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The Spy Network

by Vietnam II

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1.
2.
Florence Lawrence (free) 02:11
3.
The Drummer 03:04
4.
Song 9 02:28
5.
6.
Famous 02:26
7.
8.
9.
Brett Zehner 01:52
10.
The Flag 02:58
11.

about

The Spy Network
an LP from Vietnam II
Recorded in New York, NY and Columbus, OH
All songs written by Jamarr Mays and Eddie Palmer
Artwork by Nat Hagey

Untitled Story by Barry Burton
The doctor told Ernie that the wound in his foot probably wouldn’t heal without a new kidney. His physical therapist told him that if the wound didn’t heal, he could forget standing. A prosthetist said there was no point getting a prosthetic leg if he couldn’t stand on the one he had left. Without two legs to get around on, he had to use his scooter.
This junky ass purple thing the Medicaid People sent him after they took his leg. By the second day, it had developed a squeak. No matter how much grease his neighbor Tom put on the wheels, it was squeak-squeak-squeak wherever he went.
Tom came with Ernie’s wife Sharla to the nursing home to ‘see what he could do’. Ever since they’d been neighbors with Tom, he’d always been ‘seeing what he could do’. About the four mutts he owned that barked endlessly at anyone who passed his yard; about the walnut tree that leaned into their back yard and dropped its fruit onto their grass every fall, and at least once per year their beagle ate one and had to be taken to the vet and treated for the poison; now, the squeak in his scooter, not at all his responsibility, and yet here he was, forty-five minutes from their neighborhood in the front lawn of Green Pasture Homes, bent over his upturned purple scooter, wiping his brow with the side of his faded hat, tools gleaming on the sidewalk in the morning light.
“Looks like the chassis been bent,” said Tom, more to Sharla than Ernie.
Sharla nodded and took a drag from her cigarette, a habit she’d picked up in last few weeks, because she’s been stressed, apparently.
Ernie on a steel bench a good twenty feet from the two, watching them interact.
“See here,” Tom pointed at something along the underside of the scooter’s frame.
Sharla leaned forward to see, mere inches from their neighbor’s shoulder. At this moment, they looked like a couple, who’d come out to see their poor cousin Ernie, who had no other family, who hadn’t the money or the know-how to fix his own damn scooter.
“Stress marks. Here and here,” Tom said. “Now look at this.” Tom tugged at Sharla’s sleeve–Ernie could hardly believe what he was seeing–and pulled her around to the topside of the scooter. “He sits here, right?”
Sharla nodded again, this time slower, perhaps not sure what he was getting at. Ernie knew.
“Look at the stress marks. Off to the right, amiright?”
Sharla looked back them, nodded.
“But factor in his lost left leg. This is where his center of gravity hits the chassis.”
Sharla took another drag, and nodded stupidly, then “Ohhhhhhhh,” smoke billowing out of her like an exhaust pipe. “Can you fix it?”
“I could try to bend the chassis back, but it’d probably just weaken the metal. These things are cheap. Made in China. Be best to just get another, with a sturdier chassis.”
Every time Tom said chassis, Ernie’s blood boiled.
They were watching him now, whispering.
“Honey, are you okay?”
Was he scowling? He was scowling.
“Yep,” Ernie said. “It’s no use right? Like I’d said?”
They left Ernie in the middle of the hallway with a boltcutter in his arms. Sharla had wanted to carry it down to Ernie’s room, but that would have meant bringing Tom. He kept insisting he would be fine, trying not to sound mad. Ernie didn’t want Tom to see his junky room. He didn’t want there to be any excuse for him to stay one moment longer, or have a reason to come back to try to fix something else.
Walking away from him, they were nearly shoulder to shoulder, like a couple. Ernie thought about driving to the entrance door, watching them stroll out to the car to see he catch them holding hands or even kissing when they thought no one would be watching. His gut stabbed him as he pictured Sharla’s lips planted on Tom’s, who they used to call the Parking Nazi, because he’d call the city on a car left on the street more than 72 hours.
They’d be expecting him in Laundry in ten minutes. Any tardiness and he’d forfeit half his work credits, which meant he’d have to tack on another duty today to make his room and board. He called the Medicaid People about this nonsense and they said it was completely legal. As long as he could work, Green Pasture Homes was allowed to require him to as part of his eligibility for services.
When Ernie got to his room, he tossed the boltcutter on the pile of clothes on the floor of his closet. They no longer fit him, so he hadn’t bothered taking them to Laundry. He tore a rain jacket off its hanger and threw it over the skillet. He didn’t want a nurse or aide stumbling onto it. He knew they came in throughout the day, and sometimes went through his stuff. Twenty dollars was missing from his wallet after he’d left it on the nightstand one afternoon. Another day, he found the tuning dial of his weather radio a smidge off the station he kept it on. Cups moved, drawers left askew.
Another imagine of Tom and Sharla flashed in his mind, this time in their bed, his wife sucking on a cigarette with a peaceful look on her face. Ernie tore down handfuls of garments off their hangers, snapping a few. He left the pile for Laundry with two minutes to spare. The Director could kiss his ass if she thought he was going to take out the trash today. Last time he had to do that it took him four hours and left a rancid stench on his scooter for days. He’d drive his scooter in front of a speeding car before he agreed take that job again.
In Laundry, Ernie found Janet hunched over a cart filled to the brim with unfolded linens. She reminded Ernie of an old turtle, if it’d been scorched by the sun and dressed in a white curly wig.
“Well look who the cat drug in!” Janet said. A lifetime of smoking had shaped her voice into what amounted to gravel spun in a blender.
Ernie slapped a pack of Virginia Slims on the scoured steel table beside her. “What’d your son say about the van?”
Janet’s grin was too white and straight to fit the abuse her teeth must’ve gone through. “All bizness, eh?” She slipped the cigarettes into her shirt pocket. “He’s on tour with his band for another month. The van is prolly just sittin in the driveway, where I left it bafore he dropped me off at this dump.”
