Blaze of Glory

CHAPTER 8

The ex-garbage man closed the door softly, pausing in the hall. The scraping continued from the front door, but the screams had subsided. Bennie and Samuel spoke in confident tones, coming together to solve the problem, one gangbanger to another. Grandma was singing again and over the din, he could hear the well remembered strains-

Patty cake, Patty cake, baker's man.

Bake us a cake as fast as you can.

Mix it, and roll it, and mark it with a B,

Slap it on the door for Buckley and me!

For the hundredth time Buckley shook his head. Everything was so damn insane. He somehow thought the end of the world would be a little more orderly, a little less rife with the absurd. How he’d ended up in this redoubt with such a gaggle of-

Suddenly, an indescribable itch began at his side. Beginning as a pinprick, it evolved to a small tingling, then quickly progressed through the usual levels of pain until there was a second of intense searing agony and then a small pop. Scratching at the spot, he came away with a blood-soaked finger. Buckley Adamski stared in shock and felt around the hole again. His heart sank when he felt the small wriggling form. He pulled out his hand and glared at the innocent looking maggie that had exited his body, and with the surety of a lifetime knew that he was going to die.

He hurled the harbinger to the ground and squashed it beneath his heel, driving it into the cheap carpet with all of his two-hundred and twenty pounds. The fact that he was going to die a horrible death crept through him on sticky fingers, each touch a promise of the devastation to come, an assurance that he’d be the next one dancing the Sally Struthers’ death disco. It must have happened when he’d fallen asleep. They must’ve missed one in the rush to kill them all. Worst of all, he was paying for the sins of the others and it was so unfair. MacHenry should have been the one sitting in the chair. The irony wasn’t lost on Buckley. The man who wanted to die had escaped death.

Buckley wiped the blood on his pants and fought back the sob that’d bubbled up and lodged within his throat. He would have to tell the others. If he was any kind of man at all, he'd have to tell them, open the door and walk out into the hall.

They deserved to know.

He turned the corner and shuffled into the lantern-lit living room, head down. Bennie and Samuel stood with their hands on their hips, breathing heavily and staring happily at the door. Everything was coated with a light dusting of flour. The door was a mass of sticky white paste. Flour, salt, and water had been combined to make a cook's mortar to cover the wood and fill all the edges.

"Grandma gave us the idea. If one of those damned things manages to bite its way through the wood, then it'll get itself a killer surprise," Bennie said.

Grandma was sitting in her armchair, an empty crack-pipe wedged between her smile as she silently pantomimed the patty cake motion over and over. Little Rashad and Sissy were on the couch holding hands. It seemed as if everyone had come together and they were proud of themselves.

"You all did good," Buckley murmured.

"It was because of you, Mr. Adamski,” Samuel said. “We talked about it and we're real sorry the way we treated you. All you wanted to do was help us, we know that. You made one small mistake and we attacked you. The truth is that the way you pulled us together and taught us how to work as a team was what made the difference."

Buckley felt his eyes fill. He lowered his head. He was about to confess his death when the doors nailed to the windows began vibrating. The sounds of scraping and gnawing started in earnest as if they’d finally been discovered and every maggie in the city had descended upon their position. The vibrating increased dramatically until it seemed as if the entire building was shaking. Bennie shouted at the top of his lungs for it to stop. Samuel covered his ears and fell to his knees. Sissy and Rashad began to scream, while Grandma upped her dosage.

Buckley felt it.

The end was near.

This was it.

He walked into the kitchen, laid the shotgun atop the table and opened another bottle of vodka. He was dead anyway. Fuck it. Maybe MacHenry was right with his blaze of glory speech. No more Ben Grimm, it was Johnny Storm time. Flame on. As he spun the cap off the bottle, a clear precise note pierced the cacophony then traveled the treble scales until it found itself. The simple strains of the Rocky Theme from the old Sylvester Stallone movie took hold of the din, and before long, the vibrating stopped. The tune heard at millions of pep rallies, the soundtrack for an Italian-American boxing movie, the symphony for losers everywhere filled the air with its lofty notes. The scraping disappeared. All was silent except for the sound of a lone trumpet playing the ultimate underdog anthem.

Buckley stepped slowly into the living room to find Little Rashad standing in the midst of the adults who were still huddled on the floor in terror at the base of the boy’s feet. His eyes were closed, but not tight enough to dam the tears, just tight enough so his forehead rippled with the strange concentration known to all trumpet greats. Definitely Louis Armstrong, thought Buckley.

