CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 10

COFFEE, WOMEN, AND TROUBLE

A bell over the diner door rang, tripped with the top part of the door smacking into it upon my entering. Right away I could see, though the place looked different on the outside, the interior hadn’t aged a day.  Padded red flaked bar stools lined the bar like pawns of a chess set over the black and white checkered floor. An old record juke box flashed orange and green lights at the far end of the diner next to a cigarette dispenser. The light yellow walls were decorated with pictures of what I assumed to be previous owners and cooks from maybe the 1930’s, and the typical Coke-a-Cola logo was branded all throughout the place. By the looks of it, I was the first patron of the morning.  

Through an opening in the wall behind the bar, connecting the kitchen to the dining room, a female hollered out,

“Have yourself a seat and I’ll be right with ya.”

I sat at the bar where I found a couple menus sticking up, sandwiched in-between a large glass set of salt and pepper shakers. I laid one out flat, but before I could look it over, an empty coffee cup was slapped down in front of me.

           

            “You look like a man who could use a cup of hot coffee.”

My eyes followed a white coffee stained apron up to the ripe face of a pretty brunette. She had few enough wrinkles that one would have a hard time distinguishing if she were older, but looked young for her age, or if she were younger, but looked older. It was hard to tell, but my guess was the later. She gave me a crooked smile and before I could reply, she poured the hot black goodness into the cup.  

            “What else can I get’cha cowboy?”

Without looking at the menu I ordered what I knew they were sure to have. 

“Two scrambled eggs and a side of wheat toast.”

“Alrighty hun, I’ll get that out to ya in a jiffy.”

She turned to the opening in the wall that lead into the kitchen and sounded off like a drill sergeant,

“I need two mixed chicks and a side of grain!’

           

Aside from Black Beauty and the picture of Olivia, it had been a while since I had seen a woman.  The smell of her perfume was almost as strong as the coffee cooking in the pot, just as intoxicating, settling like sticky sweet pollen from a rose onto the hairs of my nostrils. With every whiff, my nose hunted down the sent like an English Pointer, forcing my eyes into a locked on ogle in her direction. I couldn’t help but look. Nothing gives life to a man’s field of view like that of a beautiful woman, especially when you’ve gone as long as I did without seeing one. She caught me a few times, but didn’t so much as blush at my admirations. Clearly, she was use to attention, or maybe she just didn’t want it from me.

In my younger years, I was no Rudolph Valentino, but my rough features were attractive enough to win a few dames over here and there. Olivia always reassured me that, GIRLS SEE DIFFERENT KINDS OF HANDSOME, AND YOU JUST HAPPEN TO BE MY KIND. She meant it as a compliment, but I heard it as, YOU DON’T HAVE A FACE FOR THE MOVIES, BUT HEY, AT LEAST YOU HAVE A FACE.  I hadn’t had a good long look at myself in ages, but I was sure all the new scares and gray hairs that I collected in prison, buried any fragments of handsome I might have once had.  Rusty at the game, and without a good hand to play, I decided to flirt with my coffee instead of the waitress. I took a sip. It was bitter, burnt, rainbow oil on black, and perfect.  

“Where ya coming from cowboy?”

“Oh, nowhere, I’m just passing through.”

“Don’t mean to pry, I saw you get off the bus is all.”

I didn’t bother to tell her that I wasn’t on the bus. I was afraid that would lead to me having to explain where I really just came from. I’d rather her assume I was a tramp over a released convict. My attention drifted from her when I heard what sounded like rolling thunder, but soon recognized it to be the distinct rumble of a few V-Twins pulling up out front. She didn’t seem to notice.

“You been traveling a long time?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Well if you’re looking to rest up, there’s a nice little motel just down the street from here that’s pretty cheap, but cozy.”

“I just might…”

DING-DING; the doorbell and a blast of crisp autumn wind announced more patrons to the diner. Most people’s natural reaction is to look at the commotion made by whatever is coming through a doorway, which the waitress did, but I saw no reason to take my eyes off of her. Not just because she was fun to look at, but because I adapted a different way of seeing when I was in the pen. There, to get caught starring directly at a guard or another inmate could be taken as a sign of hostility. Wandering peepers in the slammer usually meant only one of two things, you’re asking for trouble, or looking for it.  So I learned to see what was going on around me by watching others when they weren’t watching me. I’d pay attention to their reactions as they looked at whatever might be going on behind me. I could tune into their eyes and see what they see. Their eyes became the ones in the back of my head, without them ever knowing it. I also learned how to make my ears see. Sounds can show the brain its surrounding environment just as well as sight, sometimes even better.   

Before the waitress could even greet them, I knew by the sound of boots on the checkered floor, and the time it took for the bell to ring again on the back swing of the door, that at least three or four men had entered the diner, bikers no doubt. In the subtle dilation of the waitress’s eyes, and the slight perking of her lips in an almost undetectable frown, I could tell that she knew these men, and she wasn’t happen to see them. The strong smell of burning tobacco that masked the aroma of fresh coffee and killed the sweetness in the waitress’s perfume, told my nose that they were smoking. And in the honey pitch of their laughter I could see youth.

