#13 - Blue Peacock

“I know what’s going through your mind. You don’t wanna kill, right? You don’t think you’re capable? Maybe you won’t have to. But do you think for a moment that anybody gets excited about this part of the job? Sure, there’re sick bastards out there that do, but all of us, me included, felt just the way you do the first time. The problem is, you’re focused on this little moment. You think this is important, like pulling a trigger is something monumental, like the whole world shifts on its axis ‘cause of this thing you’re doing. It’s not like that. Everybody dies. People die every day, correct? Nod if you agree. This happens and it’s been happening since the dawn of time, since caveman times. Do I wish it was different? Do I wish we could all live in some blissful, candy-land utopia? Sure, I’d like to live in a world like that. But that ain’t the world we live in. You know that. You see things clearly. If you didn’t you wouldn’t be here. This is an evil place we’ve been born into. There’s a lot of wickedness, a lot of selfish monsters all around waiting for their opportunity to pull an inch ahead. I’m looking at you and I’m seeing your mind working and I know where your thoughts are taking you and I’m warning you – don’t – don’t confuse what you’re about to do with the evil out there. This ain’t evil, what we’re doing. This is survival. And you know why survival is important? ‘Cuz if we don’t survive, if we roll over and let the darkness come in, if we let the power slip through our fingers and fall into the laps of the bad men, well, then it’s all over. We can kiss our asses and society and all things good in this world farewell. That’s what this is, survival. And to survive you’ve gotta be strategic, you’ve gotta stay a step ahead. When you pull that trigger, a man will die. No question. That’s a hard truth to swallow. The thing you can’t forget is that he’s gonna die someday anyway, and if he’s a bad man, he’ll hurt a lot of people before he sucks his last breath. This is an opportunity to keep that pain outta the world. You kill the bad man today and tomorrow he can’t hurt nobody else. That make sense to you? It should. That’s what we do. We do some ugly shit, no doubt, but I believe good comes out of it. I gotta believe that. We’re like the surgeons here. We cut open the chest and we get our hands bloody, but you know what? The patient lives. He gets better each time we cut him open. He heals. See? Killing ain’t fun, and nobody wants to do it, but somebody – me, you – we have to. You scared? Of course you are, you should be. This isn’t light work. This isn’t for everybody. If you didn’t feel sick in your stomach right now, I’m not sure I’d understand you as a man. I’d think you’re a sicko. It’s normal to feel that feeling in your gut. It’s normal to have second thoughts. That’s morality, man. That’s your mother’s voice in your head. That’s your teacher in kindergarten telling you not to hit that little girl sittin’ next to you. That’s God and Buddha and Jesus and Mother Theresa and the Pope all telling you ‘thou shalt not murder’. That’s guilt creeping in. But I’m here to tell you that all that is gonna cloud your thinking. That’s all noise right now. There’s only one voice that you know is true right now, and that’s the voice deep inside you that knows that this is the way things have to happen. This is reality, right here, right now. You’ve got a job in front of you. You get paid well, don’t you? Nod your head, I know what you get paid. You’re valuable because you’re willing to do something not many are willing to do. You’ve got courage. I know that. That’s why I trust you. I know you can do what needs to be done. You’re the real thing, like me.”

He removed the gun from the inside pocket of his coat.

“We’re friends, correct?” He asked.

I nodded.

“If nothing else, think of this as watching a friend’s back. I need you.” He said. “Look at me.”

His eyes were wide and fixed on me. I stared back at him.

“If somebody walks in here and you don’t take care of it, you put both of us in danger. Understand that? That make sense to you? It could be somebody with a gun. It could be somebody with a phone ready to call the cops. Either way, if they walk back outta here alive, we’re done. You see how this is an us-or-them situation? That’s what I was talking about. Survival.”

He handed the gun to me. “I need you.” He said again.

“Should I hide?” I said. My voice was hoarse, quieter than I’d intended.

“You do what helps you relax. I don’t want you fidgety. Find a place at the entrance. Make sure you’ve got a clear line of sight.” He said.

“Is there anyone I shouldn’t – you know, do I shoot no matter what?”

“Like who?” He said.

“A kid or something.” I said.

“What the hell’s a kid doing here?” He said, shaking his head.

“Okay.”

“You take care of anyone coming in here. I trust you.”

Next to the register, only fifteen feet from the entrance, stood a large heating table covered by a clear glass sneeze guard. A piece of notebook paper was taped to the front with prices listed for different pieces of fried chicken; Legs, thighs, breasts, wings, gizzards, livers. I stepped behind the heating table. The entrance was visible. I crouched down, out of sight for anyone coming through the door. In the quiet, I could hear J’s shoes scuffing against the linoleum floor in the distance.

I looked at the gun in my hand, and suddenly I knew what was happening.

“J?” I said, whispering, but loud enough for him to hear.

“What?”

“Somebody’s coming, aren’t they?” I said.

“What? You mean you see somebody?” He said.

“No. Not yet. I mean, you know somebody’s coming and that’s why you want me here, right? You brought me here to kill somebody for you.”

He didn’t respond.

“Who is it, J? Who’s coming?” I said.

“You want a name?” He said. His voice was low, strained. “You know that only makes it harder.”

I didn’t say anything.

J said, “Yes. Somebody’s coming. You’re gonna kill him.”

*     *     *     *     * 

To read about Blue Peacock, read the original Wikipedia article HERE. 

#14 - Veerappan

No one’s ever happy with the bananas. They’re either too green or too ripe.

If too green, they say “These won’t be ready to eat for days.” And they shake their heads like they are very disappointed. 

If too ripe, they say “These will be rotten tomorrow.”And they roll their eyes. I’m always apologizing for the bananas.

“Sorry.” I say.

