Kaori's art did not lie: Pascal, the bondsman, does not believe Enzie, but then he makes a grim discovery. The Aether and the Lie is a story of greed, failure, and the past.
Visit MontanaVoice.com for more information and to listen to additional episodes.
Kaori's art did not lie: Pascal, the bondsman, does not believe Enzie, but then he makes a grim discovery. The Aether and the Lie is a story of greed, failure, and the past.
Visit MontanaVoice.com for more information and to listen to additional episodes.
The Lie
a novel
Chapter Seven – Pascal by Steve S. Saroff
Kaori told me that she had killed her ex-boyfriend as well as his new girlfriend. She said she slashed them both with a kitchen knife as they were having sex. She drew sketches, which she showed me the previous night in The Green Tortoise hostel. When I told her that I did not want to look at the drawings, she hit me in the face. I think that she broke my nose. If she told me the truth, as she was murdering her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, I was burying the stolen money. Right after that, I had gone to Kaori’s apartment and had sex with her without knowing what she had just done.
Our flight from Seattle landed in Missoula. Kaori and I walked out of the airport and got into my car. Kaori said to me, “You so silent.”
I didn’t answer her.
I drove back towards town. It was late in the afternoon, and the air was cold. Winter was knocking on the sky. I got to Kaori’s apartment, parked, but left the engine running. She asked me, “What you do now? What I do?”
I looked at her. The portfolio case that she was holding in her lap was huge. I touched Kaori’s hand. I said, “Go inside. Cook yourself some food. Eat. I need to have someone look at my nose. See if there is something they can give me, some drugs or something.”
“I hurt you,” she said, her head bowing down, her long hair covering her face.
I wanted to yell at her, but instead, I just quietly asked, “Kaori, did you kill Jim and Elizabeth?”
She looked up at me. There was no flinch, no rapid eye blinks, no tremble in her hand. Instead, she said, “Yes. He mine. She wrong to be there.”
As she said this to me, I remembered how the last sketch she showed me, which she forced me to look at by pushing it at my face while my nose was bleeding heavily, was a sketch of her killing herself.
I turned the car engine off. I said, “Ask me to come in with you, and I’ll get you started on cooking some food.”
She smiled then, nods her head, and said, “Yes,” and we got out of the car and went inside.
I put rice in a rice cooker. Then, I filled a tea kettle with water and put that on the stove.
Her painting easel in the center of the small room was empty. So I asked her, “Do you have any blank canvases? Can I watch you start a new painting? I have seen you sketch, but I have never seen you paint.”
She nodded and got a blank canvas stretched on a wooden frame and put it on the easel. Then, she asked, “What I paint for you?”
I said, “Paint how you feel now.”
She took a tube of black oil paint and directly squeezed some of it onto the center of the canvas. She picked up a long-handled brush and touched its hairs lightly into the paint, then moved the brush diagonally up the canvas, leaving a thin, black line that faded into wisps of gray. She took another tube and squeezed a small amount of orange paint near where the first line ended. She put a dab of red paint next to that. She used the same brush, mixing the two colors into the black paint that remained on the brush into a deep, golden red.
I had expected blood and pain, instead where her hand had moved, there became an evening sky.
She poured some turpentine into a small container on the easel’s tray. She rinsed the brush. She picked up a wooden palette and then another tube of paint. She put paint onto the palette. Then she put another dab of paint from another tube on the palette. She used the brush and stirred a new color. Then, her hand went to the canvas, where she touched and smoothed the black paint with a fingertip. Then she touched the brush, then touched the canvas again. She put her hand in the turpentine. She wiped her hand on her shirt. She moved the brush again, and then there was a tree, then another tree, then a grove of trees.
She made a new color. She wiped her hand on her shirt again. The white, lace shirt that she was wearing in Seattle. I saw that the oil paint has gone through the fabric and is staining her skin.
She was still painting. The trees became leafed, the foliage became bright green and yellow. She put an azure stripe of sky underneath the sunset. Then she painted, with fingertip and brushstroke, two moving figures. Two people dancing under the trees in blurred motion. Their arms were outstretched. One had a foot off the ground. She painted the grass beneath them as a swipe of color.
The teakettle started whistling. I got up, found the tea, and poured the boiling water into a cup. The rice was still cooking. I brought Kaori the tea and put it down on the small table next to her easel. The painting was perfect, and I wanted to tell her to move away from it, but instead, I said, “I have to go. My face. I’ll come back soon. You drink this. When the rice is done, you eat. I’ll be back soon.”
She nodded and said, “I finish painting for you. Then you come back.”
I went back to my car. I started to dial 911, but I stopped. What was I going to say? That someone I bailed out of jail the week before had shown me some drawings? I touched the bridge of my nose. Tight and painful. Would I say that she broke my face because I would not look at what she had drawn? Would I then say that as I bled, I stroked her hair, that I breathed close to her, that I felt her shudder?
