A Certain Bend of Light

James Matthews

1.

He said to himself and the otherwise empty public washroom, “Am I dying? Yeah, I’m dying.” He said it aloud, sitting there on the toilet and staring in disbelief down at the red smear on the tissue. “Cancer for sure,” he said, a cold sweat popping all over his body. And he thought to himself. Probably started in my gut. Been feeling off down there for months, too. Likely it’s gone all the way through to the bowel. And now the evidence of it on the toilet paper here.

No, he thought. I’m just freaking myself out here now, he thought.

“Has to be something else,” he said and looked harder at the tissue. He stood up from the toilet, the jeans pushed around his ankles. He looked into the toilet, trying to see if there was blood in there. He thought he could remember reading or being told that cancer is when there’s blood in the shit itself. Not on the tissue afterwards. Blood spots on the tissue meant only that you busted a haemorrhoid or something. Presented with such a situation, with the horrible possibility, how could anybody know for certain what the hell was happening? That was his next thought. The uncertainty was most unsettling. There’s nobody else in here, he thought. I’ve got to find out if it’s a haemorrhoid. Sam opened the cubicle door. He poked his head out and looked around. Nobody at the sinks or the urinals. He couldn’t see any feet when he looked under the doors of the other cubicles that housed toilets.

He was alone. No better time, he thought. Sam, with his pants still bunched at his ankles, shuffled to the sinks. He turned around and tried to hoist his bum into view of the mirror.

Looking over his shoulder, he couldn’t see anything.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Sam’s head whipped around to the door of the washroom.

“And why do you have your arse hanging out all over the place, Sam? Jesus, did you have a finger stuck up your bum? What ARE you doing in here, Sammy?”

“You’ve got to help me, buddy,” Sam said. “Come on, Petey. You’ve got to give me a hand here.”

“A hand? Where do you want me to put my hand?”

“I’m dying here, buddy.”

“Of what? Embarrassment?”

Then Sam looked at himself and considered the state he was in. One of those unfortunate situations. But he was into it now.

“You’ve got to help me, Petey. A dying man’s request.”

“You’re not dying, Sam,” Pete said. “But what the hell you doing in here, in this... state?”

“I’ve got the cancer.”

“Well, how’s it going to help for you to be poking around your arse like you were?”

“What I’m going to ask you isn’t something I’d ask just anybody, Pete. Bear that in mind…”
Pete’s heart started to sink as soon as he heard Sam say, “What I’m going to ask you.”

“But would you be a pal and take a look for me to see if I have a haemorrhoid that maybe is bleeding?”

“Ah, I don’t think so, Sammy.”

“Come on. Stop screwing around, Pete.”

“Oh, I’m serious. I’m not screwing around. I would never want to find myself that close to your arse.”

“I can’t feel a haemorrhoid down there. I can’t feel it. That’s what I was doing. I can’t get the angle right to see if there’s one, either.”

Pete walked to the urinal and unzipped.

“Just take a look when you’re done, will ya? Seriously. I won’t tell anybody. This could be bad, Pete. This could really come out badly for me. How long have we known each other, Pete? The things we’ve been through. Just take a look, for Christ’s sake,” Sam said and shuffled over to the urinals where Pete was standing. “From where you’re standing...”

“All right there, Shuffley. That’s close enough.”

“Well can you see anything?”

“Gimme a second, will you? Christ. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“Hurry, man, I don’t want anybody to walk in and see us like this.”

“All right. All right. I can’t see anything.”

“There’s no sign of a haemorrhoid?”

“That doesn’t mean you have bowel cancer or colon cancer or whatever you’ve convinced yourself you have, Sammy. Why do you think you have cancer anyway?”

Sam showed Pete the toilet paper in his hand. The folded tissue with the skid mark and the red.

“That’s blood?” Pete said.

“What the hell else could it be?”

“Still doesn’t mean anything. Could mean you’re using two-ply like it was sandpaper. Go to a doctor.”

“Hmm.”

“Jesus, man, pull up your pants before somebody walks in and sees us like this,” Pete said. He finished at the urinal and walked to the sink to wash his hands. “You’re not dying. Go see a doctor and give it up.”

Sam shuffled back into the cubical and flushed the toilet. He pulled his pants up and washed his hands.

Pete must have been telling Juan details about the washroom because they were both smiling into their plates when Sam sat down at the table.

“In there a while, weren’t you?” Juan said.

“I guess.”

“Everything all right, Sam?”

