Jigsaw Man: Jigsaw Man

Copyright © 2012 by Marvin Brown.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4691-4834-2

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-4835-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS

PART ONE

VOODOO CHILD

PART TWO

REUNIONS

PART THREE

HUMANS AND BEASTS

PART FOUR

POUND OF FLESH

PART FIVE

THE JIGSAW MAN

Praise for Covet:

"Marvin Brown’s debut novel Covet is a lean, complex jigsaw of a thriller, a fast-paced, contemporary parable on the psychology of race, the nature of identity and the brutal powers of memory. You will not soon forget Russell Washington and Garrett Kale, nor the very talented Marvin Brown. I was hooked on the very first page."

—Richard Montanari,

author of The Violet Hour and Kiss of Evil

A snappy 140-pager that reads like a dispatch from a coffee shop just outside of Hell.

—The Glass Eye

"Welcome to a fascinating, chilling, tightly written psychological thriller that breaks many of the rules and explores new territory in the black man’s alienation in America. Brown’s slim book is long on depth, ingenuity, and substance. But the book’s unusual style may be the most intriguing part of all. The author’s nonlinear approach is reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s groundbreaking movie Pulp Fiction."

—The Toledo Blade

"A ‘psychological drama’ that reads like a cross between Goethe’s Faust and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. An interesting, imaginative first novel."

—Ohioana Quarterly

For Melinda Sue Brown,

who walks with me through the best and worst of it.

You, always.

together

divided

forgotten

remembered

PROLOGUE

PILOT LIGHT

In her darkness, so subtle beneath the scrape of each breath she took, something crept. His boots trying to be discreet on bowed, subdued floorboard? Or was it this old house again?

Sweet Jesus, she’d hoped to be asleep when he returned, half-hoping to die in that in that sleep. It’d never be the case. There was always too much pain after these episodes to sleep, and she was too much of a coward to die.

How many more nights to live these moments?

It had been a quick ride to this point. Ila was a fourteen-year-old girl, not long ago, standing on a rust-red, chalk-dry country road waiting for a ride all the girls in her off-the-map town waited for. She and they were all too eager to hop into the car that would pick a dusty girl up off the dirt road and drop her on some other road—any other road—as a woman.

Silly little girls. They all had the dream, or some elaborate variation of it. But Ila’s journey wouldn’t need to be a complicated one, she’d told her girlfriends. It didn’t have to transport her to money and fame, or power and friends, or to a big city lit with enough lights to blind a dreamer. Ila needed nothing more from it all than to gain two simple titles.

Careful what you wishing for, girl, Momma told her. Momma knew.

Ila shifted in bed. Rusting springs were slow to adjust. Blood across the pillow was dark and wide. Hair at the back of her head felt matted. A concussion maybe. It wouldn’t be the first.

There it was again, something creeping. Or was it the damn house, egged on under the protection of the darkness, behaving mischievously.

Ila hushed herself—no easy effort, that. She took in air at the price of pain. The man had turned an involuntary function into a stinging chore.

At sixteen she met and married Merrick, accomplishing her goals, minus one. A year later she gave birth and all her hopes had become reality. A year after that, the dream went bad, like a banana in the sun.

That was the beginning.

Ila could not hear the hammering of the boots, a telltale sign of Merrick’s arrival. He was not home. Not yet. She couldn’t know what kind of mood he might be in whenever he finally showed up. Two beatings in the same night wouldn’t be a record for Merrick, his personal best achieved on an occasion when he’d pummeled her and then twice afterward returned to repeat the deed. But this time, this night, he was reaching for new heights in the annals of his abuse: his most severe beating.

Why was it easier to face the beatings than to leave him? God, for the children, Ila.

Her vision was obscured. Her hand went to the soft, pulsing golf ball that was her eyelid. She had been something to look at, once. Now, every piece of her was disgusting and disgusted. Twenty-seven years old. Mother of two. Wife of a monster. Courage of a flea.

Ila worked her way to her feet. There was a sticky wetness where her thighs met. The way Merrick beat her, it was possibly something very serious, very permanent; more likely, it was nature running its course. She couldn’t know for sure. She had no tampons and Merrick wouldn’t allow her out of the house to get more. Either way, the spill between her legs assured her she’d keep at least one of the hundreds of promises she was incapable of keeping: She would never give this ever-loving monster another child to abuse.