“Do you have the keys?” Ernie remembered the overhead cameras. He rolled the scooter over to the opposing steel table, and began picking laundry out of the nearby cart. He knew the cameras weren’t mic’ed, because a few times now Janet had come in drunk, her waterbottle spiked with vodka. She’d said as much as so far hadn’t been reprimanded or pulled from her duties.
“Yeah. I keep a spare in my lockbox. Say, whatcha need the van for anyway?”
“If I tell you, you’d be implicated,” Ernie said.
“Well shit, Ernie,” she said. “You say it like that, and I’m led to believe you ain’t gonna come back.”
“Of course I’ll be back. I’ve got dialysis tomorrow. The nurse said she wants to cut on me again. Plenty of reasons to stay here.” Ernie fought to keep the image of Sharla and Tom out of his head. Maybe she had just happened to talk with Tom on her way to the mailbox last week, and maybe their conversation just happened drift to Ernie’s broken scooter. Maybe that’s all it was, coincidence. Like how Ernie’s kidneys shut down with much warning last year, mere weeks after he’d been laid off. Sharla’s health insurance was shit, so they kissed most of their savings goodbye. Two years and an amputation later, he had an open wound on his foot from stepping on a nail that had loosened from their floorboards. Coincidence seemed to be running his life, eating away at him, bit by bit.
“Gaddam you’ve got a long face. Your wife leave you or somethin?” Janet had a way of cutting through the bullshit that Ernie liked, but that was too close, too fresh.
“Mind your own fucking business, Janet.” His jaw ached from clenching. He wouldn’t say anymore. If she couldn’t or wouldn’t give him the keys, then maybe this was it. Maybe Ernie would develop an infection of his other foot and they’d lop it off too. Maybe he’d develop sepsis and they’d place him on hospice. Maybe he’d die here, among the other old and decrepid residents, mostly just bodies to the staff, propped up by overpriced medicines. Sharla, like everyone else’s family would quietly prepare for their exit, praying for this degrading part to be swift. Tom would move in and Ernie would be a handful of pictures on a shelf, a hazy recollection of another time for Sharla.
Janet barely flinched. She hobbled over to her frayed teal backpack, dug out her headphone and slipped them over her ears.
Back to work, then. There be a lot of work to do today.
* * *
Ernie’d gotten the idea a couple weeks ago. An old man with terrible scoliosis drew a rickety concession trailer onto Green Pasture Home’s rear pull-around where the ambulances parked. A nurse, smoking on one of the stone benches stubbed out her cigarette and hurried inside. A resident stooped over like Janet with much healthier skin closed her book and began digging through her purse. The old man limped out of his pickup and hung up a crude paper sign with ‘Ice Cream!’ written in sharpie, then entered the trailer.
By the time he’d opened the window, there were three nurses and five residents lined up with cash in their hands. Ernie watched the old man collect over a hundred dollars in an hour, scooping out store-bought ice cream into paper cups and cheap waffle cones. An ambulance wailed in the distance, the first sign to leave, so the old man pulled the clapboard window shut, climbed back into the pickup, and drove the business out of the pull-around and over to the bus stop, fifty feet away. Even one of the EMTs came over and bought ice cream after they’d pushed their stretcher into the ambulance. The residents flocked the trailer again, and the man did a hundred dollars more worth of business before taking off.
If Uncle Verne were still alive, he’d have lent Ernie his food trailer. Failing that, he’d’ve loaned him the cash to buy his own. Verne knew a good business venture when he saw it, and between the two nursing homes and an office park in Pickaway County, this was a gold mine. The other kicker for Ernie was there didn’t seem to be any foodtruck laws, at least not enforced. Ernie watched a cop pull right up to the rickety trailer, and the old man handed the two police officers a cup of ice cream each, free of charge. That was his license.
Since Uncle Verne’s passing, his Fancy Donut and Diner MobileTM trailer was collecting dust in his half-sister’s barn, Marge. Ernie had considered calling her, but he didn’t think she’d be receptive to the idea. She hadn’t been receptive when Ernie had asked her to keep the brick-and-mortar restaurant open for Ernie to take over once his health had rebounded. She knew he’d worked with Uncle Verne before and knew the business, knew that he and Sharla were struggling, but she firmly rejected the idea. The building was sold off within a few months of his passing, and the trailer would have been too, had she listed it at a reasonable price.
What kind of money could he make with the Fancy Donut and Diner MobileTM trailer in three months’ time? Enough to pay off their debts? If Ernie made what the old man selling ice cream at both nursing homes, five days a week, he’d be close. More likely, he’d make more, because he’d be selling real food, which was in serious short supply in these nursing homes. Enough to buy one of those artificial kidneys he kept seeing advertisements for? Possibly, possibly.
Not a half-mile down the road from Green Pasture Homes, Ernie found Janet’s handicap-accessible van at the end of her son’s gravel driveway, next to a peeling doublewide on cinderblocks.
Ernie heard rocks catch in the scooter’s wheelwell, thought the machine might be about to lock to a grinding halt, but then a loud crack erupted from the underside, the purple frame shuddering as it pelted out stones and went on squeaking–squeak-squeak-squeak-crack-squeak….
The van wasn’t so old. From the looks of the tires, it’d been driven recently. A white Ford with crater in the right side of the back bumper. Janet’s long-time boyfriend rode it around until his legs could no longer pump the pedals, and he decided that was the time to say good-bye. Apprently he didn’t want to end up at a place like Green Pasture Homes.
Ernie thumbed the key fob and the back doors unlocked, slowly began to swing open. When he saw the inside, his heart sank. The van was packed with band equipment–amps, a drum kit, old destrung guitars, mic stands, and tangles of wire. It would be a miracle if he could clear a path to the steering wheel by morning. Ernie pressed the wheelchair ramp button, and the floor below several amps shook and groaned, but nothing moved. The band equipment was in disarray and piled high to the ceiling, as if it’d been thrown in, maybe from a series of garage sales by the state of it all.
Ernie tried pulling one of the amps down to the ground. He strained and grunted, but it wouldn’t budge, not under all the weight of the other equipment. Plus he’d gotten weak. He wondered if could even pull himself off the floor if he’d fell now, with these twig arms and the extra weight he’d packed on around his midsection.
