Little Straws
Benjamin Pickett finish his
morning cup of coffee, and sits at the kitchen table minutely studying the
coffee grounds peppered on the bottom of the cup. He does it to avoid eye contact with his wife
Dotty who is, at that moment, haranguing their two surly teenage sons for
committing some trivial sin of the day.
Frustrated from their apparent indifference, she turns to seek other
prey and focuses on Benjamin. “If you’re
going by the travel agency, could you please confirm the time of departure. I called twice and they put me on hold, twice;
I’m not taking that from anybody, least of all from those people. And, after this, we are not to go to that
travel agency ever again, even if it was the last one on earth.”
“No,
Dotty, we will not go to that agency again”, he answers softly.
“And
please don’t buy that flight insurance like you did the last time. What were you thinking? Who benefits other than your shiftless
brother and that girl friend of his? You
think for one minute any of us would have survived a plane crash?” She looks to see if the boys were listening.
They weren’t. “And speaking of your
brother Fred, what does he do all day, anyway?
Since he’s moved here from California,
he’s been popping in and out of here like a lost pigeon. Why hasn’t he got a
job? There’s something about him you’re
hiding from me, isn’t there? I wouldn’t
be surprise if he’s an ex-convict. Is he
Ben? He’s sure sneaky looking enough,
and all those tatoos.” She pauses and
scrutinizes Benjamin. “Frankly, I don’t
believe he’s your brother. He’s so much
larger than you...so much better looking.”
Not
waiting for a reply, she turns her attention back to the teenagers who were
stealthy creeping toward an exit. “Stop
right there”, Dotty strolls around the counter and menacingly approach the two,
“I expect to see report cards when I get back from work. You both look surprise. Didn’t think I knew about it, did you?” she
says, with repress glee. “I also know
about your hacker friends, so I’m checking with your teachers to verify each
grade, got that?” Thrusting out, she
abruptly yanks a strand of hair from both their heads. “Ow”, they cry in unison. “See, I haven’t lost my touch.” She holds the strands of hair up toward the
light. “Anything you want to add before they leave, Ben?” She is speaking to an
empty chair. Ben has slipped out the
side door.
Benjamin
wraps his overcoat smugly around his body as he walks toward the detached
garage. Ice and snow covers the ground.
The day is heavy with gray frost and the air glows with the stillness of a
coming storm. As he crunches his way on
the pea gravel path, he can still hear Dotty acrimoniously informing him of her
pregnancy, “Now, we got another one coming, and I got to walk like a stupid
penguin for nine months. Guess whose fault that is, you dick,” followed by a
hard slap on his head before he could duck behind a pillow. Dotty is a practicing Catholic, so an
abortion was never an option.
Benjamin rarely made love to his wife and
was dumbfounded to hear of her pregnancy. Dotty has metamorphosed through the
years from hippie slim to middle age chubby and was perpetually on a diet,
leaving her even hungrier and angrier and very much undesirable in her present
form. In college, where they had met, she had already displayed a truculent
nature that was delightfully adorable…at the time. The foul language spewing from her full lips
made her sexy, and her professed ultra-liberalism seemed to include the area of
the bedroom. A change took place after
they were married; she slowly transformed into a termagant with piano legs.
He
steps into the ice-cold garage, switches on the neon lights hanging over a
scarred work table. It hums back an irritating welcome. The garage is in its
usual grimy disorder. He glances up at
the foggy mass of cobwebs draping the rafters and wonders how on earth could spiders
survive in such frigid conditions. And
what in God’s name do they eat? There
certainly weren’t any insects flying around in this ice cave. He squeezes his thumb and forefinger together
on the bridge of his nose and bows his head for a moment. His old station wagon sits next to his wife’s
new Japanese import, which she never lets him drive. He gets into the station
wagon, cranks up the engine and presses the remote. The asthmatic garage door slowly wrenches
open revealing, in jerky increments, a wide expanse of pure white, dazzling
glare. Reaching into the glove compartment,
he takes out his sun glasses and puts them on.
He slowly backs out of the garage and rolls down the driveway into the
street. Shifting gears, he lunges toward an expressway jam with a motoring herd
of preoccupied commuters, just like himself, anxious to arrive to a place where
they will be just as anxious to leave at the end of the day.
When he was a boy, he was shy and frail
for his age. Being shy and frail invited
taunts and stronger peers made his young life a series of little traumas. He survived by playing dead. His alcoholic father and mother, standing in
the sidelines, became part of his disinterested audience. His younger brother Fred was the jock in his
family and the favorite son. Everybody
liked Fred and he traded heavily on that.
