Fiction
A chapter from a work in progress titled Variations on a Theme. Comments are welcome.I submitted The Body (which I renamed The Long Run) to a fiction writing competition; therefore, I had to remove it from the site. Sorry.
These are other stories I’ve written either for the blog or just because.Blunderbuss
Last modified on 2008-06-10 17:20:24 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
“We’re not getting out of here without a fight,” I told Blunderbuss. “I know their strategy: the blitz. Inundate us with flak, blind us, then come in for the kill. They’ve got more troops than we do, sure, but we’ve got something they weren’t expecting.” We eyed each other. I could tell Blunderbuss wasn’t happy with the situation, but what could he do? Sure, he could reveal himself, but that wouldn’t be his way. Blunderbuss was a sour old man who’d never had a fun day in his life, I’ll bet. This would be like being a kid again. Or being a kid for the first time.
–
I was working my beat at PS 182, during that blistering snow storm, you remember, when it was so cold it felt like your balls would crawl so far into your stomach you’d need surgery to get ‘em out. I was standing at the corner, having just come on shift, waiting for the bell to ring. It was almost three-thirty, time for the big rush, and I had gotten there a little early. To be prepared. Stopping traffic for a horde of sixth graders ain’t easy. I was wearing my orange and green vest and that damned sash that read, “Crossing Guard” in big ugly black letters and had my whistle around my neck and was just unfurling my orange flag when who should appear but old Blunderbuss himself, feet crunching across the frozen snow covered grass. He was wearing a long blue puffy winter jacket zipped to his chin, one of those that’s supposed to come down to your knees but on old Blunderbuss it came down to his ankles. He was as short as they come. He looked like he was ready to take a trek across Alaska in January. One of those coats would keep a tree warm. I think they’re pretty ugly looking, but what do I know about fashion. Hell, what does old Blunderbuss. I couldn’t see the suit pants I knew he was wearing, but I could see the reflection of his shiny black leather shoes. So dark they were the definition of dark. They were what black was meant to be. I bet he got those things shined on his way in every day.
Anyway, he stopped right in front of me, rocked back on his heels and looked up and down the street, as if I had somebody waiting to take out one of the kids. As if I would do something like that. He eyed me, giving me the once over, checking my vest to make sure it was on right, the sash easily read, whistle in place, flag at the ready. He was just looking for a reason to get rid of me. Ever since I sideswiped his car. I mean, he shouldn’t have been coming through the intersection so fast while I was making the turn. That’s what I told him then, that’s what the cop told him, his insurance, my insurance. We all seemed to be on the same page, except him. He’d been looking for a reason to can me, and I thought that would be it. Strangely, it was the cop who’d saved me.
“Afternoon, Principal,” I said, trying to sound friendly, courteous. Honestly, since the accident, I didn’t like him much either. But I needed him, probably a lot more than he needed me. There were a lot of guys on parole who need to do community service. To him, I was just another con looking for a free ride. Truth was, I didn’t need the job, not for money. I certainly didn’t do it for the satisfaction. But I did need to get out of parole: I was a week shy of 500 hours and I wasn’t gonna let anything get in the way of finishing it.
“Wilkins,” he said, like my name was a food he’d just vomited. He had this way of talking that made anyone who spoke to him feel like they were shorter than he was, like he was the tallest man in the room. I’ve heard people refer to it as Short-Man Syndrome. I think Blunderbuss was just an asshole. He tilted his head to the side, eyed my pants, my shoes, my jacket. I resisted the urge to look down at myself, make sure my fly wasn’t open or something. That was exactly what he wanted me to do, of course, slip up and let him know what was wrong with me that day. Oh, but I wasn’t gonna give him the satisfaction. I met his eyes when he finally decided to look in mine and gave him my best Mr. Friendly smile.
“Beautiful day,” I said. “I love the winter. Brings the green out in the trees.”
He pushed out his lips. “Hmm,” he said, blowing out his nose as he grunted. He sucked his teeth then turned and started to walk away. I figured he was going down to check on Williams who did time up in Joliett for theft or larceny or some shit. Framed, is what he told me. Then Blunderbuss goes and looks behind the evergreen bushes. That hedgerow is as tall as me, so no one walking down the street can look over the top, and for the most part they’re as thick as three men all the way to the ground. But in this one spot it’s a little thinner towards the base, and that’s where I had them hidden. I figured with all the snow on the ground he’d never be able to see, if he happened to come out at all, which I didn’t think he would. I was wrong on both counts.
He pointed a scrawny finger at the pile lying in the small opening. “What’s that?”
