Against the Dying of the Light

 

                             Honorable Mention Writers Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition

 

“     The lights hurt his eyes, fluorescent bursts that stung like saltwater if he happened to gaze up at them, the intensity not from their brilliance but of his own worsening macular degeneration.

He played leapfrog with his index finger over an eyebolt fastened securely to a steel table. A lot of steel in the small room, steel walls, steel chair, steel door. He poked an ashtray. Burn marks on the green vinyl tabletop bore out its use. Unusual for the times. Ashtrays made him nostalgic for the good days, when everyone smoked, when Isabel and he lived on a motorcycle, when he could see a gnat’s ass from a hundred feet away.

It was considerate of them not to shackle him. That meant they were staring at him, though, and he didn’t like them staring at him. He gazed up at the two-way mirror. They think they have it figured out, nothing left but the confession to wrap up and then find a local bar to get shitfaced. Well—maybe. But then again, he’s had more time to think about it than they have.

* * *

George pressed hard on the stapler, but the photocopy of Dr. Kathryn Peregrine’s face fell from the wall to the floor of his bedroom. He stepped down the ladder to retrieve more staples from a kitchen drawer. Isabel had bought the staples six years ago at a discount store thinking the two of them would be dead before they ran out. She was right of course. She had died two years earlier and he was in his mid-sixties. Perhaps he’d be gone soon, but he still had much to do and had yet to see Kathryn.

After refilling the stapler, George went back to his task. Kathryn’s pictures covered the back bedroom wall except the area behind his headboard. The bed was too large to move. There were three walls left to do and he estimated about six hundred photocopies still in the cardboard box. About four hundred Kathryns smiled sincerely at him from his wall. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever met, though the meeting was brief and professional, but even then, he was in awe of her stunning good looks.

The photo had been taken without her knowledge at a physician’s convention in Orlando. She had been flirting with a fellow doctor in the hallway during a break when George snapped her mid-laugh.

The girl at the copy center had looked confused, or surprised, or maybe suspicious, when he ordered a thousand laser copies of the photo. Why do you need a thousand copies of the woman’s face? her eyes asked. But it was none of her goddamn business.

George retrieved the escaped Kathryn from under the bed and stapled it over the remaining square of exposed drywall.

He needed about fifty thousand dollars to fuel his quest, to achieve his goal, that is, to meet and hopefully get to know Dr. Peregrine.

Tomorrow, he would go downtown and negotiate with a representative of one of those rip-off finance companies that buy out your pension payments with a lump sum amount. His payments came to twenty thousand a year, so figuring he’d live another ten years, his pension was worth two hundred thousand to those clowns. They’d offer him thirty thousand and he’d take it. That was the amount he needed to join the private golf club, the club that Kathryn belonged to. It was a lot of money to meet a woman, but she wasn’t just any woman. He had to belong to her inner circle. He needed to get to know her socially since their worlds were so different.

After he had the thirty thousand, he’d sell the RV. With his eyesight, he couldn’t drive it anymore and he’d need the income to maintain the façade, to give the appearance of a man with money. It was the only way to be with her.

Tuesday morning, George handed the certified check for thirty-three thousand to the manager of the Rio Pinar Country Club. Thirty thousand for the membership and three thousand for the annual dues. Despite the cost, George would still have to pay forty dollars for the rental of a golf cart, each time he played.

Through the large window of the manager’s office, George admired the pristine golf club, of which he was now a member. All part of the image, an image of a wealthy retiree, a widower, lonely for companionship. The manager grinned and shook George’s hand. There were few new members at the private club because of the poor economy. Perhaps that was why the man hadn’t asked for references.

George watched Kathryn through the window. White petals from a row of dogwoods blew onto the practice putting green where she worked on a difficult right to left putt before her round. She was a member of the Pine Pounders, a Tuesday league that boasted at least four, single digit handicap players, including the lovely Dr. Peregrine. She wore a lime green polo shirt tucked tightly into a beige skirt, hemmed two inches above her tanned knees. The blond hair was braided neatly under a white Titleist visor that rested comfortably on large Ray Bans. Two older men watched her surreptitiously as a handsome pro, perhaps ten years younger than she, helped with her grip. More than once, she pressed her hip against him, smiling each time. What would Mr. Peregrine say?

Kathryn slid into the golf cart and drove to the first tee. George had to squint as everything turned to a blur the farther away she got from him. His eyes worsened every day. Kathryn was completely out of focus as she took a few practice swings, but George imagined her breasts lifting as she took a few cleansing breaths and then peppered the golf ball long and straight down the fairway. Was she smiling? It was good if she was. She had so little time left.

