Mom Met the New Neighbors

by Paul Beckman

The new neighbors moved in while we took the weekend off, camping. My mother went over with a plateful of her cookies but my father stayed in front of the TV. He’s not so social.

Mom came home and told Dad that the new neighbors would be coming for dinner Friday night and Dad grunted his displeasure.

“Just because we’re in Witness Protection doesn’t mean we can’t socialize,” Mom said.

Dad looked out the bedroom window and saw the couple walking over. He told me to hurry up and get his “gear” and since he doesn’t kid around about that, I pulled up my closet rug, opened the trap door, and got his long, hard case and scurried back to him.

“Get downstairs with your Mother,” he said while screwing the silencer onto his rifle. Then, in a flash, he had on the scope, slapped in the magazine, jacked one into the chamber, and slid the window up a couple of inches.

The man and wife both looked up at the same time.  He tossed the wine bottle; she, the flower bouquet; and both pulled out their pistols.

Dad dropped the woman with one shot just above her right eye and the man looked up, nodded, and holstered his gun. He turned and walked back to his house, got in his car, and drove off.

Dad saw the look on my face. “She’s the one I ratted on that got us in the program,” he said. “We’re safe now. Her boyfriend is FBI and the one that placed us here.”

Minutes later, the ambulance showed up and carted her body off and the next day, the moving truck came and loaded up.

Dad didn’t say much but I knew he wasn’t looking forward to sending Mom out again to check the new neighbors when they finally moved in.

by Paul Beckman

We’re walking down the street, bumping hips, a hand in each other’s back pocket, and life is good and has been, since we met on the Greyhound last week.

Becky wanted a burger, so we left the idiot box on at the motel and strolled down Rt 1 until we saw a sign in the window of The Widowmaker’s Bar & Burger Joint, so in we went and had beers and burgers, and they were some fine burgers, big and juicy, and we both got ‘em with lots of fried onions, and they didn’t have fries but came with big ripple chips and bread and butter pickles.

It was kind of quiet, and after we took a table, I walked over to the bar, got our beers, and the bartender took my order. He gave a whistle when they were done, and I took the plates to the table and brought our glasses back and got another pair of beers.

We were almost to our room, walking through the motel parking lot, kicking up the stones, when a door opened, and this bruiser comes out, yelling that we were kicking stones at his truck and scratching it.

We wouldn’t do that, I told him, and he asked, was I calling him a liar, and I said I wouldn’t do that either, and he said, so you were kicking stones at my truck, and I could tell he was drunk, and a mean drunk to boot, so we kept walking, and he yelled for us to stop, and I guided Becky over to our room and unlocked the door, and quick locked it, and we looked at each other and shrugged, and we both knew we dodged a bullet, and then the mean drunk kicked our door open with one kick.

We didn’t have a back door, and I told Becky to go lock herself in the bathroom and try to crawl out the window and get some help, and I said howdy to the mean drunk, and he took two steps in and tossed me around like a rag doll, and then he belched and fell over on our bed and went to sleep.

I whispered Becky out of the bathroom, and we got our stuff and started walking away from the motel, and drunk guy’s door was open, so I peeked in, saw his keys and wallet, and we had ourselves a ride to the next town and a couple of hundred dollars and two credit cards to boot.

We ditched the pickup when the sun was coming up and walked back to the Greyhound station we’d passed and bought two tickets to New York, and had an hour wait, but just before the bus pulled in, the drunk guy blasted through the waiting room door, gun in hand and shot Becky.

She was hurt bad but still alive, when he told me to give him his keys and his wallet and tell him where his truck was.

I did all that and then I saw the bullet coming at my head in slow motion and heard the noise, and that’s the next to the last thing I saw.

by Paul Beckman

Jarvis left early, skipping his breakfast coffee.

Mae took the bucket of cleaning supplies into the bathroom and began scrubbing. Two hours on the bathtub alone, and extra on the spigot and faucets. After the bathroom sin,k she ate some milk crackers and drank a beer.

She finished the sink in minutes, since there were only spots of spray and not layers like the tub. She started on the tile floor, had another beer, and then on the grout, which took three toothbrushes and a couple of hours.

