The Black Hand: A Novel

By Jeffrey Walker

Elliot Turner is in a bit of a rut. Hes spent years wallowing in the depths of an abysmal heroin addiction, and its cost him just about everything. Hes alienated himself from his entire family, with the exception of his Uncle Richard, who happens to be his last true friend. Long lost dreams of being a novelist are now mere ghosts to the incessantly self-degrading young junkie.

When Richard dies suddenly in the California desert, Elliots last vestige of hope dies with him. Little does Elliot know that the grieving process sets him on a path to forge his greatest accomplishments and face his greatest fears. After crashing his truck while under the influence of prescription narcotics, Elliot lands at an indigent recovery center, where he discovers something that shouldnt exist.

Bizarre experiences begin to shape his otherwise rudderless existence as Elliot ponders the power of loss and evades the crippling grasp of fear. Full of delusion and mystery, The Black Hand is a strange, touching, and occasionally hilarious story about searching for purpose in a world gone awry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480850088

Jeffrey Walker

vJeffrey Walker is a writer from Southern California. He studied English at the University of California, Riverside, where he first began writing creative nonfiction and personal prose for various publications. You can follow him on Twitter @jeffwalkersdead. This is his first novel.

Book preview

1

T he family of puffins made its way across the searing desert landscape with slow but steady determination. The birds appeared to Richard to have a particular destination in mind, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be. Richard himself couldn’t really remember where he was headed.

What the hell are Atlantic seabirds doing in the California desert? And how did they get here? The questions floated through his consciousness momentarily and then slipped away just as quickly as they had come. A queer inability to focus prevented Richard from latching on to any one thought for more than a few seconds. Every idea that entered his mind seemed only to be passing through on its way somewhere else. He knew it was a symptom of something, but he just couldn’t remember what that something was.

Overcome by an eccentric ambition, he’d abruptly left his boyfriend’s Las Vegas home about an hour earlier. Andrew had been urging him to stay—begging him almost, saying he was worried. But like the little family of birds, Richard was determined. He knew there was something he had to do, and he knew that time was short.

It took Richard the better part of two minutes before he realized he had pulled his red convertible onto the shoulder of the road. Highway 15 lay sprawled out ahead of him, winding through the hills. His hands clutched the wheel at ten and two; his head was turned to the side, eyes fixed on the stout, little, black-and-white birds. The word Gonzo floated through his mind, but he had no idea why. The birds hobbled slowly through the desert brush, and Richard went on staring. Wallowing in the depths of a trancelike state, he stepped out of his car. Thick beads of sweat ran down his cheeks and forehead. The drops grew pregnant on his chin before falling to the hot pavement where they almost immediately evaporated. Richard shuffled around the front of his car, bracing himself on the hood as he went. The sleek, red metal burned his hand as he touched it, but he paid no mind.

Dry desert earth crunched underfoot as he left his Mustang behind and began tracing the footfalls of the puffins.

Slow moving as the birds were, he caught up to them with relatively little effort and began shouting at them as if they understood English. Hey! he screamed. What are you guys doing here? You’re gonna get hurt! It’s hot! There’s snakes!

The puffins just went on walking, their broad, orange beaks bobbing as they paced. The birds appeared to walk proudly, their heads held high, their chests bowed out. Every once in a while, one would step awkwardly on a rock and spread its wings, giving a flap or two at its side to retain balance. Richard was enamored by the birds; the striped colors of their beaks and faces looked almost too perfect. For a while, he just fell in line walking with them. Three small birds and a middle-aged Caucasian man marched single file through the California desert.

Suddenly, a gnarled root protruding from the desert earth caught his foot, and Richard fell to one knee. His right hand met the ground to brace him. But just barely. He looked for a moment at the blotchy, bruised skin on the back of his hand while his feeble, shaky elbow threatened to give out. Rolling back on his heels, he lifted his hand from the earth and examined the hand-shaped stain he’d made in the dirt. A brilliant memory of a turkey drawing he had made as a child struck his consciousness with sudden clarity. Every detail of the cloudy autumn day in second grade when Mrs. Snell had directed his class to trace their hands with crayons became staggeringly clear to him. It was as if he’d traveled through time.

The becoming young woman smiled as she showed the class how to decorate the outlines with beaks, feathers, and skinny, webbed feet. Mrs. Snell was married to a fireman, and on this celebratory Thanksgiving-week morning, he and a couple of friends from the station had come to the classroom to partake in the festivities. Sitting at a ring of desks and wearing paper hats and Native American headdresses, they had all made turkeys together. Eight-year-old Richard felt an undeniable sort of elation when he gazed at the three broad-shouldered men who had joined him in the classroom. The feeling fell somewhere between admiration and a rebellious kind of excitement, like the feeling he got when he was home alone and tried on his sister’s dresses.