When the song faded to nothing, the boy lowered the trumpet and sagged. A small depressed circle remained centered upon his lips like a kissable halo and in the peaceful silence was slowly replaced by a smile.

“What just happened?” Bennie looked around.

Buckley stood staring at the boy. Like everyone else, he was stunned with the outcome. They’d been certain that this was it. Yet they were alive — alive because of a ten year old boy and his trumpet.

“Boy,” Buckley began, striding across the room and scooping him up and into his arms. “I don’t know what you just did, but you saved our sorry asses. Why didn’t you say you had magic in that horn?”

“I don’t know,” Rashad said meekly.

“No shit,” Bennie added. “Whatever you did was a miracle.”

“Wasn’t magic, just plain old music,” the boy murmured.

“Wasn’t nothing plain and old about it, child,” Grandma Riggs said. “And I know me a little about plain and old. Them notes you was playing were the most beautiful I’ve ever heard, more so ‘cause they chased away the boogeymen.”

“Way to go little man.” Samuel slid over and ruffled Rashad’s hair. Then he turned his attention to the hallway. “Oh hell. Now that’s what I call a pig in a blanket.”

Everyone except Grandma Riggs, who was sniffing at the air like a coon hound, followed Samuel’s gaze to where MacHenry stood with a blanket wrapped around his large naked middle. Gert peeked over his shoulder.

“What was all that racket?” she asked.

“You been having sex?” Grandma Riggs craned her neck as she sought a scent in the air. “Someone been having sex? I smell sex.”

Bennie perked up.

“Giving away freebies? When you’re done old man, let me have a go. I’ll show her the difference between a used car and a new car, that’s for damn sure.”

Sissy punched Bennie in the arm. Buckley sat Rashad on the couch.

“Listen here, boy. There’ll be none of that,” he said low and easy.

“But she’s a whore, man. That’s what she-”

Buckley’s fist slammed into Bennie’s nose sending him to the floor. Buckley loomed over the young man who was now cradling his face and whimpering.

“There’ll be none of that, now. There’s only us here and we need to depend on each other. Attitudes like that can get us killed. What Gert did or does is her business and not ours. Fuck, boy. You were a crack dealer and you got the gall to call her a whore? To push yourself on her? If I wasn’t the humanitarian I am, I’d kick you just to see you bleed some more.”

“Hold on now,” MacHenry said, cinching up his blanket. “Don’t hurt the kid, Adamski. He doesn’t know any better.”

Buckley stood there attempting to control his rage. It wasn’t all because of the boy’s remark- no. It was also for his own impending death. He needed to tell them soon. He needed to leave. A traitorous thought crucified his good intention. If he’d never gotten these people together, if he’d refused to help and done things his own way, then maybe he'd have actually survived.

Dead cat in the highway, dead bird in the tree,

Dead rat in the gutter, and little old dead me.

Dead sun up in heaven, dead stream at my feet,

Dead calm all around me, earth full of dead meat.

Everyone turned and stared at Grandma Riggs as she sucked on her glass pipe, grinning wickedly.

“Well, that about sums it up,” MacHenry said. “Dead sun up in heaven, earth full of dead meat. Come on, Gert. Let’s get cleaned up.”

They went down the hallway, the used car salesman’s white ass visible through a rent in the blanket. The sound of the door slamming made everyone jump a little.

Buckley backed up and grabbed a towel from the back of a chair. He threw it at Sissy and pointed to Bennie who held his nose gingerly. “Clean him up, girl. He’ll be all right.”

She immediately moved to help the fallen boy. With Samuel’s assistance, she got Bennie to his feet and down the hall to the bathroom.

Buckley wiped the sweat from his eyes and inhaled the staleness of the room. There were too many people in too small a space. The place smelled like a locker room tinged with the sweet toxicity of crack smoke. He turned to leave but paused as Grandma Riggs spoke.

“I smell you, Mr. Adamski. I smell you right fine.”

"What do you mean, Grandma?"

"You know good and well what I mean."

Buckley sighed. Yeah, he did. “I smell me too, Grandma. I best be finding a way to get clean.”

“That sounds like a grand idea. Maybe Little Rashad here can help you. Go help our Garbage Can Dictator, Rashad. Mr. Adamski’s got hisself a boogeyman problem.”