What was I supposed to say? I shrugged my shoulders and kept meeting his eye. “Don’t know.”
“Come here,” he said.
My watch read 3:28, only two minutes until the bell. I had to get rid of him. I caught a glance at the school door. “I didn’t put ‘em there,” I said. Which was exactly the wrong thing to say. I mean, if I didn’t know what was there then I wouldn’t have known that I didn’t put whatever it was there, right? And if I did know they were there, I should probably have gotten rid of them. Blunderbuss was smart enough to catch my error.
“Is that right?” He bent down on one knee and reached in and grabbed one, stood up to face me and tossed it into the air with his bony white hand. “What’s this, then?” It was a good one. Didn’t even come apart when he caught it.
I shrugged. I was more worried that he was gonna lob it at me. Then where would I be.
“You can explain it to me or to the parole board. Your choice.”
“Nothing to explain,” I said. I watched it rise and fall from his hand, amazed at my handcraft. I wondered if they were all that good, and if I’d have enough when the time came.
When the bell rang I heard the screaming from inside the school. A few seconds later there were a few kids gingerly walking down the steps. Within thirty seconds, the front doors were swung wide and hundreds of eleven and twelve year-olds were streaming into the cold February air. Billy Thompson lumbered out first, jumped down the three short steps onto the snow covered grass on both feet. He carried a couple of books in the crook of his arm and dropped them straight away, next to the big elm. He squatted behind the school sign then rose and started shooting at us. From the right Suzanne O’Donnell pops up from behind a wall of snow I thought was just a drift. I always thought she was a weak one. Wrong again. She had a stash back there she must have spent all recess makin’ and she was tossin’ ‘em off like she was a grenade launcher. Carlos Marquez was right behind, feeding her ammo. She had good aim, that Suzanne. Much better than Marquez. I saw him pitch for the little league tryouts last summer: that kid couldn’t hit a Winnebago with a tire iron. Tom Marco, always the smart one of the bunch, tossed rockets at us from the left. We were surrounded.
They must not have known who was with me. The first one got Blunderbuss on the ear. A good lick by one of the hard ones can kick the reality right out of a man. That one knocked his head sideways and he stared at me like I done it. When the first one got me in the back of the head, he knew something was up. He dove headfirst into the hedge and took cover behind the natural barrier. I was standing there like a wingless duck in an open field and they were bombing me from all sides. It was a barrage of artillery fire. More kids had come out to join the fight. Paul Manzione rolled out from behind the marquee, arms at the ready, and Tony Popowicz had found protection behind the elm. I felt a couple smack me in the head, but they weren’t hard ones. Kids were saving the hard ones for when they needed ‘em, or we were down, whichever came first.
“Get down here,” Blunderbuss screamed. “Get out of the line.”
I dropped my flag and took cover next to him behind the hedge. The bombardment abated and under the voices of screaming children. I could hear ‘em call to each other, taking inventory of their arms and figuring out who was stationed where. Though Marco was the smart one, it was Thompson who was in charge of the attack.
“Hold your fire,” he said. “Wait until they come out.”
“Who’s that with him?” O’Donnell said.
“He brought reinforcements,” Marquez said.
“If he brought somebody else into this, that’s his fault,” Thompson called. “Don’t let it change the plan.”
We were lying on our stomachs on the snow. Blunderbuss looked over at me. I smiled and shrugged. We both peered through the firs to see what we were up against, but our enemies were well protected behind either natural or kid-made barricades. They had five against our two, though I was sure I had more than enough ammo to make it through the next fifteen minutes. But I didn’t know how many more might be waiting in ambush. Or worse, stationed behind the hedge, behind our position, lying it wait for the signal to attack us from behind. We didn’t have much time.
“We’re not getting out of here without a fight,” I told Blunderbuss. “I know their strategy: the blitz. Inundate us with flak, blind us, then come in for the kill. They’ve got more troops than we do, sure, but we’ve got something they weren’t expecting.” We eyed each other. I could tell Blunderbuss wasn’t happy with the situation, but what could he do? Sure, he could reveal himself, but that wouldn’t be his way. Blunderbuss was a sour old man who’d never had a fun day in his life, I’ll bet. This would be like being a kid again. Or being a kid for the first time. I told him my plan. I was surprised when he agreed. I thought I had it made, that I’d finally bonded with the man. For him, though, it was only a matter of expediency. He just wanted to get out of the mess he had stumbled into trying to find a reason get rid of me. Me, I just wanted to get the battle waged.
