in the morning breeze. A cigarette without a filter stuck between his fingers, the orange glow dangerously close to his skin.
Brady checked his phone—the preloaded minutes down to zero—exited the car and approached the payphone. His stiff body felt like a frail puppet being held in place by invisible strings. He walked hunched over until his spine stretched, allowing him to stand straight. The receiver dangled on a metal cable twisted beyond recognition. There wasn’t a phonebook anywhere in sight.
A glowing cigarette butt landed only inches away from his feet. He kicked it with the tip of his boot, embers spilling into the parking lot, coming to rest in front of the red Mustang.
The kids inside the car laughed, slapping their knees. Brady told himself he didn’t need any trouble, he wasn’t going to start a fight. He knew what amused them though: his long and shaggy hair, his tanned skin with hardly any stubble on his face—not because he had shaved but because it had never grown. His stature was short at best, he had started growing early but then around fourteen his body thought otherwise and stunted at under five-four. It didn’t help that his features were soft and feminine and everything about him was what people referred to as petite.
Brady entered the gas station. Cold air hit him and the overhead fluorescent lights covered the world in a blue tinge, making him feel like warm flesh within an icy box. Behind him a magazine aisle took up the entire front of the building, the coolers on the back wall held soda, fruit juices, milk, and water bottles behind glass doors. Some panels were still foggy from customers long departed. He crossed his arms to keep warm. In need of a phone book, Brady approached the register.
Just as he parted his lips, he froze. The man behind the counter looked familiar. Brady rifled through his memory but came up empty. He realized it wasn’t the man who was familiar, but his kind; his pronounced brow ridge, the pocked skin, the greasy hair dyed two shades too dark slicked back into a ducktail.
Brady had done a four-year stint in prison a few years back and this man reminded him of one of his Russian cellmates. During those years he’d picked up a fair amount of Russian, remembered most of it, but everything else that had happened in that cell he had learned to forget. He could have been out when his time was up if it hadn’t been for the fights he always got into. There’d been quite a few—fists, never any weapons—and the memory of an aching stomach pounded by relentless fists, his arms losing tension, his legs beginning to weaken sent a sudden gush of pain through his body.
Forcing himself to push the feelings aside, he beheld the Russian: a white starched dress shirt, unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up. Snakelike, the tattooed image of a bluish chain disappeared underneath the cuff of his shirt. His hands were freakishly large—even for a man his size—and the teal tinge of the tattoos and the sloppy outlines yelled prison makeshift ink. Brady had seen dozens if not hundreds of tattoos during those years, crude ink made by burning the heel of a shoe and mixing the soot with urine; once a concentration camp number, numerous tears on cheekbones, various baby footprints, mermaids, you name it, he’d seen it. The cross around the Russian’s neck identified him as a Prince of Thieves, a highly honorable tattoo. Brady imagined the man’s back adorned by cathedrals and towers, two, maybe three steeples with spires on top, representing the number of prison terms served.
Instead of You have a phone book? Brady lowered his eyes out of respect: “May I borrow the phone book, shishka?” Shishka was an informal word for a person of great importance.
The Russian’s eyes showed no emotions, his body didn’t move, not even shift in place. He reached under the counter and dropped a phone book on the counter with a thud.
“I want it back.” Robot-like, he finished one word before he began the next one. His accent was deep and weaved itself through each syllable and every word. He placed his hands on top of the phone book and slid it slowly and deliberately across the counter. “Do not leave it outside. People steal around here.”
Outside, Brady sat on the bench. He looked up landscaping and moving companies and wrote their phone numbers on the back of a business card he’d grabbed from the counter. He emptied his pockets: just enough money for a week in a seedy motel and a couple of meals.
Calling one of the numbers, business hours Monday through Friday, he realized it was Saturday morning and he’d have to wait until Monday.
He pondered his next move but not much came of it. He got stuck on the past: the bad checks he’d written—his lust for gambling was another thing all together—the stint in prison, the bone breaking job as a ranch hand, and maybe, just maybe, he should have stayed put. Should have apologized, should have found a way, maybe should have just taken the bantering of the men twice his age at the ranch with a grain of salt, the way they called him names, should have made peace with the fact that he did the work of three while they stood around flapping their gums and smoking, kicking dirt off their boots while he worked his fingers to the bone.
And then there were the women. He couldn’t remember the last time he had touched one, hadn’t had a remotely romantic moment since he’d been out of prison, didn’t want to do the math on that one. Years it had been, years. There was that one girl at the ranch—she did the weekly payroll, handing out envelopes thick with bills—but he had never pursued her. He loved the way her hair touched her shoulders, how she tossed it back right before she handed him his money. Brady felt mostly awkward around her but he still thought fondly of her. Everybody seemed to have a story about her and maybe it was true what the men had said about her even though she didn’t look like one of those women.
He felt the old rage rise up inside of him—he had always called it the old rage because it seemed to come from some sort of ancient place that reached so far back he hardly remembered its origin. That familiar temper had gotten him in so much trouble over the years, it churned inside of him as if a bucket was filling up—without any outward sign of fury—but once the liquid reached the top, all bets were off. He saw his father’s face in those moments, smelled cheap whiskey, felt some sort of way about him. He had been at odds with his father since he could remember, and in return his father used the belt. He used it often and hard. It wasn’t the welts on his skin, wasn’t his swollen shut eyelids, wasn’t the pain that seared itself into his brain, it was the tears that he swallowed that made his life unbearable. He attempted to wipe those images aside like condensation on a mirror. It didn’t always work.
By the time he dropped out of school—he was fifteen then—rage overtook him frequently. He loved to fight, taunt other guys, most of them taller, heavier, much older. He didn’t care. The pain they inflicted on him felt real, unlike his life. Unlike the—
No. His whole childhood was a can of worms he didn’t want to open. He wanted to keep a lid on it, maintain a poker face—swoosh, he imagined a hand air-swiping from his forehead to his chest, done! Nothing to see here. He thought of the horses, how they showed signs of edginess, squirming and prancing, and there, there, he’d say, calm now, calm, and he’d blow air on their nostrils. Within seconds they stood serene, waiting for his command. He didn’t have that same power when it came to his temper.
He sat on the bench by the pay phone for the better part of an hour, staring at the cracks in the concrete and an occasional weed fighting its way toward the light. Reality intruded, snapped him out of this state of contemplation: a man checking tire pressure and a woman bent over a screaming infant in the backseat, changing a diaper.
He froze when he spotted the dent in the door of the Bronco. It was the size of a boot, as if someone had kicked the door just for the fun of it.
He studied his likeness in the window of the Bronco: unkempt, worn out, a man in the body of a twelve-year-old boy. Those kids had done that, he knew it. They had no respect for a man’s property. That car was all he had, old as it may be, he had always tended to it, kept