* * *

It had been a month since George had joined the club. In that time, he had gotten to know some of the members. Kathryn was elusive, rarely at the club except on Tuesday for her league and some weekends late at the bar where she drank several vodka martinis and usually went home with the most attractive man in the lounge. George knew he would never be that man. He was twenty years her senior and nearly blind, though he would probably surprise her if they ever hooked up, as she liked to call it.

The only way to be alone with her would be on the golf course. He concentrated on that plan. The Pine Pounders refused his application to their league, since George could barely break a hundred, so he joined a Saturday men’s league where he could find a partner with better eyesight than him, to help him improve his game. Paul Jacobs stood behind George each time he hit a ball and told him where it landed.

When George thought his game was good enough, he approached Kathryn. “Dr. Peregrine,” George said as he sat down beside her at the bar. She continued to sip her martini then turned her head toward George, nearly impaling herself with the toothpick that poked out of the olive. She said nothing, raised her eyebrows, and then turned back to the martini.

“I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” she asked her olive.

George proffered his hand. She ignored it. “George Carter.” Not his real surname of course. “New member, about a month now. I’ve met just about everyone in the club.”

His gaze dropped to her breasts as she dabbed at some spilled drink in her cleavage and then sucked on her finger. She was forty-five, married twice, no children and had been practicing fifteen years as an orthopedic surgeon.

She licked her glass and glanced back at George. “I’ve seen you before.” She pointed at him. “In the hospital, maybe? You have back problems or is it just the eyes?”

George smiled. Not really an astute observation because of his coke bottle lenses, but not bad for someone after four martinis. They were alone. Alas, no one for her to go home with.

“No,” he said. “You may have seen me around the club. I tried to get into your league but they wouldn’t let me.”

Kathryn poked his chest. It was like an electric shock. She burped loudly. “That’s because you suck, just like all the old men around here. Right, Barry?”

The bartender nodded. “They all suck—not like you, Kate.”

“That’s right. I don’t suck. At least not in golf anyway.” She stirred the martini with her finger and stared back at George.

“You still here, Gene?”

“George.”

“Yeah, okay. What do you want, George? I have to get to bed early tonight. Surgery tomorrow. Another old fart bitching and moaning about his L4. Sick of it, you know?”

“May I buy you another?”

“No.” She sipped the last of the drink “Okay, yeah, you may.” She held up the glass. “Barry—Gene here wants to buy me another. Thinks he can get lucky or something.”

“Not at all, Kathryn,” George said. “I was wondering if you’d like to play a round of golf sometime. Maybe a weekend.”

Kathryn exchanged glasses with Barry. “You and me? You’re not my type. I still have a few eggs left. Check out some of those dried out old hags in the Monday league. Take the pick of the litter. Right, Barry?” Barry smirked and wiped glasses.

“Let me explain,” George said. “I’m trying to play at least one round with each member. Get to know everyone that way. Just one round.”

“Then you’d leave me alone?”

“Yes.”

Kathryn gulped the last of the drink. “Tuesday, after lunch.” She held up a finger. “One round.”

“Yes—that’s fine. Tuesday. I’ll remind you after your league.

Thank you.”

She slid the empty glass to Barry who caught it a foot from the floor. “Call me a cab, barkeep. I am fucking drunk.” She plopped down in an upholstered chair near the dining room.

* * *

The next Tuesday, George waited outside the pro shop. He checked the clock that stood on a pedestal near the practice green. Two p.m. Would she remember? He’d give her ten more minutes then try to flush her from the bar. Hopefully, she hadn’t drunk too much.

He was tired. He’d spent hours the previous night painting red heart outlines around Kathryn’s face on all of the photocopies stapled to his walls. Then he filled out pages in a diary professing his undying love for the surgeon. Finally, he had spent a half-hour cutting out his face from an old photo and gluing it next to a photo of Kathryn’s face and then placing it in a silver frame he’d bought from a gift shop. Engraved below the faux photo were the words, “Kathryn and George.”

Kathryn emerged from the clubhouse carrying a clear plastic bag holding ice and four cans of beer. She waved, shook his hand, and placed the beer in a cooler attached to the golf cart.

“Barry mentioned I may have said a few things Saturday night that were cruel,” she said. “I hope you forgive me, um—”

“George,” he said. “George Carter, and no, you were wonderful and funny. May I get your bag?” George pointed to her cart. He walked over to it quickly.