“Have a seat boys, and I’ll be right with ya.”

She brought her attention back to me.

“Quick topper off-er?”

I nodded. She made quick to fill my cup with one hand while fishing out a note pad with the other. With a swiftness that would impress a college running back, she hustled off to the men who were now sitting in a booth by the entrance. It didn’t take me long to hear why she wasn’t enthused to see her new customers. After asking to take their order, she was hit with a barrage of YOU CAN TAKE MY ORDER ANYTIME HONEY! and ARE YOU ON THE MENUE? type bullshit that guys sling when in groups. Just by that shit alone I could tell these punks were late teens, or mid twenty somethings. I knew because I had been guilty of jocking the same cocky trash when I was a kid.

They sounded like trouble, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She eventually got their orders out of them and returned to bark them off from her notepad to the cook in the kitchen. This time, he barked back,

“Order up!”

She grabbed the plate of steaming scrambled eggs, and like a hot potato, with a quick pivot, let it out of her hand before me.

“Careful, plate’s hot. Salt ‘n peppers to your right, and ketchups to your left. Need anything else?”

“No, this is fine, thank you.”

She walked back into the kitchen. I took a bite of the eggs. They tasted amazing, real, not like that powdered shit they fed us in the mess hall. I held that first bite in my mouth for as long as I could. The sensation almost took me away to an unearthly place, but I was soon pulled back to my seat in the diner with the clank and thud of boots to metal as one of the young punks kicked and cursed the juke box.

“God damn things busted! Took my fucking money!”

His friend’s laughter only added fuel to his frustration. The kid walked up to the bar and slammed his fist down on it.

“Where’s that fucking brawd?!”

I could now see him in my peripheral. A biker alright, leathered up and greased to the teeth.  I made no attempt to look directly at him, and tried to go on enjoying my eggs. The waitress came from around back in the kitchen. He started in on her.

“That fucking piece of shit took my money!”

“Well did ya read the sign?”

“What fucking sign?”

“The out of order sign next to the coin slot.”

He walked back over to the juke box and snatched the paper sign from the tape holding it down. He held it up for the waitress to see and then ripped it in half, dropping the two pieces to the floor.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, what fucking sign?”

She tried to maintain her composure, but I could see that the kid put a fear into her.

“Well what do you want me to do about it?”

“I want you to get your pretty little ass over here and open it up.”

She reached up to a hook on the wall behind her and grabbed a key connected to a black treble clef keychain. She walked around the bar, passed the table of mischiefs, knelt down and unlocked a side door in the juke box that pulled out a drawer full of coins. She handed him a coin.

“There! Happy?”

“That’s not my coin!”

His buddies let out in high pitched hyena like laughter.

“What?”

“I said, that’s not my coin. I want my coin.”

“But they all look the same.”

“You hear that boys? She says they all look the same. They all look the same? Well then I guess you’re going to have to give me all of them.”

“I can’t do that!”

“I’m not asking mama, I’m telling you!”

I heard a loud thump and a cry from the girl. He had kicked her to the floor. She curled up and whimpered as he and another goon tried to lift the drawer of coins. I had had enough. Without looking at them, I made my presence known.

“Boys, leave the money and get the fuck out. NOW!”

            “Holy shit! Where the hell did he come from?” one of them said.

They must not have noticed me when they came in. What guy would with a waitress that looked that good?

            “Listen old man, you just keep eating your fucking breakfast, ya dig!”

            “I can’t let you boys walk out of here with that money.”

            “I don’t think you have a choice! What the fuck are you going to do? There’s four of us, and one of you.”

            “Yeah daddy-o, the odds are not in your favor.”

I stood up from the bar stool, still not looking their way.

            “The odds have never been in my favor.”

            I picked up my hot cup of coffee from the bar and turned towards them.

            “Boys, your most important action when faced with an attack by a predator, your best chance at survival, is your first reaction.”

            “What the fuck are you talking abo…”

Before the kid could shut his mouth, I made a direct full on assault on all four of them.  My hot coffee found the face of one. The mug it was in found the face of another. Before the other two goons could drop the drawer of coins, I had already found a fork on a nearby table and put it into the thigh of the kid that started the whole mess. He fell to the floor grabbing at his leg as the last punk standing took a swing at me. He connected, and down I went. I got back to my feet just as quick as I fell from them. The kid that struck me put his fist down. He knew it was a lucky cheap shot, and that I would kick the snot out of him if he kept it up. I looked over to the mouth on the floor that I put a fork in. He was bleeding pretty good.

“Are we done here?”

“Yes sir.”

I took the bandana from my neck and tossed it to the kid on the floor.

“You’re going to want to tie that off. Stop the bleeding.”

I walked back to the bar and pulled the ten from my leather jacket.

“Here waitress, thank you for your service.”

I looked over to the floor where I thought she was still laying, but found her hanging up the phone behind the bar.”

“Cops are on their way!”

She looked at me with mascara filled tears and tried to courage a smile. Then her eyes drifted below my chin and her thankful expression turned to one of shock and disgust. I had forgotten about the mark. The bandana had been covering it. Right then I wanted to run to the bathroom mirror to see what she was seeing, but I couldn’t. I had to go, cops were coming and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around for them to cuff and cart me back to the big house.

