Six Novels

By Robert Trainor

Six Novels contains the following full-length novels: The Great Barrington Train Wreck, Frontier Justice, Blood and Blackmail, The Real Meaning of Life, Your Kiss Is like the Sweetest Fire, and The Book of the Dead. In the space allowed, I will give brief descriptions of these novels.

The Great Barrington Train Wreck describes the life of a homeless guy named Mike Stratton. Living on the street isn't easy, but Mike knows his way around…at least until the day he almost dies from hypothermia. Scrambling around, he finds a job as a cab driver, rents an apartment, and falls in love with his most beautiful fare, the enigmatic Alexandra Hughes. Mike becomes obsessed with her, and before long, it appears that she needs him—especially on the night when she tells him, through a flood of tears, that her racist father has murdered her black boyfriend and is coming after her next. But all is not quite what it seems in this tale of a down-and-out guy who is never able to see through the smokescreen of his lust.

Frontier Justice describes the results of a crime committed by two teenagers when they stood on an overpass and hurled cement blocks at cars, which resulted in the death of eight people. During the arrest of one of the perpetrators, a police officer named Adriana Jones persuaded the suspect to surrender his gun, but shortly later, he was shot to death. Adriana claims it was self-defense, but the prosecutor, after reviewing both Adriana's history and the evidence at the scene, charges her with second degree murder. Will she be convicted? And how would you have voted if you were on that jury?

Blood and Blackmail: Jesse Barnett is confident his girlfriend Justine didn't murder Trent, her ex-husband, because he never heard any gunshots on the night the two of them broke into Trent's house to search for obscene photos that he had taken of Justine's daughter. However, Jesse's confidence in Justine begins to waver when he is told that the murder weapon had a silencer attached to it. Justine is arrested, and after she rejects a plea deal, the prosecutor charges her with first degree murder. The trial is an odd one that leaves everyone wondering who really committed the murder.

In The Real Meaning of Life, Patrick Devlan, a twenty-seven-year-old man who has written a number of murder mysteries becomes entangled in a real-life murder mystery. Neurotic, unstable, and chauvinistic, Patrick skitters around on the edge of events as Nick, his roommate and best friend, is arrested and convicted of murdering a woman. But it isn't really clear who murdered the woman, and when Nick is sentenced to death, Patrick's world begins to crumble.

Your Kiss Is like the Sweetest Fire is about Jaime and Renee--a brother and sister by adoption but still believing they are related by blood. Events and emotions drive Jamie and Renee closer and closer to each other…a sudden surge of sexual desire in a teenage romance…a walk to the old mill pond in the twilight…a long kiss as the moon rises on the far shore. Guilt for Jaime, passion for Renee…but a week later, a love note from Renee to Jaime is discovered by their mother…Jaime and Renee shamed and then separated…Renee believing that true love, her true love for Jaime, lasts forever…and then…

In The Book of the Dead, a woman interested in psychic phenomena begins to hear a man's voice. The voice is from a man named Daren Slade, and he begins his narrative with the futile attempt he made to save a drowning woman. Later, he reconnects with his high school sweetheart, Savannah Cross…that night, they begin a tumultuous drive during which they become involved in a number of bizarre incidents before they return to the river where Daren attempted to save the drowning woman. Here, he encounters…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Trainor
• Release date: Mar 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393764212