His other option was to try to pull himself to the driver’s seat. This was not ideal. It would mean leaving his scooter behind, which, as shitty as it was, was essential for getting anywhere.
Ernie pictured Uncle Verne encountering this problem. He could be brash at times, but he got things done, even in near-impossible situations. There was the time his uncle took him out fishing on Lake Erie. He’d taken their little boat down the coast to a secluded alcove where the shallow-water bass were so numerous they’d filled half the cooler in just a few hours. It reminded Ernie of one of thos fishing shows, where the fishing pro caught something every few minutes. When they were set to leave, the outboard motor wouldn’t start. Within a few minutes, he set Ernie to whittling down a piece of drift wood with his pocketknife to the rough shape of an oar, and a couple hours later, they were in sight of the dock they’d left that same morning. That was Uncle Verne, full of solutions.
Ernie drove around to the driver-side door and opened it, and sure enough, found a car seat ducktaped before the steering wheel, probably Janet’s son’s doing. Often in these handicap cars–Ernie might’ve bought one if he had any money left to his name–the driver’s seat is actually taken out, so you can pull a scooter or wheelchair right up to the steering wheel and drive by hand. Gas and brake are often hand-operated, in case the driver doesn’t have a fully functional right foot.
The one idea came to Ernie right now–if he could pull himself into the driver’s seat of the van–was setting the van in gear, and taking off down the gravel rod, to try and shake all the band equipment loose. The gravel lot next to the doublewide was even big enough he could try to pull a donut and fling the contents out, to make room for his scooter.
The moon was bright and high as Ernie threw a flabby, bruised arm over the dusty car seat, the other hand gripped fiercely to the wheel, and pulled with all his might. His butt lifted maybe three inches off his scooter seat, his body shook, and then–squeak–he plopped back down.
He could hear his uncle in his ear. That all you got? Don’t you care about anything anymore, son?
Remembering that tan, bald fuck Tom tug on his wife’s shirt out on the Green Pasture Homes’ front lawn. That gave him a boost. That and yelling. Really loud. That felt good as he ripped his body forward and up, into that ducktaped seat. He was nearly there. Stuck, somehow… his leg. Caught under the scooter’s steering wheel. He pushed with his remaining foot–the one he’d been told under absolutely no circumstances to put pressure on–and felt himself rise higher, and at the same time a sharp stabbing pain shot up through his heel and into his lower leg.
Fuck it.
Ernie was there, he was in the driver’s seat. His foot hurt and his leg shook from the pain, but he’d made it, and–
Shit.
A light inside the doublewide had popped on.
Ernie started the car.
A scrawny tan woman–like a young Janet–came banging out of the doublewide.
“The cops are on their way, asshole!” The woman held something up with a bright little light glaring through the dusk between them–a cellphone. She was recording him.
So much for getting his scooter. Ernie pressed the gas and the van’s engine roared, but vehicle hardly moved. In his rearview, Ernie saw smoke billow up, and gravel shot into the trees–crack, crack.
Ernie slowly pushed up the gravel drive, certain he would be arrested tonight. The scrawny burnt woman guffawed, walking closer, still filming him. She had a cigarrete in her mouth. Smoke chugged out as she barked with laughter.
“You are so fucked, man!”
Ernie thought he heard sirens wailing in the distance. He was fucked. But he’d already been fucked. This was just one more chapter of a succession of fucks Ernie endured… first when his kidneys quit, then the Medicaid People, then Green Pasture Homes, then fucking Tom. His blood boiled thinking about that man, poaching his wife while he rotted away in the nursing home.
Now the police. The police were coming.
The parking brake. Ernie found it hidden among the handicap hand controllers. He punched it and the van lurched forward. Thuds and crashes erupted as the band equipment fell out the back of the van, rolled down the gravel drive.
Ernie saw the scrawny woman was no longer laughing. She was running after a drum that tumbled down into a ravine.
Ernie swerved right onto the road–back the way he’d came, knowing the police would most likely approach from the station on the left, about a mile down. One of the remaining amps popped as it fell onto the asphalt, making brief sparks as it tumbled. A few mic stands and guitars slid out after, the van mostly clear now. That would stall them, Ernie hoped.
But they would catch him. Ernie’d left his wallet in the front basket of the scooter.
Add destruction of private property and possibly motor vehicle theft to the list.
Just a couple more way Ernie was fucked.
He wondered if his uncle might’ve handled that any smoother.
***
Mere seconds after he’d turned down the alley next to Green Pasture Homes, a cop car went whizzing by, lights and sirens ablaze, headed the opposite way.
He slowed the van to a stop in the nursing home’s rear parking lot, where most of the employees parked. In the early evening, there were only a handful of cars. Ernie could see a few residents out on the back lawn, struggling to finish their lawncare duties before the 9 PM curfew. Halfway across the grass, in the shadow of a great maple tree, a stone bench sat empty. He’d hoped to catch Janet there, smoking, as she often did. Lure her out with a few flashes from the hi-beams. She might be old, a little backwoods, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d come hobbling out, knowing it was Ernie, marooned in her late boyfriend’s van.
Janet hadn’t mentioned there’d be a woman at the house. Perhaps it was her son’s girlfriend, or maybe a family member of Janet’s, given the resemblance. Regardless of who she was, the misunderstanding and the state of the band equipment would land him in hot water. Given the scrawny tan woman’s reaction, he wondered if Janet was even in possession of the van. Why would she be, if she’d been dumped off at a place like this? But if that were true, then, Janet would know that. So… had she known all along? Was this what she wanted for him, a felony for motor vehicle theft? Had she played him like the Medicaid People, when they told him Green Pasture Homes would be the best fit for him?
A sharp knock on the driver-side window startled Ernie.
It was Janet, squinting up at him. He rolled the window down. “Hey, asshole. What the hell are you doing, just sitting out here like a Peeping Tom in my van?”
“Why didn’t you tell me someone was home?”
Janet took a long drag on her cigarette and blew smoke into the window. “Home? Shouldn’t be nobody home. Who the hell was at my house?”
