Plasma Spice Latte - Chapter Three

Snowfalls Usually Forgot Lanfred

Often, when a forty minute drive in any direction revealed children making snowmen, the town would get so little it could be removed from driveways by broom. That Wednesday morning, however, snow fell all over Michigan and even Lanfred was smothered. By five AM, seven inches littered the streets. By six, white blankets buried cars and no school announcements populated the lower scrolls of TV. Streetlights, coated with ice, dimmed to an amber glow. Gusts turned every house opening into a musical instrument, piling winter high upon cars and street signs. Few headlights disturbed, leaving Lanfred still, save the timbre of the wind and percussion of its citizens scraping windshields.

Only two walked the city streets. Mildred’s lackies—Left Hand still in jeans, tank top, and no shoes, Right Hand in a new, couldn’t-resist-it purple track suit—marched to their new home in the coffee shop. They plowed through chest-level snow, leaving large trails soon covered when the wind reset the canvas.

A couple Lanfredians saw them, or at least what they could make out through the filmy filter of a blizzard. They shook their head at today’s youth and returned to scraping cars.

George Harker

When the phone alarm sounded, George awoke in the lazy boy with his back cursing passed out sleep in a non bed. He’d hit sleep when the boy said snow buried the whole town.

“You getting out of chair today?” Joe asked.

“Chair?”

“I’d say bed, but you don’t sleep in one of those.”

George could remember a time when he and Joe had stretched Tigers games into the night by drinking coffee and chatting about who’d be on the mound the next day, but that seemed long ago and long forgotten. He stood, weed crumbs spilling off him like sand from a kid who’d spent all day at the beach, and looked out the window at a world co-opted by white. The running Taurus’s exhaust pipe painted the air.

“Thanks for starting my car.”

“Don’t mention it.” Joe said

“Are you going to call in to work?”

“Are you?”

“Hadn’t planned on it.”

“Me either.”

“Want to just run late and stop downtown at Menci’s for breakfast?”

“It’s not Menci’s anymore. It’s The Lanfred Cafe.”

“When did that change?”

“Like forever ago, dad.”  Joe tied boots, not looking at his father, “And I need to get to work. You do too.”

“Don’t tell me when I need to go to work, son.”

Joe just sighed and shook his head. He pulled on a stocking cap and left.

George sat again and listened as the front door screamed on hinges, a car door opened and slammed, and the traversing whinny the Cavalier always made crescendoed then faded away. 

George had this rule: he only smoked at night. By dusk, he found it a necessity. Something about the evening churned the poison of the mind. Evidence 141A: an empty side on the bed where his wife had once slept. Evidence 141B: the whole bed where he’d brought Becky Sing not once, not twice, but with the sort of habitual frequency that puts you in a sinner's category all your own. But when he smoked the world had a dimness to it. He was aware, while stoned, that his wife had been absent for quite some time. Aware that he’d put on forty or so pounds and wasn’t wearing it terribly well. Aware that Abe, once the kind of good friend that keeps that fire lit under your ass so you screw life instead of the other way round, would not even spare George a gaze. Aware that Betty, who’d once made him feel alive and young would never let him hear her sweet, salty voice again.

He was aware of all of this, but the haze made him okay with the information. He just accepted it, like he was reading the facts as they happened to someone else: His wife’s been gone for five years, huh?  What a shame. Looks like he’s eatin’ good.

But pot also made him stupid. He wasn’t delusional about it. Any daily habit has a hold on you, and George capped every night by smoking himself stupid, jerking off, and passing out to late night television after eating a metric ton of terrible shit: corn chips, oreos, sugary cereals, pizza rolls, and Mountain Dew. He’d repack the bowl, flick the lighter, and keep the flame going at the edge of the world. Another log on the fire. And another. And another. Then it’d suddenly be three hours before George had to work and he’d commit to setting his phone alarm and closing his eyes while the late night TV screamed on.

But he couldn’t smoke during the day. A line in the sand that occasionally—on mornings when the Grand Canyon sized chasm where his relationship with Joe used to be seemed to be growing instead of shrinking—he crossed. How could he work if sadness pinned him in the chair?

