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Authors: George Dawes Green

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BOOK: The Juror
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“What we need to bear in mind is that whatever Mr. Czernyk thinks he’s defending with his lies is
sacramental
to him. It lights up his eyes. Did you notice that, Frankie?”

Frankie shrugs. “He’s defending his own ass.”

“No.”

The Teacher shakes his head. He snips at the wiring.

He says, “Our guest doesn’t think his ass has any value. It’s sort of a reverse enlightenment—he himself, the I of him, he
imagines that’s worthless. Meanwhile he values dearly the world around him. Some of the creatures in it. Its platitudes. Its
jewels. Like all frightened losers, he makes too much of these things. What in Tibet they call the
lokas
—the blurred smoldering lights of temptation. He’s built an altar to them, Frankie. When we threaten him, he puts his back
to that altar. He’ll defend that altar with his life.”

Frankie asks him, “So what do we do?”

“We strip away the gilt and the jewels. We teach him what the world is really like. We crush out those lights one by one.”

The Teacher holds up his new toy, proudly appraising it.

He says, “It won’t be easy. It’s not a matter of slapping him around a little. It takes
great
suffering and patience and persistence to change things at the soul’s core. But once he learns this lesson, I believe that
he’ll be grateful for it. Or I hope he will. Despite his anger. Despite his bitterness.”

S
LAVKO
won’t open his mouth when E.R. asks him to.

E.R. asks him again.

But still no.

So E.R. gives the word, and Eddie snatches up a clump of Slavko’s hair in his fist, and jerks his head back and holds it fast.
There’s not much Slavko can do about this, since his hands are cuffed behind his back.

E.R. says with a sly grin, “Lao Tsu would tell you to give up your sainthood, Slavko. Toss your wisdom out the window, and
it will be ten thousand times better for everyone.”

Who the hell is Lao Tsu? Slavko wonders. Sounds like some kind of goddamn
poet
.

Then the guy they call Frankie drives a broom handle into Slavko’s mouth.

His teeth crumble inward. A ring of fire flares up all around his tongue. His lower lip catches on the broom handle’s metal
hook, so that when Frankie pulls back, the lip is nearly torn away. Slavko can feel it dangling against his chin.

After a thoughtful pause, E.R. says softly, “You might have considered simply opening your mouth when you were asked to do
so.”

He takes some weird jury-rigged gizmo, and gently works it through the hole in Slavko’s teeth. Slavko feels the thing, oblong,
huge, as it presses against his tongue. It’s hooked up to a little black box with a lever on it. E.R. turns the lever. The
shock rolls Slavko’s eyes back into his skull. He can gaze upon his own spinal cord, which is wrapped in a vine of blue lightning-flowers.

Nothing has ever hurt so much since the beginning of time.

When his eyes finally find their way out of the darkness he discovers that he’s vomiting. Yellow-and-ocher vomit streaked
with blood. He’s throwing up into a pan that Frankie holds under his chin. Two of his teeth fall out and clink like pennies
against the metal of the pan.

But after he’s made that offering, his nausea subsides, and he feels his head start to loll. He thinks, Maybe I’ll take a
little nap.

Eddie snaps his head back.

Again he’s compelled to look up at E.R. and his gizmo. But so what, it doesn’t hurt a bit to
look
at the thing.

E.R. asks him, “Now what would you like to talk about, Slavko?”

“Nozzung.” He can hardly speak.

“Would you like to talk about the woman on the balcony?”

“Nn.”

“Why the obstinacy? Do you think it ennobles you? Do you think Sari would be impressed? But I promise you, she’d scorn all
your efforts on her behalf. Being a loser doesn’t make you
heroic
, Slavko. It doesn’t cloak you in a mantle of righteousness.” He smiles. “It only makes you a loser.”

But I’m not a loser, Slavko thinks. You’re mistaken about that.

The huge prick-shaped thing comes back to rape his mouth again. Slavko’s eyes take another tumble. And the lightning, and
the PAIN.

When he fades back into the world, into this ugly kitchen, E.R. is talking again. Running on and on, in his quiet, rolling,
lulling voice: “… you keep hurling yourself at the nature of the world, as though you thought you could
defeat
it. Knock it down, shove it out of your way. Then every time the world flattens you, you lie there whimpering and feeling
sorry for your poor damaged illusions. As though misery were your
portion
in life. As though it were decreed that in this abundant universe, in the midst of this great feast of life, Slavko and Slavko
alone has been selected to subsist on a diet of suffering and self-righteousness. Slavko Czernyk, Patron Saint of Losers.”

