Chapter 1: Meeks

A silver dollar on a rope chain necklace dangles from the corner of a cheap plastic framed wall mirror. Lady Liberty’s broad face stares through the window at a waxing crescent moon that succumbs to cloud cover.

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The days are long and drawn out and they linger. In the city time bleeds by slowly and it is colorless, a shifting kaleidoscope of gray and beige. Here the cold radiates and the weight of it crushes the air. Abandoned factories and battered buildings dominate this part of the anemic town. The streets are torn and ragged and uncared for and there is the feel of withering. Of suffocation.

Nothing here truly breathes.

A rusted brown Ford Maverick rolls through a cross street. Within, the driver, Russell Meeks. He’s in his forties but the tired lines in his face and the rumpled skin under his eyes make him seem older, as does the unpleasant scowl. Like the cold radiates, something within him seethes though it is tempered with something else, something rotting.

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And he remembers.

When he was twelve his father made Meeks dig his own grave. He said everybody dies. He wanted to make sure the boy learned that early.

He remembers. The grip of the worn shovel handle. The searing red blisters rising on his palms. The dirt caked under his cracked fingernails. The groaning of his muscles under the strain of the dig.

He stands in the hole now five feet deep, young Russell Meeks, still aglow with youth but that seething, this is the birth of it. At first the ground gave way easily but now at the bottom it is pale hard clay and dense.

His father stands over the hole, watching, inspecting, a deadly serious man with deadly serious intentions.

Somewhere in the distance, a train whistle blows.

Mossy tombstones jut up all around the open grave and the crisp autumn day is threatening rain. Russell wants to leave but he wants to finish this job because he doesn’t want to give the old bastard hovering over him the satisfaction of seeing his son quit something like this. If there is a lesson to be learned, he’ll damn well learn it. Only he’ll learn what he needs to learn, not what his father wants to teach him.

The train whistle calls. Young Russell hears it. Over time it invades him.

The train.

The machine is a juggernaut roaring through the thick barren darkness and the countryside cowers before it. About it there is a sense of gravity and a sense of foreboding.

And there are whispers in the air. Calling to Meeks. Audible but nonsensical. They are not words but the approximation of words, stirred emotions.

##

The Machine Shop.

Where Meeks works currently on machines that manufacture something or other. His days are ambiguous now and have been so for too long. He stands in the locker room before his shift begins where there are other people, those he works with, those he rarely engages in conversation. He stands there in his worn steel toed boots and his grimy gray overalls and he spins the lock on his locker. There isn’t much to place inside of value. Even the wallet is of little use with its fake identification and lack of contents.

But the silver dollar on the rope chain. That is valuable in a different sort of way.

“What the hell?”

This is Denny’s voice. Meeks knows the man’s name but not much else. Denny is all angles and bones and he looks to be a sickly man with ashen skin and hair that is much too thin for his age. But there is rage in his voice.

“Who the hell was in my locker?”

Denny flings the locker door wide and it clanks against the rows. He roots through his things and slams the door back closed.

“My watch and my wallet. They’re gone.”

Denny scans the room and he locks his rheumy eyes with each man, pleading. When he looks at Meeks, Meeks feels the desperation exuding from him and this is something Meeks can understand.

Meeks already knows the culprit. The thief is a man named Maurice, a bulk of a man wrapped up in a package of glistening mocha skin and testosterone fuelled physique and an air of contempt for everyone and everything. Meeks understands that as well.

“My boy gave me that watch,” Denny says.

When Denny gives up and moves on, it is Meeks’ turn to lock eyes with Maurice.

##

When they are alone in the loading bay, Meeks approaches Maurice. The man is stacking heavy boxes onto a pallet, hefting them with his girth. His arms are like logs.

“How about you return that watch?”

Maurice sizes up Meeks and offers only a smirk.

“Didn’t take it,” he says.

“It was a gift. From his kid.”

Maurice crosses the distance between them by half with a single step and Meeks can tell the man is used to intimidating others this way, with the immensity of himself, but this is nothing to Meeks.

“Fuck you,” Maurice says.

Meeks only stares at the man with a look of quiet contemplation. This disquiets Maurice.

Maurice grabs up a box from the pallet and hefts it toward Meeks. It lands at his side with a wooden clap and Meeks only continues to stare.

“I didn’t take no fuckin’ watch,” Maurice says. “Now get out of my face.”

Meeks lurches toward Maurice. The movement is fluid. Unnatural. He stops himself only inches from the giant man with his eyes locked and filled with a frozen fury. It is a deathless moment.

And Maurice seems to literally shrink beneath Meeks’ powerful unblinking gaze.

And Maurice walks away.

Later in the locker room when Denny opens his locker, the watch is there. Denny is overcome with emotion and Meeks feels something for him. It isn’t satisfaction or justice. It is something Meeks can’t quantify. It is much too complex. It is something about the boy.

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