The pipe was already loaded. He’d packed it one more time than he’d had smokes in him, passing out just as the snow began peppering the town. He wouldn’t even have to pull out the grinder.

He picked the bowl up, then walked to the window where he could remain unseen but watch the falling snow through the blinds. He thumbed the lighter. 

Fick. Flick.

It was out.

He had to get to work anyways.

Joe Harker III

Joe mentally prepared to give Lu slack. Although far from thrilled that Lu was selling the store, he could try to be happy for her. She’d bought a ticket into upper management in a major corporation and had probably also received a windfall of cash. She no longer had to worry about being a business owner, but was probably still being compensated well. Despite all of the ways it affected him, Joe tried to be happy for his friend.

But in the second work meeting in as many days, others were not so understanding.

“We have to wear a uniform?” Fat Becky asked. “You know I have this thing where I only wear the color pink.”

“Is that a lesbian thing?  I’ve been meaning to ask.”

“Dawn, you can’t just ask if it’s a lesbian thing,” Topher said, leaned back in his seat, feet crossed and on the table. At least he, Dawn, and Fat Becky were interacting. Most played with their phones rather than give undivided attention. 

“They aren’t all that bad, really. It’s just a T-Shirt.” Lu held up a black t-shirt that said ‘BARLOW’S COFFEE’ below a logo on the right breast.

“Does it come in pink?” Fat Becky asked.

“So it isn’t a lesbian thing?”

“DAWN!”

“It’s an artist thing,” Fat Becky said. She removed her glasses and cleaned them with the bottom of her shirt.

“There’s no pants dress code. You could wear pink slacks,” Joe offered.

“Actually no,” Lu said, flipping through pages of a handbook, “I was getting to that. You have to wear black or khacki pants.”

“Pink shoes?” Joe said.

“Hold on I’ll check,” she said, and began flipping through.

“I don’t get it. Why can’t we just be us,” Dawn said. “Isn’t this corporation about people?”

“We’re a corporation now,” Fat Becky said. “We are a people.”

Lu found what she was looking for and began to read aloud, “Barlow’s Coffee Employees will only wear black or brown shoes, non slip. No canvas allowed.”

“This fucking sucks,” Fat Becky said.

“Ooh, thanks for reminding me about the language policy.” She thumbed back through the pages.

“I think it’s great,” said Si.

“That’s because you’re stupid.”

“Becky!” Lu dropped the book and ran her hands through her hair. “Look guys. I know this transition is going to be hard on all of us but it’s happening. The wheels are in motion. No amount of whining or cursing will change that this coffee shop is now a Barlow’s Coffee.”

“I wear pink shirts, I whine, and I curse. If I can’t be me what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“I’ll take Becky’s hours if she doesn’t want them,” Si said.

“Are we going to open back up today after this?” Dawn asked Lu.

“Yes.”

“I kind of made plans.”

“You were on the schedule. That schedule went up a week ago.”

“Um, a girl died? Also, at the Toledo mall there’s this pre black friday sale…”

“If I can ask a question,” Joe said, “Why is the basement locked?” The first to arrive, Joe had found a couple of chair legs had popped out of socket. He’d remembered seeing wood glue the last time he’d been in the basement, but he found the door newly padlocked.

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Only management is allowed in the basement.”

“Fine with me,” Dawn said, “I hated it down there.”

“You find it sccccccarrrrrrry in the basement?” Becky asked, affecting a cartoonish horror voice.

“Stop it.”

“In the basement, Dadddddyyyyyyyy’s credddditttt carrdddddsss donnnn’tttt workkkkk.”

“I said stop it.”

“Why aren’t we allowed in the basement?” Joe asked.

Lu’s eyes begged him to let it go. She must not know. She must not know the why of the management only basement any more than she knew why they had to wear black or brown shoes. She was just tasked with introducing their new corporate lives to them.

“In the basement, people wear clothes they bought at Wallllllmmmmmarrrrrttttt.”

“Stop it.”

“There’s one more thing,” Lu said. She seemed to gather and brace for impact. She tucked loose hair behind her ears. “No more poetry open mics.”