“I thought you said it was your son’s house.” It was strange looking down on Janet. From this vantage point, he could see her burnt scalp in patches beneath her white curly hair. This made her look more ridiculous, somehow, than from his scooter, where his eyes often fell on the leathery skinfolds of her neck, the occasional white hair spiraling out.
“He owns it, but I bought it. Could’na kept it and stayed here on the Medicaid People’s dime.” There was an impatient tone in her gravely voice. “Who the fuck was at my house, Ernie?”
“Some skinny woman with straw-colored hair.”
Janet’s eyes narrowed and Ernie heard the familiar squeak dentures gritting together. “That bitch. She’s got no bizness bein in my house. What’d she say when you took the van?”
Ernie told her how he’d found the van full of equipment, panicked when the woman came running out of the house, flung the contents out the back when he took off up the driveway. He added he thought her yell something about the police.
Janet shook her head.“She shouldn’t be there. And he shoulda asked bafore packin the van with his junk.”
“Should I be worried about the police?”
“I dunno, Ernie, whatcha got planned this ol van of mine? You gonna rob a bank or somethin?”
“I’m taking my uncle’s trailer back.”
“More theft, eh?” Janet had the same evil grin she had when she talked about breaking into the Med Safe. Apparently she knew a guy who’d figured out the password.
“It was supposed to be left to me. My uncle’s half-sisters letting it rot away on her ranch.”
“How ya gonna do that with no scooter? Ya learn ta fly while you were gone?”
“I thought maybe you could help me out with that.”
Faint sirens sounded in the distance.
“You’re gonna owe me big, a-hole. More than cigarettes. I’m thinking a lifetime of whatever-the-hell-I-want from this food operation of yours.” And Janet hobbled off into the back lawn, the shadows of the great maples swallowing her burnt, hunched body.
***
Ernie had to take back roads from the alley after Janet loaded the rickety wheelchair into the back of the van. She’d said she didn’t know about the hitch. Her boyfriend Stanely had had his friend install it, so it might hold the trailer, or it might not.
The full moon stared at Ernie the whole way up to Marge’s ranch. Sharla was always one to comment on the moon’s appearance, make mention of some thing it reminded her of, like a banana or an egg. When it was full like this, the moon took on a persona, like proud or shy, depending on its visibility. Sometimes Ernie drew rough sketches of the moon for Sharla when she worked late, her cubicle about far from a good window as you could get, sometimes with a goofy one-word suggestion, like hangnail? or willy? Sometimes a sketch of them arm in arm on a hill under the moon (Come walk?) was enough to draw her out early, sometimes the pressure of a deadline was too great for any imploring sketch.
He’d gotten out of the habit of doing that since coming to Green Pasture Homes. The sheer exhaustion of his health problems, the complications he’d had with the stump of his amputated leg, the scooter, coordinating dialysis on top of it all, hadn’t put him in the mood to be sweet with his wife. In fact, he’d been nasty at times, when she’d offered to help him in ways he’d found degrading, like clipping his toenails. He’d been short, ignored her at times, pushed to away when all she’d been trying to do was help. The past two years had been hard on her as well, Ernie knew that, blowing through her sick time and then her vacation to take him to appointments, canceling trips to see her mother, who wasn’t in great health either, a trip with her friends she’d had planned for over a year. He’d noticed gray hairs crop up on her head, a weariness in her face that hadn’t been there before. And then, of course, the smoking. She’d quit in their first years together, and now she back at it, almost twenty years later. They’d both have a rough ride, but only Ernie’s problems were discussed–his unemployment, his kidneys, his stump, his wound, his temporary–not so temporary–stay at Green Pasture Homes.
And now when Ernie thought about Sharla, the question of Tom arose. Had sparks flown between them in his absence, or was he imagining things, like people not taking him seriously ever since he lost his leg? Doctors and nurses often wanted Sharla there when discussing important information, as if they hadn’t trusted him to tell her. Sharla said that was typical, but he didn’t know. He’d been relatively healthy before all this started. Tom’s wife passed away many years ago in a car accident, and it seemed like he’d never dated anyone, never had any interest in anyone since. Had he just been holding out for Sharla this whole time? Ernie did recall that Mr Parking Nazi hadn’t had Sharla’s friend’s car towed when they stayed at their house for a week, never even asked about it. Not the case with Ernie. He couldn’t imagine what Sharla saw in Tom–if she did see something–other than they were about the same age. Tom was a lumpy sort of guy, with a big head and a big nose, big hands and feet, long arms and legs, a paunch in between. He slouched, even when he stood, adding to his lumpiness. Ernie thought he spoke lumpy and had lumpy ideas, too. Like when he’d suggested that the walnuts were no longer his property once they’d left his tree. What could Sharla see someone like that? But maybe Ernie didn’t know Sharla as well as he thought he did anymore. Maybe all his problems had changed her, maybe she wanted to be with a lump now.
A horn blared behind Ernie as he merged onto the outerbelt, nearly colliding with a red Camaro. The man swerved into the adjacent lane and gave him the finger, then sped off into the night.
The van’s alignment was off, and Ernie felt his sugar getting low. His arms shook as he gripped the steering wheel, trying to keep it the lane lines.
He could stop home for food, but Sharla was sure to ask questions.
Where did you get this van? Where are you going? Where is your scooter?
Ernie’d never been a liar, not to anyone he loved.
Plus, what if–
She and Tom were–
No, he couldn’t think like that. Thoughts like that were like flailing in quicksand.
He just had to trust Sharla. Trust that they still had it.
But the way he felt right now, there was no way he’d be in good enough shape to roll out of the van and cut the locks off the trailer, let alone hitch it to the van.
Of course he’d left his wallet in the scooter.
That wouldn’t have stopped Uncle Verne. He pictured him in the fishing boat, tapping his temple with a dirty finger. Use your brain, son.
* * *
Ernie went to the nearest 7-11, about ten miles out from Marge’s ranch. He crawled across the van’s dirty floor to the wheelchair, and, with surprising effort and more pushing on that wounded foot of his, pulled himself into the seat. He looked exactly how he’d wanted to when he rolled into the brightlit store–dirty, pale, out of breath, in need of assistance. All he had to do was tell the clerk he was diabetic, and she rushed off to the soda fountain machine to pour him all the liquid sugar he wanted.