I put the phone down and drove downtown. I parked in front of Worden’s market. There was a payphone, one of the last anywhere in town. I used it to call the bondsman, the gun-carrying person who had helped me get Kaori out of jail.
He answered, and he remembered me. I told him that I had a problem and that I wanted to talk with someone. So I asked him what he was doing.
He asked, “She skip on us? Is she gone?”
“No,” I said, “She’s inside her apartment. But I think she saw her ex. She says she killed him. Killed the guy’s new girlfriend too.”
I heard the bondsman sort of snort on the phone, and then he said, “Why talk to me? Just call the cops.”
“I’m not sure of anything,” I said, “not sure if she is making things up. Not sure if she is telling the truth...”
The bondsman interrupted me and said, “Everyone lies.”
We were both quiet for a moment. Finally, I asked if I could meet him someplace.
“That girl couldn’t kill anyone,” he said. “I can tell a Fella that ’cause anyone who talks about killing is always the worst kind of liar.”
“She didn’t talk much,” I said. “She mostly showed.”
“Showed a Fella? How?”
I said that I didn’t want to talk more on the phone. Again, I asked if I could see him.
“A Fella’s persistent. That’s a truth,” he said. “Ok then.” And he told me that he was in his truck. “In my office,” he said and told me that he was parked at the jail, and had been waiting about an hour for someone. However, he emphasized that if I hurried over, he could talk with me for a bit.
I hung up, and I was at the jail in less than seven minutes. There was a white pickup truck with a camper shell parked by itself in the lot, and I saw the bondsman in the front seat. I pulled up next to him so that our driver-side doors were next to each other. I rolled down my window, and he rolled down his.
He asked, “What happened to a Fella’s face?”
I didn’t mention my face, but I briefly told him about going to Seattle, about Kaori’s drawings. I told him how graphic and detailed they were and how the last one I looked at was a self-portrait of her killing herself.
“That Japanese ritual? Where they gut themselves? Is that what she drew?”
I nodded yes.
He said, pronouncing it slowly, “Sepp-uku.” Then he asked, “She grow up in Tokyo?”
Again I nodded.
The bondsman declared, “Suicide capital of the world. That’s Tokyo.”
I didn’t say anything. Then I told him that before going to Seattle, she and I had been to New York. I told him that I was worried about calling the police to check on her story because I would have had to explain the out-of-town travel.
He said, “Those were her restrictions. Not yours. And if the girl is in hand, if she shows up at the hearing, and if she has stayed away from those people she attacked, it should be ok. You should be ok.”
“But if she has killed those people?” I asked.
“She ain’t killed no one,” he said.
I felt better, but then I was still worried about her killing herself. I told him this.
Instead of answering, though, he said, “A Fella never did say what happened to his face.”
I touched my nose. I winced. “You wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin on you?” I asked.
“Always have something,” he said. He reached into a coat pocket and handed me a plastic bottle.
As I swallowed the pills, he said, “A Fella still hasn’t said about his face.”
“She punched me,” I said.
He started to laugh. Loud. Then he stopped and said, “Sorry. Can’t help laughing at how things work out. Help someone and a Fella gets his lights knocked out. Story of our sad lives, ain’t it?” He laughed again, then continued, “Worst beating I ever did get was from a girl. She came up behind me on the sidewalk. Daytime. People all over. Knocks me on the head with something hard, knocks me flat. Stars and lights. Starts kicking me. Thought I was going to be dead. And I still miss her.”
I could tell that he was waiting for me to ask more, but I was thinking about Kaori back in the apartment. So I started the car and said, “Then you think it will be all right if I call the police and have them check on her story?”
He looked at his watch. He said, “Tell a Fella what. Let’s just go over to the boyfriend’s place and take a look. Knock on the door. Then a Fella will have a better notion of how to handle things. Might help you know what a Fella is dealing with, then dump her fast and hard.”
He turned around and rummaged in the back seat of the truck’s extended cab. He brought a plastic box into the front seat with him. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but he finally said, “Here it is, got it.”
“Got what?” I asked.
“Copy of restraining order they gave us when we bonded her out,” he said. “One order against one Kaori something or ‘nother to stay away from one specific, pissed off, ex. The address is 216 Grain street. You know where that be?”
I told him it was near where she lived and that I could find the place. He told me to drive and said he would follow, and then we both drove off the jail’s parking lot.
He parked his truck behind me in front of the house. A blue house with shrubs in front and tall trees showing from the back yard. There was a car parked in the driveway.
The bondsman got out of his truck, holding the copy of the restraining order. He said, “Think I’ll knock on that door. Say I’m a checkin’ to make sure that the girl hasn’t been violating her bail terms, make sure that she hasn’t been un-restrained.” Then he walked up to the front door and rang the bell.