He owed everybody money when he moved out of town yet he was still
missed. Know one was aware when
Benjamin left town and he was not missed.
During college, he never smoked pot, nor
tried drugs, just claimed he did. To identify with the only students who would
associate with him, the radical left, he neglected bodily hygiene; didn’t shave,
nor cut his hair, nor washed himself. He
even slept with his clothes on. On the campus, he hid behind the strong ones
who blocked the policemen’s truncheons with their forearms. Others did sit-ins and took the crushing
surge of the fire hoses that slammed them against walls and floors. Benjamin was assigned to benign tasks like
poster hanging, passing out leaflets, or answering telephones. They had him pegged
The impending trip to Mexico with Dotty
was Benjamin’s penitence for impregnating his wife. He imagines himself lying
on the beaches of Cancun with the sea breezes
blowing on his face. He would run
through the white heated sand and let himself be enveloped like a cocoon by the
soft, humid air. But his delicate
capsule would be incinerated by a conflagration of burning lava flowing down
ceaselessly from the mouth of his ever complaining wife. It would never end. There would be no place to hide especially on
those open expanses of bare sand.
And his children. What happened to
them? Now in their teens, they treated
him like an inanimate object forever standing in a foyer. When did he arrive at
that heart wrenching conclusion, or was it a revelation, that he no longer
loved them? They are never seen except
during meals when they would slink out of their rooms and, even then, they
would just sit and watch the kitchen television while an insipid dinner was
being served and eaten. On weekends,
when he was home, the children would be spending their time at ‘friends’ and
his wife would go to his widowed sister-in-law “to keep her from committing
suicide,” as she puts it. He often ended up eating alone.
Years
before, he had some idea that they should all sit down together during the
dinner hour and discuss the day’s events.
The idea came from an advertisement on a born-again Christian channel;
it suggested that family members talking to each other would strengthen
relationships, bring family members closer together. He insisted that they begin this
tradition. Somewhere, very early in the
game, the talk quickly petered out, the closeness never materialized, and the
neon screen ingratiated itself back to its religious prominence.
People who knew Benjamin said he suffered
from low self-esteem, and did so, politely.
His doctor thought he displayed a classical case of mild depression and
prescribed pills that he never took. So
it was not surprising that he made no friends, being that he was so introverted. His brother Fred, on the other hand, never
seemed to lack of friends. He had
charisma, said Benjamin. He was a bum,
said Dotty.
Mile after mile, the old station wagon
passes nearly identical houses, pastel colored, and with identical red tiled
roofs half covered with snow. This is the same route he took, day after day,
year after year; there seemed to be safety in sameness. He arrives at the commuter train station, parks
his car on the icy black asphalt that has just been cleared of slushy brown
snow, locks his car door and, with a sigh, measures his steps toward the
station’s entrance.
The newsstand rises up from the middle of
the concrete platform like a color montage about to make sail. It sells the standard confectioneries, packaged
foods, carbonated drinks, journals, smut magazine, and a multitude of national
and local newspapers. Over the façade of the stall hangs a green and white
striped canvas awning streaked with suburban soot. Benjamin had passed the stall hundreds of time
but had never patronized it. He never
reads while on the train, nor had he a sweet tooth, nor a passing hunger for
stale sandwiches, sandwiches he visualized as mummified meat and bread entombed
in a thin plastic sarcophagus.
Normally, he would immediately get on the
train that was waiting in the station, acquire a seat next to a window (If
there was one vacant), and, for the entire trip, watch the passing scenery,
never turning his head and never acknowledging the existence of others. But on this day, he would do something out of
the ordinary, something with a little panache!
Today, for no particular reason, he decides to buy a newspaper. And why
not? He will buy a newspaper and read it
on the train. He looks up and takes a
deep breath. The clouds are thinning,
revealing patches of rich cobalt blues.
It might turn out to be a glorious day after all!
As he approaches the stall, he
notes with mounting discomfort that, behind the counter, the vendor is blind
and in dire need of dental work. On
closer inspection, he sees that the vendor’s eyes have pink pupils and both his
legs are amputated at the knees. The
vendor sits on a worn leather cushion fasten with metal brads to the top of a
wooden stool. Cotton stuffing was
quietly exploding from the cushion’s duct taped seams like white puffy
entrails. He feels a little
self-righteous indignation that this vendor did not wear dark glasses to hide
his grossly disfigured eyes. No
consideration for the public, he thinks.