When Mae finished, she saw a couple of sprays on the tile wall and got those off in no time.

After putting the cleaning bucket back, she set about making dinner for Jarvis. He always liked comfort food after a job, and she made a damned fine stew, if she said so, herself.

At eight he showed up with the banker all trussed-up and duct-taped. Jarvis tossed him in the tub, saying dinner first.

Mae wished he wouldn’t bring his work home with him, and that he lay more plastic down, but she said nothing and watched a little TV, while Jarvis was busy hacking away.

by Paul Beckman

The Russian had Uber drop him off at Long-Term Parking at Newark Airport, wandered around until he found an older Lexus that could be hotwired. He popped the lock, hotwired it, and drove off, paying the eighty-two-dollar parking fee.

He made it to New York in forty minutes and double-parked on E. 49^th, next to Dicey Meyer’s car.

He found the right key on the ring and opened Dicey’s trunk. He pulled out the rolled-up rug with Dicey inside and popped the trunk on the stolen Lexus. 

A streetlight illuminated a pajama-clad couple—gypsies. They stared out at him from their prone positions. A flashlight shone on the floor between them, lying in front of two Bergdorf shopping bags with clothes spilling out. The man held an open container of hummus and a bag of pita chips. A bag of grapes sat at the ready. The woman was busy flossing.

The Russian motioned for them to get out of the car. They didn’t budge. The man wiped his mouth with the napkin tucked into the neck of his pajama top. The woman rinsed from a water bottle and spat out into a chipped cup with a broken handle that read, “I Heart da naştere.”

A police car, lights flashing, rounded the corner.

by Paul Beckman

Quinn, after dinner, while sipping brandy with his wife, Mary Elizabeth, and talking about their respective days tells her that he’s moving out of their New York apartment and taking  a new job in California. Mary Elizabeth puts her glass on a coaster and rushes to him, sits on his lap, and begins kissing him.

“I’ve always wanted to live on the west coast in warm weather, Quinn. What a great surprise. When are we going?”

“We’re not,” Quinn says. “I am. This has been a nice five years together but I want something better than nice. I want exciting.”

Mary Elizabeth hops off his lap, furious at herself for acting the fool. She walks around the room. “Is there anything we can do to make our lives together more exciting for you?” she asks, picking up the fireplace poker. She pokes the logs. Sparks drift up the chimney.

“You don’t have exciting in you,” Quinn says. “It’s no one’s fault. You’re sweet and lovable and we get along fine, but I want more.” He drones on and Mary Elizabeth’s mind goes to her safe spot—the ball field.

This is for all the marbles—deuces wild, two balls, two strikes, two men on and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and Mary Elizabeth is facing a mean knuckleballer with World Series written all over him.

Mary Elizabeth holds her hand up and the ump calls time.

Knucksie yells something from the mound I can’t repeat on TV.

Mary Elizabeth tightens her gloves, takes a couple of cuts with her Louisville Slugger and steps into the batter’s box again.

Knucksie throws, and Mary Elizabeth fouls it off.

Three more pitches and three more foul balls.

Knucksie is frustrated and starts ragging on Mary Elizabeth, and she dashes off to the mound, and they go at it.

The umpire walks out, breaks up the jawing, and walks back to home plate.

Knucksie turns his back on Mary Elizabeth; she stands, bat resting on her shoulder, prepared to follow the ump back to the plate.

She turns, steps into her home run swing, and connects with Knucksie’s head.

“How’s that for exciting? Mary Elizabeth asks, as she drops the bloody poker on the carpet next to Quinn’s head.

She picks up his brandy and takes a sip.

by Paul Beckman

She appeared to be swathed in her entire wardrobe, while sitting on a folding chair in front of a modest storefront on the Lower East Side, in front of two neon signs:

Fortunes Told.

Ask About Your Future.

I was slow walking the New York streets, seeing the sites, as I approached her. She stood and parted the curtain in the doorway and asked if I’d like to know what my future’s going to bring.

“Isn’t that something you should already know?” I asked, pointing at the neons.