I saw him ringing the bell again. And again. I could see his face become concerned. He waited a bit and came back. “There is some music playing in there,” he said, “but no one’s coming. I think a Fella and I might look around a bit.”
“I don’t want to go in there,” I said, “I don’t think we should go in there.”
“Never said nothing about going into a place. Me and a Fella are just going to walk in the yard. Check out the windows. Take a look from outside the place.”
I got out of my car, and then the two of us walked up to the house. I heard the music then. Radio music. Loud. We knocked on the door again, and again there was no answer. We walked behind some shrubs along the east side of the house. There were no windows there at all, so we kept going to the back of the house. The back yard had a tall, wooden fence and juniper and lilacs, their dry leaves scattered on the lawn. There was a white, metal lawn table back there, and walking up to it I saw that it was covered with stains from oil paint, stains from the many colors that Kaori used on her brushes, the brushes that she would have put down as she stood and painted.
I want to make these words run on here. I want to keep scratching with this pencil and fill this page, turn it, and fill another. I want to describe the other lawn furniture, the trees, and the other late Autumn leaves. I want to describe the backyard more, find the gentle words to lean on. I want to slow down and describe how, looking at that yard, I could imagine it in the Spring and in the Summer. A spot beautifully opposite to her lasting memories of her crowded, concrete childhood. Memories she had shown me through her sketches on the first night I was with her in her apartment.
I want to keep writing words to show you that I am not wanting to turn around and look. I don’t want to describe what comes next. But you must already know, and I knew, and the truth is moving up on us, fast. The bondsman was doing this for me. He was saying, “This sure is the window that she sure busted,” and he was touching my arm, saying, “A Fella needs to look at this.”
There was a sheet of plywood held by its top edge against a broken glass window with a strip of duct tape. “This wood is in the yard,” the bondsman said, “We are not inside, so no harm moving it a bit.” He took a folding knife from his pocket. He was now wearing leather gloves that I hadn’t notice him put on. He used the knife to peel the edge of the duct tape, which he then pulled the rest of the way from the window. He folded the knife blade back and returned it to a pocket of his jacket. Then he pulled the sheet of plywood back, and it fell on the lawn.
Music poured out of a jagged hole from the center of the picture window. The window which Kaori broke with her bare fists the night she was arrested. It was dark in the room. There was no movement. The bondsman, still standing a few feet back from the window, yelled, “Hey. Ya’ all in there? Ya’ all about?” There was no answer. From the same pocket where he had taken the knife, he took out a small flashlight. He stepped close the window, moved his face near the broken hole, and then clicked on the flashlight.
I was about to say that we should be going, that there was nothing to see, that Kaori had a wild imagination, and that I was sorry for having wasted his time. I was about to say this when the bondsman jumped back, spun towards me, and said, “No one should ever see that.” He knelt and picked up the sheet of plywood. He lifted it back up, putting it against the window as he found it. He rubbed the strip of duct tape, pushing it back to where it had been, sticking it to the glass. Then he looked around where the plywood had fallen on the lawn and ruffed over the grass with his boots. Then he walked rapidly out of the backyard and to his truck. I followed him.
Then I asked, “What was it? What did you see?”
He was upset. He was still holding the small flashlight which he was tapping against his leg. Finally, he opened the truck’s door and said, “Follow me.”
I said, “We need to go to her apartment. I don’t want her to kill herself.”
He answered, “That could be the best thing that would happen now,” but he looked at me, saw that I was upset by what he had just said, “Ok, a Fella should drive to her place. I’ll follow.”
I got in my car and drove the three blocks to Kaori’s apartment on Arthur. I parked, and the bondsman pulled up behind me. I got out of the car and went over to his truck, to the passenger side, and I opened the door, and I got in.
“Tell me what you saw. Tell me what I should know,” I said.
“I need to think,” he said. “We need to be careful here.”
I said again, “Tell me what you saw.”
“A Fella knows what I saw,” he said, “Already told me what was there. I didn’t believe a Fella. Didn’t believe that she could do that. But she did. A girl is on the bed. A guy is on the floor. Lots of blood. I think a Fella needs to call the police now.”
He had both of his hands on the steering wheel. And he kept talking and said, “No sir, did not like seeing that. No sir.” Then he sighed loudly. “Didn’t do nothing wrong. Just looked in the window. Could have seen what was there without touching that board. But I am forever plain stupid.”
He looked at me. He asked, “What does a Fella think we should do here?”
I didn’t answer. There was no game now. No sense of someone ripping someone off, no feeling that anything was hidden. Just a shared mood that we both are without anyone and should at least get our stories straight.
I said, “I didn’t see you do anything wrong. You looked in the window. You never touched anything. Right?”
He looked at me, and then he held his hand towards me to shake my hand, and he said, “Pascal. Pascal Ameto.”
