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part two of the story

The Picture on the Wall

Robert Collings

    I don’t remember much more about that night. I got drunker than I should have, and I think I ended up at the bar with some guy I knew in Grade 8 Science. It was dark when I left River’s, and I drove home drunk. If I had been stopped by the police along the way, I’d still be in jail. As it was, the rust-bucket had gotten me home, but I remembered nothing about the drive.
    When I staggered down to the underground parking the next morning to check the car out, I saw that it had been parked perfectly in the designated spot, ramrod straight, with an equal space between the parking lines that you could have measured in quarter-inches. I had approached the car from the driver’s side through the one-way parkade door in the underground. My head was pounding and I was sick to my stomach, but I was happy that I had at least arrived home without being arrested and without killing anyone.
    To get back upstairs I had to use another one-way door at the other side of the parkade, and it was only when I rounded the back end of the rust-bucket in order to reach this door that I got my first look at the passenger side of the car. The whole side looked like it had been squashed by an elephant. It had all been kicked in, from the front bumper down along the front quarter panel to the passenger door and then all the way back to the taillights at the rear quarter panel. Every square inch of available metal had been smashed. The passenger door had been kicked so hard that it was protruding all the way into the front seat, and it was now barely recognizable as a door. The door handle itself had been pounded into the crumpled metal until it was flush with the metal and wouldn’t budge. Even the support post had been crushed into a V-shape that poked back into the interior. Remarkably, none of the glass had shattered and that’s probably why I hadn’t noticed anything wrong the night before. But all the metal body panels on the right side had been destroyed, and I could see that even the front bumper had been knocked off the supports and kicked with such force that it was almost bent at a right angle straight into the right front tire. This would have meant that the metal would have scraped against the tire as I tried to drive home, but I didn’t remember this happening, and the tire itself had been unmarked. I hadn’t paid any attention to the passenger side of the vehicle in my drunken state, and I wondered how I had ever made it home without the other drivers on the road pointing to me and laughing. They probably had pointed and laughed, and I was too oblivious and too drunk to notice.
    My immediate reaction was that I had struck something on the drive home, but there were no scrape marks on the car, no paint or concrete transfers, and nothing else to suggest direct contact with anything other than someone’s heavy, deliberate boot. I knew in that moment that Woody Abbott had done this after he had left the bar. The dirty sonofabitch had gone out to show his contempt for me and the rust-bucket of a car that I was driving. He had come back into the bar all flushed and sweating with that demon-smirk on his face, knowing full well that he would soon be leaving with Carol Zimmerman on his arm and that I’d be left alone. He’d destroyed my piece of shit car as a little reminder for me to know my place, and there wasn’t a damn thing that I could do about it.
    I stared at the wreckage for a while, and I decided that the first thing I had to do was get rid of the vehicle. I went back upstairs, grabbed my wallet and keys, and then went back down to the parkade and started the car. It started up no problem, and when I slowly backed out of the parking space I heard the sounds of a few hunks of rusted metal falling onto the cement floor. This was bad, but there were no signs that the car couldn’t at least be driven to the scrapyard, which was only a mile or so across the bridge. I made the drive slowly, and I paid no attention to the quizzical looks from the other drivers on the road. Within the half-hour I had sold the rust-bucket for scrap to Barry’s Used Auto Parts for the grand sum of twenty-five dollars. I even violated my blood oath never to take the loser cruiser anywhere, and I was back home within the hour.
    I told my father what had happened to the car, but no one else would ever know. No one saw the car that morning except for the strangers on the road and Barry Chamberlain at the junkyard. I would not tell Gordie Zapp or anyone else. I would explain that I decided to get rid of the rust-bucket because it was too dangerous to drive on the street, which was true anyway. No one would argue and no one would care. I was certain that Carol Zimmerman would never know about what her boyfriend had done. Woody Abbott may have been many things, but he wasn’t foolish enough to tell his trophy girlfriend that he had deliberately vandalized her friend’s junker car out of jealous spite. He may have mentioned this to a couple of his own buddies, but that was up to him. I doubted that he would even do this, but I didn’t know any of his friends and I wasn’t the least bit worried that some stranger out there might make the connection when I took my measure of revenge. In the end, aside from me and my father, only Woody Abbott would know what he had done.