“And what if I was constipated? That’s what you’re so concerned about? Or maybe you’re worried there’s a bit of a stomach bug that’s going to keep me from this gig.”

Juan looked at Pete across from him at the table. Sam looked at Pete sitting next to him.

“Couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you?”

Pete and Juan laughed as Sam started back into his plate of eggs and toast.

Taking a mouthful of coffee, Sam said, “You guys don’t have to be worrying about me. This gig will be a cake-walk. Like the others.”

“Hey. Nobody’s doubting you,” said Juan.

They finished their breakfast and sat drinking their coffee. The highway diner was empty except for a few long-haul truck drivers at the other end of the room. Their rigs idled outside in the winter morning cold. A low rumble from the idling diesel engines could be heard inside the diner.

“Gladden, huh?” said Pete.

“Yeah,” said Sam.

“And that’s where this guy lives?”

“Yeah. Last I heard. And that’s where it happened, the whole thing with my wife and the trial. Everything.”

They finished their coffee and Pete threw a wad of money on the table. They stood from the table and the three men wearing plaid woods jackets and steel-toed work boots left the diner.

“Everything’s worked out, right?”

“Jesus, Pete,” said Juan. “For the hundredth time, everything’s worked out. Down to the last detail. Just as always.”

2.

He is dreaming.

It’s a dream he has a lot. It’s the one in which he’s walking along a bridge across the sea. It’s a long bridge. Sam is walking along this bridge and people he doesn’t know walk up to him from behind and look into his face. Some are smiling and others are frowning. Some of the people are laughing and others are crying. And they all look him in the face and hold their gaze a few seconds before jumping off the side of the bridge into the sea.

He has been having that dream for months. It’s been increasing in frequency over the last few weeks. That dream with the people leaping off the bridge has even started to surpass the dream in which he is going down on Jennifer Aniston on the couch the Friends cast used to sit on in the Central Perk cafe on the television show. The dream-divers are all different people, and they’re nobody he knows of personally. As far as he can remember after waking, he doesn’t recognize a single person from the dream. Twisting and turning on his sweaty sheets, more and more people are walking up from behind him. They stop in front of him, look into Sam’s face and then leap over the side into the sea.

He is about to grab hold of one man in the dream to try to stop him from jumping over the side. They are oblivious to his pleas for them not to jump. So he tries grabbing this one man when a long Cadillac pulls up beside him and screeches to a halt. Sam grabs the guy’s shirt and he turns in the dream to look at the shiny car. The guy he’s holding wriggles out of his grip and jumps over the side as Sam looks at the car.

Jim Morrison is sitting in the driver’s seat of the Cadillac with an opened bottle of some kind of whiskey between his legs. He has a cigarette between his lips that he spits out the driver’s side window. He leans down along the seat to look out the opened passenger side window to say something to Sam.

Then he wakes up and became aware of the cold of the motel room. The walls are thin and he can hear Pete and Juan arguing in the other room. Sam reaches for his cigarettes on the night table and lights one.

He shakes his head, listening to Pete and Juan bicker through the wall.

“Such a cute couple,” he says.

3.

A sign marking the Gladden city limits: ‘Welcome to Gladden, a nice place to call home.’ Sam, sitting in the back seat, saw the sign and said the words to himself. A nice place to call home. As he mouthed the words on the sign, he noticed Juan, who was driving, look at him in the rear-view mirror.

And they kept rolling along the highway into town.

4.

Hours later, Sam thought of that highway sign. He was holding a gun and remembering that sign. It was a heavy pistol missing three rounds. He was looking down at the man and the woman while holding the pistol in front of him. Pete and Juan were behind him, looking over his shoulder at the man and the woman, and the words on that highway sign come back to him for no reason. Of all the stupid thoughts to have while watching a man die in a woman’s arms, he thought.

The dying man looked into the woman’s face, and she was crying so hard. His name was Tony and his blood was all over the front of her sweater and the thighs of her jeans. Tony didn’t say anything audible. He sobbed and cried and looked into the woman’s face.
Sam’s next thought was of how the woman is probably strikingly beautiful if she were not crying so hard. When her face isn’t contorted by her crying.

Then Tony was died quietly.

Sam watched the woman fall apart, holding the man’s body in her arms. Pete and Juan were standing behind him, looking over his shoulder at her. Her sobbing and crying became louder. More heart-wrenching.

Finally, she looked at Sam and said, “Why?” It was one word mumbled in fear through heavy, wet sobs. There was a sound of a pistol being racked behind Sam. A round being loaded into the chamber.

