Rock-Paper-Scissors

[jconley77]

James Conley
August 2010
http://burningants.wordpress.com



Chuck O’Grady was a retired entrepreneur. He was sixty-three years old. He was in prison.

“Hey, Mr. Chuck!”

A prisoner, a younger man who the other inmates called Deadeye, waved a two-handed wave to Chuck O’Grady as a guard escorted him to his visitation cell in handcuffs. Chuck smiled and nodded as Deadeye passed. Deadeye was in prison for life. He had killed a bus driver.

Chuck O’Grady was in prison for committing insurance fraud. And arson. He had burned down one of his businesses, a warehouse he rented to the Red Cross, by covering the building with 150 gallons of used cooking oil from his restaurant and throwing a Molotov cocktail onto the roof. The Red Cross kept some medical supplies and thousands of bags of blood donations there. The first firemen on the scene thought it was a slaughter.

His oldest son, Mark, had come to visit him. Mark was a suit-type. He ran some kind of business from some kind of office that Chuck did not understand. The office business changed his son. Once he became a suit-type with an office business, he and his father grew apart. Seated at the glass wall which separated them, they had their first proper meeting in some time. They had to communicate by telephone, one on either side of the glass. It was the first time he’d called his father in six months. Barring the glass, it was the first time he’d seen him since he moved out.

He was seated by a security guard on one side, his father similarly seated by another. Mark had heard about the fire, and the trial and the sentencing, but hadn’t come to visit until Chuck had been in prison for two months. Their mother died recently. Matters of her estate had necessitated the visit.

Mark watched his father get comfortable on his side of the wall. He saw guards and inmates milling about behind him. Each one, guards and inmates alike, acknowledged Chuck O’Grady, smiling and saying something to him which Mark couldn’t hear. His father returned each of their greetings happily. He seemed in no hurry to acknowledge his own son. Finally, he did.

“I see they let you out of the office,” he said.
“I see they let you off the fourth floor,” Mark said.

Chuck laughed heartily. His family had considered him crazy for some time. He relished the thought.

“Good seeing you again, son.”
“Good? What’s good about seeing someone in a prison?”
“It’s just good seeing you at all.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s your mother?”
“She passed away.”
“Yeah, I heard something like that.”
“You didn’t come for the funeral.”
“They wouldn’t let me.”
“They would have if you’d asked.”
“I did ask.”
“Then why didn’t they let you out?”
“They don’t let anyone out of the fourth floor, son.”

Chuck had been admitted to undergo psychiatric evaluation for several months after he’d been found guilty of insurance fraud. His defense for burning down his building was that he’d become lonely, and wanted the company of the firemen and policemen and news people. He never really sought the insurance money. He flatly admitted to the arson, too. All grounds for psychiatric evaluation, the judge had decided.

“Dad, what the hell happened to you?”
“I’m not real sure,” he said. It was true.
“Why the warehouse?”
“Why anything?”
“Jesus Christ,” Mark said.

He set down the phone. His father had always tried to be a philosopher. His musings became increasingly nonsensical as he aged. Mark figured the last one to be the surest sign yet of his father’s senility. He paid too little actual attention to him to know he was only having some small fun. One had to find ways to entertain oneself in prison.

“Do you know why I’m here, Dad?”
“You drew the shortest straw?”
“You know, I think I did.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, son.”
“I didn’t reall-“
“You should have played Rock-Paper-Scissors. That’s what the fellas here do.”
“Yeah, that’s great Dad.”
“That’s what they do when they decide whose turn it is to conceal a batch of cocaine up their *******.”
“There were no ****ing straws! I came here to take care of some bull**** and leave! Okay?”
“I’ve gotten pretty good at Rock-Paper-Scissors, you know that?”

Mark slammed the phone against the glass. A guard tapped him on the shoulder. He calmed himself. A woman in a booth not far away glared at him. Chuck sat on the other side laughing so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.

“Looks like they threw the wrong O’Grady into the loony bin, eh?”
“How long are they keeping you here?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sentencing hearing is set for some time. I guess when it comes they’ll probably have to tell me.”
“How long could it go?”
“Who knows? Could be upwards of, hell, twenty years? I don’t know.”
“You’ll be dead in twenty years.”
“If you’re lucky.”
“If you’re lucky, Dad. You know you won’t be worth a dime if you ever get out.”
“Good!”

Another prisoner was escorted behind Chuck O’Grady, handcuffed. He playfully kicked the leg of his chair. Chuck turned around and smiled, nodding. “Morning, sir,” the inmate said to him. He jerked violently when the security guard began pulling him toward his visitation booth.

“What are going to do if you get out early?” Mark said.
“I don’t plan to.”
“It won’t go twenty years.”
“It could.”
“Seems like a lot for non-deadly arson and insurance fraud,” Mark said.
“Insurance fraud! I didn’t even file a claim.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want the insurance money. I told them that.”
“I bet.”
“I wanted the company.”
“Which one? The warehouse you set ablaze?”
“The company of people, Mark. You’ve heard of companionship? I wanted anyone’s company. Certainly not from your mother, of course, but from someone.”
“You know Mom raised all of us while you were out there turning the entrepreneurial world on its head, right?”
“She did. But she was also a whore.”

It was true.

