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Finding Albert Redwine
I smoked crack before they called
it that. This was Los Angeles. I had a good job delivering the mail and a house
that I shared with my Marine buddy Danny. We hated the Lakers more than
anything. We were throwing a party to celebrate another Celtics victory. Larry
Bird got a triple double and he was like a god. It was mostly guys from the post
office and the beach side basketball courts where we played pickup games. And
there were always some pretty ladies around. I got so fucked up I couldn’t even
stand.
People
were starting to leave because it was late and it was Wednesday. Danny’s kid
sister tried to pull me off the couch. Her name was Beth and sometimes I called
her Betty Boop after that cartoon. She had a thing for me and so I was nailing
her behind Danny’s back. It started by accident and then I couldn’t stop. If he
found out then we would have to fight. He was Golden Gloves but I don’t know
who would’ve won because I’d been in my share of scraps too. In the Corp nobody
used to mess with either of us.
It
was wrong of me but most of what I did was wrong. She was old enough so that it
was legal but still. Danny was face down in the kitchen where he puked. Beth
sneaked us into my bedroom. I begged her to leave me alone but once she took
her clothes off it was all over. She had bleach-blond hair that was cropped
short. I broke up with her last Christmas and she tried to overdose. In the
back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital so they could pump her stomach
she told me that next time she’d do it right. I held her hand because I didn’t
know what to say. She told me I could never leave. After that the sex was
always violent and exhausting and beautiful in its primal quality. I usually
felt bad about it. She was petite but sometimes I called her the featherweight
champ.
I was walking my route. There was
that haze hiding the sun somewhat. I wasn’t supposed to find him. His name was
Albert Redwine. His garage door was open and I needed a signature so I went
inside. He didn’t own a dog. That much I knew. I said his name two or three
times. Then he was swinging there in a little breeze. He’d used an orange
extension cord looped over a ceiling beam and his face was blue. I didn’t know
what to make of it because I had never seen a dead person before. Not outside a
funeral home. Even in the Corp we got gypped out of any action. Too young for
Vietnam and too old for Bosnia. I sat on an overturned bucket, probably the one
he had used. It got to me.
He
didn’t leave any note in an obvious place. His mail was mostly bills and the
package was from Phoenix, Arizona. It smelled like he shit his pants and I’d
heard about
that. He was tidy and his jeans
were creased in the middle and there were goose bumps on my forearms. I didn’t
know what could make a person go through all the trouble. He must have had a
plan. His eyes were open and looking at me as though in judgment.
The Lakers beat the Celtics in game
four and Danny smashed the television in the street. Alejandro was wearing a
Magic Johnson t-shirt and so Danny busted his lip. Somebody pulled out a gun
until the cops showed up and stuck Danny in the paddy wagon. Beth cleaned up
the house a little. Then I pretended to be asleep but she was smarter than
that. I told her about finding Albert Redwine and she wondered what it felt
like so I put my hands around her neck and I squeezed her windpipe but not too
much. She was scared. She got on top of me and I could see her emptying eyes in
the trembling light of a candle.
Jon Boilard Jon Boilard's fiction has appeared in literary journals in the United States,
Canada and Europe, and his story entitled "Before Dying" was recently nominated for a
Pushcart Prize as one of the best of 2002. Several of the others have won
individual small press awards.
His work has also appeared or is forthcoming in
The Baltimore Review, Barbaric Yawp, Beloit Fiction Journal,
The Berkeley Fiction Review, Black Mountain Review, CrossConnect,
The Dalhousie Review, Dirty Dishes, Event, First Class, Front & Centre, Hindsight,
Ink, The Laurel Review, The MacGuffin, Parting Gifts, Puerto del Sol, Rattapallax, RE:AL,
The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The San Francisco State University Review,
The Sulphur River Literary Review, Thought Magazine, Transfer, Whiskey Island Magazine
and The Xavier Review.
Email: Jon Boilard
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