“Go on,” Sam said to the woman. “Get out of here.”

“WHY?” she said. “WHY DID YOU DO THIS?”

“Leave,” Sam said. “Just – ”

There was a loud bang, the woman fell backward, and then there was silence.

“That’s that,” said Pete.

5.

“What the hell you thinking back there, Sammy?” It was Pete. They were standing around the trunk of the car, putting their pistols back into their tool boxes. They’d lingered around the scene only long enough to gather the four bullet casings. Then they’d gotten out of there before anybody who may have heard something showed up.

“You were really going to let her go,” Pete said. “What the hell were you thinking back there?”

“You know I wouldn’t have let her go,” Sam said. “I just couldn’t have her look at me anymore.”

Pete looked at Juan and said, “I’m not so sure.”

Juan looked at Sam and raised an eyebrow.

They were all silent.

“Why’d you even have to say anything to her?” Juan said.

“That was an awful chance to take, Sammy,” Pete said. “Anything could have happened. She could have done any number of things to turn it around on us.”

“It’s done now. Everything’s done. He was the target. It’s all over now,” Sam said.

Juan slammed the trunk closed and they got into the car. Sam, in the back seat, started to cry.

“You crying?” said Juan, eyeing Sam in the rear-view mirror.

“Christ, that wasn’t even the worst one. Juan’s was the worst one,” said Pete. “Why ’re you crying? Not because you feel bad for that piece of shit? What he did to you. I’d figure you’d be as happy as we were when we did ours.”

Their campaign began about two months ago. They’d met in Alcoholic’s Anonymous. They were each other’s sponsors, the lifeline to be called when slipping back into a drunken self-destructive binge felt imminent.

Before Pete, Juan had been in love with a man named Vernon Tuckamore. In many ways, Juan was still very much in love with Vernon and certain things about Pete reminded him of Vernon. One night about four years ago, Juan and Vernon were walking in their Toronto neighbourhood when a bigot attacked them with a sawed-off pool cue. They’d gotten a few licks in at their attacker, but a pool cue packs a wallop.

Of course, nobody saw what had happened. The neighbours wouldn’t speak up if anybody had witnessed the beatings. Juan suffered broken bones and was laid up for months. Vernon was beaten into a coma from which he never awakened.
Juan started meeting with a group that met twice a week. One of those support groups to help people grieving the loss of somebody loved. Pete was in that group, and that’s how they’d met.

Pete was mourning his baby sister. He and his sister, Sally, were at a grocery store with their mother. Pete was in his late teens, and his baby sister was two years old and still in a stroller. They were walking to the car in the parking lot, Pete pushing the stroller and his mother pushing the cart full of groceries. A woman ran up behind them and snatched the stroller from Pete’s hands. She kept running, out into the street where she was hit by a pickup truck. Little Sally was killed.

They’d found out from police the woman was a heroin addict. She had a baby of her own, but her daughter of about Sally’s age had been taken from her placed into foster care.
The woman didn’t get enough time in prison and was eventually paroled. That was the start of their campaign, actually – when Pete’s family got the news that the woman was to be paroled and that she’d still be living in the Toronto area.

Pete still heard late at night the playful giggling of his sister. He’d heard his baby sister giggle and laugh as the heroin addled woman ran away with her. And when it’s really dark at night, Pete can even see his baby sister’s face smiling at what she must have thought was great fun for her big brother to push the stroller so fast.

If she doesn’t overdose and kill herself soon after getting out, Pete said one night when he and Juan and Sam were having coffee, I’d like to do the job myself. He said that night that doing the job himself would probably feel good and it would offer him sweet closure.

And that’s how it started.

“You guys were happy afterwards? Really?” said Sam.

“It was justice. Just desserts,” Pete said.

“I’m not so sure,” said Sam. “Not for her.”

They drove in silence for a spell before Sam said, “Did you see how she was crying? How she watched him die in her arms?”

Nobody spoke.

“Why couldn’t he have been alone? He just wouldn’t ever be alone. All day and that fucker wasn’t alone,” Sam said.

“Give it up, Sammy,” said Pete. “It’s done, all right? It’s done. Think about how he killed your wife and how you’ve missed her. Think about that and never mind however you think that woman looked or what she must have felt.”

Sam didn’t say anything. He was looking out the window at the darkness outside.

“Think about that, Sammy,” Pete said. “Think about your wife and how she didn’t deserve to be killed by a drunk driver running a red light and how you didn’t deserve the time since without her. And think about how he got off easier than he should have. It’s all in how you think about things, Sammy.”