When I stepped outside, I could hear sirens and thought it best to head the other direction, but not before burning off my last bit of adrenaline with a good kick to the biker punk’s line of scrap metal on wheels. One into the other, the heaps of shit toppled like tin soldiers. A heavy fog had rolled in behind the morning storm and I soon found sanctuary in its cover. I wasn’t sure where I was headed, and didn’t care; I just kept making tracks away from the diner, deeper into the fog.

I walked for what must have been at least three hours until I was in a forested area, clear of any people, and any police sirens. The fog had died down a little, but was still thick enough for me to only see a couple trees into the woods of ghostly white, ghost woods cut in two by the black tar road that I was walking. It was starting to get cold again, my worries shifted from the police, to fears of potentially more rain. I knew it wouldn’t be long before night would bring its death cold back around, and I hoped to god that I would come across another town or at least the barn of some middle of nowhere farm before dark.

I couldn’t get the way the waitress had looked at me out of my head. She saw the mark. Whatever it was, it was bad, bad enough to turn me from her hero into scum with just one glance. I was mad at myself for forgetting about it, and now that I left the damn bandana behind, I had nothing to cover it with. The German was right. Whatever he put on my neck, what I put on my neck, now showed me for what I really was…A MONSTER.

            It was the beginning of dusk by the time it all hit me. The diner, the bandana, the mark and the bikers; the horror of my past, it was all playing over. But this time…

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 9

BLACK BEAUTY

            I was lost. I couldn’t explain it. It was all so real. It had to be real! The guard put me in cuffs and politely shoved me back to my cell. I was getting out. How?

            “Get your shit bundled up. I’ll be back in an hour or so to walk you to the west gate.”

            It only took a couple minutes to get my things together. I used the rest of the hour trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. It had to have happened. There’s no way I dreamt that shit, especially in the middle of my parole hearing. Soon enough, all doubts of the German and my time in the Nest were vaporized in a blast of H-A-T-E; black across my knuckles. I had become so accustomed to the H-A-T-E; I didn’t see it right away. The same way a new haircut stops looking new, or the way a fresh coat of paint in your home becomes so familiar, you completely forget what the old color used to be. The H-A-T-E became a part of me.

 It wasn’t until I thought about the black ink and my throat, until I thought about the contract and the mark that it even occurred to me to check my hand. After finding the letters, I foolishly tried tucking my chin and looking down at my neck, only to see my big nose and the stubble of my gray whiskers. I knew that all that black ink had to of stained its way into the gapping wounds sliced in my paper thin skin. My fingers found their way to my neck just fine without the help of my eyes, and sure enough they saw something in the rigged scar tissue, but not enough to make it out by touch alone.

Mirrors were banned from all cells, being that they are easily crafted into shanks, so I moved over to the toilet to see if I could make my reflection in the steel seat. The metal was too filthy and scratched up to get a clear look, so I shifted my face over the bowl, gazing for my neckline in the water, but it was no use. The damn thing had a constant stream that bled from the rim, stirring up the water and my reflection with it. I’d have to wait until I came across a window or perhaps the luxury of a mirror on the outside to see what that ghost kraut did to me.

“OK inmate, get your head out of that bowl. You can’t be drinking like the dogs no more. Time to go back out in the real world and act like a real human being.”

The guard rattled his baton across the bars of my cell, playing the music of “Get the Fuck Up and Over Here So I Can Put Your Cuffs On Before I Open This Gate”. The thunderous clank of the gate in motion shook the prison to life. Whooping hollers and clatter came from other cells like howling monkeys in a forest canopy. Such a display was only acted out on three occasions; fresh meat entering, dead man walking, or somebodies getting out. In my case, I had an uneasy feeling that I was all three.

Fearing they might cancel my parole and toss me in La Paloma with the birds, I knew it would be wise not to mention my stay with the German in the Nest. I kept my mouth shut and figured the sooner I could get the fuck out of that place, the sooner I could put it all behind me.

            “Hey guard, do me a favor and tell me what’s on my neck will ya?”

            “You mean besides your ugly head?”

            “Come on, don’t fuck with me!”

He took a carless glance more out of curiosity to see what I was talking about, rather than to appease me.

“Looks like a big mistake to me. Turn back around inmate and keep walking!”

I knew not to ask again or I’d find myself with a busted face and another five years just for asking questions.  He walked me to a small room with white cinderblock walls. As soon as the powder blue latex gloves came out, I knew what was coming.

            “Strip down Inmate.”

            “Really? I can understand coming in, but what am I gonna take out?”

            “You’d be surprised buddy. You think I want to do this? Now, shut your mouth and let’s get this over with.”

            With my hands on the wall, buck naked, I closed my eyes tight, and my asshole even tighter. It was a quick in and out, but something wasn’t right.

            “What the fuck! What the fuck is this? Holy shit!”