But you’re wrong, Slavko thinks. I’m not a loser. It only looks that way.

Again the electric bullcock is pressed into service.

It mouth-fucks Slavko in dead silence, in the vacancy of this great spiny desert, this PAIN, this white boneyard.

When Slavko can hear again, he hears:

“… but suppose you
woke
to the Tao… ran with it and not against it…. With all your fever, your furor, all your desire?… look at you! The love you
could draw to yourself… I swear to you if you were worthy of Sari, you’d have her. If your spirit ran
with
the Tao, I swear to you that
no
bliss could elude you….”

Slavko sees E.R.’s fingers start to fiddle with the dial of the PAIN-maker. Bastard’s ready to give it another goose. Slavko
feels a rage that he’s never felt before. Pure-boiled hyperdistilled hatred for that dial, for those long delicate fingers.
He shakes his head. Just a little shake, but E.R. notices.

He asks, “Are you ready to work with us?”

A long time passes, then Slavko nods slightly.

Says E.R., “This is a surprise. I’m glad. I thought we’d be here all night.” He looks to Frankie. “Take it out then.”

Frankie pulls the bloody prod from Slavko’s mouth.

“Now tell us about the woman on the balcony.”

Slavko tries to speak. But his charred tongue won’t lift. Grunts and moans, no words.

Says E.R., “What do you know about her?”

Drool only.

“Fucker can’t talk,” says Frankie. “Look at his fuckin tongue, man. How’s he gonna talk?”

Slavko’s eyes slide all over this kitchen, and he spots a ballpoint pen in a basket by the sink. He jerks his chin at it.

Says E.R., “Would you like to
write
it for me? That’s OK. Frankie, give him that pen. Some paper. Put that chair in front of him for a table.”

Frankie brings all these things.

“Eddie, take off his cuffs.”

Eddie unlocks the cuffs and E.R. hands him the pen. Slavko grasps it in his fist as a child would.

Frankie sits to the left of him, holding a MAC 10 to his temple. Eddie sits to his right. E.R. says, “What do you know about
the woman on the balcony?”

As he asks this, he walks across the kitchen to the refrigerator. He takes out a milk bottle full of water, and he sinks wearily
to the floor in front of the fridge. He takes a long pull from the bottle.

“Well?” he says.

Slavko leans over the page and writes.

“What’s that shit?” says Eddie. He takes the paper and brings it over to E.R. “Can you read that?”

E.R. glances at it and declares, “It says ‘Juror.’ Am I right?”

Slavko nods.

“Very good. Who else knows about this, Slavko?”

Eddie sets the paper before Slavko again. Slavko writes, “VIGRMFS.”

Eddie brings the page over to E.R. But E.R. can’t make any sense of it. He says, “Write this again, please.”

Again the paper is placed before Slavko. Again he makes a fist around the pen. Again he writes “VIGRMFS.”

Frankie leans forward, straining to make it out. “What the fuck is that?”

Actually it’s short for
Vengeance Is Gonna Restoreth My Fucking Soul
. But Slavko doesn’t say this. Instead he demonstrates: he swings his pen up hard into Frankie’s face. Going for the eye,
but he gets a swath of cheek instead—he can feel the flesh rip, the ballpoint sliding against bone. Slavko jerks back and
slaps Frankie’s MAC 10 forward, so that when Frankie fires, the bullet just misses.

It whizzes in front of Slavko’s eyes.

Eddie starts howling—the shot must have hit
him
.

Slavko cracks Frankie’s arm against the edge of the table, and the kid’s fingers loosen. He tears the MAC 10 from his grasp.
At the same moment he looks across the room and sees that E.R. has risen and that he’s pulling out his own pistol. Slavko
jams his ring finger into the trigger guard of Frankie’s gun—it’s the best he can do in this sliver of a second. He lurches
to his left, to dodge E.R.’s bullet, and he squeezes off a shot.

The roar and echo of the two shots fill the kitchen.

Slavko’s round slams bootless into the fridge. But E.R.’s shot finds a home in Slavko’s right shoulder.

It knocks him back and it turns him to the right—which gives him a view of Eddie, who’s scuttling backwards on the kitchen
linoleum. Disappearing behind a counter. Slavko swings the MAC 10 and fires in that direction—too late.