Pathetic. Weak. Could there be this much weakness in the world? That she chose to stay in this house, her life in danger—her children’s lives in danger—was utterly asinine. Letting him beat her was pathetic enough, but refusing to leave the house, to seek medical help, to wait in fear for him to come home and probably beat on her some more was so sad. Pathetic. Weak.

Where was anger?

Anger, if not for the increasing abuse she received, then for the emerging abuse he’d begun to inflict on the children. Anger at Merrick’s lack of compassion. The man was triple her size, yet he struck her full strength like she was an equally matched opponent.

Where was her anger? Anger that he thought so little of her after slapping her to his feet, he’d kick her for bleeding on his boot. Anger for his silly conscience-clearing justifications: Ila, can you feel how much I love you?

You don’t have to have the courage to fight him, girl, her sister Lily would tell her, just the courage to leave him. Go to the police. The shelter. Come stay with me.

Sure, there were always alternatives. Alternatives fueled by courage she didn’t have. Where was the anger that was supposed to make her fight back? Where? Ah, there it was, a tiny pilot light, forever inkling to ignite her courage, forever snuffed out by her weakness.

"For your children, Ila," that tiny flame coaxed.

He’d kill us all, she’d reply, extinguishing another opportunity of hope.

She ran her trembling fingers along her breasts, down her belly. Her insides didn’t feel right. Merrick had possibly set something free within her.

No more.

Right this moment there was need. Get out of bed, head quickly, quietly, to the basement. It was never or right now.

Don’t think, just do. Find inside you that little girl who stood on a roadside daring to hitch a ride. Time for another trip. A new journey. Quickly.

Ila was in the cool, lightless hallway. Pathetic, weak, aching. Yet here she was, making her way down the house with a speck of the determination she thought she would never again feel. Each step along the hallway protested, reminded her of the danger. The ancient floor, its length in darkness, strained to keep its passenger.

Get to the basement, get the suitcase. Pack it quickly—some for the kids, some for you. Don’t think, girl, just do. Get the kids up and out of the house. Not to Lil’s; he’d follow you there. Get as far as you can get. Quickly, Ila. Don’t think, no time.

Sure, the pain was bad. But her life with Merrick was worse than pain, wasn’t it? She was surprised by her speed. She walked out of a slipper. No time to retrieve it, leave it. Merrick’s coming.

A chance, Sweet Jesus, a chance.

In the basement she found the suitcase lodged in the corner full of junk, covered with dust perhaps older than her children. She freed it from the pile of things never used and spun away with it. Her shadow, so crisp in the moonlight ushered in through the scarred, yellowing tiny window high up on the basement wall, cut across the man in the doorway. The suitcase jumped from her startled fingers.

Merrick? she whispered. Honey? Her heart wasn’t merely in her chest, in her ears, in her head, it was thumping on the walls of the room.

Merrick wasn’t a man as much as shadows. Seemingly taking on properties of shadows, he stretched across the doorway and meshed with the dark of the basement, all black but for the flash of silver in his hand.

Ila’s scream was sharp and quick. She took sight of the blade—through the dark, through the light, through the dark—on its journey down to her. It caught flesh, moved into her, an invader so cold, skipping over a bone, finding something softer that would accept it deeply. Her liquid washed over the weapon, offering warmth to its chill.

She must have fallen to the floor. He must have stabbed her repeatedly. Her vision flickered like a candle finishing its wick. There would be no more beatings. Here, tonight, in her darkness, her husband would have to finish her. He could have this body, crumbling at twenty-seven as though it was eighty-seven. He could no longer have this mind, this spirit.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

The courage.

The pilot light.

Cold, then numb, she looked to that tiny flame.

Who will take care of my children? she wondered.

Give it to God.

Beneath mounds of numbness, there was warmth. She knew she could abandon the numbness for the heat. A new journey indeed.

No more time for regrets, silly little girl.

Yes. Give it to God.

Bye, Lil.

The pilot light ignited her courage. Her entire body went up as if some flammable liquid greeted by a spark. Engulfed, finally, there was the courage, the anger, the strength, to just let go.

