Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

I saw frozen bodies stacked like cord wood covered with ice, Gene said. Some of them I put there.

It got cold in Afghanistan too, I said.

I remember one time when this truck driver got to Kandahar in December. Brand new. Just off the bus. He was so wet behind the ears I had to tell him where the chow hall was. He kept rubbing his hands together and I pointed out the PX where he could buy some gloves. He went on his first convoy an hour later. This guy, he got in his rig, took off, but realized he was in the wrong convoy. He turned back to the base and approached the gate fast because he was out in no man’s land by himself. You didn’t approach the gate fast. You didn’t do that. But he was scared. Some Australians shot him five times with a .50 cal. I mean, he was obliterated. They had to check his DNA to figure out who he was. Less than two hours after I showed him the chow hall, I saw them put his body pieces in bags.

Evening

Fran tells me what I’m planning is called a geographic . Moving to get a new start somewhere else in the mistaken belief you’ll leave your bad habits behind is how she puts it. She studied psychology last fall and thinks she can pick apart my mind now.

I mean it. I’m gone, I say.

She goes, When you decide to do it, just go. Don’t bother telling me because I’m not going with you. Men have left me before. I survived. I’ll survive you. Leave before I come home. Make it easy on us both.

I will, I say. I can do that.

Okay, she goes, okay.

Next day

Just me in here this afternoon.

What’s the latest on Gene? I ask Mike.

Haven’t heard a thing, he says.

Mike has owned Mike’s for ten years. He was in a band, got married, and had a kid. In other words, time to get a real job. So he bought the bar and named it after himself. He’s divorced now, sees the kid every two weeks, plays gigs occasionally, and runs this place. Says if he ever sells it, the buyer will have to keep the name. Years from now nobody will know who the hell Mike was but his name will be here. A piece of himself nobody will know and can’t shake off. That’s one way to make an impression.

I first came to Mike’s by chance. I used to drink at another bar on the Paseo but one night it was packed. After Kandahar, I couldn’t handle crowds, so I left. On my way home, I stopped at Mike’s. Some lights on but barely anyone in it. I had a few beers and came back the next night. Two nights in a row and Mike figured he had himself a new regular. He bought me a beer and said his name was Mike. We shook hands. Sealed the deal, as they say.

I met Fran here. She was shooting pool by herself. Bent over the table, her ass jutted high and round against her jeans, and any man with a nut sack would have known that if she looked that nice from behind she’d be more than tolerable face-to-face. And, if she wasn’t, so what with an ass like that. But she was fine all the way around.

She had light brown hair and a determined look. My glance moved down past her chin and rested on a set of perky tits that pressed just hard enough against her T-shirt that my imagination did not have to strain too hard to know what would be revealed when she undressed. I asked to shoot pool with her and we got to chitchatting. One thing led to another is what I’m saying.

I’m not sure when I noticed Gene. I just did. I remember seeing this old man at the end of the bar and thinking how solitary he looked, how he was off in his own world. He had one of those faces that sort of collapsed when he didn’t talk, mouth and chin merging into a flat, frowning pond. When he took off his hat, the light shined on his bald, freckled head. He’d still be standing in his spot when I left a couple of hours later, the same bottle of Bud he had when I first came in half-empty and parked in front of him. He barely said a word to me in those days. Just nodded if we looked each other’s way. But then as I began showing up every night, he started saying hello and I’d say hello back.

Evening

Fran and I drop our plates onto the crumb-graveled carpet for our beagle to lick. Partly chewed pizza crust, orange grease. Slobbered up in seconds. I reshuffle the cards.

I’m going to sleep, Fran says.

Say what?

Turn the TV off.

I’m still up.

Turn it down then.

It’s not loud.

Please.

But it’s not.

Shhh.

I shut off the TV, go out to the living room. I sit in the dark fingering my knife. The way Gene has vanished, an eighty-year-old man. I can’t help but notice the empty space at the bar. Like a radiator turned off. All that dead air, dead space.

Funny what you learn about a guy after he’s gone. For instance, Tim and Lyle said that Gene would come to Mike’s at eleven in the morning. He would stay all day and apparently be pretty toasted by the time he left at closing. Really, he never seemed messed up to me. Maybe he kicked in and drank like a horse after I left.

One night, Gene told me he had taken his landlord to court. It wasn’t clear to me why. I believed him, and whatever the reason, he made it seem like he’d won the case. After he disappeared, Bill told me Gene lived in his car. There never had been a court case or a landlord. Bill had put him up in his place but not for long. Said Gene wandered around the house with nothing on but his skivvies. I couldn’t have that, Bill said. Not with my wife in the house and the grandkids coming over. I don’t care if he is a vet.

Next day

Hey, Lyle, Mike says.

Mike, Lyle says, and takes a seat near Tim. He has his hair roped back in a ponytail and wears an army fatigue jacket that hangs well past his hands. His feet dangle off the bar stool and tap the air. He reeks of pot.

I was just getting ready to leave, Tim says.

No you’re not, Lyle says.

He turns to me.

What’s going on? Working?

Absolutely, I tell him. Staying busy.

You were in Afghanistan, weren’t you? How was that?

Good. It was good.

That’s good.

Actually, it was kind of crazy.

Crazy can be good, Lyle says, and he and Tim laugh.

Mike, I’ll have another, Tim says.

I notice Melissa come in the back door.

Hi, Melissa, Mike says.

Hey, Melissa, Lyle says.

Melissa, what’s up, Tim says.

Hey, Melissa says.

She sits next to Lyle and orders a Bud Light and a shot of Jack. She has on heels, gray slacks, gray jacket, and a white blouse.

Won my case, she says. Got him off.

Since none of us know who she’s talking to, we all nod at the same time. Melissa smiles. She starts talking about the first time she came in here as she always does. I don’t know why it bears repeating. I mean, I’ve got the story memorized. But she likes telling it. Maybe it gives her a sense of seniority. After Lyle she has been coming here longer than the rest of us. Like it makes her feel she belongs is what I’m saying.

It was just before closing, Melissa says. Mike and Lyle were shooting pool. Gene was in his usual spot. She remembers Mike saying he was about to close. Then he let her stay and the four of them had beers and got stoned after Mike locked up.

Gene got stoned? I say.

Yeah, Melissa says.

I hadn’t heard that part before.

Evening

Fran tells me that instead of doing a geographic, I should go with her to visit her sister in St. Louis. It would be cheap, she says. No hotel or eating-out expenses.

Sounds okay, I say.

Did you order a pizza?

Not yet, I say. I’m tired of pizza.

What do you want?

I don’t know. Shit, what’s up with all the questions?

Fran goes into the kitchen. I hear her making herself a drink. I try calling Gene. I gave Gene my cell number one night. He called me a few times before he disappeared but I could never make out what he was saying. He had a sandpaper voice that came at you like radio static. What’s that? What’s that, Gene? I’d say, and then he’d hang up. I’d call him right back but he’d never pick up. He doesn’t pick up now. I get one of those female computer-generated voices telling me to leave a message. I’d like to talk to Gene, I say, and hang up.