Jeff Burt
The Boxers Protest
Rain collected in the soft indentations in the yard. The wind ruffled the water like a lazy spoon cooling coffee. A car had turned the ess curve a little too sharply, and was bogged down, wheels whining with increasing anger, splattering mud and mist from the tires’ frictionless spin.
The driver, a young man in his late twenties, reluctantly got out of the car to survey the ground. When he took his first step near the right front fender, his shoe and lower nine or ten inches of his trousers disappeared into the mud. I could hear the woman laugh as she scooted to the steering wheel. He looked around and mimed using a pry bar.
They were stuck, and I was stuck, mired by the insistent voices of my father and mother decreeing I should help travelers in trouble.
I opened my door and waved for them to come in. The woman shut off the engine and sprinted toward me. The man strolled, looking skyward, as if God had caused these indignities.
My dog sniffed both of their behinds, and satisfied, went to the stuffed chair and laid down. I was also less energized by guests than I expected.
No tow truck would come at this hour and in this weather. I had two spare bedrooms, so invited them to stay overnight.
I outfitted them the best I could; my sweats and a tee for him and, for the woman, my late wife’s sweats. My wife had been dead for four years, and I’d never been sure why I’d kept her sweats. At first, it was awkward seeing the young woman in them, but I was glad they’d finally come to use. When you get old, you look for reasons to justify hanging on, and this was one: those sweat pants brought a little magic back to my life, magic I had been missing for those four years.
They retired early, and I didn’t hear a peep.
I thought about my wife that night, how she always praised my ability to fix things, put two and two together. By profession I leveled buildings, piloted cranes, drove dump trucks, occasionally set explosives. For her, I did delicate repairs. Once I repaired her favorite tea cup , the crack undetectable, and she told me I had a little magic to me, a line she repeated for many years. When she died, the magic disappeared. I was run down, the cabin was run down, and everything seemed to be running downhill.
~
Snow fell overnight. It was not snow in a flake form, but an accumulation of flat hail and slush. The little wooden table I had set out on the side of the house had about three-quarters of an inch of what might’ve been mistaken for chunks of quartz. The dog slipped and slid on the porch, licking every step, at first with razored hackles up, then, finding it unusual and amusing, raced forward, skidding, scampering in place, until she became wild, and circled the yard eleven times before remembering she had a duty to do. She entered the house with steam pouring off her back and haunches.
When they came into the kitchen, the young couple lamented how cold the house felt. I had a pot of coffee on, and they quizzed me about the grounds: how old they were and whether or not the coffee had been approved by some council.. I couldn’t answer any of that, and they drank it all the same.
I had enough oatmeal to share, and the woman seemed thankful. They kept looking outside as if yearning alone could lift their car – which had sunk perhaps another two inches overnight – from the rut.
I told them the tow truck could not make it until nine, and that seemed fine with the woman. She plopped herself into the dog’s chair, opened a shade, and peered out into the snow, her brown eyes seemingly glazed blue. She stretched in an intentional way, as if doing yoga.
The man fidgeted. Nothing pleased him. Nothing seemed to work for him. He kept re-tying the robe I’d given him, and pulling up his socks over his pajama leg-bottoms to keep the air from the skin of his shins. He smoothed his hair back with both hands as if he were stuck beneath a waterfall, shaking his dry head back and forth and rubbing his eyes.
He asked if the tow truck driver could do all of his work without opening the car, and I said he might need to put the transmission in neutral.
That’s it though? he asked.
Yep, I said.
No trunk? Or opening the hood?
Nope.
I’ll have to be there, of course, he said.
You should be, yes.
In case he needs the keys.
Or help. Another set of eyes is always good.
Should we pack our dirty clothes and be ready to go as soon as he pulls the car out?
If you want to get going right away. I don’t mind some conversation if you want to stay a bit.
The woman perked up, almost leaping to her feet.
