Here, There, Anywhere

This is 100% fiction. If anything, it's like 200% fiction. Enjoy!

“What’s the most fucked up thing you ever did?” Old D asked us this on trash day, at 11 am. His voice was casual and I’m not even sure if he was making eye contact with any of us, but when Old D asked this open-ended question, we all heard the same challenge: Who fits in here?

It wasn’t actually a pissing contest, but from our limited view, it felt like a test to see who had the craziest past, and I had always wanted to know more about my peers.

There’s six of us here: Old D, Manuel, Bee Bop, Carl with a C, and Six, who never leaves “the kitchen” (a small camping stove near a flap that we use as an exhaust pipe when we cook inside).

And "here?" Here is this shack, Barney's. But there aren't any signs or maps. It’s just a name that gets passed down. You first hear about it in county. Then you hear more as the trial gets closer. And since all criminals are innocent, we want Barney's shack to exist because we need a place for those of us who might be guilty by law, but know we're not guilty of the spirit-of-the-law—a topic with great room for interpretation.

Anyway, most shrug Barney’s off as a myth or legend, but I’m “there.” Barney’s is real. Yup, this remote, rotting desolate shack is “made it.” At least it's not prison. It's not hell.

So when Old D asks about the most fucked up thing I ever did. Well, not just me. I mean, he asked all of us, except Six, of course. Cause Six was inside, like always.

At that point, all I knew was that Manuel had done something real bad, twice; Bee Bop was a coke-head turned meth-head turned got-caught-offering-to-blow-a-cop-head with three strikes; Carl with a C was a skinny, silent guy—well past his prime—and none of us had heard anything about him, but that told its own story, and Old D? He ran Barney’s, the only place for guys like us. People on the lam.

A mental rolodex of cards with memories rotating in my head—white cards with blue tabs and block letters with a wheel. I see these, imprinted with violent memories. One bears the memory of Dad slapping my hand—“Don't touch that!”—I'm four. They get worse after that.

But the rolodex always lands on one card that will not turn over. It depicts the time he hit her the hardest. It shows his fist hitting her jaw. He’s been doing this all my life, but this time it's right after my mom’s birthday. I’m home from college—Mom’s birthday is during Spring Break. Why not go home?

All the guests are gone and “she’s a dumb bitch and I can’t believe you'd…” and I'm calm as I lift my aluminum baseball bat—thirty-four inches long and thirty ounces heavy. And I stay calm as I swing. Just like coach taught me, to get into college. The rolodex captures the moment the bat hit his stomach, the first time, because his belly gave way a lot more than I'd figured it would. His abdomen's muscles create more of a cushion than a ball, especially with all the follow through I gave it.

Awaiting trial as a 19-year-old white kid in New England, I make jokes in jail cause it helps keep a guy like me from getting hurt there. It’s hard to really hate the funny guy…plus, he might be crazy. And that's just in county, before the verdict. Jail is not prison. Until you’re guilty-guilty, they treat you like a criminal and beat you and make your life hell, but only to a point. County sucks, but the guards can't look the other way or keep you in the hole.

Only the desperate believe in Barney’s. It's mostly guys headed back for a second or third tour of prison. But that's just one part of it. You still have to find the pick-up point, which is 140 miles from here, and Old D says that only a few of them even make it from there to here, what with the test and all (He told me this after I passed, obviously.). But I made it.

I’m by far the youngest and least likely person to be here, based on socio-economics, privilege, or pretty much any other census shit, but it turns out "having no remorse for murder" can do a lot to affect a judge’s sentencing.

They call me “Bam-Bam” here, then they laugh, but I don’t get it. Then they laugh even harder when I don’t get it. We have no Internet, obviously. The shack is the size of a quarter of a basketball court and it smells worse than a gym, but better than a barn. Five of us sleep head to toe. Old D has a cot. It’s better than prison, but a far cry from the school I was at before I hit my career-ending homerun.

I would guess Six got his name because he's the most tightly packed ball of muscles I’ve ever seen. He could snap my neck accidentally stretching from a yawn.

Manuel is a handsome Mexican dude who doesn’t speak much English. I grew up near the Canadian border and took French in high school, so I have no idea what he’s saying, but I nod and pretend I do so he doesn't hate me. He only looks pissed about a quarter of the time, so I think my plan is working. No one else here seems to understand Spanish except Old D, but I never ask him what Manuel is saying, cause I don’t ask anyone anything. All I know is that when Manuel got here, Old D said, "he did something real bad, twice," and we took his word.

Bee Bop speaks with an awful mix of nineties slang he picked up from an “infecting local Detroit underground scene that was and will always be, like, like, like the SHIT man, the only REAL capital R, bitch, REAL shit the world needs to hear, is all I’m saying, yo, like don’t drop the fucking world, that’s D after L, it’s my Word, and MY WORLD, you get me, bitch?” His frail, bony, white hands shake when he talks and even though there are no drugs here, I swear he's on them cause he only sleeps four hours a night. I wish I could stay awake to watch him cause I'm worried he's gonna kill me/someone/all of us.

Carl with a C is Quiet with a Q, and he might be the only guy who's name here is real, but I wouldn’t know, hence the Q. Like I said. He's an old scrawny guy, probably in his fifties, and he wears glasses. He lost his shoes getting here, but his glasses aren’t broken which means he’s not to be fucked with—something I learned in county. Carl with a C got here weeks after me.