“Dad!”
“I would have burned down the restaurant if the insurance money wouldn’t have gone to that lying whore.”
“Dad!”
“Ah, well. Like I said, I just wanted someone’s company. You and your brothers certainly didn’t pay much attention to the old man. All my friends are dead. That fire, that brought people around. The firefighters, the policemen – hell, even you.”

While his building was burning, Chuck O’Grady insisted on telling each fireman who passed the stories of his time overseas. During interrogation, he delivered a forty-five minute confession. Only at the end did he acknowledge, quite openly, that he’d set the fire.

“I bet.”
“And now I’m here. Look around. These people, the inmates, they all give me their company, and they get mine. They look up to me.”
“Oh, bull****.”
“I mean it! Haven’t you seen how they all greet me? They respect me, just because I’m old! Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?”

Mark didn’t answer.

“I mean, ****! Why else would you wait to become old as I have?”

Chuck paused a moment, looked around. Mark thought he saw a glint in his eye.

“You never liked my stories, you and all your brothers.”
“Because you made **** up!”
“Like what?”
“Like the coyote?”
“The coyote!”

Chuck had been in Vietnam. Accidentally. He was on a business trip to Laos in the middle 1970s when his plane went down in the recently reunified Vietnam. The pilot of the small commercial plane died mid-flight. He choked on his own vomit, and died right there in the cockpit, from a lethal combination of sleep apnea and Maker’s Mark. Chuck and his associates were unable to corral the spiraling Cessna. They crash-landed in a rice paddy not far from My Lai. Everyone had died but Chuck. The impact threw him into the cargo hold. When he awoke, almost drowning, five stunned Viet Cong stood over him, inspecting the plane and its cargo and its stunned sole survivor with wide eyes and AK rifles. Next to Chuck floated a dead Coyote. It had snuck onto the plane on the small, **** airfield of the small, **** airline company in Arizona where Chuck did business. The coyote had smelled food. Chuck was going to market a new brand of beef jerky to an upstart, cheap-labor outfit in Laos. The villagers had never seen a coyote. They feared the mysterious floating creature. They kept their distance as a result. Chuck grabbed up the Coyote, found he could make his way through the hostile villages as long as he clutched the dead creature and held it in plain view. Chuck walked six days through the jungle, closely followed by curious and fearful Viet Cong, hefting a dead and bloating Coyote over his head every step of the way to the border of Laos.

“What bull****!”
“If you say,” Chuck said.
“Mom told us that didn’t actually happen. You got drunk and missed your flight.”
“And your mother told me that she didn’t **** cab drivers, but hey!”
“Dad!”
“Whatever. You know they love the Coyote story here.”
“****ing morons,” Mark said.
“I mean it!”
“Sure, Dad. Do you take them on forced camping trips? Do you make them sit around ****ty campfires in ****ty forests while you tell the Coyote story?”
“We’re not allowed to have fires, son, don’t be stupid.”

Mark laughed.

“These people listen,” Chuck said. “I could be here the whole twenty years and tell them every story I’ve got and they’d all listen.”

The receiver drifted from his mouth as he spoke. He said it more to himself than to his son.

“A regular captive audience, huh?”

Chuck O’Grady laughed so hard his stomach hurt. The guards at each corner of the room kept eyes on him until his fit of hysteria ended.

“Aw man! You see that young man down the row there, near the wall?”

Chuck pointed out an inmate at the far end of the visitation booths. Mark leaned back, craned his neck out to see him.

“No.”
“Ah, well, that there’s Pepe. Pepe’s my bunkmate.”

Pepe was serving a 45-year sentence for drug possession and distribution. He’d fallen asleep in a Wendy’s drive-thru with 400 pounds of cocaine in the bed of his truck. He’d tried to cover it with a stolen real estate yard sign.

“I tell Pepe a story every night. He asks me to.”
“That’s great, Dad.”
“He tucks me in at night.”

Mark sighed. Chuck laughed again. That, also, was true.

Both paused for a moment, thinking. They stared at the glass wall in front of them without looking through it.

“The businesses certainly went to ****, didn’t they?” Chuck said. Mark chuckled an agreement.
“Heh. You remember how I used to threaten you and your brothers when you acted like little *******s?”
“Yeah, Dad.”
“’Knock it off or I’ll put you in the will!’”
“Yep.”
“Ah, well I did.”
“What?”

Chuck laughed again. Before he’d set the warehouse on fire, he’d rearranged his business affairs. His children, Mark and his brothers, they were to be his successors in the event that he should lose his businesses. Felony arson was one such event. It was all done to avoid public auction. It would all stay in the family. The burnt warehouse. The bankrupted restaurant. The debt. All the debt. Mark and his brothers had been liable for Chuck’s failing and sabotaged businesses for the last month. They didn’t know it.

“Dad, wait– what?”
“Hah! I told you I’d do it! I said it, now I’ve done it!”
“Why? Why would you do that!”
“Oh, I don’t know, son. Why would your mother **** a cabbie?”
“Dad, how– why!”
“Why anything, Mark!”

A security guard put his hand on Chuck’s shoulder and he got up. Laughing to the point of tears, arms held out, handcuffed, Chuck was escorted slowly to the door. A second guard came to assist. They nearly had to carry him out. Mark, phone still to his head, watched wide-eyed and mouth agape as his father rounded to the corner.

“Better get yourself a lawyer, son. I hear the capital gains tax is a real *****!”

Chuck laughed. He had to laugh. Mark swore he could hear his father through the wall as he disappeared from sight.