After the meeting, Barlow’s Coffee did reopen to the public, albeit with just Dawn and Si (who’s school day had been canceled) working. The rest of the crew all metamorphosed into a black suited and dark dressed collective to put Happy Meal in the ground. Joe was pissed at Lu, probably unfairly. He’d said that they could ride together and so they rode together, but he drove with Ghost blasting and she stared out the passenger window. He wondered what she thought about, watching Lanfred wrestle with accumulating powder out the window. He didn’t wonder enough to ask.

The Cavalier wasn’t great in the snow. No manual is, but Joe excelled at winter driving. He loved the dance of control and giving in. Sometimes the snow or the ice just needed to take you a direction and you had to go with it, but you had to know the right moment to take control back, to will the machine under your thumb again.

At Main St. and Burkes Tr. he coasted through a yellow, making a wide right turn and gunning it and upshifting at the apex. The result was a car that leaned and lurched and bevied a bit before moseying down Burkes.

“You want to try being careful?” Lu asked.

“I’m always careful.”

“That didn’t seem like careful.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“I’m sorry. What does my requesting you to be careful have to do with your experiential knowledge of driving an automobile?”

“It’s emasculating.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re second guessing my ability to drive.”

“No, I’m trying not to die on the way to a funeral.”

“See, that’s second guessing.”

Burkes Trail had the frequent Michigan problem of poor maintenance. Peppered with potholes and uneven concrete, only on days where snow filled in the holes could Joe’s car move along without the shocks getting a workout. It would be short lived though. By tomorrow, the road would be worse than ever.

A little down the way there’d been an accident. Abe Sing was standing in the middle of the road directing traffic around an old green Ford F150 with an accordion pressed front end. One of his deputies swept up debris, seeming to get more snow than car junk. Joe and Lu were halted in traffic. He drummed on the dash, waiting to be ushered forward but scanning the scene for the other car.

“You should get gas before we get there,” Lu said.

Joe looked and the needle was flirting with E. “You ever just try being a passive passenger?”

“Sorry was I being demasculating again?”

“Emasculating.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One is actually a word. The other makes me sound like a sexist prick.”

“Then I want the sexist prick option. Whatever one that is, that’s what I meant to say.”

Traffic lurched forward, navigating both the snow and the accident scene. The constant whip-lash of the windshield wipers emphasized the melancholy in the car. Their playful banter had grown teeth and precision. Worse, as fluently as the world around them turned to winter, their lives all changed. Their relationship, once a “will they/won’t they” seemingly just being held back by Joe’s dragging feet, now had to navigate shifting career roles, Lu’s own hand in canceling poetry night, and, not the least of all, murder. It was easy to forget, with so much happening at once, that they were headed to a funeral.

Opus Eponymous finished and returned to track one. He glanced at the CDs. Antiquated or no, they were his preferred method of listening to music. His sun visor was lined with a large, eclectic mix of burned CDs but he couldn’t think of one that would seem appropriate.

“I think you should get gas here,” she said as they drove past a Citgo and traffic finally hit a normal pace. Without answering at first, Joe kept pressing on towards the funeral home. Lu let out a frustrated sigh and he felt he need to say something

“We’re running late,” he said.

Pastor John Davis

He’d been the pastor of Lanfred Baptist longer than most his congregation had been alive. His slab of sandy blonde hair had withered to a patchy white as he watched the Gay flu become AIDS, computers and word processors become porn machines, and the traditional American family, to him the holiest and Godliest of institutions, become askew and perverted. Watching sin crumble God’s will like water weathering a rock over so many decades made him hardened and jaded. He’d reached the point that he no longer blinked when doing young funerals for drunk drivers or counseled young women who acted like their ankles repelled like same-pole magnets. He simply had started repeating the same verses, cashing the funeral checks and wedding checks while no longer evaluating the circumstances surrounding them. He no longer lamented the dwindling sunday attendance. He no longer argued with families who claimed they needed to stay home on Sunday for family time that if they didn’t come, they’d have no family time. He’d done enough. He’d seen enough. He was simply going through motions and awaiting his Lord’s return.

This was different though.

This was a shock to the system.

This was beyond a nineteen year old boy tying one on and getting behind the wheel. This was true evil.

