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  Three and Out

  Copyright © 2014 by C. G. Banks

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  Chapter One: The Vulture

  Lance Aimes sat rigid as a coon’s dick halfway down the long table. The PTO and football backer’s club had bannered the Holiday Inn reception hall with all the gusto crepe paper and poster board allowed, and that jackass, Coach Phillips, was doing his best to Lombardi the crowd. Mostly he was saying what everybody already knew: the season was done, albeit at 10 wins and 2 losses it was the best showing in 20 years, and “even though these boys weren’t able to take it quite All The Way, they were still the best goshdarn bunch a young men this Marine’s had the Great Honor to coach,” and blah, blah, blah.

  As far as Lance was concerned football was a game for morons and mental defectives. In fact, he had initially played only to impress Pop. Who was dead. Tucked in right next to Lance’s mother in Everview Gardens a ten minute ride down Buckley Road. But being here tonight was about the last thing he’d ever be able to do for the old man and that said, so be it.

  Meanwhile Phillips blustered on, switching gears now as was evident by his raised forefinger, the fine sheen of sweat glistening on his upper lip. “But before we run off to dinner, folks,” he was saying (Lance imagining him having done this whole shebang in front of the mirror before leaving his house), “I would like to present the Captain’s Award.” He stopped, pursed his lips, pointed to the ceiling as if he and God were in cahoots on this one. “As you know this annually goes to the Team Player (and you could see the capitals billowing through the air as he spoke them) who regularly and consistently” (panning the room with the same forefinger like some adamant backwoods preacher) “leads by example.” He paused, glaring across the silent bank of faces, daring anyone to drop the secret before he so willed it. Lance felt his hackles rise. “This year,” and he steepled his fingers together in studied patience, “the award has Extra significance because of the trials and tribulations this exemplary young man has gone through.” Here he paused and offered up a wicked, knowing grin. “That,” he said going into his roll, “and the perfectly awesome 83-yard run that took us to the Championship.” The room held its breath, like greyhounds before the shot. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Lance Aimes!” and the room erupted.

  Drops of rain on his forehead brought him round and he sat up, startled to full wakefulness when the empty pint bottle rolled off his lap and made a brittle clink against something nearby. “Whafuck?” he muttered, blinking furiously against the darkness. A steel press squeezed nauseously at his brain. He turned right and bumped his head into something solid. Then he saw the name, below it a short string of dates: Virgil Luntz, 1904-1937. “Whathef—“ he started but then he remembered. The cemetery.

  The rain picked up and he looked at his watch. 4 am. He’d come to show them the award…wherever the hell it was.

  He stood up and found himself surrounded by tombstones, recalled stopping by the liquor store just after eleven. A dirty rag of memory wiped viciously across his mind: his parents’ grave, the hard authority of bottle as he’s squatted before it. And now the rain. Jesus, was it cold. He shivered and drew his clothes tighter, squinting through the darkness to carefully pick his steps back to the car. Thirty stumbling steps later he misjudged a ground plaque and went down hard beside a family crypt. The jolt stole his breath away, and as he lay there gulping air, he saw the crack in the masonry. More than a crack, really, more like a hole, and he pushed himself to his knees. A hole about two feet above ground level, flat on top and bowled out toward the bottom.

  Without thinking he thrust his hand inside, still half-convinced he was dreaming anyway. Right up until his hand came up sharp against the skull, his fingers ratcheting around it as if of their own volition. Like they’d known it was there. Then, mesmerized, watching himself slowly draw it out as if from a mile and a lifetime away, coming cleanly through the hole. He saw it was a skull, minus the lower jaw. And as if from this disgrace the rain began hammering down harder as if to make him give it back. He didn’t. He just teetered drunkenly over and clasped the mossy object to his side like a football. And with this any uncanny grip of power seized him, staggering his shaky sense of reality. He stood up in disequilibria a moment, weighing the benefit of searching out that damned Captain’s Award or just going home. Finally, he stumbled off in what he thought to be the general direction of the gate and left.

  And if anyone ever found the damned thing they sure as hell never bothered telling him about it.

  He leaned back in the leather chair, trying his best to let the day escape his skin, washing it away with the whiskey. He stared through the patio glass doors at the bay’s estuary glistening pale under the dock light. Every once in a while one of the swarm of bugs flitting around it would plunge into the lake and the surface would break like glass as the shore scavengers made short work of the insect. He polished off what remained of his drink, set the empty glass back on the nearby table and maneuvered himself around on the swivel base until he faced the room proper. It was dim inside, the way he liked it, the only light a thin issue through the two eyeless sockets of the skull on the mantle.

  He only dragged it out occasionally now, had no clear recollection of where he’d come by the thing in the first place. But he couldn’t let it go, not now, not after all these years. Hell it was almost a friend, of sorts. It brought to mind human frailty, the scant distance between the living and the dead. The inscrutable distance between the mighty and the weak.

  He got up and made himself another whiskey. And another after that. When he took the time to notice it was 10:25. He found the nightly news deep into the weathercast, the weatherman braying on about a disturbance in the Gulf. And even now the loud pattering of raindrops on the roof tiles substantiated his claim. But any fool could see that. Listen with you ears. Poke your fucking head outside and check it out for yourself. A headache bloomed in his left temple and he really had to piss.

  He got up from the chair and clicked the TV off, walked slowly over to the mantle and blew the candle out in the skull. In a moment of hazy repose he watched the lazy trail of smoke drift out through the rents and holes, and he smiled away the goose as it walked across his grave. Then he plodded on to the bedroom, shaking his head drunkenly as he went. He sat down on the edge of the bed, slowly pulling his shoes off in the total darkness, and as he laid his head down on the pillow his mind began to wander, and the rain drumming on the roof hurried him away like blown leaves before a gale.

  It was a little over an hour until August 17, 1969. The name of the storm he’d missed just then was Camille.

  The Hawk’s Nest had been a little dive a couple of blocks off campus years back. The drinks were both cheap and strong and it was during this period that Lance developed what proved to be the only serious relationship of his life. That it was with booze made no difference at all. You didn’t have to buy a bottle a diamond ring and you sure as hell wouldn’t ever have to send it to college. As it was, he was lucky his parents had not neglected to provide for his welfare: a nice fat life insurance policy of his father’s had set his feet on solid ground when he turned eighteen.

  She he sat in the grubby bar, trying for hours to emphasize with or to the other patrons, but he
couldn’t. At least if he wanted to be honest to himself. To him the whole bunch appeared aimless bottom-dwellers, and the more he drank the more it disgusted him to be around them. An unrequited anger welled up inside him, but he managed to sit still, biding his time. Waiting.

  When twenty minutes later a young man stood up to leave, the wait was over. Lessons needed teaching and sometimes that required force. Lance pulled out his wallet and placed the money to cover the tab on the table, watching the guy thread his way to the door. Lance wasn’t worried about losing him, the bar was close enough to student housing that most of the regulars walked, and if the guy did have a car, well, that would mean he’d misjudged him in the first place.

  Regardless, he stood up and made his way toward the door, watching the other faces to see if anyone marked him as he left. As far as he could tell, no problems.

  The air was crisp as he stepped out to the curb and he cinched his coat tighter. Spotting the man ahead in the shadows of the street lights, he quickened his pace. By the end of the first block he was only a few paces behind, off the