Crooked Ladder

by Terry Butler

….. I never could get beyond the doubt. I listened to the words and did what was expected when I had to, but I never really believed any of it; the whole god thing seemed beyond me. When Lily was born I felt something. For a while I thought I was like everyone else, but it didn’t last.
….. I used to think that if I could make just one step I’d be normal. I felt like I was walking in a pitch dark cave where I could hear voices but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from; were they echoes, or were they down some side tunnel to another cave? If I could see I could make the right move, but I couldn’t see.
….. But that wasn’t it either. There was just something I was missing inside.

***

….. I was broke again, and I remembered once watching a dog drown in a flood and thinking how he must have felt. That’s how I felt that day. Desperate.
….. When the rathole hotel’s manager came to the door I’d make it his last time. He’d ask me if I had the rent and then he’d tell me I had to leave. He’d hold his clipboard like a shield and his money belt would ride his skinny hips and he’d stand with his back keeping the door open and his bald head tilted back, looking along his nose at me. I’d feel his fear the way you feel heat or cold.
….. And that was the way it was. “Come in and close it,” I said.
….. I folded the few bills I had and extended it with my left so he’d step forward. He left the door open, so I moved and closed it. He took the money and I brought the gun around and deep into his gut with my right and shot him twice. I held him so I could watch him die. He didn’t look surprised. More sad than anything.
….. I laid him down on his back and zipped open the money belt. An inch thick liner of bills. I shoved him under the bed, looked around and grabbed my hat and jacket. I locked the door and went down the back stairs and around the front into the bar. He wasn’t the first for me so I wasn’t in a hurry. I could sit and drink and think about the next thing without panicking.
….. I sat at the bar in the same place I always sit and when Shorty noticed me I made my signal; index fingers of two hands held 6 inches tall and then finger and thumb of one hand held close together; shot and a shell.
….. After the first one Shorty knows to keep an eye on me so when I’m almost done with the shell he brings me the setup again. What I’m doing is waiting. I’ll wait until the thoughts come clear and my next move shows up. It’s something I learned from Lela.
….. I met Lela in a bar in a different city what must have been ten years ago because Lily would now be seven. She worked there waiting tables and singing backup for the house band. She was just starting to go into churches looking for something. I’d wait outside for her. She’d go in happy and come out sad or go in angry and come out soft, but always changed. She told me to at least try it but I couldn’t get off the sidewalk. It was a feeling like, why?
….. One day I went in with her.
….. She put on her scarf on the sidewalk, dipped holy water at the door, slipped up the aisle to a row in the middle. She genuflected, knelt in the pew and got out her beads. Then she just looked at the altar and whispered prayers. That’s it.
….. When I asked her about it later, she told me it helped her to see what would be the best thing to do. It doesn’t matter where you are, she said, god is everywhere and he’ll come if you open your heart and wait.
….. I saw it but I didn’t feel it. Not then.
….. She started going to the same church all the time and she quit the bar job and got a job in a sewing store. She got pregnant and rented a house, and I brought some clothes there. I gave her money and stayed most nights. When she finally asked about the money, I told her where I got it and she sat in the dark kitchen all night watching the clouds and crying. It was the first time it was time for me to go, and even though she was pregnant, I went.
….. That day I’m talking about, I was doing what Lela showed me, waiting, the manager dead upstairs, the money on the bar dwindling toward a tip for Shorty, and Sweeny sat down next to me. I’ve never seen god, but right then I thought Sweeny might save me.
….. “I knew I’d eventually find you,” she said.
….. Sweeny was a jailbait kid when I knew her before, the last summer I’d spent on the river with Lily and Lela. She wore the tightest jeans and skimpiest tops of anybody, and boys sniffed after her like dogs trailing tongues in the dirt. She wanted a man though, not a boy, and she let me know it was there for me.
….. Now she was a woman and I took her upstairs and she peeled her top off and pulled down the shade. Her breasts were large and high and turned up a little, but they felt like pillows and my fingers sunk into them as if I was kneading butter. I wanted to look at her but she said no and she sucked me and laid me back and sat on me and slid back and forth until that was the only world there was in that room or anywhere.
….. We came and she screamed through her teeth and grunted and moved like a hooked fish until she fell over on me and we slowed down together, her face in my neck and me looking into dimness. “I found you,” she said before she fell asleep. I saw the tracks on her arms in a crack of light and then I fell asleep too.
….. When she woke up she moved carefully not to wake me and she went into my pockets and took everything and my rings and a bracelet from the dresser. The pistol was under my pillow so she didn’t find that, and I just let her go. She owed me now. It cost me, but I had her.
….. I lay back down and I thought about the dead manager under the bed and about Lela and Lily and if they could help me and how I could make Sweeny pay.
….. I checked, and the asshole was still there and still dead so I went down and had a round before I went looking for Sweeny. Shorty said no, he hadn’t seen me for a week and I left him another good tip before I went out the door.