He stood at the front of the funeral home and greeted people as they arrived. He gave firm handshakes and passed out programs. He checked and double checked with the family, assuring that they were okay and ready for this, but they were empty words. He thought he’d seen everything that Satan was capable in Lanfred. But brutal murder?  That happened somewhere else, where the sheer volume of the wicked outweighed the few faithful fearers of God by such a margin that those communities became Satan’s playground.

But in Lanfred? Where nothing was open after ten—save the few rabble-filled bars downtown. This was a new darkness. Pastor John couldn’t help but blame his complacency. God had called him to spiritually lead this community and given him decades in which to do it. He had obviously failed.

When it was time, everyone sat in folding chairs that groaned whenever weight shifted in them. This, accompanied by the ambient pitter patter of an old furnace, accentuated the silence and darkness of this community gathering. There were a lot of people here. There always was for a young funeral, but this seemed different. They all seemed to be coming to the same crisis of faith that Pastor John was.

An appropriate opening hymn: It Is Well With My Soul. 

As it played and the people sang, he looked over his notes. He’d been a legal pad and leather-bound King James preacher from the start and would continue to be even as the young preachers—idolaters of youtube view counts that couldn’t spell hermeneutics, let alone tell you what it meant—started preaching from iPads. He looked over his blue ink writing and wondered if it was enough. He knew his usual complacent drabble wasn’t sufficient, but it’d been years since he really tried.

Bible reading: the teary mother reading the daughter’s favorite passage. Pastor John as well as the crying mother knew that Becky Knowles hadn’t gone to church since it had been her choice and might have never, truly gave a darn about God’s Word let alone have a favorite passage. Still, these small delusions had a way of carrying a family through unthinkable times. When it was finished, it was time for Pastor John to take the stage.

He walked past everyone in silence. “Would you all bow your heads?”  he asked the crowd. They obliged.

“Dear Lord, help give us, this family, this community, your everlasting strength to get through this day. May you give us the words and the wisdom to contextualize this horror within your will.”

As years turned into decades, John had noticed that even praying, the collective response of bowing heads and remaining silent become tainted with wandering eyes and thumbed cell phones. This day though, the day they put one of their young in the ground, not a single head moved.

“Amen.”

Everyone looked to him for reason, for answers. He adjusted the legal pad so it sat straight up and down, glancing one more time at the notes.

“In John 14 we see…”

He stopped midsentence, surveying the room. A chair squeaked.

“In John 14: 1-4 we see what is awaiting us when…”

He rubbed his temples. Someone’s cough broke the silence. The world seemed strange and new and his role in it absurd. “This is terrible,” he said, ripping free the pages from the legal pad. He crumpled them up and threw them on the floor. Subtle gasps and murmurs responded, then faded back to the occasional clearing of throat or chair whinny. The furnace sung in baritone. Pastor John produced a handkerchief and patted the sweat from his brow.

“In 1974 when I was looking for a pulpit, it was Margaret who fell in love with Lanfred. She saw this as our home and our way to fulfill God’s will long before I did. I must confess, dear friends, that this city boy couldn’t immediately see the charm of your rural ways. But as the years progressed Lanfred has become a home only second to the one that my Dear Heavenly Father has prepared for me.

“When Margaret passed in 2003…”

Tears wanted to arrest him there and then. He buried them deep.

“Her passing was the hardest time I’ve ever faced, until today. Becky Knowles. I watched her grow. When she was knee-high she drove her Bible School Helpers crazy because she couldn’t even memorize John 3:16.”

A small smattering of laughter.

“But I’ve never seen a better competitor at the song drill. The organist would just get one or two notes into a hymn and Becky’s arm would shoot heavenward every time. She got really big in high school, and I could tell that bothered her. It made me sad because she had such a beautiful voice. Our choir was so blessed to have her, even if it was forced by her mom and dad.”

A bigger laugh this time. For the mother sitting front row, this was too much. She began to cry. The father wrapped his arm tight around her.