I looked at him, and he said, “It’s my name. I don’t tell many people. It’s not on the ads or my card. But a Fella should know.” It was a real handshake this time. No flashes of guns, no sense of threat.
“I need to go in and be with her,” I said. “I need to make sure that she is not...”
“Yes, go in there. Yes. Go in and get the girl. Don’t tell her that I am here. Go in there and bring her out. Drive her to the station, bring her to the police. I’ll drive behind you. Then tell them what you told me. That’s all.”
“Alight,” I said, “Then I went into the building and knocked on Kaori’s door.
It was quiet at the door. So I knocked again, and then I heard Kaori say, “Just moment. Please.” Then the door opened.
She was smiling. She asked me, “You find medicine for face? You better now?”
I walked past her as she closes the door, and then she said, “I almost finish,” and she pointed her brush at the painting. That painting had no solitude in it, no violence. The combination of the colors, the way they lay next to each other, the deepness of the sky, the deepness of the ground, and the way the motion of the two people dancing, it all showed that they were not alone.
“I think this painting is finished,” I said, “It is lovely.” And I sat down in the chair near the painting.
“I become famous soon?” She giggled. She sat on my lap. I felt her hands going around the back of my head. I felt the wooden handle of the brush that she was holding rubbing against the nape of my neck. She said, “I paint happiness. Everything good now.” She moved her face towards mine. She tried to kiss me. I turned away. I pushed at her. She pulled my head towards her, pulling me hard. She said, “We pretend. You my love. You tell me why you like my art. Tell me.”
I stood up so that she had to stand too. She kept both of her hands around my neck. She dropped the paintbrush, and I heard it clatter on the floor. I reached back and put my hands around her wrists. I moved her hands down to my side. I looked at her eyes.
I asked her, “Kaori, why did you kill them?”
She stared at me. Then she said, “I forget,” and she turned and tried to walk back to the easel, but I didn’t let go of her hands. I turned her towards me, and I asked again, “Why?”
She relaxed a bit. Then she said, “Jim. He say I waste time. He say I should get other job. He say art no good.” She pushed at my chest, “But you saw. Why not he see?”
Then she said, “Oh, rice done. I check.” I let go of her wrists, and she walked into her kitchen nook. But, instead of filling a bowl with rice, she picked up a large knife in the sink. She touched its point, blade up, against the exposed skin of her midriff, just above her belly button. I saw the skin around the knifepoint depress slightly. She was holding the knife with both her hands, one hand over the other, thumbs pointing down.
“Kaori,” I said softly.
I took a few steps towards her and reached for the knife. She stepped back and turned the blade away from her so that the heels of her fists were pressing against herself. The knife was pointed up at an angle.
She insisted, “You only look. You no touch. This not for you.” Then she walked past me, to her painting and stopped in front of it. She said, without turning around, “Please, sit again. Tell me when you understand art.”
I thought about grabbing her. I also thought about walking out the door, going out to Pascal, the Bondsman, asking him for help, calling the police, or doing anything else, but instead, I did what she asked, I sat down.
She took the knife and, using its point started scratching thin lines through the wet oil paint. She held the blade like a brush, moving it with a scraping motion across the canvas, with enough pressure to slightly tear the canvas, bringing the fibers up through the surface of the wet paint. After each stroke, she wiped the knife tip on her hand and then wiped her hand on her shirt. “Paint should be more dry,” she said, “But this ok. This will show.”
Across the painting, there was now a new drawing emerging, gossamer-like, something that was almost not there. The outline of a face. Like the face in the painting that I had taken from the trash dumpster. On the night after, I had driven her home from the party. Closed eyes, full lips, hair that sprawled. It was Kaori’s face.
I touched my nose and winced. “Kaori,” I said, “I left ice in my car. I need to go outside for a moment. I will be right back.”
She said, “Yes, you come back. I be here.” She said this without turning, she said this as she was still moving the knife over the canvas, scratching lines for individual strands of hair.
I walked out of the apartment, and I left the door slightly ajar so that it did not latch. I walked out to Pascal, waiting in his truck.
“I can’t do it,” I said, “I can’t bring her out here. I can’t be the one who does it. I can’t be the one to bring her back to jail.”
Pascal nodded. He said, “Guess a Fella can’t bust his own girl, no matter how bad she is.” Then he said, “Makes the most sense that I do the telling. Since I saw the bodies. Been thinking about it. I figure that a Fella don’t have to be part of this at all. Figure that I was just checking up on the girl, making sure she hadn’t been around the ex. The only crime is hers. That’s what I figure.” He shrugged and said, “Why not wait inside with her. Don’t think it will be long before someone will be back here.” Then he started the truck and drove away without looking at me.
I went back inside. I opened the apartment door without knocking. She was standing at the painting, holding the knife in front of her face. She turned and looked at me. Then she turned her face back towards the knife and the painting.