After he drank down the first cup, she went back and filled it again. She was a big woman, whose curves moved as much as her legs when she was in a hurry.
“Now don’t drink this one less you get low again. Otherwise you be even worse off than when you came in.”
It was clear she’d dealt with this before, either at her job or at home. Ernie thanked her and wheeled out, trying not to draw attention to the difficulty he was having propelling the chair, because the wheels stuck and his arms weren’t in shape. She followed him out and watched him enter the van by the rear lift, and he hoped she wasn’t memorizing his license plate.
And not even two minutes down the road, Ernie’s sugar back to normal levels, was he questioning his original plan to “borrow” Marge’s food trailer. He’d realized he hadn’t thought it out, beyond securing Janet’s van and bringing along bolt cutters to free the locks, assuming it still had the same type of locks Uncle Verne had put on it originally. He hadn’t even considered Marge’s dogs. Two rottweilers, each with their own doghouse that sat under hundred-foot oaks between her house and the barn. They were chained, but Ernie had heard their bloodthirsty barks before he’d even passed the house the one time he and Sharla visited Marge, for a cookout that mostly Uncle Verne had organized.
Marge was already well-off from a late husband who worked in the energy field. She dumped thousands into professional landscaping to make her yard look like the cover of a Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Inside she had granite countertops, newly refinished wood floors, antique furniture. Ernie recalled her holding her breath anytime he or Sharla went over to look at something, a hundred year old chair or a painting. She didn’t like us there, she’d done it simply to appease Verne.
Those dogs definitely hadn’t wanted them there. They barked at everyone in sight, so loud and persistently that no one wanted to sit on the back patio. Uncle Verne had tossed them some meat from time to time, but that only appeased them for a few minutes.
Even if Ernie drove the van off the driveway and through a little clearing to avoid Marge’s house, he’d still have to contend with the dogs when he hooked up the trailer. If Marge were home, which Ernie expected her to be, she’d call the police as soon as she heard them barking, and he’d be in handcuffs in ten minutes or less.
It was a stupid idea.
It was a desperate one.
About as desperate as Ernie knocking on front door to plead to borrow the trailer. Just for a cut of the profits. If he said 50/50, she’d negotiate him down to 40/60. If she went in out, she would want regular reports. Receipts of purchase. Continuous signs that the business venture were serving her interest.
And there was her long gravel driveway. Ernie pulled onto it not sure if he was going to veer left through the clearing or go straight to the front door.
As he drifted down its gentle slope, he could already hear faint barking, either imagined or already alerted by his presence. He kept on the driveway, through a grapevined archway and a corridor of laurel.
The barking was getting louder. Ernie stopped the car and turned off the engine.
Over the barking, Ernie heard the faint sounds of two people arguing. They were yelling, but over the barking and sounds of insects, their voices came to him like severe whispers, like two parents bickering in the night.
This probably wasn’t a good time to go to Marge’s front door to plead for the trailer.
Ernie started the van back up and reversed up the drive.
Several gunshots rang out before he’d passed through the archway.
Like Ernie, the insects held their breath for what felt like an eternity.
* * *
What the fuck was he doing?
He’d back to van up to the driveway to where he could turn into the clearing and gassed it down the slope. In the clearing, he cut the engine and the lights and just coasted through the dark, hoping the way was as he remembered.
Ernie drifted through the stretch of flat ground where they’d played crochet. He remembered the sour look on Marhes face when Uncle Verne suggested it, rings and mallets in his burly arms, voice booming. The guests’ eagerness to get the hell out of her stuffy house was too much to refuse. Marge’s late husband was buried under an oak tree at the edge of the clearing, right before the property sloped into the creek. She put her foot down when someone’s crochet ball knocked into her husband’s headstone. Uncle Verne moved the nearby ring, but Marge’s mood had already been spoiled.
There were more gunshots, very loud now–kackow, kackow–and the barking had ceased.
The van kept on drifting. Snapping branches told Ernie he was near the barn, gliding under a pair of walnut trees behind it. He could’ve been fifty hundred feet from the barn or seconds away from crashing into it. The darkness was complete, and he knew it would be a mistake to flip on the lights, even the dimmers this close to whatever bad shit was going down at Marge’s house.
Really, what the fuck was he doing?
The van slowed to a halt.
Ernie leaned his head out the window, into the chorus of insect-filled blackness.
A woman was weaping.
Glass shattering. The weaping ceased.
Ernie found himself lowering out of the driver-side door onto the grass. He had the boltcutters in one hand, and the other gripped a tuft of grass, pulling him along.
Ernie army-crawled towards the noise a good twenty feet before his hand touched a roughened panel of barn wood. He was lucky he hadn’t crashed into the thing. Anymore gas from the engine and he’d’ve smashed into the back of the barn, and within seconds later he might have been staring down a barrel himself.
He still might.
When Ernie had crawled around to the carport, floodlights from Marge’s back patio caught the sillhouette of a person standing over two darkened shapes before the dog houses.
The sillhouette fell to their knees and wept. It was a woman.
Another shadowy figure banged out of the back door, arms full of something, and walking out onto the patio. Definitely a man, thin, with a big head.
He hissed something at the woman kneeling before the dogs.
She didn’t didn’t seem to hear him. Big Head turned around and dropped the load with a thud into the pickup backed up to the front door.
Marge was no where to be seen. Ernie wondered if she was inside. Maybe they’d killed her already. They were clearly coldblooded enough to off the dogs.
Big Head went over Robber Woman and tried to pull her up. He tugged on her arm, said something in an angry tone Ernie couldn’t make out. She wouldn’t get off her knees. The dead dogs clearly disturbed her.
Big Head gave up and went back into the house. More glass shattering. Robber woman got off her knees and ran into the house.
Ernie didn’t know what to do. He pulled himself over to the barn’s side door, found it ajar, the opening edge warped like it’d been pried open.
So they’d already been in the barn.
He peeked inside. A light was on, but it was empty. He heard them bickering again, so he pulled himself inside and closed the door.
