Honey Bun

I stood on the edge, the precipice – trembling. “All hair, eyes and teeth.” The phrase tumbled out over the backs of the crowd barely reaching me at the fringe of the crime scene; the crudity of the remark was unavoidably amusing, but getting a little callous was unavoidable when you dealt with too much death.
I could feel my bile rising as I moved through the crowd and fighting it only made matters worse. I retched next to an old lady who retched in sympathy; it made me wonder why people who got sick so easily would be drawn and fascinated by a ghoulish crime scene. The car, so many rides to remember, right over there! I’d come back in a couple of weeks and report it abandoned; no one would ever really look at it. I was still wiping off the last of the puke as I approached the two patrolman who were pushing back the crowd and putting up tape to keep them from walking all over the mess scattered in front of me.
“You never get used to this, do you detective,” said the patrolman closest to the center of the spectacle. “No, I guess not” I said. Chunks of blood soaked hair torn from the scalp littered that part of the torso not hacked apart and thrown in every direction. Teeth knocked out of a mutilated head so misshapen from the beating that you weren’t sure how much of it was really left; teeth scattered around, crushed and trampled into unidentifiable bits and scraps. “Even if they can identify what’s left here; they will never think to connect it with me,” I thought to myself, “they don’t think much of me that way.”
She had found out two days ago, my wife that is, I’m not sure how; and the trap had started closing. I looked around at the scene. “Proving what this is, much less who, is going to take quite a while; even if it can be done at all” the thought was reassuring.” Sir?” the patrolman said. The sudden terror that I might have spoken my thoughts aloud caused me to retch again. After a few dry convulsions, I managed to get control of myself again. “You look pretty white, are you sure you are all right Sir” he said. “I’ll be all-right, but I think I’ve seen all that I need to here,” I said, “bag the evidence and have the pictures on my desk in the morning.” “Yes sir,” he said.
I decided to take the long way home. I stopped at “Shirley’s” for a drink, but once I’d ordered it I couldn’t drink it. Jerry, my regular bartender, was wrinkling his nose at me; I must have smelled bad, but when I looked myself over I couldn’t find anything on me. He smirked at my self consciousness. I guess he found it amusing. I dropped ten dollars on the bar and left; thinking I should find another place where nobody knows me.
As I crossed the street to my car I found myself tempted by the Greyhound Bus sign just three doors down. Things had maybe gone irrevocably wrong this time. To go home now to all the familiar things and smells, to start up again with that familiar daily grind, after this – the terror of the idea made my stomach clench and roll. Someone would have to notice something out of place sooner or later, then it would all come out in the open. I wanted, desperately, to be somewhere else; somewhere else forever, somewhere away from the smiling face in the picture in my wallet, now mangled and strewn all over a late night city street.
My stomach churned and I convulsed a little more at the thought of going through my front door as though nothing had happened. Stopping to wave at Bob and Merlyn on the porch next door. Maybe I could stop around the corner, then sneak in the back and pack some clothes. Disappearing forever isn’t as difficult as folks think. Cops see types every day who know how to vanish for years without ever leaving the city. I drove around aimlessly for what seemed like forever. The steering wheel was sticky with sweat and with nothing to dry it with, my handkerchief stank of puke, it became distracting. I stopped at the Zipsters about a mile from home to get some paper towels to clean up a little with; my handkerchief stank!
The girl behind the counter noticed my astonishment when I pulled my wallet and found it empty; no money, no credit cards, the only thing left in it was the picture. “Are you all right mister?” she asked. I panicked and bolted for the door; bumping an annoying looking kid, covered in grease on the way out. Kids remember everything and someone asked her she might say the wrong thing. When I got in the car a lump of car grease slopped off my coat sleeve, plopped off the steering wheel and onto the floor. My right eye began to water, furiously; it seems I had gotten some of the grease on my fingers as well; I actually thought about going back in shooting him.I looked in my wallet again just to be sure, “when did that happen, I wonder.” The sound of my own voice startled me, all that shaky, and I could feel the trap closing just a little.