Robert Trainor

Over the past twelve years (since I retired at the age of 59), I've written nineteen novels, four novellas, four non-fiction books, and seven anthologies, all of which you can find in the Kindle Store. Instead of writing a biography of myself, which seems rather irrelevant, I would prefer to write a biography of my books. Here, in the order in which they were written, is a brief sketch of the plots, themes, and subject matter of these books.1/ The Voice of the Victim describes a series of murders in a small city. I've always felt a great deal of empathy for the victims of violent crimes, especially those who are murdered by guns. What, I wondered, would these people say to us if they could speak? When reading this book, it is important to remember that my intention, from first page to last page, was to present the voice of the victim. And, to me, this voice is not a straight-line accusation of weapons and murderers but tends to veer to a pervasive mockery and total indictment of modern culture. This novel is much different than anything else I have written, and there will be many who will object to what the "voice" is saying.2/ Some Things Are Sweeter than God is somewhat along the lines of a classic murder mystery but is certainly not one of those books where the conclusion is some wild revelation that no sensible reader could ever discern beforehand. The protagonist is a forty-year-old woman lawyer who, in her role as a public defender, is required to represent a man who is accused of brutally murdering his ex-girlfriend.3/ The Road Map to the Universe is a well-constructed novel--at one time, I was a tournament chess player, and this book required a great deal of planning and analysis. Essentially, it's a highly unusual murder mystery, but the perceptive reader may be able to identify a standard plot theme lurking in the background. The Road Map also examines an interesting philosophical question: In a universe of four billion galaxies, what relevance, if any, does the human being have?4/ The Great Barrington Train Wreck, a truly offbeat social commentary, includes a unique type of murder mystery and is one of my favorite novels. Although I almost never include anything from my own life experience in my books, I was, just like the protagonist in the Train Wreck, homeless for many years. So I'm familiar with the lingo and attitude that some of the homeless have. This is a catchy, captivating book where the plot seems to materialize out of thin air until it becomes the elephant in the room. Also, to my mind, this tale could describe what happens to Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of the Catcher in the Rye, as he approaches forty. It's not all peaches and cream! Especially when he falls in love with the daughter of a millionaire, and even more especially when he ends up on death row.5/ Your Kiss Is Like the Sweetest Fire describes a teenage romance between Jaime and Renee, who were adopted at a young age into the same family. It seems illogical to me, but in almost all states, the law views a sexual relationship between adopted siblings who live in the same family as a crime of incest--exactly as if they were related by blood. So Jaime and Renee have this difficulty to contend with, and also, their mother and father are both rather repulsive characters who are totally incapable of helping them. Wait until you meet Renee--I love her.6/ Requiem for the West is partially based on an apocalyptic poem that I wrote during the 1990's. Ten thousand hours is a lot of time to spend on a seven-hundred-word poem! Requiem is also an examination of some apparently abstract themes that seem highly relevant to me: 1/ The pervasive role of explicit sexuality in our culture and the very different ways that people react to it; 2/ The often farcical, Dilbert-like nature of the modern workplace, in this case a college; and 3/ Is doomsday just around the corner? The 1960-2000 version of myself considered a nuclear apocalypse to be inevitable, but nowadays, I'm ambivalent.7/ Frontier Justice was easy to write because once Adriana Jones arrived on page 10, she took over the book, and all I had to do was keep up with her as she overpowered every obstacle that crossed her path. I hadn't intended for that to happen, but that's the way life goes sometimes. Do I agree with, support, condone, or advocate Adriana's way of doing things? Difficult questions. Adriana is my creation, so I have to take some responsibility for her, I suppose, but I look at it this way: To be true to a character, one has to let the person speak and act in a way that is appropriate to his or her personality. I just can't legislate them into political correctness! Adriana didn't just overpower the other characters in Frontier Justice--she also overpowered me. I really like this book--I wish, as a writer, I could think of more characters who are as dynamic as Adriana.8/ A Tale from the Blackwater River is a novella that is meant to be a satire on a certain kind of story that is showing up far too frequently nowadays, but on another level, it's just kind of a humorous tale that was a lot of fun to write. This book is written in the first person by a forty-two-year-old woman named Alanda Streets. I almost published it under the pen name Alanda Streets because I thought some people might say that no woman would ever write a story like A Tale from the Blackwater River, but for those who feel that way, I hope you will ask yourself this question: If the name Alanda Streets had been on the cover of the book, instead of mine, would you have felt that a woman couldn't have written it?9/ The Blackwater Journal is another Alanda Streets novel--this time, she is only sixteen. I couldn't seem to get away from Alanda--she does have a spunky survivor's attitude towards life that appeals to me. In this book, she has to call on all her resources when her evil father imprisons her in a room and tells her that she has only a week left to live. As the days pass by, the terror mounts on her own personal death row. Does Alanda escape? Maybe so, maybe no.10/ Love Letters (Soaked in Blood) is another murder mystery that has a humorous undertone, which many will probably miss. The problem with writing a murder mystery is that anything that can be thought of has already been done about a thousand times. The only original idea left would be to have the most obvious suspect turn out to be the murderer. Think of it--that's probably never been done! And so...maybe you can guess the rest.11/ The Book of the Dead is about a man who goes to his 25th reunion and meets his high school sweetheart. The two of them embark on an impulsive twenty-four hour car ride that will take them through three southern states and bring them face-to-face with death. This is a tale where the boundaries of ordinary reality are stretched out a little bit! I'll leave it to you to decide whether The Book of the Dead is a fantasy or a reality.12/ Destroyed by Malice sees the return of a character who played a minor role in The Voice of the Victim. He's the world famous novelist Barker Drule, but unfortunately, he (and his wife) exit the book on page 1 when they are gunned down in their driveway. It isn't long before detective Jeff Willard is convinced that the murderer is a member of the Drule family. Perhaps it's Lenore, the older daughter, who was, years ago, secretly raped by her father; perhaps it's the beautiful Raylene, who wrote a novel about a rape victim that her father managed to have the publishing industry blackball; perhaps it's Ricky, the cocaine-addicted son who is desperate to get his hands on his father's money; and perhaps it's Dalton Drule, Barker's irascible eighty-two-year-old father who just happens to own the gun that was used to murder his son. In the end, when the truth finally comes out, there will be very few left to tell the tale.13/ How to Write an Imaginative Novel takes you through the whole process of writing a novel and then uploading it to Kindle. Among the many things covered are: Where will you find a plot? What is the best way to find names for your characters? How important is it to punctuate your book correctly? Is there a quick way to learn punctuation and sentence structure? What is the best way to write dialogue? What kind of things should one avoid in a novel? What is the significance of the first draft and why is it so important? How does one begin a book so that it immediately commands the reader's attention? How does one revise and edit a novel? Is it possible to create the cover for your book without spending any money? How does one convert a book to the correct format so that it can be uploaded to Kindle? And finally, how does one upload a book to Kindle?14/ I Ching 2015 contains a complete translation (minus the Confucian commentaries) of this ancient Chinese classic. Also included are detailed instructions on how to consult the I Ching using either yarrow stalks, coins, or dice. (For those who have been using coins, one should be aware that a significant error has crept into the method that many people use to cast an omen. This error, which involves using either three or four similar coins will seriously affect the accuracy of the omens you receive.) Additionally, there is extensive advice on how to interpret an omen. By using the correct method of interpretation, you will be surprised at how much clearer omens become. As part of this advice, I have posed a number of questions to the I Ching and have then interpreted the omen I received. Finally, for each hexagram, as well as many of the lines in each hexagram, I have included my own observations as to the essential meaning of these hexagrams and lines.15/ Blood and Blackmail is an elegant murder mystery with an unusual plot twist that took me some time to piece together. For those readers who enjoy the challenge of solving a crime before the final chapter arrives, this novel should provide you with a truly interesting puzzle. I doubt many people, if any, are going to see the underlying deception that runs throughout this tale because...if I say anything else, I might help the reader unravel this mystery, and I certainly wouldn't want to do that!16/ Fairy Tales by Martians takes a humorous look at the theory of evolution. Science, of course, claims that the human being originated from an amoeba that eventually became a tadpole that eventually became a frog and so on and so forth. However, I just can't conceive of the fact that ten million years ago, two frogs mated in a swamp and because of that event, I eventually arrived on the scene. What kind of a genealogy chart is that? Neither does the seven-day religious version of events appeal to me, so what I'm left with is a very cynical view of both the religious and scientific theories concerning the origins of our existence.17/ The Book of Dreams repeats a very old idea that has been used in many a novel. But here, in this murder mystery, the idea is taken to another level entirely and contains a twist that not many will see coming. The clues are there, starting with the poem in the Preface.18/ The Dark Side of the Moon is a tale about an attractive high school teacher who falls in love with one of her students. However, Carolyn Black is nervous that her sexual liaison with the student will ruin her career. Eventually, she tries to break off their relationship, but when he threatens to commit suicide, Carolyn is faced with an excruciating dilemma.19/ The Murder of Nora Winters was inspired by John Dickson Carr who wrote a number of locked-room mysteries. In this type of mystery, the murder victim is found in a room that does not allow the killer any means of exit. The doors and windows are all bolted from the inside, and it's considered very poor form for the author to create a room where there are sliding walls or secret panels. The solution to the murder of Nora Winters is, I think, relatively simple, but I've woven in enough deceit and misdirection to confuse all but the most astute readers.20/ The Vanishing Victim is a tale of a psychiatrist and a troubled woman who comes to him for counseling. What she reveals to him proves to be a confession to a brutal crime, but he is unable, because of the doctor/patient privilege, from revealing this crime to anyone, including the police. But even more troubling is that the woman's confession, although it contains a number of factual inaccuracies, turns out to have a terrifying reality of its own.21/ The Fatality Game follows a series of innocuous crimes in a rich neighborhood that seem to be more pranks than anything else. But when a woman is murdered in her bed, Detective Cody Barnes realizes that there is something evil lurking under the placid veneer of swanky mansions that are inhabited by millionaires. And when Cody becomes romantically involved with one of the earlier victims, the beautiful Lucinda Kane, the case begins to take on a life of its own that will eventually lead to the deaths of three more people.22/ How to Write an Intelligent Murder Mystery describes some of the adventures I encountered while I was writing murder mysteries (of my twenty-one novels, thirteen are murder mysteries.) This is a somewhat unusual instructional book that attempts to relate the problems encountered in the writing of a murder mystery to the more general problem of writing fiction in today's market where any new novel is almost instantaneously buried under an avalanche of new novels.23/ The Real Meaning of Life is definitely one of my favorite books. It's written in the first person by Patrick Devlan, a twenty-seven-year-old guy who writes murder mysteries. But his father, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, wants Patrick to write something that will take his readers to a "better place." Patrick decides to follow his father's advice, but a few days later, his roommate's pregnant girlfriend is murdered, and Patrick becomes entangled in a real-life murder mystery. Eventually, after his roommate is convicted of the crime and sent to death row, Patrick is faced with a dilemma that will lead him to the discovery of the real meaning of life.24/ Flight 9525 is a non-fiction book that attempts to answer the question as to why there is so much suffering in the world. For the most part, this book bypasses the usual political, psychological, and social reasons for suffering and examines the following: If God is real, then why do human beings suffer? Why would an all-merciful, all-loving, and all-powerful Being permit its creations to suffer? The usual explanations, such as the hypothesis that God granted man free will, don't answer the question at all. In fact, this is a question that's never been answered satisfactorily.25/ The Scriptwriter is the tale of a man who becomes entangled with three different women. There's the incredibly beautiful woman, the incredibly rich woman, and the incredibly homeless woman. Which one will he choose? Events, mishaps, and character flaws lead him to an interesting decision.26/ The Murder of Marabeth Waters contains a considerable amount of subtle black humor and describes the investigation that ensues after a prostitute is found strangled to death. Detective Devin Driver is quickly able to focus on a suspect; not only did this man send a threatening note to Marabeth, but also, her blood is found in his car. As it turns out, the real murderer lurks elsewhere, and unfortunately, Devin isn't a particularly perceptive detective, so it isn't surprising when the wrong person is convicted of the crime. However, even if Devin had been Sherlock Holmes on steroids, he undoubtedly wouldn't have solved this murder.27/ The Trial of Shada King--a district attorney in Hartford, Connecticut, is charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of the man who had raped her ten days before the shooting. Shada claims that she acted in self-defense, and since she was wearing a recording device at the time of the shooting, her claim of self-defense seems to be valid. But why was she wearing the recording device? The prosecuting attorney is convinced the crime scene was an elaborate stage production that was intended to deceive those who would be listening to the tape and that the victim was murdered in retaliation for the rape.28-34/ Finally, I have seven anthologies on Kindle that combine complete versions of many of the books listed above: Four Novels, 5 Novels, Four Murder Mysteries, The Blackwater Novels, Dark Tales, Six Novels, and Five Murder Mysteries. The purpose of the anthologies is that it gives the reader a chance to buy, for instance, five novels of mine at the rock-bottom price of $2.99.I spend a great deal of time revising my books. After finishing the first draft, I go through the book at least eight more times--first page to last page. Each journey through the book is slow and painstaking--no less than three hours and no more than thirty-five pages a day. From my experience, the kind of errors that pop up on some of the later readings can be rather surprising, if not downright alarming! I particularly look for inaccurate punctuation, lackluster sentence structure, and inaccurate or repetitive vocabulary. I also do not permit confusing sentences to stand--I can't imagine that any reader will want to read a sentence twice because I couldn't find a way to explain myself clearly.Finally, I would ask you all to keep an open mind about novels by an author who has no brand name. I am quite unusual because I do not advertise myself in any way, shape, or form (outside, I guess, of this little biography). My books are well-written, entertaining, and thought provoking, but they are often truly original, and I worry about the page-six syndrome. That's the point where some readers abandon a book by an unknown author because of a single sentence, idea, or attitude that seems amateurish to them. Have faith that there are some genuine diamonds in the Kindle arena and have faith that your instinct to buy one of my books was a good instinct. If you read any of my books to the finish, I think you'll feel that your time was not wasted because these novels are not cheap imitations--they are real creations.