            The guard ripped the probing latex inside out from his wrist and ran out of the room in a vanishing act. It took me a few seconds to realize I was now alone. Turning away from the wall, I could see a trail of vomit marking the path the guard took to the exit from the now abandoned glove on the floor. It was withered like a deflated balloon around a small protrusion in the sleeve of the pointer finger (the one he shoved up my ass). I picked the glove up by the wrist and dangled it upside down like utters on a cow. The mass filled finger had a weight to it. Whatever was inside me was now inside this glove. Whatever it was, it was moving.

With eyes half open, I held the glove as far from my body as my arms would reach. All in one motion, I flipped the latex back to right-side out, and dropped it to the floor.  I didn’t want to look, but I had to. Just like when you pick a scab from your head or a booger from your nose. You don’t want to look, but you have to. Moving about the shit stained latex finger, in twitching jitters, were six or seven big maggots, the cause to the guard’s mad dash from my ass. 

All I could think about was my time in the Nest, it had to be real. I must have swallowed a few of the buggers alive. In fact I knew I did, at least at first. It wasn’t until I developed a strange desire for the taste that I started to chew’em dead. The maggots I took whole must have somehow made it from one end to the other; it was the only reasonable explanation. I’m just surprised they came out still wigglin’. 

“Hands back up on the fucking wall inmate!”

A black female guard known to the inmates as “Black Beauty” rushed into the cavity search room like a mother looking for the bully that beat her child. Her nickname had nothing to do with her being black, and at two hundred pounds with a face leathered in acne scars, she sure as hell wasn’t Mrs. America.  The ox of a woman always referred to her black baton as “Black Beauty”, and with a back swing that could knock your head clear out of Wriggly Field; it was her baton that the inmates feared. She was merely and extension of the baton, thus, she was “Black Beauty”.

“Now what the fuck we got going up in here? My friend tells me you got some bugs and shit coming out yo ass, you sick mutha fucka!”

“I…”

“Shut the fuck up before I take Black Beauty here and shove her so far up yo ass them bugs be coming out yo mouth! I didn’t ask you to talk!

She bent down and picked up a maggot from the floor.

“This some real shit right here. I aint even gonna make this my problem. You about to be a free man now. Way I sees it, you can take yo free ass to the clinic and let them fuck wich’ya worms.”

She dropped the maggot and stomped it flat with her black polished boot.

“Now turn around and face me inmate, and keep yo hands up.”

I did what she asked.

“You think you some bad mutha fucka don’t’cha, fighting niggas in the yard?”

            “What did you say?”

            “You heard me white boy! Don’t be acting like you don’t remember me bustin’ you upside yo Nazi head.”

            “I aint no fucking Nazi!”

            “Is that so? Last I remember, you was on top a brotha fixin to put his brains all over the pavement, fighting side by side with a bunch of skinhead punks!”

A chill danced its way up my spine into my brain, causing me to momentarily drop my arms to my side.

            “That really happened?”

“Get yo mutha fuckin’ hands back up! I know how it is, you gonna play stupid with me. You should be down on yo knees kissin’ my boots. Had I let you put that rock in that niggas head, aint no way you be ever getting out.”

The guard that puked his way out of the room, returned three shades pale with a brown box labeled “0032186, W. Blake”, in his arms. He sat it down next to Black Beauty and made haste back out of the room.  She kicked the box, scuffing it across the floor, where it came to a stop at my toes.

“Trick or treat white boy. Get dressed.”

Expecting to find the clothes I was wearing when I got locked up, I was annoyed to pull out a thrift pair of jeans and an old orange shirt with black triangles that made a jack-o-lanterns  face on the front, and read “This is my Halloween costume”, across the shoulders on the back. Then I remembered that I was covered in the guy’s blood when they booked me. My old threads were probably locked away forever in some evidence baggy or burnt in a furnace or some shit.

Half dressed; I looked up to see that Black Beauty was looking at me as if I were the scum of the earth. It was the kind of stare you get from somebody who knows something about you that you don’t want them to know. The kind of stare that sees through you but also pushes you back. I pulled the stupid Halloween shirt over my head.

“You know, I was only trying to survive. He attacked me first.”

           

Before I could get the shirt pulled down off my face she was up on me with a velocity that kept her body moving long after we came to a crushing dead end against the cinderblock wall. Her baton was holding my head against the wall at my neck.

“Listen here mutha fucka, you don’t know shit about surviving! Surviving is knowing to keep yo cracker ass out the slammer in the first place! Surviving is getting yo ass to work so you can make a paycheck to keep yo babbies fed and roof over they head! It’s doing what you have to do, not what you want to do. When you go and get yourself locked up in a place like this, full a killas, you aint doin’ so good at surviving is ya?!”

She let off me and took a step back. I finished putting the shirt on. Winded from screaming in my face, she went from a roar to a whisper.

“Surviving is watching yo mama get hauled off to prison for killin’ yo pervert daddy because he didn’t know well enough to leave his little girls alone. Then growing up to spend every day working in a place full of rapist and perverts just like yo daddy, but having the strength to fight yo urge to kill every last one of’em.”

She walked back up to me and put her hand on my chest.

“Killin’ is the easy part. Actin out on temptation is the easy part. Caving in to what rules you aint surviving, it’s giving up.  It’s fighting the animal within, keeping the beast at bay that’s the hard part. Knowing when to take responsibility for what you are. That’s surviving.”

