Pennsylvania Man by Tony Gordino

It’s nighttime, and- look, I won’t get into what’s gone on. I won’t get into Jenny or into what’s happening with the kids or any of it. I think it’s simpler than all that. And- it’s terrible. I don’t mean to say it isn’t. I’m just focusing on what I can change. There are people in terrible trouble and something’s gotta be done. Nothing can be done about Jenny. And the kids, I don’t know. I just don’t know. Anyway. It’s nighttime, which isn’t unusual. I am having dinner at the diner again. I sit in the booth across from the windows into the St. Pat’s rec hall. I watch him. This is the third night in a row after a few weeks waiting. I know something is coming because I’ve spent good time with thinking about it. I can feel it as if it were mine.

“Terrible, isn’t it?”

I look away from the window and into the flat brown light surrounding the waitress, “terrible?”

She takes her old finger from her apron and points back at the square TV in the corner of the ceiling, “They still don’t got ‘im. Been almost a month now. Poor lady. They say she was a puddle.”

I look over her head and watch the cop talk from a podium through the part in her hair. Right where the red turns to white, I can see him. Smile shining. Haircut shining. Badges shining.

“Still don’t?”

“Outta leads, they say. I guess they gotta wait ‘til he does it again.”

“Ain’t right.”

“Ain’t right.”

“Tuna melt.”

“Fries er salad?”

“Fries.”

She walks away but my eyes stay around where the white in her hair was, the part that splits her head down the middle. Then, I look across the street. I see him taking trips out of the back doors and through the puddles in the parking lot. One by one he unloads his truck, sliding milkcrates out of the flatbed until there’s nothing left. Soon, my coffee comes. Then, my sandwich. And he stands on wet pavement in the orange light getting laughs out of the old ladies that work in the church making meals for the sick and the seniors. Meals on Wheels. That’s where he is a few nights a week, but lately it’s been every day.

I check my watch and eat slowly, watching him charm the other drivers as they come in from their dinner routes, shaking hands and hugging. Gazing into their eyes, giving them calculated, practiced greetings. Monster.

When it’s time, when he locks up the company truck and says goodbye to the other drivers, I pay my check with cash and walk out onto Broad Street. I bury my hands in my pockets because it’s been getting cold. I lower my ball cap and raise my collar because I don’t want to be seen. It’s goddamn bright tonight. Bright as it gets all month. I follow him.

My steps are heavy. Have been. Few days now. Doctors don’t know. They say vertigo is tricky. Could be a symptom of something serious or could be you just got vertigo. Doctors don’t know. Doctors don’t know shit. With every step forward, my head slides a little further than my feet. And if I try to bring it back, it goes too far that way, too. Like standing on a boat or like my brain is the boat and the water in my head is boiling.

It comes and goes. Nine times out of ten, I can breathe through it. It lasts a few days, ramping up. Then, it’s one terrible day, and, after that, it’s gone clean for a few weeks. Three or three and a half easy weeks before the cycle starts up again. But we all gotta live with what’ll kill us.

Never mind the vertigo. I have to be careful. The streetlights are coming on but the moon is doing most of the work. It’s as bright as it is in hell. Add on that I got this shaky gait, so I gotta keep good distance. Tonight, the water’s boiling, but tomorrow I’ll be on the other side of it. Just gotta breathe through it, gotta stop this man. See, I saw it. I saw what he did to the wife a few weeks ago. I saw it with my own eyes. I won’t get into the details. You don’t want details. It’s terrible and I hate to know it. I hate it. It’s terrible. I gotta stop him or it’s the two boys next. I almost lose my step as the anger starts turning my eyes in at each other. Every step turns them in further. My god damn head, every god damn step too far forward, back too god damn far. I push through it. I gotta. For the boys, I gotta.

So, I blink long and slow and I breathe through the last few blocks. I track him down Tasker ‘til he turns on 5^th, and then, onto his block. It’s a quiet side street, and despite the booming moonlight overhead, it’s perfect for what’s next. I slow my pace and I wait and I peek past the brick on the corner of 5^th. Then, I step into the black space between two cars and I watch him dig his keys out.

The time it takes him to find them is plenty of time to run down the block and up the six steps to his porch to throw my shoulder into his. He falls and he gets up but I get my fingers on his neck quick and bring him back down. The full weight of his body is hanging from my hands. I watch the hair on his face as it stands stiff and grows thick. The moon is there in his eyes. It’s looking at me. It’s laughing. A perfect white circle fading to red as the curse climbs into his irises. I can see it, feel it. The moon is there in his eyes and as long as it is, my strength is enough. But if they go red, I’m done. So I squeeze and I keep squeezing and I know only one of two things comes next. Either he wraps his wooly hands around my wrists, pulls them off his neck, and rips me up into a puddle, or, the red fades and it’s only me and the moon and nothing else.

So I fight him. I fight him and he chokes and I fight him as he claws at me and I fight the red and I squeeze his fucking neck until there’s nothing god damn left and he drops from my hands onto his back and onto his bent legs and spills forward some so his cheek is flat on the stone of his porch.

And then, the door opens. I turn toward it to see a boy holding the knob. It’s just a screen between him and me and behind that boy is another boy. I try to smile, but I don’t exactly know how. They can’t appreciate what I’ve just done for them. So, I open the screen and kneel down and just say it plain. I tell the kid I did what I had to do and he’s got to come with me now.

But his face, it gets mad, mean. It’s more terrifying than I can understand. I look at his dad on the porch, and I wonder if maybe I just leave, let the cops help the kids. So, I look back at the boys and my plan is I just tell them I’m sorry and I run and I never stop running, but the plan blows away when I, I see four red eyes, chins turned down, smiles growing, not happy smiles, hungry smiles. Just red eyes staring at me. That’s the last thing I see as my head spins, as my hands and my knees hit the porch. Red eyes. That’s the last thing I see.

——–

“Terrible, isn’t it?” I say as I look away from my notepad and point back at the TV in the corner.

“Whattya mean? Headline says they got the guy.”

“Only after, though. Three people he killed this time, two was kids.” I put my pad and pen in my apron and shake my head at the cop talkin’ at the podium, “Ain’t right.”

“Ain’t right.”

“Fries er salad?”

“Fries.”

Tony Godino

Image: Interior of a diner with booths by the window and a truck parked across the street. From Pixabay.com