Chris Lynch - Kill Switch

Chairs scrape the floor as folks inch closer. Old vertebrae audibly creak as people twist to lean their good ears into the story.

He tells the one about the blinded scientist in Tel Aviv.

He tells the one about setting the nerd’s face on fire with thick specs and sunshine.

He tells one about impersonating a jockey and winning a big race on a drugged horse in Bolivia.

A beer shows up in front of him. A few minutes later, a hefty-looking Reuben sandwich appears.

He does not appear to remember me. He shows no sign of awareness, of either my presence or any of the strain and tribulation of the preceding days. He does not even show any of the tiredness he expressed only just recently.

“He’ll be absolutely fine,” the frightening man sitting on the other side of me reassures me. I look at him, and he speaks from behind a gray walrus mustache and two cheeks with prominent T-shaped scars carved into them. There is nobody here, in fact, without some facial hair. Da’s beard has grown in rather fully. “He’s got currency here. In Lundy Lee, everybody lives on stories. One way and another, a man with stories gets by very well here. One way and another.”

I look at the man while on my other side Da keeps storying away. Oohs and aahs and small claps are the background music as he reaches peaks of spellbinding.

“That is good to know, thank you,” I say to the man. He winks reassurance and I see the same T scar on his eyelid.

There is a brief lull in the show, as a couple of people head for the toilets, a couple more head for the bar, and one of the two women in the place comes up and puts her hand on Da’s hand. “Don’t you dare start again until I get back,” she says, unlit cigarette in one hand and the solution in the other.

“I won’t,” he says, giddy. Probably the first time he’s ever been pleased to be asked to stop talking.

I am hoping my first day at the university is half this successful, is what I’m hoping.

“This is what you want?” I ask after tapping his shoulder, after he has shooed me away for the third time. “Is this the place, Da? Is this the time and the place?”

“Valhalla,” he says impatiently, shooing me the fatal fourth time.

“You understand, though? That I am leaving you. I am really just leaving you here. And going my own way. For good and for real.”

He nods.

“I knew it before you did,” he says.

He reaches out and places his hand on the side of my face. He stares at me for several long seconds, truly, I think, appreciating me. Then he gives that side of my face a good, crisp clap, sending me away, finally, finally-finally.

And so it goes just like that. After all. I go. I am shooed, and I go. I put on my trench, tie up the belt, gather my chunky sweatshirt, and I go.

“Nobody dies of peritonitis in this day and age, right? So…” goes the beginning of the story he is spinning as I leave.

Outside, I take it in, the town, the everything, and I still cannot fathom it. I curl around to the port side to walk along the grubby, crumbling dockland. The ferry is coming in, rusty tears running down all along its seams.

“Hello, Young Man,” Zeke says, startling the ever-loving out of me.

Once more, I cannot fathom it.

“No,” I say. “No, absolutely not. No. He has found peace.”

“Maybe peace never wanted to be found. Not by him.”

“No. He is here now. Everybody tells stories here, so it’s all good and fine by everyone here. He has a beard now, like everyone here.”

“We’ll give him a good shave.”

I remember when Da joked about his whiskers, he said just precisely that, that they were going to give him a good, close shave. He made a little zipper-scar gesture at his temple.

“Absolutely not,” I say. “The beard looks good. The beard suits him. The beard stays.”

Then Zeke says something. Something that works a kind of sick magic, something that instantly calls to mind Da’s words about flipping a guy’s kill switch.

“You’ll get it, son. Someday, you’ll get it.”

There is a moment. There are, I suppose, lots of smaller, preparatory moments in your life. But I think there is the one moment where something of you is changed, profoundly, elementally. It probably does not happen to everyone, but that’s just because they swerve this way or that way and just narrowly miss it, because it was probably there, out of sight, out of mind.

I feel different before I even do it. The doing of it is almost secondary.

One of the many great things about a rotting old port town is that there is always a chunky piece of wood lying handy when you need it.

I toss my new heavy Suffolk University sweatshirt on the ground behind me and pick up the chunky piece of wood. He smiles at me, almost, almost a laugh.

I crack him, tremendously, right at that temple spot where the zipper scar would go, swinging right through him, the way good, natural hitters do. He drops to the deck, stands like a bleeding, cowering dog on all fours. I need him to look up at me. None of this honorable death baloney for you, mister. He looks up, petrified, horrified, glorified.

He opens his sad little mouth to plead his soulless, meaningless case.

But he doesn’t get his chance.

I put down the chunky piece of wood, balancing it on one end between my knees. Then I conclude communications with a beautiful bouquet of wiggling fingers in front of my pursed lips.

“Octo-shush,” I tell Zeke. “It’s a funny joke. From the office. You remember. Or do you remember? Are you even supposed to remember? Are you allowed to remember?”

He doesn’t try to answer me this time. He knows we have our answer.

Then I reclaim my chunky piece of wood and I club him. It’s done.

He lies there at my feet in more blood than I thought a human body contained. I grab him, roll him, and shove him over the side, into the water. It actually goes plunk .

I straighten up, look around, expecting… something. I look and look. Even the ferry pulling in, right there, right there so close, gives away nothing.

I feel myself shaking. It only makes sense, though, doesn’t it? Big thing there. Nerves are dancing like spit on a skillet. I can feel myself shaking from my feet on up, like I am making the rotting wooden walkway beneath me crumble to bits with it, and then I will fall through and meet Zeke in the water. I feel it in my stomach and my head and even my vision-my eyes themselves are doing something they have never done before, actually physically trembling, juddering, side to side in the sockets, vibrating at the frequency of hummingbird wings. My brain and the backs of my eyeballs are leaning on each other and combining to make a buzz that’s a torture.

I extend my hands wide in front of me to look. I close my eyes then, to the juddering. “Stop,” I say, as calmly as I can. I open my eyes and watch my splayed hands again and they are shivering, quaking to make Parkinson’s seem like stillness. “Stop it,” I say, low, firmer. “Stop it now, Young Man,” I say, staring, staring, staring at my hands as the shaking slows, slows, calms, finally finishes.

I stare at my hands for minutes now, waiting. I listen to myself, check myself, wait for myself. Stillness. There is a fair amount of blood on my all-weather spook coat. Into the water it goes.

I did this. It was there to be done and I did it.

It has been some time. I look up and around again at the peculiar port town.

If Lundy Lee noticed anything amiss, or if it cared, it has already forgotten.

There’s a story for the grandkids, I think.

“Time, Young Man,” I say.

I promised Jarrod I would see him off, and I meant it. This outgoing ferry will be him gone now to whatever happens to a guy like him on a boat like that, and good luck to him.