Small Town

The glass jars, six of them, had each held a quart of apple juice. He’d bought them two at a time at supermarkets, brought them back to his room, and poured the contents down the sink.

The gasoline had been slightly more difficult to obtain. To get it you had to go to a gas station, and you needed a car for them to put it in. But suppose a man’s car was several blocks away from the station, and he needed gas to get it started?

“I got no container,” the station owner told him. “You need an approved container. What do you think, you can cup your hands together and I’ll fill ’em up with five gallons of gas?”

It was a Wednesday night when he had the conversation with the gas station man, and stores that might carry such containers were closed. He thought of getting a length of plastic tubing and siphoning the gas from parked cars. But he might be noticed, and anyone who saw him would know at once what he was doing. Besides, if he did siphon the gas, he’d need a container to put it in.

In the morning he found a hardware store on Twenty-third Street, not far from Harrigan’s. They had five-gallon and two-gallon containers, and the smaller one would fill all six jars, with two quarts left over. He bought it and took it to a different gas station from the one where he’d had the conversation. This one was the Getty station on Eighth Avenue and Horatio. A man he assumed to be a Sikh filled the can for him and took his money. He thought of saying Thank you, Mr. Singh, thinking to surprise the man by knowing his name. All Sikhs, he knew, had the last name of Singh, though he didn’t know why. Thank you, Mr. Singh, he might have said, but of course he said nothing at all.

The rags with which he stoppered the jars were wadded-up strips torn from a plaid cotton flannel shirt. He didn’t have to buy the shirt but instead had fetched it from his storage locker. He never wore it, it was too large for him yet short in the arms, a bad fit altogether. He’d taken it from the apartment only because it had been a Father’s Day gift once. That was why he had never discarded it over the years, and why it was among the few articles he took when he left. His son had given it to him, and how appropriate to put it to use now, to sacrifice this remembrance of his son even as his son had himself been sacrificed.

The lighters were disposables, the Bic brand, better than matches because you could operate them easily with one hand. They sold them everywhere. He’d bought three, at three different stores, just to be on the safe side.

The hammer was very much like the one he’d used on East Twenty-eighth Street, and might have been the same brand, though he’d purchased it at a different store.

The straight razor he’d happened upon in the Salvation Army thrift shop on Eighth Avenue. It was similar to the one that had been among his father’s effects, although he couldn’t recall the man ever shaving with anything but a safety razor. Maybe it had been his grandfather’s before him.

He could have bought the razor from the thrift shop, they only wanted five dollars for it, but he thought it might be a worthwhile precaution to slip it into his pocket.

He was back in his hotel room by 1 A.M., and it took him just twenty minutes to fill the jars with gasoline, stuff their mouths with the flannel rags, and pack them into a large canvas tote bag he’d bought from a homeless street peddler with his wares spread out on a blanket. When he asked the price, the man said, “I usually get five dollars, but I’ll take two.”

He used his pillowcase to keep the jars from banging against one another. That was the one thing he’d forgotten, not realizing it would be a problem until he started putting the jars in the tote bag. He should have gotten some rags, or some extra clothes from his locker, but the pillowcase was a good improvisation. Loaded, the tote bag had some weight to it, but it wasn’t too heavy to be manageable, and the hammer fit neatly along one side, handle down.

Ever since he stole it, he’d kept the straight razor in his pocket. He’d drawn it out many times, in the privacy of his room, and had practiced with it, returning it each time to his pocket. He checked, and it was there now.

His first stop was Harrigan’s. When he’d initially planned this, he thought he would hurl his gasoline bombs, his Molotov cocktails, through the window. But plate glass wasn’t that easily shattered. Suppose his jar bounced off the window and exploded harmlessly on the sidewalk?

With that in mind, he’d bought the hammer. But when he got there he saw that the door was wide open, a hook securing it. Maybe the air-conditioning wasn’t working, maybe the room was too smoky.