“Do you have more in the back or something?”

“No.” I say. “These are all we have.”

Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it isn’t.

The Pineapple Lady doesn’t buy bananas from us. She buys pineapple, mostly, which is why we call her The Pineapple Lady. She’s Korean, about the same age as my grandma, and she and her husband own a Chinese restaurant called Hot Wok. She’s picky about her pineapples, but kind to me. She buys them by the case and always needs help placing them in her cart.

I asked The Pineapple Lady her name once, but I don’t know how to spell it. Actually, I don’t even think I can say it. Korean words are really hard to pronounce. After I found out that The Pineapple Lady was Korean, I looked on the internet to learn how to say hello in Korean. It’s pretty hard. I tried to say it to her the next time I saw her, but I don’t think I said it right. She just looked at me and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I don’t think she knows much English.

I was helping The Pineapple Lady the first time I met The Ohio Lady. I was loading a box of pineapples into The Pineapple Lady’s cart, and I heard someone say, “Are these sweet?”

I looked up and saw a woman holding up a bag of navel oranges. She had short gray hair, cut like a boy’s, and wire-framed glasses with thick lenses that magnified her eyes and made them look huge. She was wearing a brown fur coat, but it wasn’t fancy looking. The fur was worn and old looking.

“Yes.” I said. “They’re really good. They’re from California.”

The woman lifted the bag of oranges closer to her face, like she saw a bug inside.  

“That’s a place I’ll never go.” She said, squinting at the fruit. “It’s too dangerous for me. I’m from Ohio.”

The Pineapple Lady’s cart was filled and she wandered off.  

The Ohio Lady was still standing there, looking at the oranges. She put down the first bag and picked up a second. She was touching each one through the plastic, poking to see if they were firm.

“I don’t go to the big towns.” The Ohio Lady said. “I never stepped foot in Cincinnati, and I never will. The whole town is controlled by drug lords. They’ll shoot you no matter who you are.”

My family went to Cincinnati once when I was a kid. My Dad’s cousin Danny lives there. He took us to King’s Island one day and me and my brother rode The Racer six times in a row. We have a picture of all of us standing in front of the fake Eiffel Tower. Besides that, I don’t remember anything about Cincinnati. Except for Skyline Chili, which I didn’t like. I didn’t say this to The Ohio Lady.

 “No, I like it here. It’s safe here.” The Ohio Lady said. She was looking at me.

“Yeah. It seems pretty safe.” I said.

“It is. I wouldn’t have moved here if it wasn’t. I did my research when I decided to leave my mother.” She said.

She dropped the oranges onto the pile and looked at me with her head tilted slightly, like she thought I might be hiding something from her. But then she said, “I’m sorry. I talk to everybody.”

“That’s okay.” I said.

“I know it’s okay, but some people don’t like it. These days you get in more trouble being friendly than you do being evil.” She shrugged. “I’m a kind person. I don’t like trouble. I don’t like none of it. My whole life I covered up and wore nice clothes because I didn’t want any trouble from men. Other girls aren’t like that. They want the attention.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded.

“You’re not like those men. I know that just from the look of your face. But some men – in Ohio – they’re just hoodlums. That’s why we always stayed out of the big towns. Drug lords, gangs, thieves, pimps.” She whispered the word pimps.

I wanted to be nice to her, but I also wanted to try and find a way to stop talking to her. I just shook my head.

“That’s not why I left, though. My mother’s the reason I left. I’ll never step foot in that state again as long as that mean old woman’s alive. She’s eighty-eight this year, so maybe it won’t be too much longer. I can only hope.” Her eyes widened and looked even bigger through the lenses of her glasses. “I know that sounds horrible, like I’m just a terrible daughter, but my mother is not a kind person. She was so mean to me – and after me taking care of her for thirty years. I showed her kindness, like a daughter should, and she treated me like crap. The things she said to me are un-repeatable. Hateful things.”

“That’s too bad.” I said.

“She’s a villain in my eyes, really.” The Ohio Lady said. “Ain’t that sad? For a daughter to call her own mother a villain? But that’s what she became to me. So I had to get out of there. That’s why I’m here. Been down here for six months, about.”

This was the first time I ever met The Ohio Lady. This was before I knew about her dog, Annie, or her roommate, Gus. This was before I learned that The Ohio Lady had helped Gus with his depression and helped him stop wanting to kill himself. This was before I learned that The Ohio Lady only bought apples, even though she always looked at the other fruit first. This was before I knew that The Ohio Lady would make it a habit to look for me and talk with me, and that our conversations would usually only last a few minutes, but that they would always be interesting. This was before I knew that The Ohio Lady was a little bit lonely, but that she wasn’t dangerous or unstable or weird.

All I knew the first time was that I wanted to try and get away somehow. I didn’t want to keep hearing about her sad life.

“Can I help you find anything?” I asked her.

“I’m just looking.” She said. She must have picked up on the fact that I didn’t want to keep listening to her because she said, “I’m sorry. I told you I talk to everybody.”

“No, no, it’s nice talking to you. Nice to meet you.” I said.

“You too.” She said.

“Hope you have a nice day.”

“I always do.” The Ohio Lady said. She walked away, toward the apples. That day she bought a bag of Fujis. I went in the opposite direction. I tried to look busy by straightening the heads of iceberg lettuce. For a while, she lingered in the produce department. A few minutes later I noticed that she was talking to someone new, another woman her age. They were both holding heads of broccoli.

I’m not sure why I did it, but after seeing the two of them talking like that, I walked over and said, “Those Fuji apples are really good.”

“I hope so.” The Ohio Lady said. “They look pretty.” 

*     *     *     *     *

To learn more about the real Veerappan, read the Wikipedia article HERE.