Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

My body feels okay until I try to walk. When I do, my jaw starts throbbing. I can barely turn my head, my neck is so stiff. Yesterday I looked and felt like I’d been hit by a car. Now it feels like I’ve been hit by a bus that has reversed back to hit me again. Every muscle in my arms, legs, and chest is tender. I turn on the radio and tune in to a news bulletin. Some woman talks about the police investigation, but she says nothing new. The same old guy who gave yesterday’s weather report comes on and says it will be fine all day. I wonder what he means.

I stagger through the house and head for the bathroom. I stand in the shower for twenty minutes trying to loosen up. I’ve been spending way too much time lately showering. Too much time in the woods. Too much time bitching about why life can’t be better, why the Real World must be so Goddamn real. I study myself in the mirror when I get out. My jaw is puffed up and swollen. My neck is dark blue on the left. My eyes are bloodshot. The bump on my forehead isn’t looking any smaller. I study the back of my head with my fingers. Several valleys and mountains there from my journey down Cold River. It’s like following a map to hell.

I’m looking at a man who has been both beaten up and beaten, but enough is enough, and that’s where I am right now. Somewhere deep inside I’ve just pulled a giant lever, not so much an on and off switch as a one-armed bandit and five bars with the word hate have all landed in a row. I hate that I can never be the same Charlie I was a week ago, and that saddens and scares me. I hate Cyris, and I wonder what I’m capable of doing about that. Murder? I close my eyes and pull the giant lever inside my mind. Bells and whistles and alarms all start going off inside of me. Yeah, murder is now within my capabilities. Murder will be as easy as riding a bike. I sense other things are within my ability now too, but I’m too scared to keep pulling on that lever to find out.

The beaten man stares back at me and what seems like pity fills his eyes. The man looks like he isn’t sure what I’m going to do. He looks concerned for me as though he’s worried I might start screaming and take my rage out on the world. He offers no answers, but he looks ready to start laying blame.

“I’m no longer going to be the victim,” I tell him.

He nods. He must think that’s a good thing.

I get dressed. I walk through the house, opening up the rooms and staring out windows as if all the answers lie outside in the fresh air and warm sun. My study is still a mess, broken parts still forming piles around the room. Ideas of what to do next start firing at me from dark corners of my mind. I keep following them, one in particular is starting to take shape. More than one, actually. Each minute that goes by is a minute Jo has to spend with Cyris. Each minute that goes by is another one in which she could be dying.

Beneath my computer desk is a small set of drawers, three in total, all still intact. The bottom is a filing drawer. I pull it open and start flicking through the partitions. It takes some time to find the one for my bank. They’re all out of order. Cyris has gone through them as I figured he had: this is where he got the idea of the forty thousand dollars from.

The whole concept of a revolving mortgage is simple. It’s basically an overdraft where you can draw out the money you’ve paid in. I’ve paid forty thousand dollars off my mortgage and that’s how much I can now access. I bought this house ten years ago. When I met Jo and we began living together, I kept my house and put it up for rent. I had one family living here for five years until they moved out, and another family was here for two years until I asked them to move out because I needed to move in.

I push the statements aside. It doesn’t matter how much money I have. Money can’t buy you happiness. It can’t buy life. And no amount will stop me from killing the son of a bitch.

It is after three o’clock and the sun has peaked in the sky and is starting its long, slow spiral down toward a new day on the other side of the world. Ideally I’d like to be there to see it, there with Jo.

Okay, Action Man, it’s time to act.

I find my wallet and everything inside it is wet. I take out my credit cards and my driver’s license. I use a hand towel to dry them, then leave them on the bench in the sun. I go into the bathroom and do what I can to turn the broken Charlie Feldman into one who will fit back into society. I smile a pained smile then add some cologne and some hair gel. I load my wallet back up and head outside.

The day is even better now that I’m out in it. I think that Landry probably would have liked it. I wonder what he’d be doing right now if he weren’t dead and pinned up against a log in the river, and then I feel a pang of guilt thinking about his last act, which was to save us. It’s possible he wasn’t such a bad guy. Possible under other circumstances I might have liked him. And probable he’d still be alive if I’d taken care of Cyris on Monday morning. Landry would have liked today. I’m sure of it. The bright sun, the warm wind, the essence of calm. Barely any traces of cloud adorn the sky. Long twin white lines float a few thousand feet high above me from a fast-moving jet. It’s a great day, the type you always want to wake up to. At least it would be if I’d stabbed Cyris in the heart and not the stomach.

The handcuffs are still on the seat of my car. I hide them in the glove box. I still have a spare key for Jo’s car, and I try it in the ignition, but the lock is too badly damaged for it to fit snuggly. The screwdriver still works. At least I can still use the keys to lock and unlock the car. Being in Jo’s car mingling with other traffic is surreal. I look at drivers and pedestrians and I wonder what they think of me. Can they see who I am? Can they see what I’ve become? What I’m now fighting for? Then those thoughts are reversed as I look at their faces. Who are these people? I don’t know any of them. I don’t know what they’re capable of. Murder? Sure, statistically some of them have to be capable of that. But how do you know which ones?

The trip to the bank takes me past flooded gardens and lawns with new swimming pools that suggest the sun hasn’t been out all day. The streets are bone-dry and make for safe driving. There’s no consensus about what to wear-some people are out in shorts and T-shirts, others in raincoats carrying umbrellas. I figure they’re all right. I park next to a beaten-up Holden with half of its hubcaps missing.

The bank is a plain-looking building in a row of other plain-looking buildings in the middle of town, a few blocks from the police department and a few hundred yards away from the Christchurch Cathedral, a touristy church right in the middle of town. There’s a guy out front of the bank handing out sandwich vouchers. He hands one to me and it makes me feel hungry, almost hungry enough to eat the voucher. The glass doors open with a hissing sound. Potted palm trees guarding the entranceway almost reach the ceiling. A whole lot more potted plants are scattered around inside. Maybe it’s supposed to make the fee-paying customers feel more at ease. Me, I feel like I’m back in a forest. I look around for a river, but the closest thing is a water cooler in the corner. It has an out-of-order sign because somebody has broken the plastic tap. I wait in line. Earlier this summer, just before Christmas, this bank was held up. People were waiting in line then just like they are now. People were shot and killed. I look at everybody closely in case there are those in here who think holding up banks is a pretty good idea.

It takes five minutes to get to the counter. I present my withdrawal slip to an old guy named George who will surely die before he retires, and even then still try to show up for work. His wrinkled face takes on a puzzled expression when he reads the amount on the slip, and he adjusts his bifocals to make sure he’s read the amount correctly as if the thick lenses have added an extra zero. Then he adjusts them again to make sure he’s seeing me correctly, as if the thick lenses have added an extra bruise. He asks me to step aside while he wanders off to chat to a few people, and a minute later a woman around my age comes from somewhere deep within the bank and leads me down a carpeted corridor into a small office.