She put her baton back in a loop holster on her belt and walked out of the room. No amount of clothing could cover my naked shame in that moment.  She was right.  I had been nothing but a captive to the animal that ruled me. A prisoner long before I ever got locked up in this place. A prisoner locked up in the solitary confinement of my own cells.

Her words beat me harder over the head than her back swing ever could. I knew in those few short sentences spoken, that she was a master of control, a control that I never could obtain. A control that so little of us ever will be capable of displaying. She was an angel in the chaos and struggle that is existence. Black Beauty, the toughest bitch I ever met.

I looked down at the box to see that it still had some more shit in it. I was happy to pull out my old black leather jacket, still folded and wrapped in rope, just how I left it on the back of my motorcycle; no longer attached to the motorcycle of course. I rummaged through the pockets and found two cigarettes and a black and white photograph of Olivia.

She was sitting naked like a pinup model in a folding lawn chair. It was my going away present to take over seas. She kissed the back side with red lipstick that has long since faded. I still remember her forcing me to promise that I wouldn’t show it to anyone and that she put it in-between the pages of a small pocket sized Bible thinking that would keep me honest to my promise. It was the only promise to her that I ever broke. How could a guy not want to show off a doll like that? Let’s just say that before the war was over, that small Bible made many a solider true believers.

When we said our goodbyes, I knew it might be the last time I would ever see her. I just didn’t think that with me going to deaths doorstep to dance in the garden of war, that he would chose to spare me, and pick instead, the rose of my life from the garden of peace.  Her face still haunts me more than any ghost I’ve ever come to encounter.

A few smaller objects were scattered about the bottom of the box. A book of matches, a pair of crooked black Wayfarers, and I don’t know how it wasn’t placed with evidence, but the red bandana that belonged to the man I killed. Perhaps they thought it was mine when they brought me in. I stuffed it in the inner pocket of my leather jacket as another guard led me to the West Gate. Then, I took my first step into the outside world in over thirty-one years.

I had no place to go and nobody waiting for me. I wandered the streets until sundown and found a park to make camp for the night. It didn’t bother me sleeping under the stars. I don’t think I would have stepped in another building at the time anyway, even if it was a nice warm home with a soft bed to sleep in.  Midnight came and went, but I couldn’t find sleep. I was afraid that I would somehow wakeup back in the Nest with the German.

I felt like I had traveled thirty years into the future. The street signs, cars, and people all looked so alien. I heard music coming from buildings that sounded like it was from another world. It was as if my mind was placed in an ageless sleep while my body and the world around me grew old. In all the distractions of this new world, my new environment, I somehow forgot about the mark on my throat. By the time I remembered, it was too dark to see for the night.

By one or two in the morning, the stars retreated behind fast moving clouds and the weather took a turn to freezing autumn rain. I decided to duck out the downpour in a cathedral that I had noticed peaking over the tree line a couple blocks from the park.  It was the only place that was open and not asking for money. The Priest new well enough that the only thing I was there to save was my clothes from getting soaked. He didn’t preach at me or ask too many questions.  After bringing me some warm towels to dry off with, he slipped me ten bucks and told me that the church serves hot meals on Wednesdays, until then, I should go get something to eat.

I split the church just before sunrise. The storm had passed and I didn’t want to give any nuns a heart-attack, walking into the chapel to see a crazy old bastard in a Halloween shirt spread out on the pews. Back near the park, I sat at a bus stop, shivering as I eagerly awaited the sun to peak its warmth over a small diner called “The Scramble” across the street, or for the neon flash of life in the “OPEN” sign on the glass door, whichever came first. The wind was starting to pick back up in the dusk and with it a strong aroma of something wonderful was carried alongside the orange and yellow leaves, something that I had completely forgotten about in prison. Coffee!

I dug around my leather jacket pockets looking for the ten from the priest. The money was in the same pocket that I stuffed the red bandana, reminding me that I had the damn thing.  I hesitated to use it, but the ice wind was too much for my ears and cheeks so I wrapped the bandana around my face like a train robber in an old western movie. The thin paisley fabric didn’t do much to block the cold out, but helped keep the sting of the wind off my face. I even put the crooked Wayfarers over the brim of my nose to shield my watering eyes from freezing shut.

I thought about things the German had said, things Black Beauty said, and the things I had done.  I thought about my past and the ghost that haunt me, metaphysically and in memory. My only fear was that I may never shake the ghost of my life, and that I would always be locked up in the haunting of it all, at least in my mind.

Just as the sun came up, the “OPEN” sign of the diner buzzed its welcoming neon glow, and I carefully cracked and jarred the ice in my blood as I stretched out stiff limbs and pulled myself from the bus stop bench. Before I could take a step out into the street, a big city bus pulled up and screeched to a stop, letting out a blast of hissing air. The bus door cranked open; an old black man was at the wheel. He took one look at me and said,

“You some sort of bank robber?”

It took me a second to understand, but then I remembered the bandana over my face. I pulled it down around my neck.

“No sir.”

