Baxter's Friends

By Ned Randle

Jerry Baxter’s father liked to sing the old cowboy song, “O bury me not on the lone prairie ...” when he drank. Ironically, Baxter and his two good friends, Hugh Ferguson and Al Mitchell, are soon to be buried alive, and the hole they are digging for themselves is getting deeper all the time. Baxter is racked with guilt by the sight of his father sitting semi-coherent, blind, and barely mobile in the dismal nursing home he put him in. Fearing a fate every bit as grim, Baxter finds refuge in stark rituals from his Native American heritage that animate his fitful dreams. Ferguson has found religion, or rather had it forced upon him by his wife, who otherwise wants nothing to do with him. The tedium of his job as an accountant is slowly driving Ferguson around the bend. His one solace: fantasizing about an attractive female co-worker, while Mitchell, who has lost his zest for wheeling and dealing and womanizing, looks for a new thrill. The three longtime friends are approaching middle age kicking and screaming, if only on the inside. That is about to change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coffeetown Press
• Release date: May 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781603811637

Ned Randle

Ned Randle resides in Southern Illinois, where he writes fiction and poetry. He has a law degree from St. Louis University and studied writing at Washington University, Webster University and Southwestern Illinois College. His poems have appeared in a number of literary publications such as The Spoon River Quarterly, Circus Maximus, Seven Stars Poetry, Poydras Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Barnwood International Poetry Magazine, The New Poet, Hamilton Stone Review and Four Ties Literary Review. His chapbook, Prairie Shoutings and Other Poems, was published by The Spoon River Poetry Press, Bradley University. Coffeetown Press will release Randle’s first novel, Baxter’s Friends in June of 2013. For more information, go to nedrandle.com.

Book preview

Baxter’s Friends

by

Ned Randle

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Coffeetown Press on Smashwords

Baxter’s Friends

Copyright © 2013 Ned Randle

Coffeetown Press

PO Box 70515

Seattle, WA 98127

For more information go to: www.coffeetownpress.com

www.nedrandle.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover design by Sabrina Sun

Baxter’s Friends

Copyright © 2013 by Ned Randle

ISBN: 978-1-60381-162-0 (Trade Paper)

ISBN: 978-1-60381-163-7 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013936549

Produced in the United States of America

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Acknowledgments

My thanks to Sheryl Stebbins, Catherine Treadgold and Jennifer McCord for their insightful editing of this manuscript.

For My Family

Those who are still with me and

Those who have passed on to a larger story.

* * * * *

He was their friend

They were his friends

Everyone failed him

Even his own people …

—Sioux Omaha Society Song

Chapter One

Although he hated being confined in a small jail cell, Jerry Baxter found his first twenty-four hours in lockup tolerable because he was alone. And in his solitude he concluded that perhaps all he ever really wanted from life was to be left alone. But now the reckoning was beside the point; it had come too late to do him much good.

The sheriff’s deputies put him in a cell by himself and he had no visitors except Goldschmidt, the court-appointed lawyer, who now sat across from him in the visiting room, glumly looking down at his notepad and scribbling. Baxter was bemused by his lawyer’s behavior. The man seemed to be at a loss for words—a bad trait for a lawyer. But after the first fifteen minutes of the visit Baxter concluded that he didn’t like the way the lawyer talked when he did have something to say. The lawyer used too many words like generally, ordinarily, apparently. Weasel words, Baxter thought, not to the point. If the lawyer couldn’t get to the point, Baxter decided, he himself sure as hell would.

Baxter could sense that Goldschmidt was wary of him. When he was younger and easily provoked into a fight most men had been wary of him, so he was comfortable with it. He quietly assessed the lawyer’s reaction to his measured hostility and concluded that he was causing the man some degree of anxiety, which he enjoyed. Baxter didn’t know much about lawyers or how they did their jobs, but common sense informed him it was easier for a lawyer to defend a likable man possessing even a lame aptitude for lying. This lawyer would soon realize that Jerry Baxter was no liar. Yet the more Baxter insisted his situation was black and white, the more Goldschmidt tried to color it with a lawyer’s subtle shades of gray. Baxter felt his heavy fists twitch at the provocation.