I walked over and reached towards her hand, towards the handle of the knife. I put both of my hands around her hand and the knife’s handle. She hardly moved as I took the knife slowly from her. Then I said, “Kaori, let’s sit down now,” and she nodded.
We were sitting on her bed. I put the knife on the floor. Then, with my foot, I slid it under the bed.
She was looking at the painting, at the easel. She said, “I could not do. I could not kill.” I didn’t say anything. Then she said, “Self. Not kill self.” And she turned her face towards me and there were tears on her face, and she asked, “What wrong with me? Why I so sad? What I should do now?”
Crazy and wrong. A room filled with paintings and emptiness. Three blocks away, two dead strangers. Next to me was a girl who killed her “One Love” and then wrapped herself about me, closed her eyes in the dark, and said, “You.”
The impossible wish, to change the past.
Greed and loss. Dirty hundred-dollar bills that I had buried in clean mountain earth, which was now winter freezing. Money that I wished could speak for me and say that I was no longer a janitor. Money that I impossibly wanted to show that I could have been anything.
A week ago on the roof-top, up above Manhattan, Kaori whispered into my ear that I must love her “One time only.” And I heard what I wanted to. I touched what felt good.
But now I was lost. I saw that I was part of her going from a smashed window to jail, to murderer. I had pretended, with her, “One Love.” But there was no undoing cold, parted flesh. No math, no skill, no magic, that had yet learned how to re-start dead, or broken hearts.
There was a knocking on the apartment door. Kaori opened it without asking who it was. Two police were there. She did not seem surprised. They asked her to step into the hallway. She did. I came with her, but one of the officers told me to step away. But I was still close by when the other officer asked her if she knew anything about the two dead people, about Jim and Elizabeth. She didn’t hesitate. She said, “Yes, I did it. He was mine. He not hers.”
They arrested her. They put handcuffs on her. They took her outside. They put her into a car. I was not arrested, but I was told to get into another squad car, and I did.
We went to the station. I didn’t see where Kaori went. I was taken into a small, brightly lit room with overhead fluorescent lights. I expected to have to wait there a long time. Instead, a detective came in and explained that I didn’t have to say anything, that I was not under arrest.
The detective was runner thin. He looked like he never tired. He reached into an inside pocket of his coat and brought out a pack of cigarettes, and offered them to me. When I told him that I didn’t smoke, he put the pack back in his pocket. I noticed that the pack was new, that it hadn’t been opened. I asked him if he smoked, and he said, “No. Just want to make sure that you are comfortable. But we don’t allow smoking in here either.”
Staring at my face, he asked me what happened, and I was about to tell him that Kaori punched me, but instead, I said, “I’d rather not talk about it, if that is ok,” and he said, “Fine.”
He suggested that I call a lawyer. I told him that I didn’t respect lawyers. He agreed with me, but he said, “Double homicide is double-dead serious. I’ll be straight with you. Until we know what happened, you are suspect. You could be arrested right now. You could be in jail now.”
I answered, “I’ll say the same things with or without a lawyer, so let’s get this over as fast as possible.”
The detective placed a microphone in the middle of the table and pointed up at a corner where there was a wall-mounted video camera. He turned on a switch on the side of the microphone and then explained to me that everything I was saying would be recorded and videotaped. Next, he requested me to acknowledge that I was given a chance to have a lawyer present. After I said, I understood he began asking me questions. He asked me to explain what I had been doing with Kaori, how I knew her, and where we had been together.
I explained about her calling me when she had been in jail. I stated we had gone to New York to buy artwork and that we stayed in the Green Tortoise and stayed in the Marriot when we had been in Seattle.
He asked me about my face again. “Who broke your nose?” I didn’t answer. He asked, “Did you have any contact with this Jim and Elizabeth that your friend keeps talking about?”
I answered, “No. I have had no contact with those people other than listening to Kaori talk about them. So I have no idea who they are.”
He inquired again about my face, “Did someone hit you?”
Again I didn’t speak. The detective looked at his watch and switched off the taping equipment. He told me to stay in town, to be available. He wrote down my cell and my work phone number and address. He told me that I could go. He didn’t offer to get anyone to drive me back to Kaori’s apartment, where my car was parked.
It was one in the morning and snowing outside. The first snow, after the first knocking of winter. The beautiful, soft time before the wood smoke and frozen fog started mixing into a dull dome over Missoula.
Instead of calling an Uber, I walked the four blocks from the police station to Maloney’s bar. Other than the bartender, I was the only person there. I ordered a shot, and then I called Pascal. He answered right away. I told him that I just left the police station, and I explained that, other than not saying anything about removing the sheet of plywood, I had told the cops the truth.