“Good, because I can’t give bank robbers rides. Besides, this bus don’t make for a good getaway vehicle. Too easy for the police to make out.”

He chuckled at himself and I gave a fake smile and a huff to humor him.

“Well, you getting on or what?”

“Nor sir, I was just about to head over to that diner across the street.”

“Oh really? Be careful, they say that dinner is haunted. Spooky Scramble they call it. ”

“I’m not too worried about it.”

“No, really. They say it happened probably about thirty years ago. Some stranger to town got off at this bus station and ate his last meal in that place. I guess it was a gang of bikers that cut him up real bad after he did something to provoke them in the dinner. They killed him just down the road from here, and some of the waitresses at the Scramble say his ghost returns every now and then to order some grits from beyond the grave.”

            He busted up laughing again, but this time I didn’t humor him.

            “Ok, well if ya aint coming, I got to get going. Auf Wiedersehen.”

            “What did you say?”

            “Auf Wiedersehen. It’s German for goodbye.”

He closed the bus door and revved the hunk of metal away from the bus stop. I couldn’t believe it. How could I of sat across from the place this whole time and not noticed?  The parking lot was smaller now, and the paint on the walls had faded, but sure enough, it was the same diner where I encountered the man with the red bandana. That meant I wasn’t far from the road where I hunted him down. The road that I covered in his blood, laying the red carpet for death to make its grand entrance.  

It was then as I crossed the street that I decided I would return to the place where I took his life over thirty one years ago. I hoped that maybe, by revisiting the killing grounds, that I could, in some way, say that I’m sorry. In some way, find forgiveness.

****

But first, some coffee!

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 8

THE CONTRACT

The German pulled some bread from his pocket, alongside a can of sardines. The crack of the sardine can put new life into me. The distinct salty fish smell filled my nostrils with such an attraction, that I was able to sit straight up and reach for them. He handed the sardines to me first. I licked the can clean before he could give me the bread.

“I was the best sniper the world had scene. Hitler personally wanted me in Normandy on the day the Yankees would invade, so that I may put a German bullet in each one of their American skulls the second their boots hit the sand. That’s exactly what I did. Not for country. I did it for Elsa. I thought that if I could kill armies of the enemy, if I could prove my loyalty, that perhaps Elsa and our unborn child would be sparred.”

I listened while washing the bread down with water from my tin cup.

“It turns out that I wasn’t the only German distraught with the party and the Fuhrer. The British Special Operations Executive had been keeping a file on me. When they became aware of my situation, they called for a German informant that I happened to be stationed with in Normandy, to advise me that my services were needed for a greater cause.”

With a mouth full of bread, I stopped chewing. My stomach turned in sickness. I knew where this was headed and what I did wrong all those years back in the war. I didn’t say anything or try to stop him. I knew I had to sit and listen.

“I met with the SOE a few kilometers outside of a German POW camp in Normandy near an abandoned American post that sat on the front line. Everything was to be top secret. Even the Americans had no clue as to what the Tommies were planning. Operation Foxley, they called it. They had it all worked out. In July of 1944, Hitler was to be at his chalet known as Berghof, located in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps.  Under the guise of a Berghof grounds guard, I was to infiltrate the compound on July 13^th, just before 10am. It was reported by a German POW who claimed he had been a guard at Berghof, that Hitler would take a 20-minute morning walk around the forest grounds of his chalet at the same time everyday just after 10am. With a little recon, it was proven the POW wasn’t lying. Not only did Hitler go for a little morning exercise, he insisted to take his walk alone, without the security of his bodyguards.”

He smiled a sarcastic grin and arched his brow in a way as to say, “Now do you feel like a dick?”

“I was to find concealment within 300 meters of his walking path and simply wait for him to find my crosshairs.  The assassination was to be done with a Wehrmacht standard, accurized Kar 98k. I would put a German bullet in Hitler’s skull, putting an end to his reign.”

“And I fucked it up.”

“Yes Mr. Blake, you did fuck it up.”

Blood started to flow from his eyes, nose, and mouth. Holes slowly appeared one by one, all over his face and uniform. He retook form of the bloody mess that I left him in.

“I had been briefed by the SOE and was given a brand new German guard’s uniform to match those worn at Berghof. I decided to try it on in the latrine to be sure of the fit. The chest was a bit tight, but nothing that would cause for alarm. I looked the part and being German through and through, no one would suspect me of sabotage.”

He looked over and stared at one of the cold steel walls of the Nest. It was almost as if he were looking right through it. Or perhaps he was somewhere far back in his mind.

“Elsa would be avenged.”

Blood from his reappearing wounds was running down his body in a flash flood of red.  Small streams merged into one major river on the floor, flowing in a direct path to where I was sitting.

“I was just about to change back into my pedestrian clothing, when I was struck with the urge to relieve myself of the tea and croissants provided so generously by my new British allies. It was the worst decision I ever made next to pledging my allegiance to the SS.  Moments later a trigger happy Yankee Doodle with a taste for Nazi blood, busted in the door and shot my plans of justice all to hell.”

