Once I’d stepped in behind him, I reached for an actual pitch-covered torch I’d constructed, lighting it up with my Zippo.
The warmth of its flickering light seemed only to inflame his thirst.
“Where is it?” he demanded, weaving. “Where’s a whiskey at?”
I jammed my flambeau into a crotch of rock and pointed toward the curve in the cave wall. “Why, just back there, old buddy, old pal. Right around that corner.”
He almost tripped over the large heap of bones at the center of the cave’s floor: ribs and jaws of smallish animals, mostly.
“Yale man?” asked Feynman, eyeing the pile before he looked up at me with reddened eyes.
I sighed. “Bulldog, Bulldog.”
“Skull and Bones!” he shrieked, laughing, his voice echoing loudly in our tiny crypt.
“Now, now,” I said, waggling a finger at him, “you won’t catch me out with that old saw! Go get your whiskey, man! You’ve earned it!”
He lurched around the corner and readied himself to slip through the crack in the rock beyond, just as I clocked him across the back of the head with the shovel I’d secreted beneath all those little skeletons.
Feynman dropped like a rucksack of bricks.
I worked him into the alcove and wrapped the chain inside twice around his waist, then pulled it even tighter and padlocked both ends to the heavy grommet I’d cemented into the rock wall several months earlier.
I spun the lock’s dial, then made sure it was well up behind his back, though I doubted he’d come to before I’d finished my night’s happy toil.
After withdrawing, satisfied, from his tiny new domicile, I raked all those little bones off my neatly piled stack of bricks and mixed myself up a good sloppy pail of mortar.
I laid the first course in the crack of his cell, then the second. Third, fourth, fifth... the work went well and I didn’t hear a peep out of him, save his occasional rasping breath.
As I placed the eighth row’s first brick, I heard him moan.
I smiled, reaching for another brick. Three narrow courses to go, and he’d be sealed in for good!
“Whaddaya...” he said, his voice no more than a croak. “Thirsty?”
“Why, hello there, Feynman,” I answered with great cheer.
I heard the chains rattle against stone. He must have been trying to stand up.
“What gives?” he asked.
“I’m tucking you in for the night, old sport — a nice long rest.”
The chains clanked again, but he said nothing more for a moment.
I loaded up another brick with a slap of mortar from my trowel.
Then, of all things, Feynman began to laugh. Hearty, joyful laughter — I might go so far as to say the man guffawed.
“Oh, you’ve done it, Thurston!” he said, wheezing a bit before he began to chortle again. “You’ve played the best joke of all! Damn it, I thought I was the master, but haven’t you just gone and kicked my sorry ass with superior wit!”
“Now that you mention it, I will indeed have the last laugh, Feynman.”
“Won’t the boys crack up when they hear, back at the mess hall!”
“Funny,” I said, “I don’t think they’ll hear a thing.”
I was about to place the very last brick when he began keening, screaming at the top of his lungs, rattling the chains and wrestling against them with all his might, by the sound of it.
I knew well that no sound carried back to our so-called bit of civilization from this carefully chosen spot, so I began to scream along with him: yelling, baying, howling at full tilt.
And then I took my own turn at laughing, louder and louder, my glee echoing back from every stone, every last brick.
I had never felt such joy, such sheer and utter happiness, in all my days.
I laughed until I could barely breathe, and was about to double over when I heard Feynman’s voice behind me.
“Go fuck yourself, Thurston,” he said calmly.
He cracked me in the back of the skull with my own shovel before I could so much as turn my head in response.
I’d awakened to find myself trussed in chains, lying on my side along the ground, ankles bound to my wrists behind my back.
He’d rebuilt two-thirds of my wall.
“There’s a good fellow, Feynman,” I said. “All in fun, what?”
I tried to laugh but we both knew he wasn’t to be jollied out of putting his own finishing touches on my cherished blueprint of vengeance.
He stopped for only a moment then, leaning over his neat masonry to look me dead in the eye. “Should you ever get to use a padlock again,” he said, “which I must admit I doubt highly, you may want to change the combination from its factory setting.”
“For God’s sake, man...”
“25-10-25,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “What a moron.”
It’s rather dark in here, now that Feynman’s placed the final brick.
Fiat lux.
The Homeless Detective
by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
Cerrillos Road
Camo beer. Camo beer. Falling asleep on the streets was hard. Passing out a helluva lot easier. Five Camos in a pack. Three to knock him out. Two waitin’ for him in the morning, ’cept on mornings when he couldn’t make it back home. Back home was euphemistic. Back home was a ramshackle box trailer in an empty tract near the city dump.
Leo Malley had convinced himself five years ago: He wasn’t a human being no more. He was a bum. Difference was no less than between house cats and alley cats. Human beings lived at known addresses. Human beings relied on street signs, the fire department, or the cops. He learned from his lessons panhandling well enough to appreciate that house cats believed his stripe solely deserved leftovers. He wasn’t terribly impressed with dem goddamn house cats — whether they shared their small morsels of tuna. Okay, he liked the gals that worked at the Wendy’s burger joint. Connie always handed him a free coffee. Finishing it, maybe he could have a shot at reorganizing himself.
He lifted his shaky hand, the skin prematurely flabby and spotted. Leo looked like he hadn’t bathed sometimes, whether or not he showered at the Interfaith Community Shelter. He was a body of shakes.
A cold front had surreptitiously hit Santa Fe the night before. He limped this morning; his socks must have swollen three sizes larger. Lucky he had a couple of Camos. His Camo pain medicines helped him bicycle to town. He couldn’t find a reason to still bike to the park where truckers picked up migrant laborers. He rarely secured money panhandling, surly as he looked holding his Help Me sign. He should head over to the joint where the “good people of Santa Fe” served the homeless.
Got my coffee. Grab me some food.
Five in a pack.
I wanna see what nuclear war looks like.
Freaky. The racing thoughts began drum-drum-drumming in the back of his skull, like timpanis. The crush of confused thoughts began when Connie shouted, “Hey Leo, want another coffee?” And slipped Leo a newspaper alongside it.
His eyes fell on a headline describing United States military tensions with North Korea. “US and Korea Escalate Nuclear Arsenal Conflict.” Thoughts began running amok. Cramming his limited space for 20/20 foresight. Leo’s brain. Like a light switch. On again. Off again. Sometimes his smallest thoughts barely permeated his verbal consciousness, while his frustrated mind ran the gamut of brutal associations. It took that kind of insistent repetition to cut through his psychological welter sometimes.