He jerks his eyes back to hunt for E.R., but E.R. has sidestepped into a hallway. And Frankie has taken cover in the laundry
room. There’s no time even to take aim at his retreating legs, because at the edge of Slavko’s vision he catches a movement,
and he turns to see E.R.’s arm reaching around the hallway corner and firing blindly.

A rude braying of agony wells up from Slavko’s left hip. No time to brood over this, though, he has to keep shooting. One
wild shot at E.R.’s arm, and one at Eddie, who’s poking his head above the counter, and one for Frankie sticking his puss
out from the laundry room. Meanwhile Slavko keeps lurching backward, toward the only corner of the kitchen that doesn’t harbor
an enemy.

He makes it to the door leading to the garage.

Parcels out another round of bullets.

One for you and one for you and one for you.

But screw this patty-cake shit. This is not really my game. I gotta get out of here.

He opens the door, stumbles through, slams it behind him. Limps through the dark garage. They left the big sliding door open,
good. But he can scarcely see, and the metal track for the door catches at his wounded shoulder. The overload of pain takes
him out of who he is. He can’t remember why he’s leaving this party. Am I drunk? Where’s my date? Who’s taking her home? Jesus,
look at this rain. Here’s my car where I left it, but I’m not sure I can drive—

Then he feels a weight in his hand, and he looks down and there’s the MAC 10 and he remembers.

He limps over to the Buzzard, and gets in. He finds the ignition key and the car coughs and starts.

A figure appears at the garage door. He shoots. He tries to shoot again, but the clip’s empty.

He throws the Buzzard into reverse and backs down the long driveway, through the trees. Pitch dark. A bullet hits his windshield.
The whole sheet of glass flurries into webbing as he bumps onto the street.

A pair of headlights flares up near the house he just left. Which reminds him: he switches on his own lights.

But he can’t see anything in front of him: the spiderwebbed windshield is nearly opaque. As he drives, he bashes the butt
of the MAC 10 into the glass. Smacks it again and again till he’s made a peephole in front of him. He drops the piece and
claws at the crumbling glass, ekes out a field of vision.

The wind rushes at him. He’s rolling now.

He’s broken out of that cage and he’s still alive.

Which means that that juror has a chance. And Sari has a chance. It even means Slavko Czernyk has a ghost of a chance. Did
somebody say
loser?

But when he passes under a streetlight he gets a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror, and it’s a horror moon of knobs
and blue swelling and blood valleys. Puke bubbling down his chin. His chest wound is a sucking wound. His hip wound—oh E.R.
hit the jackpot with that one—pays out blood all over the seat.

But it’s OK, take it easy, just keep steady, stay awake, keep driving. You’re on Oak Road. You know this road. Bunch of houses
coming up pretty soon, you’ll be surrounded by plenty of good people. Oh Jesus, and just a few miles down, the hospital. Right?
St. Ignatius! Juliet’s hospital! Juliet! Juliet to heal me and comfort me and be sorry for all the unkind things she’s ever
said to me. God
damn
, Slavko—and you thought that things were going
bad
for you tonight? This is the night of Slavko the Hero, this is like a grade school fantasy. Is this what E.R. meant by running
with the Tao? Well, E.R., I got to hand it to you, you mother fuck. Except that I’m in excruciating pain, and I’m confused,
and I believe I’m bleeding to death. But if I can send you fucks to prison? If I can save that juror? If I can die in her
arms—no, wait a minute, I mean Juliet’s arms, don’t I?—I mean I’m confused, but the main thing is that you won’t be calling
me a loser anymore, will you, E.R.?

Conquistador
, rather.

Then those headlights show up again in his rear mirror.

E
DDIE
’s behind the wheel, and his head is killing him. His head is still oozing blood from where Frankie’s wayward bullet nicked
his scalp.

He ought to be home in bed.

Instead he has to be out on the road with Vincent, chasing down this dickhead.

Sure-Knack’s car is a fuckin barge, but the man’s got no fear, nothing to lose, so he can do amazing things. He skids loosey-goosey
through every curve, he keeps taking it within a finger of the ditch. And unless you’re another psycho you’d better concede
him a little ass-room.

Look at him now, driving down the wrong side of the road. A car comes the other way, but Sure-Knack doesn’t even blink. Like
a fuckin battleship, he keeps steaming along. The other guy has to veer into Eddie’s lane, he’s got no choice. And Eddie,
he figures he’s got no choice but to slam on the brakes and get off the road and bounce along the shoulder, ah shit.

BOOK: The Juror
12.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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