I got up on my knees and fired a couple of soft ones at Manzione. Kid took one in the jaw and one in the ear, which had to hurt, all that cold creeping into your head. The next few seconds passed faster than a jackrabbit runnin’ from a snake. I had two more grenades ready to launch, but I waited to see what they would do next. Manzione let out a terribly cry, like somebody’d jabbed a crayon in his ear. His voice bounced off the brick school building and filled the dense, cold air with its piercing. I thought maybe he was hurt, the way he lifted his head to the sky and held his arms out like an indian warrior. But he was still standing, not flopped down on his knees or rolling around in the snow. That would have been a good tactic, one I’m glad they didn’t use. If someone was hurt, even feigning injury, I’d have to go investigate, a move that would leave me wide open for a full assault. Manzione stood in the snow, just beside the school sign, and called out his battle cry. By the time those two seconds were over, the others had recognized the signal and started their full attack. Snow flew at us from every frontward angle. Each time I turned to get away from another cloud more artillery crashed against my chest or kicked the snow around me on the ground, creating a cloud of dust that was beginning to make it hard to see. Which was part of their plan. Toss the soft ones first, hit the ground, blind us, then come in for the full assault once we’d been incapacitated. I thought it was a cheap way to go, but it seemed to be working. They lobbed them over the top of the hedge, even, so it felt like someone was behind us, too, attacking from all sides. There wasn’t anyone behind us, though, save for our imaginations. Or maybe just mine.
Blunderbuss knew what to do. He pulled the puffy hood over his head to cover his face and crawled out from beneath that hedge like John Rambo. The kids tossed bombs at him in a constant barrage. But he was my secret weapon. It’s not that they didn’t know who he was, which was helpful, but also that the coat he wore was too big for his thin body. He might as well have been swimming in the thing. Every direct hit on Blunderbuss was more like a bullet grazing your arm: it hurts at first, but then you realize it’s just a flesh wound and you get over it. Blunderbuss was so caught up in the adrenaline of the moment that he seemed completely unfazed by the bombardment. I tossed him ammo and he lobbed them off, hardly paying any attention at all to where they wound up, simply throwing, reloading and throwing again. Some of his shots were right on target. Marco was in the open and though he was on our left Blunderbuss still managed to swipe him a couple good shots, one even hitting him hard enough in the chest to knock the kid backwards when he lost his footing in the snow and landed on his back. O’Donnell took a few hits, but she kept up her barrage. Thompson, still in charge, popped up from behind the school sign but his throws were wild and off the mark. One of them hit the snow in front of me and remained intact. I tossed it up to Blunderbuss who threw it right back at Thompson, catching him in the neck.
When it was obvious that Blunderbuss had them so flustered they were simply throwing just to throw, I jumped to my feet and lobbed my own barrage. Though we were two, our reload rate slowed because after every couple of throws we had to squat for more ammo. But I had made over three hundred snowballs that afternoon; I was ready for anything. These kids had thought their sheer numbers would outdo me, which they might have if the old man hadn’t shown up. We were winning, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, we were winning because of Blunderbuss.
I caught Popowicz with three good shots in a row when he popped out from behind the tree. Marco had moved to his side to help feed him munitions, so we were no longer facing a multi-fronted assault. We had only one direction to throw, and we threw as hard as we could, as fast as we could, still avoiding the barrage the kids were raining down on us. Their throws were becoming wild, erratic, their well-organized attack starting to break up. When he ran out of ammo to feed to O’Donnell, Marquez fled but not before Blunderbuss caught him in the ass just before he turned the corner to hide behind the yellow brick walled school. The only girl in the fight, O’Donnell seemed unwilling to let go the fight, but when her supply of munitions ran out and her partner abandoned her, her will to fight seemed to vanish. She glanced at Thompson who yelled at her to get down, moved behind the tree and kept up the assault. We took the opportunity to lay into her, Blunderbuss and I, with an onslaught of artillery. She covered her head with her arms, but it wasn’t enough. Within seconds she was covered in thick globs of snow.
Suddenly an errant snowball caught Blunderbuss in the side of the head. He reeled backwards but didn’t fall. He pulled his hood back and scooped a palm-full of snow out of his ear. I kept up our defense and within seconds I knew we had it won. O’Donnell stopped throwing and I could see the fear in her eyes. “Hold your fire,” she screamed. But they didn’t listen. They were too intent. She dropped what ammo she had in her hands and took off running away from the fight, towards the back of the school. She hit the sidewalk with one foot which slid sidways but she managed to stay upright and kept running, never looking back. Popowicz watched her run and while still lobbing the hard ones at us tried to see what had scared her off. Then he saw it, too.
“Holy shit,” he called. “It’s Blunderbuss.”