“Did that woman deserve what happened to her tonight?” Sam said.

“That was unfortunate,” Juan said.

“Doesn’t make it right, though, does it?”

“Right?” Pete said.

“That’s what we set out to do, remember? To put things right. But this – that – what happened tonight ... that was wrong!”

“Bound to happen,” said Pete.

“Huh?,” Sam said and lit a cigarette.

“You think you should be smoking?”

“Why shouldn’t I be smoking?”

“You know... the colon cancer you think you might have.”

“I’m not smoking it through my ass, Pete.”

“Whatever. Go ahead then.”

“But what’d you mean when you said it was bound to happen?” Sam said.

“You know. Two of three went without a hitch. Something was bound to happen. In fact, you think about it, something worse could have happened. We could have been in a tighter spot than you feeling guilty for the woman. I’d say, the three we did, everything went exceedingly well. Don’t you think? Old scores have been settled and here we are driving away free and clear.”

Free and clear, thought Sam. Anything but free and clear.

“You know what?” Sam said and flicked the cigarette out the car window. “Stop the car, Juan.”

Juan looked at Sam in the rear-view mirror and Pete looked over the seat at Sam.

“Stop the car, Juan,” Sam said.

Juan looked at Sam again in the mirror but kept driving. He never even touched the brake.

“STOP THE CAR, JUAN.”

The car slowed and rolled to an easy stop. The three men sat in the car without speaking for a few minutes.

“What’re you going to do, Sammy?” Juan said.

“I don’t know.”

Silence in the car, except for the sound of it idling at the side of the highway.

“I don’t know,” Sam said again.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Pete said.

Sam opened the door and stepped out onto the shoulder of the highway. He started walking back the way they came. He lifted his eyes from the road and read a sign seen in the red glow of the car’s lights as it pulled away: ‘Welcome to Gladden, a nice place to call home.’

6.

Sam walked back into town and got a room at the first motel off the highway. Hours passed. He was alone with his thoughts and a pack of cigarettes. The television remained black and the curtains drawn. Eventually he fell asleep on top of the bed’s blankets. And he dreamt.

This time on that bridge, the woman who had been with Tony walked from behind him and stared. She stared a long time, tears streaking her face. Tony’s blood was still on the thighs of her jeans and on her sweater. Her long dark hair was dishevelled and stuck to her face in places because of the tears.

Jim Morrison didn’t have a chance to pull up in his Cadillac this time. Sam was the only one to jump off the side of the bridge into the sea.

He woke up as he hit the water in his dream, hearing something he’d heard in a song or something that Morrison once said ringing in his ears: ‘Nobody gets out of here alive.’ That has to be a bad way to start a day, he thought.

Sam had slept in his clothes. He ran his fingers through his hair and considered the face looking back at him in the mirror. Screw it, he thought, and left the motel room to get coffee, cigarettes, and a newspaper.

There was a story on the front page of the local daily newspaper about what he and Juan and Pete had done the evening before. A man and a woman had been found dead behind a warehouse in Gladden’s industrial area. The bodies had been found by a man jogging. Sam wondered if the jogger had been in the area and had heard the shots. Then he thought about how close they, maybe, came to being seen standing over the two bodies. Or how there could have been three bodies left instead of the two.

The man and the woman weren’t identified by police until all next of kin have been notified, and the authorities weren’t releasing details about how they died. But police said foul play was suspected. A car registered to the woman had been found apparently abandoned in a coffee shop parking lot.

It would appear the victims had been taken from the coffee shop or had agreed to travel from the coffee shop to the location where they were found, police said. They were working on determining that as part of the investigation.

Sam wanted to put as much distance as he could between him and Gladden.

Police hadn’t named the victims in the news story, so Sam flipped the pages to where the obituaries were. Among the six obituaries were the two he was looking for. That was quick, Sam thought. Anthony Mench and another for a woman named Arlene Spencer. Sam knew she was the woman because Mench’s obituary said he left to mourn a step-daughter named Christina while Spencer’s mentioned she had a daughter of the same name.

Seeing the name Anthony Mench in black ink on the gray newsprint conjured memories for Sam of reading accounts of the court case, when Tony got away with killing Sam’s wife.

Charlotte had been driving across the island from St. John’s. She’d been going to visit friends in Corner Brook when she’d ducked off the highway and into Gladden. He stayed at home in St. John’s, kissed his wife goodbye and said he’d see her in a few days when she returned.