Inside, Ernie spotted the trailer on the other side of the barn. A set of tools, a hammer, and a crowbar lay in front of the door. Even from here, he could see that they’d mutilated the door trying to get in. The door’s swinging edge was curled out from attempts with the crowbar. The door’s handle hung vertical and marred from beatings with the hammer. Ernie couldn’t figure out why they’d tried so hard to get in, when it looked like a regular concession trailer from the outside.
Unless they’d perhaps known Marge, known that the trailer had been Uncle Verne’s, and inside sat about 30K worth of food appliances. Uncle Verne had lots of friends, some not so savory. It wouldn’t surprise Ernie to know one of them had planned a heist after his passing, knowing his wealthy half-sister wouldn’t see it coming.
To Ernie’s right against the barn wall sat a pile of boxes, the kind of varying sizes that suggested things of sentimental value that Marge didn’t want to see but couldn’t throw away. Probably her late husband’s things. His golf clubs, plaques, and clothes. Or maybe Uncle Verne’s. Ahead of that was Uncle Verne’s John Deer riding mower. It was covered in dust. To the left, on a concrete slab were the cars, behind their three doors. Uncle Verne’s Ford Blazer, Marge’s husband’s Cadillac, and Marge’s Acura. Marge had another temple, made mostly of furniture, covered in plastic and tied round with a spool of rope next to the trailer.
Ernie heard the back door of Marge’s house creak open and bang shut. He scrambled on his belly towards the tower of boxes, felt the rocks slice his forearms and knee as he pulled and kicked with surprising speed. Footsteps on the gravel approached the barn’s side door.
Ernie had just pulled his leg behind the nearest box as the side door opened.
Silence. Ernie didn’t dare look over the line of boxes to see what they were doing.
Footsteps again. Ernie stole a look and saw Robber Woman walking towards the trailer. A jolt of adrenaline surged through him when he saw she was carrying his boltcutters.
In front of Ernie, a crochet mallet leaned against the wall. He took it and held it against his chest.
Ernie heard Robber Woman over by the trailer. He crawled, mallet in hand, as carefully as he could to the other side of the box pile to see what she was doing.
Getting to the other side seemed to take an eternity, and the whole time he imagined her hearing the little rustles his arms and leg made as he inched forward, her aiming a loaded pistol at where his face would be when he stole another look.
After Ernie had reached the other side and calmed down his breathing, he heard sounds of metal tinkling over by the trailer door.
Ernie peeked over the box closest to the trailer and found his wife sitting crosslegged in front of the battered door, sorting through a pile of keys.
Ernie nearly dropped the crochet mallet at the sight of her, very nearly collapsed on his face in the gravel.
No. I’m seeing things.
Ernie looked again. He had a clear view of Sharla’s profile, her unmistakable nose, “regal” her grandmother had called it. Pointed chin. Shoulder-length dirty-blond hair. She’d lost weight, he realized. Somehow he hadn’t noticed before. Not a lot–she was never heavy–but she’d lost some.
It felt like the blood in Ernie’s body had turned cold. He could no longer feel his hands, his remaining foot. His heart raced, trying to circulate the blood faster, to warm him up, but the cold only spread further, into his belly and chest. A great weight formed in his chest. His jaw ached–
He heard footsteps. He knew whose footsteps those were. Sharla’s new lumpy man. Dog killer. That fucking Tom.
“You have the same boltcutters as we do,” Sharla said.
“No I don’t,” Tom said.
“What do you mean? Look at them.”
“Those aren’t mine.”
Ernie couldn’t breathe. Sharla and Tom continued to talk, but their voices seemed to shrink and distort, like he’d fallen into a well, had plunged into water.
He was dimly aware he’d lost the mallet. Wherever it had gone, he hadn’t heard it. He only felt the great weight in his chest growing, like all that band equipment that tumbled out of Janet’s van had been placed on his chest. His left arm throbbed. His jaw continued to ache. The dim light of the barn wavered in intensity.
Before Ernie blacked out, he saw Sharla bent over him, shouting. She sounded so very far away. Tom shouted too, had grabbed Sharla’s shoulder and she shook it off. She shoved his chest, over and over again, as tears rolled down her face.
***
“Give me my fucking phone.”
“Sharla, slow down. He’s already over the hill. It won’t matter if they get to him now or in an hour.”
“How the fuck would you know?”
“I had a heart attack last year. The EMTs gave the same freakin thing.”
“So that makes you a fucking expert? My husband might be fucking dying.”
“Can we stop with the f-bombs?”
“Fuck. You.”
“Really?”
“Really. Fuck you. I should’ve never agreed to this.”
“I said stop it, Sharla.”
“Fuck you, Tom. Don’t fucking tell me how fucking talk. I’m not your fucking wi–”
The slap was like the swing from Ernie’s childhood, snapping, dropping him on his ass. Like the wet towels the older boys stung him with in the highschool locker room. Like the cue ball colliding at full speed during a pool break. Uncle Verne’s were legendary. Like the time he’d fallen asleep waiting for Uncle Verne to explain to Aunt Mimi why they’d been so late getting back from fishing, her voice going shrill with worry… Why had he taken Ernie so far out from the docks? Why hadn’t he had the motor checked before leaving? Why hadn’t he called when they’d stopped at the gas station on their way home? … Uncle Verne’s big rough hand connecting with Uncle Mimi’s ruddy round face–a crack, a fissure, a break in the reality Ernie’d thought possible.
Ernie’s wife stumbled back into Marge’s china cabinet, but it was empty. Sharla grunted and fell into a heap on the floor.
“Shit! Sharla–I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean–”
“Get away from me!” she shrieked.
Tom tried to help Sharla up, but she crawled away.
Tom paced around the room. He looked even lumpier in his all-black robbery outfit, the hood of his sweatshirt only covering the back half of his skull. He dropped her phone on the floor and stalked off, his big head hung low. The screen door creaked open and banged shut.
Ernie heard Sharla weeping under the dining room table. He wanted to go over to his wife, to hold her, tell her everything would be alright. He tried to sit up, felt the pain in his chest grip him, shove him back down.
