Michael Lister - Power in the Blood

Waiting on the bed for him were a remote control and a jar of Vaseline. He pointed the remote in the direction of the camera, and the TV began to play. The sounds of sex began to fill the speakers. They sounded as if they were coming from his TV, and because the video camera was so close to the TV the sound was distorted, but it was still unmistakable. It sounded like the tape we had just watched. Russ was watching himself with Johnson.

He removed the lid from the Vaseline jar, scooped out a heaping amount, and began to masturbate. He thrust hard up and down and moaned with pleasure. It was a sick, contrived moan, like he needed to hear himself make it. It made me feel sick.

I suddenly became very uncomfortable. I looked over at Anna. She seemed fine, but if we were watching a tape of her funeral, she would probably look the same way.

“Are you uncomfortable?” she asked.

“Slightly,” I said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. This just seems so personal, even more personal than watching two people have sex.”

“There’s more to it than that,” she said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you?” she asked.

“Do I what?”

“Do you, you know . . .” she said and nodded toward the TV.

“We are not having this conversation,” I said. I then added with a smile, “It really is the safest form of sex, you know.”

“Just one question,” she said.

“What?”

“Do you ever think about me when you do it?”

I choked and stuttered as I tried to speak, which was admission enough for her. She smiled.

I smiled.

“I think that’s enough of that one,” I said and stopped the tape. I pushed the fast forward button. This time it fast forwarded the tape without previewing what was on the screen. I pushed play again. There was nothing, just snow.

“You know, you are a very attractive guy; single, smart, sensitive, and to top it all off, you are very spiritual. I know you find me attractive, and we are alone in your trailer. Why don’t you seize the opportunity?”

“Besides the fact that you’re married and I look like Ricky Raccoon?”

“Yeah, besides that,” she said.

“I would never . . .”

“That’s precisely my point. You’re different from Maddox. In fact, you’re different from any man I know. I would never do this with any other man. I would never talk this way with any other man, but you, I can trust.”

“Don’t trust me too much. It might get you in trouble.”

“I’m not saying you don’t have a healthy libido. It’s just that you are to be trusted.”

“Don’t believe that,” I said.

“I do. I’m not saying you don’t have your struggles like everyone else, but I can tell things about people, especially men. I know you. I trust you.”

“Do you trust Merrill like that?”

“I trust Merrill, but for different reasons.”

We turned our attention back to the tapes. The third tape was Maddox and Johnson again. It was shot in black and white, which, because of the contrast between the two men, took on an artistic look.

The last tape, or what I thought was the last tape, was the kicker. It was Maddox in the starring role again, but this time his co-star was Anthony Thomas. Thomas was not as willing a participant as Johnson and seemed to be drugged.

When we finished watching the tapes, I felt like I needed a shower. The world looked like an ugly, dirty place, and I didn’t like seeing it that way.

“What do you think?” Anna asked when I had stopped the last tape.

“I think what you think, that everybody on these tapes is now dead. I thought there were five cases?”

“There were, but one of them had a smaller tape. Audio-tape, I guess.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in my purse. Let me get it,” she said.

“Anna,” I said chastisingly, “it could be very important.”

“I know. I brought it with me. I just forgot to get it out of my purse. But it might just be music or at best just sounds. How is that going to help?”

“I need to hear it to know.”

She retrieved the tape and brought it over to me. It was not an audiotape, but an eight millimeter videotape.

“Anna, this is a videotape.”

“But, it’s so small.”

“It’s eight millimeter.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it’s from a different camera than the one in Maddox’s bedroom. It’s not standard VHS, like these other tapes. It means that it was shot by somebody else.”

“Let’s watch it and see,” she said.

“You girls are so untechnical. We can’t watch it. I don’t have an eight-millimeter VCR.”

“Well, who does?”

“Susan still has ours.”

“Great, let’s drive up to Atlanta and see if she’ll loan it to us.”

Just then the phone rang, and I knew it was bad news again. I was almost to the point of not answering my phone anymore.

It was Dad.

Molly Thomas was dead.

Under shade of massive live oak trees dispersed among the bald cypresses that lined the banks, a small hill-the highest point in Pottersville-sloped down into the muddy waters of the Apalachicola River. The crooked cypresses, both in and out of the water, were silhouettes against the neon orange and pink of the setting sun. The natural slope down to where the swirling water patted the red clay of the bank was most often used as a boat launch. It was in this picturesque spot, where I had learned to water-ski and later had been baptized, that the car of Molly Thomas was being pulled from the devouring mouth of the powerful watery snake.

Apparently, Molly Thomas’s car had raced down the hill at high speed and crashed into the river below. When I arrived, two deputy sheriffs’ cars, one city police car, one highway patrol car, one game warden’s Bronco, an ambulance, and a tow truck, and Dad’s Explorer, which had the windows rolled down because Wallace was inside of it, were all parked at odd angles around the scene.

The yellow crime-scene tape, stretched between two cypress trees near the water, rippled in the small breeze coming off of the water, making a small and lonely whipping sound.

Molly’s car could just be seen breaking the surface of the water. A cable attached to her back bumper was spinning around the winch of the tow truck pulling the two vehicles ever closer to one another. At certain points along the way, the steady hum of the winch was interrupted by the grinding of metal on metal as the river begrudgingly released the car.

“Is this the girl you were dickin’?” my charming brother asked when I walked up to where he, Dad, and two other officers stood. Jake and the two officers laughed. I was amazed we were from the same family. I suspected we were not. There had to have been some sort of terrible mix-up at the hospital. Jake felt the same way.

“Does it look like suicide?” I asked Dad, ignoring Jake completely.

“Yes, Son, it does. There are no signs that she tried to brake or that another vehicle was involved.”

“You were such a bad lay that she offed herself,” Jake said to even more laughter than the first time. He now had them primed. “She left a note addressed to ‘Dear Pencil Dick.’ We saved it for you.”

More laughter.

“Is it okay to walk down there?” I asked Dad.

“Sure, Son. Go ahead,” Dad said in a voice that told me he was sorry for what Jake was doing, but that he wasn’t able to stop him.

As I walked away, I heard Jake say something about having sex with a raccoon. There was more laughter, but this time it was forced, like men wanting something to be funnier than it was. As I walked down to the river’s edge, I felt awkward and self-conscious.