Chapter 6 - Induced

 Chapter 6

Induced

Puharick’s words fold in my hand as I stuff it into the outer pocket of my jacket.  As the rain hits me, the door on my van closes and I begin the push to the door of the Daylight Donuts on 3^rd.  Rain has never been what I wanted it to be.   Too unapologetic.  Too self-centered.  It mobs me as I fight myself to show no interest.  It fucks my ankles, my neck, my hands and Puharic’s deeper meanings, now bleeding at first contact, or not bleeding but translucent, pretending unaffectedness.  I walk an extra ten feet to avoid hopping onto a slimy curb, and right about when I want to start swinging at the rain, I make it to an eve.  The door is off, a lot of things are changing, but too soon, too fast, too much change, Jesus, “pull” and it doesn’t even need to say it out loud.  Its destiny is distracted by a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and a Bud Light Sticker from the 80’s and so much small Stickerage and Signage, and words, I could complete a Junior College degree just doing a work up on this fucking donut shop door alone.  How have I not noticed this before?  In fact, when did the old man get so many fucking stickers!  If this was the fucking seven eleven down the street I would kno… , it’s the fucking Seven Eleven.  God damnit!, I wheel and am back off the curb, right in the half foot of re-gurge in the gutter, from what ever is saying no to the rain in the sewers, and both feet are wet now and I am back in the van, and I am made meaningless again by the rain.

I have to go home again, I have to go home, I don’t care, I am not slogging around all day with wet socks, I do not fucking care.  I would smoke if I did, and I think about it, and instead pop a dick pill, buckle up, get the van heater going again, and then wait too long for a break in the cars to pull out, and then I am back again, on the river, rolling through, passing it all in my time capsule, my space ship my van.  Maybe driving will turn into something more like what it is way deep down, maybe city driving will.  Maybee we will be able to hide completely and never have to step out of our cars, hovering 200 feet above the real street, the poor mans street, the actual fucking ground, as we hover and our apartment windows are like our car windows, and the air is the sea, only a sea with water we can breath, and maybe that will be it, maybe driving will be home.  Maybe driving will become what it really is someday.

I pull over behind a grocery store and go into the back of my van and dig out my sandals, then I scrape off my shoes, and socks and slide back up front dropping into the cockpit, feeling a bit freer and thinking about going full-day-off with shorts, but that is not today.  Today, a scab comes off.  Today a door opens or a window gets broken.  Today I get a connection or they get a cast.  At my real office (the donut shop on 3^rd), I sit in the old chesterfield and read the daily paper.  My coffee comes out to me in the mug the old guy keeps above the coffee maker, on the coffee maker to keep it hot, convenient.

“you rain uh”

“Fucking rain” I tell him.

“Uh fucking a rain” he says, I nod and reach for my wallet and he subtly waves off payment like an old Italian.  The fuck he doesn’t speak English.  I don’t know how the chair got in this place, the old man never sits.  He doesn’t even lean when he smokes out back after taking the last trash bag out.  I only ever caught one other person in what I really feel like is my chair, once, it was a kid, and when I walked in his fat mom called her son out of it like he was wandering off or doing some other shit that took her right to the edge of beating him in public.  That’s right you little rat, your not even a rat yet.  Your not broken enough to sit in that chair.  You haven’t lost.  You have too much of your self to even know what to do in a chair like this.  My god, your just a fucking kid, oh my god, and it hits me how much pain that little turd gets to drink if he’s lucky.  But it's not my chair, and I am the only one who sits in this place anyway, though I saw a Mexican once, in a reflector vest, sit one time, hung over, waiting for the rest of the crew to get those damn ham and cheese microwaved cresents, those always a disappointment sandwiches you know are a lie, and yet you drop $4.00 because of course you do, we all do.  His back never touched the back of the chair.

