I’m duct tape bound and gagged, must have used rolls of it. The slightest attempt to move fails. Smacked in the face, my nose is in bad shape. I’m having trouble breathing but my teeth are still in place as far as my tongue can figure out. All I taste is blood. I was walking from my floor-sweeping job at New England Paper Tube to my room on Montgomery Street when a van flew past. The driver slammed on the brakes and backed up, bouncing off the curb a few times. Christ, the license plate read Bela! Bela is dead! A hefty woman wearing a blue leather jacket jumped out. Her disguise was a gold Lone Ranger mask. When she swung, her long braid flapped into view.
I regain consciousness as she drags me into what looks like a back yard shed but larger. After a few rib kicks, she’s gone. A camper’s lantern sheds dim light. There’s an unlit stub of a white candle in the middle of the floor; melted wax holds it erect. A Bic cigarette lighter stands upright beside it. There is a faint smell of gasoline. Not far away, a 5-gallon plastic container for carrying lawn mower or out-of-gas car fuel, a few broken bricks and cinder blocks beside me. I’m scared shit. Why would someone do this? For the first time in years, I pray and I surprise myself how many words return. I start a rosary in my head but drift to what I’d be doing were I in my room had I gotten home: sipping Christian Brothers Wine and fantasizing over a copy of Holiday Magazine that arrived yesterday, a sample of Fort Lauderdale beach sand included. I know a guy who caddied in Florida, told great stories about spring break college girls. He often spoke of a lacy black slip memento from a Vassar College woman but no one ever saw it. I’ll never get past welfare mothers on the prowl at the dive bars on Broad Street. Are those, and all my days finished?
The way my face pains, brass knuckles, a fist-held roll of nickels or quarters coldcocked me. This shack reminds me of a fort I built with my friends twenty-five or thirty years ago. It stood near a quarry and a stream that stunk. We were fourteen. We found sex there, kind compliments of a girl named Isabel who preferred Bela. She was sixteen, lived in the new houses near Blanchard Park. For some reason she hung around our Project, often gave us money she said grew on her secret lemon and lime tree. There was a scar on her belly from a caesarian birth. Her adoptive parents made her give the baby up to some Catholic agency. She described movies, the Blob in a scary voice and another time The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Good-looking, she was tall, hair dark blonde pageboy style. Frequent smiles showed deep dimples. Thinking of her in my current predicament is comforting even though I’m in a horror film situation myself. She softly sang rock and pop as well as Christmas Carols. Mostly it was a sad tune like “A Taste of Honey.” She hummed the theme from the flick Circus of Horrors, “Look for a Star.” She loved a line she said was from a movie featuring a cool lady named Holly who smoked through a long cigarette holder: “It’s useful being top banana in the shock department.” Naming an actress, say, Ingrid Bergman, Bela called out all her credits: Gaslight, Spellbound, Casablanca, all of them, entire resume. The last time I saw the BELA license plate, it lived on a Mercedes Benz.
What did I do to deserve assault and duct tape? Constant smiling might loosen my gag— guaranteed if this were on a silver screen! Could be the first time done in recorded history? I start ever so gently.
Our Bela life ended one evening when a bunch of older kids led by a bully named Ducky Markel invaded, threatened us with death by hunting knife. Markel earned his nickname from a mallard pet he had when he was seven or eight. Where he got it was a mystery. He latched onto a St. Bernard once but I never heard Ducky called Bernie. The punk liked to imitate Donald Duck and badly. He forced George Blane to remove his new coat, sliced it beyond repair. Markel took Bela’s watch. I’d found it in the sand at Lincoln Woods, gave it to her as a gift. It was only a Timex but she retired her Benrus. Bela tried to flee but a lug named Caleb grabbed and held her. Ducky backed us out the door waving the knife inches from our faces. We could hear her screams from where we hid in some thorny bushes. It had to be at least a half hour before they escorted her to a dumpy white Cadillac. She sobbed as Ducky shoved her into the backseat. A thick cloud of exhaust remained as the wreck putt-putted off.
Returning to the fort we found the creeps even took our Army blanket. Nothing would ever be the same. Frank Wilson had a book of matches. We took turns lighting the splintered scrap wood walls. We ran our breath away back to our Project. Paul Martin’s mother was at bingo. We got onto the roof of his block through his bedroom window. We saw dancing flames, heard sirens, did some worrying.
I give up the smile idea. My tongue mimics a metronome, moving along the tape meeting my top lip. Good thing my mouth wasn’t locked shut at the taping. I’m freezing my ass off which causes me to call on one of my oldest and sweetest memories. A frigid February night I followed Ducky to the Blackstone River, tire iron lodged up my sleeve. A woman I didn’t recognize joined him. She wore a grey cape and a red beret, long black hair. Markel always managed to find a woman who’d take him in no matter his circumstances. All of his good looks took too long to fade. Markel was a wino, often shouted out the name of his favorite brand while chugging at a Project corner, “Hombre.” From my hiding spot behind the dead ferry office, they looked like they were waiting for a boat to arrive. No kissing or even holding hands; she fell to one knee but didn’t do what I expected, just picked up something dropped. He gave her a swig from a pint bottle then finished it off, reached into his coat pocket for another. She hurried away, down a couple of times climbing the hill. He downed that bottle as if it were apple juice. His measured striding turned into staggering. Eventually, he left. He had a tough incline time too. At the top, he made a short walk long to a parking lot then headed up Englewood Street, a sad strip littered with abandoned houses. I sneaked up behind him and clunked the side of his head with my weapon. His noggin hit the curbing edge. The half-exposed manhole I’d seen a week earlier called to me. It took some doing but I got the cover completely off. I dragged Ducky about ten feet, finagled him into his personal hell. He was a skinny piece of debris. I almost caught a finger getting the lid back in place.
