The Shit-Poo Epos
Episode 4
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Sam wakes thinking that huge bats are swarming on him, black hooded things with faces like rabid Doberman's. He hits the air with balled fists, punching off the demons until he realises the demons are just in his head, a faulty wire buzzing some deep dormant part of his brain. He sits up. He is in his walk-in closet laying on the bare reeking mattress he’d dumped there on the floor. He lays back again and tries to piece together events of last night.
He remembers William disappearing. He remembers calling the Dame. He remembers these things but what concerns him is what happened after that. He has no idea. Slowly he peels himself off the mattress again until he sits up. His temples throb. He tries to massage some blood into his brain, but to no avail. Groaning he gets up and staggers to his hand-basin. He looks at himself a moment in the mirror. The mirror gives him vertigo and he vomits brown chunks into the basin with enough force to have some of it cascade over the edge of the basin onto the ground. A deep coat of non-descript ex-food covering the stained porcelain. He looks at this a moment then belches loudly. He fills a glass with water and drinks it. Then another. And another. With the tap running he tries to push the chunks of puke down the drain with his fingers, but no luck. He gives up and staggers backward until he hits the desk. He sits on it and then lays back until he can feel his body calming down and his breathing returning to normal.
He wakes a few hours later. The sun is shining into the window. It must be afternoon. The phone rings and he looks at it a moment, watching it vibrate with every ring. The vibrations reverberate in his skull skin-plastered against the desk’s surface. That’ll be the Dame.
He lets the phone ring out and just lies there, stares at the ceiling. Yellow rings caused by leaks in each of the four corners. He rubs his face with his hands, upsetting a layer of boozehound-grime. After the rub he rubs his fingers together until a small black ball of dead skin-cells, barroom smoke and whore-spittle is formed. Looking at it he works himself into a sitting position. Balancing the little ball on his thumb he flicks it across the room with his middle-finger.
The room smells of vomit. He gets up, standing unsteadily he opens the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet to the left of his desk. That is where he keeps his clothes. There are no clean clothes there. Damn. He reaches into his pocket. The roll of twenties William gave him is no longer a roll. A fold of two twenties and a handful of change.
Bending over to grab the blanket off his bed he groans. He spreads the blanket on his desk and piles his dirty clothes in it. Then he bundles it up by pulling all four corners together and holds it under his right-arm. He puts on his hat and pushes his feet into his shoes without tying the laces, then he is out the door.
He is sitting in the laundromat wrapped in his blanket watching his clothes roll and tumble in the washing machine. He is drinking orange juice from a liter carton he bought at the corner store. He looks at his sorry belongings roll over and over in the soapy water. Where did William go?
'Yes,' he thinks and sits up, his mind at attention, 'where did William go? The gardener had been my hunch at first. Then the postman. But not William. The Dame trusted him too much.’ A loud beeping breaks him from his thoughts. He opens the washing machine and heaps the damp clothes in a dryer, inserts the coins and turns it on. Another twenty minutes. He steps outside the laundromat and lights up a cigarette.
He stumbles back to his apartment in just an undershirt and some warm pants. Back inside he takes his clothes back off and washes himself with water from a bucket, ignoring the drying vomit in the basin for now. He dries himself, gets dressed and brushes his teeth. He puts the plug in the sink and fills it so hopefully the crust of puke will come off more easily when he returns.
He turns the key in the ignition and she roars. The car is alive. Thank God. He pulls out onto the road and points the Hupmobile into the direction of the Dame. Time to face the music. A car coming his way flashes his lights and Sam turns his on. The light of the day is already fading. His first case and he has already failed. Not only did he lose the money, but he also managed to drink himself stupid instead of getting onto damage control. William’s trail by now would have gone cold.
A flash of his dear late mother glimmers into his head as he pulls into the drive of the house. ‘You will always fail at everything.’ A curse she laid on him. Exactly what the Dame will now tell him. He clears his throat, a deep rattle of phlegm as it collects in his mouth. He parks the car behind the house and opening the door spits the oyster into the dust, where it rolls further, a tiny green-brown ball of himself. The view is obliquely satisfying.
The back door is opened by Albert whose face is set to thunder and amusement at the same time. Sam looks at him a moment then sighs and steps past his tormentor into the house.
He finds the Dame in the kitchen, red-eyed, her hand held by the chambermaid he stuck it to two nights ago. He has forgotten her name. Both women would’ve shot him on sight if they’d been packing heat. He can feel the death radiating from their eyes.
