THE EDGE magazine | Fiction | Novel excerpt | Fred Willard

THE EDGE NOVEL EXCERPT

Down On Ponce

From the novel Down On Ponce by Fred Willard, published September 22, 1998 in the UK by No Exit Press. Published in the US by Longstreet Press.

I LEANED BACK in a wobbly dinette chair with my feet propped on the table. No junk mail and one letter this week; it was from Lester ‘Bug’ Raiford.

Bug was a funny guy whose problem with authority had gotten out of hand when he tooted too many lines of crank and became convinced his brain was haunted by the ghost of Sid Vicious.

The outside of the envelope bore the imprint of a rubber stamp: ‘Warning! The enclosed correspondence is from a prisoner at a Federal Mental Hospital and has not been censored.’

The note was short, but more coherent than the last half-dozen had been.

Good news. I finally got sane enough to convince them I was crazy. I like it much better here in the nut house because you don’t have to do nothing to get drugs, they just give them to you, even when you don’t want them.

As far as I can tell, if I develop what they call remorse, I may be able to get out of here eventually. Remorse seems to mean that you cry when you talk about your past, so I have been like a weeping willow tree. You may see the tear stains on this letter.

It’s all bullshit because I enjoyed seeing the Federals jumping out of that burning car with their pants on fire. I have enclosed some artwork for your enjoyment. Your friend, Bug.

The second sheet was a heavy piece of construction paper that held an awkward collage of cut-out magazine illustrations assembled to depict a grinning Dan Quayle about to be sodomised by Long Dong Silver.

Across the bottom was a ransom note-style message which read: ‘Every cop is a criminal, and all you sinners are saints.’

I selected a postcard with a picture of a Seminole Indian wrestling an alligator from a box on the table that held stamps, pens and paper and wrote a reply.

‘Bug. Congratulations on your move. It sounds like you are doing much better. Take your medicine and cry as often as possible. Both may do you good.’

Then I taped his collage on the wall above the dinette next to the jackalope. Invented by an anonymous Hieronymus Bosch of the American Plains, the jackalope consists of a stuffed bunny head with pronghorn antelope antlers glued on top in order to confuse the tourists.

Lester had given it to me during the last stages of his methedrine psychosis. He said it illustrated a business plan to franchise surrealist open-casket funerals, where the deceased would have parts of various animals attached to their bodies. Needless to say the plan never went anywhere.

Shortly afterward, Bug was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail into a car full of ATF agents.

There was a tentative knock at the door. I imagined it was the neighbour trying to borrow money for his bad habits. Lately he had been sending his gaunt wife to ask.

Even though she always prefaced her conversations with a brief homily on the evils of drink and drugs, she’d been wiping her nose a lot lately, so I guessed she either had a perpetual cold or had been dipping into the snuff box with her old man.

There are patches of grandness and wealth in Hastings but not enough to alter the perception of drabness cloaking the town, which is surprisingly invigorating after the studied languidness of so media-hip, so post-everything, so in your face Brighton. Same coastline, different planets. Making my way back to the station after the interview, looking for a book shop that Chris had recommended, the first shop window I passed was filled with guns. Synchronicities are both beautiful and worrying.

She’d tell me a hard-luck story -- God knows she has plenty to pick from -- and I’d slip her a couple of bills, then she’d go home, and I’d hear his ragged Camaro race out the gravel drive of the trailer park.

I hoped she held back some for herself and the children, but I doubted it.

‘Just a minute,’ I said.

I looked through the peephole. As near as I could tell through the distortion of the plastic fish-eye lens, my visitor was not the neighbour’s wife with a sad tale or the neighbour with a baseball bat, but a clean-cut man standing in front of a shiny car.

I opened the door. He was well dressed, in his mid-thirties, freshly shaven, with a fashionable mop of blond hair. The car was a new Mercedes.

‘I wonder if I could talk to you a minute?’ he asked.

‘What about?’

‘Could I come inside?’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘It’s confidential.’

‘Are you sure you’re talking to the right man? You might want to check on that if you’re going to take me into your confidence.’

I spoke in a fuck-you tone of voice. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. He didn’t seem to want to say it either. He was shuffling around like he was going to propose marriage and was afraid I might accept.

‘You’re Samuel Fuller. My name is James Shirley. We have a mutual friend.’

‘And who might that be?’ I asked.

‘I’d rather not say.’ He avoided eye contact.

‘I guess that’s confidential,’ I said.

I could tell he knew I was making fun of him and was trying not to resent it. I let the silence linger until it became uncomfortable, then said, ‘OK. Come on in.’ I could always throw him out if he didn’t have anything pleasant to say.

As he climbed up the steps of the trailer, I saw my neighbour eyeing the Mercedes from his kitchen window, and I wondered how long Shirley would have a radio.

He slumped into a worn easy chair.

‘You follow the Braves?’ he asked. ‘You want my advice on baseball?’

He looked at his hands. ‘No, I want you to kill my wife.’