As they sat across from each other, Baxter sized up the lawyer and concluded he was a lightweight. At least physically. Goldschmidt had a spare frame underpinning scant meat. Baxter looked Goldschmidt’s arms up and down to get a better idea of the man and focused on the skinny forearms sticking out of the shirt cuffs and the bony hands with their knotty, veined fingers. Baxter noticed that Goldschmidt’s hands quaked as he talked, as a weak man’s hands might do if he just doesn’t have enough muscle to hold them steady under stress.

The lawyer’s thin neck poked out of his shirt collar which, although buttoned behind his tie, loosely encircled his throat, defining a capacious gap between flesh and fabric. The lawyer had a narrow face, a prominent nose, and long, soft ears. Behind his rimless glasses his eyes looked large, with bulging wet irises of a vague, translucent green. He had coarse, yellowish-brown hair parted at the crown and falling a bit shaggy at the nape of the neck.

Baxter followed the crease in the lawyer’s trouser leg and saw a bony ankle and a small, narrow foot. He studied the bumpy outline of the shin bone under pale skin, skin that seemed to glow like white phosphorous above the elastic of the man’s sock. White. All of Goldschmidt’s skin was white. Fish-flesh white. Like the skin of a man who spent his days inside under artificial light and did his roaming at night, out of the reach of the sun. He was a lightweight, all right, and Baxter felt like he could easily hoist the lawyer out of his chair as if he were a little kid and plop his bony ass down on the table top and tell him to sit up there and play where he could keep an eye him, to make sure he didn’t mess anything up.

Although Baxter adjudged Goldschmidt to be physically weak, he nevertheless sensed that the man had something tough inside him and that he didn’t scare easily. His lawyer guts were hard, and his lungs and heart were all gristle and stringy meat. Baxter had known little men like Goldschmidt before and guessed that his lawyer was cunning and adaptive. One other thing Baxter noticed about Goldschmidt was that the lawyer never smiled. And when he looked up from his notes, Goldschmidt looked around with his nose screwed up, like he was sniffing the air, catching the scent. He was cunning, all right, and that was good in a lawyer. Although the man looked frail, Jerry figured he had a gangly toughness and resiliency, like an old coyote.

Baxter, on the other hand, was an imposing man. Soon to be forty years old, he still had the fullback’s body of his high school days. He was just a little thicker, more mature, and stronger. He was tall, standing a couple inches over six feet, and he carried his broad, sloping shoulders and meaty arms with ease and confidence when he walked into the visiting room. Goldschmidt noticed that even in confinement Baxter moved about with a grace that belied the bulk of his body. His client had a thick chest, a firm, sturdy neck and a large head topped with dense hair the color of dark, burnished copper. Baxter’s face was hard and smooth, almost semi-precious, like the pink marble of an antique window sill.

Goldschmidt fidgeted, doodled, stared at Baxter and asked an occasional question. Jerry answered in grunts. The table was in a small room in the jail where the lawyers were allowed to meet with their clients. The room wasn’t a good place for intimate conversation—much less the life and death discussions that often took place there. The walls were dirty beige and in need of painting. The tile floor bore the bruises caused by the thumping, restless heels of scared men. The floor was swept clean but showed narrow dark scars and irregular stains left by discarded cigarettes and brown spit. Baxter looked around and reckoned there had been enough cigarettes smoked in this room by desperate men to fill a tobacco barn. The air in the room was more than stale; it was uncomfortably warm and tainted by the palpable residue of acrid smoke and foul breath that clung to the walls and tabletops. Bare and ill-furnished, the room amplified his voice no matter how softly he spoke and Baxter could see a deputy just outside the door, straining to hear pieces of his conversation.