    I knew what the Chinese guy meant about revenge. The wisdom of the ancients may be wonderful, but I was not going to let someone’s bony hand crawl across the centuries and stop me from giving some cretinous bully the payback that he goddammed well deserved.
    The Delmonico Bakery was located in an industrial park just east of the city. The bakery was well-known in the area, and it serviced a number of restaurants in the lower mainland. It occupied a huge chunk of the industrial park, and there was a big takeout window at one end just off the street for anyone who wanted to pick up an order at the designated time. The general parking area for the complex was located deeper inside the sprawling property, but for the Delmonico takeout customers there was a smaller lot just off the main street that ran through the park, cutting it in two. This lot had only had a few spaces, and it was on the opposite side of the street, but it was directly across from the takeout window on a slight diagonal and much more convenient for the customers.
    I had managed to scrape up the financing for another car, and this latest car was at least a step up from the rust-bucket that Woody Abbott had gleefully destroyed. I decided to take a few early morning visits to the industrial park to check out the bakery. It was now late August. I hadn’t spoken to Carol Zimmerman since that night at River’s, but I had found out through the grapevine that Woody Abbott was now working full-time nights at the bakery, Monday through Friday, from midnight to eight-thirty am, with a lunch break and two coffee breaks. The Delmonico Bakery was notorious for being a strictly run, family owned operation, and I learned that the night crew lunch break was always a half-hour from four-thirty to five, with fifteen minute coffee breaks at two-thirty and six-thirty, always to the minute, and always without exception. The metal takeout window itself was bolted shut during the night and with the window rolled down and locked there was no way that Woody Abbott or anyone else could see the takeout lot from inside the bakery. If you should wander by the bakery on the sidewalk between the break times, the night crew would be hard at work inside and they would never know you were there. Combine that with the general darkness of the industrial park in the middle of the night, and you’d be almost invisible if you wanted to mess with any vehicle parked in the takeout lot. And the takeout lot just happened to be the lot where Woody Abbott parked his Chevy Nova when he worked nights.
    I assumed that Woody Abbott parked in this lot because it made it more convenient for him to check out his car, and sure enough, in my night surveillance I always saw him come out of the bakery for a quick look during the breaks, and always at exactly the same time. At any other time he’d be toiling away deep inside the bakery and his prized Chevy Nova could have been parked on the dark side of the moon for all he knew. He kept the car secured with the latest anti-theft bar locked across the steering wheel which made the car impossible to steal. But I had no intention of stealing his car. My only intention was to bash his property in equal measure to the bashing done to my property. I had even purchased a sledge hammer at a yard sale so the weapon of destruction could never be traced back to me if it was ever found. I remembered my father’s cautious words about the journey of revenge and the two grave stuff, but that didn’t apply to my situation. I was not going to cause any physical harm to anyone, and this was the total opposite of the mindset of a person like Woody Abbott. This made me a much better person than he was, and a much better person all around. If I delivered each blow to his precious car with an image in my mind of his own head hitting the metal instead of the head of the sledge hammer, my private thoughts were my own business.
    I had done all my homework and the night had arrived. I had parked down the street from the Delmonico Bakery and I was checking my watch to see exactly when the four-thirty lunch break would be over. At just the right time, I got out of the car and walked along the sidewalk towards the bakery. The whole park was as silent and still as a graveyard. As I got closer to the bakery I slowed my steps and then stopped. The bakery was ahead of me to my right, and the takeout parking lot was a little closer on my side of the street and dead straight ahead. The area had some streetlights that ran along the sidewalk on the bakery side, but the lights were so high up on the curved poles and spaced so far apart that they seemed to create more shadows in the gloom than any real lighting. I took a few more steps and stopped again. It was now well after five o’clock and the lunch break would be over and everyone would be back to work. I could now see the silhouette of the Chevy Nova looming ahead in the darkness. There were no other cars in the lot. I had the sledge hammer tucked inside my coat and I was clutching it tightly with my right hand. I had even put a special tape on the handle for a better grip when I got down to business. A few more paces and I was now close enough to the car so I could see the faint reflection of the nearby streetlight in the front windshield. Closer still, and the dim light from way up in the sky was now bouncing off the chrome front bumper. A few more steps and I was up against the car. I brought the hammer out of my jacket and I raised it high over my head and I was all ready to strike the first blow that was going to hand that dirty sonofabitch the lesson he richly deserved, and then I heard the shouting: “Hey, hey you! I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!”
    Woody Abbott was at the emergency door of the bakery and he was screaming at me. He bolted out into the street waving his arms and in that same moment I heard the roaring sound of a car engine coming up from behind me. I don’t know where this car came from. It was speeding up the street in one direction and Woody Abbott was charging at me from another direction, and in an instant they both met in the middle of the street. The impact made a crashing sound like you wouldn’t believe, and the car just kept speeding ahead without stopping or even slowing down. Woody Abbott was thrown high up into the air and he landed in a heap on the sidewalk in front of the half-open emergency door. I heard the car hit him but I never heard him land, and I must have been in shock or something. I was close enough to see his body in the wedge of light from the door. It looked like his neck had been broken. From the moment he hit the ground he lay perfectly still with his head and his neck at a funny sort of angle that reminded me of my front bumper that morning in the parkade. I tucked the hammer back inside my jacket and I took a few quick steps back down the sidewalk towards my car. Within moments I had faded into the darkness and I knew that I couldn’t be seen by anyone in the bakery. I took a couple more steps back, moving faster now, and then I turned and hustled down the sidewalk. I heard voices coming from the bakery and when I looked back over my shoulder I saw two workers come out the emergency door. More light flooded out as they opened the door all the way. I saw them kneel down beside the body and then they looked up the street in the opposite direction from me, as if they were trying to spot the phantom vehicle. Then there was the sound of someone screaming and a few more workers spilled out of the door onto the sidewalk. More lights came on from inside the bakery and there was more shouting and screaming. The workers were all crowded around the body and they were all looking up the street away from me, as if they were determined to spot something in all the shadows and the gloomy lighting. No one had noticed me. A few more steps and I had reached my car at the far end of the street. I slipped in behind the wheel and drove away into the night in the opposite direction from the bakery and that was the end of it.
    There was nothing I could have done for Woody Abbott. The bakery people were swarming around him before I even knew what was happening, and there was nothing they could do for him, either. I knew he was dead as soon as the car hit him.
    I couldn’t identify a thing about the death car. I had heard it coming up the street behind me and then my attention was immediately focused back upon Woody Abbott who was charging at me, ready to kill. I don’t know how he knew I was there, or even if he knew it was me holding the sledge hammer, or even if he saw any sledge hammer at all. After he was hit and thrown onto the sidewalk, all I remember was this black streak speeding away and then disappearing into the shadows. I didn’t see anyone inside the car. I didn’t know the make, model, or year of the car. I didn’t have the first clue about the license plate. I didn’t know if there was one person in the car, or ten. I would have been completely useless as a witness and I would have wasted everybody’s time if I had stayed at the scene.