Book preview

THE GREAT BARRINGTON TRAIN WRECK

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COPYRIGHT 2012

BY ROBERT TRAINOR

Prologue: A Letter from Death Row

Dear Everyone,

The other night, I had this terrible nightmare. It began with me riding in a train that was crammed with people. I mean packed—it was like one of those subways in a big city at rush hour where everybody was pressed against each other. Kind of sexual if you were up against the right person and not some eighty-year-old loser who had about a week to go before her ticket got punched by the Master of Ceremonies.

I was one of the lucky ones who was actually sitting in a seat, but the guy next to me was a real downer. All strait-laced and freshly scrubbed—I was afraid he might try to sell me an autographed Bible, so I spent my time looking out the window and gazing at the scenery. Since it was late November, there wasn’t much to see—just a lot of dreary brown shrubs and leafless trees, and with nothing else to do, my mind began to wander. Life just seemed to be so pointless. A lot of running around in circles and fighting battles to survive and hoping that your last check to the landlord was going to clear. It’s hard to explain, but I always had this feeling that I was mixed up in the mail, and instead of arriving on some cool planet that resembled nirvana, I had been sent here to this dismal wasteland of factories and prisons.

Suddenly, I heard a noise up ahead that sounded like an explosion. From my perch by the window seat, I could see we were starting up the ramp to a bridge that crossed over a wide river. Ahead of me were the concrete trestles, connected with iron or steel, that supported the railroad tracks. But, horror of horrors, the explosion had knocked out the middle part of the bridge.

Everything happened in slow motion—the tracks toppling into the river a hundred and fifty feet below, the sudden screeching of the train’s brakes as it tried to avert disaster. But it was too late—trains take forever to stop, even in real life. Nobody else appeared to know what was going on—I can remember someone saying, Oh look, they’re stopping so we can look at the river—isn’t it beautiful? Ignorance was bliss for them, but all I felt was terror because I knew what was going to happen next. Slowly, the car I was sitting in began to tilt—forwards, of course. At first, no one was alarmed, but as the angle and momentum of the tilt began to rapidly increase, cries of alarm began to fill the air.

Oh my God, someone yelled, we’re falling into the river. Someone else, I can remember it vividly, began to chant their final prayer: Dear Jesus, I commit my soul to thee. Even I, at that moment, began to plead with...I don’t know what or who it was. God sounds so unbelievably pathetic—the kind of antiquated word that is making its last stand at nursing homes. So maybe I wasn’t pleading with God, but I was pleading with something—some force or power that would save me. But my plea went unanswered, and all my thoughts were forever interrupted when the execution began.

The car, being now almost perpendicular, threw everyone into the air—if it hadn’t been so crowded, I probably would have died at that moment. I can remember falling forwards and colliding with someone and bruising my head, but then the car must have gone beyond perpendicular because I began falling towards the ceiling with a couple of people on top of me. A moment later, I hit the deck, and an agonizing jolt of pain went through my back. All the time, of course, there was an ever-increasing sense of speed as the train hurtled towards the river.

I feel compelled to say that the few remaining seconds of my life were not made more pleasant when I heard the cars in front of us collide with the water of the river. I was in the rear section of the car, and when we hit—this would be maybe a second before my actual execution—a severed head went flying by me. Just then, everything turned black. As black as black can be. I could, however, still hear sound—the crunching of metal and the screams of people and the water rushing over everything. And in the middle of this blackness there was a thin line of yellow light that looked exactly like a fuse, and as it burned down, the light it gave off vanished so that when this fuse of light was completely burned up, I could see only total blackness. And also, simultaneous with the disappearance of the light from the fuse, all sound vanished.

I didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that I had died.

Part One: Not Exactly a Norman Rockwell Painting.

I

Just to introduce myself, I’m about as poor as poor can get. Not third-world malnutrition poor, but dirtbag American poor—tattered, friendless, homeless. Twenty years ago, when I was fifteen, I dropped out of high school, and a year later, I was booted out of my parent’s house. Since then, I’ve been living on the streets and have hardly even slept in an apartment, much less rented one. During the long, cold northern winters, I’ve gone from one homeless shelter to another or from one abandoned house to another. In the summers, I usually crash in the city park, or on rainy nights, I’ll walk the five miles to the state forest that lies on the outskirts of town. Here, I’ve dug a hole in the ground that’s covered with logs, tarpaulin, and brush. Meanwhile, through it all, drugs and alcohol have been my staples—morning, noon, and night.

Even though I have no formal education to speak of, I’m not a total barbarian. Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of hours in the public library reading about things that interest me, regardless of their relevance or practicality. Because of this, you might be pleasantly surprised by my vocabulary and ability to write a coherent sentence—I guarantee you that this isn’t going to be one of those crude, half-baked books that is littered with four-letter words and all sorts of peculiar vulgarities that some writers, many of them quite famous, find so attractive.

Before proceeding any further, I should warn you that if you’re hoping to read an inspiring story about a guy who tried to better himself and then did something heroic, you’d better go someplace else because, basically, I’m a coward who hails from the most dismal part of the slums. Even worse, I’m proud of it.

II

I suppose, to be authentic, I should begin with what happened at the cabin. It doesn’t actually have anything to do with the main part of my adventures—in fact, it’s just a pathetic sideshow to the catastrophe that befell me after I became involved with Alexandra Hughes. Even so, the story of my downfall wouldn’t be complete unless I included my death-defying march down the Landon Falls Road. I have been through more than my share of desperate times, including a stint on death row, but I think the thing that scarred me the most, even more than having a gun pointed at my head, was that eight-mile walk down a deserted road in a torrential November rainstorm.