Why is that son-of-a-bitch eye-balling me? Jerry wondered. Maybe he knows Goldschmidt. Knows I got myself one hell a bargain in this guy.

There was one dirty window in the room and the afternoon light leaked through wire mesh-reinforced sash, glanced off Baxter’s face, and reflected into Goldschmidt’s eyes until the lawyer had to blink and slide his index fingers under the lenses of his glasses to rub his eyes. Baxter leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

"O, bury me not on the lone prairie …" crept into his head, and he started whistling the tune, whistling louder and louder until the melody cut through the fetid air and rattled off the naked walls and settled on Goldschmidt, who abruptly looked up from this notepad.

Can’t get this damn song out of my head, Jerry said. A goddamn cowboy song. Thanks a lot, Pop, cowboy song. Grandma must be rolling over in her grave.

Grandma, Grandma. I’m glad you’re not alive to see this, to see your little Jerry in jail. He rubbed his eyes also, trying to remove the disgusting film that seemed to stick to everything in the jail. Tears formed under his eyelids as he rubbed.

Be strong, he thought. Clear your head. Be strong. You can take it. You can hold up; you can carry anything they pile on your back.

But cowboy songs?

He chuckled. Thanks a lot, Pop.

You like cowboy songs, Goldschmidt?

You mean country music?

No, not that crap. Real cowboy songs.

I don’t think I know any.

"Oh hell, everybody knows a cowboy song. How ’bout ‘Home on the Range’? Everybody knows ‘Home on the Range.’ "

"Oh yeah, sure. I know ‘Home on the Range.’ It’s okay."

Just okay, you little fairy fart? It’s a man’s song. You should have heard my old man sing it. He glared at Goldschmidt until the lawyer looked down at his notepad.

There was tension between Baxter and his lawyer as they sat across from each other, tension of the kind that drifts across the morning breakfast table in a bad marriage. It was the tension that develops between two people who view the world very differently, especially when there is a lot at stake.

You know, if you hadn’t been so defiant when you were arrested, you wouldn’t even be in here, Goldschmidt finally said. They told me it took four cops to take you down. They damn near shot you.

Everybody has to die, Goldschmidt.

Well, under normal circumstances we could have arranged for a quick arraignment and you could get out on some manageable bail.

If they’d have shot me I wouldn’t have to worry about bail.

Baxter straightened in his chair and put the palms of his hands flat on the tabletop. He began to patter with his fingertips in a puddle of yellow light that pooled on the table, making a soft drumming sound. Goldschmidt went back to doodling on his notepad and listened to Baxter’s noise. It wasn’t random, but a rhythmic sound, plain and primitive, a measured, intentional beat.

Staring across the table at Goldschmidt, Jerry leaned forward and asked, Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m guilty?

Goldschmidt’s eyes darted from his notepad to Baxter, squinting from the reflected light that bounced from his client’s face. The lawyer calmed himself, carefully placed his pen in his shirt pocket, and folded his spidery hands neatly on top of the legal pad.

That, Mr. Baxter, he said slowly and softly, is for the jury to decide. See, it doesn’t matter to me if you’re as innocent as the Virgin Mary or as guilty as Judas. His voice began to rise. The state says you committed a crime and it’s my job to give you fair representation in a court of law and try to get you off. Or get you some sort of manageable sentence. All we need to do is create a question in a juror’s mind as to whether you did it, or in this case, why you might have done it. That’s how the system works. They say you did it; you don’t have to say if you did or you didn’t. The burden is on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you committed a premeditated murder.

The lawyer paused to take a deep breath through his mouth. So, he exhaled slowly, our job is to create just a little doubt, reasonable doubt they call it, in the mind of at least one of the folks sitting in the jury box. The state doesn’t have to prove why you did it, but a good prosecutor will try to. The jury wants the whole story before they convict a man. So motive is always critical to the state, and particularly in this case.

