The One Percenters Read online

  Still, something’s going on here. The future is now, and the rules are all changing.

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  Technological advancement has changed the world, and not only in the way you’re thinking. It’s more than just practical. Now even the weakest, the dimmest, the least charismatic can rise to the top, or be bred into the system with a big bank account. Evolution can no longer thin out the crowd, and it’s only a matter of time until nature bites back big-time. Think Black Plague.

  Think AIDS by air. We have taken away nature’s biggest tool, and she’s one pissed-off bitch. Make hay when the sun shines, because it’s only a matter of time.

  A man on a bus once told me the worst-case scenario for humans would be curing cancer. I didn’t solicit the opinion; the guy just liked the sound of his own voice. I asked him why he felt this way. He said it’s no good to have everyone living to 150. The world can’t support it; the economy can’t support it. Nature needs a means to an end, and we’re robbing it of that. It’s all leading up to a big ol’ natural ass-whoopin’ of humble Homo Sapiens. Eat your vegetables, kids. You’re gonna need all the fight you can get.

  My pondering of the sidewalk avoidance percentage [S.A.P.] goes right along with this. Somehow nature still has us hierarchied, but hell if we know how it’s determined. Someone probably has life figured out, but that someone is hiding out deep in a far-off cave, afraid of the reality of ignorance in the world.

  Shortly before Cristen bought the farm, I decided to take a trip. I’m not sure that I ever really decided, actually. It was more of a subconscious effort. One morning I woke up and started to sweep my apartment.

  Two hours later, I’m on Route 3, music blaring, a light drizzle coming down. I didn’t know where I was going, but I did know where I was heading. I had known for months. Finally, I had broken down, even if I didn’t care to admit it to myself.

  There are things in this world we accept ‘cause we have to: mosquitoes, pinkeye. .

  There are things in this world we accept because they’re part of the unchangeable, necessary system: taxes, vaccination shots. .

  There are things we accept in this world that we have absolutely no idea why we accept. We do it Page 49

  because everyone else does it and it’s the right thing to do. Murder can be like that. Now, I say “can be.” Some dumb fuck gets pissed off at work and knifes his kids that night. Well, he might as well skip trial because, due process or not, he’s sure as hanged. You see, the legal system is a nice little toy and it makes us feel like we are in control, but the one big, butt-ugly flaw is that it depends on human objectivity, which is about as common as a 10-9 professional soccer game.

  Laws don’t put people in jail. Crimes don’t either. It’s the circumstances that make the difference.

  Did the circumstances warrant the act? Self defense, insanity, abortion, manslaughter. All can end up in a death, and it is somehow left to the unfortunate few to separate the excusable from the heinous. What a way to spend a summer—in a hot and sweaty courtroom with a bunch of strangers on hard chairs. With lawyers. And guilty versus innocent? Might as well throw a dart.

  Maybe they do. Maybe that’s what juries do when they go back into that little room. Maybe a game of cricket decides it all. When they take a really long time to decide, they’re playing for points.

  I drove for quite a long time. You know you’ve driven for a while when you suddenly realize you’ve been listening to gospel music in Spanish for two hours.

  It’s easy to tune out on the long road. It’s also easy to crack your car up. Strange how life works. I could end someone’s life just by crossing the median. Entire family lives disrupted or ruined. It’s much easier to make the front page performing evil than good. The cards are stacked that way forever after you slide down the blood chute into the doctor’s awaiting herpetic hands. Go figure, right?

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  Chapter Nine

  That was when I first heard the bees. Just a hum at the time, not yet a buzz. And it was barely noticeable, I tell you.

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  Chapter Ten

  It was past nightfall when I got there. I parked the car alongside the woods, not wanting to attract attention.

  It was too late now for my purposes. The darkness assured that. I slept a remarkably peaceful sleep.

  The sunlight awoke me. It was dawn—dewy, sweet, and innocent. Dixon was a beautiful town.