    I could hear sirens approaching in the distance as I left the industrial park and turned onto the main roadway. I kept driving like nothing had happened. I listened to the wailing sounds get louder and closer and then I saw a barrage of red lights and speeding police cars roar by me and then fade away as I got further from the scene and the police cars got further away from me. There were a few other cars on the road that night and no one had any reason to pay any special attention to me. I drove the speed limit like any other prudent driver. In my excitement I had even made up a sick joke in my head about not having to worry about Woody Abbott and Carol Zimmerman pulling up beside me in the Chevy Nova at a red light, even though my VW Beetle wasn’t quite as shameful as the rust-bucket. I was back in my apartment parking space in about twenty minutes. I didn’t worry about the sledge hammer, and I tossed it into the trunk. I knew that accusing fingers were going to be pointed at me no matter what the truth was. I may have had bad intentions that night when it came to destroying property, but I had never laid a finger on Woody Abbott or even put a single scratch on his car. You can throw all the Chinese philosophers you want at me, but in the end I was as innocent as those bakery workers who crowded around the body in the dead of night, all looking for a car that had vanished forever.
    For months I had a picture in my mind of the police suddenly pounding on my door as part of their investigation, but nothing ever happened. Still, over the years I’ve been bothered by the creeping notion that I did something wrong that night by not sticking around. It’s something that I find difficult to explain, because I have repeatedly convinced myself on the test of all logic that I did nothing wrong at all. I can’t think of any good that my staying at the scene would have ever done, other than to get me into trouble when I didn’t deserve it. No one knew I was at the scene that night, and no one needed to know. I had gone over and over the timing before I ever went to the business that night and I haven’t the foggiest notion why Woody Abbott chose to look out at his car on that occasion as opposed to all the other nights when the lunch break had ended and he couldn’t see a thing. I thought about the possibility of him telling one of the other employees that it was me with the hammer just before he ran out onto the street, but no one ever contacted me or said anything. I even worked up the nerve to order something from the takeout window of the bakery about a year after Woody Abbott was killed. I parked in the takeout lot and waited for my number to come up. When I was called, I crossed the street on the diagonal and walked up to the window like any other good patron. I was handed my donuts and my three loaves of bread and no one raised an eyebrow. I didn’t know if Woody Abbott had friends at the bakery or anywhere else, but no one ever said a word to me. I resolved that the best course of action to take in all of this was to keep my mouth shut, so I kept my mouth shut, year after year.