Ila burned down slowly, softly, without pain, all the while somewhere in the distance, there was music.

PART ONE

VOODOO CHILD

1

He moved slapdash through the blackened woods, his heart in the air, each breath in his heart, not fast enough to outdistance the sounds of the five demons who gave chase.

Oh, God . . . take me. Don’t let them get me.

God wasn’t listening. Not after the wreck. This place was out of God’s reach, black and endless and cold, despite the burn of the chase.

A light jumped out from behind and flickered in the thrash of his world. Stone-hard branches that couldn’t be seen tore at him from any direction—at his face and at his neck and at his arms—like the fingers of the demons were sure to do.

Close.

He’d seen the group of them seconds before they saw him, fresh from their bloodletting, as dead as he.

Now they came for him. Screaming. Through ruins of foliage.

Close.

Don’t let them get me.

Carrying him down the dark, tight throat of the woods, his legs were aching, threatening to give away, and he could hear his name tripping over his shoulders, slipping past his cheek, hard, cracking, like it was new to him.

Close.

Please, God—

Closer.

No—

A hand colder than the wind found him, brushed his neck, took him by the back of his shirt, and he knew for the second time tonight, as he was pulled back and down into the dark, this was the end.

2

Her smile.

He was sure they were a sight to her from where she lay, the five of them crowding over her, pushing out failing skylight and rolling tree line. A hint of urine and the whine of Hendrix’s guitar rose up between the flaring of the wind. He lingered on her smile as he struggled in an explosion of thoughts, the glistening of moonlight in the blood tracing her teeth.

Amidst all of them, but standing alone on this arc of highway, Caleb huffed at the lunacy: It was screwy, the way significant, major, details could slip through the delicate finger of memory, while other things—the littlest things—managed to hang in the center of the mind forever.

Goochie, Royce called to him through the breeze, maybe more than once. Caleb now wanted to divorce himself from The Gooch and all who knew him by that name.

The night was a smothering black that rubbed away his glaze; raving wind dried his oily skin. His comfortable glide between two worlds had ended here tonight. Once his parents’ golden child and the reckless kid leading five others like himself, Caleb drifted now in a place where he was neither. Fitting end for a hypocrite, he thought.

Again, nearer, louder, Royce said the name and Caleb looked up from the girl, her wet smile, just before a blink, in his eyes still.

’Cause I’m a million miles away, sang Jimi, and at the same time I’m right here in yo’ picture frame.

3

Where the fuck did she come from? Slyman asked. Anybody see where she came from? He ran his meaty fingers through a sweaty blond crew cut as he looked up, then down the darkening road. He looked like he was trying to swallow his lips. All muscle and tank top.

No one lives way the fuck out here, he said.

For a moment, Hump was staring agonizingly into the star-sparse sky, the whites of his eyes glowing within his dark, gleaming face, apparently hoping for answers to fall out of the blackness. Caleb noticed him tugging on his afro, something Hump often did when he was nervous.

She can’t be ten years old! Hump said.

They were on a patch of road waxed yellow under a sodium-vapor lamp. The rest of Route 95 was fading abruptly on either side as the last parts of the day were coming down.

Gooch, you were up front, Slyman said. You see anything?

Caleb shook his head. I looked up and she was right out in front of us, and Scammer was swerving the van… there was no time…

Keeko was coming undone, pacing erratically along the highway, crying and mumbling prayer and crossing himself. All that good Catholic training he was so fond of seemed to be draining from his lanky frame with each step he took.

This is the worst thing I’ve ever been involved in, he said.

Royce loomed at Caleb’s side, nothing unusual here. He could have been Caleb’s overfed Siamese twin. The Ox wore the night like an accessory to his outdated clothes. A mother—if he’d still had a mother—wouldn’t dress a son this badly. The dark was draped over a mass that diminished everything in its environment. Now, aligned with shadow and light, Royce Green was a 198-pound vision that could intrude into dreams in the worst way. His mind, though, was so much less.

Goochie, he asked, is she leaving?"

Leaving. It was Royce’s substitute word for dying. His sweet, oddball little mother told him in her final days that she had to leave him. The Ox didn’t understand what that meant, not even as she pushed out her last breath. Someone who had so little had lost so much; it wasn’t hard to understand why he was the way he was.

