Drowning of Stephan Jones (8 page)

Ten minutes later, the three crowded together on the front seat of the Harrises’ Oldsmobile and drove down Parson Springs’s Main Street. Ahead on the right was the venerable Queen Anne Hotel, and five doors farther up was the newest business in town—The Forgotten Treasures Antique Shop.

Once inside the shop a person found herself in the center of a virtual symphony of memorabilia, collectibles, and pure whimsy. A Victorian bird cage held a clay pot with cascading English ivy. In a corner stood a brass lamp with a leaded-glass shade—a grandfather clock with brass finials—a folding teak
deck chair with a brass plate on its back reading “Ile de France.” An old-style manikin with a painted mustache wearing a gray tunic with heavy gold epaulets, once proudly worn by a long-forgotten Confederate captain during the War between the States.

Frank Montgomery shook his head emphatically at his customer, a young woman with enough carats in her wedding ring to buy an affordable house or two. “Oh, no, you don’t want to do that! The Canton vase is too ... too ordinary for your elegant living room, Karen. Go with the Omari. Definitely, the Omari!”

But as soon as the sale had been made and the customer left the shop happily carrying her nineteenth-century Japanese vase safely encased in Styrofoam peanuts, Frank underwent a radical change, a change from quietly dignified to noisily exuberant. He walked briskly around a Chippendale table set with silver candlesticks and antique Waterford to swing open the door to the rear workshop. Inside, his partner was a study in concentration as he painstakingly replaced the worn, torn, and brittle leather writing surface of a nineteenth-century English writing box.

Waving the white sales slip high in the air, Frank bellowed, “Guess what!?” But before Stephan had even looked up, Frank was already answering his own question. “Know that Omari vase that everybody turned their nose up at when we were on Beacon Hill? Well, let’s hear a big round of applause for genial Frank Montgomery ’cause it’s been sold at long last. We’re rich ... or at the very least we’re bucks and bucks ahead of the bill collector.”

“Good show, partner. What did you do, charm the socks off some rich old biddy?”

“Hell no!” replied Frank, sounding as though he were filling up with righteous indignation. “Only thing I did was to charm the socks off some rich young biddy!” To celebrate their victory,
they decided to eat a good meal, drink a little wine, and make merry over lunch right in the shop.

Stephan asked what he wanted to eat, and Frank answered, “Surprise me.” When Stephan asked what he wanted to drink, Frank again responded, “Surprise me.” With only these admittedly wide parameters, Stephan slipped his down jacket over his varnish-stained plaid shirt and sprinted all the way down Main Street to Wayno’s Liquor Store, where he bought a bottle of cheap wine imported from Portugal.

Then he headed toward Jimmy Joe’s Bar-B-Que Restaurant, where the pork was smoked in pits and anyone who took even one bite understood that here at last was barbecued food that tasted exactly the way God intended it to taste.

When Stephan lived in Boston he was under the crazy impression that he knew exactly what barbecued food was: a glob of sauce from a bottle that made meat taste as though it had been globbed with sauce from a bottle. But now that he was becoming a true-blue Arkansan, he realized at long last how very little he had known. As soon as he entered the small, savory-smelling storefront restaurant, he saw that the take-out line was at least twice as long as usual. Over the take-out window was a sign pencil-written on lined notebook paper: “Sorry we have short hands today ’cause of the ice storm that is a-coming so please be patient.”

Stephan smiled at the sign and thought how lucky for Jimmy Joe that he was so great at cooking, because the chance that anyone would ever pay him for his writing was at least a zillion times less than zero. But the next thing he thought was that he didn’t have time to waste standing in line, not with all the refinishing, regluing, and restoring waiting for him back at the shop. So, in spite of the fact that the barbecue was a near work of art, he decided to go where the food might not be all that good, but at least he could get it good and quick.

Inside the Pizza Pad, the aroma of tomato sauce and oregano
captured the senses. That, along with the unbridled cheers from three high school seniors playing an obviously engrossing electronic fight game.

“A large mushroom and olive pizza with extra cheese and a couple of bags of chips to go please,” Stephan called out to a guy wearing a uniform with the red lettering, CHRIS over his right pocket.