We aren’t much for conversation, unless it’s on Zoom, she said, and laughed. Maybe if you were in one room and we were in another we could Zoom.
We’ll be ready to go, the man said.
They went to the bedroom to change, and came out with a trash bag of dirty clothes and their luggage. I had one spare toothbrush and offered it to him, but he pushed it away.
The woman said they had used their own, but I hadn’t heard the water run, so knew that wasn’t true. My coffee brewed strong, and I could smell it on their breaths.
My dog had taken back her chair as soon as the woman had stood, and now rose to inspect their luggage, wagging her tail.
Must be a mouse in there, I said.
Oh, probably just my lotion, the woman said. Unless she’s a drug-sniffing dog. She laughed again.
The man scoffed. We don’t have any drugs, don’t use any drugs.
He pulled the woman toward the door and there they stood, staring out without speaking for the ten minutes before the tow truck showed.
~
People can leave behind sensitive things when they pack too quickly. My wife’s brother and sister-in-law would routinely leave medications – prescribed and non-prescribed – in plain sight on the bathroom on the counter: beta blockers for the heart, nicotine patches and gum, and over-the-hood-of-a-car opiates, presumably for pain. My father often left a small stack of dirty clothes, which usually meant I should launder them and invite him back to pick them up, both of which I did.
This young couple left behind hair dyes, and in the corner near the outlet, a small pair of clippers.
I figured they were on the run, though from what or whom I could not say, and tried not to imagine. From the window, I saw them standing near the tow truck, inspecting the damage to the right front bumper as the tow truck driver hosed off the wheel and hub watching for axle damage. The woman was still laughing, though nothing was very funny out there – while the man frowned, paced, and glowered. I assumed he was not high and probably upset that she was.
The axle was broken. The man kicked the tire, aiming about three inches away from the tow truck driver, who responded with a swash of water on the man’s coat. The woman laughed.
Hesitatingly, the couple made their way back to the house and asked if they could stay until they arranged for a rental to be delivered. I said yes, and handed them the dyes and the clippers. The woman nodded and smiled.
This may not go well, she said, looking directly at me, somewhat sad and dreamily.
The man shook his head and stomped loose mud onto the entry rug. Not true Persian, is it? he asked.
No, I said. Home Depot, on-sale. Cheap. Lasts forever.
Not well, not well, not well, the woman sing-sang.
I’m going to have to disable your phone, and I need you to give it to me now, the man said, inverting the order of his steps, a not unusual thing to do in a moment of stress.
I handed over my cell phone.
Landline doesn’t work. Had it disconnected after my father died.
The man checked the wall phone anyway. He pulled out a snub revolver, somewhere between a derringer and a pistol, large enough to be a hand gun, but small enough to resemble a toy. He waved it, motioning for me to sit down. I sat.
He used my cell to call Enterprise and my credit card for the charge.
They can have a car here at 9:30, he told the woman.
Enough time, she said, to have coffee. You don’t know who we are or why we are here, do you?
Nope, I said. Just that you dyed your hair and cut it shorter.
Good, she squealed. You can live!
The dog came over and looked at me with eyes that said you are sitting in my chair.
I slid over to the couch and she clambered into the chair, her head over the armrest so she could see the road.
What do you plan to do with the car?
It’s a rental. We plan on leaving it.
Whose name is it in?
Ah, now, you don’t need to know that, do you? Let’s cut the questions and keep on living, okay? By the way, do you like my hair? The woman giggled and patted her head.
It’s well cut, I said.
But the color? The color?
Looks a tad too rusty, for my taste. Not an Irish red. Too dark.
I know, I know. But what can you do? CVS doesn’t carry Irish red.
But the cut is good, kind of sassy, I said.
Sassy? I like that, she laughed. I’m sassy, darling, she said to the man, who insistent on pacing a hole through my faux Persian rug.
Wonderful, he said. Fits you.
