Selected Short Stories Featuring Cockfight Read online

silvering hair. "Out back." He turned like a mastodon and lumbered across the floorboards like his grief was chained to his ankles.

  There was a sign on the refrigerator by the counter that said "Sale - All Coke Products 50%." Every two liter and glass bottle was gone, but the cans, which seemed to be the reason for the sale, were stacked unsteadily in their place in the warm fridge. "You coming?" Larry asked, stalled at the back door. "Yeah."

  "I, I found her back here. Beside the dumpster, but hidden so's I didn't see her until I came back to empty the trash." His knees failed him and he caught himself on the edge of the dumpster. I helped him stand, and he leaned heavy on my shoulder.

  "Take her easy," I said. There was a buzzing sound behind me, like a bug zapper. It was the old Coke machine, washing the back of the store in a diseased, red light.

  The marquee display on the Coke machine flashed its internal temperature, as if the promise of a cold drink was endorsement enough. "She was laying on her front, looking behind the dumpster. There was, there was a rat, sitting in the corner there, staring at her, like..." and I almost dropped him on the pavement.

  "Come on, Larry. You need something cool to drink." His feet stopped moving, just planted on the concrete. "I'll buy you a Coke. On me."

  "I'm not thirsty." He wouldn't budge, so I pulled until he tipped over, and he fell in step. I dropped three quarters into the machine, and it spat them all out at me. The display flashed red, angry letters at me: EMPTY.

  "Now Larry, why would this machine be empty if you've got a dirge of cans just inside the door? Maybe folks buy in ones or twos to get them cold, but at the sale price for a buck you get six cans." The lock was busted clean open. "When did you report the door broken, Larry?"

  "Few days ago." I pulled on the face of the machine, and it swung open. The machine had been gutted, all the cans and racks removed. It stank of lemon. "You kill Cheryl the same day?"

  He started to shake. "Christ, Bill, you don't understand." I took him as far as the back wall of his store and he used the wall to prop himself up.

  "No, Larry. Don't think I will, either."

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  Falstaff

  “But Sir John, I saw you die.”

  I ran my stubby fingers over my sparse, white beard. “You heard of my death. You may have even seen my corpse in the street, or in the ground. But as I am not dead, you could not have witnessed it. Now drink.”

  That gave him pause, but it would take more than a moment’s breath to recover from the thumping I’d given him. At first pass, he refused to drink of my flask, but he understood that he was beaten already, his refusal symbolic only, and swallowed whole. He made a face as the liquid passed over his tongue, then when he spoke his voice was only a whisper. “I saw you in that tavern alive, and your king dead, when it was you who should be dead. I knew the two could not be separate events.”

  “I doubt it to be true- you did not stumble upon me- I came here for you.”

  “You’re a liar, Sir John, and we’ve known long enough not to trust you.”

  “My lies, yes… the histories would have you believe that Prince Henry killed Hotspur Percy at Shrewsbury, that I took credit for his victory. Henry was 16 at the time, and gangly even for that age. Hotspur was a man of 39, who had fought enough and fiercely to earn his name as a horseman. Hotspur was impetuous- and that was his downfall- but it was not at the sword of Henry, nor in truth at the end of a sword at all.”

  “In the heat of battle, Hotspur lifted the visor on his plate for fresher air, only to have a bolt lodge in his jaw. I have little doubt Henry fired that bolt; he was one of very few on the field to carry a crossbow. But Hotspur was removed from the field, and taken to a tent with his surgeon, and here is where my claim at his death originates. You see, a noble may not die from even so grievous a wound; Henry himself survived an arrow through his cheek that day, due to the skill of his father’s surgeon.”

  “The conflict has been called part of the war of roses; Henry fought under the red rose of Lancaster, Hotspur under the white rose of York. So with white rose thread through my tunic, I walked cross Hotspur’s line unchecked. I was nary bothered at the entrance to his surgeon’s tent, where I killed patient and physician in silence upon a dagger. The better part of valour is discretion. I see ‘coward’ quiver on your lips; to kill a nobleman in darkness is better than to kill a hundred-fifty peasants in day’s light, and that was the bargain I struck when I struck him down. His rebellion ended there- though his father’s agitation did not.”

