Knuckleduster Page 4

  After an hour, he had the entire floor mopped. He wheeled out the floor buffer and went to work, patiently steering it around the gym floor in grinding circles.

  As the buffer droned, the constant hiss of the scrubber gliding across the wood’s lacquered surface forced Brody’s thoughts elsewhere. He held the finger throttle down on the buffer and slowly steered it to the right, then the left, and then back again. The sound drilled in, mining the memory best associated with a similar sound.

  And just like that, time receded and towed Brody along with it, ten years rewinding.

  4

  Burning flesh. Popping and sputtering akin to the sound of meat on a griddle. Hearing it, smelling it but never seeing it. Around Brody, people cheering. Laughing, even. Someone cried out in a foreign tongue, jubilant victory trumpeting all around him. Steeped in the noise and confusion, Brody lay against the wall of the bus depot with his eyes dead in their sockets. His legs badly burned. Shaken to the core with terror and pain, ears ringing, and blinded. But still alive.

  Hours before, he had been moving with his unit through a bus station in downtown Cairo. They had gotten a call from another unit that a bomb had been located and disarmed there and Brody’s unit was to follow with a final, painstaking sweep. The entire depot had been cleared; all that remained was the small room at the back reserved for napping. Rows of cots, fans blowing across those in the midst of long travel, pots of iced water to ladle from. It was where insurgents, going from one clandestine base to another, could often be found.

  The area they were sent to investigate was around the corner from a bank of pay phones, Brody remembered. The unit marched quickly in a pack. Brody was always appointed tail so most of his steps were taken backward. They paused, crouching in unison at the doorway. Brody checked the rear—all the citizens were on the floor, ducked behind counters and potted plants and bus station directory stands. Clear. He tapped the shoulder of the man ahead, and the tap made it all the way up to the point man. Wordless, they stood and the point man vanished around the corner.

  When the man before him moved up, Brody stood from his crouch. While turning forward momentarily to check his footing, he saw it: a gallon milk jug wrapped in duct tape nestled between two garbage cans. A length of fishing line. He had barely enough time to complete the thought, let alone shout before the point man’s shin struck the line. The clink of the pin being pulled echoed.

  The soldiers froze at the sound, that telltale chime. They broke formation, scrambled, and several incoherent yells made it halfway out of their mouths when the improvised explosive device detonated. Brody expected a concussion blast, some fragmentary pieces flying off, chunks of slag or ball bearings, wood screws. But no, the initial explosion wasn’t that strong—it was meant as a cruelty, a humiliation, a blinding burst of ignited white phosphorus. A flash like a magic trick, a blossom of brilliant white leaping at him. And then the bomb’s heart itself. Just hearing it: a pop followed by an angry whoosh. The heat washing across his face. Then the screams.

  Brody would later be told by the corporal that it was basically the innards of a flash bang with half a gallon of lighter fluid and lamp oil. A trip mine Molotov cocktail. Blind and unable to run. Brody, the tail, not quite all the way into that narrow hallway leading to the nap area, was the sole survivor. As he lay in the infirmary tent, unable to see anything before him, the corporal had told him he’d been lucky. Every other man had died on the spot, their skin burned to the third degree, their brains boiled in their skulls.

  “You’re fortunate you got blinded, son,” the corporal said. “Because you sure as hell wouldn’t want to have seen how those boys looked when we found you.”

  It was just as bad, though. Having to listen to them burn as he furiously rubbed his eyes with the backs of his gloves. Hearing them burn as he tore the gloves off and rubbed with his hands. If only he could get whatever this shit was out of his eyes. They needed him. But all he could do was sit, listen, and stare in their general direction without being able to see anything through his new, permanent blackness.

  One of them had screamed for his mother, another for a woman named Helen. Another cried to God. Despite his injuries, Brody thanked the fates that his best friend had left their unit a week before. Thorp would’ve been point and that would’ve meant certain doom for him.

