We Were Killers Once Read online

  Carlo took his left hand away from mine that he’d been holding, and ran a line with one finger down my forehead. It felt as if I was being anointed. I wondered if he could feel the frowny line between my eyes. He said, “The Greeks believed the daemon wasn’t a monster from hell. It was an inspiring force inside of us. Something that drives us.”

  Like I said, no telling where these conversations will go, especially when you sleep with a philosopher. I yawned. “This I did not know. Do you remember if we let the dogs out?”

  “We did,” he said. “Our anniversary is coming up next month. What do you want?”

  “Such a romantic,” I said. “I don’t—”

  Light snoring. Smile. I had probably worn him out. Our intimacy was usually reciprocal, but I had been the aggressor that night, giving to him what and when I chose and taking what pleasure I wanted. He never said, but I thought this might be a different way for him. I liked to imagine his first wife as something of a prig, passive in bed.

  I stayed awake a bit longer, thinking about how long I had left with this man whom I had married only a few years before. Ten, twenty. Thirty years? He had been married to Jane for twenty-five years. Could I beat Jane’s record? Was there such a thing as competitive marriage? If there was anything less than perfect it was the fear of losing Carlo after finding him at a time that some would call late in life. This makes sense. When you’re young, nothing gets the appreciation it deserves. Love, liberty, life itself is taken for granted. Youth has no sense of its mortality. Later in life, if you’re not still consumed with struggling to pay a mortgage and worried about the price of cat food, if you can actually retire, what you have more time for is brooding. Then things you didn’t have time to worry about before can prey on your mind more, not less. Sometimes that old-age-serenity thing is crap.

  This brooding about the past and future does not just apply to your traditional insecure female. It applies also to a tough old broad who has righted countless wrongs and can still kill a man with her bare hands. It applies also to older men who never paid for the things they did, and become obsessed that someday they’ll be called to account.

  All that aside, this story is mostly about my regret that I failed to preserve intact the one person I loved most in all the world, you sweet innocent Perfesser. Because even as we spoke that night about the past, it was presently coming for you. And I would discover that the one person I couldn’t save you from was myself.

  Three

  He was short and stringy, with a full head of hair, but mostly gray. The overall effect was of a jockey past his prime. He used these features to his advantage, letting people think he was old and weak, until they got a better look at him. Some were fooled for a longer while than others. Those others shivered or inadvertently turned their back to him, as if affected by something evil at his core.

  Prison hadn’t made him officially bad. He was already declared bad by the time he was twelve. That was when he killed his little brother with his dad’s shotgun. It was 1956. He told the judge, he told all of them it was an accident, but no one believed him. He got sent to a boys’ reformatory school outside of Pascagoula, Mississippi. His own parents didn’t even believe he was innocent of the homicide, and even if they did they wouldn’t forgive him for killing their baby. They figured they saw the writing on the wall and Jeremiah would always be bad. So his parents wouldn’t let him back in the house when he was released two years later. No, prison could not have made him worse than he was thought to be.

  But it had honed his technique.

  “Jeremiah Randolph Beaufort, number 4570937450.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your sentence has been commuted. You are free to go without parole. Do you have any dress-outs?”

  “Yes.” Beaufort thought to add “sir,” in his habit of being a model prisoner all these years, but then he thought it was no longer necessary. He didn’t have to be a model prisoner any longer.

  “We will provide you with a bus ticket to the destination of your choice. Do you have a choice?”

  “Pascagoula,” he said.

  The warden laughed. “Well, that’s practically around the corner. You could almost walk. You don’t want to go any further than that?”

  Beaufort pretended to think on it. “How about Bangkok?”

  Now that he was getting out the warden appeared to be more relaxed than usual, laughed again rather than calling him on being a smart mouth. “It’s just that, don’t you have family or something? In another state?”

  “Warden, I’ve been in here for thirty-three years, four months, and five days. What do you think?”

  Not liking the feeling of being on the defensive, the warden shrugged. “I think you’re fortunate to be released. Your sentence has been commuted, Mr. Beaufort, but you’re hardly innocent of crime.” The warden tapped an open file on his desk. “This last stint was your third. You’ve been in and out of prison for drug possession and trafficking”—he glanced down at the page before him, frowning as if the math was hard—“for almost fifty years.”

  “This is Your Life,” Beaufort said, his mood turning dark as he lost patience with sucking up to someone young enough to be his grandson.

  Maybe it was how Beaufort said that, or maybe it was that the warden was too young to know the television program. He lifted his chin and looked at the freed man with different eyes, half shaded by his lids. If he had been about to ask whether Beaufort needed a ride to the bus station, now he didn’t bother.

  “See you soon,” the warden said, as he said to all the departing cons.

  Beaufort went from the office to a holding area where he could pick up his stuff and change into the clothes his transport had brought him. Thinking about his last interview. What did those bastards expect, that you’d lick their hand gratefully? You put a guy behind bars and take care of him like a zoo animal, three hots and a cot for years on end, fresh sheets you didn’t have to wash yourself unless you’re assigned to the laundry. They did everything but hold a guy’s dick while he pissed. Then they let you out and say you have to be a human being now, lead a responsible life. Beaufort didn’t know what he’d do if that was the life he had to look forward to, being grateful for a job bussing tables and sleeping in a cardboard box at the age of sixty-nine.

