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Mason's End

Richard C. Rogers

At two in the morning I came to the chain-link fence surrounding the Ron-Thor Plastics compound. I looked around, saw the road was empty, then threw my bundle over the fence and shimmied over, landing in the weeds on the other side.

They don't run a graveyard shift at Ron-Thor, and there was only one car in the lot. Riggins the night watchman sat in his booth, reading the paper.

I jacked a shell into my twelve-gauge and waited with a sick feeling in my stomach. It didn't take long. Mason showed up on time, moving low and fast like a nasty thought. Wiping the sweat from my hands, I clutched my rifle and called his name. . .

***

We were cell-mates once.

I'd been inside barely a month. I was just a kid--a stupid kid. It was my first stretch in prison, and I was scared empty.

Krantz was this greasy fuck built like a linebacker. He liked his meat young, and he had his eye on me. Every time I walked by he'd make kissy noises and smile at me. I didn't know when it was coming, but I knew what it would be, and I was glad when the block shut down at night and I was safe for ten more hours.

I'm a deep sleeper. When the lights go out and my eyes close I'm dead to the world. That can be a big help when you're locked up, and time’s just something to kill, but it spooked me when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a new cell-mate sitting on the opposite bunk.

I said hello--he just grunted.

He was a weird-looking bastard. The left side of his face was a mess of scar tissue, like he'd been in a fire once, or a bad car accident.

Even with my eyes closed, I could feel him watching me all night

In the morning, when the guards called us out for breakfast, we went our separate ways in the mess hall, but every time I looked up from my grub I saw him staring at me. Between him and Krantz, I felt pretty jumpy when we hit the yard.

***

Krantz finally made his move that day, coming up on me in the laundry room.

"You know what time it is," he said.

"Get on back," I said. The fear in my voice shamed me.

He grinned and licked his lips. "Come on, honey. Come to Daddy. You gonna be mine."

His meaty fist lashed out. I fell back against the wall with the whole side of my head numb. Moving up on me, he lowered his pants and fished out his thing. The whole world had come down to this dirty corner, and I was trapped, but it was like a bad dream where you can't move.

Then I saw my cell-mate moving up from behind, without a sound. He had a blade.

Krantz didn't see it coming. One minute he was on the edge of paradise--the next he was in hell with a cut throat. I jumped aside to avoid the spray of blood.

***

There was a lot of hollering the rest of the day, but we'd gotten out clean.

I'd never seen a man killed. I was a mess that day. I felt numb and twitchy at the same time. The lights kept dimming in and out, like they do in the movies when someone walks the mile.

My cell-mate just sat on his bunk, staring at me.

"What is it?" I finally said.

He stood and walked over until he was standing right above me. "You ain't no more'n a fart in the wind, are you?"

I didn't say anything. I couldn't.

"You was gonna let him have you. You was gonna lie down and take it like a baby."

"No. . ."

He glared at me like he wanted to kill me. "Believe Mason, baw. Mason always knows best. You don't stand up, you get eaten. That's the law of the jungle. And you in Tarzan-ville now, believe it!"

"I--thank you, I guess."

"Fuck you. Fuck your thanks. Eat or be eaten. Remember that."

Mason went back to his bunk and squatted like a spider in the corner. I tried to sleep, but every time I looked up he was staring at me.

***

The hubbub over Krantz wore down after a while, but word had gotten out that me and Mason were on the same team, and I was pretty much left alone after that. I put my head down, minded my business, went about doing my time.

I owed Mason. Sure I did. But I didn't like him.

Most of the time he was so quiet it was like he was hardly there, but every now and then he got the urge to talk.

"You know what I like?" he said out of the blue one night.

I just looked at him.

"When you get 'em down, say. You get your arm on their windpipe, you stick it in and make the cut. The blood runs out, and you know one more's gone. You got one less bother to contend with."

"I don't want no part of killing," I said.

"Hoo," he laughed. "Listen to you. What you doin' in this country club, you ain't done nothin' wrong?"