Goldschmidt tilted his head back at a slight angle, glanced side to side and sniffed the stale air in the visiting room. He reached inside his suit coat, pulled a folded white handkerchief from the inside pocket and wiped his nose. Of course, one tactic we can use is to offset their motive, he continued as he tucked the handkerchief back in his pocket. We can tell your story and we can try to justify what you did. You’ve got a good story; we’re talking about self-defense. If the jury decides you were justified in what you did, you walk. Or maybe get convicted of a lesser charge.

Every man is supposed to get a fair shake, Mr. Baxter. And I intend to get you better than that. I intend to get you out of here, one way or the other, which is more than fair. We might not even get to a jury; maybe before the arraignment I can talk to the prosecutor about self defense and try to get the charges tossed. Goldschmidt reached for his pen and made a note at the bottom of the page under his parade of doodles.

Baxter leaned back from the edge of table and, in a matter-of-fact manner, said, I wasn’t defending myself. I did it on purpose.

Goldschmidt winced and dropped his pen on his writing pad. He quickly looked around to see if anyone could have heard the confession. He exhaled loudly, slumped down in his chair, and silently stared at Baxter.

Finally, he took a deep breath and said, Our primary defense to the charges against you is self-defense and now I can’t put you on the goddamn witness stand. His thin hands fluttered aimlessly about when he spoke, like confused, white moths. Excuse my language. That wasn’t very professional.

I wasn’t afraid. I could have pinned the skinny little bastard to the floor with one arm. I could’ve held him there ’til the cops showed up, but I didn’t. I did what I did because I wanted to, Baxter said as he rose from his chair and turned his back on Goldschmidt.

The lawyer also stood up, hooked his pen in his shirt pocket and shoved his pad of paper into his brief case. Perhaps you should ask the court to appoint another lawyer.

"You’re as good as any," Baxter said flatly.

"Where buzzards fly and the wind blows free …" drifted into Baxter’s head. He closed his eyes to hear his old man’s gravelly voice intermingled with off-key strains from his battered harmonica as he sang and played at the kitchen table.

I’d like to have your confidence, Goldschmidt replied to Baxter’s back.

I shouldn’t need a lawyer! Baxter said loudly as he turned. He pounded his fist on the table, startling Goldschmidt. What I did was right. Now that was fair. Why does it have to be so damned complicated? It’s simple. Why do you have to complicate it?

Baxter turned his back on Goldschmidt, walked over to the dusty window and squinted into the late afternoon light. The orange October sun was tacking into the horizon, leaving little warmth in its wake. All he wanted was to be left alone, to go back to his cell and go to sleep so he could wake up secure inside a cold morning mist rising from water, readying his tackle for the day’s fishing, unbounded in his freedom and solitude but for the bow of the boat, which was readily within his reach, satisfied that this was all just a bad dream.

I have a problem, Baxter said softly as he turned to look at Goldschmidt. Sometimes I have a problem hiding my feelings. I want to; I don’t want to burden other people. I try to keep my feelings inside, but eventually they just seep out. It’s a weakness, I guess. So, what you’re suggesting is hard for me. I can’t lie.

I understand that, Goldschmidt said. I would never ask you to lie; I can’t ask you to lie. I’m just saying you don’t have to offer anything. They can’t make you testify. I was leaning toward not letting you testify, anyway, but now I’m sure as hell not going to let you. If I can’t work something out with the prosecutor we’ll just take your case to a jury and the facts will do the talking. We can have the others who were there the other night explain what happened, the circumstances and all. I’m confident a jury will come to the right conclusion.

Then why do you want to cut a deal?

I said I’m confident, but … but it’s not a slam dunk. You can’t ever be sure about a jury. A deal is a sure thing.

Goldschmidt stood there awkwardly fidgeting with the car keys in his pants pocket. Look, he said finally, backing away from Baxter, I just want you to leave everything to me, okay?

