smoking over the Dead 
by Charles Cliff Brooks

              I was twenty-eight years old when I found myself in a position where it was necessary to kill someone.  My name is Oliver.  Let me tell you right up front that I am from a good home.  My parents loved me.  Sure, my dad and I had a rough spell, but there are no emotional scars to put me in a murderous state.  This whole sequence of events is very out of place in what I have always considered my “normal” life.

            Currently I work for law enforcement to catch men and women responsible for selling drugs and guns to kids.  I always thought I would end up a reclusive writer and poet but I ended up in this profession after being drafted by a friend from the local police department named Steve Morris.  After college and two years in the real world I still looked no more than twenty-one.  Unknown writers don’t get paid so well.  Steve knew I needed a job.

            He also knew from our teenage years that I was comfortable in any element without much effort to “blend in.” To the cops that is an asset more precious than tear gas and a search warrant.  Steve was well aware I did not always have friends who lived consistently on the proper side of the law.  We never talked about it, but we grew up together.  He knew.  It takes a thief to catch a thief. 

            I felt that this job of snuffing out crime targeted towards children and teenagers was my way to work off some of my old sin.  (Though I am beholden to Buddha now, back then I still had some good old-fashioned Christian guilt hanging in there.)  This vocation became my gospel and my church.  Once I clocked in, the stress and moments of danger were just part of my penance. 

            “Do you still smoke pot?”  Steve asked me.

            “Of course not.”  I lied.  He knew full well I still smoked occasionally.

            “Well, I’m not going to drug test you since we’re pals and all.”  Steve winked at me the day I started the job while we sat in his cluttered office.

            Thank God!  I thought since I was pretty sure that even though I had sucked down a gallon of water before I came here a lab would still detect THC.  I had to piss so badly my back teeth were floating! 

            “Go take a leak before your rupture something.”  Steve laughed and I tried not to make it obvious that I might wet myself before I made it to the men’s room.

            I did indeed make it to the toilet and urinated for what felt like half an hour.  When I came back to Steve’s office he told me that I would work for the drug task force as a mole or liaison into a subculture John Q. Law couldn’t penetrate.  No one in this town knew me.  I realized that I was the lucky guy who would get paid to skate the fine line between chasing the demons we sought, and being one of them.

            There was training involved, of course.  I was excited to get this chance even though it never crossed my mind to work in this particular field before.  To be honest, I don’t like cops that much.  I don’t like cops to this day.  I was interested in the psychology and mystique that I inherited and forgot all about the fact that I could very well get shot in the head.

            After a few months in the trenches I came to the conclusion that if I didn’t smoke herb before I got this job I sure as hell would’ve started afterwards.  I don’t drink.  Booze was out.  Prayer alone wasn’t enough to chill me out after a few nights of dodging bullets.  As long as I was smart about my smoking habits, Steve and the other boys left me alone.

            So on the weekends I would leave my neck of the woods and drive to the city where I had friends that I could trust to keep my secrets.  This particular scenario that I am telling you about now came to pass due to my choice of friendly associates, varying degrees of luck, and a love of marijuana.  To be honest, when it all went down, I was in the home of a best friend the size of a Titan, admiring the age-worn glass of my favorite bong, and stoned to the gills. 

            I was undoubtedly as far from being in a bad mood as you could imagine.  If I’d been any happier I would’ve been twins. 

            It was just me one evening, sitting on a friend’s couch, watching cartoons, when this five-foot-tall Hispanic man comes in from nowhere with a chip on his shoulder.  (I guessed that he was from Hispanic due to his accent and the tattoo of the Virgin of Guadalupe on his right arm.

            (As I’ve already mentioned, this isn’t my house, but it still seems rude when a stranger walks in without knocking first.  Or maybe that’s due to the fact that I’m from the South.  Good mommas teach good manners.)

            The guy barged in, looked around the room quickly, assessed that I was smoking pot and watching cartoons, then made his purpose known.

            “You selling the shit, man?”  He asked in a faux-menacing tone. 

            “No…dude.  I don’t sell the shit.  This ain’t even my house.”  I look around the place like it should be obvious. 

            Yet, I was fairly certain the owner of this home, a prominent mover of marijuana named Kurt Johnson, would know what “shit” this guy was requesting.  Unfortunately he was upstairs with his girlfriend, Jenny, in the grips of sexual relations.

            “Are you being fuckin’ funny, bro?”  He blustered.

            “Calm down, friend,” I begin.

