The Reapers

This was Willie’s patch. He had grown up here, and he hoped that he would die here. He had biked out to LaGuardia and Shea Stadium as a kid, throwing stones at the rats along the way. It had mostly been the Irish and the Jews who lived here then. Ninety-fourth Street used to be known as the Mason-Dixon line, because beyond that it was all black. Willie didn’t think he’d even seen a black face below 94th until the late sixties, although by the 1980s there were some white kids attending the mostly black school up on 98th. Fu

They’d eaten at one of the buffets, avoiding, as always, the goat curry that seemed to be a staple of the cuisine in this part of the city. “You ever even seen a goat?” Arno had once asked Willie, and he had to admit that he had not, or certainly not in Queens. He figured that any goat that found itself wandering around Seventy-fourth Street wasn’t going to live for very long anyway, given the clear demand for dishes of which it was the main ingredient. Instead they stuck to the chicken, loading up on rice and naan bread. It was Arno who had converted Willie to the joys of Indian food, goat apart, and he had found that, once you stayed away from the hot stuff and concentrated on the bread and rice, it provided pretty good soakage after a night on the tiles.

Now they were back at the auto shop, and Willie was counting down the minutes until they could close up and go home. Softly, he cursed the Brooklyn Brewery and all of its works.

“A bad workman blames his tools,” said Arno.

“What?” Willie hadn’t been in the mood for Arno all day. The little Swede or Dane or whatever the hell he was had no right to be looking so spruce. After all, they’d finished the night propping up the bar together, talking about old times and departed friends. Some of those friends were even human, although most of them had four wheels and V8 engines. Arno had no qualms about drinking liquor. His only stipulation was that it had to be clear, so it was always gin or vodka for him, and Arno had matched Willie with a double vodka tonic for every beer. Yet here he was, bright and cheerful at the end of a grim day for Willie, listening in on his private conversations with the gods of brewing. Arno never seemed to get a hangover. It had to be something to do with his metabolism. He just burned it off.

Today, Willie hated Arno.

“It’s not the brewery’s fault,” continued Arno. “Nobody made you drink all that beer.”

“You made me drink all that beer,” Willie pointed out. “I wanted to go home.”

“No, you just thought you wanted to go home. You really wanted to keep celebrating. With me,” he added, gri

“I see you every day,” said Willie. “I even see you Sundays at church. You haunt me. You’re like the ghost, and I’m Mrs. Muir, except she ended up liking the ghost.”

He considered his analogy and decided there was something suspect about it, but he was too weary to withdraw it. “Why the hell did I want to celebrate with you anyway?”

“Because I’m your best friend.”

“Don’t say that. I’ll just despair.”

“You got a better friend than me?”

“No. I don’t know. Listen, you’re just supposed to work for me, and even that’s doubtful.”

“I know you don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“Not listening.”

“Dammit, I’m serious.”

“Tra-la-la.” Arno disappeared into the little storage room to the left of the main work area, trilling at the top of his voice, a finger lodged firmly in each ear. Willie considered throwing a wheel nut at him, and then decided against it. It would require too much effort, and anyway, he didn’t trust his own aim today. He might miss Arno and hit something valuable.

He sat down on a crate, propped his elbows on his thighs, then rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes. It was almost eight, and dark outside. They always worked until eight on Thursdays, but in a few minutes they could safely lock up and call it a night. He would get Arno to take in the signs advertising that you could get your brakes fixed for $49.99 and your oil changed for $14.99. Then he would watch TV for a while at home before crawling into bed.

He wondered later if he had fallen asleep for a few moments right there and then, because when he opened his eyes there were two men standing in front of him. He made them for out-of-towners immediately. He could almost smell the cow turds. Both were of medium height, the older of the two probably in his early forties, with dark hair that hung untidily past his collar, and sideburns that extended out in sharp points at the end to join a goatee, as though all of his hair, head and facial both, was part of a single arrangement that could be taken off at night and draped over a ma

Willie hated golf shirts almost as much as he hated golfers. Whenever anyone came into the shop dressed for the course, or with clubs in the back of the car, Willie would lie and tell them he was too busy to be of service. There might have been golfers who weren’t assholes, but Willie hadn’t met enough of them to be able to give the whole sorry species the benefit of the doubt. Also, in his experience, the more expensive the car a golfer drove, the bigger the asshole he was. His intense dislike of golfers extended to the entire golfing wardrobe, and that went double for phlegm-colored golf shirts and anyone sorry enough to wear one either in private or in public, and most particularly in Willie Brew’s place of business when he was nursing a hangover.

The second man was broader than the first, and, despite the moderate chill in the air, was dressed only in a faded denim jacket over a T-shirt and distressed jeans. He was chewing gum, and wore the kind of shit-eating grin that suggested here, in the flesh, was not only a jerk, but the kind of jerk who considered it a poor day indeed that didn’t involve inflicting a little pain and misery on another human being.

And this was the thing: they were both looking at Willie like he was already dead.

Willie knew who they were. He knew that, not far from the front entrance to his beloved auto shop, there would be a blue Chevy Malibu parked, ready to whisk these men back to wherever they had come from as soon as their work here was done. He should have said something the first time he saw the car. Now it was too late.

Willie stood. He still had a lug wrench in his right hand.

“We’re closed, fellas,” said Willie.

But these men were not here about a car, and anything that Willie said to the contrary was just delaying the inevitable, a pretense for which they would have no patience. They were here on business, and Willie tried to figure out if there was anyone he had bugged so much that they’d want to sic two guys like this on him. He decided that he couldn’t find a name. There was nobody who hated him this much. This wasn’t about him. A message was being sent, and it would be sent through Willie, through the breaking of his bones and the ending of his life.