She said, “The gun. Don’t you want to know about the gun?”

          I patted my pants pocket and walked by.

“It’s worth ten dollars to know about the gun—don’t you think?”

I turned and followed her inside. She switched off the neon lights, locked the door, and pulled a curtain closed on another doorway, exhaling the smell of boiling cabbage, as she lit watermelon-scented candles around the room.

 She pointed to the chairs around a small, round, wooden table. “The seat you pick will say a lot,” she said.

 “In that case, why don’t you pick out the chair for me?”

“That’s not how it’s done,” she said. “My name’s Rose. What’s yours?”

“Shouldn’t you know that, also?”

“I don’t know what you’re calling yourself, but your birth name was Myron.”

“That’s the name I go by,” I lied.

“No it’s not,” she said and got up and took a cigar box from a bookshelf and said, “Put your gun in here, and I will tell you all you need to know.”

I took out the unloaded, rusty .22 caliber and left the bullets in my pocket.

She dimmed the lights, put both hands on the box, centered it on the table, and moved them over the box, as she hummed a song from Fiddler on the Roof.

          “This is not a lucky gun. It was used to hold up several bodegas, and it wounded a policeman. This will only bring you bad luck, and you should have left it, when you saw it lying in the curb.”

 Rose stood, indicating the reading was over. “I suggest you leave the gun here for me to dispose of, for you.”

I paid her the ten dollars and then lifted the top of the cigar box to get the .22. It was empty.

A large, mustachioed man entered the room, brushing the curtain away, and stood with a menacing look. He had a Bowie knife in his belt and the .22 in his hand.

“I told you this was not a lucky gun,” she said. “Now give my husband all your money and your wallet.”

I did what I was told and backed to the shadows of the entry door, while reaching behind my back. “You were right, Rose, that’s not a lucky gun. It’s unloaded, but this 9mm is lucky and loaded.”

I pointed it at her and her husband and took my money and theirs.

Then I took the cigar box for good measure.

by Paul Beckman

Lola cried when she was happy. She cried while watching a sad movie. Her mother cried at the same things and at the same time when they were together. Lola’s husband laughed at her for crying and teased his mother-in-law for it, also. Lola’s father was more of a weeper. Cutting into a fresh melon and smelling its fragrance could cause him to shed a few tears. Lola’s husband did not dare tease or laugh at his father-in-law. He knew better than to make an enemy of this short, stick figure man with Popeye muscles, who had a ruffian’s reputation on the docks where he was a longshoreman.

Lola’s son was another story. He wanted to be like his grandfather and be tough, and like his father and not cry, but he was fifteen and his father took too much pleasure in kicking his butt for minor infractions of their house rules, or any delay in getting his chores done in a timely manner.

Ethan, the fifteen-year-old, would spend as much time as possible at his grandparents’, and neither one of them would yell at him, much less hit him. Once he stayed away for a week after talking back to his father and getting the buckle end of the belt on his back and face.

When Lola came home from the store and saw the blood splattered on the kitchen linoleum, she went up to her son’s bedroom and held him while they both cried themselves out, and then she ran a tub for him and dried him off, adding salve to  his open wounds. She brought him up a bowl of cereal, and he slept as she went down to the basement and got his baseball bat and sat holding it in the dim light of the living room, waiting for her husband to come home from the bar.

The next day Lola called her father, who said he’d be right over.

Lola and Ethan were sitting on the steps leading upstairs. Her husband’s car was parked on the lawn with the driver’s door open, and Lola’s husband leaning half out of the car.

Her father pulled up, looked at his son-in-law, and then went into the house, where he saw the condition of his grandson, both eyes swollen and blackened, with buckle marks on his arms and back.

He told Ethan to go get his father’s belt and hunting knife and bring them in to him and then to stay outside until he told him he could come in.

Lola’s father took her into the bathroom, where between sobs she told him what she had come home to and what she did. He told her that her husband beat her, then closed the door and told her to strip down to her bra and panties.

He proceeded to give her a beating like the one Ethan got, but not as severe.

He then raked his arms and face with the hunting knife and stabbed himself in his side. He ran Lola a bath and walked downstairs and outside, just as the police car the neighbors called, pulled up.