When I look back on it, I can see that my two days at the cabin were an omen of what was to come. Although there would be a twist to some of the details, the ultimate result of my liaison with Alexandra would be another kind of death march, even if the road was paved in gold and adorned with beauty. Nowadays, with the wisdom gained from my many mistakes, I can see that the Landon Falls Road is nothing more than a symbol of my failed life. It is a road that stretches on forever—all the way to infinity, if infinity is defined as the length of my life. And I am walking down it, with neither man nor God nor nature for company—walking down a desolate, abandoned road until I fall or am pushed into my grave.

I don’t have much use for school learning, but I can remember one of my teachers droning on and on about how history always repeats itself. From where I am now, absolutely everybody wants to run away, but if someone asks me to disappear into New York City with them, I’ll think carefully before I say anything. I was asked to do that twice in my life—the first time I said yes, and the second time I said no, but both answers proved to be wrong. When I said yes, it should have cost me my life, and when I said no, it did cost me my life. I mean I can still breathe, but that’s about it. 

III

Late in the afternoon of a cloudy November day, I walked up a narrow path that led through a swath of small boulders that had been washed up from a recent flood.  After I reached the top of a tree-lined ridge, the path petered out, and I stood at the beginning of a windswept plateau at the far end of which was a small wooden cabin. By now, twilight was falling, and I could see the light of a kerosene lantern as it shone through a window. I knew that the two people who lived there wouldn’t be happy to see my face, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anyplace else to go.

Walking up to the cabin, I found the door was ajar, and since I was, at best, an unwelcome visitor, I didn’t bother to knock and just presented myself. Here I am, folks! Sitting at a table near the fireplace, Wayne and his girlfriend Meryl were drinking shots of vodka and quickly made it plain that they weren’t happy to see me. Mike! What the devil are you doing out here? said Wayne. Before I could reply, Meryl said, He’s probably looking for a place to stay.

Rather than lie, I remained silent while the two of them looked at me warily. They knew my track record—my ferocious addiction to alcohol; my longstanding habit of always being broke; my parasitical tendency to attach myself to people who might let me sleep under their roof. If only I could persuade them to view me as a hungry stray kitten that was desperate for a pat on the head and a little bowl of milk or some other half-chewed tidbit from the table.

Once upon a time, like when I was nine, I had been a relatively normal person, but I couldn’t pull that act off anymore. Somehow or other, I was one of the ones who had missed the lifeboat drill, and unfortunately, when the survivors of a shipwreck are drifting around in a lifeboat and awaiting rescue, they can only haul so many other people out of the water. Obviously, no one sitting in the boat wants to see it capsize, so the unlucky souls floating in the frigid water will be avoided like the plague, and all their frantic, woeful pleas will fall on deaf ears as the boat is quickly rowed to a place where this agonizing scene is no longer visible. As far as the audio goes, that too will gradually dwindle away as the ones in the water, people like me, freeze to death. Too bad!

Although I hadn’t seen him in over a year, I’d known Wayne for almost a decade—we’d hooked up at a bar one night and started dealing drugs shortly afterwards. He was a tall, lanky guy with shoulder-length scraggly black hair, large hands, a scruffy beard, and penetrating brown eyes. Back when I first met him, he was working for a delivery service hauling around pamphlets and what not, but that all went by the boards when he got drunk one night, stole the delivery van to make a drug deal, and ran it into a ditch.

Wayne can be friendly enough when he puts his mind to it, but for the most part, all he’s looking to do is drift away from the world and live on his own desert island. His father died a few years back and left him enough money to build the cabin on a small plot of inexpensive land about eight miles from the center of town. He chopped down the trees that were used to build it, and with a couple of other guys, he put the thing up one summer. It probably only cost him three grand plus a lot of bartered dope because the one thing Wayne can do as well as anyone is grow marijuana. He was constantly planting small stashes all over the place—any secluded area within twenty miles of Barrington was fair game. According to him, if you only had four or five plants in a single location, you’d never get in trouble because even if the cops caught you harvesting the stuff, it wasn’t like you were some monster dealer from Pittsburgh who had arrived to corrupt all the local folks. Just a pathetic Barrington boy who was trying to scrounge out a high. The worst that would happen was that you’d have to perform some turkey work for community service—like the time he had spent a month doing janitorial work at the high school. 

Wayne had met Meryl at a rehab center, and they had begun shacking up as soon as they were released. Meryl was a much more attractive woman than one would expect to find with someone like Wayne. Although she kept it hidden behind her oversized jeans and grey sweatshirts, she had an excellent figure and a really beautiful face. Soft brown eyes, a clear complexion, a charming smile, and auburn hair that was cut in a sexy, stylish way. I only knew her from my friendship with Wayne, but I’d been around her enough to know that she was quirky, sarcastic, and not at all afraid to speak her mind. 

The two of them didn’t work much—he did some carpentry work from April through October, while she would waitress off and on in downtown Barrington. Naturally, on her sorties into town, she ditched the hick clothes for a short skirt and a tight blouse and made a small fortune in tips. I can still remember seeing her as she strutted into Patterson’s, the best restaurant in town, all dressed up like a sophisticated hooker who was looking to score. I’d also seen how she dealt with men, even when Wayne was around. Not exactly flaunting—more like she knew the way to paradise. I, however, had always been exempt from her charms, and she seemed to go out of her way to make it clear to me that I wasn’t very interesting. Or maybe I’m just using the word interesting as an excuse to cover up my seedy looks. No one would call me a movie star—not unless I was playing a derelict on skid row.

So where are you coming from? asked Wayne. I knew that my best hope was to come up with some sort of cover story—my image was bad enough without having to recount how I had just been thrown out of the homeless shelter because I’d been caught with a pint of vodka that I’d ripped off from a liquor store. Actually, by the time the dolts who ran the homeless dump nailed me, it was only a third of a pint, and I made a point of ostentatiously polishing off the remainder as they were grappling with me on the way to the exit door. I paid for it, it’s mine, you stuffed shirts from nowhere.

I wasn’t really cut out for homeless shelters—all the sanctimonious rules and regulations made me feel like I was living in a monastery. It was a totally hypocritical environment because when the head monks went home at night, most of them got bombed on booze, weed, or coke. Everyone knew that, but I suppose it was natural to get plastered and zoned out when you had to hang around all day with losers like me. End-of-the-worlders. No matter what, I was the kind of street person who wasn’t going back—no more schools, no more rehabilitation, no more work, no more nonsense. 

Actually, I said to Wayne, I just left the protest at City Hall Park.

It wasn’t the stupid teachers protesting for another 8% raise, was it? said Meryl. She was on the outskirts of the political wave—one of those who still thought that it made a difference who got elected and all the rest of the insane nonsense that drives the voting types into mass hysterics. And before you come down on me for my anti-voting attitude, you should remember that the people who live on the streets aren’t the ones cruising around in the lifeboats. 

I had no clue what the squawkers at the park had been squawking about, but I decided to say something that I knew would play into Meryl and Wayne’s sympathies. Some kid was wounded by the cops during a drug bust.

That figures, said Meryl. I can’t believe they’re still cracking down on things like weed. You would think that by 2009, someone would have grown a brain.

So let’s smoke some dope and forget about it, said Wayne. It’s just totally moronic to get wrapped up in other people’s troubles. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a do-gooder—they’re even worse than politicians. 

IV

I can’t actually tell you where it all began to go wrong. What was the first thought that led me down this path, the path of the bottle, drugs of every kind and description, and the endless begging for nickels and dimes from strangers? If I had to guess, I’d say it all came from laziness, a laziness that found all the peculiar demands of the school system too absurd to deal with. 2x+y=7, and I’m supposed to take that world seriously? Algebra might make sense to you, but it seems like a form of pretentious insanity to me. As I began to lose interest in Barrington High, my dumbbell father thundered around the house with dire predictions of what would happen to me if I never attended college. Mike, you’ll be working in a factory your entire life. Nobody can support themselves on what the smog mills pay around here.

