The Spot: Stories

The house went up in a giant wind-fueled blossom that glowed in the back window of Lester’s car while we headed west. I don’t do arson, man, Lester said. Arson is too low on the ladder, it’s at the bottom of the crime totem pole, for fuck’s sake. That was an act of God, that was something we had nothing to do with. Even your best arsonist depends too much on the whims of the elements. What’s at the top? I said. He said, What’s at the top? screwing his face up and drawing his fingers through his beard, pinching it tight. He thought a few minutes. Crucifixion is the top crime, man. No doubt. You nail the palms, you crown the head with thorns, and let slow, natural death take over. The guy up there is high as hell on opiates. Doesn’t feel a thing. No, sir. He’s blitzed on opiates. No pain, no gain. That’s a fact, he said, staring out through the windshield. We were flying swiftly toward the horizon. Darkness was all around us, stretching out across empty plains. The sky was sparkled with stars. Besides us, there wasn’t a sign of life in the universe. We were all alone, rattling along at full speed. Just ride the glazed highway to the Holy Land, Lester said. You hang up there on the cross until the birds are pecking your eyes out and then you feel it. When the birds start to peck, the pain begins. When the birds get to your eyes, the opiates cease. Without eyes you’re just blessed pain, man, just more and more pain. Lester got quiet for a minute. He reached up one-handed and stroked the tip of his beard. In the dark it was impossible to see his eyes, but I knew what they’d contain if they were visible: he’d have that silence in there, that kind of calm I’d seen before, all dark gray with bits of blue swirled together into the deepest black. When he started talking again, about ten miles later, his voice came out dry and tight. Then all the pain folds up on itself into this vast silky darkness, man, that gets tighter and tighter, tighter and tighter, tighter and tighter, until you’re dead, he said. I said, Until you’re dead, and tapping the wheel, he said, Yeah, until you’re fucking dead. You know how those old TVs used to have that little dot of light when you shut them off? The whole picture would zip into that single little pinpoint of light and then it would sit there, just sitting for a minute, sitting and sitting and then it would zing off to the side and that would be it, you’d be left with just darkness. Well, that’s how it is, man. You bundle it all up, crunch it, and ping, it’s gone. He went on about it for a long time that night, nothing more than that memorable to me now, mostly theorizing about why crucifixion is the top crime on the pole, and about what it’s like to die, what it’s like those final few seconds, just before you sign off, as he said, just before everything becomes static and sizzles out. I said, If it’s so top why isn’t it done more? He said, Because it’s too difficult to find good victims, man. Here in this part of the state it’s impossible. Nebraska folk are cleaner, more purified. Tulsa has plenty just waiting for it, man. I said, If they’re waiting for it why don’t we just go there and find some? He gave this long pause then, rapping the top of the wheel again, adjusting the rearview, looking back at Augusta. You’re really a dumb shit, he said. I said, Why? He said, Because Tulsa ones are junkies, and what’s dope? Dope’s dope, I said. He said, Dope’s dopamine, for fuck’s sake. You’re a Tulsa junkie and you’re already there, man. No need to go for the ride because you’re on the ride, you see. I said, I see. I didn’t, but I said I did. Get up on that cross and you’d like it too much, he said, and then he went into all of the details again, how you’d have to find a couple of pressure-treated railroad ties to make the cross, some of those galvanized nails you use to hang gutters. (Lester had done a lot of roofing in his life and could lay down shingles in his sleep, said thick tar smells remained in his nostrils.) You’d get some high-grade nylon rope. But if you like it too much, I said. What? If you like it too much, I said. What are you talking about? You said if you like it too much, on the cross, you said they’d, the Tulsa guys, would like it too much. He said, So what? So if you like it too much it’s not a crime, I said. He said, Yeah, that’s it, that’s right, exactly, you put some skinny-ass Tulsa junkie up there and he’d go for the ride of his life, but for Augusta you’d have to use a — what’s it called? — a block-and-tackle thing, like getting a piano up to an apartment, you know, like that Abbott and Costello routine, he said. I said, What are you talking about? He said, Just thinking about what it would be like to get her up on a cross. We drove. Drove more. By the time we got to Elk City the wind was coming in swoops, nudging us onto the shoulder and then back onto the road. The rage behind it was apparent to us all. You can’t go breaking small fragile things without ramifications, I thought, watching Lester grapple with the steering wheel as the wind ground us to a dead stop, hit with such ferocity that the car just couldn’t make headway, and we ended wayward on the shoulder, spinning our wheels until Lester eased up and said, Gotta make a pit stop, and opened the door into the roar, crossed in front of the headlights, bending down into the wind, the dust roiling around his head. Out there he was a space walker lost to the world while we sat waiting. I said, Augusta? She said, Yeah? I said, Are you okay? She said, Yeah. I said, You’re really beautiful, you know. She said, Yep. I turned and looked: a big mound of flesh topped by a moon face lit by the interior light, her eyes invisible but glassed over, dead to the world because Lester had pumped her full as a reward for her acting skills, for being so brilliant in her role. He’d found the lab in the back shed, a bunch of old bait buckets and chemicals, tubes and glassware, and a huge amount of product. The old coot’s a crank cooker, he’d said. You put him in a movie, nobody would believe it. Put him in a movie and they’d bow into their popcorn and mumble: Bullshit, man, he’d said, framing it up with his fingers to see what it might look like.