Goochie, is she leaving?

Caleb looked at the mess pinned down by the van.

—a voodoo chile, Lord, I knows I’m a voodoo chile—

She’s gone, Royce, Caleb told the gentle giant, and watched him blow out a sigh that might have disturbed trees nearby had the wind not beaten him to it.

Gone, all right. A tiny, China-white right arm reached out across the highway, seeming thankful to be free to the van. The left, folded up in the wheel well like a used-up accordion, hadn’t been as lucky.

Her neck, skin still too new to be scarred, was swollen and lumpy, like a wet paper bag overloaded with marbles. This was more than a broken neck, Caleb diagnosed. The collision had snapped bones, no doubt, but the weight of the van resting on the girl’s chest sent her internals rushing down avenues and up alleyways they had never been intended to navigate. She looked like she was a tube of toothpaste with the cap still on that had been squeezed too tightly at the bottom.

And her face.

Beautiful and destroyed.

Caleb closed his eyes but it was still there.

Her smile.

4

Turn that fucking music off, Todd Stone shouted from behind the van. The eighteen-year-old loudmouth, better known as Slyman, was inspecting with a flashlight the skid marks along the road, then the tires themselves. Then the girl. He lit a cigarette, its sudden light glancing over sweat and muscle and tie-dyed cotton.

Somebody kill that noise.

Hump shook away his holy-shit gaze and made for the van, avoiding the girl with cautious eyes and steps. The Doobie-mobile listed for a moment when he went up onto the running board. Caleb could hear him kick past beer cans, shatter what sounded like the bong, and fumble with the 8-track player—one ol’ Mississippi, two ol’ Mississippi—before finally killing the thunder of Jimi’s Stratocaster.

Silence rushed in. It was almost too much.

Check on Scammer, Caleb urged from the road. He turned up his shirt collar against the wind and winced. Heat and pain worked their way down his neck and across his right shoulder.

Still out like my grandmomma after 9 o’clock, Hump said. He breathing, though. There’s a cut on his head… maybe he need a doctor or somethin’, man. Shit, I don’t know.

On tiptoe, Caleb could just make out Scammer’s body slumped forward, his shoulder-length, burnt-brown hair swept over the steering wheel.

Crickets started filling up the silence.

Fucking stop that, Keeko! Slyman said. Just stop the crying already!

I’ve never been apart of anything this bad, Eugene Keeko Goodacre replied. The moon put a shine to a face that was awash in tears and snot-bubbles. How do we get past this?

Without getting caught, Slyman suggested.

Hump climbed out of the van. Thinking only ’bout yourself—hey, that’s new for you, Slyman.

"Fucking juveniles, Hump! All of you, man. Me? I can go to jail for this—"

Jail? Keeko said. This was an accid—

Alterboy, you can’t afford to be fucking stupid right now, man! Slyman shouted. "Bunch of Hail Marys ain’t gonna fix it for you this time, Eugene."

We shouldn’t fight right now, Royce said. That’s not right.

Will the 200-pound bag of meat with one brain cell please mind his own goddamn business? Slyman said.

Don’t you say that, Slyman. I don’t have one brain cell.

Doink! Sorry, Ox. Didn’t mean to give you too much credit.

Focused is where we wanna be right now, Caleb interjected.

Don’t start trying to talk to me like you’re my goddamn father, Gooch. So tired of that shit, man.

I’m definitely not your father, Todd!

Caleb saw the muscles in Slyman’s jaw tighten. "What you need to do, Caleb, is keep your meat puppet off my nuts, he said, turning to Royce. You always get this part wrong, don’t you, Ox? When we’re in the talking phase, you shut up. When we get to the wiener-slurping phase, we’ll let you know."

Royce snorted. You’re the one who never knows when to shut up, Slyman. You… you’ve got a big-ass mouth!

Ox, you’re pushing me into new stages of pissedoffness.

Caleb smirked. Slyman, you’re not half as funny as the size of your pecker, he thought. Already, Mr. Originality was wearing down the phrase he’d swiped from the shop class hip-cats. Just now, the wind seemed filled with tiny ice tacks. The tacks struck him everywhere skin was exposed.

Enough, Caleb said. Let’s get the van off her.