Six months later, on coffee break at work, I learned of the Ducky discovery by a sewer maintenance crew. The newspaper didn’t waste much ink. Nothing printed about head wounds. Anyone who knew him, or knew of him blamed drink. I couldn’t muster up any remorse, regrets, or nightmares. The genuflecting red beret babe never told of the Ducky night meeting.
Bela became a racetrack hustler. She hung around a clubhouse bar near the IRS window casting her nets for men who had to share their bonanzas with Uncle Sam. She was tax- free. Better than walking the streets I thought. One Saturday I went to the track to bet a hot tip horse I heard about at work. A newspaper coupon got me into Bela’s territory. We talked. Christ, she welled up about Ducky. I almost felt sorry I’d killed him. She kissed me on the cheek then hurried off to a mobster looking man. The horse, Rock Me won easily but everyone in the city must have bet him, paid odds of 2-1 instead of the 10-1 in the program. I began lighting a dollar candle weekly at St. Cecelia’s hoping the Lord would keep Bela safe. All for shit, she died in a backside stall. I heard stories about her death too awful to tell.
When the Lone Ranger returns I’m dozing off. She kicks me, leans close to my face. “Some say the earth will end in fire, some say ice,” she says in a mean whisper. I recall those words from a junior high poem. She coughs up phlegm, launches it in my face then pokes me in the eye with her middle finger. “Flames for you puke. The sewer’s too easy.” How in the hell could she know? Then it dawns on me that a ton of guilt fell on me after seeing Bela at the track. I went to confession. Hell, yeah, I’d seen Father Franz at the track wearing sunglasses sitting at one of the bars that Bela worked but dismissed it as mistaken identity. Later I learned he was a “whiskey priest.” Guess he upped it a notch, “Whisky glass and a woman’s ass.”
She speaks into my ear before biting it like a piece of tough jerky, “Ducky was my father.” A car backfire startles her. She quickly turns her head putting her braid within reach. I snap my jaw open and the tape is loose. I miraculously raise myself enough to bite her Rapunzel rope. I bite with all my mouth might and yank her to one side. She topples, hits her face on half a cinder block, flat-out unconscious. I thank that driver’s poor maintenance schedule. Spotting a hunting knife in her belt holster, I free the buckle with my teeth and pull the weapon out. Ducky’s fort bully blade? I think of the saying, “I could do this or that with my hands tied behind my back” as I prop it blindly with my numb fingers, handle first, between her legs then sit on her thighs. The cutting edge is razor sharp, slits the hell out of my hands and wrists before slicing apart the duct tape. I cut my ankles free. I use my handkerchief and tape scraps to bind my worst wrist cuts. Feeling like an attempted suicide, I place my head by her face. She’s breathing. All I find in her pockets is change. Straightening her head, I snap up the mask. I’d never seen her before, mascara wildly overdone. She is wearing a watch. As I remove it, I see a tattoo on the back of her hand: “Quack.” I hold the back of the watch to the light and see a deep scratch. I feel a half heart I’d engraved with an icepick, the Timex I gave Bela. I put it into my pocket with difficulty. A child could have flipped her over easier. I remove her holster, hell of a time getting it on my belt. I can’t budge the high school ring with blue stone, silver cross lying across it. Same as my sister’s, St. Jean de Baptist Academy. I quit school when I was sixteen.
I pick up the gas container. Jesus, the sucker is full. I kneel down for the candle, agony straightening up. The wick is missing. I flick the lighter, a dud. Just a scare or is she a royal screw-up. I tie her shoelaces together just for the puny revenge of it. As soon as I’m outside, the van door opens. A tall blonde woman jumps out and comes at me swinging. I fight back as best I can through a strong odor of booze and cheap perfume. She gets in a good right when I go without luck for the knife. She hits like a man and sure enough, the wig flies off. It’s Father Franz. The Lone Ranger lumbers from the shack wearing one shoe, the other dragging. She holds me while the hands that hold communion hosts beat more hell out of me. It takes them a while but they manage to lift me onto the low roof using a stepladder. I hum “A Taste of Honey” to myself. Franz hurries off, returns with a hammer and nails. He makes a shingle out of me, securing my jacket and jeans. Would this crucifixion count for anything on the other side? Dropping to the ground, they’re laughing like hell. My tape-tired tongue inspects my mouth. One front tooth is gone. I imagine Daughter Ducky combing it out of her braid. I try to smile but my face will have none of it. Father “Woman’s Ass” must have added nicotine to his vices, carries a lighter. I hear shouts of “In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti” and “Mommy’s watch, Mommy’s watch,” before the whoosh of igniting gasoline.
by 
Tom McDade
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