Within seconds the fight was over. They scattered like praire dogs, like rats scurrying away from a cat. Popowicz followed O’Donnell around the other end of the school, away from his home. They probably had a meeting place worked into their plans. Impressive that they’d still be thinking clearly, really, after all this. I was barely thinking myself. I was in complete assault mode, still throwing after the kids as they ran. I caught Thompson in the back but he didn’t seem to feel it, not even breaking stride as he ran across the street and vanished into the suburban sprawl that stretched around the school in every direction. Marco picked himself off the ground and scurried away, clawing at the snow as he scrambled to his feet. Snow fell off his jacket like blood. Thompson was the last standing. He faced us, snowball in each hand, and debated his options. He could fire off his last two then make for the hills, or he could just run. In the end I guess he figured he was already in trouble, what more could a couple of extra shots do. So he took aim and fired first one at Blunderbuss, then at me. Blunderbuss dodged his bullet, sidestepped out of the way just in time to let the rock-hard snowball whizz past him. I wasn’t so quick. Thompson’s second shot hit me square in the chest, knocked the wind right out of me. Not enough to kick me off my feet, though. I was still standing as he grabbed his books and slowly walked away, as though none of this had happened, as though he were just coming out of the school and ready to head home.
Blunderbuss turned to me. He had one snowball left, squeezing it tight in his right hand. The heat from his hand had melted the snow; I could see the water pooling around his knuckles. That last snowball was pretty hard. Before I knew what hit me he reeled back and let that last one fly. It hit me square in the face from about five feet, splattered across the bridge of my nose. I felt the cold all the way into my nuts. My head exploded with the searing sensation of dippping my head in a bucket of cold ice water. The blow kicked my legs out from under me and I landed on my back, the ground coughing up snow. I felt my face for blood, thought there must be some. My hand came away cold and wet but not red. Blunderbuss started laughing then, doubled over slapping his knee laughing. He took off his glasses and wiped his face with a handkerchief he pulled out of his back pocket. I lay there looking up at him laughing at me. I was a little pissed at first, but then I realized I’d won. Three weeks of daily bombardments coupled with three days of planning or my last, final assault, and actually paid off. I’d beaten those damned kids. Despite his disregard for my current well-being, I had to thank Blunderbuss. Without him I’d have lost, I know that. I laughed with him, wiped the snow from my face and howled. I’d actually bonded with the man. I was amazed. You’d have been amazed too, if you’d been there. Alas, the schoolyard was empty, the buses gone. No one was left but old Blunderbuss and me.
He surprised me when he offered his hand to help me up. I took it and he pulled me to my feet.
“I guess we got ‘em,” I said.
He was still laughing as he pulled off my vest, taking the sash with it. “You’re fired,” he said.
I guess it just goes to show you that though you can win some battles you can’t always win over your fellow soldiers. A captain is a captain, after all.
He didn’t even stop to let me thank him. My vest in his hand, he laughed as he crunched back across the frozen grass and vanished into the warmth of the school building.
Just a Few Words
Last modified on 2008-05-19 20:16:45 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
This is part of a continuing series of thoughts written while waiting for the clothes to wash at B. Bubbles on Broadway. This is also the first piece of fiction I’ve written solely for the site.
She wasn’t expecting it. Who does, really? Knapsack of dirty laundry strapped to her back, causing her to walk with a slight hunch, she turned the corner at Broadway at 124th and crossed to the subway overpass. Hunched as she was, she wasn’t looking up when she came to cross the southbound part of Broadway and almost fell backwards when a yellow taxi screamed past her, horn blaring. She could feel the cool rush of exhausted air blow the oily hair out of her unwashed face. It was early in the morning, the laundromat just opened, and she had a busy day ahead of her, no time to dawdle at home before heading out to start the weekend’s chores. After laundry, she would do shopping for the week and then head to work where she had to finish a budget that had been plaguing her all week. It was the kind of drudgery she could only accomplish while snug in her cubicle; doing budgets at home, as she had tried before, always led to shoddy and unfinished reports. There were too many distractions in her studio apartment: television; radio; books piling up on the Goodwill coffee table that she never seemed to have time to read but couldn’t help but continue to buy; browsing the gossip web sites to find out the latest tidbits about Brangelina or TomKat. While walking with a canvas bag full of laundry strapped to her back, she had been thinking about the numbers that had been plaguing her all week, how to reconcile a lack of incoming funds with the explosion of expenses that the firm seemed to be piling up.
