Charlie Huston: Six Bad Things

– Sorry, my Spanish, not very good.

Turns out her English is great.

– American. We thought you were Costa Rican.

– No.

– Yes, because, the color is right. With the German blood, you know? And also your accent, your Spanish, is somewhat like that, and you do not act American.

– Thank God for that.

– Si, gracias a Dios.

She laughs.

– But we like Americans also, but here they are always so drunk.

– I don’t drink.

Her toe grazes the jug.

– Except the water.

– I like the water.

– And you smoke.

– Do you want one?

– No.

She rocks in the hammock.

– Do you want to smoke with us? With me?

She takes a small baggie out of her pocket and shows it to me. I can see papers, a little chunk of hash, a tobacco pouch. I haven’t been high in months, but it’s not like the booze. There’s no rule…

– Sure.

She smiles, and wobbles around in the hammock getting herself balanced cross-legged.

– Something flat?

I toss her my book. She looks at the title before putting it in her lap.

– Steinbeck. I read for school, The Grapes of Wrath, about American farm laborers and the Great Depression.

– Good book.

– I liked it.

She takes a rolling paper from the bag and sprinkles tobacco into it. I shift uncomfortably on my chair. Watching a pretty girl roll a smoke. Something inside me shakes its head.

– Before, I asked about the tattoo. The lines. What are they for?

The tobacco is spread evenly and she starts to grate hash over it, tiny flecks falling into the European-style joint. There are things I don’t like to remember, things I mostly forget.

– They’re things I don’t want to forget.

– What things?

– Things I did. Bad things.

– You’ve done only six bad things in your life? You are very good, then.

– These were very bad.

She’s rolling the joint between her fingers now, rolling it out smooth, tucking in the edge of the paper, pinching it with her thumbs. She runs her tongue across the glue strip, rolls her thumbs upward, spinning the whole thing into a tight, experienced joint, then pops the whole number in her mouth, covering its length with the thinnest film of her saliva. She holds it out to me, eyes sparkling.

– What kind of very bad things?

On cue, “Ain’t No Sunshine” starts to play.

In New York, four years ago, a woman lays spread-eagle on a table, her body covered with bruises. Dead.

– You should go.

– Como?

– I really think you should leave now.

The edge in my voice. She still has her arm extended, the joint offered to me.

– Que pasa? Is there something?

– Go away. I want you to go away.

My body starting to tremble.

– You are sick? Can I?

– Get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck off my porch. Go back to your fucking friends.

Keeping my voice as steady and quiet as possible. Watching her flinch back from the first obscenity. Struggling out of the hammock, all her grace disappeared in the face of my abuse.

– Just get the fuck away from me.

Stumbling off the porch and running away, across the sand to the safety of the fire as I pick up the water jug and fling it into the darkness after her.

I kill the lamp, walk through the door over to the boom box, kick it to the floor, and the song ends. I go around the room, pulling the rods that drop the storm shutters, close and lock both doors. Bud is hiding under the bed.

– That’s right, cat! Better fucking hide, know what’s good for you. Fucking cat! Fucking cat! Nothing would have happened, nothing without you. You! Stupid! Fucking! Cat!

I’m screaming now. Bud is terrified. I tear the back door open and run. I run across the twenty yards of sand to the tree line where the jungle begins and then I run through the jungle, tripping and falling a dozen times before I huddle in the roots of a tree, shivering and sobbing, hugging the trunk.

Having been reminded of Yvonne who liked to roll her own cigarettes, and who is dead because of me. Having been reminded of the six men I’ve killed, two by accidents of a sort and four in cold blood. And crouched here all night long, wretched and sobbing, I never once feel sorry for myself. Because I’m a maddog killer and I deserve everything I get.

THE FRIEND’S name was Russ. He gave me the cat to watch and then he disappeared and then guys started showing up and hurting me and killing my friends because Russ had failed to let me in on a key piece of information. He had failed to tell me that there was a key hidden in the bottom of Bud’s cage, a key that unlocked a storage unit that contained a bag that contained four-and-a-half million ill-gotten, whistle-clean dollars.

Still, things turned out a fuck of a lot better for me than for Russ. He ended up dead from having his head beat in with a baseball bat. That’s a fact I know for certain. I know because I was on the other end of the bat when it happened. I didn’t really mean to kill him. My reason was fogged at the time. A barroom full of my friends had just been machine-gunned to death. Anyway, he wasn’t the last guy I ever killed.

Or the first.

IN THE morning I go back to the bungalow. I pick up the boom box and the spilled CDs and pop the shutters open. The Spanish girls’ camp is gone and the area has the look of having been broken up quickly in the dark. Sorry, girls. So sorry.

This isn’t easy. Living isn’t easy. But the less I expose myself to life, the easier it is. The less chance there is that something might remind me of who I am. Boozing made it easier, but I don’t want to booze anymore. Because it shouldn’t be easy. With the things that happened, the things I did, life shouldn’t be easy. So last night is a reminder: keep your life small, keep the people in your life few, and keep them in front of you. Because life isn’t easy. And you can lose control of it in an instant.

Bud watches me from the bed until I come over and sit down next to him. Then he climbs into my lap, stretches, and rubs the top of his head against my chin.

– Sorry, Buddy. You’re a good cat. Not your fault, I know that.

He jumps off the bed and walks over to the cabinet where his food is. I take the hint and get off my ass to feed him.

– Yeah, I know, apologies are like assholes, right? Want to make me feel better, feed me.

I leave him to eat and go into the little bathroom. It’s just a tiled chamber with a showerhead at one end and a small commode at the other. A rain tank with a filter unit is on a small tower right outside. That takes care of my washing-water needs, and Leo brings me a few five-gallon jugs of drinking water every week.

Where I really luxuriated when I had this place built was the septic tank. That cost a pretty penny, as does getting it pumped. But, trust me, when you grow up with indoor plumbing, you are simply not prepared for the places most people in the world have to crap.

I wash up and find several cuts on my arms, legs, and feet from my run through the jungle. I sterilize those and take care of them with a few Band-Aids. Then I go for my morning swim, get my ears clogged so that I have to do the cigarette trick, put on shorts and a guayabera shirt, lock up, and walk over to The Bucket, where I find Mickey already sitting on my swing, drinking from my coffee cup, and reading my paper. And I start to remember very clearly just what it feels like when you really want to kill a man.

I MADE that call to Tim back in August. I’d been going out to the pay phone by the highway every three months to call him at home. He’d let me know what was up, if the cops were still poking around. And they poked. I mean, in the forty-eight hours I spent running around Manhattan getting chased, the death toll reached fourteen. At the time, it was a pretty impressive number. Then some really fucked-up people rammed a couple airplanes into these tall buildings in New York and I dropped off the radar.