  “As to others of my lies, the king is dead, that much is true, but my hands were not upon him for a cause, neither by touch nor by spirit, and I do mourn him. No father should outlive his son- and no servant outlive his king.”

  “He permitted the church to hang you.”

  “We permitted the church its spectacle, and their acquiescence bought their continued salvation.”

  “I don’t understand; I saw you drunk, stumbling as you left, when I followed from the tavern.”

  “It’s soft cider, fool,” I said, splashing the remnants of the flagon across his face. “You thought me drunk; you thought me old; you thought me fat; you thought me weak. In sum, you thought naught at all. You saw the man I showed you, not the man who breathes here.”

  “But to business: you’ve been from Owain; I know he’s an old man, now, but he tried to kill Henry’s father, and I have little doubt he’ll try to murder Henry’s son for his crown. Speak quickly now, if you would not die as you have lived: a traitor to your king.” He coughed, and either I had talked too much, or he’d refused this last opportunity for confession. “I’ll find Owain, and the tuppence he’s given you won’t pay the ferryman’s toll, leave do you spit’s good now. Mayhaps you noticed your throat tighten- a poison, from a true apothecary whose drugs are quick.”

  His lips, already burned blue, curled in anguish. “I’ll prepare your place in hell, Lollard.”

  It was not an unsullied refrain, and I replied as I do: “I’ve done no wrong, simply performed in my vocation- and it is no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.”

  “Vocation,” he chortled. “You’re a, thief. Heretic. Charlatan… murderer.”

  “I am the king’s man, and that’s all you bloody well need to know.” I pushed his head hard against the stone wall; it was necessary he die, that Owain be not counseled of my progress, but not that he feel it.

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  “It’ll be due back in 28 days. That makes it October 10th.” The words don’t sound like mine, nor the tone of voice- friendly, even genial, but there’s a little of me in the metallic clang of the stamp on the inside cover- loud and a little angry. The stamp is old, antique, probably, big and heavy but shiny, chrome with brass appointments. My boss is very precise that he wants it clean of fingerprints after every shift.

  But I’ll tell you a secret: I used to kill people for money. It gets a bad rap, on account of the moral ambiguities, but the pay is nice, really the job isn’t all that difficult, and you get to make your own hours. And I was good at it- there’s something about doing good work that’s fulfilling.

  Though I suppose “good” is arguable- at least semantically, because while my work was certainly of high quality, I don’t think most people would use “good” to describe it. But working in one of Medellín’s library-parks is good work, too- I’ve had people thank me, even call it God’s work.

  I’ll explain: Medellín is infamous as the home of Pablo Escobar. In ’91 it was the most dangerous city in the world with over 6000 murders in a year- averaging eighteen bodies a day. Business, my kind of business, was booming (which isn’t a joke about the daily car bombings- I may be that clever, just not that cold).

  I contracted for Escobar. This was during his time imprisoned in La Catedral. He envisioned himself as a manor lord, in essence, and began demanding taxes of his fellow traffickers, in exchange for the work he did
fighting the government. Those who refused to pay, he had kidnapped and brought to La Catedral, where they were tortured and executed, their bodies left in the street outside his “prison.”

  Escobar suspected the opposition to his lordship to be too unified, and thought it was being orchestrated by Carlos Bonilla. I was contracted to capture Bonilla at the same time the Moncado and Galeano brothers were taken. But someone tipped Bonilla off- his family and his essential belongings disappeared before I got there.

  In those days, the Medellín cartel was not a trusting organization. Many of Escobar’s own lieutenants were killed for refusing to pay his tribute, and he was becoming paranoid. If I returned to him without Bonilla, he would have simply assumed I’d been paid off, and have me killed instead. So I disappeared. I’d made enough money, and saved and invested it smartly enough that I could live modestly.

  But I learned something in my time, and that was that a man who runs causes larger ripples than a man who’s staying still. So I never left Medellín. What better place to hide than among its nearly 3 million citizens? But a man with no livelihood causes questions, so I applied for work at many places, and eventually found employment at a library.

  Medellín’s several library-parks are not where I started work, but I work in one now. The library-parks have been credited as revitalizing the city, giving its