Fish Farm, Walt Sautter [best story books to read .TXT] 📗

bitch of it. He wound up in the Pentagon, a full bird colonel. I heard he retired a couple of years ago. Nice pension. The whole deal.”
“And what happened to you? How did you wind up here?”
“When I got out of the service, well, kicked out, I of course, went lookin’ for a job. What kinda job are you gonna get with my record? Not a good one, that’s for sure.
So I kinda bounced around from one shitty job to the next and I finally wound up here. Broke! Never got a military pension, of course. They took my chances of that when they put me in the brig.
All I got is some social security and not even much of that.”
“Sounds like you really got a screwin’.”
“I’d say so. And ya know what! I think about it every goddamn day. I don’t know what’s worst, what really happened or just the thinkin’ about it day after day after day.”
“I kinda know what you mean.”
“Well, I guess there’s nothin’ ya can do about it now.”
“Maybe not, but I’m not so sure”, replied Jack and they continued the Bocce.
“Hey, ya know Hal, you never told me how life treated you. We talked a lot but every time I brought it up you kinda danced around it.
Since we’re here spilling out our guts I think it’s your turn now.”
“Ain’t my turn. No use whinin’ ‘bout things gone by.”
“I don’t think anybody’s whining, just telling like it is. What do you think Petey?”
“I guess. I showed you mine maybe you should show us yours Hal?”
“Well I suppose but ain’t a hellava lot to tell.
Grew up down south. Didn’t have shit.
Dad got sick and we lived on Social Security. He got what the doctor called dementia. He was a pretty old guy when I was born. Ma couldn’t work. She had to take care of him. She wasn’t gonna put him in any home and I didn’t blame her. The homes in those days were run by the state and they were pretty poor. Wasn’t no Visiting Nurse stuff either, not in those days. After a while the money we were getting’ just wasn’t enough so she hadda get a job. She use ta lock him in the bedroom and go to work and hope for the best.”
“How about your brothers and sisters. Couldn’t they help out?”
“Got no brothers or sisters.
Anyway, the town we lived near was a good old southern football town. When you when to high school you were expected to play unless you were crippled. Everybody had to play. They’d won thirty-two games in a row when I got there and were state champs for five years straight.”
“So did you play?”
“Are you kiddin’? Two hundred and ten pounds, six foot two. Didn’t have much a choice.
Ma didn’t want me to play. She was always worried that I’d get seriously hurt and I could understand that. Havin’ one person she loved bein’ a mess, was all she could bear. But she finally agreed to let me play and I did like it and I was good at it too.
Don’t mean to be braggin’, but real good. All-State three years runnin’. Still got the rushin’ record at the high school from forty-five years ago.
When I got outta high school I had a bunch of college offers. I went State cause it was close to home and I could help out Ma when I had to. In the end it didn’t make a lot of difference cause Dad died before I started college.”
He paused for a moment.
“Well, anyway, like I was sayin’. I got a scholarship to State. They called it a scholarship but I kinda looked at it as contract to play football. I don’t remember seein’ the inside of too many classrooms but I do remember seein’ lots of locker rooms.
I played four years. Started three of ‘em. Second team All-American as a senior. Then after the season when I was a senior, I got a Certificate of Attendance, no diploma, just the handshake and the certificate.
You know, in those days, that was generally the way things worked. Most all the guys I played with got the same deal.
I went home and got a job driving a bulldozer. That was about the best I could do. But believe it or not that was a pretty good job in my town and I guess I only got it cause I was kinda the local football hero.”
“So you were a heavy equipment operator all your life?”
“Nah, only for a year or two.
One day I read in the paper about a guy I played with at State. He was playin’ pro ball and doin’ okay so I decided to call my old coach and ask him to help me out. I knew I was better than the guy playin’ in the pros.”
Again he paused
“And so?”
“Well, this was the fifties you know. Coach told me that there wasn’t too much room for a black guy in pro ball unless you were like Jim Brown.”
“What about the guy you saw in the paper, the guy you played with?”
“He was a white guy.”
“So then what?”
“I got a factory job. Worked there for forty years. The company got sold and the pension was sold off. That happened a lot in those days. They’d buy a company, steal the pension money and then collapse the company. “
“Do you have a family?”
“Yeah, I raised a family. Wife died in eighty-five. Cancer!
My son lives in California. I keep in touch but he’s gotta live his own life too. He’s doin’ alright but not great.
Anyway, I got my Social Security. They couldn’t steal that and I get food stamps and a little rent help by the government, so I’m hangin’ in.