Ethan told the police he got back at his father with the baseball bat he was holding, and his grandfather told the police Ethan was trying to protect him from his father and the knife.

Then Lola came limping out and said that she gave her husband back for the beating he gave Ethan and her the night before.

The policeman told them all to go in the house while they waited for a detective and an ambulance.

When they showed up, they walked into the house and Lola, her father, and Ethan were all sitting on the couch huddled, crying, and bleeding.

by Paul Beckman

These are some of the things I know and some I wish for:

We’ll be getting new BMX bikes. I hope they’re Tony Hawk models. My new brothers will want to play ball with me and Mikey: softball, hardball, bowling, and pinball. We’ll go to a new school in a nice town and live in a big house with our own bedrooms. We won’t have to beg for food or steal it. And we’ll be able to play on the high school sports teams—that is, if we make the tryouts. I’ll be able to play drums in the school band and my brother Mikey will write for the school newspaper. And we’ll go out on dates, get our driver’s licenses, and use our new father’s car. Our new mother will ask about our food choices when she is making out the shopping list. All this and we’ll get new clothes. But best of all, we’ll never have to see our birth parents’ fists again.

Our new mother and father picked us up and signed the papers. We got in the back seat of their silver Mercedes, and they asked if we were hungry, and asked how we feel about a drive-through, and we told them we were excited about McDonald’s, and it would be one of the biggest treats of our lives. We got two Big Macs, a large fries and shake each, and were careful to not drop or spill anything in the car.

We drove off the turnpike ramp and went through beautiful neighborhoods as it got dark, and finally we drove to a  cul-de-sac, and went all the way to the end, and took the driveway in what seemed forever, to a large brick house that was so beautiful, we both wanted to cry, and our new father opened a garage door from the driveway, and we drove into our new world, which was the basement of this new world, where we were told that we were only allowed upstairs in the house when our new parents invited us.

For now, we must put on the handcuffs with their chains imbedded into the cement and our ankle cuffs. We each had a mattress. They brought us down food after they had dinner. It was left over from their meal, and Mikey and I shared roast beef with bite marks, the same with the baked potatoes, dessert, and vegetables. We were told that at the right time in our training, they’d let us loose to work in and around the house, but it would take a while of good behavior.

Our new mother homeschooled us, starting in the morning, after breakfast of leftover eggs, and toast, and sometimes milk, and once, juice.

We never did get our driver’s licenses or go out on dates, or even have our own rooms, until one day, they were gone all day and came home drunk.

Over time I had worked a big piece of concrete almost loose, and they brought us their doggie bags from the restaurant, and sat watching us eat, while drinking Scotch, passing the bottle back and forth until they got silly, and then a little mean, and finally passed out drunk.

Mikey reached the lady’s pocketbook, snagged the keys and her wallet, undid my locks, and I stood holding the concrete slab high over the man’s head.

After we took care of business, we went upstairs to finally see our new house and raid the fridge.

by Paul Beckman

Dad was coming over to give us presents from Santa. Mom told us he didn’t buy them—he got them from his Christmas party at work.

Dad went upstairs to the bathroom, which was at the top of the stairs. I was excited after I opened my one present—a Roy Rogers cap pistol. My older brother showed me how to load it. I wanted to tell Dad how much I loved this, because I loved Roy Rogers.

I stepped onto the platform to wait for him to come out of the bathroom. The door was open, and I could see him standing, peeing. He turned and saw me looking up at him.

“You sneaky little bastard,” he yelled.

Scared, I ran and sat next to my brother and his jigsaw puzzle.

The toilet flushed, and then angry stomping down the stairs. I kept my head down as he called me a wicked, evil little boy. “Now give the gun to your brother—you lost it for being a sneak.”

I got up and ran into the dining room with it, and he followed, yelling at me.

Mom walked out of the kitchen and stood with her arms folded.

Dad stopped yelling and stared. I fired two caps at him, and he turned and walked to the front door.

He looked around, and Mom had moved in front of me to block him off.

I reached around her and fired two more caps and he stormed out of the house.