She scooped coffee into the filter, filled the coffeemaker with water, and then with her head in her hands and elbows on the counter, watched every drop stream into the pot until the beeper sounded. She smiled.
She poured two mugs, one for herself, and one for me.
Caffeine doesn’t make you agitated, does it? she asked. It does me, but I’m more proficient when I’m agitated. At work, I’m a dynamo in the morning, a slug after lunch, and then a vortex after my mid-afternoon cup. A fucking tornado. How about you?
It stimulates me, but I keep it to a cup a day so I don’t start clenching my teeth. My wife said she could hear me grinding my teeth by eight in the morning.
Your wife? She’s where?
Dead. Cancer. Four years ago.
Oh, sorry. You’re alone here. Get along with your neighbors?
Hardly know them. They keep to themselves. I’m a little rough for them, which is to say, maybe a little too poor for their tastes.
Oh, their rugs are real Persians?
Something like that.
Are they snoops? Are they gonna ask about the car?
Eventually. They’re East Coast snoops, which means they won’t ask for the first day. Midwestern snoops would ask within the hour.
She laughed. Guess I’m a Midwestern snoop. Do you know about estate scams? That’s our specialty. Buy an entire estate one day, sell it overnight, leave town the next morning before the wire transfer clears. Do one big one, you’ve got money for a year. This last one—big money. Four semis. Almost two million dollars. We get twenty percent.
The man abandoned his pacing to put his hand over the woman’s mouth.
She’s just making conversation, I said. She’s proud. It’s okay to be proud. I would have heard about it in day or two anyway, and put things together. I can still add things up, you know.
The man told me to stop talking, and strip down to my underpants, no socks, no shoes.
I protested, but did as he said.
When I was a teenager, I told the young man, I got arrested for walking down Main Street in just my boxers. The deputy held me in the lobby of the jail and called my dad. It was around midnight on a Friday after a basketball game at high school. I had taken off almost all of my clothes to protest against that very deputy. The deputy who had raced a classmate on a highway where she died in the resulting crash. I had stripped to my boxers because the deputy had tried to get my girlfriend to go off with him in his police car, and I knew the result. I had stripped down because I couldn’t think of anything else to do to draw attention.
I assumed that my father would bail me out, or talk my way out altogether. All he did, however, was chat with the deputy and examine the edge of the desk where he drummed his fingers. He didn’t acknowledge me once.
The deputy didn’t put me in one of the two cells. He let me sit in the lobby in my boxers under the fluorescents so that every person in a car or walking on the street could see.
Death by public humiliation.
Except I didn’t die.
When morning came and I got my release, I took the folded clothes under my arm, tied my tennis shoes, and tromped the eight blocks home in the early March cold.
My mother saw my outfit and did not bat an eye. She told me, this, pointing to my naked torso, this is a more serious problem than what you did last night. You’ll ruin your father’s honor. And mine.
I snorted and feigned throwing up. Honor, I said. You call siding with liars and cheats ‘honor?’ Saying nothing about the deputy murdering my friend when he raced her on County G and forced her off the road into a tree so just so he could have some fun?
And that’s how you challenge us? my mother snapped. Parading through town in your boxers? You need to go to college. You’ll learn there are better ways to protest than this small town can offer.
So I went to college. I learned new ways, and tried almost all of them. Sit-ins. Marches. Protests by word. Protests by deed. Letters to officials. Even a fire.
Deep in my heart I am still proud of wearing those boxers down Main Street, drawing attention to that murdering cop. No one listened to my protests. No one read my letters. Hell, they let the fire burn, didn’t even douse it.
But those boxers. The deputy was investigated, fired, arraigned, and found guilty for manslaughter. Imagine that. The power of a kid in his underwear.
This is all to let you know, I said, that sitting in my underwear I am more proud and more dangerous than I have been in decades.
The young man grunted, and said I was crazy, stupid, old.
I agreed.