As he waited for his order, shifting his weight from his right leg to his left and back again, Stephan chided himself for not thinking to bring along the
Little Rock Gazette
, which was delivered six mornings a week to the shop. It always gave his spirits a special boost when he read that the Boston Celtics or the New England Patriots had actually won one; but when he was forced to read about one of their losses, well, it just hung a kind of pit-of-the-stomach gloom over his whole day. No, he thought, it was probably just as well he had not brought the paper along. Stephan wandered over to watch the action at one of the video games, where two full-color cartoonish characters in a ring were relentlessly slugging the living computer chips out of each other. “Block him, Spider! Block! Block! To the head!” young male voices called out encouragingly to the lean and lanky kid who groaned and grunted over the simulated excitement of the video.

“Hey! Hey! Well, well, looky who’s here!” said a voice inches from Stephan’s ear. He turned his head and without meaning to—and certainly without wanting to—he let his jaw drop. Glaring at him was that sneering guy from the hardware store. Andy Harris smiled at Stephan Jones from only one corner of his mouth. “Hey ... how you getting along, ol’ buddy?”

Stephan nodded his head. “Oh, okay thanks,” he mumbled as he retreated back to the counter just in time to see a golden pizza lavishly sprinkled with black olive slices emerge triumphantly from the oven.

As Stephan, with boxed pizza in hand, closed the door of
the store behind him, he wondered how it was possible for the weather to change so dramatically in the fifteen minutes that he had been inside. Now the sky was an icy, glassy blue, and it was almost as though God were playing the role of a great scenic designer in the sky. One glance heavenward and anyone could quickly understand that the entire celestial stage was being readied for some epic event.

When did the streets become so totally deserted? Had everybody already made it home before the approaching ice storm? The heat of the pizza penetrated the bottom of the paper box and Stephan wondered if he wasn’t carrying the world’s most flavorful hand warmer.

“Hey, you—hey, wait up a sec!” called out Andy as he, the Ironman, and the Spider lumbered briskly toward him. Stephan gave a half-turn, just enough to catch sight of who was calling to him, but instead of stopping, if anything he quickened his pace. “You know, that’s not very nice,” said Andy, galloping up with his posse. “Hey, don’t you know I kind of thought you were more friendly than that. After all, you did come to my church for Christmas services. So how come you came to my church?”

“I’ve got to get back to work now,” Stephan explained, as Andy and the Ironman, who could double as a human wall, barred his way. The Spider sandwiched him in from behind as though he were nothing more than a piece of luncheon meat haphazardly thrown between a couple of slices of bread. “Look, I’ve got to go ...” Stephan pleaded. “I’m already late.”

“Now, now, you don’t have to be like that ’cause I just want to introduce you to my friends, Mike the Spider Horten and Doug the Ironman Crawford, here,” Andy said with disarming sweetness.

“But, say, I am sorry, but I don’t really remember your name.”

Stephan’s head drooped, but his answer came out clear
enough. “Stephan.”

“Stephan?” mocked the double-sized Ironman. “Stephan! What kind of a fruititooti name is that?”

“Hey, now don’t go ridiculing a man’s name, Ironman,” Andy interjected. “A man’s home is his castle and a man’s name is his castle, too. Or something like that.”

Ironman and Spider laughed appreciatively. “Yeah, so
where
did you get such a fruititooti faggy name as Stephan?” Spider asked in a voice so deep that it seemed downright misplaced in so tall and spidery a guy. This time it was Andy and Ironman who laughed raucously.

When Stephan didn’t immediately respond, Andy gave him a shove backward. “Answer the man!” he yelled, as Spider gave their captive an even harder shove forward. “What’s the matter with you anyway, don’t you believe in being polite?”

“Leave me alone,” Stephan begged with a voice that trembled. “Am I bothering you? I’m not bothering you!”

“That’s where you’re wrong—you—you fucking fag!” Andy shouted, giving him a two-handed shove so unexpectedly violent that both Stephan and his backstop, Spider, went stumbling backwards. Spider lost his footing and sprawled against the concrete sidewalk. When Andy extended a hand to his fallen comrade, Stephan faked to the right and took off running to the left, still carrying the pizza in one hand and the Portuguese wine in the other. He sprinted down the empty street as though this were one race he had to win.

Footsteps heavily pounding the pavement, down-up, down-up, in rapid-fire succession came behind him. Stephan knew he could run faster and harder than his two thick-bodied tormentors. But what about the other one? The one built like a willow reed? What about him!?