That’s about it, man and here I am.”
“It must really piss you off when you watch football today? Guys making millions.”
“Born too soon I guess but that’s the way it is. What can ya do?”
With the Bocce game completed they all walked home.
Chapter 3
“Bang! Bang!”
He slowly opened his eyes and glanced at the clock.
“One A.M. What the hell is going on?” he thought.
“Bang! Bang!”
It was the front door.
He meandered to the door and looked through the peep hole.
“Bang! Bang!”
Mrs. Murray continued to pound on the door.
He opened it as she was about to strike again.
“Please let me in”, she gasped.
“What’s the matter? What happened?”
She hurried over and slumped into the chair trying desperately to catch her breath.
“I think he’s dead! I know he’s dead!”
“Dead! Who’s dead?”
“The man in my apartment.”
“In your apartment?”
“He’s the same man that broke in the last time. He still has a bandage on his neck.”
“How’s he dead?”
“About two hours ago I was in the kitchen and I heard the door bust open again like last time. He came right into the kitchen and said he was going to kill me and Suzy.
I told him, ‘Take what ever you want but don’t hurt us. I didn’t tell anybody about what happened before. I didn’t call the police like you said.’
Then he said, ‘But you might be tellin’ somebody down the road and if my homies find I been cut up by an old lady like you that ain’t gonna be good for my rep. I gotta make sure there’ll be no talkin’’. And then he came at he with his knife.
I ‘d been making tea for myself and I’d just poured the cup and it was still boiling hot. I just threw it at him. It hit him right in the face and he fell backwards and hit his head on the radiator. Then he didn’t move. He just laid there. I got a knife out of the drawer and sat by him in case he woke up. I probably should have just run out but I was so scared I didn’t really know what I was doing. If he would have woke up I don’t know what I would have done.
But I sat there frozen for a good half hour and he never moved. I tried to see if he was breathing and he wasn’t. I don’t what to do. If I call the police then what are ‘homies’ as he called them, going to do to me and Suzy?
What can I do? What can I do?”, she wailed.
“You stay here and let me go down and see. I’ll be right back. Give me the key.”
“Here’s the key but you don’t need it. The door’s pried wide open.”
He slowly walked to the floor below in measured, stealthy steps and cautiously peered into the apartment. He rounded the corner into the kitchen.
There he was. Lying there, face up, eyes closed, next to the radiator with a pool of blood radiating from the back of his head. Jack bent down and put his hand on the chest of his tea stained shirt. It was cold and motionless. He felt his wrist. It was cold and pulse less.
“ Dead alright”, he thought out loud.
He heard the muted creak of a foot step in the hallway. Silence. Then another.
He slowly picked up the dead man’s knife from the floor beside him, pulled away from the body and backed into the shadows of the pantry.
Another creak came from the hallway. He carefully peered around the corner of the pantry door.
It was Mrs. Murray standing in the doorway with her hand over her mouth staring at the lifeless corpse on the floor.
“I thought I told you to stay upstairs.”
“I couldn’t. I was so afraid.”
She paused.
“What am I going to do?
What am I going to do?”, she repeated.
“I’m not sure but I know what you are not going to do”, he replied.
“You’re not going to call the cops. As soon as they come everybody will know what happened. When I say everybody, I mean everybody on the street including his boys and they won’t take too kindly to it.
If they find out the whole story, you won’t last too long. Maybe it’ll look like an accident. It’ll look like you fell off the roof or maybe look like suicide, but in any case you’ll wind up like him. These guys have no trouble killing anybody that harms one of the gang or insults the gang’s honor, not even old ladies. As a matter of fact, killing an old lady would probably give their reputation a boost. It would show that nobody, no matter who, can get off hurting one of them without paying the price.
I think they’d kill a new born if they thought it disrespected them.”
“What should I do?”, she again repeated nervously.
There was silence.
“Well, we can’t just leave him laying here on the kitchen floor.
Let me go upstairs for a minute and this time you stay here. Kept the door shut. I’ll be back in a minute.
Okay?”
“Okay”, she answered meekly.
He left briefly and returned with a small round of wire and a large plastic leave bag.
“Get your vacuum cleaner and the hose with it.”
She left the room to fetch the vacuum.
He cut a short piece of the telephone wire he had brought with him. He proceeded to fold the man’s outstretched arms over across his chest . He placed the hands together. On the back of each hand was a large tattoo, “FM”. He bound them with the wire.
With another piece of wire,