Pops was slow to realize it, but I didn’t foresee my future as being an either/or choice between college and Barrington Steel—I was opting out for an entirely different way of life where I didn’t have to be a phony or a slave. I would live by my wits and survive on the streets, and it wasn’t long before I joined the first great wave of homeless people in Barrington. Nowadays, of course, I’m just part of a large and growing mob—with the way things have turned out, there are times, especially at night, when Main Street in Barrington has more bums on it than people, but except for the fact that it makes panhandling more problematic, it’s comforting to be around one’s peers.

Although the homeless are much less violent than they’re made out to be, I’ve known of two guys, one in 2004 and the other in 2006, who were murdered, probably by street guys. The one in 04 was found shot to death in an abandoned building, while the one in 06 was murdered by someone who deliberately sold him some really bad heroin. I know all about the 04 murder because for a couple of days I was the prime suspect. What it all boiled down to, in the minds of the detectives who were investigating the case, was that either Wayne or I had shot the dude, and given my situation now, it’s probably better if I say as little as possible. I will admit, however, that we were the only other people in the building when the shooting went down, but it was late at night, and we were totally zonked out on weed and booze and never heard the shots. Or at least I never heard them.

The big problem, for me, was that the gun, which had been found next to the guy’s body, was mine, so my fingerprints were all over it, while Wayne’s prints were nowhere to be found. The cops were practically drooling over me, and I told them the only thing that I could possibly tell them, which happened to be the truth—someone had stolen the gun from me. Fortunately, there were a number of prints on the gun that didn’t belong to me, and another piece of evidence in my favor was that the body had been found in an area where there were at least a dozen footprints, all of which belonged to someone who had feet much larger than mine. Like Wayne’s. And so, after much ado, I was released, although I know there are still some guys at the police station who are convinced that I did the deed.

As Wayne lit up another joint, I could see that he was looking at me suspiciously. Mike, he said, you’re not here because of the shooting, are you?

Every time I met Wayne, he always asked me about the murder. No—I haven’t been hassled about that in years.

I wouldn’t put it past you to turn on me, said Wayne. He was one of those guys who was becoming more and more paranoid as the years went by—dope does that to some people. Wayne, do you really think that if I get caught with a bag of grass I’m going to talk about a murder in which I was the number-one suspect?

I suppose, said Wayne, without much conviction. So what are you looking for, Mike? A place to crash? From the tone of his voice, it sounded as though he thought that if he didn’t let me stay, I might go to the cops and tell them about his shoe size.

Wayne, I said, just let me stay here a couple of days until I can figure something out.

Wayne looked nervously at Meryl before replying. One night, Mike—sorry, that’s the best I can do.

V

Wayne’s cabin was bigger than it appeared from the outside—the main room, the one with the fireplace and table, started as soon as one stepped across the entrance and probably measured fifteen feet wide and ten feet deep. To the left was Wayne and Meryl’s bedroom, which was about eight feet square, while to the right of the main room was a small area, used for storage, that was nearly five feet wide and ran the length of the cabin. It was set off by a makeshift half-finished wall, and although there was no door, a space had been built for one. There were only two windows in the cabin—the biggest one was near the front door, and there was a smaller one in the bedroom. The outhouse was almost a hundred feet behind the house, and it’s probably safe to assume that Meryl found the trip out there to be annoying, especially on those January nights when there was a foot of snow on the ground and the temperature was plunging into the minus digits.

My projected bedroom was the storage room, and Wayne helped me clear it out—it was a real disaster area that was strewn about two feet deep with all sorts of strange stuff. Lots of rusty tools, a snowblower that was in about seven pieces, and incredibly, a rusty push mower. Wayne laughed when he saw it. That’s another one of Meryl’s prize possessions—she was all excited when she brought it back here. Believe it or not, she was telling me how easy it would be to cut the back yard so that we could put a table out there and eat dinner while we watched the squirrels scampering around. Wayne picked up the mower, lugged it over to the front entrance, and hurled it outside where I heard it crash with a clatter.

The back yard, he said sarcastically, when he came back. Yards are what people deal with when they begin to get attitudes. There are gopher holes out there, Mike, and even though I’ve lived here six years, I’m still afraid some hungry bear is going to come down from the hills and eat me for dinner.

It took us another twenty minutes to clear out the snowblower and a hundred other pieces of junk, which were all tossed out the front door. Doesn’t matter, said Wayne. Sometime during the next week when Meryl’s complaining about all the trash on the manicured front lawn of our estate, I’ll drag the stuff over to the ravine and pitch everything in there. That’s where we throw all our garbage, so it doesn’t make a difference as long as some windbag of an environmentalist doesn’t move in nearby.

You ever seen a bear?

Once! I was riding shotgun in Meryl’s car, and when I saw it, I yanked my 38 from out under the seat and started blasting it at the thing. Meryl was all freaked out and told me I should call an exterminator.

An exterminator?

That’s Meryl being Meryl. She doesn’t know the first thing about anything.

Meryl had pilfered a couple of fifty-dollar bottles of French wine from one of the places she worked, so before we zonked out for the night, we started pounding down wine like it was fruit juice from a fire sale. The only items missing from our ritzy upper-class French scene were the wine glasses—being common folk, we just passed the bottle around and guzzled it down. Very chic and suburban! I thought the wine was excellent, but I’m not much of a judge because I rarely drink the stuff, and the only type I’m familiar with comes from the ultra-cheapo rack at a corner store. Three-dollar specials. Rank but ready—just like me!

Wayne thought the wine was putrid and pronounced it as high-end crap for millionaires and presidents. He kept supplementing the wine with shots of vodka—a powerful combination that I would strongly advise against. Makes your head whirl and your stomach twirl, but each to their own. Predictably, it wasn’t long before Wayne knocked over one of the wine bottles, which catapulted to the stone floor and exploded into smithereens. Meryl was incensed. That’s why, she said, looking at me, I can never take him out anywhere. He’ll either start making lewd remarks to the waitress, or he’ll barf all over the table. Or both. Nice!

The food in that restaurant was just overpriced garbage for the credit-card crowd, said Wayne. Nowadays, all they ever sell in downtown Barrington is fancy commercial nonsense, but I suppose with all the nut jobs that are crawling around on Main Street, it makes sense to sell stuff that no ordinary person would ever use.

I’ve never had any trouble finding nail polish, said Meryl. And, she said, when I was in the drug store last week, I saw some bootlaces—I almost bought you a pair, but I knew you’d never use them.

Wayne looked at me and said, Every time we have company, which is about once a year, Meryl ends up telling them about the time she tripped over my laces and almost fell into the fire.

It’s not so funny when it happens to you, she said.

But it is funny when it happens to someone else, said Wayne. And don’t start giving me some lecture about how evil I am because I laugh at people who go sprawling onto the ice. He lit up a joint, and before long, the mood became peaceful as the weed turned us into free-floating zombies. Finally, Meryl said, Let’s hit the hay early tonight, Wayne. I’m wasted.

What about him? said Wayne, as he pointed at me.

What about him? asked Meryl.

When are you planning on splitting? said Wayne to me. To tell you the truth, Mike, I don’t really feel like seeing your face in the morning. Nothing personal—it’s just that all this yackety-yak nonsense is wearing me down.

Don’t worry about it, said Meryl. He’ll be long gone before you roll out of the sack.

So, Mike, you’ll be gone when I come out here in the morning? said Wayne.