    My father died without ever knowing what happened that night. Gordie Zapp never knew. We had a ten-year high school reunion and there was a small “In Memoriam” display where the grad photo of Woody Abbott was pasted onto a white carboard sheet along with the photos of a couple of other kids who I didn’t remember. Even in death he was called Woody and I didn’t see the name “Arthur” anywhere on the board. We all looked at the display and commented about how fast those ten years had gone by. I was appropriately respectful along with Gordie Zapp and everybody else, and not one of them had the slightest idea that I had been at the death scene that night. I heard some dark rumors at the reunion about drug debts that Woody Abbott may have owed to the wrong people, and how his death may have been some sort of payback. They were only rumors, and I quickly left the group when the topic came up.
    I lost contact with Carol Zimmerman after that summer, and I don’t know what happened to her. She never showed up for the 10th graduation reunion. When I mentioned this to somebody, I was told that she had never attended the service for Woody Abbott, either, because she’d been secretly engaged all along to some wealthy guy out of state. This may have been the mysterious Helmut, but I didn’t know the details and I didn’t ask.
    I looked for Carol at the 20th reunion, and then at the 25th, and then at the 40th, but she never showed up for any of them. I made a point at the reunions to always ask about her but no one seemed to know anything. The small “In Memoriam” display that they had for the 10th reunion had morphed into a larger display by the time another ten years had passed, and I was struck by the number of pictures posted on what was now called the “Memorial Wall”. Most were kids I hadn’t thought about in all those years but I remembered them from home room, or PE, or any number of other classes. They were all born the same year I was, and now they were all smiling young faces on the Memorial Wall. And with each of these reunions there was always the grad photo of Woody Abbott at the top of the white cardboard sheet, smiling out at me forever.
    It was at the 40th reunion where it really surprised me how young Woody Abbott looked in that graduation photo. Here was the most feared guy in the school, the guy who could put you into Intensive Care if you just looked at him sideways, and yet in the picture he was just a scrub-faced teenager who needed some dental work. I always took the time to look long and hard at his picture at all these reunions. I had convinced myself that the secret we shared meant nothing in the end, but it was something that was always eating at me and wouldn’t go away.