The paper is mostly noise.  I look for the signal, I really scan and look for any kind of pattern, even the help wanted adds, the real estate the colums are pure shit, then I see the funnies and the horoscope, they are tied together, Charlie brown looks down, he found the lead that broke him, he can see the fisa form, the word majestic, a date, the start of a department and so much ash.  The proof was there, Lucy tells him he can get killed for even looking at the ash, she stands over him, I think some one is dead, I think it was his friend.  Here they come, stand up, play, dip shits are coming, stand up Charlie Brown, STAND UP!

I look around, my body is literally electrified, I feel both crazy and drugged, no it’s a heart attack, I wait, but the heart keeps working, I am quiet, I gulp it down, I fuck with my hat. I sit up, I adjust, I look around, outside.  Someone's here right?  Someone has to be here?

the door opens with a bell and the sound of rain.  In walk the brass.  I am simultaneously unrecognized and unmissable in the chesterfield off the counter area at the Daylight Donuts.  I put my shoe back on.  I get a nod for one of the servicemen.  They actually came her for donuts.  Stan is a first name and so is Roder.  Stand up Charlie Brown.

I cut out the comic.  This will have to do for now. I keep trying to hold it different to see past the window of the comic strip and down at Charlie Browns knees where conveniently out of the frame of the comic the burn bag lay and the remains of what they stole, what the hid, what they have been doing to us sits, found too late, found like a fuck you, try, I dare you try.  But his world is stuck, and the window is a 2d comic book strip box, and those physics can’t be fucked.  I am too big to fit in the hole, and I do not want to scrape off who I am to fit through even if I could, to sit next to him and say, I am gonna get these fuckers, but, I am just as helpless as you are.  I want to put my hand on Charlie Browns shoulder and say, I know.  I know.  And I do.

The horoscope is Silver.  I see it and I know I can swing by Jani’s place, that she’s sleeping but will let me fuck her, that she’s thinking about it.  “The pen will not fall down from rain, but you will need to shake all four legs to get out” something about making a fist, and recycling..  the key is there, the door unlocks, she is laying where I know she will be, face down, there's a smile but she won't open her eyes.

    I am certain I am both crazy and right.  I can still reach down to the people here that we are all calling my friends, and speak to them with the added benefit of them hearing me, maybe not all of it, but most of it, so I am here, I am here right?  I have to be here?

    A perfectly small bell rings on the door as it opens and i realize that though i have been sitting directly in front of full, floor to ceiling glass windows without obstruction that wrap a good half of the entire building on three sides, I never saw them approach.  It is just a boy.  well, a teenager, fat, wants a fucking donut.  might be me, might be me for real, as I sit, old, skinny, tired, not eating a donut in a place that will save him from a stepfathers resentment, a mothers obliviousness and expertly grown obtuseness, from the pain only beautiful women can cause, the hoplessness of directionlessness.  From the empty hand pulled back from the universe when it said 'what do you want little boy', and i said, treasure, love, home.  and its said, 'get the fuck out of here I wasn't talking to you'.

     Maybe the kid is a part of something.  Maybe its just a kid that wants a donut.  you can turn a cat evil, but you have to work at it over time.  maybe its just a kid.

    When I leave Jani's house I have been repaired in a way that masturbation can't.  Whatever probability spikes have been emanating off of me and flinging right up into the proverbial ass holes of the Archons, has withered into KOFI with lite static.

    I skip the office and two blocks later I am at the Bank talking with Soderson in his office.  

"It's hers" I permit him.

"At some point, when do you just give this all to the police, the detectives?"

"Miles?" I return.  Soderson looks like he has been brought in to solve a giant puzzle in a kids room where the kid has eaten a piece, lost a few and one definitely has been pushed up its ass then returned to the pile, a trick against himself.

"Bill, I am not looking to be done with this." I clarify, but all that is offered from the Bank Manager is a worried expression.

"47 stab wounds." I leave out the part that her body is radio active and that her debit card which I am trying to get him to tell me where it has been most recently used, is like a glove warmer in my pocket.

"Point me at an address, someplace that may have or been near a Camera with a DVR." still nothing.