            “I’m not your fucking friend, bro!”  He snaps.

            “Whatever floats your boat, dude,” I held up my hands as a peaceful gesture, “I hope this is not the tone you use when conducting business.” 

            “Where is the man?”  He asked, looking all tiny and mean.

            “He’s upstairs with his girlfriend.  You can go up there if you want, but they’re freaks and can get kinda tough on anyone interrupting them,”  I warned. 

            I believed that this guy was here to purchase marijuana, and if there was ever a man who needed to chill out, it was this toy soldier right here!  I am sure an agreement of sale could be worked out, but this was not the way you did business with Kurt.  Kurt was particular about his “Protocol”. 

            The surly visitor either didn’t hear my warning or didn’t care. Without a second look at me the intruder walked away and took the stairs up to my comrade’s bedroom.

I can only guess that he entered the bedroom without knocking, a bad habit he must have, because the first thing I heard was the rage of a woman.  That was never a good sign.

            “Who the fuck are you?!”  It was the voice of Jenny.

            “I’m here to get Dozer’s shit!”  The angry traveler growled. 

            All I could think was, Who the hell calls himself ‘Dozer’?

            “Well I am telling you right now that if you don’t back the fuck out of this bedroom I am going to smash your ass in a bad way, Paco!”  Kurt roared. 

            I chuckled to myself at this point.  That piss ant was about to have his ass handed to him!  I put my bong on the end of the coffee table and began to get up in case there was the off chance Kurt needed me to help in the skirmish.  I wasn’t looking for a fight, but I thought not offering my support would be in bad taste since I was a guest and all.

            “I said I’m here to get Dozer’s!....” Was all the visitor got out before he was hurled over the railing of the staircase and onto the coffee table in front of me.

            The table broke on contact and my bong was catapulted into the kitchen where it shattered.  I took a moment to say a prayer for the passing of such a close family member.  My bong was deceased and looked accusingly down at this disheveled pile of gangster.

            Who did he think he was?!  Who walks into someone’s house and acts this way?  He was either stupid or very brave to play king-of-the-castle without some kind of protection….

            …And that’s when I saw him pull a gun out of his waistband. 

            -At this moment everything went silent.  My mind is in a tomb; all other stimuli slowed down if not removed altogether.  I was not high any more, but moving instinctually for the grip of the pistol.  I had to get that gun away from him.

            There was an immediate panic in my throat that made me like a man possessed.  I never took my hands off the gun, always pointing it at the ground and away from me, remembering what I learned from my years with law enforcement

            Then in a primal tug-of-war I got the weapon away from my nemesis.  I held the small revolver in my hand.  I looked at what I was holding and relaxed for a second, amazed that I pulled it off.  I thought about how none of this was necessary and then put my attention back on Kurt’s unwelcome houseguest.

            “What in the name of Saint Jude is the matter with you?”  I asked.

            The guy looked back at me in shock, trying to get up from a fall I am sure caused some internal bleeding, and then focused on the gun in my hand.  I suppose he was second-guessing himself because I didn’t seem as ready to put a hole in him as he was to put one in me.  A few more seconds lapsed and I thought he was about to apologize and leave.

            “Is that midget still down there?!”  Kurt bellowed!  He was out of his room and headed down the stairs.

            Shaken, the kid jumps at me, his eyes again on the gun, where I held it above my head and well out of his reach.  I am six feet and one inch tall.  The gun might as well have been on the moon to this guy.  I laughed as he jumped for it like a kid at candy.  It made me remember playing keep-away with my little brother. 

            It made him quite unhappy.

            “Fuck you, man!”  He backed up and reached into his pocket.  I heard the ominous “snick” of a switchblade.

            As he pulled that knife around, I hear Kurt coming closer, but realized that I was going to have to stop this or get cut.  Kurt was too far away to help.

            Damnit!  I thought, not wanting blood on my hands, but not wanting it coming out of my guts either.

            So I leveled the pistol at the newcomer’s little chest and pulled the trigger when he didn’t stop lunging at me.  Due to the delicate size of the Hispanic’s sidearm, a small gun for a small guy, the single shot was more a “pop” than an explosion.  We were in a house located in a noisy part of the city.  In the city, those that do hear a possible gunshot immediately rationalize the commotion to be someone else’s problem.  A man was dead and all I could think was that no one heard it.  No one would care.  I couldn’t decide if that gut-instinct was from the cop or the criminal in me.

            “I knew I might have to hurt someone, Oliver, but…”  Kurt, trailed off as he walked up with a hammer in his hand. 