“When Margaret went home to be with the Lord, this community carried me and loved me. I knew everything I’ve ever said in this funeral home: Ecclesiastes “For everything there is a season”, John 14 “Let not your heart be troubled.”  But truly, it was the way Lanfred, my home, gathered around me that got me through that dark time when God’s will was clouded to me.

“Margaret was right about this place. You are a wonderful, powerful, caring community. This thing that has happened is terrible and dark and the family needs you like I needed you. I know you will not disappoint. Let’s pray.”

Joe Harker IV

“What’s that flag for?” Joe asked.

Joe’s car, among all the rest in the row, was covered not only in more snow but a suction cupped on orange flag.

“You are part of the funeral procession,” Lu said as they climbed in the car.

“Which means?”

“Is this your first funeral?”

“My grandpa died when I was like twelve. I don’t remember this.”

“I thought you wanted to go graveside. The funeral guy asked you whether or not you wanted to be a part of this.”

“I didn’t really hear him. I just sort of nodded.”

Joe’s Cavalier was trapped in the middle column of three lines of flagged cars. Everyone began starting their vehicles and brushing the newly piled snow off the top. Joe, on the other hand, just sat still.

“Aren’t you going to start it? It’s freezing in here.”

“I’m such a dumbass.”

“What?”

“I blame my father. It’s all that pot in the house. Or maybe just some dumbass heredity or something.”

“That would explain the Kardashians. What the hell is your problem?”

Joe sighed and turned the ignition. The engine stuttered a bit in the cold but roared to life. The low fuel light lit up instantly. “This might get a little hairy,” Joe said.

“You are a dumbass.”

“Well I never meant to be part of the dead person parade.”

“Seems like someone in this car suggested getting gas but that was belittled by gender politics.”

“Your ‘I told you so’ is noted.”

Cars began stuttering forward. Joe looked for any way to sneak out of line, but he was completely blocked in. He progressed forward, silently praying that the car would make it to the cemetery. Running out of gas afterwards would be far less embarrassing than en route.

The line of cars made its way out of the funeral home and down the road. Joe had never seen all traffic laws cease before. Every car on the road that wasn’t part of their bandwagon stopped to let them pass. Had the circumstances been different, he might have marveled at how society and community could stop its constant hustle and bustle to honor the dead, but it just paralyzed him. Should he pull out of line to hit a gas station?  That might mess up others in the line. Also, with all other traffic ceasing it wasn’t like they weren’t making good progress. In fact at this rate they could probably get to the cemetery and make it easily afterwards to—

The engine idled down to silence. Joe desperately stepped at the gas pedal to no effect. He did his best to use the last forward momentum of the car to pull off to the side of the road but the the car suddenly had no power steering, and the end result was the car blocking three fourths of the lane.

The cars ahead traveled onward like a train with an unhinged car. The car behind began to honk. Joe rolled down the window and signaled for them to travel ahead.

“See now this,” Lu said, with probably the biggest smile on her face since before their world was populated by death and corporate takeovers. “This is demasculating.”

As cars passed there was no shortage of judgmental looks. They came from the old and the young. They came from cars full of families and single drivers. Every vehicle rubbernecked to see what idiot ran out of gas in a funeral procession, and every time it made Lu laugh louder and louder. “Are you going to do something about our situation or just stay a roadside attraction?”

Joe drummed on the steering wheel with index fingers. A couple of cars passed by with more judgmental stares but he flipped on his hazards and built up a wall of ignorance to the world outside. “This is Lanfred. We have time. I want to talk.”

“About what?”  

“No more poetry night?”

“Damn it, Joe, I don’t want to talk about this work shit.”

Joe gripped the steering wheel. “How can that be your response?  How can you play a hand in canceling something that you should know is really important to me and just not want to talk about it?”

“Maybe because I’m fucking scared, you asshole.”

They stared at one another. He felt unequipped to deal with this version of her. The playfullness had gone from her voice.

“Look,” she said. “I know we have stuff we need to talk about. I know you’re mad at me. I get it. But someone we knew died and not just…” Joe waited while she wiped away tears and caught her breath. He wasn’t sure she wanted him to watch her cry, so he looked out the window and watched the snow fall.