Still, his aversion toward the physically handicapped shouldn’t cloud
his positive day. With stoic fortitude
and pose indifference he places some coins on a tray and selects a morning
newspaper.
“That’ll
be seventy five cents, mister,“ growls the vendor.
Benjamin
is startle that the blind vendor could even speak. “That’s what I put in the plate,” he replies
defensively.
“No,
you didn’t. I only heard a quarter.”
“No,
I dropped a fifty cent piece and then a quarter. The fifty cent piece landed on a dollar bill
and you probably didn’t hear it,” he explains.
“Didn’t
hear it, huh?” The vendor’s voice became louder. “Listen, mister, I can hear the air whistling
pass the boogers in your nose. Don’t
tell me I didn’t hear it. Now, be nice
and pay what you owe.”
It
is the morning rush hour. People, waiting for their train, stop their milling
about and begin circling, glancing furtively at the unfolding drama like
curious gazelles. Benjamin hears their
tongues softly clucking and feels their squinting eyes scrutinizing every inch
of him, noting his every flaw, his every weakness. He is in grammar school
again and the bullies are unzipping his fly.
He begins to feel the humid flush of body heat rising underneath his
overcoat, through the crack of his shirt collar, gliding up his neck, flowing
past his chin and enveloping his face.
He faintly senses damp droplets of perspiration forming under his armpits
and slowly trickling down the side of his ribs.
“I’m terribly, terribly sorry, but I did give you your money. I dropped it right there on the plate…I have
witnesses…” He frantically looks around
and sees now how foolish his statement must have sounded, but he valiantly
presses on. After all, the man is blind
and cripple, what possible physical harm can a blind man missing both legs do
to him? ” …And I’m not that kind of
person who would go around cheating people out of nickels and dimes, as you can plainly see , I… I…” It
was just a slip of the tongue, a faux pas.
“You
shit,” screams the vendor, “you like making jokes outta blind guys like me,
huh, do you? I get it… you wanna get
your jollies off a blind guy, is that it?
Is that what you want, huh? You
prick! Well, here take it, you son of a
bitch, take it all.” The vendor sweeps
his white cane across the counter, knocking over the change plate that lands
with a loud metallic clatter, scattering paper money and coins over a wide
area. It is amazing, notes Benjamin in a
daze, how so many coins can drop from so far a height and end up rolling on its
edges. Stunned by the vendor’s quick
reaction, Benjamin covers his face with his hands. Everyone is staring at him! A fleeting sense of incontinence is
developing; he imagines a dark stain slowly spreading down the front of his
trousers!
To his immense relief, a uniformed guard,
sauntering through the crowd, reaches the scene, and surveys the concrete
floor.
“Now
why did you go and do that for, Jake?”
The guard kneels down and begins picking up the coins. “Give me hand, here, will you, mister?” He is addressing Benjamin from his crouched
position. As Benjamin stoops down, the
guard whispers, “You gotta forgive him, he has these bad days and he flares
up”.
The vendor
continues to rant while he swings his cane back and forth in front of him. “I want you to arrest that son of a
bitch. He tried to steal from a blind
man. He got no respect for us
handicapped people, but I caught him, I caught that son of a bitch red handed.”
“What did he try
to steal?” asks the guard, patiently.
“Money, that’s
what. He didn’t put enough money on the
plate. That asshole tried to short
change me because I’m blind,” shouts the vendor heatedly. "I want you to arrest him. I want him locked up!" There is a tittering of laughter from the
amused crowd
“Now, Jake, you
know I can’t arrest the man just because you think he shortchanged you. How much do you think he owes you?” ask the
guard.
“He shortchanged
me fifty cents.”
The guard takes
Benjamin aside and causally looks over at the group of commuters who were
relishing this welcome aberration from their dreary routine. “Look, mister, it’s gonna be a long day for
the both of us. Why don’t you do us all
a favor and give the man his fifty cents.”
“But I did pay
the man!” sputters Benjamin. “I dropped the money on the plate, in spite
of what he says.”
“No one is
saying you didn’t,” says the guard, glaring at him. The guard’s attitude is turning sour.
Benjamin is
mortified. The onus is being place
entirely on him! But rather than
exacerbate the situation, he reaches into his pocket (praying to God that it
isn’t damp, for he hadn’t looked yet) and hands a coin to the vendor. The vendor snatches it with a victorious
sneer, and in that instant, Benjamin realizes that the vendor is not totally
blind. The guard begins making small talk with the vendor, ignoring Benjamin
completely. The small crowd begins to
disperse and the street drama slowly drains down a black hole. As he boards the security of the train, he
discovers that he has left the contentious newspaper on the counter of the newsstand. So much for panache: the castration was complete!