"She has no family Bill.  No one to fight for her, or cover her body.  No one to put a blanket over her.  No one came.  She has an apartment over in Black Eagle.  Someone took her from there to the Firewatch tower below Holland Peak, before, while or after they stabbed her 47 times.  I am playing tag and some motherfucker is laugh-walking away from what he did."

"Your not the FBI Dan, your a columnist."

"fuuck," I surrender.  "You don't even have booze in here man."

He says 'he doesn't know what I want him to do about it', with a gesture.  Lift the world maybe?  Lift a car off her, help me lift her off the metal table in the Lab at Conkelly, where her body was taken after the Autopsy was stopped by spooks and what was a living human being with cloths and a car and some connection to this world, is being studied or worse.  

"Alright" I say and stand.  "I get it." on the way out I try to appreciate the stere formality of the bank.  I try to drag some of the order with me out through the windows but it dissipates in the open air and may never have been needed at all.  

Behind the Speedway in apartment C, where I get hand jobs from a girl named Elle, I give her boyfriend the debit card for 10 Percocet and tell him the pin code is 0901 0191.  "Who's Nancy Hoffman" he laughs.  "Dumb rich Lady" I answer" and that was it.  The first time I heard her name out loud.  I nod and leave, enter my van and across the highway and wait.  five minutes later Elle's boyfriend walks around the side of the Speedway and goes inside.  2 minutes later he comes out, walking fast, swinging arms and then heads back to the apartment I cum in twice a week.  about 10 minutes later a late 80's sedan, a Lincoln, pulls in.  The Two brass from the donut shop are inside, shades and serious on their faces.

What would killing them right now get me?  Are they close enough to this to die by my hand?  Retributed, stuffed in a grave by vengeance.  No one notices me because I am old, have gray facial hair, am unkempt, sloppy, slow-ish.  They are inside for less than a minute when state police show up.  I have been inside there more than enough times to know it has trouble with five people at once.  The open sign is turned around by a suited arm with a silver watch and heavy gold ring with a large black stone in the center.  I pull the slide back on my 40 cal and do the quick math of Heaven and Hell.  Of leaving the planet right now, of Shooting until I do not exist anymore.  This could reach the finish line.  It will be quick, messy, maybe even half wrong but I could catch some evil, send it back downstairs, nail the cellar shut with bullets and slip-ons. I put my hand on the lever that will open my car door and send a fountain of light into heaven like I have never been a part of, or witnessed or even heard of.  My passenger side door opens.  Miles climbs in and sits next to me.  I look over at him gun in my hand.  He sees and says nothing, then offers "Feds?".  "Brass" I say.  "Malmstrom?" he returns.  "Probably.  Mt Hood maybe." I clarify.  He nods.  "You don't look like a speed shooter and I have cake at home."  I turn back to the Door and get ready for my final run.  "Wait" he shouts. "I have real cake at home fucker" as he pulls his snub nose out and spins the barrel, half cocking it, then we both exit the Van and head across the street with guns outstretched old school shootout style.

As I enter the center of the highway, gun in left hand, arm fully outstretched, not looking for cars, ignoring the scream of hot tires dragged across pavement and horns blaring and one maybe two screams, the door to the Speedway opens and half backing out is Ronson or Rongdon, the tan kid, the Brass Spook from the Donut shop that most certainly is here tidying up their murder of the girl Nancy.  I think of Screaming, of asking what they did to her, where was she, or incriminating them, a statie exits and instantly, as the moment his eye is capable of seeing me, see's me and as though still, he comes from fast time where this world moves slow as a river, he begins without recognition, the pulling of his service weapon, and that is when the glass of the door they are exiting and the glass of the full pane convenience store windows all shatter from bullets leaping from my gun and Mile's revolver.  I keep advancing, and as my gun empties, i go for the mag I keep in my pocket as the first bullet hits my arm and the second my chest and the third maybe also my chest, and i am seeing more sky then I should.  and why are my hands on the pavement, i need that clip, and I look up and miles made it a good 10 feet further than me, and his face down with arms wide, no gun in his hands and his coat spread out perfectly like he was arranged.  How the fuck did he make it farther than me?  this isn't even his thing.  then Sleep.