He felt like he’d been run over. His chest in particular. Each breath brought on a searing pain that radiated from his sternum into his belly. He was sitting in the rickety wheelchair Janet had stole for him from Green Pasture Homes. There was a tube the width of a fat sharpie marker sticking out of his thigh. Marge lay slumped next to him, in an antique armchair. A massive bruise on one temple ran down to her jaw, her cheek puffy from pooled blood. She was out, still breathing, drooling on the fancy upholstery.
Sharla saw him looking at Marge. She scrambled over to him, took his hand into hers. “Honey? How do you feel?”
“Hey Shar.” It hurt to talk. It hurt for Ernie to see her on floor, eyes red and mascara dribbling down, a large welt forming on her cheek from that fuck Tom’s massive hand. Getting angry hurt… it threatened to prod him… even when he didn’t act on it.
“How did you know we were here? Where did you get that van?”
His wife looked so different dressed in all black. Like some middle-aged painter. Very different from what she usually wore–used to wear–bright purples, yellows, reds, and whites, flowy things. Her black contoured outfit had a severe look, like an accusation. She’d often told Ernie he dressed too plain, would buy him more colorful clothing on birthdays and Christmas early in their relationship, before she’d learned he’d never wear it–not if it wasn’t black, gray, or blue.
“Are you having an affair?” Every. Single. Word. Hurt. Five separate knives dug in his chest. The breath he took afterward, each of them twisting.
Sharla face morphed from concerned to horrified, stunned, confused. Like he’d asked her if she was ready to take a trip with him to the moon. “With who? Tom? Ernie, are you fucking kidding me?”
“I. Just. Thought.”
Sharla dropped her head into her palms like she would start weeping again.
Ernie raised his right arm–even as his chest constricted, squeezed his lungs like a corset three sizes too small–and put his hand on his wife’s neck.
“You thought your wife of twenty-eight years would start an affair with our shitty neighbor. While you’ve been sick in a nursing home.”
A silence stretched between them, the ripples between his wife’s words growing larger, more cartoonish.
“What happened. To Marge?” Ernie’s chest didn’t squeeze and sear so bad if he whispered.
“She fell and hit her head trying to run when we came in.”
“Why’d you. Shoot the dogs?”
“Fucking Tom. He thought shooting them would throw the cops off the scent of family. Really, really stupid–”
Outside, tires squealed and the engine of Tom’s pickup truck roared up Marge’s long driveway.
Ernie didn’t want his wife to go to jail. He would say it was idea. He’d forced Sharla into it. Maybe Marge wouldn’t even remember seeing her. She’d hit her head, after all.
Brakes squealed somewhere near the road. A great boom echoed off the house.
***
Sharla called 911 and told them to bring at least three ambulances. They found an emergency flashlight in Marge’s kitchen and started up the driveway, Sharla pushing as fast as she could while Ernie aimed the flashlight.
They found the wreckage not even twenty feet into the road. Paintings, antique chairs, shards of fine china, bits of crystal, a mangled chandelier Tom had unscrewed from the ceiling, all ruined and strewn along the pavement, down the grassy slope, into the complete darkness, probably as far as the laurel.
They saw Tom’s truck first, flipped on its back in the grass, the front crushed in. Tom’s bloody head rested on the airbag. He was moaning. Sharla left Ernie on the road to check on him.
Ernie saw another pair of headlights, upturned, illuminating a crowd of trees on the other side of the road. Bits of wood everywhere. Clapboard wood. He trained the flashlight onto the rusted underside of another truck, swaying a little.
A scrawny, tan woman poked her head out of the driverside window. Her face was bleeding and she didn’t look all there.
“Ay, we need your help over here.”
Ernie did a doubletake before he realized it was the woman from Janet’s dublewide. The one who’d filmed him while he was taking the van.
How in the world had she gotten here?
“Are you okay?” Ernie’s chest hurt, but not quite as much as it had in Marge’s house.
The woman ducked her hand back into the car without saying anything.
Ernie rolled to the backside of the truck. It was on the very edge of the road’s shoulder, before it dropped deep into a grassy slope. Fifty feet down, the flashlight picked up more clapboard wood, rusted metal, a crushed tub of… ice cream?
At the very bottom of the slope, he spotted a trailer, the same trailer he’d seen parked in the Green Pasture Homes pullaround with the paper sign saying ‘Ice Cream!’
As Ernie rolled around to the front of the vehicle, the truck began to rock. He saw the scrawny woman was trying to worm her way out of her seatbelt to climb out of the window.
“Hey, keep still,” Ernie told her.
Ernie pushed the wheelchair right up to the the smashed nose of the truck, shined the flashlight into the cracked windshield. He found an unconscious Janet in the passenger seat. Her white hair was soaked in blood, her breathing almost imperceptible. One arm dangled out the broken passenger window. Her seatbelt kept the rest of her from tumbling out and down the slope.
Ernie told the scrawny woman not to move, that the truck was on the edge of the slope and might tumble if she got out, then he went to get his wife.
***
The ambulances were taking a while. After Sharla had pulled Tom from his truck, she came over to see what she could do. The truck was too heavy to try and pull down. Anytime the scrawny woman moved to get out, the truck swayed and threatened to roll over the edge. They’d had to shout at her several times to stay where she was.
Then Ernie remembered Janet’s van behind the barn. He gave Sharla the key fob and quickly explained the hand controls. He told her about the spool of rope he’d spotted behind the boxes and she took off down the driveway.
“How bad is she?”
“Pretty bad, but she ain’t dead.”
“You should wrap her head to control the bleeding.”
The scrawny woman found a scarf in the central consol and wrapped it around Janet’s skull.
“I don’t understand what you guys were doing out here.”
“Janet said you were desperate for money and about to do somethin stupid. After the cops came and she splained the van, she called the Ice Cream Man. I guess she was able to work somethin out.”’
“How’d you know where I was?”
“Janet found the address in your wallet.”
“She was awful mad about you being at her house.”
“Yeah, well she didn’t her son was in rehab.”