He sits next to
a window and stares out during the entire commute. He watches his reflection flittering over
hills and gullies, whizzing by the silent landscapes, flashing by rows and rows
of telephone poles. He watches the
shadow of the train, jumping and twisting along the gravel bed, desperately
keeping pace with its source, flickering with each wooden tie, rushing by in a
blur of colors in tempo with the measured clacking of the wheels. And then the scenery abruptly vanishes and
all life is submerged into the inky blackness of a tunnel. His reflection suddenly delineates and
leaps out from the window pane, stark, and grotesque, bathe in bloodless neon
lights; the face, so morose, so wretched!
It moves, it talks, it will even grovel for you. And then the blackness explodes and
metastasizes instantly into the most brilliant kaleidoscope of landscapes,
whirling by in streams of reds, browns and yellows. He vanishes.
He no longer exists. Benjamin
bites his lip, lowers his head and begins to sob. It was the little straws that broke the camels
back.
II
Benjamin was employed as one of many
assistant accountants in a small corporation that imported cheap garments from
the Far East.
He has never met or has ever seen the Asian owners but he minded his own
business, was paid the standard rate, received the standard benefits and was
never asked to do anything illegal.
His office was
located in the basement of a converted warehouse by the rail yards. It was the only office in the entire basement,
the rest of the space was crowded with packing crates of all sizes stacked to
the ceiling. The place smelled of mildew
and Lysol, but he didn’t mind. Solitude and the coziness of the office was what
he wanted. This isolation was broken
rarely by the mail clerk, and often by Mr. Grunther, his immediate supervisor. Mr. Grunther would drop in routinely and stay
for a few derisive words.
“Jesus, you look terrible. Had a rough commute, or did you have trouble
making your wife come?” asks Grunther, grinning and leaning on the office
door. "Well listen up, butt
head. This is in regards to the recent
cut backs by the head office, meaning some of us will have to pick up some of
the slack…” He stares at Benjamin’s
hunched form as he rattles on.
Benjamin,
sitting at his desk, says nothing. He
was already depressed about the unsettling rumors of massive layoffs. He had
buried the rumor into the far recesses of his mind, and it was nearly forgotten
until Grunther referred to it obliquely.
When he had interviewed for this position over a decade ago, Grunther
was in search of the perfect subservient whipping boy and, in the course of many
interviews, he found Benjamin. It was
Benjamin’s first and only job out of college.
“…and I’ve got you down to cover for Wong,
who’s at the main office now. Hey! You listening? You look like you’d just died from
something.” He pauses and looks both
ways to assure himself that they were alone.
Then he says, “It’s sure funny how that Chinaman moved up so quickly,
huh? Here, I’ve been, working steady for
nearly fifteen years, and those guys in the front office don’t even know I
exist. Wong’s been here, what, three
years? And you, you’ve been with me for
how long? Now, here he is, his yellow
ass being promoted pass all of us, and do you know why? Because those slant eyes up there are
promoting their own kind, those bunch of fuckers.” A thick blue vein began to pulsate on
Grunther’s forehead and he begins rubbing his temples with his fingers. “Getting a fuckin’ headache,” he growls.
“Look, there isn’t much to it, and you get to
leave a few minutes early.” He walks up
and lays a black shoebox on Benjamin’s desk.
It has NIKE written in bold red letters on the cover of the box. “And maybe with the extra time, you could get
on with one of those black whores on Third
Street, get them to give you a little head before
you head for home. Give you a little
head… head for home… get it? Get
it? Heh, heh”. Benjamin does not smile. “Suit yourself,” mutters Grunther, “the deal
is you pick up the miscellaneous receipts from payroll on Fridays at four and
take it to the bank. While at the bank, you pick up the cash and deliver it to payroll: it’s not a big
amount, so we don’t call out the armored car, in case you’re wondering. Payroll
will fill you in with the rest. Any questions?”
"Yes, what’s in
this?” asks Benjamin, as he removes the lid off the shoebox. In side the box is an oil stained, brown
paper bag and a worn leather holster with a metal belt clip. He lifts the brown bag and feels the ominous
weight of its contents. He empties the
bag and a, blue-black, short barrel revolver, wrapped in a red oil rag, slides
out and clatters on the scarred desk. They both stare in silence. Then Benjamin
looks up and says, “Would I really be needing this? I mean, do I have to carry a gun? I don’t remember Wong ever carrying a gun
when he went to payroll.”
