had come and gone. Seems most didn’t hang on long around here, the call of drugs or booze too much to handle. And the Salvationists didn’t let you do that shit right here under their noses. But that didn’t matter for Sautin, however, because drugs nor booze had ever been a problem. Just everything else.

  In the dim light of the cheap 40 watts he studied the faces he knew: Lucky, that dumb sonofabitch, forty going on eighty. Or Mitch, Jesus Christ, he claimed to be an electrical engineer and could barely count the change in his pockets. Not those two, no way. Sautin needed brains. Not much, but some. So there was Nicky, and his head seemed all right, but his moods were tricky. And that dickhead Boz; he was already close to getting his ass kicked if he said much more.

  Sautin flicked a match to life with his thumbnail, the cigarette one of the last five in his pack. It had to be quick, this also according to the goon. ’Fuckin day before yestadee,’ he’d smirked, almost smiling again. It pissed Sautin off now just thinking about that asshole. He looked to the left, at Pauly. Just like the goofy fucking brother from Rocky, only bigger. Dumber maybe, but that probably wouldn’t matter. Probably. He breathed out a plume of smoke and stared down at his knees, shaking his head.

  The moment ran back through his mind, as it had continuously since early afternoon. He’d been standing by the bus stop, ready to get on and go anywhere rather than sit another idle minute where he was. Because, after all, that was another thing those sweet Salvationists didn’t smile on: sitting around on your ass all day waiting for the dinner bell. The cot was free but management didn’t take things much further than that. God, it’d been hot. He remembered spotting the kid a little after two, twenty fuckin minutes after the bus should have been there. Obviously the fucking drivers didn’t give a shit about posted schedules.

  And at first he almost believed the guy wasn’t staring at him. Why should he? Sautin had on one of his two remaining pair of dirty jeans, gracing the street in a sleeveless T-shirt with absolutely nothing on that. Just Nobody, nowhere, but after a second and closely-followed third glance it was apparent the guy was looking not just his way, but directly at him. Some stocky, smirking bastard, dressed-down and younger (if only by a few years) than Sautin himself. He’d returned a lethal glare and sat down on the bench close by. No one else had been waiting.

  It didn’t take long for the asshole to cross the street and walk over. And as Sautin studied him, he realized the guy really wasn’t a stranger at all. Or not quite. As the goon dodged through a smattering of traffic at the crosswalk, Sautin became certain he had seen the face before, several times as a matter of fact, lingering in the street outside the Army. Probably just some fucking fag, a dope pusher, but who knew? His spine hardened and when the punk got close Sautin said:

  “What the fuck you want?”

  It appeared to take the guy by surprise but not by much. In fact, if anything, the young player looked a little slicker on this side of the street than he had from a distance. He held out his hands in a sarcastic pantomime of fear. “Hey buddy, nothing,” he answered sarcastically. “Came to catch the fuckin bus,” to which Sautin immediately knew the fuck was lying. The clothes spoke enough themselves, even without the attitude. This motherfucker didn’t ride buses.

  The kid had his back turned then. “I seen you a coupla times at the Corner,” he said, looking far down the block as if something much more interesting was taking place down there. Sautin had already been at the Salvation Army long enough to know its street moniker. “Hard fuckin times, looks like,” the kid added, turning his head to look at Sautin again.

  It was then Sautin started to his feet and the kid got a quick look of surprise and backed out into the street. “Hey man, be cool, man. I ain’t faggot. Keep your fuckin shirt on, why doan’cha?”

  “I’m waitin for the goddamn bus,” Sautin replied, stepping closer. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re doin.”

  The guy stepped back to the curb. “Yeah, well. Hot as a motherfucker, ain’t it? Get on the bus and let the breeze blow your hair, right? Like you’re in fuckin Hawaii, right?”

  Something deadly in Sautin’s face toned the goon’s rhetoric down a notch. Regardless, Sautin didn’t sit back down. He edged one foot closer. The other guy held tight, although the twitch in his cheek belied his initial confidence. “Hey man, I said be cool! No shit!” The kid held out his hands honestly now. The smirk had retreated to a spot somewhere far back in his sweating hairline. “I ain’t here ta fuck wit‘cha, b’lieve it. You wanna make some fuckin money or what?”