 A moment later she continued, “Becky was killed and I’m really scared. And you let your car run out of gas and now we are just out here?  Why wouldn’t you just get gas?  And now we are out here and whoever got her could still be in Lanfred and we are just sitting out here and you haven’t even called anyone, no, you choose now to to have a chat about our feelings?  Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Well why did you cancel poetry night?”

“You can be a real Prince Charming, you know that?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Let me use small words with pantomime:  Stranded. No Gas. Cellphone call?  Nope!”

“We both have cell phones. If you were so worried you should have made a call or asked me to. I thought we were having a good time.”

“We were having a good time and that was supposed to distract me from the fact that some evil killing thing might get me and rip my throat open until help arrived…only it isn’t coming still because you haven’t called anyone.”

“There’s nothing coming. Stuff like that doesn’t happen in Lanfred. We just had our one weird thing and now nothing will happen for a century or two. Whatever psycho did that is probably gambling in Windsor by now.”

“You don’t know that. You can’t know that.”

“Well you also can’t know that they’re here.”

“So what?  The other night when you were all like ‘Do you want me to come over to make you feel safe?’ that was bullshit?”

“Well…”

“You just wanted in my pants, didn’t you? Motherfucker.”

“I’ve never heard you curse this much.” Joe said. He’d hit that stage of defense where the filter between his brain and mouth became a hose.

Suddenly there was the sound of a siren, short and staccato, like someone dragging their hand up piano keys quickly. Mirrors showed the sheriff’s vehicle behind them and Abe Sing out and shutting the door.

Sheriff Abraham Sing II

Abe faked saying something into his radio pinned to his jacket then confidently walked up and knuckled Joe’s window. Joe rolled it down.

“Afternoon Lu,” he said tipping his hat.

“Good afternoon, Sheriff” She replied.

Abe masticated on the situation he’d found himself in. He began to speak at a slow, deliberate pace, “I got a number of calls of a vehicle blocking the road. They all said it’d be easy to find. ‘It’s the one with a bright orange flag on it.’ That’s what they said.”

“Mr. Harker here ran out of gas,” Lu said.

“I see,” Abe said, watching the Harker boy wriggle in unease. “That’s quite demasculating.”

“Worse,” Lu said to the sheriff, “He’s been chasing me for the better part of a year but he never makes a move because he’s too stupid to realize I like him back and every time I start to think ‘screw it’ and make a move myself, he does something like this to remind me that he’s a child.”

Abe Sing was a man who’d had faced many a career trial or tough scenario, but never one so difficult as keeping an inappropriate smile off of his face in that moment. He really liked Lu West. She had the best traits of her father in her. He’d prefer it if she chose someone other than Harker to bed up at the end of the day but he was pretty sure that was none of his business. If nothing else, who better to make a decent man out of a kid that was probably set up for failure?

“Winter weather is not the time to run out of gas. That’s especially true given what happened to your coworker. I keep a gas can in the trunk for situations like this. Let me go get it. I’ll be back in a jiffy. In the meantime unlock your gas cap if your vehicle has one of them locks.”

“Thank you, Sheriff,” Joe Harker said.

The sheriff nodded and smiled. He could tell that thank you had been hard to say. He walked back to the trunk when something caught his eye. 

The road carved through the woods like a free brushstroke. The west (their left hand side) had been trimmed and domesticated to be the yard of Greg and Constance Liberty who ran the local chapter of Farmer’s Insurance. On the East side the woods were undisturbed with dense, high trees and a small river that wove parallel to the road but fifty feet or so back. Almost exactly where Abe stood the river turned East and the trees allowed a clear view of the bank. Abe thought he could see a human hand sticking out, covered in snow.

He kept one eye on the bank, committing the forms to memory like someone who’d just seen the hidden image in one of those magic eye posters and didn’t want to lose it. He unlocked his trunk, removed the gas can, and thudded back the trunk with a sound as alien to these woods as what he believed he saw in the water.

“Here, take this, get your car going and leave the gas can on my car. I need to check out something,” He said to the Harker kid, handing him the gas can. He didn’t wait for a response. Instead he turned and made towards the river, forcing one foot in front of the other, and questioning not for the first time that week if he was losing his mind. He should have stayed retired. This could all be evidence that he was simply becoming unfit for duty.

