ROOMFUL OF WITNESSES
What happened to Leon is a dirty shame.
I never liked the guy. I’ll admit that. I thought he was lower than a squirrel beneath a truck tire.
Bad blood between us? Maybe.
But no one can pin this thing on me. No way. I didn’t do it—and I’ve got a roomful of witnesses.
You heard me right. A roomful of witnesses.
The day didn’t start too bad. Yeah, I woke up in the staff bungalow with the same joy, aches and pains in all the usual places, and a wet, hacking cough to remind me I was down to my last pack of smokes.
What else is new?
The sheets on my cot were damp from night sweat. I stood up and stretched. No bones cracking or creaking. Hell, I’m only thirty-eight.
I know my hair is a little thin in front and my cheeks have crisscross lines in them. Charlene says I have old man’s eyes. Well, what do you expect? No one ever built a haven for Wayne Mullet.
The top dresser drawer stuck again, and I tugged it so hard, I pulled something in my right shoulder. Groan. The Louisiana humidity doesn’t agree with furniture, at least not the cheap, piney stuff they bought for our rooms.
I rubbed the soreness from my shoulder, coughed up something nasty and blew it out the window. Then I pulled on the uniform. Baggy, green cotton pants and lab coat, white rubber-soled shoes. Ha. They make the staff dress like doctors, which always gives me a chuckle.
Wayne, your momma would be so proud.
I crossed the back lawn to the kitchen. A promising day. Morning clouds shielding the sun, although the back of my neck was prickling by the time I reached the big house.
And what were those bugs? So many of them, swirling in such a tight circle, they formed a dark pillar reaching high above my head, and I’m six-three.
Leon Maloney is superstitious as all get-out. I hoped he didn’t see this bug thing. He’d probably say it was an omen. Leon is always running on and on about omens. Sometimes I have to show him the back of my hand to make him stop.
He told me his momma had some kind of fortune-teller booth at the back of a saloon in the French Quarter, and she taught him everything you need to know about omens and bad luck. He says she never taught him anything about good luck.
Yeah, Leon can be a bitter dude. Why can’t he just keep it to himself?
Okay. He’s had some real bad luck. I mean last year, for example, one of the old guys pulled out Leon’s left eye—and Leon was just trying to serve him some goddamn soup.
I had to slap a few bugs off my face as I pulled open the screen door and stepped into the kitchen. Some kinda swamp flies, I guess. Don’t know how they got way out here in the woods.
Think maybe they flew, Wayne?
I like to give myself a hard time. Keeps me sharp, you know. But don’t you try it. Yeah, you might say I’m a little touchy. Momma used to say I’d snap at a gator if I had more teeth.
Hey, I grew up on the bayous and I got swamp water in place of blood, and I saw a lot of things pulled up from the brown water a kid probably shouldn’t see.
Well, why get started on that? Speaking of brown water, the coffee smelled good, and they had egg sandwiches this morning on toasted English muffins and the bacon wasn’t burned as usual. So how bad could things be?
Leon was already finishing up. He raised his head from his grits bowl and flashed me a good-morning scowl.
Leon has long, wavy blond hair. He’s into metal music and I’ve seen him go nuts on air guitar, making his hair fly around ’til he was red in the face. He says he could be an Allman brother if they’d let him in the family.
Some kinda joke, right? I never know with Leon. It’s hard to read a guy with only one eye.
What a loser.
Dr. Nell made him promise to stop blasting his music in the staff dorm because it got the old folks all riled. Leon nodded his head and agreed, but I saw that twitch in his stubbly cheek that meant he was angry.
I wouldn’t want to cross Leon. He’s quiet and goes about his business taking care of the retired folks here. But once when he had a big knife and was slicing up the fruit salad for lunch, he told me he cut someone once, cut them pretty good, and didn’t feel bad about it afterward.
He was holding the knife in front of him and had this weird smile on his face after he told me. And I think he meant it as some kind of warning or threat.
Leon and I had some run-ins back in the day when we were guests ourselves, guests of the Louisiana State prison system. That’s when I learned to keep an eye on him. I mean, two eyes, ha ha.