“We could each take a cart if you want,” she said.

“No, no, don’t be silly. Let’s share. That way we can get to know each other.”

On the first tee, Kathryn popped open two beers and handed one to George. By the third hole, she had opened two more.

“I’ll get us refills at the ninth,” she said.

She was an excellent golfer. Her short game was as good as her long one. When she missed a green, she’d get up and down deftly, rarely bogeying a hole. George played worse than usual. He had other things on his mind. From the first tee, he’d thought only of the seventeenth hole. His heart raced in anticipation of what he was about to do.

The booze had slowed their pace of play, which worked to his advantage. By the time they had reached the seventeenth, the course was nearly empty. The sky glowed shades of orange as the sun began to set. They wouldn’t finish the round but not because of darkness.

Kathryn had one hundred and fifty yards to the green. She placed the can of beer on the tee box and smacked a seven iron, ten feet from the flag.

“Not bad for playing in the dark, right, George?” She rubbed his shoulder affectionately and placed the club in her bag. As soon as she sat in the cart, George slammed the pedal to the floor and steered for a large retention pond on the right side of the fairway. Before Kathryn could yell out, they hit the water hard. It was four feet deep in the middle. George knew that from two weeks earlier when he had waded in to gauge the depth. He explained later in the clubhouse that he had accidentally fallen in trying to retrieve a ball. A lie everyone believed, aware of George’s bad eyesight.

The cart flipped on its side, dumping them into the pond. Kathryn stood almost immediately and yelled in frustration to the empty course. George hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her under water. She slapped at him as he knelt on her chest, working against her athletic ability and natural buoyancy to keep her under.

George pushed her shoulders against the pond bed stretching to keep his head above water. When Kathryn’s movements became less frenetic, he stood on her chest and then counted to a hundred before stepping off.

* * *

Two detectives came into the interview room and slammed the metal door behind them. The two-way mirror vibrated from the shock. One detective flipped a chair around and sat across from George. His breath smelled of sausage. The other detective leaned against a corner of the room. He spoke first. “I’m Detective Triana and he’s Detective Bailey. You look tired, George. You tired?”

“A little.”

“Yeah. I can see why. Busy week. House decorating. Rounds of golf. Murdering your playing partner. Wear me the hell out so I can imagine how beat you are.”

“It was an accident.”

Bailey leaned over the table. “Accident my ass. What do we look like, George? Dumb shit rookies on our first case? You lie to us, you spend your last ten years of your life nuzzling lowlifes in Raiford.” Bailey threw his hands up in mock disgust. Bad cop, bad cop. It wasn’t like Law and Order. George tried to calm his heartbeat. Patience.

“All right, all right,” Bailey said. “We got the cameras rolling, audio on. You are here voluntarily, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you said you didn’t want a lawyer so the floor is yours, George. Let’s hear it right down to the part where you drown Dr. Peregrine in the muck.”

“It was an accident.”

“Mind if I smoke?” Triana said as he lit a cigarette.

“I can’t see well.” George took off his heavy glasses and waved them in front of Bailey. “I have macular degeneration. I thought I was driving to the green. I didn’t see the pond. I’m sorry. I really am. When the cart flipped over I couldn’t see Kathryn, but she must have been under it. I’m so sorry.”

“So if your vision is that bad, why were you driving?” Bailey said.

“Kathryn—Dr. Peregrine was drinking and I’m not sure she could have handled the cart. I’m sure she couldn’t have.”

The detectives thought about that for a second. Good. He wanted them to question their own conclusions.

“Okay,” Bailey said. “Let me tell you the whole story, George. We’ve had two days and made some goddamn startling discoveries. Especially in your apartment.”

“Condo.”

“Okay—condo. Here’s how it went down. Sometime in the recent past you met the good doctor Kathryn G. Peregrine and decided you was gonna do a Hinckley. We checked, George, your bedroom looked like a shrine to the late doctor. Pictures of her all over your walls. Little hearts around her like something a school kid might draw for a sweetheart. So you keep a journal of love poems and oaths to your beloved and then sell your pension and RV so you can be with her at her private club. So, Georgie—you’re nuts, but it ain’t no crime to obsess. But then you had to go and kill her.”

“I didn’t.”

“You killed her, but it wasn’t because of all that crap, was it? You know why you did it, don’t you George?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You did it for Isabel.”

George was silent for a few seconds, then said, “That’s a lie.”