"I'm no killer. I just--I made a mistake. When I get out of here, it's over. I intend to live right."

Mason slapped his knee. "You still don't get it, do you, baw? We's shit on the bottom of the world's shoe. We is bad seeds. We don't fit. Ain't no room for us anywhere but here."

"That's not true. Once is enough. I get out of here, I'm not coming back. Count on it."

Mason smirked. The scars on his cheek caught the light, and for a second they glowed. "We the same, boy. Count on that."

He melted back into his bunk, and didn't speak the rest of the night.

***

I was finally let out. As I headed for the gate, Mason leered at me from the yard. I tried not to look at him, but his voice cut right through me, just like his knife had cut through Krantz.

"Later, baw!" he yelled. "We'll have us some good times!"

***

Life was hard on the outside. They call it normal out there, but it isn’t normal anywhere anymore. I kept a dumb harmless smile on my face as best I could, but at night, when I was alone with my thoughts, the nightmares were constant. It was Krantz I saw mostly, bleeding out his life like a slaughtered pig, but other times it was Mason, grinning at me from the dark corner of my furnished room.

***

They took me on at Ron-Thor despite my record, but it was no charity case. I pulled the lowest of the shit work--cleaning the johns, hauling garbage, sweeping the floor. The foreman (his name was Bob but the workers called him Bubbles when he wasn't around) was a hard-ass, a miserable, power-mad little prick that seemed to have it in for me from the get-go. It hurt, the way he spoke to me, but I kept my head down and tried to ignore it.

Every two weeks I received an envelope with eight fifties in it. Shit pay for shit-work, but who could complain? I wasn't the only one. Ron-Thor didn't operate on the right side of the law, and they had a string of illegals on the line. Mexicans mostly, shoveling and sorting plastic pellets that were turned into garbage bags.

The Mexicans worked even harder than me, ten hour shifts six days a week. You might think, being on the same level, we would have gotten along, but it wasn't so. When I passed them with my broom and dust-pan, most of them looked like they wanted to stick a knife in me. Between them and Bubbles, and having the stink of garbage on me even after I got home and washed up, I'd sit in my room and feel sick to my stomach. The shit I swallowed each day was rising in my throat like a backed-up toilet.

I wanted to move on, but I needed a nest-egg for that. I started putting a little by every two weeks, ten or twenty dollars, but it felt hopeless.

***

Everything changed when I met Rose.

I kept my eyes on the floor when I cleaned Mexican Row. It seemed safer, somehow, to remain invisible. The way they looked at me--well--a man can take only so much, and I couldn't afford trouble. But one day I was moving along with my garbage truck, bagging the line near the end of my shift, and a soft voice said, "Thank you."

I looked up and saw her. Saw Rose.

She was a tiny little thing. Dark-skinned, with long black hair. New on the line, I guess--I hadn't seen her before. She looked tired and sort of sad, but her eyes were luminous. They looked almost black at first, but when she turned to the light I saw they were very dark brown. Beautiful, almost, as a deer’s eyes. I stood there with my stupid garbage truck, feeling like a fool. She pushed her can a little closer so I could pick it up easier, and smiled.

I nodded my thanks and moved on, but that night I couldn't get her smile out of my mind. Not that I wanted to. It was the nicest thing that had happened to me in a long time.

After that I wasn't so reluctant to clean Mexican Row. Rose was like a flower in the desert, and I lived for that smile each day.

***

One day after lunch I was in a corner of the warehouse, out by the freight doors near the garbage bins. A broken skylight, tinted green like old coke bottles, was set in the ceiling. That is, the outer pane was broken, but the inside one was intact. I heard a noise and looked up. A sparrow had flown in and gotten trapped between the panes. It was flopping around in there like it was crazy.

I put down my dust-bin. "Go on," I called. "Calm down. You can find your way out." The sparrow just spun around in there, chirping, only it didn't sound like chirping. It sounded more like screaming. I was thinking to get the ladder and go up to unhook the latch when a voice hit my back.