~
Some argue awareness is consciousness, others that consciousness is always there, but not necessarily awareness, meaning even if a being is alert, it may lack the intellect to notice things profitable to its well-being.
These two could think, plan, react, and even steal. However, they were unaware of the danger lurking in their specific surroundings.
Scammers get frustrated when they can’t find another victim, or their costs rise necessitating bigger, more lucrative, and thus, riskier scams. I was no victim, either, unless they straight out shot me, which I mentioned the neighbors would overhear and report, as they did any loud noises, East Coast or Midwest.
They couldn’t abduct me, I told them. I was large, lazy, ornery, and had a terrible prostate. I peed a little every hour.
I knew their faces. I knew their names, at least their current aliases.
The woman banked with First Third. I could see the logo in the reflection of the computer screen on the window behind her. I saw the same logo on the man’s iPhone, along with app logos from Hertz, Enterprise, Zoom, and Airbnb. I told them a skilled detective skilled would identify them within an hour .
They clutched their phones even tighter. I was a threat.
And still the woman laughed. They were cooked, done. How could they still be giddy about a getaway? Was she sociopathic? Her giggling started to annoy me and her partner.
I told them I needed to pee and I needed to wear my pants or my kneecaps would turn into breakable glass. She laughed. He relented.
I peed in privacy, drew up my pants, and removed my belt.
When I opened the door I snapped the belt across the man’s face, then spun it around his neck before he could take a step. I had planned it, but my success surprised me.
The woman sat as if in a stupor, continuing to giggle. I dropped him to his knees, then used my chest to bully him to the floor, squashing him like a bug. I stood, with a foot on his lower back. Where’s the gun, I yelled at her.
She looked outside. The Enterprise car slipping on the snow into the driveway.
We packed it, she howled. It’s in his luggage.
A friendly double toot of the horn sounded.
It's a Prius, she said, mocking a pout. I wanted an SUV for the snow, but he wanted something inconspicuous. He said no one would expect criminals to drive a Prius. Scam artists aren’t Eco-friendly.
She closed the computer. She put her right hand on the table, flat, smooth, and then from underneath the table came an explosion. I thought at first she had fired a gun, but it was my dog barking at the driver coming to the house. The woman knew exactly why I had a stunned look on my face, and rolled into a ball on the couch, and began laughing.
The Enterprise driver knocked. I yelled for him to come in.
He clocked the woman in her spell of hilarity.
She’s high, I told him. They robbed someone, something.
I told him to call the police, and he dialed.
Is that a leash, he asked, pointing to the belt. Role play?
It’s my belt, I said. I use it to keep my pants up.
The woman rolled from the couch to the floor. My dog bathed her hands with licks as she covered her face.
That’s when I saw consciousness without awareness. The Enterprise driver’s eyes were wide open but he wasn’t seeing anything. Danger had called, and without fear, he had opened the door. He stood with an older man, shirtless, in saggy jeans with a belt around a man’s neck, a young woman helpless in mirth, and a dog sniffing his pants, yet all he could think about was sex.
They’re going to jail, I said.
He shook his head side to side. What about the car?
They won’t be needing it?
He got on his cell phone. There will still be a charge, he said, muttering that he would still need some paperwork signed.
The cops will do that, I said. What is their ETA?
ETA? I don’t know. I called my dispatch, not the police.
The woman erupted in long waves of laughter, holding her sides, crying, and then just crying.
The driver called 911. He turned to me asking what role she was playing.
In ten minutes, this will all be over, I told him.
I am sure if you asked the driver what happened that day, he would tell you a story featuring the belt with a side of kink.
If you asked the man with a belt around his neck, another story. The woman, a third.
They would tell of how consequences did not seem to flow from their actions.
The world tends toward disorder, and I had tried a little to hold it together.
A little magic had returned.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife and a Labrador that thinks she's a horse. He has contributed to Gold Man Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, Per Contra, and won the 2016 Consequence Fiction Prize.