Triana lit another cigarette. The smoke made George’s vision worse. It was difficult to make out their faces.

“Two years ago, Isabel had surgery for a bad back, “Bailey said. “ Not minor, either. Serious shit for a sixty year old. Risky stuff.”

“I was there,” George said. “We knew the possible outcomes. I don’t need you to tell me what I already know.”

“Testy, George. Calm down. A man headed for prison needs to preserve his energy, right? So anyways, coincidentally, Dr. Kathryn Peregrine is your wife’s surgeon that day and coincidentally, she screws up the surgery, and then coincidentally, Isabel dies on the operating table. So what do you do? You wait. Take your time to exact your revenge. You’re patient. Wait until everybody forgets about Isabel and then carry out your plan. Sell the farm and cozy up to the doc at the country club until you can get her alone and then off her. Pay her back for killing Isabel, right?”

“It wasn’t Kathryn’s fault. Isabel and I knew the risk.”

“Yeah,” Bailey said. “But you blamed her anyway. You must have thought we were morons not to figure it out. She kills Isabel, you kill her. There’s your motive. Who the hell knows why you go to all that trouble with the pictures and diary shit, but what it comes down to is just good old vengeance. An eye for an eye.”

George stood, startling the detectives. Both unsnapped their holsters at the same time. “I didn’t kill her! It was an accident! I’m telling the truth. I loved Kathryn. I’ve loved her since before Isabel’s surgery when Kathryn came into the waiting room and explained the procedure. I had never seen a more beautiful woman in my life. She loved me too, I could feel it. I could never kill her, I loved her. All I wanted was to be near her, to smell her, to touch her. In time, she would have felt the same about me. I know she would have. It was an accident. I wouldn’t kill her. I loved her. I did. I loved her. I loved her…” George sobbed into his hands and then looked up at the detectives. Even with his poor vision, he saw a puzzled look on their faces, and then just a moment of doubt. That was all George wanted, a small amount of reasonable doubt. It was all he’d need from the jury.

 

 

Beneath The Wintry Sky

 

(First Place winner of the Missouri Writers Guild 2011 Short Story Competition)

(First Place winner 2012 Oregon Writers Colony Contest)

 (Second Place winner of the Writers/Editors 2012 Short Story Competition)

 

Snow fell from an ash gray sky, nearly invisible until a few feet from the ground, the flakes dusting odd-shaped drifts dyed brown from the piss, shit and blood of the 292^nd infantry regiment.

He had slept only four hours in five days of constant battles, his side surrendering St. Vith back to the Panzer divisions. Window dressing for the Reich, one success in a lost war, with only one conclusion, the end of their noble quest. The Nazis were delaying the inevitable and taking as many of the enemy with them as they could.

A shell from a Kraut eighty-eight exploded about fifty feet from Joe’s foxhole, an eruption of dirt covering the fresh snow. There was plenty of snow, and sleet, and ice, all penetrating their sleeping bags, coats, and boots, while preserving the mangled bodies of their comrades, blessedly saving the living from the smell of the dead. He’d had enough of death, and enough of war. Why did civilized men capable of understanding mathematics, building cathedrals, and conquering disease, think they needed to club each other to death for a little land?

Joe had shot his first enemy soldier over a year ago. He had squeezed the trigger as if he were holding a baby bird, the rifle nearly jumping out of his hands as the distant silhouette collapsed to the earth. He thought of the dead soldier as an infant held by his parents over the crib, a toddler chasing playmates through high grass, a young man kissing his sweetheart as he boarded his train to eternity.

Those thoughts stopped after a few months of war. Joe felt none of them now. The enemy was faceless and nameless. He was eliminating someone intent on eliminating him. That’s all it was. Anything else and you’d blow your brains out.

Kowalski threw the bottle across the foxhole to Joe. He wasn’t expecting the toss and spilled some on his uniform.

“Dumb Polack,” Joe said. “Don’t they play any baseball in Jersey? You throw like a little girl.”

It was Christmas brandy from Camden’s girlfriend or lover or mother, who the hell knew. Camden wouldn’t need it anyway, buried in a shallow grave two miles north of their entrenchment. Joe passed the bottle to Corporal Johansson who took a quick swig and handed it to Paul Santini. A goddamn League of Nations foxhole. Kowalski got the bottle back from Santini and held it out in salute. “To Jake Camden, God rest his soul.” Santini made the sign of the cross. “And,” Kowalski continued, “to a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

“Yeah,” Santini said. “Just like home, except there ain’t no food, no family, no presents and no tree. Other than that, it’s the same.” Santini pulled broken Christmas tree cookies from a sack and passed them around. “A little stale and broke to hell, but better than nothing, right Sarge?”