“You never
lifted his coat,” says Grunther mildly.
“Insurance policy says you have to….payroll will fix you up with a
license. And if you don’t know how to
use it, don’t worry, neither did Wong.”
After Grunther
leaves, Benjamin sits and stares at the sculptured black metallic instrument
lying on his desk. He has never touched
a gun before. He has seen them up close when they were worn by policemen. Those shiny black dangerous revolvers of the
city police with their butts sticking prominently out of the leather holsters
is what he remembers. They stormed in,
during the protest sit-ins, to batter students with hard rubber truncheons
while he stood watching quietly from behind the barricade. The images of those long metallic barrels and
white ivory handles (or were they plastic?), made an impression. Slowly he rises to his feet and walks around
the desk, never taking his eyes off the thing; the thing that, by company
mandate, now belongs completely to him.
He leans over
and with his middle finger and thumb gently picks up the gun by its trigger
guard and studies it. He is thinking, this
instrument can turn living into dead instantaneously. It can reach out and
terrify the most powerful of men and silence the most vocal of adversaries with
just the gentlest pull…no… with just the threat of a forefinger. And the sweet pungent scent of machine oil
rising from the short barrel smells wonderful.
It never
occurred to him to own a gun, or to carry it concealed, yet here is an
instrument that could have protected him from harm, be his friend, right the
wrongs he had suffered, and cause enduring pain to all his enemies. And all this could be done…with
impunity and from a distance. That was the beauty of
it. He could make people do anything he
wanted or suffer the consequence.. And
it was so portable for such a huge potential threat!
He lays the cold
metal pistol onto the palm of his right hand.
To his surprise, it is warm to the touch and heavy like pure gold. He sticks the gun into his waistband like he
has seen in the movies. Feeling giddy
and excited, he tries a few quick draws, pulling up his shirt in the process. Tucking in his shirt, he clips on the belt
holster, pulls the gun from his waistband and shoves it into the leather
holster with a flourish. It fits snugly.
With it in place, Benjamin begins to experience this profound sense of
well being, a sense that he had never felt in his entire life, a fulfillment of
his soul, so complete, that it took his breath away. He never took
illegal drugs, he is thinking. Perhaps
he should have….if this is what it feels like, to be omnipotent.
Much later this
morning, Benjamin finds himself approaching Grunther’s office which is on the
first floor. He rarely had reason to go
there since his interview twelve years before.
He approaches the secretary and asks if Grunther is in.
“He’s busy right
now,” she says, without looking up, “so please be seated and, oh, do you have
and appointment?”
Benjamin ignores
her and walks into the inner office. The secretary, suddenly aware of this
breach of office etiquette, rushes behind him, protesting. Grunther, sitting behind his desk, looks up
startled.
“Yes? What is it?”
He looks at Benjamin as if seeing him for the first time. Grunther
cannot remember the last time he saw Benjamin in his office. “It’s alright,
Carol, I’ll handle it.” The flustered
secretary backs out, reluctantly closing the door behind her.
Benjamin speaks
in a quiet monotone, “This will only take a second.” He leans forward placing
his open palms on Grunther’s desk. “I just want you to know that I don’t
appreciate your comments about my wife, nor comments on my private sex
life. It’s just none of your goddamn business
and if you persist, I will feel obligated to do something about it….something
drastic. I hope I am making myself
clear, for both our sakes. It would be tragic
if you are not clear on this. Well, are
you?”
Grunther
hesitates and swallows. This little
prick has lost it, he is thinking. Shit!
He’s wearing the gun I just gave him!
Sonofabitch got it in the holster.
Grunther’s mind begins to race as he sucks in the air. He has read of
employees going off the deep end and shooting their bosses, but it never
occurred to him that it could happen here!
And it was happening, here, right now!
His spine begins to tighten up and he feels the blood from his head draining
down his neck. The room becomes
unbearably warm. He grips the arms of
the chair and tries to get up but realizes his feet are paralyzed; they’re asleep! So he sits there, petrified, perspiring
freely, with fleeting thoughts of a possible stomach wound, HIS stomach
wound, caused by this…this impossible
pipsqueak.