    By the time the 50th reunion rolled around, the Memorial Wall had become the main attraction. It was full of pictures now and as soon as I entered the gymnasium my first impulse was to rush straight over and check out the new additions. I knew everybody else was thinking the same thing, but rushing over to find out who had died wasn’t the appropriate way to handle things. So the trick was to inch your way over to the display while you made small talk with someone and then look at the pictures as if you’d just stumbled upon them by accident. That’s exactly what I did. I was amazed at all the pictures. There were so many that they now had to be arranged in alphabetical order. Woody Abbott was still there, of course, the fresh-faced kid who had been the first unlucky soul to make the list. He was the first to die, and fifty years later he was first on the new list because of his last name. I was looking at the pictures, nodding as I recognized each young face. Down the list I went, down all the pictures carefully arranged by last name, down all the way to the very last photograph on the wall. It was the graduation picture of Carol Zimmerman. I didn’t know she had died. When I asked around, no one seemed to know what happened to her. One of the organizers of the event told me that she had heard about Carol’s death and had posted her picture without knowing any of the details. Carol Zimmerman was part of our graduating class and she was gone, and that’s all anyone knew.
    I was staring at Carol’s picture in much the same way that I used to stare at her in class. She was just a kid, too, exactly like the boyfriend who always drove the nice cars. Then, Gordie Zapp came up quietly beside me. I hadn’t seen Gordie in years, but his stealth maneuvers were just the same and he looked just the same. “I heard she married a rich guy who shot himself a few weeks after the wedding,” Gordie said. He was trying hard to maintain some sense of solemnity. “Drew’s here, did you know?”
    Gordie nodded towards a group of men standing nearby. They were ex-high school football jocks and they were posing for a picture. Most of them still possessed the size and bulk of their youth, but those attributes were now the distinguishments of old men: heads that took an odd shape through thinning hair, and torsos now squashed into tightly buttoned shirts. They were pressed together in a half-circle with their arms around each other, grinning for the camera and making a victory sign with their hands. Drew Thompson was standing in the middle of the group. He was flashing the biggest victory smile of them all, as if the last fifty years had never existed and the championship game had just been won the hour before.
    “Do you remember that night when the three of us were at Rivers?” Gordie asked.
    I remembered that night well, but I pretended to search my memory. “What night?” I queried. “Do you mean with Drew?”

    Gordie nodded towards the photo. “You were sitting with Carol. I came by and said hello. Me and Drew, we were jealous of you.”
    I thought the time had finally arrived to at least reveal a part of the secret that I had kept hidden for so long.
    “Her boyfriend kicked my car in that night,” I said. “I guess he was jealous, too.”
    I looked at Gordie and he looked at me. “He didn’t do it,” Gordie finally muttered.
    My heart started pounding and I felt slightly dizzy. “How did you know about that? Nobody saw the car and I sold it for scrap the next day.”
    Gordie lowered his eyes. “Drew started it,” he said. “A little kick. Then I did a little kick. Then things just...happened.”
    “Just like kicking the football, is that what you’re telling me?”
    “We thought it was funny,” Gordie muttered. “An old junker of a car.”
    “You and Drew thought it was funny because I was part of the joke?”
    “I’m just sorry, that’s all,” Gordie said. His voice was breaking and he was now shaking his head. “Things got out of hand. We were drunken kids. I’m sorry for what we did, I’ve always been sorry.”
    I looked over at Drew Thompson laughing it up with his old buddies. Someone had told me that he had made a small fortune in sales, but I didn’t know what he sold and I never asked. Gordie was staring at me now, waiting for me to say something. I didn’t respond, and then Gordie lowered his voice and said, “She flicked me off that night like I was a bug. I told you I was sorry.”
    Gordie wandered away. I knew that I would never attend another reunion, and I knew that I would never speak to Gordie Zapp again.
    Alone now, I turned back to Carol’s graduation photo. How well I remembered the rush that went through me that first day in Math 12 when Carol Zimmerman took her seat at the desk across from me. I remembered everything about that moment and everything about that first class. Mr. Olsen started the class by telling us that the only absolute certainty in life was found in mathematics. As I looked at the photograph of the smiling young girl on the wall I wondered about the other certainty in life. Carol had made the Memorial Wall before me, and I wondered where my own picture would fit in when the time came.

    My eyes then drifted up to the picture of Woody Abbott. In that moment I wondered if my father had been right all along. I wondered if I had indeed dug two graves, exactly as the Chinese philosopher had predicted.
    “I’m sorry, too,” I whispered, to no one in particular.

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