Holding his dirt-caked palm in front of his face, Richard curled his fingers over. He gazed for a moment at his yellowed fingernails. They looked like brittle wax paper, cracked and threatening to tear away from the roll with any small movement. He opened his palm back up, rolled his wrist over, and realigned it with the turkey in the sand.

Just then, a shadow glided across the ground toward him. Squinting through bloodshot eyes, he slowly lifted his head. What he saw looked divine. One of the puffins was standing directly in front of him, not two feet away. Its head covered the sun almost perfectly, and glimmering rays of light shot out from behind the bird’s beautiful features like a halo. Drops of sweat rolled into Richard’s eyes. The thick, salty liquid stung as it met his eyeballs, but he couldn’t look away.

Your path evades you, the bird said to him in a calming, childlike voice, but it will be found.

A bemused smile spanned Richard’s cheeks. He struggled to articulate a response but found nothing. Just then, his shaky elbow gave out, and he pitched forward onto his chest. Coughing through the dust, he tried to lift himself but collapsed again. Despite his efforts, the best he could do was roll over onto his back. In his state of perpetual obliviousness, he had no idea that he was dying. The mere concept of death, in fact, seemed strangely foreign to him. He jerked his head around, searching for the bird, but saw nothing. Squinting through the abrasive sunlight, he heard it again.

A beautiful voice, angelic in pitch, told him, It will be found.

He smiled again. Peaceful bliss enveloped him as he closed his eyes and took his last breath skyward. A few choked, snoring noises came from his throat as he died, and then there was only the harsh desert breeze.

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Elliot Turner was beginning to get sick. He could feel the rigid anxiety gnawing at his bones, and he knew he had to act fast. If he had any money, his predicament could be solved easily, but he didn’t, so it couldn’t. After screeching his truck to a stop in the library parking lot, he jogged inside. Few young people in Orange County still had library cards, but he was one of them. And he had it for exactly this reason. Printers and label makers were luxuries he couldn’t afford.

The massive library stretched for what seemed like miles in every direction, and it was stacked to the brim with books and desks and shitty old computers. He selected one of the ancient monitors and hovered restlessly over it.

Shaky hands danced across the keyboard as he typed prescription water contamination into the search engine. To his relief, there were copious studies outlining the detrimental effects of flushing old pills down the toilet. After printing a few of the articles out, he forged a blank spreadsheet with the Food and Drug Administration’s logo on it. The next and final task was to mock up a nametag with the FDA logo and a fake name printed on it—he settled on Trent Logan though he couldn’t have said why. As he worked, he shot nervous glances over his shoulder. He wasn’t doing anything terribly illegal—not yet at least—so he wasn’t worried about getting caught, but he still didn’t feel like explaining himself to any heroic librarians.

After the half-zombified junkie finished his prep work, he managed to drag himself back out to the parking lot and start his truck. Waves of anxiety seethed in him, but he tried to keep the symptoms at bay as he drove. He parked his truck on a mostly empty residential street next to a mobile home park. It wasn’t one he’d ever been to before, but he had a good feeling about it. The sign next to the entrance read Pastoral Meadows Retirement Community.

The day’s hot stillness pulled a film of sweat over his arms as he grabbed a clipboard and an empty backpack off the passenger seat. He doubled back to his truck three different times to make sure it was locked, checking his reflection each time and trying to convince himself that his five-day beard was stylish and not lazy.

After tucking in his plaid, collared shirt, he slung the backpack over one shoulder and walked through the entrance to Pastoral Meadows. Gangly legs carried him down the sidewalk and past the rental office as a white-haired couple rolled across his path in a golf cart.

When Elliot felt like he was a safe distance from the rental office, he turned on his heel and walked up a driveway. He gave the mobile home’s front door two solid knocks and removed his sunglasses. A few uncomfortable seconds went by, and the door swung slowly open. A stout, leathery-skinned old man looked quizzically down at Elliot through the outer screen door. The ancient man wore a white T-shirt with a large brown stain over his sagging left breast. His shirt was stretched over his massive belly and tucked hastily into his gray sweatpants. He wore socks under his sandals, and in many ways, he looked exactly like Elliot had expected him to. Elliot stared at him for a moment or two and then opened his mouth to speak.