  Soon after it became quiet, but the hissing persisted for a long time.

  The buffer collided with the wall, and Brody snapped out of the recollection, physically twitching when he did. He buried the horrid consortium of images back in his mind and took a second of quiet contemplation before returning to work. This memory managed to crop up every few days. Especially when he removed his lenses for the day and didn’t have the sonar on. That was when the imagination worked best, when there were no visual distractions. The projectionist of his memories was always more than happy to find the reel that carried the bad stuff and offer up a matinee.

  He glanced back at the trail he had left in his wake. The polish had long before rubbed off, and he was scuffing the hell out of the clear coat. He shut the machine off and looked at the ten and a half feet of gritty gymnasium floor he’d have to figure out how to repair before leaving for the day.

  After Brody managed to cover the damage with a fresh coat of lacquer, he set up the wet floor sign and returned downstairs.

  Samantha thanked him for his work and told him how many hours he had left: 295. “Well, you’re getting there,” she commented, putting the ledger back on its nail. She set his belongings on the counter, and he placed them in their proper pockets.

  “What is it?” he asked, knowing she was going to throw some life advice on him whether he asked what was on her mind or not.

  “Just you,” she said with a sigh. “Coming here every couple of days, picking away at that record of yours. I wonder what you’d do if you didn’t get in trouble all the time—if you’d still come here.”

  “I’d like to think I would,” Brody said. He felt comfort in talking to Samantha. She was a kindly old lady he felt a bond with, one he couldn’t quite explain. Was she like an older sister to him? A sage grandmother sort who dispensed advice like a mystically possessed vending machine, every piece perfectly suited to the recipient who never requested it but always needed it?

  “I wonder why you don’t stop trying to fix everybody’s bothers and just go about your own business. I mean, the things you do for folks, the messes you get yourself wrapped up in—it’s enough to make a person think you’re suicidal or something.”

  Satisfied that everything was put back in the right pockets, Brody began buttoning his coat. “I’m not suicidal,” he murmured.

  She shot him the I-know-you’re-telling-me-stories-young-man look his grandmother had aimed his way countless times.

  “What? I’m not.”

  She took a deep breath and what she said next, she illustrated by talking with her hands in big, sweeping gestures. “It’s a never-ending cycle. You get in trouble for roughing up someone, you get sent here to do your work, you meet some other sad soul who wants you to help them, you do, and you get in more trouble, you fib to the cops and tell them you’re seeing these girls in the romantic sense. But it’s obvious there ain’t a damn thing going on between you and any of them. And it just keeps going around and around.” She whirled her finger in the air. “What do you get out of it?”

  “What do you get out of it?” he asked, a faint curtness coming into his voice he didn’t intend.

  “I stay on this side of the desk. Sure, I may get a bed ready for someone, I might microwave a hot dog for some kid who got dropped off here by his good-for-nothing parents, but I’m not walking around looking for trouble. You’re going to wind up getting yourself killed doing that business. You should meet a nice girl and stop all the shenanigans. Just tell me why you put yourself through so much grief. Tell me what Brody gets out of it.”

  “I don’t know, Samantha,” he said, using her name to let her know he was ser
ious. “I don’t get anything out of it, I suppose. But that’s okay with me.”

  With her stockpile of advice nuggets dispensed to depletion, Samantha just shook her head. “Just remember what I said.”

  “Will do.”

  “You coming back later this week?” Samantha called after him as he crossed the entryway toward the front door.

  He said over his shoulder as he pushed open the glass doors, the belt of Christmas bells that hung on the door no matter the season jingling, “Probably. If I don’t get myself killed first, that is.” He smiled and was gone, the door easing closed on its hydraulic, shutting out the cold air with him.

  As Brody walked to meet the 3:45 train, his phone began thrumming against his thigh. The caller panel read You’re in trouble now, a self-appointed message that popped up whenever his probation officer called.