"What goes on here, Thompson?"

It was Bubbles, with his usual hard-on.

"Sorry, Mr. White," I said. I pointed up at the skylight. "I--can I take ten, sir? I just want to help that bird out of there."

Bubbles looked at me like I was crazy. "What you smokin', Mister Thompson?"

"I--I--“

"Get back to work this fuckin' minute, or show me your ass walkin' out the door!"

Hating myself, I picked up my broom and walked on.

***

I worked the rest of that day with my mind in a jangle. When the five o' clock whistle blew, I fetched a ladder, hurried around to the back, and climbed to the ceiling. I unlatched the skylight, but it was too late.

The sparrow was torn and bloody, crumpled up dead.

I put it in my shirt pocket.

Back on the ground I found a shovel and buried it out back, next to the dirty river.

I must have blanked out for a while, because it was around seven when I walked to the highway to catch the bus home. I was waiting there when the Mexicans came along.  The men stared me down and I looked away. I saw Rose from the corner of my eye, but I didn't say anything.

The bus came along. There weren't too many seats. The men took what was left, leaving the women to stand. Rose ended up crammed in next to me. I don't know why exactly, but I guess that sparrow was weighing on my mind, and I started telling her about it.  When we pulled into town it turned out we got off at the same stop.

She smiled good night at me. I remember that.

I took that smile home. It was funny--in one way my room didn't feel so lonely anymore; then again it felt lonelier than ever. But I didn't think about Krantz or Mason that night.

My brain finally had other fish to fry.

***

Rose and I got to talking a little bit each day after that. We started having our lunches together, and one thing led to another and I had a girlfriend. It was like the ice inside me was melting, and every minute was a gift, when I walked along with her hand in mine. Her poor hands. All mottled and messed up by the chemicals from the plastic. It made me furious, someone so pretty and fine being used that way.

Rose felt lost in America. It was too big, she said. Too easy to get lost in. She often talked about the town she'd come from, a pretty place in the hills called Xalapa. Her family was there, and she dreamed about saving enough to go back and open a little shop. But her dream was far away. The Mexicans were paid even worse than me, sixty hour weeks, cash money twice a month, ten fifties off the books. With what she sent back home to her mother, and what it cost to maintain her little room, she was saving about as much as I could each month. Hardly nothing.

"My dream," she said one night with tears in her eyes, "is so far away."

Her sad, tired face broke my heart.

That's when I started thinking about the pay envelopes. Twenty Mexicans on the line times five hundred bucks was ten thousand dollars.

Ten thousand dollars.

***

Rose and I had our little honeymoon period, but we were too poor to buy many good times, and it wasn't long before we got to arguing about this and that. I started to think a lot about those pay envelopes, and how I could get away with Rose to a better place.

***

One night we had a nasty row. She was in my face, pushing me in the chest, calling me this and that. I barely stopped myself from shoving her back. Instead I grabbed my coat and hurried to the nearest bar, took a corner booth, and sucked down whiskey.

The world bent around me. For men like me, the world was a series of rooms, one leading to the next, each one getting smaller. And the final room wouldn't be a room at all. It would be a--a hole.

I looked up, and saw him sitting across the table from me.

"Why the long face, baw? Don't like the free world?"

Mason was the last person I wanted to see.

"What are you doing here?" I managed.

"I came lookin' for you, baw. I came out the cage and said, lookee here, what's cooking? What's for dinner? And you on the plate. Me and you, we gonna be pards."

"I told you. I've gone straight."

"Where'd it get you?" he screamed.

I had to admit it. "Nowhere, I guess."  With that the dam broke. I started blubbering about Bubbles, and Rose, and pay envelopes and Mexico and cleaning shit-cans and whatnot. It all came out like poison.

When I finished he just sat for a while, with a face hard as a marble.