Survival
instinct forces his dry vocal cords to activate and he croaks out, “Benny,
Benny, Benny, hey, you know I was just kiddin’, no offense, but I never thought
it bothered you. You…you never said
anything. Now, admit it…you never did say anything. Come on, you know how I am. If I knew you
felt that way, I would’ve never ...never...uh, honest. Look, it’s not gonna happen again, I
promise., I got you fuckin’ upset, so, tell you what, why don’t you take the
rest of the day off, and I’ll cover for you.
Will that fix it? Will that be
okay?”
Benjamin does not reply. He just stands there for several long seconds
and stares at Grunther’s sweaty outstretch hand. Ignoring it, he slowly turns and walks out
leaving the door open and Grunther drench with perspiration.
There is no euphoria. No.
Being treated with respect will be a common occurrence, and he will
treat it as such. He is mildly surprise
that his heart is not pounding nor his underarms wet. Maybe I should turn around, go back and shoot
him, he thinks… shoot him right in his pink mouth, knock out a few teeth,
maybe. A need arises to shoot the gun,
to empty out the cylinder in a burst of shots.
He promises himself to look for a shooting range as soon as he can. It may just be a lot of fun shooting off that
pistol. Now, he will have something to do, somewhere to go during the weekends
besides staying in the house and feeling sorry for his existence.
He springs out into the street and begins
walking toward the train terminal. The
sun is again peaking through the clouds, shadows drifts in and around the
buildings sliding down onto the pavements and hip hopping over to oblivion. Benjamin is thinking how resplendent that
is. There is a slight breeze brushing
against his face as he walks briskly along.
He begins to laugh as he raises both arms and quickens his pace, turning
his walk into a trot, chasing his shadow in the snow. … He spies a yellow cab. The street is fairly
empty now; few people walk around an industrial neighborhood during
the mid-day. He raises his arm with
forefinger pointed to the sky, and the cab pulls to the curb.
Benjamin yanks
open the rear door while glancing at the rear tire.
“Hey, I think
you got a flat in the making.”
The driver
sticks his head out the window, “No crap?”
“Well, look for
yourself, I’m getting another cab,” and with that he slams the car door shut
while the cab driver gets out to have a look.
With a swift motion, Benjamin pulls out his gun and points it level with
the face of the bent over cab driver who is totally shocked, not so much at the
gun, but at the harmless looking man who is holding the instrument. It is so unexpected.
“Put your hands
on your head and get down on your knees before I shoot them off,” he says
calmly.
“Sure, sure
mister. Anything you say,” The cab
driver lowers his head, pleading, there is now terror. “Hey I got family, so
please, give me a break. You can have anything you want. I’m the last guy that’s ever gonna give you
any trouble, I really mean it, the very last guy”.
Benjamin thanks
the driver, gets into the driver’s seat and drives off, leaving the cab driver
kneeling on the sidewalk in shock.
Heading towards the train station, he spies the bank. He had always admired the front façade of
that particular institution which he passes numerous times a week. The radio in the cab begins frantically
calling out numbers and requesting a response.
The driver probably notified the company when he was picking up the fare
and he hadn’t relayed back a coded signal.
Benjamin pulls up on the white zone in front of the bank and gets
out. He walks casually pass the guard, takes
several envelopes from the customer’s table and gets into line. Stepping up to the counter, he slips the gun
from its’ holster, and places it underneath the envelopes with the tip of the
barrel peeking out and pointed towards the tellers stomach. He didn’t care if he was observed or not.
“Put all your
money you have in the drawer, please, and place it in these envelopes, then
hand it to me as you fill each one up.
Don’t put in the red dye capsules because I’m going to press each
envelope when you hand them over.” He
read that somewhere, “and if the dye ejects I will shoot you and your
nearest co-workers. And you know who the management will blame
for that. Do it slowly now, don’t drop
anything, …and you are having a good time so please smile. “
“I am smiling,
sir, and I’m going to do everything you say”, whispers the female teller as she
nervously begins slipping the contents of her money drawer into the bank
envelopes. She later told investigators
that she had no idea what the person really looked like. The robber was of average height, she
thought, and his face so unremarkable that she couldn’t even help the sketch
artist. She later became a prime
suspect. An insider job, they would say.
Benjamin gathers up the envelopes and warns the teller not to give an
alarm. He tells her that he would hate
to kill that old guard standing at the entrance and that would be her fault
entirely.
