Prodigal Blues

"Five.  And they all deal with me.  None of them has ever seen Grendel's face."

"A silent partnership."

He nodded.  "Now it's time for your second test," he said, disabling the dome light and opening his door.  "Get out—and make sure you follow my lead."

"What are you going to do?"  The idea of participating in a transaction like this was more than I could stand.

Christopher slung the bag over his shoulder.  "You'll see.  Leave your door opened just a crack.  Come on."

Sixteen steps.  It took sixteen steps to get from my door to the passenger side of the other bus.  It was one of the longest walks of my life.

Both the driver's-side and passenger windows had been rolled down.  I stood where I was supposed to as Christopher, plastering on as much of a smile as his facial prostheses would allow, went around to speak with the driver, who reached up to disable his dome light and in the process accidentally flicked it on for a few moments, giving me a brief but clear look at his face.

I wish I could tell you that he was a sweaty, pale, beady-eyed little toad who stank of semen-stained underwear, colored his comb-over with shoe polish, had dirty fingernails, a nose covered in exploded capillaries, and a pronounced facial tick; I wish I could say that one look at him would scream 'pervert' to a one-eyed man a hundred yards away in a rainstorm; I wish there had been something, anything about him that set off the gothic bells and brought in the thunderclouds; but like Grendel, he looked utterly harmless:  clean, well-groomed, and conservatively dressed.

"Beowulf Antiquities, Inc., at your service," said Christopher.

"You have a new friend," said the driver, not looking at me.  "I wasn't told anything about you suddenly getting an assistant."

Christopher held up the tape.  "Co

"You're kidding?  He finally… wow.  I mean, wow, y'know?"  He reached through the opened window and took the tape, turning it over in his hands with tenderness, even reverence.  "He said this one was going to be special."

"I have a supporting role," said Christopher.

The driver looked back at him.  "Well… good for you.  About time."  He slipped the tape into a canvas satchel on the seat beside him, then removed two very thick brown envelopes and passed them to Christopher, who stuffed them into his shoulder bag.

"This is really going to be something," said the driver.

Christopher's smile spread up into his eyes.  "You have no idea," he said.

And then shot him right in the throat.

At first I wasn't sure what happened—or maybe I was and my brain just didn't want to register the truth of it—because I knew I heard the bird-chirp and I definitely saw the white flash but then for several seconds absolutely nothing else happened, the guy just sat there like he'd momentarily forgotten something or was waiting for a fart to finish, but then he jerked around, facing the windshield, and one of his hands moved up to his neck and his index finger probed the entrance wound like the Little Dutch Boy at the dike and when he pulled out his finger the blood started spurting, arcing up against the inside of the roof and ru

I should've been screaming but I wasn't.  I wasn't even there.  This wasn't my body on top of the bloody corpse, it was something I used to walk around in.  I was out in a rowboat with Dad near Buckeye Lake, watching him cast off his line and listening to him talk about how Mom was going to fry us up some damn tasty walleye for di

"…me now."

I fell out of the boat and sank down into that familiar body.  My lungs filled with water.  Drowning was supposed to be peaceful, right?  God I hoped so.

"…at me!"

Something hard slapped my face, snapping my head to the side, and the water was gone and so was the boat and so was Dad and I felt my heart sink because, damn, walleye would've been tasty.

I blinked my eyes several times, then righted my head.

Christopher looked at me over the dead guy's legs.  "Don't flip out on me now, Pretty Boy.  Deep breaths, that's it, c'mon, in, out, in… good, there you go… now look at me, right here, right"—he snapped his fingers three times—"over here, that's it.  You with me now?"

"…yeah…"

"You sure?"

I swallowed, tasting blood.  I hoped it was mine.  "I'm… I'm sure."

"Listen to me.  Turn around and close the door.  Stay inside."

"I don't want to."

"I know you don't, and I'm sorry, but you need to do this for me.  And you need to do it now."

I dragged myself the rest of the way inside, yanking closed the door.  I slipped on a puddle and dropped onto my ass, pulling the satchel down on top of me and almost cornholing myself on the stick shift.  I curled up into a ball, hugging the satchel to my chest.  I was now sitting face-to-face with the thing the driver used to walk around in.

"I need to run over to our trailer," said Christopher, pushing the guy's legs back inside and closing the driver's-side door.  "I'll be right back.  Don't go anywhere, okay?"

"…okay…"

Then I was alone.  More or less.

I listened to the sound of something dripping off the seat and spattering against the rubber floor mats; the staccato rhythm seemed muffled, more like the sound made by someone cracking their knuckles through heavy gloves, not liquid at all, but no one in the world had that many knuckles, so I decided they were drumming their fingers against something hard but with a softer covering, a leather briefcase or vinyl seat-cover or even the dust jacket on a book:  tappity-tap-tap-tap; tappity-tap-tap; tappity-tap-tap-tap.  I wished they'd decide on a cadence and stick to it.