"It's clear as a bell," he finally said. "I showed up right on time. We gonna take care of Ron-Thor, and Bubbles. We gonna jack the place, and you gonna make that trip. We gonna live right for a change, like we deserve."

I felt like there was a storm in my head, but what he said began making sense to me.

One job and out was my thought.

I nodded.

Mason beamed at me. "You let old Mason take care of everything. Sit tight. Go on 'bout your business. But you start lookin' round, baw. You just think about access, and I'll handle the rest."

He left me. I drank whiskey after whiskey, but my mind stayed clear and cold as an ice cube.

***

I apologized to Rose the next night, made up with her as best I could. I asked her to believe in me just a little while, but something had ripped between us. Something I wasn't sure could be fixed.

At Ron-Thor I worked with two minds. I played Mr. Stupid on the outside, but inside I studied the place like a hawk, figuring how to get in and get out, where they kept the pay envelopes. Riggins the night watchman worried me most. He was from the old school--a tough bird, I felt, if push came to shove. I knew we'd need weapons.

Mason came through with a shotgun, and we set a date.

***

I'd forgotten, but that night was Rose's birthday. I made some lame excuse, but when she found out I wouldn't be with her she tore into me. The things she said I won't repeat. I told her to trust me, that we were getting out, we were going to find our paradise, but she just told me to leave.

So I did.

***

On Rose’s birthday I called in sick--just sat in my room and looked at the walls. I felt cold inside, and burning up at the same time.

I picked up the phone at six. It was Mason, his voice crackling like he was far away.

"What?" I said. "I can't hear you."

"Lock n' load, baw. We gonna roll."

"I--I’m ready."

"And when we's done, we gonna take care o' your bitch."

"Wha--no…"

"He travels fastest who travels alone. If you ain't got the balls for it, just trust old Mason. He always does the job right."

"That wasn't--that’s not--”

His voice rose and fell like a snake with a broken back. "Don't cross old Mason, baw, less you wanna wind up on the end o' his string, too! Two o' clock! Be there!"

The line went dead.

And I sat in hell.

***

I lost time somewhere. One minute the clock said six, the next it said midnight. I braced myself with a tumbler of Early Times, wrapped the shotgun in a blanket, and left. The streets were quiet as I walked along with Rose's last words burning my mind. I thought maybe I'd just take all the money for myself--let her find her dream with some other man. But at the same time the thought broke my heart.

My mind was skittering like a cat when I reached Ron-Thor, jumped the fence, and hid in the weeds…

***

Mason arrived on schedule, his huge bulk blotting out the stars. The scars on his face caught the light--he looked like a Halloween monster. "You showed up," he said. "Didn't think you would."

"I'm here. I’m ready."

"Then let's move. I want me a taste, and I want it now."

When he turned towards Riggins, I raised my shotgun and spoke his name.

He turned slowly. "What's this?"

"It is what it is."

"Looks like the worm has turned."

"Ain't no worm. Just me."

"Who are you to go up against old Mason?" His voice swelled like a preacher's. "Mason's in charge here! Mason's gonna get you right! He gonna set you on the path!"

"You shouldn’t have got on Rose, Mason. She's the only good thing that’s ever happened to me."

He glared at me--his contempt plain.

"You got two choices, baw. You put down that gun and walk the line with me, or I'm gonna take it from you and do the job myself. And when I'm done with that, I'm gonna go take care of Rose, if you ain't got the stomach for it."

"This is the end of the road. Get down."  

He sneered. "You can't kill me. You ain't got the mustard."

"Down,” I said. “On your knees."

There was a moment's uncertainty in his eyes, a look of--what--fear? But then a curtain dropped over his face.

"I won't."

"You will. It's over."

He laughed. "Fuck you, baw! I kneel for no man, least of all a punk like you."

"Then take it straight!" I screamed.

I pushed the barrel of the shotgun between his teeth and pulled the trigger.

And we died.

Copyright(c) 2006 by Richard C. Rogers

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