He’d yet to talk with anyone about the security tape. He was worried, even though he’d watched it again that morning to prove to himself that it wasn’t just a trick of the night, his subconscious, or his dreams. He feared that the tape itself was perfectly reasonable and he was the one off his rocker.

You aren’t a cop anymore. You can’t be a cop anymore. You own a sandwich shop now. That’s who you are.

Step by step, he made his way to the hand, his shoes loudly depressing snow. His radio chirped and he ignored it. With each step, the evidence that it was a human arm and hand, not just the sticks and branches he’d been hoping for, became more and more damning. He could start to make up a pale, pink hue underneath the snow. A fingernail somehow still coated in silver nailpolish glinted in the sunlight.

For a moment he stood staring at it. He was unsure what his next step should be, a scenario he hadn’t found himself in since he was young and green and every step was an unsure test of the correct procedure. He had to show the tape to someone, but someone he could trust to give it to him straight if it was all part of his mind. He had to call this body in (Or just arm; you have no idea what grotesque mysteries lie underneath) but had to do it in a way that was discreet as possible until he had some real hard answers for the people of this town. They were already shaken enough with the death of Becky Knowles.

“How the heck could you see that from the road?” Joe Harker asked.

The sheriff hadn’t seen him approach. He was standing about six feet back with the gas can in his hand, staring at the exposed arm and hand like it wasn’t nearly as peculiar.

“I asked you to fill up and leave,” Abe said.

“The gas can has no spout,” Joe said, feigning looking around the container for the answer. “Is that what I think it is?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Lu can’t see that. She’s freaked as it is.”

“You're the sort that needs detailed instructions to piss, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Screw off the cap. If you’d of done so yourself you’d of seen that the spout is on the reverse side. I prefer that kind because it doesn’t make my trunk smell like gasoline. Not here!  This is a crime scene now. Go open it by the car, fill up, leave it on my car and be on your way!”

Joe Harker obliged, about facing like a scolded puppy.

“Oh and Harker!” Abe yelled. The boy turned around. “You didn’t see anything here. The town doesn’t need to know about this till I can tell them what it is.”

He avoided the radio, choosing instead to make calls on his personal cell. That was against procedure. So was calling Chuck, the coroner from Jackson county, but Lanfred’s coroner was this young pup just out of OSU. Youth still think the world should work how it is suppose to work, where hard work and honesty are always fairly rewarded.

“Got you boys some action down here in Lanfred County, eh Abraham?” Chuck said when he arrived at the scene. Abe hadn’t seen him in years but he showed up in the same terrible Central Michigan University ball cap he’d always hid his bald head in. It was tattered and faded before, but in addition it had begun to yellow and both it and Chuck’s face had new permanent wrinkles  Every man has a vice, and for Chuck it was toothpicks. One always hung from his lips and it would dance around while he spoke. “That’s what, two murders in as many days?”

“It’s been three days, and we don’t know that this is a murder yet,” Abe said.

“Aw, sure you do,” was the reply. “River banks are about as cliche a finding spot you can get. I can get him out for yeah. Or her I suppose. I can’t do it by myself, though, especially if I’m going to do it right. I’m going to need at least one of my boys but we can do it and take a look at it for yeah, but I’m going to have to put something on the books.”

“Can you buy me some time?”

“I suppose I can give you a day….I can forget to hit the return key submitting the report. You’re going to catch hell for bringing me down here though.”

“Do you blame me?”

“Naw, I get it.”  He chewed his toothpick and seemed to smell the air. “I got bad news for you though, Abraham, I don’t like the way things are going for you here. Neither will those federal sharks. They’ll smell blood in the water just as sure as shit as I do now. When this gets out, the FBI will likely come through and fuck your town up trying to save it.”

George Harker II

George Harker, newly free from the workday, did not go home. Instead he parked himself in view of the Sing home and smoked a bowl. 

He’d gotten weirdly cavalier about his illicit drug use. There’d been a time when it had been this closely guarded secret and smoking was only done in bathrooms, breathing into the exhaust fan to flush out the evidence. When Joe had been young, it had moved out into the living room but only at night when he could confirm that the boy was sleeping. And now?