I made my face go dead, nothing coming in or going out, like a happy-go-lucky psycho who would scratch his ear or cut your throat with equal conviction.

He tried not to show it but he was badly frightened. I liked that. It meant he would be easier to control.

‘Wait here,’ I said.

I walked down the narrow hall. The trailer floor sank with a creak as I entered the bedroom. I’d been meaning to move. The place isn’t worth fixing.

It’s a dump. The closet door had slipped off its tracks, so I pushed it aside just enough to stick my hand in and pull out the pump shotgun. Then I walked back to the living room, worked the slide for effect like they do on television, dropping a perfectly good shell to the floor and pointed the muzzle at his face. I hoped it didn’t go off by accident. It would be a mess.

‘You can either go or stay. I don’t give a fuck. But if you stay you got to take your clothes off.’

‘What?’ He blinked.

I know how a gun in your face can make your mind feel like an empty room with a bad echo.

‘Clothes off,’ I repeated.

‘Why?’

‘I want to see if you got anything taped to your body.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like a wireless mike or a tape recorder.’

The idea finally caught up with him. ‘That’s smart,’ he said. What a dumb shit.

He pulled off the hand-sewn loafers and socks, stood, dropped and stepped out of his khaki pants, unbuttoned the shirt and laid it on the sofa then took off the new striped boxer shorts.

‘Turn around,’ I said.

He held his arms at shoulder height and did a 360. There was nothing on his body. He was trying to act casual, like, gee, I’ve been in the army and this doesn’t bother me a bit, cause I’m used to being ordered to take my clothes off, but his genitals had shrunk to the point they looked like a goober balanced on two English peas. Luckily, they didn’t share the same colour scheme.

‘See the picture on the wall of our former vice president about to get romantic?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘A friend of mine did that. He’s doing time at a federal institution for the criminally insane for fire bombing a car full of federal agents. Pretty interesting the way he’s got all those pictures stuck together, isn’t it?’

He tried to say, ‘Yes,’ but his voice cracked.

He was holding himself so tight that I imagined if he farted it would sound like he was playing the penny whistle.

‘You can sit at the dinette,’ I said. The trailer had an open living room-kitchen-dining area. He sat at the table like he was trying to touch it as little as possible.

I checked the shoes. Expensive. No swivelling heels with secret transmitters. No pockets on the shirt, nothing attached to it. A comb in one back pants pocket, his wallet in the other.

There were three hundred-dollar bills in the wallet; I took them out and stuck them in my jeans. The driver’s license said he was James Shirley, like he claimed. According to an insurance card, the Mercedes out front was his. Nothing much else of interest. Keys in the right front pocket. He was clean.

‘Go ahead and put them back on.’

I pointed at his clothes, then put down the shotgun and sat on the sofa. He dressed as we talked.

‘Why should I want to kill your wife?’ I asked.

‘Ten thousand dollars,’ he said.

‘That’s the beginning of a reason,’ I agreed. ‘Why do you want her dead?’

‘She makes my skin crawl.’

‘Ever thought of divorce?’ I asked.

‘No. Does it make a difference?’

‘It could.’

‘Why would it make a difference? I don’t understand.’

‘You could change your mind about a divorce. You can’t change your mind once she’s dead. I don’t want some guy who knows my name mooning over his poor dead wife.’

‘I want her dead.’

Aside from being a chickenshit, he was a cold-blooded little son of a bitch. I couldn’t imagine him caring enough about anyone to want them dead. This had to be about money.

‘All right. Let’s talk about finances.’

‘How about five thousand before and five thousand after you do it?’

‘And what am I supposed to do if you don’t make the last payment? Sue you?’

‘You can trust me,’ he said.

‘Right. I see your point. People who hire people to kill people are generally trustworthy.’ I thought about the best way to handle it, something he could manage, then said:

‘You get yourself a box, you put thirty thousand dollars in used twenties in it, photographs that will show me what she looks like, and information about her schedule and habits. Deliver the box to the Sunnyland Marina on Lake Lanier, then just go about your business, don’t do anything differently -- only, without making a fuss be sure you can account for your time during the weekdays. OK?’

‘Sure, sure.’ He would probably fuck it up but it didn’t make much difference. He hadn’t blinked at my tripling the price. There was probably a lot of money involved.

‘One other thing.’

I didn’t say anything until he looked at me, then I gave my imitation of Bug Raiford on the worst day of his life. I folded my arms together, let my jaw go slack and leaned toward him opening my eyes as wide as possible.

I hissed a little, and he leaned forward to hear what I was about to say.

I whispered, ‘I’m going to enjoy doing her. It’s going to be fun. You know what that means?’

‘Nuh no,’ he stammered.

‘It means you don’t want to fuck with me.’

‘You’re right,’ he agreed quickly.

‘I don’t want to ever see you again,’ I said.

‘No. You won’t ever see me again. Don’t worry,’ he said.

‘Leave.’

Shirley walked briskly to the car without looking back. He didn’t even stop when he realised the Mercedes’ radio was missing.

What an idiot. •

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