She was driving through an intersection when a drunk driver ran the red and T-boned her car. Charlotte died in hospital before Sam could get to her. Tony Mench was the drunk driver. At least, unofficially he was the drunk driver. There was no question he had been driving, but he’d managed to conjure enough doubt about whether he’d been drunk.

Tony Mench claimed in court that he’d hit his head in the accident. He told the jury that he’d wandered disoriented and in shock from the scene of the accident. Police and paramedics who responded to the accident could only find Charlotte at the scene.

Tony Mench walked into a police station two days after the accident. Police knew it was his car. It was registered to him and police looked for him. He’d walked in and said, “I’m Tony Mench and I believe you’re looking for me. I believe I may have been involved in a car accident.” But that’s all his lawyer would allow him to say.

During trial, patrons of a local pub the night Charlotte died testified that they’d seen the accused at the pub drinking. But that was only a detail without breath or blood samples taken from Mench that night after the accident.

He read in the obituary that Mench and Spencer would be given a wake at a funeral parlour the next day. The address was provided.

So Sam waited.

7.

He woke up and went to the bathroom. There was no blood this time and he thought that maybe it was a good thing. He thought that perhaps often things weren’t as bad as they first seemed. He finished and started the shower, waiting for the stream to get warm.

He got into the same clothes he’d been wearing for the past week. As he dressed, Sam thought again about leaving. He thought again about putting some distance and time between him and Gladden.

But he knew he wasn’t finished yet. Time and distance hasn’t done much to remove him from Charlotte’s absence and his thoughts about Tony Mench. This time, on the heels of what he’d done, Sam was determined to bring a definite end.

However that may happen.

From the backseat, Sam told the cab driver the funeral parlour’s address.

When he got there, he stood outside and chain-smoked four cigarettes as he watched people come and go. Cars filled the parking lot and the air was crisp and chilly. A fresh snowfall the night before blanketed the ground and rooftops of nearby buildings.

Get it done, he thought, and went inside.

There were gaggles of people standing around, some with cups of coffee or tea and small sandwiches. But there were other people standing alone. He figured there were enough people standing away from groups to make him seem a little less conspicuous.

A young lady wearing a black dress sat at one end of a couch. Christ, Sam thought, she must be the daughter. She looks just like Arlene Spencer and she has to be too young to be a sister. The young lady was crying, her tears streaking her face much the same as tears had marked her mother’s eyes and cheeks.

Sam walked over and sat beside the young woman.

“Christina?”

She put a white handkerchief to her eyes and looked at Sam.

“Christina?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

He was one of many people, certainly, to express sorrow to her. The others were merely commiserating with her loss. Sam, though it wasn’t expressly spelled out, was apologizing.

“I’m sorry you lost your mother,” he said.

She looked at the handkerchief in her hands at her knees.

“Don’t allow it to swallow you up, Christina,” Sam said.

She sobbed and Sam noticed that he was crying as well. She looked at him again and her pretty features were contorted by her crying. And Sam thought that maybe it’s through the pain we all take on when we’re crying that beauty is revealed. Like some bizarre refraction of light seen through the salty water of tears.

“I’m so very sorry, Christina,” he said, then stood from the couch and was about to leave the funeral parlour.

“Did you know her well?” Christina said. Her voice was tiny and fragile and had a sigh-like quality.

“I met her once. Seems like so long ago now. It was only once, and she made an impression. But I feel like I know you. I know what you’re feeling right now, Christina.”

“She was a good person, my mother. Why would somebody do this to her?”
Sam sat back down. His body felt too heavy for his legs, so he sat down and ran his hands through his hair.

Christina looked at him and said: “He got her messed up in something. I know it. It’s the only explanation.”

He wiped his jacket sleeve across his wet eyes.

“Did you know my mother’s husband?”

“A long time ago,” he said.

“He wasn’t a very nice man,” she said. “My mother’s husband. He wasn’t nice at all.”

“Yeah. I think I knew him,” Sam said, and sat back into the couch with his thoughts. “But sometimes people do things, certain terrible things, when they figure there’s nothing else for them to do. They do those things when they feel like maybe they have to, you know? And they do their best afterwards to live with what they’ve done. Maybe your step-father was like that.”

Christina started to cry hard then.

And Sam reached for her hand. He kissed the palm of her hand, the one that wasn’t holding the handkerchief, and he touched a tear on her cheek.
Then he stood up from the couch and walked out of the funeral parlour.