Joe nodded and nearly broke a tooth on a cookie trunk. It was a six-hour time difference between Belgium and Vermont. Kathy would be helping her parents start the Christmas dinner. Afterwards, they would stand by the tree and toast Joe and pray for his safety. He wondered where they got their tree from this year. Kathy’s letters took months to get to him. She probably thought he was dead unless the Army was keeping the mess in Belgium secret.

The snow stopped as suddenly as it had started. Small black bugs crawled out from Santini’s cookie sack. Welcome to our world, Joe thought and threw the rest of his cookie away.

Three years ago, he drove twenty miles to Shrewsbury to find the perfect Christmas tree. The Frasier Firs were at just the right height. The perfect tree for the in-laws. He and Kathy had made love quietly in her old bedroom, each wondering if it would be their last Christmas together. That gave him an idea. He stood, put on his helmet and strapped his carbine over his back.

“You know what we need?” he said.

“Betty Grable,” Kowalski said.

“Besides that. We need a Christmas tree.” He pointed to the woods. “There’s a whole forest of ’em out there. Keep my seat warm.” He pulled a small hatchet from his pack.

“You’re gonna get yourself shot for a tree?” Santini asked.

“Yeah. I mean no. One of those eighty-eights hits in here it’s goodbye Charlie, anyway. What’s the difference?” And with that, he climbed out of the foxhole and ran bent over, holding his helmet on his head as he made a beeline to the forest, about a hundred yards away. The constant artillery barrage of the last two days had left few trees near the edge to choose from so Joe pushed further in until the woods were so thick they blotted out what was left of the setting sun through the heavy fog.

There it was, a four-foot spruce near the bottom of a small gully, the branches heavy with snow. He took the hatchet from his coat and after shaking the snow off the tree, began hacking at the trunk.

A few ration cans and some of Santini’s stale cookies hanging from the thin branches and they’d have their own Christmas tree for their hole. Maybe Stars and Stripes would send a reporter. He could imagine the headline:  “Four unlucky bastards blown up with their Christmas tree.”

He stopped to light a cigarette. About thirty feet away, a German soldier sawed on a similar tree with a large knife. Their eyes met as Joe flicked his Zippo. He missed the tip of the cigarette with the flame by two inches.

Joe swung his rifle around and aimed first at the soldier’s head, then the chest. Light pressure on the trigger, ready to squeeze, but he didn’t. It surprised Joe as much as it did the Kraut. The German fumbled with his rifle but somehow managed to get it into firing position. He was just a kid.

Hell of a thing to die for, Joe thought, but there were worse ways to go and his intentions had been good. He hoped someone would tell Kathy the truth.

A gray squirrel jumped from one tree to the next behind the nervous German. It startled him enough that his Mauser shook. Then the man took a breath and yelled something at Joe that could have been anything. Joe understood a little German but Johansson was the only one fluent and he was a million miles away and drunk on stolen brandy.

Joe lowered his gaze to the soldier’s tree. The boy hadn’t made much progress with the knife. Maybe the Krauts didn’t supply hatchets to their men when they fought in dense forests. It sounded like something Hitler would do.

Joe gently placed his rifle against a charred stump and then pointed to his hatchet. The soldier seemed to understand and nodded, so Joe picked it up and cleaved what was left of the trunk of his little tree with two mighty hacks. He held the tool out to the soldier. “Looks like you’re having a tough time with that knife.” He threw the hatchet to the boy’s feet, where it sunk in the snow.

The soldier fished it out and began chopping at the base of his own small Tannenbaum, never taking his eyes off Joe. A couple of times Joe thought the guy might hack his foot off but the tree finally came loose of the trunk.

Joe walked over to him and the soldier immediately had his rifle up and aimed. The snow began to fall again, small flakes resting on the boy’s long lashes. How old was he? Fifteen? Sixteen? Old enough and nervous enough to kill, he guessed.

The boy tried to hand the hatchet back to Joe, but Joe shook his head.

“You keep it, Hans. You need it more than I do.”

Joe went back to the stump and picked up his rifle and the Christmas tree. He had walked away a few steps when the boy soldier said, “Frohliche Weihnachten.”

Joe smiled, turned, then saluted lazily to him. “Merry Christmas to you too, buddy.”

.