Anyway, I finished breakfast, drained the coffee cup and crushed it in my hand. Leon had a stain on the front of his lab coat, but I wasn’t gonna be the one to tell him about it. I followed him to the kitchen to start making the breakfast for our guests.
We got two hundred old guys living here, so that meant two hundred fruit smoothies just for starters. Leon and I are slicing and dicing the fruit and jamming it all into the smoothie machine. And I’m filling up glasses. We staff guys get paper cups, but the guests get glass, of course.
And Charlene Fowler comes in, all red lipstick and that bleach-blond hair glowing under the fluorescents, green eyes wrinkled into smiles. She’s not in uniform. Instead, a magenta midriff top and white short shorts, with enough skin showing to let everyone see her flower tattoos.
She breathes on me and rubs one long, purple fingernail down my cheek, all flirty, or you might say slutty, like the two of us are something, only we’re not.
I know she’s banged Leon. More than once, I’m sure. But she’s always coming on to me, too. Just to cause trouble and make things even more tense between us. I’ll give her this. She’s a sexy thing, especially for this place.
Leon told me to stay away from her once. But he didn’t want to fight me. He said it kinda quiet and didn’t look me in the eye.
We both know we gotta be careful. Dr. Nell always has her eye on us, and we want to keep these jobs.
Like I said, we both did time in the prison on the other side of the woods from here. Those stone walls poking up from the trees are a close reminder. We know we’ve got it good here at The Haven.
Charlene stays in my face. Her perfume smells like oranges. Or maybe it’s the fruit I’m putting in the smoothies. “Did you forget everyone is leaving this morning?” she says, all breathy, like she’s saying something dirty. “You two boys are on your own.”
I shrug. My shoulder still aches from the dresser drawer. “We can handle it, Charlene.”
Leon chuckles. You never know what’s gonna strike him funny.
“Dr. Nell says don’t forget Ida is still getting the antibiotics,” Charlene says. “And no snack bars for Wally. He’s put on some pounds. She says to keep your cells on. She’ll check in from town.”
Charlene gives us this devilish grin. It fits her face fine. “Guess Dr. Nell doesn’t trust you boys.”
Leon raises his eye from the bananas he’s slicing. “You trust me, don’t you, Char?”
“About as far as I can throw you.”
“Why don’t you stop rubbing your tits against him,” Leon says, his voice suddenly as hard as hickory. “Come over here and give me some sugar.”
Charlene sticks her head out, like she wants to get it chopped off, and the green eyes sparkle. “Why don’t you make me?”
Leon doesn’t give Charlene any warning. He grabs her by the neck, the way you’d choke a chicken, pulls her over to him and pushes his mouth against hers.
Charlene starts to struggle and spit.
And I don’t think. I mean, I shoulda just stood there and let ’em work it out. Instead, I lose it. I grab Leon’s arm, lower my shoulder and bump him away from her.
That surprised even me. What did that mean? That I wanted Charlene? Or I just wanted an excuse to fight Leon?
No time to think about it. Leon lets out a roar like some kind of swamp creature. He tackles me to the floor and, before I can catch my breath, we’
re wrestling and rolling around on all the fruit peelings and garbage.
He’s sitting on top of me, doing a little jackhammer action with both fists to my ribs. Powerful for a little guy. I’m not surprised. And those bony hands hurt.
Luckily, Charlene is no shrimp. Somehow she manages to pull him off me and step between us. I’m on my back, massaging the ribs. Leon jumps to his feet like a cat ready to spring. But then I see his shoulders sag. He looks away.
And I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking. We’ve gotta back off here and be cool. Our jobs ain’t the greatest, but they’re all we got.
I stand up and raise both hands. Like truce, man. Leon nods and backs up to the kitchen counter.
I turn and see this grin on Charlene’s face, and her eyes are still sparkling, like excited. “Oh, my!” she says in a girlie voice. “Did I cause that?” She even giggles. “Was that really over me?”
“Just kidding around,” I mutter.