Sharla brought up the van, and cut a sharp right where the tiremarks met and the debris from the two vehicles had exploded outward. The van’s hitch seemed solid. Ernie tied the rope to it with a bowline knot, the one Uncle Verne had shown him as a young teen. Now, having remembered his uncle’s poor treatment of Aunt Mimi, his resourceful seemed less impressive, more of a cover for emotional fragility, a weakness in character.
Ernie made sure the scrawny woman held Janet in the car when Sharla hit the gas.
The rusted underbody of the truck groaned, tilted, and thudded to pavement.
***
Janet began to howl about her head as soon as the EMTs pulled her out of the truck. She’d lost her dentures in the crash–somewhere down the slope, maybe, Sharla hadn’t been able to find them–and she was belligerant to everyone who tried to help her. Her lips bagged around her mouth, and her tongue flailed and lisped in that special way only possible to people without teeth.
“Fuck you thtarin’ at? Never theen an ol pairuh tittieth bafore?”
The EMT trying to place the EKG leads on Janet was young, probably not even twenty-one, and his face had turned as red as the cross on his sleave.
“Easy, Janet. He’s just trying to do his job.”
“What the hell do you kno about jobth? You ain’ worked two yeareth, an yer dumb ath they git.”
Ernie was more than willing to tolerate her abuse. He’d rather it be that than worry about her cracked skull.
“Where they gunna take uth?”
“Riverside.”
“I ain’ goin’ nowhere til I git that fuckerth info. Fool wuth drivin in the middle of tha road.”
“We have his info. He’s my neighbor.”
“You mean tha guy that came with yer wife? Tha one who thee wath cheatin with?”
“I never said that.”
“Your fathe did.”
“Well, I was wrong.”
“Ha! Big Thurprithe!”
***
Ernie’s doctor showed up at the hospital the next morning, disappointed and annoyed. He was old, had a slouch like Tom, and his bushy eyebrows always seemed knitted in concentration, or maybe concern, Ernie could never tell.
“Your foot is in bad shape, Ernie.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Is your wife not here?”
Sharla had been taken into custody. She’d fessed up about everything, before Ernie could take the fall for her. It was true it had been Tom’s plan more than Sharla’s to rob Marge. Tom had had big debts himself from his wife’s lengthy passing, plus they hadn’t managed money well. He’d convinced Sharla they would be able to take a few things and Marge’s home insurance would repay her in full. It seemed like a win-win. Tom gave the same story, though he swore Sharla had volunteered 100%. She went in without any pressure. It seemed the police weren’t completely convinced by Tom, given the massive bruise on Sharla’s face, and his abrupt getaway and abandonment of his accomplice. The police were waiting for Marge to come to before pressing charges. After her fall, she’d had a brain bleed and hadn’t regained consciousness. If she didn’t, well… Tom and Sharla would be looking a third degree murder alongside breaking and entering, property damage, theft, and whatever else they were already being charged.
Ernie’s thoughts were about as far as they could be from the hospital, concern for his foot, whether he’d ever walk again. Ernie would let the doctor lop it off right now if he wanted, if he could somehow ensure Sharla wouldn’t be put away for this… all because of him… because of their debts.
“She couldn’t make it. How bad is it?”
“You’ve set yourself back at least a month. Maybe even longer. You’re lucky it’s not infected.”
A relief. A small relief. He still had no kidneys, only one leg. This new heart condition…
“What about my heart? What kind of treatment are they going to give me for the heart attack I had last night?”
“Heart attack? No… you didn’t have one of those. Your EKG was normal.”
His chest didn’t feel normal. He had a bruise the side of a dinner plate on the center of his chest where Sharla pumped and pumped until Tom finally stuck him with the epi pen.
“You might have a few broken ribs. Those’ll heal on their own. In regards to your… episode… I think you may have had a panic attack. I’m putting in a referral for a psychological workup.”
And with that the doctor left. After him the scrawny woman rode in on Ernie’s purple scooter–Kel, he’d learned her name was. She’d come by earlier this week and told him it was probably destroyed. Janet had insisted they bring it along in the trailer, thinking he’d have trouble getting around in the wheelchair she’d stolen for him.
“The fire department found it in a bush next to the trailer. Alignment’s way off but it seems good otherwise.”
Ernie thanked her. Another small relief.
Kel asked if he wanted a ride. She told him Janet had already checked out of the hospital and was waiting for her in the lobby.
He followed her out.
It seemed that the scooter’s trip down the slope had fixed its squeak… or as Tom might have said, corrected the bend in its chassis.
It figured that the scooter’s alignment was off–way off. Ernie had to turn the steering wheel almost all the way left to get it to drive straight, which meant he could only take painfully wide left turns. Several times Kel had to wait after she’d turned left, wait while he arced and arced for ages, stopped to reverse, then arced some more.
***
Marge didn’t wake up for eighty-two days. In the meantime, Ernie had remortgaged their house and took on a lawsuit loan with terrible interest to pay for a lawyer who could persuade the judge to hold off the trial. His foot got better. The doctor sent him back to the prosthetist who was working on mold for his amputated leg so he could start learning how to walk again. He went into counseling and had begun to work through some issues he hadn’t realized he’d had.
About a couple weeks ago, Medicaid pushed through a round of payment cuts to nursing homes. Conveniently, Green Pasture Homes said he was fit to go home a few days later.
He still had the scooter. The squeak seemed to be coming back, but only when he leaned a certain way. He didn’t care anymore.
Within a week of Marge waking, Sharla got the news she wanted to press charges. According to their lawyer, she wanted to go to the full length of the law to punish Tom and Sharla.
Ernie was sitting in his living room in his purple scooter, drinking coffee. Their beagle Muffy sat on the recliner next to him, startled awake by the doorbell ring.
Whir–squeak-squeak–whir…
The man at the door asked if he was Ernie Lutz.
Ernie said he was.
“These are legal documents,” he said, and handed Ernie a sheaf of papers.
They said Marge was sueing him for the damage he’d done driving through her yard.

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released December 3, 2019

Jamarr Mays
Eddie Palmer

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Vietnam II Columbus, Ohio

Indie Rock from Columbus, Ohio

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