He responded, “I figured a Fella might do that. I did it too. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
I asked him how long they had questioned him for, and he said, “About an hour.”
I told him that I was at Maloney’s and that they were open for another hour.
He said, “Know the place well.”
Then Pascal laughed and said, “I like people who do stupid things for women. But a Fella should have left this one alone. Should not have called me, that’s for sure.”
I told him I was sorry, and I was about to hang up when he said, “Hold on. Save some talking words. I’m parked two blocks away. Drink would be good on a night like this.”
Two minutes later, he parked in front of the bar. When Pascal walked in, the bartender nodded a familiar ‘hello.’
I asked Pascal, “You sleep in your ‘office’ too?”
“Everything except piss and shit and shower. Got tired of losing houses and can’t stand landlords.”
I paid for drinks. The bartender moved away from us, sat on a stool, and read a newspaper.
Pascal asked, “Did you see her?”
I told him, no, and I described the questions I had been asked.
He said they asked him the same sort. He also stated that he assumed that we wouldn’t be in any trouble, “Except for maybe having to stick around and answer the same questions another dozen times.” He added, “This will be big news in town. ‘Jilted Foreign student murders two.’”
I told Pascal that Kaori wasn’t a student. He asked me how she made her living, and I said I didn’t know but guessed that she received money from her parents.
Pascal asked me what I did for a living. I told him that I was a computer coder. He asked if the pay was good. I told him it was. “Good job?” he asked.
“It used to be,” I said. “But it’s not about computers anymore. Instead, it’s about cheating and lies.”
“That’s what ruins everything,” he said. We both looked at our shot glasses.
I was drinking Stoly, Russian vodka. Pascal noted, “There’s benzene in that. Gives it that ‘industrial’ flavor.” He told me that he had a girlfriend from Norway. She had been a student at the university, and she liked Stoly. He said, “The ‘Nordsky’ was a dance student. Legs went up to here,” and he held his hand up by his chin. He said, “She and I came in here. Got drunk together.” Then he was quiet.
I said, “I met a girl in this place. A long time ago. We walked out that door,” and I pointed towards the back, “we went dancing.” I didn’t say anything else.
Pascal then said, “Let’s get out of here. It’s not right to sit near ghosts.” He got the bartender’s attention and asked for a bottle of Irish.
“What flavor?” the bartender asked and gestured to the package liquor shelves where there were five different brands of Irish Whisky lined up.
“The best stuff,” Pascal said, “the cheapest.” And the bartender put a fifth into a paper bag.
We went outside, and I told him that my car was parked by Kaori’s apartment. He said he would give me a ride, and I got in the passenger side of his truck. It was snowing harder. There was no traffic on the streets. As we started to drive down Broadway towards Kaori’s, Pascal said, “I have an idea of what to do now.” He looked at me and said, “It’s two in the morning. I assume there’s no hurry to get home. Want to go do some night shooting?”
“What?” I asked.
“Paper and cans,” he said. “Make some loud noise and some small holes. Always seems to help.”
“Sure,” I said.
Pascal drove down Broadway, drove through East Missoula, and turned up route 200 along the Blackfoot River. After about fifteen minutes, I asked him where we were going, and he said, “Jonsrud road. Twenty miles or so. A place to think. A place to make noise. No one around.”
When we got to the Jonsrud turnoff, he put the truck into four-wheel drive. There were about three new inches of snow covering the gravel road surface. Then, less than a mile up the road, just past the campground, a barricade blocked the way. We stopped in front of it, our headlights reflecting off the words, “Road Closed for Season.” Pascal said, “Give me a hand moving this,” and the two of us pulled the barricade, which was mostly a large support for a highway sign, to the side. I waited while Pascal drove the truck past it, and then the two of us moved the sign back to where it had been.
I asked him how much trouble we could get in by driving on the closed road. Pascal replied, “I’ve got a fishing license. In Montana, if you are near a river and have a fishing license, you can do anything.” We both laughed, and he said, “Crack open that bottle. I think I can drink and drive here. Only ones I am going to run off the road now will be us two sorry fools.”
I opened the bottle, and Pascal stopped the truck again, rummaged in the back seat --- ‘The kitchen,’ he said --- and found a package of paper coffee cups. He stepped out and picked up a handful of snow.
“Want to cut it with a bit of fresh ice?” He asked. I nodded, holding my cup towards him, and he dumped some snow into my whisky.
As we started to drive again, he said, “Check out the darkness on this side. That’s a black way down. Fifty feet to rocks and water. We will take our time.”
I agreed that we should go slow. I re-filled our paper cups and looked out into the swirling snow, bright and confusing in the headlight beams, and I let Pascal pay attention to the darkness that matters.
Ten miles past the “Road Closed” barricade, up the Jonsrud Road in a snowstorm, Pascal pulled the truck to an embankment above the river and parked. He left the truck’s headlights on. They lit up the forest near us, and there, about fifty feet away, was a large, fallen log. Pascal said, “This be the place.”