  Beaufort walked out of Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. His transport had been provided via an old associate of his, a guy named Yanchak. The first time he was caught he didn’t snitch on Yanchak. It didn’t matter that Yanchak would have had him killed if he had, Yanchak owed him big-time.

  The transport had brought him some civilian clothes to wear. He had put on real jeans for the first time in more than thirty years, nice if a little too big and too rough, and a shirt that didn’t smell of that harsh detergent that bit the inside of your nose. Also a little money, enough to get himself food during the four-hour bus trip to Pascagoula and whatever came after. He didn’t ask the transporter’s name, but asked him for a little more money, figuring the guy hadn’t given him all of it the first time.

  “I have to buy a belt, too. You didn’t bring me a belt.”

  The guy forked over the other ten-dollar bill he had held back. Beaufort took it, folded it, and put it with the rest in the breast pocket of his shirt. “Thank Yanchak for me,” he said.

  It was quiet in the car for a while as they drove. His hearing dulled from the constant noise of the prison population at all times of the day and night, Beaufort could hear nothing but the air from the open window pass his ears.

  “So how does it feel?” The guy broke the silence after fidgeting around in his seat, shifting his hands back and forth over the steering wheel. He had a soft southern accent like Beaufort’s that showed he was from this area. Beaufort wanted to show that he was the one with power, and not just an ex-con at the mercy of a driver. So he took a good long time before he said, “How does what feel?”

  “Being out. After all this time.”

  Beaufort sniffed t
he air and found it strangely free of the stench of urine and antiseptic cleaning solution. “I’ll have to get used to being able to bend over and pick up the soap.”

  The guy opened his mouth wide and laughed like it was a joke. “I hear you’re someone to be reckoned with,” the guy said.

  “Some might say that,” Beaufort replied.

  The guy said, “I can see you’re tough, you got this mean vibe coming off you, but Yanchak tells me you were in on that Three Strikes and Life deal.”

  “Yanchak should mind his own business.” Beaufort didn’t want to totally put the guy in his place because he needed the ride to the bus station and he didn’t want to piss off Yanchak, whom he would need later. But he’d just as soon the guy shut up and let him view the scenery to see what had changed in thirty years.

  The guy did not shut up. “So that was in the eighties, right? I wasn’t born yet. If they caught you three times you got a mandatory life sentence.” He twitched as if feeling the sentence. “Man, that’s rough. I was thinking you might be pretty tough, but man, who actually gets caught three times?” He talked like other men might, making fun of someone and calling it conversation.

  Not just a junky, but a stupid junky. Beaufort didn’t respond. The thing he hated most was someone implying he wasn’t smart. He didn’t let anyone get away with this kind of talk inside, but it would only be a half hour or so and he’d never see the guy again. Beaufort stepped back out of his own head, noted his restraint, and admired it.

  His silence, though, appeared to make the guy bolder. “So what is it with that, how did you happen to get caught three times? I mean, once, maybe twice at the outside, but you have to be pretty dumb or just careless to get caught three times.”

  “Maybe that’s just what they caught me on. Maybe drug dealing wasn’t the worst thing I did,” Beaufort said, gritting his teeth. He turned his head to look out the passenger window of the car and hummed an old tune. When the tune came to a rest he’d make a little popping sound with his lips as he always did. This continued until they reached the bus station. Beaufort opened the car door.

  “See you,” the guy said.

  “Tell Yanchak I’ll be in touch when I’m ready.” In prison he had learned that you don’t let people get away with anything, or you won’t survive. Beaufort took his left hand and put it on the back of the guy’s head in what seemed like a peaceable gesture. Then he slammed the head forward, hard, onto the steering wheel. Beaufort looked inside himself and noted that he didn’t take pleasure in the act and that he held himself back from actually breaking the guy’s nose. He only did it from long instinct, to be tough so you didn’t have to look over your shoulder all the time. And it let out a little of the built-up anger. After this he would be more careful to adapt to life outside.

  Starting now. He said, “Thanks for the ride,” gave his palm a swipe on his jeans to get off the hair oil, and left the car.

  Four

  Pascagoula had changed some but not much. The same long buildings that made up the strip malls from the eighties were there, they just had different names on them. White Castle was now a Taco Bell. Krispy Klean laundromat was now a Nice Nails.

  The bus station was in the same place, only with decades more of grime built up. And two blocks away was the same library. Beaufort noted that.

  But first, go to the Ace Hardware (which hadn’t changed in fifty years) and get a short hank of twine to keep up his jeans. He stepped around the corner outside, looped the rope around his waist, tied it, and pulled his shirt over so no one could see he didn’t have a belt.

  Second, use the money he saved on a belt for a large burrito and a strawberry shake to fill his belly for a long walk.

  Third, take that long walk. He smiled to himself, thinking how that phrase was one used for men going to their execution. In his case, he was going to make sure it was never used in that context.

