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| ...the fucking Weather Station... |
Chapter Forty-Four
Brubaker sat in his chair, watching the Weather Station…
Brubaker sat in his sagging, moldering old armchair. He was watching the Weather Station. He looked at the crucifix hanging on the wall opposite. It was above and beside the TV, a little to the right. Of a good size, it looked like a bronze sculpture. The actual cross was wooden, but the figure of Jesus was probably just painted ceramic. He didn’t really care. The symbolism was the important thing. Brubaker prayed a lot, for an atheist. He even talked to the thing sometimes.
Sometimes he just couldn’t sleep. Tonight was one of those nights.
Earlier that day, Bru had come home and found his old man in the kitchen, shaking like a leaf. Big Frank was all upset about something.
“This was in the mailbox.” His old man, mouth, jaws, and lips quivering, and with his hands shaking like branches in a windstorm.
Bru took the envelope from him and examined the curious title on the cover, printed on some cheap dot-matrix printer.
It said: ‘Alert.’
Then the next line, Neighborhood Watch, next line, Community Safety.
The next line said, “Important.”
The letter was pure poison.
Dear neighbor,
It has come to the attention of this writer that living among us is an unregistered sex offender with untreated mental disorders. Charles Henry Brubaker of 853 Knight Street is known to police and has been seen taking photographs of young children in and around the St. Matthew’s school area. For years this man has been known to sit on the front porch with his aging father and stare at children walking on their way home from school.
Mr. Brubaker is a poor-minded, life-long drug user who has never worked and has had numerous encounters with police resulting in incarcerations under the mental health act.
He is evidenced to have been charged with stalking a neighbor with criminal intent in the past and was relieved of various drugs, firearms, pornography and photographic equipment at that time. This was due in part to neighboring children complaining that the man regularly undressed in view of a window through which neighbors could see him. The charge was so strong that he wasn’t permitted to be within several hundred feet of his own residence.
Please be aware that this writer prefers anonymity by reference only to the safety of my child. Community awareness of a sex offender and peeper is all that concerns me about this person. Our collective safety demands this, and so should you. Take back our street from this deviant by being alert and critical to his nature.
Snoopy the Snitch
Neighborhood Watch
“You have to call the cops.” The elder Brubaker told his son. “I’m implicated too, you know.”
At that exact moment in time, Brubaker couldn’t think of anyone he hated more than those scum-sucking jerks, those degenerate sons-of-bitches down at the Lennox Cop Shop. It couldn’t be LaSally. The man was vicious, but this...this. No. To sneak around at night and stick this in the mailbox would have taken a smidgeon of guts.
“Why bother? They’re the ones who wrote it.” He told the old man. “Them and the fucking fascist cocksuckers at the paper.”
One of these days there will be a reckoning, a little voice in his head said, loud and clear.
So that’s why Brubaker prayed so much lately. He didn’t pray for revenge. He didn’t pray for something bad to happen to someone. He didn’t pray for money or success, or anything trashy and useless like all that.
He prayed for justice. A little bit of justice would go a long way. It would take care of all the rest.
All kinds of crazy thoughts went through Chuck’s head—and they were all relevant.
In the movie Hang ‘em High, starring Clint Eastwood, there is a scene where Clint goes to the judge.
“Those boys saved my life. Why are you hanging them?”
And the judge says, “It’s because of that magnificent journey across the desert, with three murderers. If I don’t hang those boys, then there will be more lynchings in the territory. Men will say, there is no justice in this territory.”
Brubaker stood in front of his crucifix, barely aware that it was four a.m.
He prayed for guidance, and courage, and strength, and patience.
He prayed that he might have the privilege of bringing those dirty, stinking Lennox cops to justice someday.
Yes, Mr. Brubaker had learned to hate the Lennox Cops, and to loathe and despise the good folks at the Guardian-Standard.
“All I ever wanted to be is a writer.” He told Jesus hanging on the wall. “Sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth it.”
The crucifix was silent, but there was a little voice inside of his head.
“Get them. Get them good.”
Brubaker stood there for a long time, praying for inspiration.
“So you want to play God, do you?” He murmured to the walls.
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| ...time to suck the cock of the Fire God. |
Thinking of Barnes, O’Keefe, that little butt-kisser Purvis, the asshole Sergeant Oberon, he spoke to the crucifix on the wall.
“I think it’s time they learned to suck the cock of the fire-god.”
It was a reference to a certain Monster Magnet song he liked.
Damn straight, and Brubaker would think upon it. He would think upon it well. Is this how the police reacted to his criticisms of the budget process? The police had him down in their files as, paranoid and delusional. They expected him to run away, or commit suicide, or show up at the front desk of the Guardian-Standard, yelling and screaming, abusive and threatening…
Suddenly he remembered a funny little story Shawnia told him. She was a middle-aged Cree woman, oddly enough, although they were up in northern Ontario or Manitoba or something. Around here, the people were all Ojibwe. But she was a Cree, and her name was very pretty, musical in her language.
People always thought ‘Indians,’ talked in grunts.
She told him all about I.M. Stoner. Bru knew him from college days. They’d done a little drinking together.
Stoner went a little kooky and sent her an anonymous letter, and while refusing to tell him what was in it, she said it was hateful.
She was dead certain it was him.
“Oh, yeah.” She said firmly. “It was him.”
Certain information in the letter, which only he could know…it was put there so she would know who wrote it, without being able, (or willing,) to prove it. A pattern.
“So what’s the funny story?” Chuck asked.
“I heard he was down at the cop shop, at the front desk, yelling and shouting. He was all red in the face, all kinds of sweat pouring down and my friend was there picking something up…”
Stoner had an extremely rare malady, one that caused him to sweat profusely for no real reason. Her friend went down there to pick up her driver’s license after a roadside suspension.
“Oh, yeah?” Asked Bru.
“It was something about an anonymous letter. My friend said she thinks he got one,” Shawnia told him.
That had been a year or so ago…
“No way. Why was Stoney shouting at the cops? That never does any good. Does it?” His initial reaction to the anonymous letter was that it was a set up, and that he was expected to react…to do something.
It stank to high heaven.
“What a dirty, stinking, miserable, shitty little town.” He told the crucifix on the wall. “There is no justice in Lennox County.”
No argument there.
A little voice in his head spoke to him.
“Kick their asses, Brubaker.”
END
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| ...Snoopy the Snitch, hard at work... |
Images. Louis. He steals them from the internet.
Louis has books and stories from Kobo. He also has some art on ArtPal.
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