“My platoon was told the post had been abandoned. The Brits weren’t supposed to be there. We thought maybe the post had fallen behind enemy lines and we were doing a quick sweep to clear it out. How was I to know? I, I…”

Bending down to one knee, he took a firm grip of my throat with his left hand and pulled a knife from his boot with his right. There was nothing I could do. I was powerless. 

“I don’t want your excuses Mr. Blake! My body went sixty days in that shithole before anyone found me. Sixty days, just like your sixty days in this solitary cell. Your gun fire scared off the Brits, believing your troop to be Germans, and nobody ever found out in all the confusion, that an act of “friendly fire” took place. Nobody came looking. I was found by some French children who proceeded in spitting and throwing rocks at my rotting carcass. I was listed as a traitor to my country and painted as an evil SS sniper in your history books. I lost to both sides and you were painted as a war hero.”

He put the tip of the knife up to my throat with enough pressure to barley break the skin.

“They say you were put in here for stabbing a man in the throat Mr. Blake. They say he had a big swastika tattooed over his Adams apple. You killed him without ever asking a single question, didn’t you Mr. Blake? Let’s say, perhaps you were to find out that he wasn’t what you thought him to be? Perhaps his ghost comes to haunt you one day like I haunt you now and you find that he had a rational explanation for bearing such a mark? An explanation like the one I offer you now. But how were you to know? You never gave him the chance. You never gave me the chance Mr. Blake!”

The air in the humid dank Nest turned to a type of cold that I was unaccustomed to. A cold that was worthy of a season all its own. I could see my breath, but the German made no exhale.  

“Is it not the bane of men to jump before we look, to act before we think and to find answers before we ask questions?! We are biased by nature Mr. Blake. Understand this as I understand this. It’s our biased ways of thinking that act as easy to spot beacons of light in the fog of misunderstanding, misconception and fear. Looking for the quickest comfort, the shortest solution, we are so easily fooled by these misleading beacons of light. For if we follow our first initial biased beacon out of the fog, if we set sail directly into its light, we may very well lead our ships into the jagged rocks that rest as its foundation. It is to be said that our biased beacons should set off alarms in our minds, asking us to question our path. Forcing us to be sure that we are making rational decisions, and not following blindly, that which only “appears” to guide us.”

He released his hand from my throat and brought it around to a quick jerk on the back tuff of my hair. Pulling my head back, he pushed the knife a little deeper into my neck.

“There is only one way for you to understand this lesson Mr. Blake. It is your turn to be on the end of a trigger reaction, like I was when you shot me down.  It is your turn to feel the helplessness of being on the receiving end of blind hate, like the man whose throat you slashed to hamburger.  Now you will be at the mercy of a biased decision born of a careless urgency, like the black man in the folding room.”

He took the knife and started to cut into my throat. It was deep, but I couldn’t tell if he wasn’t trying to kill me or not. He purposely held back from pushing it into my windpipe, but with each cut he made, I felt that the next might be for keeps. I didn’t dare try to pull away or grab for the dagger, besides I would have been more effective trying to blow it away with my mouth rather than using my withered arms.

A few more cuts in, he dropped the blade into my lap and pulled a glass inkwell full of black ink from out of the cold thin air. He opened the inkwell and forced me to cup my hands out before him, than he carefully poured the black ink into my trembling palms

“This is a contract Mr. Blake. You have a choice. Make a mark to seal your fate, or refuse to mark and choose death.  If you should refuse to accept the mark, simply release the dark black ink, the darkness of your life, to the ground beneath you. Then pick up the dagger from your lap and lead it to your heart. By choosing death you will be admitting your mistakes and taking responsibility for them. Your honor will be restored and your darkness will be over.  Or, you can choose to bear the mark and…”

He stood up and turned his back to me.

“…live out the rest of your life in shame, knowing the coward that you are. You will forever be haunted by the people you destroyed and you will never escape the darkness that surrounds your pathetic existence. All you have to do is take the black ink and rub it into the gashes of your throat, binding your life in darkness and putting it on display for all to see.”

            “I don’t understand.”

 “The sentence is yours to choose Mr. Blake, life or death?  You are the judge of your future. I know it’s a difficult choice, you are biased towards living; it’s all you’ve known. Nobody wants to die. I didn’t want to die, but don’t forget what I said about being biased.”

“What would you do?”

He walked to the solid steel door of the Nest. Without turning back, he said,

“I would be with my Elsa. Auf Wiedersehen Mr. Blake. I hope we don’t meet again.”

He shut the door behind him. I was alone. I sat there in the confined darkness of the Nest. I couldn’t tell where the black ink in my hands ended and the darkness began. I wasn’t ready for death. I had too much of a survivors will within me. Besides, I didn’t even have the strength to pick up the damn dagger; much less stab it into my chest. Most of all, I was afraid.

I wanted to cry, but I had no tears. The German was right. I had found sympathy for him and understood what this all lead up to. I was a coward. I had always been a coward. We are all cowards making our way through the dark.  I thought about picking up the dagger. I went through the actions in my head. Even after all that the German had to say, I still couldn’t find my way out of the darkness.

In all my stubbornness, in all my selfish desire to be right and stay alive, I took my hands to my throat and accepted the darkness to follow. If only I would have realized that by not accepting a sentence to death, I would be sentencing myself to something much worse.