He got out and rummaged in the small camper on the back of the truck. He returned with a duffel bag. From that, he took out paper targets and a staple gun. He walked over to the log and stapled a row of targets onto it. Then he came back to where I was standing, leaning against the truck’s front between the beams from the headlights on either side of me.
Pascal taught me how to fire a semi-automatic forty-five. In the bright light from the headlights, he showed me how to stand and instructed me how to breathe right up until the gun went off. He said, “Pull that trigger slow and steady so that it surprises you. Don’t be yanking it.”
“This is a 1911,” he said, “it has a kick. A Fella has to remember to keep his thumb down ’cause when it fires the slider flys back and a thumb that is left up there will be a bummed-out thumb.” He also pointed out, “Remember that with each shot another one is ready to go. Level the sights again, grab that breath, and pull that trigger again.” He also added, “Three number one things to remember about guns are, ‘one’, they are always loaded even if they aint. ‘One,’ keep the finger off that trigger until a Fella be killing the target. And, ‘one,’ they are loud. And a bunch more number one stuff, like don’t shoot at night or when a Fella is drunk.”
He was right about the noise: even while wearing earplugs, it was loud.
We spent half an hour taking turns shooting at the targets. Each time I fired the gun, all I saw was a white flash of flame. I liked the heaviness of the metal in my hand. I liked the way my hand felt after each shot, like having connected with a baseball bat against a fast-moving pitch. But it was much easier than swinging any bat. It took almost no skill, other than not flinching, to pull the trigger. The power was too easy.
I picked up the bottle of whisky, took another drink, and then said, “I am drunk. I can’t do this anymore.”
Pascal answered, “After this afternoon, one of us had to get shit-faced, and it has to be you since I am the one who will have to drive the rig back to town. Even a Montana fishing license don’t give no one no right to kill no body.” Then he reached into the truck and turned off the headlights. And like that, the darkness was total.
I still felt the snow falling on my head, but I could not see anything. Pascal said, “Nothing like being out here. No worries,” and I heard him sit down near the left front wheel. So I sat down too, in the snow, by the other front wheel. I leaned back against the truck’s bumper. I was still holding the bottle of whisky in my hand, and I drank more from the bottle.
Pascal said, “I came right to this place before. Different season. Spring then. A few years ago, with Nordsky.”
I was quiet, and he continued.
“I met her when I tried taking classes for a bit. She was here because in Norway they have so much money --- that whole country is oil-rich --- that they have this free college for everyone thing, ‘cept there aren’t enough colleges there. The King, a real King, pays college kids to go study wherever they want. And Nordsky wanted to come here to Montana. I don’t feel old now, but I was 20 years older than her then, and when she found out she said, ‘No way I would get involved with you.’ That hurt. But I dogged her, she didn’t seem to mind. I told her she had the best attitude of anyone I had met, and she did. She had a good attitude towards things. She took chances.
“I brought her here. I wanted to listen to her talk outside. I wanted to keep from being interrupted by the boys who followed her around in all the bars. That’s what I said to her, I said, ‘You always have boys around you. What can I do to talk to you without boys around you.’ I said to her, ‘I ain’t pretending nothing. I like the way you look. I like your voice. I want to drive with you and hear what you have to say.’
“That’s when she asked me how old I was, and when she told me I was too old. But she still took a drive with me. Right here. To this spot. Exactly. Except the truck was over there,” and he clicked on the flashlight he must have taken from his pocket, stood up, and pointed it back to the snow-covered dirt road. “The truck got Stuck up to the axels in a drift. Right there.”
Pascal sat down again, looked out over the river, and clicked off the flashlight. Then he continued talking.
“The road was closed, same barricade, but it was end of winter closed for a reason. Snow drifts in the shadows. I told her we might get stuck. And, like I said, we got stuck right here, evening time.”
He waited a bit, and when he didn’t say any more, I held out the bottle, reaching with my left arm across the darkness until the bottle nudged against him, and I said, “I think you’ll be fine driving. Have another sip.”
“Just a taste,” Pascal said, and he took the bottle, and then I heard him drink, then he continued.
“She weren’t worried. She bragged about how tough she was, how she was from above the Arctic Circle, a ‘Lap Lander.’ And she brags that she was used to the dark, and how she could stay warm. And how she could go days without eating. She was just teasing me because she already knew that there was all kinds of food in the truck and blankets and everything. It was a Friday night, and there was no place either of us had to be for a while. I made a fire, down there,” Pascal clicked on the flashlight again, and pointed the beam down towards the water. “A fire by the riverbank.”
“Want more of this?” he asked, and he handed me back the whisky bottle.
I asked, “You still have blankets in the truck?”
“Big pile,” he said, “Sleeping bags too.”