Jerry sat down in the chair. He didn’t slouch, but sat with his back as straight and stiff as an arrow. His face was streaked with sweat and his hair stuck to his forehead. He raked his hair with his fingers and it stood up, stiff and dirty. His body stank. He hadn’t showered since his arrest. His shirt was stained under the arms and clung to his ribs and back. He figured Goldschmidt was the type who probably hated the smell of men in jail.

He looked past Goldschmidt, through a window in the door behind him, distracted by a ruckus in the hallway outside the visiting room. He could see a prisoner being hustled and shoved down the hallway. He had seen this play out before in the short time he’d been in jail. The prisoner would curse and kick and spit at the jailers, but the jailers had the last word with their heavy shoes and stout nightsticks. Jerry was impressed by how much the jailers seemed to enjoy their work. Everyone should enjoy their work, he thought.

They say the best defense is a good offense, Baxter said offhandedly.

That’s true, Goldschmidt said. That’s what I want to do. Go on the offensive with self-defense, if that makes sense.

What? Baxter asked, looking back from the hallway toward Goldschmidt.

I said we’ll go on the offensive. You had a right to protect yourself. I mean, who wouldn’t have done what you did when they’re scared? It was self defense.

I wasn’t scared.

Maybe not, but there was Mrs. Ferguson. And the boy.

I wouldn’t have let him hurt them.

And you didn’t. That’s the point. I need to think about this. But knowing what I know now, I can’t risk putting you on the stand if this case goes to trial. But we have the wife and the son. I just need to figure out how to use them.

You’re not using anybody, Goldschmidt. I want you to leave Fergie’s wife out of this, Jerry said firmly. She just couldn’t take it. You know; you’ve talked to her. And the boy; I don’t want the boy involved in this either. He’s messed up enough. No, you leave Fergie’s family out of this.

I understand how you feel, but the Fergusons are the best witnesses we have. There’s a question as to whether we can put on a good defense if you’re going to be stubborn about who testifies.

There is the question as to whether I break your goddamned head if you try to make them testify.

The prosecutor might call them if I don’t.

Is that right? Well, I’ll just plead guilty at the arraignment and fuck the prosecutor and fuck you and your defense.

Goldschmidt backed toward the door. Okay, okay, he said, you don’t have to get ugly about it. Everyone I talk to says you’re such a nice guy

I am a nice guy. Just don’t screw with me. Or with Fergie or his family; then you and I’ll get along just fine.

You’re not giving me much to work with.

Goldschmidt was perspiring. He had stayed too long. The jail did that to him. He could stand it for a while and then he got overwhelmed by a gripping, claustrophobic sensation. He wheezed and sweated. Nervous, sour sweat began to wilt his shirt.

Maybe it’s me that sets you off, Goldschmidt said, but I’m warning you: when we go before the judge for your arraignment, you can’t act like that. You have to stay calm.

I’m calm, Goldschmidt. You’re the one sweating.

I’ll be back after I do a little more leg work on this, Goldschmidt said, facing the door. I need to look into a few things, do some research, more investigation.

Goldschmidt banged on the door so the guard would let him out.

Goldschmidt? Baxter called as the deputy unlocked the door.

What?

I’m not paying you. You don’t have to give me that ration of bullshit.

Goldschmidt’s face reddened and the heat rose in his damp armpits.

I hate to think about Fergie. I hate that the most out of this whole stinking mess, Baxter said to Goldschmidt’s back as the lawyer started out the door. I’ve known him since high school. I don’t know why he did what he did, but he was a good guy. He really was.

Well, Mr. Baxter, Goldschmidt said over his shoulder, if it’s any consolation, when I talked to Mrs. Ferguson she told me her husband always said you were the best man he ever knew.

Baxter walked back to the window and waited for the deputy to come and get him and take him back to his cell. This was his chance to see outside and he wanted to enjoy it as long as he could. When the deputy came in, he sat down on the edge of the table while Baxter stood with his back to him, staring at the waning glow of the setting sun. As he watched the sunset the old song slipped back into his head,

O bury me not on the lone prairie.