            “He was about to stab me…We need to make a plan.  I’ll get towels to catch the blood.”  I refused to let this beat me.  I had to think or spend time in prison.  I am too pretty for the big house.

            “Is he dead?”  Jenny asked from her perch at the bottom of the stairs.

            “Yes.”  Kurt stared at our new problem sprawled on the floor.

            “Do we need to call the cops?”  Jenny asked.

            Kurt looked at me, slightly exasperated, then answered, “Jenny, honey, I sell weed to most of the uptight business fellows in the city.  I have numerous budding plants in our basement.  Oliver here works for the police and might have to explain this dead Mexican to his superiors Monday morning.”

            “Right, I guess that’s a big ole ‘no’ then.”  Jenny answered and then calmly walked back upstairs to put on more clothes. 

            I could always count on Kurt to keep a cool head when it mattered.  The soft tone he just used with Jenny is indicative of a man who’s been in this trade long enough to know: 1) shit happens, and 2) getting hysterical only makes shit worse.

            I put several towels underneath the corpse and Kurt brought a shower curtain to wrap the body in.  After encasing the guy in plastic decorated with sea horses and dolphins we tied off both ends with duct tape.  I nervously snickered at the fact that our handiwork looked like a huge, plastic joint.

            Jenny came behind us like a champ and removed all the blood from the hardwood floor with bleach. Leaving me again, Kurt retrieved a huge duffle bag from somewhere in his home and came back to my side.  I helped him stuff the huge plastic joint into the bag.  Together we took our cargo into the garage where Kurt’s vehicle was parked. 

            In the garage we put three cinder blocks inside the duffle bag to weigh it down.  Kurt decided the best course of action was to drive us to a remote lake his father owned and finish this by sinking the body in it.  The travel time was estimated at two hours.  I liked the plot from the start, but that was too much time on the open road.  Without a better plan I followed Kurt’s directions and shut up.

            Kurt and I left Jenny still cleaning in the house, and Kurt turned the ignition. 

            “Where’s his car?”  Kurt asked as he hit the button attached to his visor which opened his garage door.  He was looking behind him, scanning the territory. 

            “What?”  I asked.

            “The dude’s car.  Where is it?”  He clarified and I looked behind us too where the driveway was empty and no strange cars were parked on the street in front of Kurt’s house.

            “Did he walk from somewhere?”  I suggested, confused. 

            “Maybe someone dropped him off.”  Kurt was equally baffled.

            That thought gave us pause.  If someone dropped the Mexican off that meant that someone would be coming back to pick him up.  This trip would take us four hours total to complete.  That left Jenny alone for too long.

            “Go get her.”  I whispered because I knew what Kurt was pondering

            “Right.”  Kurt hopped out and soon came back with Jenny.  I began to offer her the front seat but she declined and climbed into the back seat.

            “Not what you had in mind tonight, huh Oliver?”  Jenny wasn’t chipper about this, but still behaved like her boyfriend.  This was just another Friday night, a dead guy stuffed in a duffle bag behind us, headed out to an old lake tucked away in a dark corner of the world.

            “How’s work?”  Kurt asked.

            “What?”  The conversation shifted entirely.

            “Your job, Oliver.  How’s it going?”  Kurt talked to me thinking it would keep me calm.  He was right.

            “I got some more poetry published. The magazine that’s printing them asked for some more of my poems for a chapbook.”  I answered.

            “What’s a chapbook?”  Kurt asked as he lit a cigarette.

            “Twenty poems put into a book.”

            “So you would have a book of poems published?  Will they pay you for it?”  Jenny joined in, genuinely intrigued.

            “Hell yeah.  Not a lot, but it gets my foot in the door more than anything else.”  I answered.

            “Fuckin’ A, man.  That’s cool.”  Kurt took a drag from his unfiltered Camel and then punched me in the arm.

            A few minutes crept past us.  Kurt had the radio off and drove the speed limit.

            “How’s the other work?”  Kurt took a more serious tone, like we were discussing nuclear secrets.  He knew that I didn’t like to talk about my “day job”.  I escaped all that by visiting him. 

            “It’s a job.”  I tried to put it out of my head with the dead guy in the back.

            “I’m glad you do what you do.”  Jenny added and patted me on the shoulder.  I found it surreal that drug dealers were congratulating me for…catching drug dealers.