So I don’t talk to any of these guys. All of them except Old D scare the shit out of me, and Old D would terrify me, but he’s in charge, so I have to believe in his integrity. Besides, I can't leave. Now that I'm on the lam, I've completely fucked up my already pathetic case for an appeal. Killing your dad for hurting your mom is not self-defense, apparently, so I figure running away is also a bad look.

Old D was a proverbial stereotype. Old, but young enough to beat you until you're begging for mercy. Strong, but quietly so. He’s “that” older, weathered, but not-past-his-prime dude from the Coney Island projects who' seen shit, done shit others say they've seen, and felt bad about some of it, felt okay about some of it, and now he can explain his perspective, which tutors the unteachable tenets of integrity.

He's intimidating, in the old-fashioned way. He wears a tight shirt stretched over his thick mass that he got from years of living life to the fullest and scraping by in between. Meanwhile, I still look like a teenager, so I'm envious of his big, manly body and his white beard.

This is why it was so fucking weird when Old D stepped onto what we call the porch, a pile of rags next to the shack, to engage with us. He'd never given us a lecture, let alone asked us to talk.

When none of us replied, Old D pursed his lips then said, “What, you fuckers think I’m gonna tell someone? Who’s got the most to lose here, huh? I just think it’s time we owned our shit. It’s like, uh, it’s like phase two of recovery. Right, Six?”

“Yup,” Six calls from the kitchen, his voice baritone and giving testimony to my yawn theory. The guy is our "cook" if you want to pretend that what he does is cooking. I would just call it "sorting through trash," but I suppose there's an art to it.

A man Old D calls “Guy X” brings trash bags every week. I’ve never seen him, but at ten 'til noon every Sunday, Old D and Six march us to the river for a 20-minute walk. Once we’re at the spot at the bank between two old trees, they say, "Lie down and stay still." If it gets to nightfall and neither returns, Old D says we should run and it’s every man for himself.

But Old D always returns, without Six, and we march back to Barney’s where the old bags have been replaced with new ones and Six is scrounging for scraps, placing these treasures in the “pantry,” a box by the stove that he guards every second of every day. the rest is put out back, to keep the smell away, but this doesn’t work when it’s hotter than 70, and it’s always hotter than 70.

No one's answering Old D. Bee Bop is hugging his knees and shaking, which terrifies me, so I glance at Manuel who's also staring at Bee Bop with the same look I try to give Bee Bop: intense fear masked with a casual, nonchalant “we’re all in this together” smile that's just smug enough to imply "Unless-you-want-to-fight-and-then-I-will-KILL-you" vibe.

We all learned this look at some point in the system, and we're all trying to win an award for best performance with it. Well, except Bee Bop. No one fucks with a guy who bounces and rarely sleeps.

I still don't understand why Old D let Bee Bop stay here. Old D gives us a test, first day, pass or fail, and even though none of us are allowed to talk about it, I'll say this much: the test made sense, but unless Bee Bop got a very different test than I did, I can't see how he passed it.

Old D's started tapping his foot, hard, against the ground. “C'mon. Someone answer me.”

I have a stick in my right hand to draw spirals in the dust. It helps me keep my eyes off Bee Bop. So I'm surprised when, without any thought, I speak. “My Dad wasn’t nice. Ever. I mean, I have no idea how the fuck he got someone as nice and smart as my mom, and I have no siblings, but man, he’s a, he was a fucking dick. So I killed him.”

“Su padre?” Manuel asks.

Well guess who can speak English now. I look up at Manuel and, forgetting about the Academy Awards, I gave him an eyeful of candor and he nods. And even though his face has no emotion, this gesture improves our chances for friendship by nine thousand percent.

“That’s fucked up. Fucked up!” Old D is not smiling, but I consider this a win. I've just revealed “the most fucked up thing I did” and I feel good. I’ve never talked to strangers about any of this.

“And I fucking really killed him!” I continue. “And I wish I could go back and do it again because then I’d have fun, knowing just how fucked up he was—the shit that came out in my trial, the shit he’d done to my mom that I never even knew about. Man, I’d go back and I’d fucking kill him slower.”

I'm now hysterically crying, and I'm becoming "mortified," that’s the word for it. I am becoming mortified because I am crying in front of an “essay” (that’s what they called people like Manuel in county), and a meth head, and Old D, and…can Six hear me?

Then I see Carl with a C staring at me, with a look I’ve never seen.

My only strong memory after I killed my Dad and before I escaped transfer for Barney’s is telling Mom, “Sorry” over and over again. “I’m sorry, Mom” I'd say with tears and a yearning for a hug that the plexiglass wouldn't allow. I worry she blames herself for what I did, and that’s what I was saying sorry for, all those times. I wasn’t sorry for killing my dad, but for putting her through the trial and eliminating myself from her life. But the worst part is that I don’t think she thinks the fucker deserved to die, and that’s why I started crying at Barney's that day. I was thinking about my mom, not my dad, that fucker.

So then, this happens: Carl with a C gets up, walks over, and sits down next to me. He then puts his arm around me, I suppose to comfort me? Like a dad would? And at first, it’s kind of helping actually.

But then...it gets creepy.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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This week Coffin Talk welcomes Jessica Morris. She’s an author, recovering addict, and daughter of an alcoholic minister with intriguing ideas about God, religion, and death. She’s also an expert at eschatology (The study of "The End Times") and how to use addiction to catalyze forgiveness, acceptance, and faith. Listen here!