The Stringer by Christopher Ananias

Extreme Adult Content – refer to the tabs at the bottom of the story

A small dark-haired boy was walking in the fog like a phantom. Lenny Coins thought about his father. How could his father do such a thing—things? But the balloons. What about those?

At the bus stop, Tom waited for Lenny and offered him a Marlboro cigarette. Like he did every morning.

“I’m only eleven. I don’t smoke, Tom.” This was in the eighties when the Marlboro Man rode the range, instead of a hospital bed. Smoking was cool, and serial killers were coming on strong. 

“Well, you gotta start sometime. Um… How’s your dad?” Tom was twelve, red-haired, splattered with freckles, and beefy. He looked about sixteen. He took a seasoned drag and studied Lenny with smoke drifting from his nose. Lenny was vedy-vedy interesting. Tom had been Lenny’s neighbor until Tom moved over by the Elks Golf Course.

“I don’t have a dad, Tom.”

“Yes, you do. Remember that time he took us to the carnival in Bendsville? And we blasted those stars with a Tommy gun.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Lenny’s radar went up, at any mention of Bendsville. Bendsville had been one of Harold Coins’s favorite places to hunt. Sometimes he took Lenny along as a stringer. Lenny didn’t know he was a stringer, but that’s what he was.

“Was that the first one in Bendsville?” said Tom. “That little girl… Bethany Anne Squire?” His puffy freckled face got the eager look, like those old movies with Dracula drooling over a shaving cut, and Lenny thought, that’s all you care about.

“I don’t know. I’m just a kid.” But Lenny knew… Didn’t he walk around with a string of balloons tugging his finger and the promise of a puppy? He saw a red-soaked vision of his father in the back of the cargo van on a black tarp like a demon in a cave…Then he pushed the memory away.

“I’m just a kid. I’m just a kid.” mocked Tom. A cocky smile hung on his puffy face with the cigarette hanging out.

“Shut up, Tom.”

“You knew didn’t you?” Kids will say anything and a lot of it’s true. Funny, how we lose this ability—to speak the truth.

“Shut up!” Then they were fighting, and Lenny was holding his own against the bigger boy, and they didn’t see the school bus pull up, and the old bus driver Mr. Carlson was between them. “You little sons a-bitches!” His false teeth came spitting halfway-out, and he had to push them back in. Tom and Lenny in their red blotchy faced violence looked at each other and laughed. Tom’s cigarette laid on the street curling smoke. He didn’t claim it.

“What are you laughing at, Coins? When your father comes out of his coma. The state’s gonna fry that no-good bastard.” He smiled and showed his scuzzy dentures.

“Hey you old shit. You can’t talk to him like that.” said Tom, rushing forward his freckles dark red, again. The bus driver flinched, back. Lenny thought Tom was going to swing on him.

Carlson pointed. “One more word and you’re both off the bus.”

“Cool it, Tom.” Lenny, holding Tom’s beefy sweaty arm. It was over and they sullenly climbed the bus in front of Carlson, slumping in his dairy barn coveralls, he smelled like cow manure and wore a KENT Feeds cap. They went to the back seat. The other kids were watching them, then looking up at the bus driver. Carlson jerked the bus forward before they could sit, and headed toward the rusty water tower where a decommissioned Sherman tank sat, and they bounced over the railroad tracks, without even stopping.

 “Thanks Tom…That was bad-ass.” 

“Nothin’ but a thing, Leno.” They smacked high then low, just like Maverick and Goose in “Top Gun.” Carlson’s faded blue eyes watched them in the visor’s mirror all the way down the twisting highway through the foggy dips to the school rising on the hill. Just in time for the rain to splatter the bus’s roof.

At around 8:30, Mr. Kline, the Vice Principal, stopped Lenny in the deserted hall, where the red lockers were studded all the way to the gymnasium, GO DEVILS, plastered on the double doorway. “Hold it, Lenny.” Lenny thought, Great. It’s The Vest. The smell of Avon Cologne and cigarettes, thick and awful. Everyone smoked back then. Have you ever seen the Marlboro Man? The dude was cool with his reds and the horse, riding fences.  