Benjamin again
walks pass the guard who is pacing back and forth in front of the exit. The guard has his hands clasp behind his back
and his head up, studying the plaster molding on the ceiling. It must be excruciating to have such a boring
job, Benjamin is thinking. Come to think
of it, I have such a boring job. He
slips back into the taxi and slowly drives to the train station's parking lot,
just a mile from the bank. Less than
twenty minutes has past, from the time he left Grunther’s office, to the time
he arrives at the parking lot. He is
astonished that so much was done, and so much had changed in such a short
period of time. Einstein was wrong. Time really lengthens when you’re having
fun. In the parking lot, he empties the
envelopes on the car seat and counts the bills.
It comes to approximately sixty three hundred dollars. Sirens are screaming in the distance. Benjamin wrongly assumes that it is a
response to the bank robbery but instead it is the police coming to investigate
an assault complaint called in by Grunther.
There was a worn
leather valise stuck in between the seats.
He pulls it out, opens it, and discovers the cabby’s lunch. He is delighted. Taking the food out, he
replaces it with the paper currency which he stuffs into the separate compartments. He also eats the lunch, which is an egg salad
sandwich with lots of mayonnaise, red lettuce and a sliced dill pickle. There is also a small tomato, a small bag of
potato chips, a green chili pepper, and a nudity magazine wrap around a cold
can of beer. Must’ve packed it himself,
notes Benjamin. Good lunch. A whole lot better than what Dotty would have
packed him. Come to think of it, she
stopped packing his lunch years ago when he mentioned that having peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches for lunch daily, and washing it down with instant coffee
wasn’t exactly appetizing. She exploded
and hissed, “Well, little man, if you don’t like it, pack your own goddamn
lunch. Believe me, when I tell you that
I’ve got better things to do than serve you hand and foot.”
From that day,
Benjamin skipped lunch and, over the years, lost a few pounds in the
process. Now and then he would go to the
cafeteria on the second floor, but co-workers would see him eating alone, while
they were in cozy cliques, laughing and talking and giving him pitiful
glances. He would go only when he hadn’t
had dinner the night before, which was often.
Well, that phase will end, he thinks to himself. He reflects that if the worst happens, prison
food wouldn’t be half bad and he would be eating regularly.
Leaving the cab
and strolling into the terminal building, he wound look neither left nor
right. He would go home and pack his
things and maybe leave a note to Dotty.
Did he owe her that much? Did he really care if she lives or dies? No, I don’t owe her anything, he is
thinking. He definitely would not miss
her…or his kids. Accepting this, he
feels elated.
He boards the
train without incident, and meditates during the entire trip. As the train approaches his station, Benjamin
begins to observe how different the place is at this time of day. In all the years of commuting, he has never
arrived this early, it has always been in the late evening, at the peak of the
rush hour when it was noisy and crowded. The place appears nearly deserted
now. His eyes scan the entire platform
and finally rest on the newsstand. The
vendor appears to be taking a nap, sitting up. Benjamin glances around. There is no one in a guard’s uniform, not
nearing the lunch hour. Benjamin knows
what he has to do.
“Hi, remember
me?” says Benjamin, cheerfully, as he walks up to the counter. The vendor is startled out of his stupor,
unfolds his arms and looks around with his head slightly cocked. Benjamin takes a newspaper off the rack and
quickly rolls it up.
“What can I get
for you, mister? Need somethin’? I got it all here,” says the vendor, half
awake.
“No, no, I don’t
need anything, except a piece of you,” Benjamin says it with a smile.
“What did you
say? A piece of what?” asks the vendor, not quite comprehending.
“I said I wanted
a piece of you. That’s what I said,” and with that pronouncement Benjamin lifts
the hinged counter top, steps behind the counter and in one swift motion, grabs
the vendor and slams him to the floor.
The vendor lands with a thud on his amputated thighs before he rolls
over on his back and begins gasping in shock.
Next to the high stool was a portable heater humming and glowing
red. Benjamin kneels down, putting his
full weight on the vendor’s chest and arm, pinning him to the floor. Without hesitating, he jams the rolled up
newspaper into the vendor’s open mouth and holds it there, muffling his
screams. With the other hand, he lifts
the heater by its handle and lays the face of the heater on top of the vendor’s
open palm. The length of the vendor’s
back arch with spasmodic jerks and the stumps of his thighs wiggles frantically
from the burning of his flesh. Tears are
rolling from his pink glazed eyes and gagging sounds are erupting from the top
end of the newsprint.
After a few
seconds, Benjamin lifts the heater and
places it next to the vendor’s ear causing the vendor to jerk his head away in
terror.