Sure—no problem, I said. Sleeping under this guy’s roof wasn’t likely to become an ongoing temptation. 

Wayne looked at me suspiciously. Don’t screw around with me, Mike.

Wayne, will you please stop it, said Meryl. Why don’t you and I just go into the bedroom and fool around for a while.

And what’s Mike supposed to do while we’re doing that? Fantasize about some skank he met at a bar ten years ago?

Maybe he can listen at the door, said Meryl, who was probably just trying to placate Wayne with a nasty joke.

I wouldn’t put it past him, said Wayne, with a laugh. What do they call that in the literature books? A vicious experience?

No, no, said Meryl, laughing. A vicarious experience.

Same thing, said Wayne. But anyways, I’m getting sick of this three-way scene and trying to engage in a lot of moronic chitchat. The next thing we’ll be talking about is Black Friday and all the jerks who go storming into the malls because there’s a sale on used underwear. Holding out his hand to me, he said, Glad I could help you out, old buddy—sorry it couldn’t be longer. And listen, I was only joking about standing outside our door. If I catch you doing that, I’ll bash your brains in with my baseball bat.

I shook his hand and said, I have to crash—I’m shot. Getting up from the table, I retreated to my overgrown closet, and after crawling into a ripped sleeping bag that Wayne had found entangled with the snow blower, I squirmed my way into it and tried to make myself comfortable. The floor was hard, but I had slept in lots of places that made this seem like the Hotel Hilton. Hundreds of places—swamps, on a workbench in a cellar that had two feet of water on the floor, ten feet from railroad tracks on the inclined embankment, burned out houses that reeked from the fire, rat infested buildings—the whole laundry list of the disenfranchised.

VI

I was totally spaced out from the weed and had fallen asleep when I was awakened by the sound of Meryl’s voice. Wake up, Mike—I need to talk to you. She was sitting in a wooden chair at the entranceway to my dive of a bedroom, and because the entranceway was offset, her face was almost directly above mine. You awake? she said, in her sultry but rough voice. That was one way you could tell Meryl came from the streets—no normal woman would have talked in that kind of voice. It was too explicit, too heedless of how a man might interpret it or how a man might be invoked to passion because of all the seeming lust that coursed through it.

I couldn’t imagine why she would be talking to me, but given the time and the circumstances, it wasn’t hard for me to arouse myself from the groggy tomb of my derelict habits, and I communicated this reality by half sitting up on my elbows. Because the fire in the main room was still burning, I was able to see her distinctly as she struck up a match and put it to the end of a hefty joint. This is from Wayne’s special stash, she said. Very potent. After taking a drag, she handed it to me, and as I was toking up, I noticed that all she was wearing, apparently, was a fairly short bathrobe that stopped a couple of inches above her knees, one of which I accidentally grazed as I handed the joint back to her. Skin! It can do things to a man—not only that, it was the skin of a woman who had always acted like I was invisible. And here she was in my bedroom, and here she was acting like I was a man she was interested in.

As enticed and tempted as I was, I told myself to cool it—who knew where Wayne was. He’d already told me about his gun, and I wasn’t anxious to make its acquaintance.

Mike, she said, in her intoxicating voice, sometimes...have you ever thought of disappearing without a trace? No forwarding address, no notes left behind—nothing.

It was hard for me not to laugh at that idea. Where would I go?—my horizon only extended from one homeless shelter to another. To keep the conversation going, I said, I guess you don’t like living here?

It might be OK if Wayne weren’t around. He’s like a Neanderthal, and I’m not just talking about the shape of his head. His cultural IQ must be about 40, and that’s only because of the old comic books that he constantly reads.

So why don’t you move out? You must meet a lot of guys downtown. Right away, I knew that this wasn’t a very smart thing for me to say because, at least for the moment, Meryl was acting like I was the guy.

Sure, she said in an offhand way, and sometimes, I even sleep with them, although if you listen to Wayne, you’d think I was the world’s most promiscuous woman. But...I don’t know...I think, deep down, I’m just totally sick of this town. It’s so backwards—there are churches on just about every corner, the mayor is a pervert, and everybody else is so ordinary that it’s enough to make you cry.

By now, the weed was having a powerful effect on me, which wasn’t surprising because when you toked up on something from Wayne’s special stash, then that meant you were traveling deep into the unchartered regions of Zombie Village—those who have smoked hashish will know what I’m talking about.

Meryl, is there any booze around here? I felt like I was gasping for breath and might pass out—pass out into the eternal void from which there is no return.

She went over to a far corner of the room and brought back a nearly full fifth of vodka. After taking a belt, I began to feel somewhat more normal—for those who don’t know much about drugs, it’s sometimes possible to achieve a marvelous high by mixing alcohol and weed. More often, of course, one either quickly passes out or throws up all over the place, and since I was striving to impress Meryl, with what I don’t know, I obviously wanted to avoid both of those possibilities. And since her bathrobe was now open in a rather suggestive way, I was all in favor of doing anything to support those kinds of suggestions. Try smoking Wayne’s special stash and belting down some vodka before you start lecturing me on some prim-and-proper routine. Drugs, in case you haven’t heard, ramp up the libido. Ramp it up, baby!

So what are you planning on doing, Meryl?

Just hear me out, Mike. OK?

I’m listening.

Meryl lit up another joint and took a ferocious hit off it. Basically, she said, I want to split from this scene, but I’m too scared to do it alone.

Too scared? Fear was not something I associated with Meryl.

Mike, if I don’t have a man with me, some guy will start hitting on me, and he could be anything from a harmless weirdo to a serial killer. But I wouldn’t be nervous if you were around because no guy is going to hassle me if I’m sitting next to you.

Why’s that?

Because you always look so menacing—even when you’re trying to be friendly.

I laughed, mostly because Meryl seemed to think that she had just given me a compliment. I’m not really a violent guy, Meryl.

I know that! So why don’t we just bomb out of here and head for New York City? She paused and looked at me reflectively. "It’d be a good deal for you, Mike, because I’d be willing to pay you. Not, of course, in money but in collateral goods. Maybe I should pronounce that as co-lateral. You must know what I mean—you’re not that dense." 

I reached over, took the joint, and sucked up some smoke.

Listen, Mike, what have you got to lose?

Her offer seemed far too good to be true, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being led into some sort of trap. You really want to leave Wayne?

Mike, he’s always bombed or trashed and can’t do anything except roll up another joint. And also, unlike you, he can be a violent guy—I know that first hand.

By now, I was beginning to realize that it would be totally stupid to toss away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with a woman that I had always secretly desired. When would we leave? And... I hesitated because I didn’t want to appear too eager, but with lust trumping good taste, I decided to go for it. And when would I receive the collateral?"

When would you like to receive it?

Now! But suddenly, in the midst of my rising desire, I remembered that Wayne was only about fifteen feet away. Reluctantly, I said, We should probably wait until—

We could do it now, if you like.

What about Wayne?

Meryl waved her hand dismissively, and in a sarcastic voice, she said, Don’t worry about him. Before we went to sleep, I fed him a cocktail of happy-nation pills.

What in the world is a happy-nation pill?

Valiums and sleeping pills, so he’s pretty much dead to the world.

Her robe had fallen partly open again, and I ran my hand up her leg. She responded by pressing her leg against my hand. Alright, I said, I’ll take the co-lateral.

VII

To be really up front and honest about it, I don’t feel like discussing what happened after Meryl crawled into my sleeping bag. I know, to be avant-garde and all that, I should at least make a few lurid and tasteless remarks that touch upon the subject, but I’d just as soon fast forward through the whole thing because, when I look back on it, I can still feel some memories that I would rather forget. Not that I was too drunk or wigged out to perform or anything like that.