  “Who the fuck’s askin?”

  “Names doan matter,” the guy said reaching into his front pocket. Sautin’s eyes followed. “But money talks,” the goon added and took out a surprising wad of cash. Sautin’s expression never changed. His hands stayed put. The youth’s eyes flashed, forming a question his lips didn’t ask. The thin smile wavered. “So?” he suggested. “Int’rested?”

  And Sautin had eventually nodded.

  Now, sitting on the bunk smelling the bite of disinfectant and the oily mix of farts and dirty socks which made their continual circuit, he’d had plenty of time to think. He’d been around long enough to spot a chickenshit when he saw one, and they didn’t get much worse than that one. Sautin had read it in his eyes, seen it in his twitching cheek. But on to the business…

  It seemed there was an antique store, Mel’s Past, not far from here where Mel lived. He’d apparently made himself disagreeable to certain, vindictive, though unknown persons. Said trouble involving drugs, money…fuck, Sautin didn’t care if it was fuckin kiddie porn. Guy supposedly lived above the gallery in a small two-room apartment. The punk wanted Sautin to bang the guy around, bust up his place, and grab the drugs that were (supposedly) inside. Fucking laughable.

  As he rocked back and forth on the paper-thin mattress, smoking a solid chain of cigarettes and studying any man’s face he could bring to light, Sautin wondered, deliciously, how he could turn what information he had to his advantage. There were many factors involved: the risk of capture front and foremost, of course, and then deceit, another man’s cowardice, and perhaps most importantly, the rock-bottom, mudhole poverty which had become wholly insupportable for him. He’d been feeling tinges lately, little warning flashes that time was running out. Somehow, someway. If he was going to make a go at the Big Time, rather than remaining an itinerant, hot-headed roustabout, it was goddamn time!

  He dropped the cigarette into the tray beside the bed. Well, what about the real weirdo? he thought finally, getting to the end of his line. The guy who’d come in late last night? He was young enough, sure, probably stupid enough to serve as a patsy. The fucking egghead that afternoon had suggested breaking in at night, but what did he know? The first sure sign of an amateur. Guys his age hadn’t done enough to go pawning jobs like this off on complete strangers. He was just a cracked step on the ladder, and Sautin would find out where it led afterward. Of that he was sure.

  Surprisingly, the thunder and lightning had died down while he worried his problem. No doubt showers would fall, but the hint of serious thunderstorms seemed to be fading. He’d told the punk he’d give his answer tomo
rrow. First thing in the morning. Only thing left to do now was decide which one of these losers was best suited for a Fall. The knife was already right where he liked it: in his boot.

  Chapter 6:Groundwork

  He ran down to the convenience store on the corner first thing in the morning for a pack of Dorals. Fucking cheap nigger weed and smelled like shit but that’s what the meathead smoked. Name of Darrell, as it turned out. Sautin had studied him until lights out and the more he saw the more he liked. Guy was quiet, kept to himself. He didn’t appear timid, though, and that was good, but he stuck to the shadows. Hadn’t talked to anyone Sautin was aware of.

  And as he hurried along the dirty sidewalk he knew that was the way in. The dude had gone to bed fairly late, and Sautin didn’t figure him for the early riser. Once again it was just a feeling, but as of late these things were getting stronger.

  He twisted his wrist, glancing at the scratched and foggy watch crystal. A little past seven and only a block from the Army. Plenty of time to get this thing rolling, and it didn’t even really matter if Darrell had plans of bugging out today or not. He’d be there for breakfast (the guy was ragged and thin, and he’d wolfed down dinner last night like a ravenous pack of dogs). Sautin felt sure by the time the last bite of eggs went down he’d have the fucker right where he wanted him.

  He pulled up by a lamppost a stones’ throw from the Corner. He skinned the cellophane and foil wrapper from the pack and shook four cigarettes into his hand. He put these in with the half-pack of Marlboros he already had in his inside jacket pocket because illusion (he felt) had need fit as closely the truth as possible. And if he had to smoke a few shitty cigarettes to put the close on this deal, well that was just the cost of doing business. He stuck the cigarettes back in his pocket, set his jaw and rounded the corner to get some breakfast.