Inside his cup slushed a caffeine slurry somewhere between weak cement and baby formula with a shot of gravy. He was alert now, and wished that he wasn’t. He wanted to gag even before he heard the deep drawl by the cash register.
Kyle Brandon was equally offended and resentful. It was 1973: who the hell was this guy to be using racial epithets? He was no prize of European descent; no Scotsman or Irishman would claim him. And what the fuck was it with these deep southern accents in Ohio? He was barely an hour’s drive from Cleveland, about as North as you can go without swimming across the Lake. The Underground Railroad used to run through here. Now it would be running as far away as it could go.
He heard asterisks, lots of them. The girl bearing their bruise couldn’t have been more than 15, just a kid on an errand. She didn’t need this. Nobody did.
The corpulent man spoke again. The girl suppressed a shudder as flicks of saliva ricocheted off her cheek. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. Back in my granddaddy’s day little (asterisks) like you knew their place. Now why don’t choo get down there and do what y’all are told.” The girl just stood frozen, not believing what was happening. She shivered, not knowing what to do, unsure of how far away the front door was.
Kyle Brandon had had enough of the coffee, the day, the long drive, and the goon.
He grabbed his ticket and approached the counter. He reached inside his jacket to pay. His wallet was made of steel. The man sucked in a gutful of air at the sight of a long barrel aimed squarely at his rotund face.
“We don’t have much m-money here, mistah.”
Brandon was amused at the sudden genteel formality. “This place is a shithole. Why would I expect you to have money? I’m not here to rob. I’m here to prevent a crime.”
“C-crime?”
“First, you’re going to apologize to the young lady.”
“A-p-pologize—to the lady?”
“Yeah. The one right here. In front of you.” He was aware of the girl still shivering, still in shock.
“M-miss, Ah’m…sorry if I, uh, oh-fended your, uh, delicate sense—”
“That’s enough. Jesus.” Could this guy be more of a cliché? Did Kyle drive home from Kentucky in the wrong direction?
“All right. If that’s the best you can do, we’re done here.”
“When you go,” said the fat man, suddenly finding an ounce of the “bravery” he’d shown the girl, “I-I’m gonna c-call the police,” he gasped.
“Yeah. Do that,” Brandon sighed. “Also, they’re going to need a mop.”
Then the Ohio Café turned red.
The portly man’s bulk dropped to the floor as sloppily as he had lived, the left wing of his overalls getting caught on the edge of a booth on the way down, jerking his head down. From Brandon’s angle it almost looked like he’d simply slipped and fallen against the counter, albeit repeatedly, a scenario that he had even less patience for entertaining after his seemingly eternal wait for the worst service he’d ever had. It took restraint not to shoot him again.
“I wouldn’t get the coffee,” he said to the young woman, head bowed down. He handed her a sketch he’d made on the back of his bill.
“God bless you, sir,” she said.
Brandon grunted on the way out. The rusty bell tingled. He found his car and gunned the engine.
He still badly needed a decent cup of coffee.
]]>“You’ve got a real talent,” Mr. Chason said, closing the tall, black book as it caressed the bare top of his mahogany desk. “But you know, times are tough for newspapers. We just don’t have the budget for a traditional illustrator anymore, not even—especially—one of your calibre.”
Kyle Brandon understood all too well.
“It’s all we can do to keep the presses running. Journalistic integrity has to take second chair these days. Hell, we even endorsed the Governor-elect because we knew he was corrupt. Now that the County Commissioner’s under indictment, we’ve run out of big reveals. This Governor ensures our circulation figures will spike again in a year, maybe two, when we play our cards. Maybe we’ll have an opening for you then. Say, have you ever thought about digital illustration? Our website could use the content. It doesn’t pay much, but an artist can always use the exposure.”
“Not really my forté,” said Kyle. “I’m a paper and ink guy.” He respected the editor in spite of himself, and he could independently corroborate the paper’s lack of journalistic finesse by virtue of the fact that if they were any good they might have connected him with the vigilante known in some circles as The Illustrator.
The editor nodded. “I understand. Completely. Ink is in my blood.” He rose and offered his hand. The handshake was firm; Chason was clearly an old-school type. In spite of this warmth, Kyle wasn’t too sorry that he didn’t get the job.
Because he got what he came for.
]]>“I’ll take you to him,” she said impassively.
As they walked across the field, Andrea stopped momentarily at a headstone that read “In Loving Memory, Faithfull Unto Death, 1973-2010”. In happier days, she would have bemoaned the spelling error and the careless absence of appropriate punctuation. Today, she simply reacted with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, then she moved on briskly, taking no notice of the multitude of other stones by now known to her by an increasingly cold heart.
The reporter, on the other hand, naturally attempted to capture the names as they progressed, but the lack of light thwarted this desire. One tombstone looked impossibly modern, white and gleaming—Matt somebody? An adjacent one resembled The Thinker and belonged to an Adam. There were a multitude of angels and cherubs around an unusually pretty headstone, but in spite of the reporter’s steady gaze this time, he couldn’t see a name. It wasn’t there; the letters were missing. Maybe they were lost in the mail, or maybe someone just didn’t care enough to make the effort in the first place. Perhaps it should not have been such a surprise, years of loyalty so coldly brushed aside, letters that may have made the difference. Across the field, the reporter spied a segregated section of tombstones that bore the evidence of having been garishly decorated, but time and weather stripped away the artifice until only tin-coloured scraps clung in a desperate attempt to justify how special they thought they were. After their passing no one shared the enthusiasm for pinning medals. Now they were just a series of unkempt gravestones, like so many others.
Andrea stopped wordlessly at the sight of a man stood coldly at the base of an open grave at the end of the row. Wet dirt slid from the blade of his shovel as he acknowledged their presence.
His head cocked and the brim of his hat seemed to shift of its own will. The reporter shuddered as the man spoke.
“Always room,” said Rodney, “for one more.”
]]>The delay is being blamed on EMI by Paul McCartney—the story is about iTunes and other digital retailers, but physical releases are connected to this.
Which reminds me about something related to the Apple Inc. issue. I don’t think it was expressly stated, but it would likely have been implied during the last round of litigation by the former that Apple Corps Ltd. was in a state of dormancy. This isn’t the case. There are more Apple Records discs and DVDs than I can afford.
]]>This is my one hundredth post to Armour.
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