“Now you listen
good, you blind motherfucker.” Benjamin
had never, in his life, used the ‘mother’ word but he always wanted to, and now
it seems most appropriate. “I’m going to
let you live with just a blistered hand, you miserable piece of shit. But if I ever, if I EVER hear you reporting
this, I will come after you, you blind sonofabitch, when you least expect it,
and slice off your fingers, one by one, you understand me? Nod, if you understand me.” The vendor nods his tear streaked head and
begins to shiver violently.
Benjamin rises
from his crouch position and calmly brushes himself off. A stray customer comes up to the stand and
Benjamin takes the money and makes change from the cash register. Only the correct change was accepted on the
metal dish displayed. As the customer
walks away, he asks, “What’s happened to old Jake?”
“Oh, he’s out
sick, today..” Benjamin says to the
retreating figurer. The whimpering sounds from the vendor, lying on the floor
of the stall, are drowned out by the station’s routine noises. Benjamin watches as the customer walks some
distance, then raises his foot and stomps on the vendor’s other hand. The vendor screams. “That’s for moaning.”
Walking off the
station platform toward the parking lot, Benjamin marvels at the beauty of the
overcast sky and how fresh the air. It
is still late in the morning when he gets into his car and drives straight to
his bank.
Dotty and he had
several joint accounts. Benjamin never
bothered with it nor was he even aware of how much each account contained. He let Dotty handle all the finances in the
family. Every time he inquired about the
accounts, she would snap back with "What do you want to know for? You going somewhere?” Well, NOW he is going somewhere, and he
giggles. He is astonished to learn that
there are over thirty thousand dollars total in all the accounts. He withdraws the whole amount and deposits it
in another checking account in his name only. He encounters no problems; the
bank manager knew him by sight. The reason he gives for such a large
transaction is that he is going to speculate in the booming stock market. The bank manager cautions him about the
dangers of speculation, and asks if he would care to speculate with their
bank.
The next stop is
at the travel agency where he tells the agent to cancel the trip, and to
arrange for just one seat on a one way flight to Mexico and could the date of
departure be tomorrow? “No problem,”
says the agent after checking with his computer. “Good”, says Benjamin.
The house is
quiet and empty when Benjamin drives up.
Dotty is at work at Newfields department store. She is a store detective, and the hours are
long due to the approaching holidays and the growing menace of
shoplifters. Dotty is considered by many
to be very capable in her position, and she never carried nor owned a gun. Those who work with her said that she didn’t
need one.
Benjamin goes
through the house looking for anything he might need in his self-imposed
exile. Something in the recess of his
mind tells him that he is never coming back. He doesn’t know why but he is
grieved by the thought. Finding nothing,
he begins climbing the stairs to the second floor. He knew where Dotty kept his passport. Mustn’t forget that. He was going to pack light, just T-shirts and
shorts. He could buy what he needed when
he landed in Mexico.
Suddenly there
is a thump. He freezes mid-way. There
are voices coming from his bedroom. It
can’t be Dotty; it is a man’s voice. A
burglar? He feels excited, a burglar in
this house! Well, he is thinking, as he
carefully pulls the revolver from it’s holster, let’s see what we have here. He
raises the gun and cocks the hammer back. His adrenaline begins to pop open his
sinuses and he fully inhales. He feels
exhilarated. He tiptoes up the rest of
the stairs and breathlessly stands in front of the bedroom door. It becomes quiet. Perhaps he was heard? He stops for a moment in front of the closed
door, he feels the pulse aside his neck throbbing. He steps back, braces himself, and then
smashes the door open with one swift kick.
He rushes in gripping the revolver with both hands at arms length, and
pointing it straight ahead, just like in the movies! He is all set to shoot the first thing that moves.
He is all powerful! He is to be feared!
He is the king!
After the inquest,
the coroner’s office declared that it may be a strong case for
manslaughter. Although what Fred was
doing, when surprised by Benjamin, was morally wrong, it was not a capital
crime. You don’t shoot your brother for
sleeping with your wife. But for Fred to
be hitting his brother’s head with a baseball bat, killing him, because he
thought Benjamin was a burglar, that was another matter. “If it wasn’t for that goddamn gun, I don’t think I would’ve swung so hard,”
sobbed Fred. “It was the first goddamn thing
through the door and it happened so quick.
What was I suppose to do?” Tears
dripped down his chin. “What the hell
was he doing with it anyway, and what was he doing home so early? My brother never fired a gun in his
life. He was afraid of guns. Hell, man, he was afraid of everything. Maybe...maybe
he thought the gun would make a
man outta him?”
“And chicken’s
got lips.” piped up Dotty.