  Too pretty to be home to a penitentiary. Yet there it was. No fancy name, just Dixon State Prison. Dixon was one of those places that’s a town, a township, and a county all in one. I guess someone just gets lazy in those cases. Either that, or they figure they’d make it easy on everybody.

  Steam was coming off the hood of my car.

  Steam or vapor or smoke. I always confuse those damn things. Chemistry sucks. I reached to my dashboard and grabbed the Styrofoam cup. I tasted the cold and bitter coffee. Just a sip was enough—too much, even.

  I felt my face, and it was scratchy. I must have been a sight. Bad situations. Any one of us can fall victim to

  ‘em, and before you know it, your friends start to doubt you, then your family too. Then you get desperate. All this went through my head as I sat there, though it was largely irrelevant. I find it difficult to keep my thoughts under grasp at times. Sometimes it’s just easier to let go.

  I stared down the hill that morning. The sun was out, and I could hear the chatter of small woodland creatures behind me. It was a comforting sound—

  summery and cheerful and childlike. There was a smell in the air that I couldn’t place at first. It was both pleasant and not. I realized it was hot asphalt.

  Somewhere, road crews worked, though I thought it a bit early. Probably wanted to avoid the heat of the day.

  I can’t say I blame them. Outdoor work is attractive to the idealistic man, the one who forgets the bitters of winter and the sting of the hot sun.

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  Down the hillside was the rear of the prison.

  There was a fenced-in area where the criminals could recreate and dream of long tunnels leading outward.

  I didn’t know if they’d even let him out there.

  I knew even less about jails than I did about women.

  High-risk prisoners, I didn’t know where they went.

  Are they’re permanently chained? It was a question to which I hoped never to find the answer. The same hand that had grabbed the coffee now held the steel handle of a knife. I don’t know what I planned that day, if anything. I could no more get into the rec. area than the prisoners could get out of it. But I didn’t know how to shoot a gun, and that made things difficult. How things have changed.

  It ended up a moot point. I never saw him. At least I don’t think I did. From my vantage point up on the hill, the cons were essentially tiny talking heads with tattooed shoulders. I remember being quietly happy not to have seen him. After all, vengeance solves nothing. Jill would still be gone.

  Somewhere else, deeper and more subtly, I wished he stood in front of my car even as I sat there. I imagined blood spatter on the windshield and a dent in the bumper. Not a large dent; I would steamroll rather than smack. I wanted to see the whites of his eyes.

  Still, this feeling was very subdued. I reached in the glove box and drew out an unopened cigarette pack.

  I removed the cellophane, got out of my sedan, and took a seat on the roof of my car. As I smoked one, two, three butts. Yes, yes, we all can slip, all right? I looked back at the woods—fresh, green, and youthful—

  thinking of the creatures within its treed walls. I could only hope they were happy in their simple lives. I wanted to hurt somebody.

  Eventuality Avoidance. 1.n. The often subconscious use of day-to-day, inane activities as a means of averting thoughts concerning meaning, consequence, and the unknown in this lifetime. See escapism. [1955-60]

  Hegemony is a wonderful thing. The best kind of control is that which those under control think is Page 53
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  natural, or part of an unchangeable system.

  Ad in the Barton Press: Had enough. Even as you live, you die. Goods to be dispersed. Good riddance.

  Graffitied on a stone wall, Madison, WI: Death is a reward, long life a punishment.

  And still the hum got louder. Slowly louder.

  Nearly buzzy, but not quite.

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  Chapter Eleven

  My writing has been scattered; for this I apologize.

  The medication is making it hard to concentrate.

  Hyperbole comes easily to me when I’m stoned. I am feeling better today; that should help.