****

“This concludes our Parole Hearing of Walter Blake, inmate number 0032186.  We will now take a lunch break and meet back here in one hour.”

            “Excuse Me?’

            “Is there a problem Mr. Blake?”

            “What happened? Where am…”

            “Your Parole has been granted Mr. Blake. You’re to return to your cell, collect your things and be ready for release within the hour. Are you having trouble understanding this?”

            “Yes sir, I mean, No sir, I just…”

            “Guard, please escort Mr. Blake back to his cell. Don’t worry Mr. Blake, we understand that you are feeling overwhelmed, but you have shown that you are ready to enter back into society and we have full faith that you will be just fine.”

CYCLED SENTENCE - PART 7

SALVATION IN STARVATION

            I was hungry. Twenty days in the Nest and my body was eating itself. Despite my cries for help, nobody answered or came to my call.  I had water. I don’t know how, but I had water. Every time I woke up from sleep, a small tin cup would be filled by my side. I tried to refuse it at first, like I was protesting in some sort of thirst strike, but my body gave me no choice and I eventually drank.  A man trapped under water can only control himself so long before the brain demands oxygen, betraying him to take in a deep gulp of liquid death. The same goes for the brains demand of water. I don’t remember drinking from the cup; I just know that I must have.

 It’s funny if you think about it, two elements necessary to the survival of our species, and if you get too little? Dead. Too much? Dead just the same.  It seems to me that my whole life has been nothing but a bunch of too little or too much. No just right or in-between. Everything in existence is balanced on a fertile equator of “just right”. Too far south? Too little. Too far North? Too much, and vice versa. By the way I was feeling I’m pretty sure I was south bound and moving fast.

By day 25, (at least I think it was day 25, could have been 2 months or 2 days for all I knew.), my primal brain finally overpowered the frontal lobe. There were only three things I could eat, besides myself, the rotten Nazi corpse, the Nazis leather boots, or the maggots that were eating the rotten Nazi corpse. My body was in need of protein and the maggots had it.  Essentially, by eating the maggots, I was eating the Nazi, but there was no way I would go and take a chunk of that putrid fascist flesh from the source.

Thankfully I was so out of my mind with hunger that the taste of the maggots began to seem rather pleasant.  I don’t know where they came from, but they kept coming. The Nazi corpse, infested with what seemed like infinite hordes of larva, in a sense provided a role in a vital ecosystem that offered me survival within The Nest. The maggots ate the corpse, I ate the maggots, and the way I look at, the Nazi ate away at me. The Circle of Life. The thing they don’t tell you about the Circle of Life, is that it’s just as equally a Circle of Death. It all depends on what direction you’re moving in the circle.

Eventually the maggots started to thin out. It got to the point where I had to really dig for them. What ones I couldn’t get to, turned into flies, so I figured that I’d wait for them to lay more larva and be a little more sparring the next go around. Even with the energy the maggots provided, it still wasn’t enough. My body was starting to shut down.

My head would wander into what felt like other times, other dimensions.  I found myself back in the war a lot. Terrible memories made real and revisited in this state of hallucinations.  I was 60 days in when I found myself at the side of a bath tub.  My beautiful Olivia was in the warm, soapy water humming an old love song. I knew it couldn’t be her. She died, burnt up over fever just before I shipped out. She looked at me with her big green eyes and asked if I would rub her back. I reached for her and fell into the water, into her arms.

I broke into a deep sob. No oxygen, no water, no food could replenish the energy depleted by my breaking heart. I was dying. I didn’t think of Heaven and already knew too much of Hell. My only sadness at that moment was with Olivia.  I wrapped my arms around her and cried out all the life that was left in me.

“Now, now, you’re quit alright.”

I came to, sobbing in the arms of the German. He was holding me and looked well alive.  Not a day of rot was on him.  I thought about pushing him back, but was too weak. He gently sat me down on the floor. I didn’t have the strength to sit, so I spread out on the ground and kept my eyes on him the best I could.

“I had a girl too you know? She was with child. I heard you talking to a woman in your sleep.”

I mustered enough strength to speak to the bastard. Words came in whispers.

“Let me guess, your girl was a blonde hair, blue eyed bitch with a stomach full of Nazi youth?”

“No Mr. Blake.”

“Bullshit! Wasn’t that what it was all about? Insure the reign of the superior race? Aryans fucking Aryans like rabbits until the whole fucking globe was German!”

“Yes, that was part of it Mr. Blake, but not so with Elsa. You see, she was a Jew.”

I didn’t know what to say; besides I used the last of my energy talking.

“We thought we could keep it a secret, but while I was away in Normandy, the SS put two bullets in her, one in her stomach, and a day later, one in her head.”

He lowered his head.

“They tossed her in a mass grave from what I was told. Some friends were able to reach me by letter. I failed her. I promised her that I would return and that everything would be alright, that we would have our son and a hearty pay for my service to the country. It’s true that I was SS, but in that moment, I hated all of Germany. I hated myself. Once I knew what had happened, I thought about deserting my post, or perhaps suicide. It wasn’t long before I was approached with another option.”