I shot The Ferret.
But I did not kill Welsh Losser.
I shot The Ferret.
I shot the weasel down.
I shot The Ferret.
I wasn’t aiming for the clown.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a poem.”
“Funny, you don’t look like the violent type.”
His face moist and flush, Kowalski lowers his gaze back down over the thick white pad of wide-lined paper as if to scan it for errors, contemplate the completion of another couplet.
The young woman moves on, down the smooth-surfaced floor of the newsroom aisle, turning off into a row of cubicles to eventually disappear behind one of the many gray plastic desks, lifeless work stations that line the editorial offices.
Kowalski keeps his head bowed, feigning the brooder who’d disguise his disgrace. The swelling under his eye has gone from midnight blue to old yellow, and his lower lip is still fat and sore.
But where it really hurts is in his head, the pain of abject humiliation, the throbbing scenes of violence inflicted on his person that flash across his mind’s eye, the sting of an unexpected and endless series of blows to his helpless state of consciousness, incapable of raising a defense against a relentless memory of the recent past.
‘He came out of nowhere, with no warning, much less anything resembling a provocative prelude,’ says one voice in the young poet’s head.
‘He beat your ass in full view of everyone in that bar. You didn’t even throw a punch,’ responds another voice, in a gravelly and unmistakably hostile undertone.
And then, as if siding with the second voice, Kowalski’s mind switches on a projector to display graphic images from the night before. Each frame evokes an involuntary but inescapable sense of emotional distress, acute pangs of guilt, a paralyzing fear that smothers any latent attempt to save face. The clickety-clack of vivid stills keeps time with the pulsating pangs of a cowardly heart. The dull thuds of his attacker’s cuffs can still be felt against his ribs and head, the shrieks, but also snickers and occasional howls of amusement from that anonymous audience who seem to linger just out of sight but not out of mind.
‘He gave you the licking of your life and then savaged those flimsy pages of verse you’d been bent over, just for good measure, flinging the carcass of a cover they were written into, into a dingy beer-soaked corner,’ continues the gravelly voice.
“I didn’t see him coming.”
‘You had your eyes closed like a frightened little girl.’
Again, the projector in the back of his mind switches on, but this time as if with a broken reel. A meaty white fist all but bursts out of one frame, followed by a splash of bright stars in another, the pasty mug of The Ferret, green-eyed, pursed lips, clenched teeth, zooming in then out of focus mere inches from the frightened screen that is his victim’s face. Flailing arms, more fat-knuckled paws, a flurry of overhead blows, the evil leering of his assailant’s expression blinking on and off across the field of his vision, closing in on his boxed-in head, stiff neck, weakling shoulders, flattened back, held hard to an unyielding floor.
An uproar of background noise then takes hold over the halls of his perception, like the speaker system of some broken-down cinema house finally jolted to life, blasted into the theater of his head. The hubbub of a crowd, at once indignant and entertained, shocked yet happy to have a ringside seat releases gasps of vague sympathy mixed with the occasional guffaw that calls for more – give him some more.
The chipped yellow No. 2 pencil that Kowalski is clutching in his palm snaps in half. He gets to his feet, heading fast to where the toilet and elevators are.
‘He got his ass kicked by The Ferret… didn’t even fight back…’ he can hear along the way, in his head if not from behind every cubicle that he passes on the way out.
“Give the kid a break already,” barks The Hunched Cornish, still seated in the small bare kitchen of The Checkout.
But The Half Guinea pays him no heed. The swarthy Mediterranean, his forefinger still bloody and bandaged, has fashioned a remarkably lifelike image of Kyiv-based detective John Smith from fresh dough and is toasting him over a makeshift metal wedding bed that he’s stood among the burners of The Checkout kitchen’s stove.
“Fay, o Fay. Will I ever make Investigator First Class?” mocks The Guinea as he slowly lowers the dough image of Smith onto the bed’s red hot metal frame, removing the skewer that he’s run through Smith’s corpus lengthwise and then tapping the figure gently down into the makeshift bed.
“No, no, It shan’t be so. For you’re only made of dough. And I’m a young girl who cannot leave her mother,” pipes in The Guinea’s mangy canine friend from under the kitchen table.
“Nay Fay, don’t say. I cannot lose my way. For evil and lies abound in the false forest that is expatriate Kyiv, every freak – an odious sapling, every loser – a replanted shrub, seeking somebody else’s shade.
“Goody Kate Mustard will show you the way, dearest John. Hark I hear her wailing overhead, astride a serpent-headed stick, sailing the skies of the Ukrainian capital, destined for that woodland gathering of pretenders and opportunity hounds.
“’Twas this very old dame who learnt you the investigator’s catechism, the puritanical principles needed to delve into others’ affairs, the prude’s cookbook of moral convenience, the private eye’s bible, in which the wicked are undone and the righteous get promoted over the crazy and drunk,” sneers The Guinea, poking his bloodied finger into Agent Smith’s soft white flesh.
“Into the forest, into the flames, o pilgrim, o private eye.”
The Guinea starts jabbing the skewer into the half-baked dough figure of John Smith, whose arm, legs and head crumble loose into the flames. The dog begins to howl like a wolf. The fire spits and hisses.
Then a large rump of a hand crashes down into the whole mess spraying burnt crumbs across the kitchen and extinguishing the stovetop pyre.
The Hunched Cornish returns to his seat and commences nibbling at the edges of his ham and cheese sandwich, careful not to get any mayonnaise on his fingers.
The Guinea straps a leash on the dog, dons his cape and cap, and slams the door behind him as he exits into the night.
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, C.T.F.S.A., April 5, 2016