Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

There could be, Jimmy said.

Like with tools and shit.

Yeah.

A lotta shit walks off the job.

It could.

Do you have any idea what a Bobcat costs? A boom? The kind with the thing that telescopes? A hundred thousand easy.

The kind of money you go up to any broad you want and tell her I’m the Kid.

You need a truck that can carry equipment, a flatbed thing.

The guy lit a Newport and crossed his legs, resting his shin across his knee, as if setting up a planning table. Indicating Jimmy, he said: And he’s our guy on the inside. The plumber said, We gone be rich mothafuckas… Jimmy reduced his movements to a slow speed, made sure to drink from his bottle of flat beer in the coolest possible way. They made statements with a significant air. Speaking slowly, Jimmy repeated a line he had heard in a movie: Security’s a joke. You’re lookin at it. The plumber glanced at the guy whose house it was as if this was indeed a very significant statement. No one had a problem with the line’s being stolen from a movie, apparently. I can feel it, the guy said. They did not get into specifics. The conversation stayed abstract and then wandered into notions of what could be done with the money from a score and debates about what criminal charges would be faced. The plumber suggested they get high. They passed a joint and watched the game. Female voices could be heard. It was the guy’s daughter, a brown-haired girl of seven or eight, being brought home. She said something about the funny smell of the smoke and the woman suppressed a laugh. Can you close it? the guy said. The woman pulled the sliding living room door shut, and they heard her saying, They’re watching the game, in the kind of voice you use with a child.

They never stole heavy duty construction equipment — Bobcats or lifts — and loaded them onto interstate flatbed trucks. When Jimmy was arrested, it was for DUI. He had a couple of bags of cement in his trunk and a Ryobi that retailed at six hundred dollars. He wasn’t raised to steal, Mrs. Murphy said. I know he knows better. Up in the Bronx, the local received a call about him and in the bars they said he was going to get bounced. In the meantime, he kept working. He had his supporters. Keep your head high, Jim. He went to the rectangular building with many windows on Queens Boulevard near Union Turnpike and went through the metal detector, found his Part.

His defender, a sarcastic man with a double chin, did not seem to understand that they were both Irish and what this meant or that Jimmy was a union man and what that meant. Jimmy stood outside the Part waiting for him against the dirty marble wall with the other people who were milling and waiting. The defender showed up late after the case had been called, pushing through the crowd with his briefcase, sweating and distracted.

They called me already.

I’m sorry, I had another case. The judge talks too much. But you don’t need me today. They’re dropping the vandalism, aren’t they?

What vandalism? That wasn’t me. I’m DUI.

DUI, right. You’re Turner. I thought you were Rodriguez. Are you sure this is where you’re supposed to be?

They looked at the names under the glass.

That’s you. Let’s go in. I’ve got another client here. Wait for me while I go talk to him.

The case was continued. The next time he got arrested, they impounded his Skylark and locked him up and he stood before the court while wearing sneakers minus the laces. In court, they referred to him as Mr. Turner. He turned to his defender: I thought you were getting me off. His defender said: Nobody can get you off. You’re guilty. Right or wrong? You did it, didn’t you? Yes or no? So take the plea and next time learn to call a cab.

Then they led him back out to the bus after waiting eight hours in the holding area behind the courtroom where you could not use the bathroom. He sat pushing against the individual shackled next to him who pushed him back. They drove through Jackson Heights, they looked out the windows at the taillights, the Spanish women getting off the subway. He looked ahead at the front of the bus, the transport officers behind the cage, at where they were going. They were surrounded by industrial buildings and the airport. He heard the vacuum cleaner roaring of jet engines going over them and saw the shadow of a plane come rushing over them, swooping down, and landing, and the dark water going by, the lights on the fences in the dusk.

Rikers could make you deaf. It made him smell. For weeks after his release, he shouted. It turned his volume up. He somehow found himself in exchanges with other men on the subway or on the street who had passed through the jail as well. In hoarse rattling voices, they shouted about the mayhem or the riots or the way it had been worse five years ago, before the reforms. They found each other by the way they spoke out in public, in the line outside the unmarked entrance in Ozone Park where Jimmy waited with the other offenders wearing sweatshirts over their heads and blowing vapor in the cold, shuffling upstairs to give his number and get his pills, as part of the terms of his release.

On the corner, wind-burned, dull-eyed, they said, Oh, you a union man. There’s a pride, Jimmy said. You got it made, they said. All you gotta do is keep tight. Keep it in tight! they laughed. They lived in a shelter off Centre Street and did temporary work unloading trucks for Chinese merchants who owned lighting businesses on Bowery.

When I got out after five years, I would do any job, a Puerto Rican named Cat said. My sentence was for murder. I served my time, I don’t care. It happened because I was seeing a woman. She was Dominican. Highly attractive to men. Everybody noticed me with her. This guy, he was a big dude, he liked her and he kept trying to pursue an interest in her. I went to talk to him. He broke my nose, hurt my pride. I came back and knocked on the door. She come out and I said, Get José, and as soon as he come, I had a butcher knife. I jumped on him and kept stabbing him. They gave me murder. When I served my time, I used to jump rope, go for a jog, anything to forget the time. What’d you think of Rikers?

It didn’t affect me.

When I passed through there, they had the lawsuit against the city. It would have affected you, homeboy, let me tell you.

All I know is I got used to it.

I got used to it too. That don’t mean nothin.

I’m not going to change myself just to do what somebody’s tellin me to do.

Neither will I, Cat said. But you can’t get the years back.

So be it.

So be it. That don’t make it right.

To make it right, he took a loop up to the Bronx on his way out to Nassau and cruised down Webster Avenue. When he got far enough, he saw a woman standing by herself with a black handbag and black boots. She was very fat and pale and had small eyes. After she got the rubber on him, he had some trouble, so he repositioned. She looked at him apologetically and said, I can’t do it if you choke me. He just stared at her. Okay, but just like don’t choke me or nothing. Then he was fine. Leave it. Don’t resist. Just keep at it. His skull ring imprinted her white neck. With her missing teeth and rasping voice, she truly reminded him of his mother, at two hundred instead of three hundred pounds. She had bruises on her skin either from getting smacked around or from Kaposi’s sarcoma from AIDS.

The third time he was incarcerated, as an alternative to his full sentence of fifteen months, he was given the option of a five-month intensive rehabilitation program run on a boot-camp model. His common-law wife had just gotten pregnant and there was considerable pressure on him to do the right thing.

He’s got to do it and make the most of it, Mrs. Murphy said. I only wish they could have offered this to him the first time this happened, but they didn’t have it. The discipline is what he never got from Patrick. Some need more than others. You’re not going to get through to him unless you earn his respect, which is why I had high hopes for the union.