  He answered, gritting his teeth, looking southward in anticipation of seeing the train arrive so he’d have an excuse to hang up.

  “I have a lot of things to attend to today, so here it is: the CliffsNotes version in easy-to-follow bulleted points. I’m disappointed. That’s one. Second, I thought we talked about your little midnight fisticuff trysts.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds—”

  “Third,” Chiffon continued without even registering his attempt to interrupt, “another hundred hours have been put on your tab.”

  “Okay.” Brody slumped his shoulders. What could he do, refuse? The train rounded the corner into sight. He sighed with relief. “But I’m actually about to get on the rail here in a second and I—”

  “You’re fortunate; you really are. If it were in my hands, I’d see to it that you got a little time to cool your jets in one of Minnesota’s many fine correctional facilities. But as it stands, until they uncap the Wite-Out again at the capitol building, here it is, my gift to you: one hundred more little opportunities for you to not only make the Twin Cities an ever better place to live than it already is but also an upped dosage of what I’ve already prescribed to you: perspective.”

  “Thank you, Chiffon,” Brody forced himself to say.

  “Miss Doyle is fine,” she corrected. “Detective Pierce has asked me to move your appointment up. So mark your calendar. This Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Bright and early. My office. Are we clear? Understood?”

  “Yes. Sounds good. Thank you.”

  “See you then. Bye now.”

  Brody hung up and cursed under his breath then again when he boarded the northbound light-rail and saw there wasn’t a seat to be had. He gripped the bar and let the gentle tug of momentum pull at his frame in a nauseating rush of speed.

  He considered what Nathan had told him the night before, about the loophole law getting changed early next year. He knew how Chiffon—Miss Doyle—felt about him and what he did; many of her other clients were the men he paid drinking hole visits to. Let a fist fly in January, and it was off to jail he’d go. Pretty doubtful there would be a bodega where he could get lens charger batteries in exchange for his wages pressing license plates.

  Of course, it might be what she’d choose to do come Friday—just a day shy of a week from now—and throw the lever on the trapdoor he was always tap-dancing on and drop him into a cell. The term Black Friday would certainly have a new ring to it then.

  5

  When Brody returned to his apartment, he immediately got in the shower to remove the smell of floor polish and industrial soap. That and the call with Chiffon always put him in a bad head space. The woman could instill terror, make him see barred walls and uncomfortable prison mattresses and even smell the fires of a riot—where, he guessed, he’d most likely be dispatched when the guards were preoccupied. A shower was the only cure. Lenses out, sonar off, a makeshift sensory deprivation chamber to remind himself he still had the law on his side for the time being.

  Once out and toweled off and dressed, he could see from across the room that the icon for voice mail on his screen was blinking.

  Could the redaction have changed in the last hour and Chiffon be calling to inform him with unabated giddiness in her voice that he was going to spend some time in an eight by ten after all? For a beat, the smell of smoke from the prison riot fires rekindled, and the thought of someone emerging from the murk, hunched and smiling with a head full of bad thoughts, shiv in hand held low to the side, lumbering toward his open cell made his throat run dry.

  He walked over to the mounted screen and read the display: Thorp Ashbury. As he stared at the name in plain black text, his mind reeled back to dusty days in the desert heat, heavy body armor on his shoulders, shared laughs in the back of the soldier troop carrier with this man. Miss Doyle’s threats evaporated and an elation he hadn’t felt in years replaced it, clicking easily in place. He told the screen, “Play voice mail.”

  Thorp’s voice came across every speaker in Brody’s apartment. “Hey, it’s Thorp. Just wondering if you had a spare couple of days. Maybe you’d want to scoot out here and do a little fishing. Turkey Day’s coming up and if you wanted to stick around for that, maybe I could rustle up something. If you don’t already have plans, that is. Or just go get our own bird. Pheasant’s in season. Currently. Either way, uh, give me a call. And we’ll, you know, get something going. Take care, buddy. Talk to you soon. Bye.”

