Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

“How you know my wife?” he asked.

“I just hear about her.”

“What you hear?” DeFreeze twisted in the car seat, the vinyl squeaking.

“This and that.” Prophet Jones was leery of this particular avenue. DeFreeze balled his fists up and slammed them into his thighs. “Damn,” he said. “The little stories just keep coming on me. I hear and I close up my ears and they just keep coming.”

Motherfucker was freaking out on him. “Damn, nigger, you got no time for this. Got to get out of here right now.”

And what Prophet Jones definitely did not want to be was sitting inside his personal vehicle with Donald DeFreeze when the Man rolled up with his gotcha grin.

DeFreeze went right ahead. “Try to turn my back to it, put faith in her, but even now the little stories make their way here.”

“It’s bad. I know it. We all know the story. You not alone. They all the same. But you got to get going. Go get your shit together and find someplace else to be.”

He thought of the lockup downtown and how little it would take for the Man to offer him deluxe accommodations therein. Plus all the Man had to do was break a fucking window and that house was a what you call shambles.

“They ain’t all the same,” insisted DeFreeze, suddenly argumentative.

“What? Who?”

“I want you to know I got some really beautiful, aware comrades right in here. They are helping me put all this motherfucking shit behind me.” DeFreeze’s voice rose in pitch and volume and he tilted his head back. “I am truly blessed. My God has said unto me that I sinned and I must pay. But in his forgiveness my evil has perished and I am come unto the meek to offer them deliverance.”

What the fuck. Prophet Jones was not bargaining for anyone to be shoving a cross up his ass. Just took him on in here so he could hear the radio, and all the sudden he’s Reverend Ike. He reached past DeFreeze and unlatched the door, giving it a little push. Like, hint hint. The Field Marshal put one foot on the sidewalk but kept the rest of his body in the car. Prophet Jones exhaled sharply, opened his own door, and came around to the passenger side, where he fully opened DeFreeze’s door and gestured up at the house.

“Listen, DeFreeze. Go in there, get everbody together, put they guns, they C-rats, all they shit in they ditty bag, get going. They find you, you won’t be delivering a motherfucking pizza, you hear? Get out. Get on out.”

McLellan’s Home Decorating Center extends deep into its low building, long narrow dark aisles formed from ceiling-high shelves leading like tunnels to the back of the store, where the overhead fluorescents are shut off and the parched dust of provident thrift has settled on every anciently untouched surface. The store smells of old cardboard and potting soil and it has the empty silence of a place that has only just stopped making noise. Toward the front, the remaining fluorescents flicker, and there’s also a large blue-lit device that first lures and then eliminates flying insects, sizzling them disconcertingly. Hoes and mops and nets and pickaxes and push brooms and rakes and scythes and shovels and window poles and window screens lean against the walls, and there are bins holding nails and screws and bolts and nuts, and stacks of paint cans, and canvas dropcloths folded heavily on low shelves, and terra-cotta flower pots and planters and window boxes of all sizes stacked on the floor, and the walls lined with perforated Masonite panels for paintbrushes and rolls of tape and sanding blocks and tape measures and work gloves to hang from, and the man at the counter is obscured behind the revolving display of shiny key blanks. Yolanda approaches the man, who is entering figures in a little notebook.

“May I buy a hacksaw, please?”

The man looks at her. He raises his nose and shakes his head slightly to signify incomprehension.

“A hacksaw. Hacksaw.” Yolanda mimes the act of sawing. She almost mimes the act of sawing off a handcuff but catches herself.

The man turns to look at the tools hanging behind him. He takes down a small crosscut saw.

“Yes, but … no. A saw, but different.”

He replaces the crosscut saw and removes a circular saw blade from a hook.

“ Hack saw. Hacksaw?”

“We closed.”

“But—”

“Closed.” He reaches behind him to snap off another row of fluorescents.

Dan Russell wants to know:“When you start these house-to-house things, what do you do? Just burst in with guns and all?”

“No, we’ll knock on the doors and announce ourselves and explain that we need the People’s help, so can we please billet some of our troops here or at least spend the night? blah blah blah,” says Teko.

“Well what if they say, sorry no thanks?”

“We’ll move on to the next house.”

“What if they call the police?”

“They won’t , Dan,” says Yolanda. “The People know we’re doing it for their sake.”

“Um,” says Dan, “am I the People?”

Yolanda reaches for the door at Klein Bros. Ace Hardware and is surprised when it opens automatically. Inside the place is bright and air-conditioned and playing “I Shot the Sheriff” from speakers stuck in the dropped ceiling so that the song follows her around. A teenage girl is mopping beyond a barrier of yellow WET FLOOR signs and a young man wearing a red blazer and carrying a clipboard emerges from a tiny office like a tollbooth set in the corner.

He asks the girl: “Can I see myself in it?”

“It’s good and shiny.”

“Can I eat off it?”

“It’s pretty clean.”

“Can I perform surgery on it?”

“It’s real clean.”

He spies Yolanda and disappears into the tollbooth. A moment later his voice interrupts Clapton’s backup singers. “Chaz help the lady in Window Treatments.”

A big pimply boy wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a clip-on bow tie under a shiny green vest approaches Yolanda. His name tag announces him as Chaz. “Help you, ma’am?”

“Oh. Hello.”

“Looking for something nice for your windows today.”

“No. Actually.”

But there are no further queries forthcoming from the boy, whose expression is as blank as a bowl of dough, and the journey from window treatments to hacksaws seems longer and more savage than she would have imagined.

“A saw,” she says.

“A saw. Oh”—and an eager look that hints at his contempt settles on his face—“you’re totally in the wrong place. That’s over there.” And he jabs at the air with his forefinger before turning away. Yolanda begins walking to the other side of the store, where another teenage boy in a similar outfit is waiting. This boy is named Douglas.

Clapton sings, “ … Every day the bucket goes to the well …”

“Help you find what you’re looking for today,” the boy breathes.

“Hacksaw,” she says.

“Hacksaw! You sure you need a hacksaw? Most people, I find, they’re like, ‘I need a hacksaw’ and whatnot when really they need something else.”

“I think I need a hacksaw.”

“Do me a favor. What are you exactly trying to cut? It makes a difference.”

“ … yes, one day the bottom will drop out. . ”

“Pipe.”

“Well what kind? Cast-iron pipe? Galvanized steel? Copper? Plastic PVC? It makes a difference, believe me.”

“Um. I don’t know. Pipe.”

“Inside or out? I know you’re wondering, ‘Why’s the guy asking so many questions?’ And you know, I’m not trying to denigrate the valuable addition of a hacksaw to anyone’s home toolbox. But let’s make sure we’re using the right tool for the right job, right? And after we figure out what that is, if you still want a hacksaw, we’ll set you up with a hacksaw.”