R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

Perhaps then, only then, could I have possessed something of which to speak.

And thus would not have felt empty.

It was I – who wished folks would called me Six or Lineman or Doc, or some other well-earned nickname, a name that people would hear and ask of its origin, and in being told they would understand what a deep and perfect human being I was, flawed, yet brave and bold, and experienced, and rich in something few possessed – it was I who was in some way nothing, and yet so afraid of being nothing I imagined that everything I wanted could be taken from others.

And so I did.

I remembered times I would sit back in the corner of Evangeline’s only diner, Montalvo’s, popping peanut M &Ms, snapping them back against the roof of my mouth and feeling them thunk against my teeth, and grinding up their bitty sweetness, and finding the candy shrapnel tucked down inside my gums… and it was late evening, and soon Montalvo’s would close, the warm-faced Creole-Irish halfbreed cook whose name I could never recall would turn me out into the depth of the night, wishing me well, laughing in that broken Americanized twang that sounded like no accent I had ever heard, or would ever hear again. He rolled, that man did, rolled across the greasy linoleum floor, rubbing his hands through a greasy towel, wiping the back of his greasy hand across the lower half of his greasy face, and he smelled of fried onions and fried eggs, of fried fries and tobacco. Like a roadhouse on fire. A unique smell that no human being should ever have to carry, but he did, and he carried it effortlessly, the smell a part of him in everything he said and did and thought.

But for the time being I was safe, there at the back of the diner, watching the three or four regular kids dance to the jukebox, the two girls, their wide mouths popping the spearmint tang of gum, their rah-rah skirts over firm brown thighs, their flats and ponytails and rubber bands and the men’s wristwatches they wore, and me wondering what it would be like to fuck one of them, wondering what it would be like to dissolve my tongue in that spearmint tang, or maybe to fuck two of them together, to lose my hands beneath those spinning skirts, to touch the very heart of whatever they believed their lives really were.

For now, they were safe.

I believed that if I had read novels I could have talked, but I did not read novels, merely facts from encyclopedias.

To talk of such things would have made it all too obvious that I had no life at all.

Perhaps if I had read those things that were named in my volumes – books called Flight To Arras, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, To A God Unknown, Narziss and Goldmund, Altona, Men Without Shadows, A Very Easy Death – names such as these, then perhaps…

And if I had known the names of the authors as well it would have been taken for granted that I had read these things, and I would not have mentioned the titles, but merely the names of the characters, and people would listen and know that I knew all these things from the tone of my voice, the expression in my eyes, the way I half-smiled my own thoughts that were nothing but my own.

Perhaps then, only then, could I have possessed something of which to speak.

But I had not, and did not, and never would, I felt.

And so I killed things.

What else could a poor boy do? I watched the tight-thighed girls, their whirling skirts, the way they glanced at me arrogantly, the way they dared each other to speak to the weird kid in the corner with the M &Ms when they first started coming here an age ago. They took the dare, one or two of them, and I was shy and pleasant, and I blushed, and they giggled, but now they have grown some and they don’t bother with dares, they just think I’m weird, and they dance all the more with their thighs and their skirts and their peppermint tang.

I hated them for their smooth brown skin. I wondered what their sweat would taste like straight from the skin. Beads like condensation down the glass walls of chilled bottles. Like rain against glass.

I sat alone, there in Montalvo’s Diner, and perhaps the only person who did not think I was weird was the crazy halfbreed cook with the forgotten name who carried a smell that should not have had to be carried by any human being.

He did not worry that I had nothing to say, for I bought my Cokes, popped my M &Ms, sat and looked and breathed and existed.

I did not speak.

I would think to speak, but all I could come up with was ‘Well-uh-I-kinda-killed-some-things-one-time…’, but seeing as how that wasn’t really the polite kind of talk folks were looking for, I did not say it.

And, as such, had nothing to say.

Perhaps if I had been caught…

Perhaps then, and only then, would I have had something of which to speak.

Sometimes I would challenge myself, dare myself to walk up to one of those girls, those tight-skinned teenage tornadoes, and ask their name, and say ‘Hi, I’m Bill or “Doc” or “Lineman” or “Swamper,” ’ and feel them blush a little, and smile, and say ‘I’m Carol or Janie or Holly-Beth,’ and ask me how I came to be called something such as that. I would shrug noncommittally, as if it didn’t really matter, and tell them it was the war, back a long time, honey, a long time ago that you wouldn’t want to be hearing about . And we would dance then, and she would give me gum, play some records I liked maybe, and then later as I walked her home, she would ask me again how I came by my name, and I would tell her, in small, measured emotional phrases, and through the spaces between my words she would feel the depth, the strength, the power of self-control needed for someone to return from such a place and still be able to smile, to laugh, to say ‘Hi’ and dance in Montalvo’s Diner with someone such as herself.

She would fall in love, and I would feel the pressure of her hand in mine, the way her shoulder rubbed the side of my chest as she leaned to stroke my cheek, to kiss my face, to ask me if maybe, somehow, possibly I might consider seeing her again…

And I would have said, ‘Sure honey, sure thing,’ and I would have felt her heart leap.

Or maybe not. Maybe I would hold a Coke bottle in my hand, and as they pulled me close I would break the base of the bottle against the wall, and then turn to face Bobby-Sue or Marquita or Sherise or Kimberley, and say, ‘Here, a little of something cool and hard for the pleasure of your company…,’ and grind the glass teeth deep into the solar plexus, through the vagus nerves, and feel them tighten and twitch, dancing like a headless chicken through the scrubbed backlot behind a busted trailer, feeling them close up against the broken shards like the hands of hungry, shit-faced kids, the blood pumping, sweating out through the aperture, glowing over my hands, warming them, filling the pores, finding my prints like narrow channels and filling them…

And then lean them against the wall, fuck them in the ass, comb my hair and go home.

Perhaps then, and only then, would there be something of which I could speak.

Before Carryl Chevron I had killed a dog. Before that I had set a cat in a pen with three chickens and watched them run their little hearts out. Before that I killed some other things, but now I cannot remember what they were.

We were all essentially children, and some of us never seemed to be anything else. I understood this, as now I understand many things, and I see now that my own depth of understanding is even greater than I am aware. I know it all comes from the heart, right from the very center of the heart, and I know that if you do not listen to what it has to tell you then it will kill you.

Time rolled onwards like some unspoken darkness, and within it there were sounds and motions that even now I cannot bring myself to recall.