  Brody asked the screen to play the message again, and he listened closer this time. The first pass he got what Thorp was saying, but now he wanted to hear how his friend was saying it. The guy rarely talked in clipped sentences like that. He had a cavalier swagger about him, a bravado that came from being the top dog in whatever small town he was originally from, lauded high school football champ or the like. Obviously, something was distressing him.

  But then Brody thought about what they had been through together, all the places and disasters and awfulness that had passed before their eyes. Again, he traveled back ten years to Egypt. They had been sent merely as peacekeepers, as contracted policemen with much better firepower. They had been told several times that they were not to use their guns and their presence was all the reassurance the citizens needed. “You’re a reminder of what’s not to be messed with,” their commanding officer had told them.

  Brody remembered them trying to help an old man who had gotten his arm caught in a bear trap, right there in the city’s alleys. He decided to move along through the memory, dodging the more difficult moments of it. He jumped over what had happened to Thorp, what the guy had been through and dealt with—and then the rest of that peacekeeping effort when Brody finally got blinded and was put on the same list as his friend. Invalided but for two completely different reasons and shipped home within a month of each other.

  The projectionist wouldn’t let it sit merely at that, though. The incident in that alleyway, with the man caught in the bear trap, unceremoniously commenced play. Piecemeal, it came to him. Turning the corner, seeing the man hunched, his limb in the metal bite of the trap, begging in a scattered, trembling voice for help—eyes wide, his lips peeled back in a feral way.

  But that was as far as Brody’s mind would allow, and he jumped the edit ahead to when Thorp had become introverted and rarely spoke to anyone about anything. His bravado had been amputated, and grafted on in its place was a staring quietness that could never be shaken. It surprised Brody to get a call from Thorp now. In all the years they’d been stateside, they’d never exchanged anything other than a vague card around the holidays. And now he was inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner? Why now?

  Brody put his wariness aside. It didn’t matter how long it had been. He decided to just be thankful he had someone who wanted to spend any time with him at all.

  “Call back,” Brody told the screen, and Thorp’s number was dialed.

  Over the speakers of the apartment, Thorp answered on the sixth ring with a tired hello.

  “It’s Brody. How are you, man?”

  “Hey,” Thorp said languidly, as if he had been woken up. “How’s it going?”

&
nbsp; “Just returning your call. That sounds like a plan to me. I could stand to get out of the city for a while. Where are you living nowadays?”

  Thorp made prolonged grunting sounds indicative of a man stretching, and when he spoke again, it was with a bit higher tempo and levity.

  “Chicago. Well, not Chicago proper. It’s a good drive from here. I can kind of see it from here; let’s just say that. So it’s not too much of a trek, really.” There it was, that clipped way of talking again. Perhaps it was how the man was now. Maybe he had been placed on medication or had taken advantage of some of the postwar therapy sessions the military offered. Brody couldn’t picture it, the big football star sitting in a cramped office with a shrink or organizing one of those pill-a-day containers with the seven plastic lids, but you never know.

  “Fishing, huh? Sounds like paradise.”

  “Yeah, well, I got myself a good chunk of land, some decent woods to roam around in. It’s old farmland and I figured why not, so now I’m trying to do the cranberry thing. Eventually, I might try my hand at selling to Ocean Spray or something when I can get through a season without completely killing my crop.”

  Brody laughed. It felt good. At first it’d he felt enormously awkward talking to Thorp, but he quickly found himself falling back into the brotherly rapport they’d had so long ago. Brody realized how much he truly missed the camaraderie of friends, of people he knew he could trust and talk to about certain things that only they’d know and be able to relate with.

  “What day works for you?” Thorp asked.

  He had to be home next week for his scheduled visit with Miss Doyle, perhaps even leaving Thanksgiving night to ensure he’d be back in time. He folded his arms and told the empty apartment, his voice finding the microphone, “Anytime that works for you. You’re the host.”