“We were just waking ourselves up,” Leon says, stretching.
“Do I have to tell Dr. Nell about this?” Charlene asks, teasing. “I sure hope you boys can be trusted on your own.”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. She’s out the kitchen door. And about a minute later, I hear the staff Jeeps crunching down the gravel drive, which means Leon and I are all alone, in charge of two hundred residents.
We can work together. No biggie.
Most of the old folks here at the home are pretty nice and don’t give us much grief. Ida is my favorite. Poor thing’s been sick. Usually, she’s as flirty as Charlene. The old thing likes to grab me by the ears, pull my head down and smooch me on the lips. But the last few days, she’s been lying around moaning, acting pitiful as an old hound dog.
Leon and I brought out the smoothies on a tray and began passing them out around the front room. A couple old dudes were glued to the TV already. They sure love those cartoons, the louder the better.
I handed Frankie his glass. He raised his gnarly hands and signed, “Thank you.”
I signed, “Your welcome. How are you today?”
His fingers moved slowly: “I feel a little old.”
Leon makes fun of me for talking to the guests. But almost all of them can talk really well, and I don’t see any reason not to chat with ’em a bit. They always like it.
Frankie taps my shoulder and signs, “Cookie? Cookie?”
I laugh and sign back, “Later.” Frankie is one of the oldest guests and the least trouble. He used to work in some kind of science lab in Texas. His pal Frannie worked in the same lab.
Next up—our least favorite dudes. Sweeny and Bo. These two guys were in show business. Big deal, right? But they act as if they own the place. Try to cross them and—well, that son of a bitch Sweeny bit me twice. Believe it?
They’re nasty and bad-tempered and are always getting the other guests all riled. Talk about bad news. The only time their eyes light up is when they’re causing trouble.
Leon and I each had one smoothie left on our trays. Sweeny’s and Bo’s hands shot out. They’re grabby as weasels in a chicken shack. I started to hand Sweeny his drink—then pulled it back.
“Hey, Sweeny, watch this, dude,” I said. I tilted the glass to my mouth and drank it down. I wiped juice off my mouth with the back of my hand. “Mmmmmm. That was good, man.”
Leon laughed. “We’re in charge today, guys,” he said. “No one to give you bad boys a break. Boo hoo.” He copied me, gulped Bo’s smoothie down in front of the old guy, then licked his lips.
Sweeny and Bo looked at each other like they didn’t believe it. Then Bo pointed at us and rubbed his two pointer fingers against each other.
Shame, shame. That’s what that means when they rub their pointers back and forth.
“It’s not your day,” I told them. “Everyone went to town to celebrate a birthday. Know what that means? Leon and I get a little payback time.”
Then Leon went too far. As usual.
He gave Bo a little slap across the face. Not a hard slap, but it seemed to stun him. Leon laughed. “Think you haven’t been asking for it?”
Again, I couldn’t just stand there. I pulled his arm back. “Careful, Leon. Don’t hurt ’em.”
He snickered. “What are they gonna do about it?” Leon raised his hand and gave Sweeny a slap. It made a loud smack, and the old guy’s head snapped back.
This wasn’t good. Leon and I have been working here ever since we got out of the can. Six or seven months, taking care of these guys. So far, we’d done okay. I didn’t like these dudes any more than Leon did. But why look for trouble now?
Leon gave Sweeny a slap on the cheek. “How’s that feel, buddy?”
Sweeny lowered his head sadly and rubbed his fingers together. “Shame, shame.”
Leon laughed and raised his hand to give Bo another face slap.
“Leon, you’d better not—” I started.
But I didn’t get to finish my sentence cuz Bo grabbed Leon’s arm up by the shoulder—and yanked him off his feet. I let out a cry as he whipped Leon over his head and sent him sailing into the wall.
Leon groaned as his body slammed hard into the wall. The whole house seemed to shake, and a stack of DVDs toppled off their shelf onto the floor.
Leon climbed up slowly, looking kind of green. And before he could catch his breath, Sweeny jumped off his bench, shot forward, and head-butted Leon in the gut. Leon went ooof, just like in the cartoons, and his face turned from green to blue. Breath knocked out, definitely.