‘You have a lot of guts showing your face here again.’ Sam looks at his shoes. He swallows. ‘I thought I owed you at least that much ma’am.’ He feels like he is about five years old. ‘I’d never thought it’d be him ma’am. Not after what he meant to you.’ The Dame looks at him, then the mask of her face breaks and she starts crying again. The maid puts her hand on the Dame’s shoulder, trying to comfort her. ‘I am really sorry Dame Gnaufert,’ Sam tries again, but she holds up her hand to shut him up. ‘Leave,’ she sobs, ‘and don’t come back here again.’
The outside air has got a chill to it, even though it is the beginning of autumn. He shivers and hugs his arms close to him. The sun is under now. Darkness behind the house. He looks toward the servant’s quarters. He hears the Doberman’s bark. Then a light starts to shine in the deep crevices of his brain.
The dogs in the kennel are going crazy. There are two of them, their paws against the mesh of their cage. But they ignore Sam. They are barking for their boss. He opens the door of the cage and steps inside, closing the cage behind him. The dogs still ignore him, scrambling for the momentarily open door, but he manages to close it in time. With a deft movement he hooks a leash onto one, then the other. He takes a deep breath, then opens the cage-door.
He has not ran this hard for a long time. Actually, he has never ran this hard. Or far. But he is not letting go of these dogs. They first led him back to the ‘Pig and Whistle’, now they are leading him further into his neighborhood. Would William be stupid enough to be hiding under his nose?
He runs past the post-office, past ‘Heave-Ho’s’, past the little park with its hypodermic needles and its ladies of the night. He tears through his stomping grounds and out until the dogs stop, panting at the water of the bay around which the city has been built. They howl with frustration at the tiny lights hovering like fireflies in the darkness of the water beyond. William has taken to the waters. Would he still be out there on one of those ships? Or is he gone already? And does he have the shit-poo with him?
The next morning he is on the pier showing William’s picture to fishermen there. He went back to the Dame last night. Albert was about to sic the dogs on him, as the Dame had ordered, but when Sam said they were in his car they fell silent. He explained what he had done. That the trail was not yet cold and that William was yet within their grasp. What he needed now was a picture of William and a few more dollars to cover his expenses. He would find the dog, if it was the last thing he did.
He shows the picture to fisherman after fisherman. None has seen William. He stares over the water. He is still out there. As if he can smell William on the wind. He has left from here to wherever, Sam knows so. Sam knows too that these boats can be hired at night. For whatever purpose. William would’ve come here, even if it was to have someone take him to a bigger ship.
A whisper from behind, ‘hey mister.’ He turns. An old man with a striped yellow and black bandana, three whole teeth in his mouth and big bushy eyebrows stuck on his face like leeching caterpillars, breathes in Sam’s general direction. Rum. Cheap Rum. ‘Hey mister, I hear you are looking for someone?’ Sam sizes him up. The man is tiny, reaches to Sam’s chest, no higher. ‘Yes,’ Sam says, ‘sure am. Do you have any information for me?’ The old-timer coughs and turns his pocket inside out. Sam smiles and draws a twenty from his pocket. The man smiles back and points down the pier. ‘You’ll want to talk to Bart there.’ ‘Which one is he,’ Sam asks. ‘The big one.’
Bart is big. Very big. Not fat. Just big. Tall. Huge. He pretends not to hear Sam when he clears his throat and says : ‘Excuse me?’ Sam clears his throat again. ‘Excuse me, Bart, is it?’ The behemoth glances at Sam sideways, then goes back to staring at the sea. ‘Beat it,’ Bart responds. Sam’s face sags. How very rude. He turns and walks back up the pier a few steps. Then he turns again, he takes a breath as if he is about to say something, but he thinks the better of it. Instead he kicks Bart in the back of the knee as hard as he can. The giant nearly falls face-first into the water, but he manages to stay on the pier by throwing himself back, landing on his ass. Sam immediately kicks Bart in the kidney, once, twice, then punches him in his ear. The fisherman doesn’t even know what has happened to him. Dazed he sees Sam hover into view. ‘Now,’ says Sam, holding an open switchblade delicately against Bart’s throat, ‘can we talk?’
The Final Episode Next Friday...
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'Blues Fiction - Joran C.A. Monteiro's Writing'
© Joran C.A. Monteiro 2010
