State of Nature

By Ethan Fleisher

Saint Tremonti

I’m an Irish Catholic to the bone.

I’ve lived with a bunch of niave smile-struck protestants from the local channels for as long as I can remember, and at an early age I found I was different. I was usually smarter- not in the bookworm kind of way, but an edgier, wiser way- and usually the cynical one in the group. I was always a smart-ass, too. Give me an authority figure, and I’d find something wrong with the him so fast it’d make your head spin.

Catholic can be a title, too. Hypocrisy is human nature.

My name? One of the most important things in my life. I’m Cal Monohan. Yeah… the name’s got irony. Monohan means, when translated correctly, “Monk.” Pure and simple.

I have family, but most of them are bigger bastards than I am.

Luckily, I’ve got some cousins that would give their own hide for me. Two of them, both a year younger than I am, at about nineteen: Lelem and Kyle. Good kids, always have been.

I’ve got some close friends, too. Joe Tremonti, as far as I’m concerned, is about one miracle short of Sainthood.

It was a cold, overcast Sunday afternoon when he made his first.

“You’ve got a lot of issues, Cal, you know that?”

Joe Tremonti turned off the highway onto Burkes and Long, and took Long drive to the mall. I was silent; it’s a rhetorical question, and if I were to answer it Joe would obviously be hearing nothing new.

We parked by Snider Drug, and I opened Joe’s old Suburban door and stepped out into the moist, cool, late September air. I could smell diesel fuel and Burger King, a far cry from the common perception of a typical Minnesota fall day: bright blue sky, wondrous changing colors and a bunch of real nice Norwegians.

That’s Duluth. I live in Brainerd.

Joe stepped out of the driver’s side, and took the last, big swig of his Dew. He dropped the empty can to the ground, and stomped it into a fourth of it’s normal size.

“Rough day?” I asked, zipping up my jacket. Joe was never mad. The damn kid was gonna be a priest, after all.

“Nah, just trying to figure you out,” he said. He looked like a good old Catholic boy; short brown hair, gray-blue eyes and thin lips. Little bit on the short side, too, but built stocky. You respected him as soon as you saw him.

I laughed. “I’ve been trying to do the same thing to you for six years,” I said.

A light rain fell quietly over the dull street, and Joe put up his hood. “We hitting the Chinese buffet?”

I shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

I shivered as we made our way to the double doors of the Asian All You Can Eat. I hated days like this, but I loved them at the same time. I believe that’s called a paradox, in case the reader’s in need of a word of the day.

The warmth inside was anything but welcoming. It was that sludgy sort of microwave heat, the kind that makes you miss the cool air outside you just came from. Piss warm, like a high school locker room.

Joe and I sat ourselves by the window. I watched a red Solara pull up, and I could hear the bass to some crummy rap number pumping in my chest.

I had a system like that once. Then I grew up.

One of the waiters came up, grinning like “you love what you do. So show the customers”. I smiled back. Someone needs to smile, I guess.

We thanked the guy for our water, but neither of us got up to get our food. I was watching Joe stare at the window.

“What are you doing?” I said.

And then he ducked, and at the same moment I saw for the first time, though I’m sure he had been there all along, a chunky black haired Asian turn on his heel to face the window.

There was a brilliant red flash, and a nearly neon spray of blood splashed all over the wall of cheap tourist toys behind him. He crumpled like a tin can, and hit the ground in a heap by a young couple’s feet.

“Holy hell,” I said.

The room was deadly silent for a moment, everyone staring at the poor man’s limp body and the spindly stream of lip-stick red that inched it’s way through the crevices in the tiles.

Then everyone seemed to scream at once.

I looked back towards Joe, and he was already on his cell phone. “Yeah,” he was saying. “It’s a red late model Solara, heading East on Long Drive.”

I turned back to the man on the ground, and saw a woman stooped over him with her fingers on his neck. She was shaking her head, saying, “Nothing, nothing, nothing…” Then I noticed the hole, and I realized it was futile to even attempt CPR. He’d been shot right through the left eye.

He had died instantly.

Joe was now standing, staring at the body like everyone else. “Come on, Cal,” he said. “We gotta go.”

I shot him a look. “What the hell are you talking about?”

That was a logical question. In Sociology in high school, my instructor had drilled it into our heads that one of the greatest questions in cinematic history was the last line in Lord of the Flies: “What are you guys doing?”

So consequently, I had asked one of the most ingenious questions man could muster.

Joe began walking towards the door, digging his keys out of his pocket. “We’re following that Solara.”

I continued to stare like an idiot. “We’re what?”

“Shut up and get in the car,” Joe said, loud enough to hear clearly over the frantic yelling and crying.

I got to my feet and numbly made my our the door.

“Alright,” Joe said. “They’re heading East on Long, and they’re gonna try to shake any tails they might have. So they take… what, Burton?”

We were halfway to the Suburban. I watched two kids across the street running from their mother, who was screaming for them to come back. A stereo blasted from a black Pontiac. I met Joe’s eyes. “Why in God’s name are we following them?”

“Because we know those guys,” Joe said. He was too calm. The bastard never even twitched. He never has.

“Who are they?” I was now opening the passenger side door, trying to keep my eyes on Joe’s, like if I let them wander he would leave me behind.

“I saw Leo Grant and his cousin,” Joe started the ignition. “But there was on more guy.”

As we pulled away, I thought for a second I was going to wet myself, but somehow my bladder shied. I thanked it silently and buckled my seat belt.

“Do you still believe in God?” Joe asked me.

“Of course I do,” I lied.

“You’re lying,” Joe said. “And you should quit that. That guy in the restaurant could have been you.”

So I prayed for the first time in months.