David Means - The Spot - Stories

A human failing. Nothing too big, nothing tragic, but some little error on our part. A sudden distraction in the form of a lament for a lost lover, or a stray thought. Some preheist factor, unnoticed before the chain of events began. A second cup of coffee that led to a poorly aimed shot, or a jittery trigger finger. (Good aim requires at least one dose of caffeine. Too much caffeine and you’re likely to succumb to the urge, so to speak.)

Some impromptu gesture, Ohio-related. Some improvised response to a gesture on the part of one of the customers — throwing the plan off for a fraction of a second.

We drew a blank that night, with the rain drumming down on the tin roof of the forge. We simply could not find the exact cause. Both of us had shot the Old Order Mennonite, we agreed, at about the same instant, arriving at a mutual conclusion and acting on our instincts in the same manner, and that seemed enough to justify what we did and to set it aside as the actual cause of the botch. We’d drawn from the same visual cues and responded to the best of our abilities swiftly and without too much thought.

In the end — after a lot of mulling, a lot of cigar smoke and pondering — we agreed that the botch might’ve been caused by some outside factor. Just one of those things. Just another afternoon heist gone bad. We shook hands and gave the forge one last slap for good luck and stepped out into the rain and went our separate ways: Carson headed north toward home; Donnie headed south to Florida; I drove west, staring hard through the swap of the wiper blades, shaking myself awake, doing my best to fend off the desire — and it was a strong one — to return to the bank.

Idea was to go back into the heart of that sad scene, to make an end run around fate by entering into the expectations of the law-enforcement officials (who knew in turn that we in turn knew that they had this expectation), because it was a given that at least one gang member would come stumbling back to the scene of the botch, the brim of his hat pulled low, keeping what he thought was a discreet distance from the scene, lurking in the shadows — so to speak — and holding himself in compliance with the traditions, scapegoating himself to regain some higher sense of order that had been lost in the maelstrom of the botch itself. Just thinking about it was a retreat into vanity. But the impulse was pure and hard. I wanted another shot at the Old Order Mennonite, a chance to fire a few seconds later, deeper into the unfolding drama, to shake loose the image of the woman on the street, who was probably now in bed, I thought, sleeping soundly next to her husband, while in the bowels of the house — nothing less than a big Queen Anne Victorian — a screw rotated, drawing coal into the maw of the fire, keeping them warm and cozy against the chilly night. It was the kind of house a guy like me could only dream about, financed on war loot, backroom deals, and countless bootleg runs. In that house — I imagined, staring out through the rain and dark, trying to keep myself on the road — she slept the deep doze of an innocent. When she woke the next morning she’d go out into her life, sashaying those fine hips, flashing those fine ankles, released from the burden of the truth, never knowing that in the simple act of walking down the street yesterday, she had triggered a dismal botch, a massacre of epic proportions. No: In the morning she’d stretch her arms over her head and yawn, smelling the bacon and coffee downstairs, arching the delicate bones of her shoulders, dreamingly rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Idea was to stake out the town for days on end, if necessary, watching over cups of coffee in Ralston’s diner, knowing full well she’d have to pass that way eventually. Women like that follow strict shopping patterns. A town like Gallipolis has a limited number of retail establishments. The idea was to catch her off guard, to poke the gun into her face and to force her into the car. The idea was to let her know that she had been moving through life the way a fish moves through the water, unable to see the fluid, unable to sort out the larger picture. The idea would be to somehow shift the burden of the botch from my shoulders to her shoulders, heaving it like a duffel loaded with bones of the dead. Then she’d have to raise her arms instinctually — seeing the bag heading her way — and catch it the way a fireman embraces a falling child, bending her knees to ease the weight, lowering herself as far as she could to the ground, staggering under the great weight of the botch itself, catching her balance on the back of her heels.

Trying to make it look like we were going somewhere, we worked up and down the rows, holding keys in our hands, moving from one car to another in case the guy who monitors the security screens inside the store happened to glance up from his magazine, or his coffee, or his ball game, to catch sight of us. Anyway, no one has ever stopped me, Lester said, and the return policy is sweet because they’ll take anything back, no questions asked. You just get the receipt, go inside, find the goods, and then take the stuff to get your money back. In the parking lot that night we had three receipts, including one for a large load of groceries — three hundred dollars’ worth. I said, Jesus, this is a lot of food. Lester said, What do you think most people do, starve, you think they don’t go in and buy whatever they want? I said, No, I think most kind of save money and then go buy stuff. He said, No, no, they just go and pile it up like that. I said, Okay, okay. He said, You’re a dumb shit, for sure. I said, Shut up. He said, Talk more like that, you’re out. I said, Sorry. He said, Get looking. I looked, came up with a receipt for a Sony something, called him over, and he said, Bingo, that’s it, a bigticket item. Then, clutching his key, holding it out, he went back out to the edge for one last look along the curb where stuff might blow up. Augusta came hunching up, saying, Hey, Genevieve, we’ve got to try that Sony. I said, Keep looking.

Augusta was a horrible sight: hunchbacked, with pocks on her face, an Oklahoma harelip, Lester called it, and lithium teeth, all gone. The soles of her feet had calloused so thick Lester took his razor knife and whittled them out of boredom. Ugly enough to stop a clock, he said when we found her. Ugly enough to stop traffic. Yes, sir, a traffic-stopper indeed, he said, drawing her tight the same way he’d drawn me, making those soft kiss sounds, touching her cheeks, tracing the shape of her face. Oklahoma ugly, he added, lifting up one of her breasts. They’re gonna make a movie about this one, he said, taking a step back and boxing his thumbs and fingers to make a frame. Lester had his hopes pinned on being a film director. Post-cleanup, he was going to head to Hollywood. Nothing up in Red Carpet Country can match that for sheer ugliness, he said. I said, You’re getting redundant. He said, What? I said, The ugly thing, it’s getting old, fast. He said, What did you say? I said, Nothing. He said, I thought so, that’s what I thought you said, working a crick out of his neck, twisting it around and around. It was a cold wet October night, somewhere outside Tulsa.

An old farmhouse with a streetlamp attached to the back to ward off prowlers (like us), a huge orb of light casting itself into a mud-rutted backyard filled with whirligigs of all types attached to poles, heaving and rattling in the wind, creating a terrible shudder. Take out that light, Lester said. What? I said. He said, Get a rock and smash that out. I said, Okay, and went amid the whir of sound to find a rock, picking around for one, looking up at the seesawing figures, the whirling ducks, the swinging shapes. I found a nice round rock and heaved it up at the light and took pleasure in the loud pop and darkness. Get up here, get up here, Lester was yelling from around front. I stood for a minute in the dark and felt the wild ratcheting of the whirligigs in a burst of wind from the west. I knew how they felt. Stuck in eternal toil. I had to save at least one, so I gave a pole a hard kick: a small lumberjack boy in a little green hat, gripping a long saw, looked up at me from the ground and smiled. Get up here, Lester called again from around front. At the front door, working the gray rubber grips of a chrome walker, Augusta’s grandfather blinked into the darkness. As soon as he figured out what was going on, he lifted the walker up and used it as a battering ram to hold us back.