Stephen Dixon - 14 Stories

“You did the right thing. Let me speak to him now.”

Laslo holds the two-way in front of my mouth. “Hello,” I say.

“The papers to donate your wife’s body to the hospital for research and possible transplants are ready now, sir, so could you return with Officer Laslo?”

“No.”

“If you think it’ll be too trying an emotional experience to return here, could we meet someplace else where you could sign?”

“Do what you want with her body. There’s nothing I ever want to have to do with her again. I’ll never speak her name. Never go back to our apartment. Our car I’m going to let rot in the street till it’s towed away. This wristwatch. She bought it for me and wore it a few times herself.” I throw it out the window.

“Why didn’t you just pass it on back here?” the man behind me says.

“These clothes. She bought some of them, mended them all.” I take off my jacket, tie, shirt and pants and toss them out the window.

“Lookit,” Laslo says, “I’m just a hospital security guard with a pair of handcuffs I’m not going to use on you because we’re in a public bus and all you’ve just gone through, but please calm down.”

“This underwear I bought myself yesterday,” I say to him. “I needed a new pair. She never touched or saw them, so I don’t mind still wearing them. The shoes go, though. She even put on these heels with a shoe-repair kit she bought at the five-and-dime.” I take off my shoes and drop them out the window.

The bus has stopped. All the other passengers have left except Laslo. The driver is on the street looking for what I’m sure is a patrolman or police car.

I look at my socks. “I’m not sure about the socks.”

“Leave them on,” Laslo says. “They look good, and I like brown.”

“But did she buy them?” I think they were a gift from her two birthdays ago when she gave me a cane picnic basket with a dozenand-a-half pairs of different-colored socks inside. Yes, this is one of them,” and I take them off and throw them out the window. “That’s why I tried and still have to get out of this city fast as I can.”

“You hear that?” Laslo says into the two-way radio, and the man on the other end says “I still don’t understand.”

“You see,” I say into it, “we spent too many years here together, my beloved and I — all our adult lives. These streets. That bridge. Those buildings.” I spit out the window.” Perhaps even this bus. We took so many rides up and down this line.” I try to uproot the seat in front of me but it won’t budge. Laslo claps the cuffs on my wrists. “This life,” I say and I smash my head through the window.

An ambulance comes and takes me back to the same hospital. I’m brought to Emergency and put on a cot in the same examining room she was taken to this last time before they moved her to a semiprivate room. A hospital official comes in while the doctors and nurses are tweezing the remaining glass splinters out of my head and stitching me up. “If you’re still interested in donating your wife’s body,” he says, “then we’d like to get the matter out of the way while some of her organs can still be reused by several of the patients upstairs.”

I say “No, I don’t want anyone walking around with my wife’s parts where I can bump into him and maybe recognize them any day of the year,” but he takes my writing hand and guides it till I’ve signed.

I’ve been looking for a job for a long time, can’t find one, when I see a help-wanted ad for a security guard. I apply, the interviewer for the security company says “You’re really too old for the job but look young and limber enough and we need men badly these days, especially of your color and build. It’s a booming service, stores and buildings are getting robbed all over the place, and you can start tomorrow if you want at two hundred a week, but I first have to know if you’re willing to use a club over someone’s head if you have to.”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s no answer.”

“Then I guess so.”

“That’s not a good enough answer either.”

“Sure, why not? You mean if I’m working in a store and someone comes in with a gun and wants to rob it?”

“Someone comes in with a gun, you just stand there, petrified, don’t do anything, you want to get yourself killed? Forget the ‘petrified.’ We don’t want to look that bad, but we also don’t want our insurance rates raised because one of our guards got killed. So just, if anyone comes in with a gun or even a knife or pulls one on you once he’s inside, don’t do anything. Don’t. If someone comes in with a club but one of our sized clubs, then you hit him over the head, or even she. You’re allowed to hit a she if she’s about to hit your head or the owner’s or salesman’s of the store you’re protecting. If it’s a much smaller club than yours, then you try and disarm him, and if you can’t and he’s still coming, use your club over his head. But if someone comes in with nothing like a gun or club but makes trouble like shouting or swearing and the owner or manager want him out, and you can’t get him to leave with just nice words, then this is what you do. You quickly look outside for a cop if you’ve time. If you haven’t time or you already looked and no cop’s there, then you politely escort, or try to, this person out of the store. Sometimes you’ll have the manager’s or salesman’s help, most times you won’t. If the person fights back or won’t go, you grab him and throw him out of the store. If he comes back, you throw him out again. If he keeps coming back, call or have someone call the police, and if there’s no police in time, raise your club to hit him. That usually does it. Now if this guy fights back with his hands and happens to knock you to the ground and is about to kick your face in or the owner or a customer’s head in, then you use your club if you have to, over the hands or arms if you can or in the groin. If you can’t or you have and the guy still keeps coming with his kicks or hands, then over the head. You’ve that right. That’s what you’re being paid for. You won’t get in trouble with the law, believe me, but if you do, the company will back you up all the way and pay you for the time you have to explain it in court. If it’s a woman who’s the aggressor with her hands or a smaller club, don’t use your club on her unless she somehow gets you down and is about to pound the club on your head or stick her shoes in your eyes. Then you’re entitled to hit her anywhere you want with your club, though one good one on the leg or chest should do it for her and it looks better for us in court. Now can you do all that?”

“Hit with a club you mean?”

“Stop stalling, because you know what I’ve been talking about. Hit with a club a woman or man or even a child if it’s a killer child on the hand or leg or if you have to, on the head. Can you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not just saying so to get the job?”

“No, I’m positive I can.”

“Then if your references are okay, you’re hired. I think we have your size in a uniform, though it may be a little big or small. Come in tomorrow morning at eight and if everything checks out, I’ll give you your first assignment and uniform and club.”

I start to leave his office.

“By the way, Tom. You haven’t an arrest record or anything like that? You’re not a thief, for instance, in this city or any other?”

“Nothing. Not even a car violation in ten years.”

“Any kind of violation before those ten years?”

“Nothing. Never. Not even as a kid.”

“And it’s not just because you never drove a car or were ever caught?”