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror this morning. The white shirt I wore contrasted sharply with the circles under my eyes and my black, scraggly beard. I don’t look a bit like the child of long ago who jumped and skipped and frolicked. That seems like a lifetime ago, when I thought adulthood would bring total understanding and omnipotence. A lifetime ago, at least. That was before the advertising companies ate away at my brain. The same business that made me a relative fortune has sucked away my soul, leaving me as another empty shell ready to be refilled by Madison Avenue’s minions. Like you, I am tortured in the shower by inane jingles. Like you, I pay other people to front their products on my threads. I figure it was worth the trade-off; advertising bought me a really good shower with lots of hot, high, and high-pressure jets.

  I realize I told you that the man on the bus—

  the one with the cancer cure theory—liked to run his mouth. In truth, I’ve been running my own as well. It seems best to let the story tell itself, so my soapbox is now officially pushed firmly and forever back beneath my bed. It joins the dust bunnies in the darkness.

  Again, I apologize.

  Soon after I returned from my little trip up north, I decided I needed a vacation. At this point, Cristen and I were becoming serious, and I felt it was time we got away to face life from a new perspective and begin to create some new and fresh memories for ourselves. Every new relationship should be granted its own slate. Too much baggage is being carried around, if you ask me, or even if you don’t.

  We decided to go to the lake, to rough it for a weekend of sun and fun or vice versa.

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  We took her truck. It had four-wheel drive and was sufficiently beaten upon for a trip into the deep wood. We decided not to look for a commercial campsite, opting instead to take the more mellow and private option of hiking off the highway until we found a site we liked. Opson Lake is rather large, and though it draws quite a crowd in the summer months, there is enough circumference land so that folks may be assured solitude should they search for it.

  I packed a grill—the same one we used for the concert—on loan from Pat. There were fishing poles, two sleeping bags since we didn’t own a double, a three-man tent, a large cooler of food, a smaller cooler of beer, and a couple of bright orange rafts—all the makings of a hell of a weekend. I brought a knife with me whenever I camped. Normal people use them to fillet fish and prepare food, but really I’m terrified of bears. Admittedly, what good a four-inch knife would do against a grizzly, I don’t know.

  It didn’t start off as we had hoped. There was a torrential downpour that evening, and what’s worse, I had numb-headedly left the tent stakes in my closet.

  Not that it mattered in the end, as the rain meant there would be two bodies available to hold down the fort, literally.

  We sat by flashlight that night. It lacks the romantic essence of candlelight, but it’s a lot safer in a tent. The thunder outside was crisp and harsh, and loud enough to shake the land around us. It was the type of gripping storm that raises your adrenaline and brings your innermost fears to the surface. It reminds you that, yes, you are still afraid of the dark and all the things that go bump in the night. When the wind howls or the silence cuts like a knife, we are forced from our protective shells into a chilling world where we don’t know the rules and our irrational emotions rule the roost. Thunder is the set of headlights that glides across the wall in the dead of night when we sleep at faraway hotels. It is the slow drip from the kitchen faucet when we’re alone in bed at night. It doesn’t pull punches, and it backs itself up with bolts of hard-core, Page 56

  unrelenting electricity. I digress.

  We got very drunk. Along with the beer, we packed a bottle of whiskey we never planned on using but which circumstances dictated we finish, and finish it we did. A smart camper always brings along some token item to kill time in case of inclement weather, and we had done just that. We had a 13-inch television, black-and-white, and we watched a baseball game which extended into the thirteenth inning. I was surprised that we had reception, but you know what they say about gift horses.

  Cristen was a far bigger sports fan than myself, but I must admit, watching it there with her as rain pelted our tent, I was rather enamored with the game.

  It ended when the third baseman drove a ball into right-center, bringing in the man on third who had doubled and then moved along on a sac bunt.

  I must admit also that I had to ask Cristen to explain the infield fly rule at one point.

  I didn’t feel like much of a man doing so, a fact I find interesting looking back. I asked why the infield fly rule didn’t go into effect with just one man on base.

  Cristen explained that assuming the batter busts it out of the box on the pop-up, he should easily coast into first base, eliminating the con-job double play that the infield fly rule is designed to prevent in the first place.