  On the way out of town, he passed the kind of motel off old Interstate 90 where truckers stayed. He asked if they had rooms and they said sure, plenty.

  Would they hold one for a few hours?

  Sure. Did he have a credit card?

  No.

  Then no.

  He took a deep breath and remained polite, would have to take his chances there would be a room available later, hopefully before the sun went down and the truckers who were tired of sleeping in their cabs started checking in. He stopped at a Quik Mart next to the motel and got a bottle of water for the trip. Imagine that, three brands of water in bottles. Cold, too.

  He walked about six miles without getting tired of walking, even though his prison shoes were not the best. From time to time he’d pick up that tune he knew, the one where he popped his lips at the rest. The sensation of going and going without stopping, without running into a wall or a barbed-wire fence, was exhilarating, almost religious. He didn’t mind the humidity or the bugs, they came with the freedom. He felt like he could have walked all night. He was in good shape.

  But he didn’t keep walking. He stopped at some property past the side of town that was too poor to attract any developers. No one had ever bought this land, a bunch of dirt marked here and there with oak trees sagging with Spanish moss. The only sign of human life that remained on the property was the blackened chimney of a fireplace that had once risen from his childhood home before the place burned down.

  His heart started to race as it had not from the walking. He strode over the concrete foundation of the house in a few steps, marveling how small the place was, much smaller than he thought when he was seven years old or so. What he was looking for wasn’t in the chimney. It would have been easy to put it there, but too chancy that someone would nose around and find it. He put his back to the back of the chimney, feeling the stonework that had eroded in decades of exposure to the wind and the rain. He put his arms straight in front of him, sighting the line they led to. Then he walked the line.

  A good ways off from the chimney he found the first rock, looking like any old rock that had wound up there however rocks wind up. He looked up and saw the next one. And the next. When he got to that third rock, bigger than the other two, but so far off you couldn’t easily see it from the house, he moved it to the side and started to dig. Last time he was here he had a car and a shovel, and that made this whole process easier, but you couldn’t have everything easy. His nails and the cuticles around them were encrusted with black soil by the time he dug down a good foot and a half to a metal box, somewhat rusted, but not so it wouldn’t unlock with the little key hidden underneath the lining of his wallet.

  He opened the box and took out the plastic bag. It had a satisfying heft to it.

  He didn’t hang around to count the contents of the bag. Before he got back to the highway he stopped to put a few twenties from the bag into his wallet and hid the bag with the rest of the money down the front of his jeans. Tomorrow he would get something better.

  Beaufort walked the six miles back as the sun was going down, went into the Quik Mart men’s room and washed up some so he wouldn’t stand out. Nothing to make anyone notice him, dirty hands or anything. The place offered packaged ham and cheese sandwiches and six-packs of beer. He carried these things next door to the motel. They still had rooms. There was a different clerk who hardly glanced at him, instead keeping his focus on a device that looked like a small laptop computer without a keyboard. A movie played on it, a superhero he didn’t recognize, but you could tell from the cape and tights. Beaufort had some catching up to do. The superhero was fighting men who were meant to look like bad guys. Bad guys never changed. This reassured him.

  He paid cash for one night.

  * * *

  The next morning Beaufort walked over to the truck stop for a real breakfast, nothing that came wrapped in paper or cellophane, and no powdered eggs. He ordered three over easy, sausage patties, and hash browns at the counter. He still felt the euphoria of the day before. God, it was good to be out. He took big gulps of air between bites like even
the oxygen was better.

  A skinny waitress, with a ring in her nose that made him think of a starving cow, poured his coffee. He asked where was the nearest Kmart.

  “Mobile,” she said, kind of sullen and snotty, naming a city that he knew was a good distance away.

  Now Beaufort, though he was small, had a way of seeming to get bigger until he filled up the space around him. “Is there any place closer than forty miles?” he asked. He kept his voice soft, but the coffeepot shook a little in the waitress’s hand as if she’d known mean men in her life and he was one of that kind. Some coffee sloshed onto the counter.

  “Now look what you did,” Beaufort said, without taking his eyes off her. Watching someone else’s fear made him feel better about his own, the fear he could only admit to himself alone in the middle of the night when it kept him awake.

  She apologized as she wiped at the spot with a towel and whispered, “There’s a Super Walmart closer in town.”

  His hand shot forward—he was proud of how fast his reflexes still were—and grasped hers, pressed down on the towel underneath. The waitress was too shocked to cry out, and by the time she could have done so he had let go. Then she had no reason to cry out, because he had not hurt her or touched her in an inappropriate spot.

  He said, “So I ask you about a Kmart and you don’t have the courtesy to tell me about a Walmart. What’s the difference?”

  She appeared greatly chastened now. “No difference, sir. They have everything.”

  “Clothes, food, soap.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s better. Okay, where is this Super Walmart and can I walk to it?”

  “I don’t think so. Must be a good two miles north of here. On Denny Avenue. Do you know where that is?”

  “I know it.” He scraped up the last of the yolk on his plate with a slice of white toast, left enough for the bill and a ten percent tip, and headed out. He left a good tip and he hadn’t hurt the girl. He wasn’t the same man he had been in his youth; he told himself that this proved it.