As the cab whipped past her, she imagined briefly the pain of being hit, of her body crashing against the already dented yellow hood, her head colliding with and cracking the dirty windshield, wondered if it had been washed recently or if her already dirty hair would be clotted with dried vomit and bird shit. She would catapult over the top, hoping the bag of laundry would soften the impact she would make on the asphalt. Imagined the moments of silence followed by the slow rising wail of a train overhead and the rush of people who would surround her, try to make her comfortable for the interminably long time it would take an ambulance to arrive. Wondered how she would pay for a trip to the ER without insurance, with no savings, her parents on an extended vacation in China and probably inaccessible. Would they even treat her?
As quickly as the thoughts entered her mind, they were gone. The walk light green, she leaned out to look past the brick support of the train to see no cars coming and crossed to the laundromat. Head still down, she didn’t see the shoes standing on the corner, next to the unused phone booth. She should have known she would meet him on this corner at some time. It was on this corner that she met him, of course: he worked at a bar down the street and lived on Tieman Place, one block away. But when she stepped up on the curb and saw him standing there, she caught her breath with a start, felt herself falling backwards again (she really had to get a different laundry bag) and reached out for something to grab onto. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her up, held her steady for a moment. “Whoa,” he said, like he was a cowboy and she a wild Mustang. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You should be careful when you walk. You almost got swiped by that cab.”
He smiled, that twinkle in his eye that had captured her so many months before. But she was determined not to be mesmerized by him this time. Still, when she started to pull her had away and he held on for just a moment longer than was necessary, part of her wished he would not let go, that he would keep her safe from the world forever. That was his effect on her from the beginning, one of the things that made him so hard to forget.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“Fine, fine.”
“Your parents good? Did they ever take that trip to China they were talking about?”
How did he have that ability, to remember so many things about others. Her parents had loved his intensity, told her they thought he was the best she had ever brought home to meet them. He engaged them, asked them questions, seemed genuinely interested in their lives. Months later, when he told her he had met someone else, she questioned all his intentions, his interest. Had it all been a game? A ploy to string her along for as long as possible? She had waffled between missing and hating him during those first two months, had avoided this side of Broadway for fear of seeing him yet found herself every day when she got off the subway looking across the lane of cars parked beneath the subway trellis for his familiar figure standing in front of Toast smoking a cigarette. She never saw him. Eventually she managed to give up waffling, simply detested him and managed to put him out of her mind. Had even gone out on a couple of dates. Neither of which had amounted to anything. No matter. She immersed herself in her work, determined to make the best of her single life, took the extra time she suddenly had to read more, explore the city, visit museums he never wanted to visit, started running, had even entered a race in Central Park, though she had overestimated her abilities and wound up walking the last mile and half, crossing the finish line with her arms limp at her sides. Luckily the race photographers were long gone by then and there was no photographic evidence of her self-defeat, only the record of her poor performance on the New York Road Runner’s website. It had taken her six months to cross Broadway again, to use the laundromat she was on her way to when she stumbled into him.
“They left two weeks ago. They’re having a great time, though I’ve only heard from them once.”
“Probably hard to stay in touch from there,” he said. “How’s work? Are you still doing the accounting?”
That had always been a point of contention. She considered her job a career, while he considered all jobs nothing more than ways to avoid life, a step away from what all of us really want to do. He had embraced this notion, worked odd jobs, bartender, sometime superintendent for his building, all to keep his options open for that opportunity he knew would one day come knocking. Some part of her agreed with him; she had always wanted to be a dancer. That had been the reason she moved to New York. But wanting to be a dancer and needing to live seemed to be conflicting ideals, and she had long before meeting him given up on the idea of making a living as a dancer. That was one reason he had broken off their relationship, he said: her lack of ambition.
“Actually, I left a few months ago. I’m working as a dancer full time now,” she lied. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that what he said to her that night had been true, that she wasn’t brave enough to reach for her dreams.
“Good for you,” he said. “That’s really great.” He dropped his cigarette on the curb and crushed it with the toe of his sneaker. “Listen, I’d better get going. It was really great to see you.”
“You too.”
“Say hello to your parents for me.” He waved as he turned and walked south, up the Broadway hill towards the Columbia campus.
She watched him until he had gone half the block, hoping that he would turn and smile at her one last time. She hadn’t asked him anything about himself, about his parents, his jobs, his life. She imagined him telling his friends that she was now a full time dancer, he would proudly announce the bar one night that he had fucked a dancer, that her legs were strong, that she was the best lay he ever had. One night, he would google her to find pictures he could masturbate to, and then he would discover that she had lied, that she was still working as an accountant. By then it wouldn’t matter, she thought as she turned and walked towards the laundromat to start her morning chores, start her day.
