I hadn’t meant to kill Lester. Well, not exactly. I just wanted him to shut the fuck up. It wasn’t like I wanted to hurt him. He was my best friend, wasn’t he?
I took a swing at him, is all. Only I had the tyre jack in my hand. And down he went, a great white gash on the side of his head, and he hit the deck, all crumpled over sideways, like one of those stupid dummies they use in the car crash commercials.
I stepped over his legs and looked down at his face. It was kind of whitey grey. Blood was working its way up and out into his hair, and he didn’t move, didn’t put his hand up to stop it, just lay there, like he couldn’t be bothered anymore.
I stood over him. He used to look like that when he was sleeping, his soft hair shiny as a girl’s. When I looked at his face, it looked real peaceful, like he didn’t have a care in the world. His skin was real smooth.
I guess when I think about it, it had been coming on for months. Not that I wanted him dead. I don’t mean that. No way. And don’t tell me you’ve never wanted anyone dead. I know you have. If it isn’t your ex-boss, it’s your ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, whatever. It makes life easier doesn’t it, to just rub them out like they were never there in the first place, bugging you, pissing you off day in day out? You could turn them off, simple as turning off the TV, and that’d be an end to it, wouldn’t it?
It wasn’t like that with me and Lester. We were buddies since way back when. He was one of those cute neighborhood kids who looked like he’d stepped straight off an Eat Rite program, with his freckles and white teeth. I’d hang around on the stoop till he came out, catch a sly look at his mom through the screen door when she was clearing table, and wait see if she gave me some pie. Sometimes she did. And sometimes she didn’t. She made fine pie. She was pretty too.
Once in a while she’d smile at me with her wide blue eyes like she knew all about me, like she could see right through and in behind. Lester had her eyes, as clear and honest as a spring morning. They made you want to be good. I used to look into those eyes of his and feel like I was a milk and cookies boy too.
We’d take off down to the river for catfish, be gone most of the day, no idea about time. We got hold of some old boat one morning, got it into our heads we’d make her float, and we was gone so long, what with wrestling her out of the mud, rotten as alligator chow, an’ haulin’ her every which ways, we didn’t see it had gotten dark. We got thrashed when we got back, though I didn’t think Lester’s pa had no right to thrash me. He thrashed me harder when I told him to go to hell. Lester had water shining in his eyes but he didn’t make a squeak; he just blinked at me and went on in.
He was always there. It was just him and me. Seemed the most natural thing in the world for us two to get the workshop going at the end of town. He was best with the customers, with his nice manners and all, but we made a good team.
Sure, he got on at me at times. Guys do that. But, these last few weeks, it was like he was never going to leave off.
It started out over a girl, and don’t go saying, sure, course it was, always is; I’m not going to fall for that old cliché. There’s always another girl. Different dress maybe, but same old line. If they aren’t simpering or whining, they’re set on making you different. When that time comes, it’s time to move on, brother. Unless you’re the kind of guy who wants a woman hanging round your neck like a dead weight, or you didn’t get enough love from your own mom or something. Well, poor pitiful you.
Hell, no. I like women. I really do. Just don’t like ‘em getting on my case is all. And now Lester was getting on my case. Worse than any woman. It was like he’d got the needle in and was working it away. Made his point, ha ha. But now, see, he’d got me where it hurt, and he was jiggling the damned thing around and watching me jerk about. I got sick of it. Who wouldn’t?
He’d got himself this girl, see, been parading her around for weeks, shoving her in my face. As if I was interested. Goddamn him if he hadn’t got her to start coming round to the workshop, to call for him and walk him home, like he was some kind of pussy or something, who couldn’t get hisself home in the dark.
Always, before she got there, he’d start up this dumb whistling. And he used his body different. He kind of got stiffer, strutting about the yard like a dog scenting his bitch, rubbing his hands on the oil rag in the shop, and acting like he’d just won some prize.
And what kind of prize was she? Yeah, okay. I know what you’re thinking. That I wanted her, that I was pissed at him. Well, wouldn’t that be the simple answer?
No, I didn’t want her, not even with her little looks out at me from under those long lashes of hers, and the way she moved when she knew I was watching, slow and easy. She stood so close to me one time I could smell her skin. She might have acted like a sweet thing but she would have turned out just the same as all the others underneath.
Once they get you, man, you gotta keep it together or you lose yourself.
I mean, a guy goes to do a bit of fishing or something, mebbe work on the engine out back, and can he get on with it? Sure as shit he can’t. She’ll be out there, getting on at him, has he done this and has he done that, and why don’t they ever go anywhere nice, and can she have her folks around? Jeeze, it’s enough to turn a decent guy to drink, just to drown it out.
But Lester didn’t seem to care about that. He lay under the car, his legs sticking out, telling me how his life had changed since he hitched up with her, said she wasn’t like the rest. Was he ever foolin’ hisself? I swear, sometimes, I felt like letting go the tackle so the vehicle would drop down and crush his stupid head, but that was later, after weeks of it.
I didn’t take too much notice at first. He was always like that when he got a new bit of snatch, so I let it ride, all that jerk-off about how tender she was, and how no-one had ever made him feel so great, how she was funny, and kind, and how ‘compatible’ they were together. As if I wanted to know what she was like in the sack.
But it went on for weeks, and then months, and it was like he was never going to leave off with it. And today, man, today he yammered on like one of those ministers who comes round to the porch, and starts railing on at you about how you need to change your life, find the Lord, and you’ll be saved, brother; turn away from your dark side and embrace the light. It stuck in my craw, and he knew it. He had that crazy light shining in his eyes and, all the time, my heart felt blacker and blacker.
Next thing, there he was, on the floor. Shut up alright.
When she came round to fetch him home, I had him covered over with an old blanket from out the back of my trunk. She looked real sad when I told her what happened, told her a motor had swung round on him from the cradle we got suspended above the shop floor, told her he hadn’t seen it coming.
She reached out and put her hand on my arm; it was like I just got plugged into the mains there for a minute. She talked to me real soft and soothing, like I was a kid, and she got on the phone, called the hospital. She left me standing.
Then, when she was done with her phone calls, her voice like silk and cream all mixed up, she came back over, slipped right up alongside me, warm and steady as a summer breeze, touched me again, whispered to me I was in shock, that it’d be okay, that she’d see me home.
I let her lead me over to a chair and sat, like a dummy, while she waited beside me for the precinct guys to come: pale, quiet, but calm, like she was going to take care of everything, and me too.