            “You know I would never sell weed to kids.”  Kurt was always adamant about this fact not only to keep me from snitching on his little operation, but because he did have morals.  Kurt simply chose to exercise those morals outside the law in an arena of his own making to clients he hand-picked.  No matter how I sliced it I couldn’t fault Kurt for wanting that sort of freedom.  Of course, I realized this night, no great freedom comes without a great price.

            “We wouldn’t be hanging out if I thought you sold to kids, man.  I know you’re a decent human, Kurt.”  I returned.

            “Thanks.”  Kurt nodded and continued to smoke his cigarette.

            We fell into a hush.

            It’s a sick fear in your stomach when you’re carrying the recently deceased to be stashed somewhere it will never, ever be found.  Anything could happen between here and there.  I tried not to get nervous but focus on reading the signs along the road to keep my mind busy.  It was an exercise I used when taking long drives as a kid with my grandparents.

            We had to make it to the lake.

            I think we all wanted to fall on the ground and thank God when we did catch sight of the lake, but knowing this deed was too dark for His protection, I decided to leave God out of it. The nerves were raw in my neck.  We remained silent as we transferred the cargo from the Jeep to a small fishing boat Kurt used.  Jenny stayed in the Jeep.

            Kurt rowed out into the center of that placid nighttime lake. We heaved the package over the side, almost capsizing us.  I had no doubt that from this day forth this place would be haunted.  Kurt and I had planted a ghost.

            Once the boat settled again Kurt started us back to shore.  The hair stood up on my arms as the full impact of this bad business hit me again. We were changed as the lake went silent and returned to black glass.  I felt as if we were playing out an undiscovered tale of Edgar A. Poe.

            We climbed back in the Jeep after I took a hard rake we brought with us and tried to scrape away as much of our tire tracks as possible.  I truly doubted that anyone would find our guy out there, but that’s the kind of thinking that’s gets a lot of folks caught.  I’ll rake my ass off before it’s put in the slammer.

            “Toss your shoes out the window once we get out on the pavement.”  Kurt said as he turned on the radio and drove away.  I began to protest but realized he was thinking about the shoe prints left at the lake.

            “Sure, boss.”  I untied my shoes and waited for the appropriate time.

            Both of us threw out our shoes.  Jenny got to keep hers since she never got out of the car.

            “This can be pretty gruesome work.”  Kurt mumbled as he shook another Camel from its pack.

            “Yup.”  I returned. Kurt acted as if we were simply returning from a hunting trip.

            Of course, I thought, I can’t remember seeing any redneck on The Hunting Network who had to discard his shoes once the deer was killed!

            “I’ll get you another pair.”  Kurt then offered.

            “No, man.  It’s cool.  They were old.”  I declined.

            “Yes.  I owe you than much.  You got into this because of my business.”  Kurt had his mind set on this.

            “Alright.”  I answered. 

            And that was the last thing said for two hours. Once we were back in the smog of the city the Hispanic’s gun was wiped down then thrown in a drain pipe nowhere near Kurt’s house. 

            Back at the house we told Jenny to stay in the Jeep while Kurt and I went through the house for whoever might have dropped off the guy I killed.  Once we were sure no intruders were about, we let Jenny come in.  We cleared the broken coffee table and replaced it with one they had in the basement.  You would never have known that a man bled out here unless you counted the smell of bleach now laced in the incense.  That even disappeared after a few days.

             Kurt, Jenny and I waited for someone to appear at the door asking questions.  We waited.  No one came.  We never figured out who “Dozer” was.

            Once we were at ease we laughed in hollow sincerity like nothing was wrong.  It never happened.  (Of course it happened!)

            Once we firmly believed the cops weren’t coming our small band relaxed.  Kurt bought me a new pair of New Balance running shoes.  Still, the damage was done.  The deed undid us.  Slowly we began to feel like strangers with nothing in common locked in an elevator.

            After three months I stopped going over there. Kurt stopped calling me.

            I still work in law enforcement.  I write to fill my solitude.  I am not proud of what I did, but entering dangerous situations doesn’t give me the anxiety I once experience before I killed that man.  I do my job better because of that evening.  (Or at least that’s what I tell myself during long nights when I can’t sleep.)

            Tonight I am sitting on my front porch and looking out over the North Georgia Mountains with a joint of my own home-grown between my lips.  Here I have never killed a man.  Here I’ve never helped sink a corpse into the bottom of a private lake. It’s amazing how quickly you can make yourself forget your transgressions.  I don’t bother asking for absolution.

            Yet, I still have dreams about that lake.  Like that lake, I too am haunted.