Afterwards, as Meryl and I lay there together and had a few celebratory tokes off a joint, she told me about her plan. She began by reminding me that once we were on the road and could find some out-of-the-way place to park her car, I would receive another gift of her favors. She didn’t use words like gift and favor, of course, but I’m making a real effort to be as elegant as possible because, deluded fool that I am, I like to think there’s a possibility that people will see this book as something more than the last-ditch memoirs of a drug-crazed lunatic.

OK, said Meryl, once she had the sexual stuff squared away, I’ll talk to Wayne tomorrow morning and convince him to let you stay another day—just be cool and don’t cause any trouble by making some senseless off-the-wall remark. You following all this?

So far, it wasn’t very complicated, but I was a little leery of what was coming next. Sure.

Alright, the reason I want to leave tomorrow night is because I’ve got a paycheck coming, plus I’ll probably make another fifty tending bar—that’ll be our traveling money. I have no idea if my car can make it to New York City, but we’ll give it a go. And anyways, if it does break down, we can always dump it by the side of the road and start hitchhiking.

And Wayne will be asleep when we leave?

He’ll be more than asleep, lover boy. Because what I’m going to do before I leave for downtown tomorrow night is make him a dinner that will be loaded with happy-nation pills. Believe me, he’ll be totally, one-hundred-percent wasted. We could run the car into the house, and he wouldn’t know it.

A few minutes later, she went back to the bedroom, and I was left alone with my thoughts in the darkness of the night. As I began to seriously think about the whole thing, I kept coming back to the fact—it was almost like a premonition—that something might go wrong. For some reason, I couldn’t stop imagining what it would feel like if Wayne were pointing his 38 at me. As I slithered around in my grungy sleeping bag, it was easy for me to imagine the thoughts that would be going through my mind during that last split second before Wayne pulled the trigger, and even worse, what I would feel in the first split second after the bullet went ripping through my defenseless body.

At this point in my rather woozy meditations, I began to feel the heavy weight of Wayne’s special stash, along with the compounding effects of the vodka. The room began to swirl, and I had to go into amateur detox mode—breathing slowly and lying absolutely still. Before long, without being quite aware of it, I began to drift off into the pleasant mindfulness of sleep. A couple of times, I thought I heard Meryl in the next room, but before long, I had passed into another dimension.

VIII

By the time we had all crawled out of our respective sacks, it was a little past noon, and the three of us weren’t looking very lively. The wages of sin, I suppose. Wayne, in particular, was quite the mess. He kept complaining about a monster headache and spent the afternoon trying to alleviate it by chain smoking joints from his special stash. As dusk fell, clouds of smoke were billowing around the cabin, along with the hacking sounds produced by a number of his apocalyptic coughing fits. God’s sake, said Meryl to Wayne, can’t you go into the bedroom? By the time I reach Barrington, I’m going to smell like I crawled out of a vat of THC. Wayne let out a snarl and lit up another joint as Meryl went over to the front door and opened it so that some of the smoke could escape from the cabin. Cursing, Wayne stumbled out of his chair, and with his bootlaces dragging across the floor, he slammed the door shut. Meryl went storming into the bedroom, and about twenty minutes later, she came out with a wooden bucket, and after bringing in some water from the well, she went over to the sink and mirror, which were located to the right of the front entrance. Once there, she attempted to fix herself up—she was scheduled to begin bartending in Barrington at seven and wouldn’t return until a little past two. Eventually, as she was leaving, she told Wayne that she had made his dinner and that it was in the fridge. But, she said to Wayne as she winked at me, don’t let Mike get his paws on it, or he’ll wolf it all down on you.

Great, said Wayne, after she had gone. That means she made me two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but it doesn’t make any difference because I’m just going to stick to weed and booze tonight. He was halfway to the end of another joint and handed it to me, and as I helped myself to a blast, I wondered whether I should make the attempt to talk him into his happy-nation sandwiches. However, the conversation now took an unexpected and unpleasant turn.

You know what, Mike? I like Meryl, but she’s a little bit too loose for my taste. You know what I mean by loose, don’t you?

Obviously, this was a subject that I wanted to avoid. Loose...you mean... I didn’t even want to utter the word.

She’s always messing around behind my back with guys she meets at the restaurant. It isn’t like she tries to hide it, Mike. She’ll leave here like she did today and come cruising in here around ten the next morning. And all you have to do is take one look at her to know what she’s been doing all night. ‘Who was it this time?’ I’ll ask her. ‘The busboy,’ she’ll say, ‘I just couldn’t resist him.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. 

Mike—the busboy! Talk about an insult! Some seventeen-year-old punk with pimples all over his face. It’s getting to the point where I’m beginning to hope she just shacks up with one of those ugly morons.

After a reflective, anxious pause, I said, I can see where you would be upset.

In one sense, said Wayne, as he grabbed the vodka bottle and took a gulp from it, I don’t really care. There are a lot of times when I wish Meryl would just pack up her rubbish and find some other dude to lay her crazy trip on. Leave me alone so I can toke up in peace and not hear all these ridiculous complaints about how I never do anything around here.

In an attempt to be friendly, I took the vodka bottle and helped myself to a shot.

The thing is, Mike, she’s beginning to overdo it. About a month ago, she asked me if she could bring some guy back here so they could sleep together in that little pigpen where you were staying last night. There’s a date for you!

By now, I was so nervous that I was beginning to bite my fingers. It was impossible to predict where this conversation was headed, but my imagination could foresee a lot of unpleasant outcomes. And what did you say?

Not under my roof, said Wayne, in an angry tone. If I catch her doing it with some guy here, I’ll blow his pathetic brains out—it doesn‘t matter who it is.

The whole drift of the conversation seemed way too coincidental to me—like Wayne was deliberately leading up to something, something that couldn’t possibly be good.

She coming on to you, Mike? And if she does, are you going to push her away?

Before I could say anything, Wayne laughed in a spiteful way and said, It’s not like I’m really worried about it because you’d be about the last person Meryl would fall for unless she’d drunk about two gallons of vodka.

I desperately wanted to change the subject. Sports? Politics? The weather? But my mind and tongue seemed frozen, and I couldn‘t figure out a way to work any of these boffo subjects into the conversation.

You’re so quiet that it just reeks of treachery, said Wayne. Looking at me with those ornery, bloodshot eyes of his, he said, Man, I keep remembering this weird dream I had last night...at least I thought it was a dream, but now I’m not so sure...

Wayne was staring at me like I was an ugly reptile—maybe he was just prone to seeing his reflection in other people’s faces. Drumming his fingers on the table in an authoritarian way, he said, Last night...Meryl came out here, didn’t she?

With his face beginning to resemble Rasputin’s, I decided my best hope was to go on the offensive. Wayne, how should I know? Maybe she sat at the table and had some vodka, but I couldn’t actually tell you because I fell asleep in about two minutes.

Really?

Yes, Wayne—really.

I don’t think so—I know she was gone from the bedroom for a long time, so what was she doing?

Wayne, I never saw Meryl after the two of you went to bed last night.

You’re lying, Mike—I know something that you don’t.

Maybe, I thought, with a sudden sense of terror, he had been awake while Meryl and I had been fooling around. We had been quiet, but maybe not that quiet. However, if he had heard us, why was he only talking about it now? Had he decided to wait until Meryl was gone so that he could deal with me without there being any witnesses? That way he could just ditch my body in the ravine and tell Meryl that he had no idea where I was. And since there wasn’t anyone on this earth who would miss me, my murder would be an easy crime to pull off. Like most homeless people, I would simply vanish without a trace.

Wayne was now assuming the attitude of a triumphant prosecutor who had trapped a witness, Mike, I purposely didn’t tell you something—just to see if you might be man enough to tell me the truth.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wayne, but I didn’t have anything to do with Meryl last night.