“Here’s my hall pass, Mr. Kline.” Lenny had gotten used to getting braced and knew they always wanted information on the crimes. The cops tried to question him, but his mother always stopped them standing in front of Lenny in her starchy church clothes. Instead of her pole dancing clothes. “Showing her split,” as Lenny’s grandfather liked to say, at the full nude strip joint in Lansing.

Lenny looked toward the Boys’ Restroom, holding it, he had to go—bad. His grandfather’s coffee again.

The Vest glanced at the yellow hall pass. He was a tall, imposing man with sandy brown hair. He handled all the disciplinarian duties, while his boss, the prick, Principle Evans got everyone to like him, saying the funny morning announcements. Lenny Coins sat at the top of Kline’s disciplinarian list.

Lenny thought, You don’t care about that pass. You fuck-face.

“How are you? What happened to your eye, Lenny?” said the man in the gray slacks and the maroon vest. Every day, he donned a different colored sweater vest that became his thing. His signature. Lenny thought in terms of signatures and Modus Operandi—after a year of living a true crime story. The newswoman on Channel 8 said Lenny’s father, the suspected child murderer Harold Coins, had a signature that only the cops knew. But that wasn’t true, Lenny knew it too. Had seen his father make the strange and horrific cuts with a Buck hunting knife. “Field Dressin,” as he crudely said. And what about me? All the shit I’ve done. He saw red and green balloons and a little dimpled hand reaching for one.

“Playing basketball, I caught an elbow. Mr. Kline,” said Lenny with an empty expression. It astonished Lenny, that the old bus driver Carlson hadn’t ratted.

“Come by my office after lunch,” said Vice Principal Kline. He thought, will I ever get this little bastard to spill it?

Lenny reached into his jean’s pocket and gave The Vest a business card.

The Vest studied the card. It was crammed with tiny words. He frowned and squinted. It said, Leonard Coins invokes the FIFTH AMENDMENT and DECLINES to answer questions, MUST CONTACT Attorney Alvin J. Apperson before speaking to him. The lawyer instructed Lenny not to talk to strangers, school officials, cops, anyone, while Lenny’s mother stood behind him in her black clothes like an undertaker. She was a twisted human being, as his grandad liked to say. Claiming to be a Christian, showing her cunt and asshole for the whole world to see. Poisoning Lenny over cup after cup of Maxwell House coffee. Lenny, for being only eleven and far beyond his years, saw the irony in Don’t talk to strangers.

Lenny’s mother frightened him; her mouth cracked like a bullwhip and so did her glittery stripper’s fist. She scared him more than his father, who was the Devil himself. A brain-dead devil. But he never touched Lenny, and he knew his father loved him in his own awful way, but he loved other things more, and wanted to share them with Lenny. And Lenny always jumped right into the van like they were going to Dairy Queen, and sometimes they did as a little treat for Lenny’s efforts.

“Here!” He threw the card at Lenny, “Get your ass back to class, Coins.”

“I have to use the restroom. I have a hall pass.” Lenny danced around hurting. 

“Go then.” The Vest stormed off toward the teacher’s lounge. His voice trailed back, “Where is my egg sandwich? Who took my sandwich?” then he muttered, “That goddamn gym teacher… Patterson!”

Lenny went right to the urinal. He usually hid in the stalls. The big boys were always after him, calling him Killer Boy. He kind of liked that.

The coffee he drank with Grandad affected his bladder all morning, even after he peed he still felt like going again, but he loved the dark brew and sitting on the porch with Grandad with rain pattering on the tin roof. Lenny was going to grow up and be just like him, except he would keep his hair and not get false teeth. Grandad talked about sex all the time.