***

….. I found Sweeny in a bar out in the avenues just like I somehow knew I would. I saw her when I went in and I took a stool and waited.
….. She saw me in the mirror and came down the room and put one sweet cheek on the stool next to mine, that knee folded, the other leg blocking me as if she could keep me there with it. She took my glass and swallowed what beer was in it. “You found me,” she said.
….. I laughed a little. That just struck me funny. Losing and finding people. Some you can’t lose and others you can’t find, and you never know who might be looking for you or sometimes who you are looking for. It just goes on like that. I don’t know if it was the laugh or the losing and finding, but I looked at her and found out I wasn’t mad anymore. “Hey, Sweeny,” I said. “I need you to help me out.”
….. I’d known Sweeny since she babysat Lily after Lela took me back. Watching her now while she rattled on about how she knew she owed me but she had other, important, personal shit she had to do also, and not much spare time and blah blah blah, I got bored. Only half-listening to her lie, I went back in my mind to when I met her in that funky old resort town on the river. I could still picture how fine she was that one day when everything changed forever.
….. I had looked for Lela because I wondered about Lily, and how it was when she was born, and how she looked when she walked the first time and if she ever told her about me. I surprised myself with that but I didn’t want to think on it much, just find them.
….. Her junkie brother told me about the river house and about him and his sister having it from their dead parents and how she had bought him out. They were easy to find once I knew where to look, and it didn’t take long.
….. I answered all her questions with I guess the right yeses and noes and she took me back. I didn’t really know what would happen and I didn’t know why I was there other than Lily, and I wasn’t real sure about that. Maybe I wanted to change. Maybe I would if things fell that way. Maybe I’d inherit a house and a pile of money. Maybe the moon would turn to cheese.
….. Maybe won’t buy much, though, and pretty soon Lela and me saw things spinning slowly along like the little whirlpools that drift on the surface of the water where the river gets deep. Spinning here and then gone. I was almost gone when Lily fell off the deck and her mom saw me at the river edge talking to Sweeny, and then I was gone for sure.
….. It was an accident. Lily and me were sitting on the deck when Sweeny came down the beach and stopped in front of us. She took her top off and went in the water. I told Lily to stay there and I went down to the edge and Sweeny stood up and wound her hair, squeezing it dry with her head tilted to one side. The water stood in beads on her skin and her nipples were hard and chill bumps covered her belly. Her panties were transparent nothing and her pussy was shaved. She looked like a seal, slick and plump and streamlined.
….. I was talking to her like that when Lela came home and yelled for Lily and me and then started in screaming. I barefoot hopped across the hot sand and burning rocks and Sweeny laughed and hollered, “Go, old man!” I wasn’t old and she knew it.