Suddenly Stephan was grabbed by the sleeve of his down jacket and spun crazily around. The pizza and wine went crashing to the asphalt. Strong arms from behind encircled his neck
like a tightening vise. The willow reed had him! Pressing hard, pressing hard against his Adam’s apple. Air! Air! He began gagging at the same time that he silently screamed for air.

In the next moments, the other two surrounded him. The steel neck-hold was released, and air, blessed air rushed once again to fill his lungs. “Good work, Spider!” complimented Andy. “Grab those hands—hold them behind his back, Ironman!”

Shaking his head in disgust, Andy surveyed the debris from the shattered wine bottle as he made
tsk-tsk-tsking
sounds with the tip of his tongue. “Boy, you got some nerve messing up the street, you really do, Stephan—Stephan-
eeee
. That is your name, isn’t it, Stephanie?”

Stephan swallowed and wondered how come it hurt so much to swallow. Then Andy latched on to his cheeks, one in each of his hands, and began pulling them outward until the groaning man’s face took on hideous proportions. “When I speak to you—you answer me! Understand, fruit fly?”

“Yes,” Stephan answered in a hoarse whisper. “Yes.”

“Now that’s much better,” Andy beamed triumphantly while bending over to pick up the fallen box of pizza.

“It’s still good enough to eat,” the Ironman observed with what sounded like near reverence. “And hot, too.”

“Well in that case,” Andy proclaimed while carefully removing it from the box, “let Stephanie eat it!” He smashed the still steamy pizza hard against Stephan’s face.

“AWWWLLL!” screamed Stephan, slapping the scalding cheese from his cheeks. The tormentors, frightened by the sounds of anguish that filled the streets, took off running; so did the tormented, only in the opposite direction.

Less than three minutes later, a single sleigh bell jangled as the door of Forgotten Treasures was opened and then slammed shut. Wearing a decidedly annoyed expression, Frank Montgomery looked up from the display case he was rearranging.
“It’s about time! A man could starv—My God, Stevie, what’s wrong!?”

Biting hard on his lower lip to keep his emotions from spilling over, Stephan Jones rushed straight through the store. Whizzing wordlessly by his dumbfounded partner, he ran into the workshop and to the sink. He turned the spigot on full volume and began bathing his singed face with cold water.

Nervously Frank hovered over him. “You’re as red as a beet! What in God’s name happened!? How did your face get burned? You know, we better go to the emergency room, let them check you out.”

Stephan tore some paper towels from the roll and began to wet them under the tap before pressing them gently to his face. “No, it’s better now ... really.”

With words so heavy that they seemed almost weighted, Frank asked, “You going to tell me who did this to you?” Then he listened as he heard a rush of air race through Stephan’s nostrils en route to his lungs. It was as though he needed the extra supply of oxygen just to help himself push out the story.

“From the hardware store over in Rachetville. That young punk. He and his two friends.”

“Oh, yes.” Frank’s forehead wrinkled up like an old washboard. “That’s the little bastard and his family that preacher tried to introduce us to at Christmas services?”

His partner closed his eyes as he pressed the cold, wet paper towels against his face. “That’s the one.”

Frank’s eyes registered concern as he nodded slowly. “All right, we’ll talk later. Look, I’m going to run across the street to Dyer’s Drug and buy some ointment or something to put on your face—maybe an ice bag, too. Yeah, an ice bag would be good.”

As soon as Stephan Jones heard the tinkling front door of the shop close behind Frank, his tightly buttoned-down mouth burst wide open, and then his slender body began to tremble
uncontrollably as he cried out with equal parts fury, frustration, and pain.

Chapter 8

A
T PRECISELY SIX
o’clock in the evening, the tortoise-shell Tiffany mantel clock began eloquently chiming out the hours. Dripless candles in brass candlesticks illuminated the faces of the two men who sat stiffly at opposite ends of the golden oak dining table. The only consistent sound was the sound of the flatware as it cut and scraped against the porcelain dinner plates. But every so often either one or the other made an attempt at conversation that drifted off into nothingness.

The one ingredient that was unmistakably there was gloom. Frank was trying hard, way too hard, in fact, to keep Stephan’s spirits up. And Stephan was pretending much too hard that his spirits were already up.