I would have to find a way for someone else to figure this out – and figure it out soon. Anyone would expect me to be the first one to notice someone missing; and to try to feign surprise and tragedy over the fact that someone close to me is dead and that I was there to see them and didn’t even recognize them would be a deadly mistake. A child can tell a real reaction from histrionics by instinct; you really can’t fool a cop, much less one that knows you. No – someone else would have to figure it out and I would have to alone when word reached me; I’d be all right then and I can shocked that it could happen to someone so close. No – I couldn’t run, if I did the truth would come out in a matter of days; and in the end only a nobody can really disappear. I could feel the trap closing – it was a mistake and there was no way to get it back now; if only she hadn’t found out.
Despair began to settle in as I watched the sad looking attempt at planting trees along the roadside shuffle by and into the rear view mirror. I listened to the tires tread their way, struggling for silence on the dry streets, as I turned the corner for home. The back way wasn’t going to work, my porch light was on. Bob’s and Merlyn’s porch light was on also. I could see that from four blocks away.
I turned the radio on hoping to find something to help me stop trembling. The lyrics to “Killing Me Softly” made me retch again. I pulled over and put my head out the window until the convulsions stopped, then turned off the lights and turned on the air conditioning. With that and a snotty, puke soaked handkerchief I tried to dry the sweat on my face. “Deep breathes,” I kept thinking. “Deep breathes.” I took the picture from my wallet and looked at it. “So beautiful once,” I thought to myself, “now strewn all over the street in pieces.” I tore it up into tiny pieces, then turned on my lights and pulled back out onto the street.
Merlyn was on the porch, Bob must have been inside. I shivered and the hair on my neck was tingling as the sweat that had accumulated under my collar chose now to trickle down my back.I stopped out in front, wiped my brow with the stinking hankie, then threw it in the litter bag; it really was starting to smell bad; stopped my car and turned out the lights. I was thinking that maybe I could get by Merlyn as I opened the door to my car, when Bob stepped back out on the porch. He waved – as I walked up the sidewalk. I hoped the darkness would hide my appearance, but the double take dashed my hopes there. “you look terrible,” he said, “still having trouble with the crimes scenes huh!” He was trying very hard not to let his amusement show; “Gunite Bob!” I said, trying to look tired as I struggled to get my trembling key into the door lock. It finally went in and turned almost silently enough to hold out some hope. “Thanks for stew, we had some for supper” he said from behind me. “Stew!” I thought as I stepped through the door, “what stew?”
The house was as I had left it this morning. I could see that nothing had been moved as the door chuffed closed behind me. I couldn’t smell anything because of all the bile in my nose; so I reached, out of habit, for my handkerchief to mop my forehead; not there, of course, I had just thrown it away.
I looked around the living room that all of a sudden seemed so unfamiliar; all the smiles in the pictures, all the little knickknacks that should have meant so much seeming so flat and slick and meaningless. If I hadn’t seen Merlyn and Bob; if the key hadn’t worked I might of thought that I was in the wrong house.
I was still standing, with my back to the front door, trembling – and thinking of where I could find something to wipe the sweat out of my eyes, when I heard her voice carry through the dark to me from the kitchen. “Honey Bun,? come in to dinner!” I started violently at the sound of her voice as the last scrap of hope vanished with it. I felt the trap closing as I slowly crossed the room to the kitchen door. A small table with two chairs sat at one end. “How could I have hoped she wouldn’t be here,” I thought to myself as I sat down, “the Greyhound, I should have taken the Greyhound, I should have run and never looked back, even with the empty wallet I should have tried”
So disturbing that clear, calm an innocent look in her eyes; not so much as a quiver to be seen at a fingertip. How could she sit there with her hands caked in blood; her tank top soak in it, clinging to her breasts. How could she not worry about what she might catch from it all, splattered on her face that way; what was below the table, where I couldn’t see, I couldn’t even imagine. “ So, you and pretty little Bertram won’t be frolicking in our bed anymore, I take it,” she said. I felt the trap snap shut as the despair at ever escaping washed over me one final time before I let hope go forever. “Eat up Honey Bun” she said. The stew looked good, but my stomach convulsed anyway; I couldn’t help but wonder. “Leftovers” she said. I could tell by the curl at the corner of her mouth that she knew what I was thinking. “Oh – go ahead and eat up, I won’t tell the boys if you won’t tell the neighbors” she said, I could hear the smile in her voice as I jumped, retching uncontrollably, for the sink; “then we’ll do the dishes together – then we’ll do me.”