“Ok,” I said, “Keep going with this story, but I think we need to spend the night here. I think both of us need to drink and not drive anywhere.”
Pascal answered, “I judged a Fella right. Fella is ok, even if you don’t do real work. Computers. That is bull crap.”
“I tot-a-lee agree,” I said and drank more whisky.
Pascal clicked off the flashlight and continued.
“We have this fire going. I go and get some food and cook it, and we eat. I have a bottle of wine too, and I get that, and we drink. Now it is getting dark, but there is still some light, and I say, ‘The best time to shoot guns is when you are drunk,’ and I go up to the truck, stuck there in the snowdrift, and come back with the same 1911 you were shooting just now. I show her the gun, and she tells me in her country they are illegal, but I explain about the fishing license - how almost anything is legal if you have a fishing license, and she starts laughing. She wants to shoot the empty wine bottle, but I won’t let her. We just shoot at the stumps across the river there, safe as can be. No broken glass to ruin no good spot. Then she starts bragging more about how tough she is, all worked up because of shooting, and I don’t know why, but I take all my clothes off, and I swim across the river. Right there,” and Pascal clicks the light on again and aims it into the falling snow down towards the Blackfoot, an inky black moving reflection of memories.
“Swimming. Always was good at it,” Pascal said. “And I got to the other side. But there’s no bank to climb up, no rocks. Just the hard kind of snow, that kind that is mostly end of winter ice. But I’m still able to get up there. Then I yelled that she should come across too. She yelled back that she thought that I just wanted to see her without her clothes on. So I yelled that she was damn-straight-right. And she started laughing so hard that she fell. Laughed herself silly, drunk, and lying there on the ground. But all her clothes are on. And she’s warm by the fire, and she’s staying there. Me, I’m standing naked on an ice bank on the other side of a river. I am freezing. Teeth start chattering. Now it doesn’t matter my age, I’m just numb, dumb, and stupid. And drunk. I’m not thinking about the girl anymore, I only want to get to where it is warm and not to die. And I sure as shit didn’t want to go back in the water but there’s no other way.” He turned on the light and pointed towards the far bank again. It was steep and rocky, and I could imagine it as a bank of ice in April.
Pascal continued, “I did it, though. I done swam back. Got up next to that fire, crouched over it close as could be, hugged that heat, singed my private parts, almost. And a Fella knows what? A Fella knows what that laughing Nordsky does?”
I responded that I had no idea.
“Nordsky comes over, still laughing, but says, accent like maple syrup on a pile of biscuits,” he drank more whisky, “She says, ‘I was wrong about you. You are exactly my age.’”
Pascal was silent for a long time. I listened to the low sound of the river mixing with the sound of the snow falling around us. Then Pascal continued, “Nearly managed to keep that one. Lasted almost two years. She liked how I danced with her, liked how I tossed her in the air and caught her. Boys couldn’t do that.” He let out a long sigh, and yelled, “Cover your ears!” I did cover my ears, and he fired another gun, one with a deeper roar of noise, that long barreled revolver he was wearing on his belt the first time I met him. Six slow times into a straight-up, hundred proof, drunken sky.
After the echoing of the revolver shots had faded, Pascal said, “Nothing works out forever. If a Fella knows what I mean, it can be right while it is happening. Way I enjoyed those legs. Seeing them next to my face, dancing, holding her, her smiling down at me. The best was laughing with her. Liked that part best of all.
“In Norwegian, Nordsky told me, the worst cussing a Fella can say is, ‘draw till helvete.’ It means, ‘go to hell.’ Say that in Tromso and you have a serious fight on the spot. But say, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ and you get a smile, a slap on the back, and the Norwegian Fellas there will buy you a beer. I went there. Tromso, but I couldn’t take the winter. Legs or no legs. No sun at all. Came back here. She didn’t. She told me to go to hell when I left. I told her to fuck herself. She smiled and kissed me goodbye. Nothing works out forever.” Then he said, “But what you just had happen with your crazy one is not right. That will follow your tracks far into forever. To that I say, helvete.’ “
A broken nose throbbing through the whisky. Ears ringing from gunshots. No fire to huddle over after coming back from swimming across an ice-cold river. No one to impress.
The sky was dumping snow. A foot was now on the ground. I was shivering in my wet clothes. I told Pascal that I needed to sleep. He got a sleeping bag for me. He also handed me a small tarp, which I spread out in the snow, and then folded over myself like a collapsed tent. Pascal climbed into the back of the truck, into the camper shell where he slept. I tried looking up into the storm, but I could not see anything. Not even a hint of direction. I pulled my head under the sleeping bag and felt closer, there on the ground, to where I belonged than I had in a long time. Draw till helvete. Draw to hell.
- From “the Lie” by Steve S. Saroff
© 2021 Steve S. Saroff