Hello, sir, he said. My name is Trent, and I’m with the FDA—

We don’t fuckin’ want any, the old man said and slammed the door in what Elliot thought was a bit of an overly theatrical gesture.

Elliot turned and retreated down the driveway. He struggled to retain his confidence as he approached the trailer next door. The sun beat down on his head with heavy rays of brilliant light. Elliot’s hair hurt. My fuckin’ hair for God’s sake, he thought. Opiate withdrawals were probably the only thing in the world capable of making things hurt like that. After knocking on the front door of contestant number two, he hitched his shoulders up in a poor attempt to appear in good posture. The door swung almost immediately open, and a frizzy-haired old woman stood before him in a faded purple bathrobe. An exceedingly large cat stood at her feet, its tail flipping slowly through the air.

Elliot cleared his throat. Hello there, ma’am, he said. I’m from the FDA, and we’re working on a community project. Recent studies have determined that a large amount of people are dumping old prescriptions down their toilets and contaminating the water supply. I have some studies here if you’re curious.

She nodded at him with an uncomprehending smile.

Anyway, Elliot said, at the Food and Drug Administration, we’re trying to prevent further contamination by going door to door and collecting old prescriptions.

Oh, sure, she said enthusiastically. What a great idea. She spoke in a voice that suggested she had no idea what she was agreeing to. I have a few prescriptions I don’t take anymore. I can hand them off to you. Do I need to sign anything? she asked, pointing a short wrinkled finger at his clipboard.

Elliot felt a swell of relief—equal parts excitement and astonishment—wash over him. Having done this before, he knew that it worked, and yet, he was always amazed at how gullible people were. If you wore a name tag and held a clipboard—even just one with a blank Excel spreadsheet clipped onto it—you could convince people of some pretty wild shit. It was all in the appearance. If you appeared to be an authority figure of some kind, people just followed your lead. This was an interesting and terrifying concept to Elliot, who sometimes wondered what false idols he unknowingly obeyed—aside from the obvious ones, of course.

No, Elliot said. You don’t have to sign. In fact, we recommend you remove all the labels before handing over your drugs. You know, just to protect your identity.

The woman smiled blankly, turned, and walked slowly away. The cat remained and blinked his lazy eyes at Elliot a few times. When the woman returned, she was holding a gallon freezer bag full of little pill bottles. The labels had been removed per Elliot’s recommendation. She handed him the bag without a wink of hesitation, and Elliot offered an empty smile as he slid it into his backpack.

You’re doing the community a great service, Elliot said. He didn’t like lying to people or being manipulative, but he did it in a heartbeat if it meant he could avoid dope sickness.

God bless, the woman said as she closed her door. Her slippered foot gently nudged the cat out of the way before the cheap trailer door clicked shut.

In the few seconds that Elliot had seen the pills before putting them into his backpack, he had seen enough to know that his efforts were fruitful. There was only one bulbous, perfectly round little seafoam green pill on the market, and it was an ideal remedy for his ailments. Oxycodone 80 mg was a very identifiable pill, and Elliot had a trained eye. The bag the woman had handed him had at least fifty of the little green godsends in it.

He placed his sunglasses back on his face, tore off the name tag, and slipped the clipboard into the backpack with the score. His symptoms began to abate just knowing he had a fix. A huge part of opiate withdrawals were psychological, and he knew that, but he’d be damned if that made them any easier to endure. He clenched his pale, sweaty fists as he paced back to his truck. On the drive home he felt keen and optimistic; he even smiled a bit, completely unaware of the fact that his day was about to be very ruined.

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A library card wasn’t the only relic of the old world that Elliot was equipped with. He also had a landline and an answering machine—items that were nearly extinct in 2016. The answering machine sat on his Formica countertop, jutting out from the wall between his cramped kitchen and dining room. It blinked 01 in bold, red flashes, and Elliot walked past it uninterested. His small studio apartment was not exactly messy, but it could not be accurately described as clean either.

Elliot dumped the backpack on the coffee table in front of his sofa and slid out of his collared shirt. Underneath, he wore a black T-shirt that said Obsession by Calvin Klein on it. He guessed the shirt was probably a free gift that came with a purchase of the indicated fragrance, but he didn’t know for sure. He had never worn the cologne, or any fragrance by Calvin Klein for that matter. This was due mostly to the fact that Elliot could not smell. A nerve in his nasal canal had collapsed when he was just three years old. But even if Elliot could smell, he did not imagine that he would ever want to smell like an obsession. What the fuck does an obsession even smell like? he had wondered while looking at the