These words came low and mournfully …

Baxter closed his eyes, and he could hear his old man singing, his beer-soaked voice, loud and off-key, rising from the kitchen, heralding his arrival home with his extra quart of beer, with the sweets for his sisters and him, and with dust and grime and cinders for Grandma.

O bury me not on the lone prairie.

Goddamn cowboy song, he thought.

Grandma, I’m sorry about that, he silently confessed, sorry about all of it. I really am.

Chapter Two

If Jerry Baxter had known his best friend was wasting his time daydreaming about life in prison in the days just before he himself was arrested and locked up in the county jail, it would have helped him make some sense of things. Baxter would have recognized the daydreams for what they were—a dark omen. Dreams are dreams, awake or asleep, and Baxter respected their prophetic power. He would have understood that Hugh Ferguson’s fascination with prison was bad medicine, as Baxter’s grandma used to say—something to be left alone. Such dark conjurings were very bad medicine indeed, and they hovered about, casting lean, black shadows like a murder of crows.

Running his left hand through his thinning hair, Ferguson closed his eyes and tried to conjure up his daydream, the bittersweet reverie that provided some relief from the boredom that weighed him down in his office chair. Frequently, in the days leading up to Baxter’s arrest, Ferguson tried to escape the unbearable gravity of disaffection by imagining himself locked up in prison with no hope of pardon or parole. The trick was to close his eyes and concentrate until he could hear the sensuous sound of metal on metal, the intimate ting of the hard key sliding into the well-lubricated lock. In his mind’s eye, he felt the vertical strength of the bars as he slid his hands up and down the smooth steel and cleared his head by resting it against the stark concrete wall inside his cell.

It was one of those afternoons that Ferguson finally opened his eyes, slumped in his desk chair, looked across the lowered heads of his coworkers, and had an epiphany. Each head, it appeared, was intently poised as if in prayer over a ledger book, stack of invoices, or an orderly sheaf of receipts. The workers worked with pencils in hand, reconciling money

Reviews for Baxter's Friends

[sweetfacegeorgia · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I have to be honest... I didn't understand and therefore didn't enjoy this book. The narrative went back and forth between characters so often and without warning that I wasn't sure who was who and would have to go back a few pages to figure out where I was in the story and who was telling it.

[camsend · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Losers' Laments a review by Michael Casey Baxter's friends are miserable and morose. Unremittingly. Baxter himself is nobody you would want to hang out with. When the characters are vacuous and give over what little energy they have to a prolonged piss and moan about their purposeless lives, the narrative needs a dramatic plot to hold the story together. This novel has no such engine. Two thirds of the book are spent voicing a losers lament that bemoans frustrating marriages, juvenile lust, and unsatisfying jobs. When some action kicks in it pivots on a desire to commit crime for the thrill of the transgression. It ends in destruction for the hapless trio. The writing in the narrative is functional but too often marred by odd "sophisticated" diction that hails from a different register than these characters would speak or sound. "Carmative, anility, simulacrum [a favorite of the author], phrenic, punition, and sacrifant" are examples of bons mots that are pearls before swine. I suppose it's possible that we were supposed to find humor in the parade of hapless males. But humor requires wit, and these dudes are woeful and witless.

[jonathan70us-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It’s hard to escape from the ones you are supposed to love, especially when they are supposed to love you back. Baxter, his friends, and (don't forget) their family and friends love and love back, lash out and lash back.An amazing achievement is Baxter’s Friends. Ned Randle helps us readers live what it’s like to be making and doing, or being made to do and being done to. This book told me a lot of things, and I’ll tell you two of them. You, reader, should struggle to read this book as you would read people: What is being said without anyone speaking? You, reader, should struggle to read this book as you would read people: What is being done, even when no one lifts a finger?