The click click of the lighter. The drinking down of smoke and holding it in until you couldn’t bare it any longer and every part of you demanded breathing out. The billowy cloud of smoke that danced out of your mouth and painted the air of the room or in that case the entire car interior.

He stared at the Sing home and tried to summon regret for the things that had been done with Betty but found nothing but a hard cock and regret that it had ended. He took another hit. His cell phone chirped with a text from his son:

6:23. [Hey, just letting you know. I’m having a party tonight for everyone from work at the house.]

“Fucking great,” George said out loud. “Why the hell would he do that?”

Joe Harker V

“Why the hell would you do that?” Lu asked.

The ride back to the store had been quiet. Joe had been glad that Lu was too mad to ask what the hell had been going on, but he needed an excuse to keep her near. “Because a party is just what we all need. We need to blow off this steam. We’re all strung tighter than Steve Martin’s banjo,” Joe said.

“That wasn’t really funny, just a reference to a guy who plays banjo.” They were in Lu’s old office, and in that moment it actually felt like not much had changed. Lu sat in the office chair. Her hair unruffled and still being in place this far into a work day aside, she looked like she would have a week ago, inventory report in hand and mousing her way through a spreadsheet while she talked. Joe, standing, leaning on the office door frame, absently clicking on and off a permanent marker, the other hand pocketed in his apron, also reeked of normality. These moments were the foundation of them. “I’ll think about it,” She said. She chewed fingernail, scrolling confused through the spreadsheet. “How’d we use so many bananas?”

“White Mocha Norm’s kid.”

“White Mocha Norm has a kid?”

“Yep. Didn’t have custody before but does now. I guess something happened to the mother?”

“You think so or you know so?”

“White Mocha Norm told me so. She lived up in Lansing I guess and got caught in some sort of drug bust. They got her locked up in Jackson.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah, and so now we see the kid every day. She seems nice. Always gets a Chocolate Banana smoothie. Are you really just at a ‘I’ll think about it’?”

Lu flared her eyebrows, “Isn’t it weird we know so much about our customers but we call them by their drink?”

“Stop trying to change the subject.”

“Your aggressive charm is crossing that thin line into dickishness.”

Joe grasped at a comeback, but found nothing. He probably had been pushing too hard. “I’ll see you later, Lu.” 

When he reached home, his father’s car wasn’t there. He didn’t know if that made him mad or happy, but relished the opportunity to go inside and be alone. He dumped his stuff wherever, slumping coat to floor off of shoulders, throwing keys where they’d be easily lost. He grabbed the earphones from his bedstand, and layed on his bed, pawing at his phone. The room seemed utterly quiet, so he turned on a podcast about poetry. They were interviewing this successful poet about how she just won this award and he thought how he should be writing right now instead of just wasting time. He also had to clean the house because God knows his dad wasn’t going to do it and there were people coming over. So he got up and unloaded the dishwasher, but as he listened to the poet’s process and how much she loves going to readings, Joe couldn’t help but mentally plan out what he would say were he being interviewed.

But why the fuck would someone interview him?  He hasn’t written in a week. He hasn’t polished anything lately or sent it out to roll the publishing dice. He couldn’t even say he ran a weekly poetry reading anymore. He was no better than a barista, and even that was suspect with new, never-seen bosses and whatever direction his relationship with Lu was devolving.

With the dishwasher half unloaded, he texts everyone: 

7:32. [Hey y’all, remember, party at my house tonight!  We will play cards and drink drinks and have ALL the fun!  Who's coming?]

By the time he drove to Walmart to buy some booze, he’d switched off of the poetry podcasts to Loveline. He listened to a high school girl talk about checking her boyfriend’s phone and getting jealous while he stood in the liquor aisle. He was deciding whether ‘Five O’Clock’ was good enough or if he needed a classier vodka when he finally got a text from Lu:

7:51. [I’m really sorry. I can’t come tonight because of work stuff. Believe me when I say I wanted to come. It’s some stupid ‘Welcome to the Company’ thing that I’m being told is mandatory. Rain check?]

‘Five O’Clock’ would do just fine.