These old chimpanzees weigh about 200 pounds. They’re over five feet tall, you know. And adult chimps are several times stronger than humans.
They’re big and ugly and dangerous, which is why people send them here to The Haven. They’re only cute ’til they’re six or so. Then they turn into big, hairy monsters.
I guess it was some lamebrain in Washington who had the idea to open a retirement home for chimpanzees back in the Louisiana woods. When we heard about it in the prison, we laughed at first. Then we started to get angry, thinking about these chimps living in luxury with their DVDs and wide-screen TVs, their playrooms, three meals a day served to them on trays in their puffy armchairs and five acres of woods to play in behind their house.
That made us angry when we looked around at what we had.
The ugly, old chimps were living high on the hog, all right. And every day, we got the slops.
Did Leon and I have a chip on our shoulders when we started working here? Like I said, we just needed jobs.
But now some bad feelings were out in the open, and we had to tie things up and push ’em all back. Like trying to get toothpaste back in the tube.
Leon was still kinda purple, wheezing and holding his chest. I had to deal with these monkeys.
I stepped forward, thinking hard, trying to look tough. But what looks tough to a monkey?
Bo glared at me, a big, toothy grin on his ugly face, waiting for me to make a move, I guess. Or planning his next one.
Behind us, the other chimps were going nuts. Leaping up and down, screeching and howling, heaving their smoothie glasses at each other. I saw Frankie—good old Frankie—crouch down and take a big dump on the living room floor. Guess he was upset.
Pretty soon, I knew the shit would be flying.
Holding his stomach, Leon pulled himself to a sitting position. He was moaning and groaning. You wouldn’t like it either if a 200-pound monkey took a dive into your belly. “Wayne, we gotta get help,” he choked out. “Can’t let this get…out of control.”
We had an agreement with the prison. It was in our rule book. Call ’em up in an emergency, and they’ll send the guards running.
But I knew those dudes. Believe me, I knew them too well. They’d come shooting like it was the first day of deer season. I don’t know about you, but I always think it’s good to avoid a bloodbath before lunch, if you can.
“We can control ’em, Leon,” I said. I started to tug him to his feet. He groaned a
gain, rubbing his middle.
I had him standing up, teetering a little, when I saw Bo and Sweeny leap out the open window. One followed the other, and they didn’t look back.
No, we don’t have bars on the windows. Cuz this isn’t a cage, remember? It’s a haven. Besides, what chimp in his right mind would ever leave a cushy setup like this?
“Ohmigod! Ohmigod!” Leon kept slapping his forehead and staring at the window. “I’ll kill ’em! I’ll kill the both of ’em!”
Bad attitude. I was about to tell Leon that his bad attitude got us in this mess to begin with. For a moment, I couldn’t decide whether to start packing my suitcase, or go after the two fugitives.
But I’m a hopeful kinda guy, and I really wanted to stick around. So I motioned for Leon to follow me. “We can bring ’em back. They’re probably waiting for us in the garden.”
Leon glanced all around crazily. I don’t know what he was looking for. A weapon? Then he narrowed his eye like he was trying to focus on the situation in hand. And he followed me out the front door.
The screen door slammed behind us. Sounded like a gun going off, and I jumped. I took a breath and told myself to cool out because I had to be the thinking one.
The heat hit us like a tidal wave, and I felt the first trickle of sweat at the back of my neck. The air felt thick and steamy. “They ain’t waiting in the garden,” Leon said.
“There they go.” I pointed just as the two chimps disappeared into a stand of red mangrove trees. Leon and I took off, jogging after them. We ran right through the whirring column of buzzing swamp flies and kept going.
I could hear the two chimps chittering to each other, all excited like. I knew that’d make it easy to follow them. One small break.
“Wait,” Leon said, pulling back on my shoulder. “We need something.”
“Like what?” I said.
He didn’t answer. Ducked into the little, white garden shed. I heard him banging around in there. “Leon—they’re getting away!” I shouted. “If we lose their trail…”