Lenny studied his grandfather’s penis when they crossed streams in the toilet bowl. They were always racing each other to the bathroom. Grandad said on one occasion, “If they’re old enough to bleed their old enough to breed, yes sir!” and cackled. This would have infuriated Lenny’s mother, any mention of sex could make her fist fly, unless she was on the job riding the pole. Doing her signature—spread move—usually in some hairy beer guzzler’s face. 

Lenny’s plans of being like his dad changed. When Harold Coins, in a mad rabid lust, took a big chance in broad daylight and attempted to abduct a little pudgy girl from McClellan Park in Bendsville. He took her off her feet like a big squirming doll under his arm and carried her kicking and screaming through the grass. The cop saw him and blocked his van and pulled her service weapon. Coins held the girl hostage, by a swing set, with his Buck hunting knife cutting a red slice into the folds of her fat neck. The lady police officer didn’t hesitate and fired the luckiest shot of her career. A perfect head-shot just like she practiced on the gun range’s paper targets. But devils are hard to kill.

Lenny checked his face. Tom got him a good one, under his right eye a smudgy circle of black swelled up. He said to the mirror, “Tom, you rule.” No one besides Lenny’s deranged father had ever stuck up for him, always keeping his mother at bay. Tom was ready to fight for him. 

The boredom of classes and the dragging clock of middle school periods, broken up by buzzers and the lunch hour’s face smack of red dodge-balls, all came to a sudden 3:15 bell, and Lenny stood outside. He got a note from Mrs. James, the principal’s secretary. Lenny’s mother was coming to pick him up. They were going to the movies.

The black Monte Carlo SS pulled up to the curb. All the buses were gone, and the teachers’ cars were gone, too. Lenny opened the door. Lenny saw a bad sign. He thought, What? You’re wearing those stupid church clothes. She always dragged them to the Jehovah Witness Church with no windows after visiting Lenny’s brain-dead father. A line of pink sparkle trailed down her neck.

“Mom, I thought we were going to see ‘Top Gun’ tonight.”

“You’ve already seen it twice. We’re going to see your father.”

“I don’t want to see him. Can’t you pull the plug on that murdering pedophile?”

“Pedophile. Where did you learn a word like that?”

Lenny wouldn’t answer. He was not a rat. The cops could testify to that.

“Oh, of course, Grandad. How he could talk about his own son that way. Lordy Lords.”

Lenny let it wash over him. He saw the red-soaked vision of his father in the back of the van… Doing unspeakable things to a small body with long blond hair. The van smelled like copper pennies, shit, and screams! Harold Coins with his long black sideburns and Roman nose was breathing hard, and he was completely naked. His hands soaked in blood up to his forearm. He said, “Field dressin’ er, Lenny. Just like a fuckin’ deer. C’mere.” Lenny obeyed climbing out of the van’s black bucket seat. Harold Coins handed his son the wicked long Buck Hunting knife holding the bloody tip of the blade, with his thumb and forefinger, balancing the heavy knife waiting for Lenny’s fingers to wrap around the smooth black handle. Coin’s bright blue eyes lit up watching his son take it, like a transfer of some demonic spirit. Lenny’s fingers wrapped around the warm black handle feeling the steel hilt. An ungodly power surged through him. “Make the Devil’s foot. Right on her forehead. That’s it… right betwixt ‘er eyes.”

Once Lenny’s “balls dropped” that summer as his grandad liked to say, he dropped a semi automatic Remington .22 into Lenny’s hands, a Buck knife onto his belt, and the killing in the woods started just like it did with Lenny’s brain dead dad. After another day of swamp mud, lathered in DEEP WOODS OFF—Lenny still got mosquito bites. He sat in warm bathtub water with a sweaty forehead, thinking about balloons, and the promise of puppies, playing with himself. Semen shot out in the warm water in long stringy white curls.

They drove into the countryside, and Lenny saw a rugged-looking man on a horse. The Marlboro Man looked up from riding the fence line. The cowboy thought, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. He got nervous and lit another cigarette.

Christopher Ananias

Image: A bunch ofcolourful balloons on strings from Pixabay.com