***

….. We got off the Greydog across the river from the town. Sweeeny bitched about the heat and wearing the wrong shoes and me walking too fast. I told her shut up or find her way back to the city by herself.
….. We got a beer at the store before we crossed the bridge and sat down under some trees to drink it. “Just what is it I’m supposed to do?” she said, cranky like she was doing me a big favor.
….. I wasn’t sure right then. Sometimes things have a way of deciding that and you’re better off to just ride along and let shit happen, though there’s never any guarantee.
….. Like when the hospital called and said that Lily had woke up and she was being transferred to a room of her own, I had the idea things would be OK then if I just played it cool, but Lela wasn’t built that way. I hung up and told Lela what they said and all of a sudden she started crying and punching me like a man would. I took as much as I could and then I grabbed her by the wrists and held her until she gave up.
….. That was when she gave me the look that started me questioning myself and I haven’t stopped since. I didn’t want to, but the way she looked at me was worse than the punches. That look was sad, mad, disgusted, hurt, humiliated, all of that at once. I knew we were done then and I grabbed my paltry shit, took money from her purse and hitchhiked to the city.
….. Now it’s Sweeny questioning me and I can feel I already took all I will from a bitch and I look at her while I finish my beer.
….. “We’re here to get my daughter and the first part is going to be rough. I think a woman along will make it easier, and since you fucking owe me, you’re it. We’ll get Lily and get a car and I’ll find a place to hole up with my daughter and you’re just going to do what I need you to do.”
….. She said she was going to help me that far, but she had other stuff she had to take care of back in the city so let’s get it over with. No, I said, you’re in it for the whole thing, and I’ll decide when you can go. The way I looked at her made her lick her lips and shift her eyes around like a cat in a corner.
….. We walked across the green iron bridge with the wide sidewalk on the downriver side where you can see the vacationers’ beach and all of them jamming onto it. That’s where I’d find a car.
….. I could see Lily’s house from there too, the rickety houses stacked in crooked rows going up the steep bluff and cantilevered, and I saw her car sitting on the roadway up so that meant she was home.
….. Lily was watching TV and I could tell she wasn’t quite sure who I was. She remembered Sweeny. She got a big smile and Sweeny dropped down and squatted next to her and they hugged and talked the way females do. Lela called some guy’s name from the kitchen and said I’m in here and I walked back there.
….. She went from happy to pissed off in about one second when she saw me.
….. When I first met Lela she was what guys want in a wife, though I never wanted one. She was a pretty blonde and always had her hair done up in some casual style and didn’t need much makeup. Her hair was thick and wavy and down long or piled on her head or in braids wrapped around like sheep horns or a ponytail and she always smelled clean, like soap. Plus she had nice tits and a great ass and was more than willing in the rack. So I’d tried to see if I could feel like I was supposed to with her back then but I don’t think I ever did.
….. Now she was pissed, and she started for me, and I guess she thought she was going to punch me around again. She was going to say something, “You get out,” like that, and I decked her. I jerked her off the floor and there was that look again, like she was questioning what I was doing, and I didn’t think at all, I just shot her. I don’t remember pulling out the gun but I do remember the instant feeling of thinking fuck and then what was I going to do with her when I split with Lily.
….. Sweeny came in and said, “What the fuck,” and Lily started in crying. I told Sweeny to get her to shut up and I would get a car and be back in a few minutes.
….. Of course, that’s when the guy showed up, hustling up the front steps to the porch. Just what the fuck I needed. He recognized me I could tell, but I couldn’t place him, and he said what’s up, and I opened the screen and showed him the gun and told him to get inside.
….. I hadn’t counted on him. I had him sit on the couch with his hands under his butt and when he tried to ask me about Lela and Lily I told him to shut up. I kept trying to place him and he kept asking me shit and saying my name. This ball was rolling now. Lela was dead and he saw me with a gun and it just seemed too complicated and what the fuck I shot him too.
….. He slumped sideways on the couch and groaned. His look said he was hurt but I wasn’t sure I’d killed him and so I shot him again. This fucker had thought he was going over to his lady’s house for lunch and ended up shot, but he should have found out whose woman he was fucking. I remembered who he was then. He had the gas station.
….. I turned around to go, but I hadn’t realized that Lily was standing there watching that whole thing. I hated it, but maybe I could make it up to her later. She was sobbing and choking, struggling to breathe. Sweeny went to her and Lily held on tight. Sweeny was looking at me in a complicated way like I was nuts and she was mad as hell at the same time. She said, “You asshole,” and looked at the door, thinking about it. She shut up and pulled Lily closer when I stepped toward her.
….. But now I couldn’t trust her. She’d burned me once and I’d let her get away with it. It was all getting too involved and some of it I hadn’t thought about. If I killed Sweeny it would leave me with Lily on my hands while I found a car. It would also make it four dead in one day and the cops would bury me when they figured it out. What could I do? If I left, she would call the cops before I could get a car. I should have been alone, shouldn’t have brought her at all.
….. I could feel that pitch black tunnel all around me. The world of right and wrong and love and sacrifice, all the shit I’d always heard about and never had, was somewhere outside the cave and I was moving across to Sweeny and my daughter, the pistol pulsing in my hand as I dropped to a squat and watched them shimmer and start to fade from view.
….. I leaned in and saw myself in Lily’s eyes now, a shadow looming in her iris, a dark figure swimming in her tears. She brought her hand up and pushed softly on the barrel of my gun, just turning it away from her and Sweeny, and she’s hiccupping and moaning, saying, “Noo-ooo,” and Sweeny is weeping softly and staring as her eyes fill and run over.
….. I’m tired of hearing women cry, tired of living. It’s too hard. Lela was the only ladder up I came across in this life and I couldn’t climb it. Maybe if she hadn’t asked so many questions I couldn’t answer, hadn’t hoped for so much, I’d have stayed, and things would be different.

***

….. When the big door creaks and whispers shut it’s like you traveled somewhere. The light is different, and the air is heavy and you can smell the heat of the candles and the dust. It’s old and that makes it seem foreign too. An old lady in a brown scarf is kneeling at a side altar looking up at dead Jesus draped across his mother’s lap. She looks disappointed. The old lady and Mary both, disappointed.
….. The old lady heard me coming. I knew by the way she held her head, listening, but not moving. “Mom?” I said. She looked at me calm and said no and shifted so I could sit. I took out the gun and laid it on the seat between us. She looked at it and then at me, and she frowned but she didn’t run.
….. There were candles in little jars in front of us, red, green, blue, amber, plain. Not many and scattered, and I remembered once breaking open the money box for them and there wasn’t much. Now they have a big ugly padlock on it for guys like me. I breathed in the scent of the candles and felt the silence.
….. The lady was praying hard, probably for me, and I watched her without turning my head until I knew I could trust her. Then I asked her to go get someone and I told her I would wait there.
….. I heard the door open and close and I knew she’d left. I picked up the gun and reached over the candles and put it by Mary’s feet. I looked at her eyes, looking for what I don’t know.
….. It’s only a statue.

####

Terry Butler’s stories have been seen online at Hardluck, Flash Fiction Offensive, Powderburn Flash, Yellow Mama, A Shot of Ink and Darkest Before The Dawn. In print, in Hardboiled Magazine and in the anthologies On Dangerous Ground, edited by Dave Zeltserman, Deadly Dames edited by Gary Lovisi, and Tales of Zorro, edited by Richard Dean Starr. He’s also had the pleasure of co-authoring a story with Ed Gorman in Ed’s latest collection Noir 13. Upcoming in Cemetery Dance and a new anthology of stories edited by Gary Lovisi, Battling Boxers. Hollister CA is home.