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Proper Tools

Richard E Marion

    It’s simple. Travel light. Do the work using the proper tools.
    Barrett’s hands were his best tool, he also carried backup. Though proficient with firearms, he preferred blades: silent, dignified.
    The Doors, album one, final track, cranked within the flint gray Mercedes. He was approaching the five-star hotel, Route 1A North along the Atlantic.
    Route 1A reminded him of thin black lanes, green hills, grimy cabins with flyspecked windows. Simple people, minds like the beasts, guileless.
    He was little. The rooster in the crooked barn gave daily chase, feeding off the boy’s panic. It had clawed orange feet, snow white feathers, and evil eyes.
    One day the boy stumbled. A rock, smooth, hand-sized, like the stone axe in a schoolbook. He and the stone combined. White feathers turned bright streaming red, clawed feet ceased. The air smelled of brown pennies and framing nails.
    The Mercedes pulled into underground parking. He killed the high-end audio, one must be considerate. Barrett breathed the aroma of leather and oil, and imagined the tools which created that splendid machine.
    Jimmy Barrett used the stairs. One must stay in shape, even if he was unnaturally strong and virtually immortal. Death was his trade. A nameless artist seeking no acclaim.
    The steps made him think of a third floor tenement in a dingy town, except at the hotel they didn’t bounce like a trampoline. Back at the gray town, Jimmy had just started high school. He stayed with a man called father.
    Father kept an unattractive woman named momma. She was kind. Momma cooked, cleaned, and prayed a lot.
    Father often reeked of tobacco and alcohol. He told people that he worked at the Navy Yard. Young Barrett asked Mr. Greenwood next door what was a Navy Yard? Mr. Greenwood told him it was where they made things for the government, but it had shut down.
    Father got worse with the smoking and drinking. Frequently he ranted at length about government, but never mentioned the Navy Yard.
    Once father came home early and was acting strangely. He hollered about sick of it and enough and had to move again. He waved a gun around like on TV.
    He started screaming “lies” and “protection”... At last, he went into the tiny bedroom and shut the door.
    Momma sat perfectly still, like the statues in the dark church, but there the statues did not cry big fat tears.
    The following day young Barrett walked to the library, two miles. The librarian was a nice old lady. She resembled a little bird, but smelled nicer. She was not a rooster. There were books on fixing automobiles. Barrett studied steering and brakes and proper tools.
    On the way back he purchased a file and a hacksaw at the Jenkins Hardware Store. Later that night he worked on father’s pea-green Ford coupe, because he did not like momma getting scared and crying.
    Next morning father drove off in the green Ford and never came back. “Uncle” moved in. Uncle owned a sunset blue Cadillac. Uncle didn’t smoke, drink, or make momma cry. Uncle bought them a real house.
    Back at the hotel Barrett was almost at the top, not even breathing hard. The dark thoughts had elevated his mood. Jimmy jimmied the thick door that isolated the penthouse from the common guest suites. The proper tools made it easy.
    Barrett was an engineer until the politicians sent the jobs away.
    So, Barrett signed up for security, rent-a-cop. The firm checked him out carefully and gave him a piss test.
    After a week the company talked to him about chromosomes and recessive genes. They administered eye tests, smell tests, strength tests, and coordination tests. They told Jimmy he was not entirely human, he was more.
    A “werewolf,” they said, but not like in the movies. They advised him to shave every morning and night.
    Jimmy looked quite ordinary but he was really strong and talented with his hands. They gave him a referral, told him he was like a machine. That sounded a lot like tools.
    He wound up with a better job than rent-a-cop working for an organization with no name. It paid more, enough for a big Mercedes.
    His new job was fixing problems created by people who “didn’t follow the program.” They had to be stopped, just like that white rooster and the man with the green car.
    Jimmy James Barrett let himself into the penthouse silently.
    His “client” must have expected him, because he did not look surprised. The client smelled familiar, bad. His mind was not like the beasts in the country or momma. His soul writhed like red dirty worms.
    Client reminded Jimmy of himself when he shaved in the mirror, except older, and looked weak. Probably not even immortal.
    “Son.”
    “Father...
    I killed you. You made momma cry.”
    “You tried, you dumb little turd. You were bad with tools, you asshole.
    I had to disappear anyhow... Like father like son, at least.
    Glad you finally got a real job, moron.”
    Barrett had taken it all in stride, until “bad with tools,” which flipped him out. The tendons in his wrists and hands stood out like cables. The veins were lashing. His face itched.
    It made for an off day. The upside was Jimmy was in no rush. The penthouse was quiet and isolated.
    Out came the duct tape and nylon cord, white like the rooster feathers.
    A sapphire knife has no metal. Scary sharp. It can only be re-sharpened with diamond.
    Jimmy’s hands were clenched so hard they ached.
    Good thing he had brought the proper tools.



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