  I’m still fuzzy on it, I’m afraid, but I nodded my head as she explained, because I’m sure that no one alive could have done a better job of it. She tried to explain all the rules to me at an earlier date. She had one of those thick books with black-and-white illustrations that are labeled Figure 3A. I tried to go along with it and learn about a game that was foreign to me, but it just didn’t want to stick.

  The television was turned off at 9:45 p.m. It still rained hard, and when I peeked my head out to take a look towards the lake down the slope, I could see bolts of lightning coming fast and furious and breaking into three, four forks. I felt total serenity at that point.

  I remember thinking how very conceivable it is that ancient civilizations should think up myths to explain natural forces.

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  These myths are often laughed at today, but it would seem they are as good an explanation as any, and they make for much more fanciful tales. Giant crabs in the ocean and snakes that swim among the clouds. Kind of fanciful, really. Makes you wish for a more interesting world than one under the power of electricity and motion. Very efficient, but not so much in the glamour department.

  Cristen and I made love under the stars, even if we were inside the tent. The electricity in the air and the natural thrill granted by a hard storm made it an especially frisky session. We were alone, with only the yellow, haunting eyes of the forest inhabitants upon us.

  I could hear the rain fall off severely, and there was the sound of raccoon chatter at the lake shore.

  I remember reading that raccoons adore the taste of crawfish, or is it crayfish? Truthfully, I’m not sure there’s a difference, and I sure as hell don’t know if Lake Opson has either of them. But the masked bandits must have found something that was to their liking,

  ‘cause they were shrieking up a storm down there. Food could be one explanation for that. The other’s a good woman. Maybe one of those big fellas found himself a gal and the two were now getting acquainted. I could relate. When we awoke, the weather had seen a great improvement. The sun’s rays scattered brightly across the surface of the lake, and reflected through the forests, dancing on the leaves of the larger trees. The sky was a bright, intoxicating hue of blue, like a big bowl of, well, blue gelatin. The air was crisp, and you could feel a breeze under your armpits. If this wasn’t a perfect day, then I have never had the pleasure of seeing one.

  Cristen and I did a little shuffling, removing all the beer from th
e small cooler except for a six-pack.

  We made a couple of sandwiches, which joined the beer in the little cooler. Armed with food, drink, and with fishing poles stretched across our backs, we waded out into the lake.

  There was a pier about 500 feet to our right, but we chose instead to set our sights on a large rock which protruded from the lake about forty feet out.

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  The natural setting felt more soulful, and who knows what monstrosities the local fishermen might have left on the dock?

  The boulder was flattened on its top, making for an ideal place to suntan and take it all in. A third person would have cramped its surface, but for a couple, it was terrific. We had taken in several small fish, maybe six total—nothing keepable—when we ran out of beer.

  Besides, you can only sit on a rock for so long. We now treaded the exposed stones toward the shore, and were about halfway there when hell ascended upon us.

  I happened to be looking downward (assward) at the time, so I saw it well. Cristen was wearing sandals, and the water had made her footing a bit tense. Finally, almost inevitably, her left sandal slid out from beneath her. I will never forget seeing her ankle dislocate. Her foot was at a right angle to the leg, and for a brief instant she was actually standing on the base of her calf. I didn’t hear any rip or tear. Instead, for just a moment, the whole world went dead silent.

  It was the instant between paradise and hell, the moment of the dawning realization. In the time it took for the pain to go from ankle to brain, my own mind realized this event marked the end of any fun we’d be having this weekend. It was something I realized in a resentful manner, as if the accident were planned to take away a bit of joy from my life. The funny thing, though, is that I didn’t stop enjoying myself at that moment. Nothing of the sort, actually.

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  Chapter Twelve

  She screamed. It was a loud, piercing-to-the-point-of-curdling-the-blood, horrifying scream. It echoed through the valley, off the rocks. I knew she would not be able to keep her balance, and indeed she didn’t.