With an abrupt motion, Wayne reached into a drawer underneath the top of the table, pulled out his 38, and pointed it, from about four feet away, at my head. All I can say is that unless this has actually happened to you, it’s impossible to understand what I was feeling or thinking. You can imagine and guess, but it probably wouldn’t come anywhere near the reality. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind that I might be about a zillionth of a second away from having a bullet blast through my brain. Would there be a moment of recognition after he pulled the trigger? Would I have even that? And what if the bullet didn’t kill me but left me as some washed-up, brain-dead wreck who couldn’t even babble out a two-word sentence?

Glaring at me, he said, I’m tired of messing around with you, Stratton.

Wayne, I never... My voice trailed off as I wondered whether he would be able to sense that I was lying if I continued to deny everything. I knew he had a hair-trigger temper, and I was terrified of saying something that would set him off.

Meryl told me all about it, Mike.

She told you? What are you talking about?

There’s no sense denying it—I know everything that happened last night. Everything!

Had he really known all along? It seemed very unlikely to me that Meryl would have said anything to him about our lustful adventures inside the sleeping bag. I have no idea what she said to you, Wayne, but you’re imagining everything.

Imagining? I know every last detail. You must think I’m an idiot—fooling around with my woman like that.

There was a part of me that thought he was just searching for information, that he suspected but didn’t actually know. Even so, I had no idea what to say—I was terrified that a direct lie might prove to be the end of my career on earth, while an honest confession seemed to be nothing more than outright suicide. No, I said, I...it’s not what you think, Wayne.

Not what I think? Here’s what I think—you don’t deserve to live. I trusted you, I let you sleep under my roof. And then, last night—I don’t know what time it was—Meryl comes stumbling back to the bedroom with the vodka bottle, and says, ‘That was fun.’ So I asked her what she was talking about and she said, ‘Not everybody’s like you, Wayne. Some guys actually know what they’re doing in bed.’ Now what’s that supposed to mean?

You tell me, Mr. Big Man. I knew Wayne wouldn’t be acting this way if I were the one with the gun in my hand. I felt so desperate that my terror was beginning to turn into rage—if I was going to die, I might as well go down with at least an attempt at self-preservation. But I’d have to invent something and invent it fast because I could sense that he was about to pull the trigger. Already an idea had occurred to me, but if it didn’t work, I was a goner.

The table we were sitting at was just a cheap piece of leftover trash that Wayne had hauled in from somewhere—not some massive two-thousand-dollar monument to luxury. My hands were under the edge of the table, and as a surge of terrorized adrenalin rushed through me, I ducked and simultaneously flipped my side of the table upwards. I was fortunate that Wayne’s edge of the table, which went downwards as I continued to push my side up, bounced off his legs and crashed to the floor. With the table now almost perpendicular, I shoved it towards Wayne who fell out of his chair and crashed to the floor. As I ran towards the door, I could see that Wayne had fallen awkwardly onto his side, but he still had the gun in his hand, and just after I had yanked open the entrance door to the cabin and taken about two steps outside, I heard the first bullet whistle by. Man, was I ever freaked out. I couldn’t stop thinking that the next bullet was going to hit me. By now, I could hear Wayne getting to his feet. I’m going to kill you, Stratton. 

Because it was raining heavily, it was pitch black outside the door, which gave me some hope, and when I had gone about thirty feet, there was a sudden barrage of shots coming from the doorway of the cabin, and since they sounded as if they were passing to the left of me, I veered to the right and ran in a zigzag pattern until I reached the road that went into Barrington. Wayne was still coming after me, so instead of continuing down the road, I crossed it and began to clamber down a steep embankment. I’d gone about five feet when I slipped in the mud and went sliding face first down a seemingly endless hill until I became entangled in a bush, which brought me to an abrupt halt. By this time, I could have made it into a record book for the world’s greatest mess. Mud in my hair, mud in my eyes, mud in my mouth.

Up above me, I could hear Wayne who was bellowing his head off with one death threat after another. But since there were no streetlights along the road, I knew he would never find me, and after another ten minutes, during which time he fired a couple of rounds into the woods, I heard him go back to the cabin and slam the door shut.

And then, after waiting a couple of more minutes to make sure that he was really gone, I began to wonder what I was going to do next. 

IX

Since my coat was still in the cabin, I was only wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, and with the temperature in the low forties, I was already beginning to shiver. For lack of anything better, I decided that I would have to hide in Wayne’s outhouse, so I ran back across the road, cut behind the cabin, opened the outhouse’s rickety wooden door, and jumped inside. Despite the fact I was drenched and coatless, I figured that I had a couple of things going for me. The best option, by far, would be if Meryl discovered me because then we could just split for New York City like we had planned. But if, for some reason, she never appeared, then I could at least wait until the rain died down before I made my way back to Barrington.

I had been out there for what must have been an hour when I heard the door to the cabin open, and in the light coming from the cabin window, I could see that Wayne was walking towards the outhouse. I ran into the woods, and once Wayne had disappeared into the outhouse, I realized that I could probably make it back to the cabin and retrieve my coat before Wayne returned because, obviously, a character like Wayne wouldn’t bother to use the outhouse for anything but a significant event.

A few minutes later, I was back in what was now a stink bomb of an outhouse, but at least I now had my coat, which was both dry and warm. The lights in the cabin remained on, and after a while, the night began to get a little long. I was able to sit down, of course, but it became quite depressing, what with the smell and all, as I waited and waited for Meryl to appear. I wanted to doze off, but it seemed way too risky because there was always the chance that Wayne might spring an encore. What a pathetic way to die, even for me—riddled with bullets in an outhouse. Not exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, I muttered to myself with a sinister laugh. I could have waited on the road near the driveway to the cabin, but it was raining so hard that I would have been drenched within ten minutes, and I had absolutely no clue as to what time it was—maybe ten, maybe midnight.

...Time passed, and the next thing I knew I was awakened by shouting, which was coming from the cabin as Meryl and Wayne went at it like two sixteen-year-olds. Threats, cursing, smashing—and then suddenly, after about ten minutes, the lights in the cabin went out, and there was nothing but silence. Apparently, Meryl would be making no appearance at the outhouse—maybe, like Wayne, she only used the facilities when it was absolutely necessary. Discouraged, I sat there until gradually, over a period of about a half hour, the rain began to let up. Once it had stopped, I knew there was no sense hanging around any longer, and I began the eight mile trek into Barrington.

X

The Bataan Death March. Although there are some who would disagree with me, my march that night down the Landon Falls Road would be another version of what happened in 1942. After I had gone about a mile, I began to hear thunder—thunder in November!—and before long, bolts of lightning flashed through the sky, followed by torrents of rain. Hungry and exhausted, I felt I had to make it into Barrington and never considered turning back, even as a cold rain began to come down in massive, gusty sheets. Covered in mud, drenched, freezing, and staggering down a nearly washed out road in a very cold November rainstorm, I often felt as if I wasn’t going to make it back to civilization. Before long, my teeth began chattering, and I began to trot, off and on, as I tried to increase my body heat, but since there were no street lights and I could hardly see anything, it wasn’t long before I tripped in a pothole and fell face first along the edge of the road. Sopping wet and shivering uncontrollably, I think the only thing that saved me was that the rain began to let up when I was about two miles outside town.

At that time of night, the Landon Falls Road was extremely desolate, and I didn’t see a single car until I was on the outskirts of town. Earlier, I had passed two houses—I was so desperate that by the time I came to the second one, I began to walk up the driveway leading to the house. I had some vague idea that I would bang on the front door until someone opened it—then I could, as in the movies, stage a dramatic collapse. Hopefully, the person in front of me would be a kind,