RING CYCLE

by

 Thomas Larsen

 THOMAS LARSEN lives in Lambertville, New Jersey. He has worked as a freelance author for over ten years, with publishing credits in Newsday, New Millenium Writings, the Antietam Review, and Puerto del Sol. His short story Lids was included in Best American Mystery Stories-2004. This fall, his first novel (Flawed) is scheduled to be published by BeWrite Books. We're not completely sure whether his story is hardboiled or noir, but we do know that it was tres cool, so we decided to include it in this issue. It's great having Editor's Prerogative.

 

 

 

     Lazlo Werner was thirteen when his family moved to America. They arrived in New York in the spring of 1949 and were settled in New Jersey by summer’s end. He would never forget coming into the port of New York. From the deck of the ship the city skyline loomed solid and majestic. Lazlo felt his life change by the minute, for the better he could only hope. He worried that Americans would hold his name and accent against him and vowed to change both as soon as he was able. Lazlo wanted badly to be an American and thought his homeland tragically flawed for waging then losing both World Wars.

      “Look Papa,” he tugged his father’s coat sleeve. “The woman is holding an ice cream cone.”

      He’d meant it to be funny. Everyone knew the Statue.

     “That’s a torch, son,” his father missed the joke.

     “ … Like in Frankenstein?”

     “That’s right. To keep the monsters away.”   

     Lazlo loved the Frankenstein story. His father’s first edition of the Mary Shelly classic would someday rank as his prize possession. But on this, the first day of their new life, his father’s words brought a chill of foreboding. It wasn’t hard to guess where those monsters might come from.    

     “Lady Liberty, eh?” his father snorted. “Leave it to the French to make freedom a woman.”

     “She looks like your niece, Lillian,” his mother stared intently.

     “What are you saying? Lillian’s only 18! That woman is much older.”

     “But look at her eyes! They have that same distant focus.”

     “Yes, you have a point. But no, the neck is all wrong for Lillian.”

     Lazlo saw something scary in the lady’s eyes. His cousin Lillian’s could melt him with a glance and he counted the minutes until he would see her. This one looked like she’d smote an army of Frankensteins.

     “Papa, what’s that?” he pointed to an open barge piled high with trash.

     “Garbage scow.” 

     “They dump their garbage in the ocean?”

     His father shrugged and spat in the water. “Refuse in, refuse out.”

 

* * * * *

 

     Lazlo didn’t lose the accent fast enough for some. One schoolmate in particular, Donald “Butch” Delaney took it as a personal affront. The older boy was quick with his fists and Lazlo soon had the lumps to prove it.

     “Hey wiener, what did Hitler say when he heard you were born?”

     “Don’t bodder me.”

     “It’s no bodder. Come on, what’d he say?”

     “Leave me alone.”

     “Want me to tell you?”

     “No.”

     Delaney smiled maliciously. “Hotsie totsie, a brand new Nazi!” His Jimmy Durante, dead on the mark.

     By fifteen Lazlo was as big as his nemesis and their lunch hour brawls were a playground event. The boys yelled for Butch to kick Kraut ass, but the girls were decidedly undecided. Despite the accent, Lazlo was handsome and the way he stood up to the bully was dumb, but heroic. At first it was Delaney who ended up on top, but one day Lazlo laid him out cold. As punishment the nuns kept him after school for two weeks straight. On the evening of the first day Delaney was waiting for him at the end of the schoolyard. When he shoved Lazlo against the fence the bully felt a knife at the point of his chin. After that the schoolyard wasn’t a problem for Lazlo.

 

* * * * *

 

      Cousin Lillian had changed in her three years in Trenton. She was taller and prettier and Lazlo had to keep his eyes from wandering where they shouldn’t. Lillian lived with her parents and an older brother in a three room flat on Eden Street. Leon, the brother was a drunk and a hoodlum, but he’d heard about Lazlo and the Irish kid and they gave each other plenty of room. At first Lillian pretended not to know why Lazlo was always around, so one night on the roof he told her straight out.

    “Love me? But Lazlo, you’re just a child,” she teased him in German. “You’re mother would think I was robbing the cradle.”

     “This has nothing to do with my mother. When I’m finished school I intend to get a job and then I will ask you to marry me.”

     “Marry? What makes you think I would marry you?”

     “What I think doesn’t matter,” he answered her in English. “Do me this favor, Lillian. Don’t turn me down until the time comes.”     

     “But I’m five years older than you. When I’m thirty you’ll only be twenty-five.”

     Lazlo seemed to consider this. “Well then, I could always take a mistress.”

     “What a silly boy you are,” Lillian ran a hand up his leg. “No mistress could compare to me.”

     Lazlo swooned as she gave him a squeeze.

 

* * * * *

 

     He got a job running presses at Palmer Printing downtown, big pounding presses, Miehles and Heidlebergs. The pay was low but the huff of the feeder and thump of cylinders marked a cadence to his work that was missing from his life. He found he had a knack for machinery and could take the presses apart and put them back together without a single spring or screw left over. When parts broke or were hard to find Lazlo machined a replacement himself often to a higher tolerance. The men at the plant started calling him Doc and to his delight, the nickname stuck.

    He was there six months when his mother died. Brain hemorrhage, out of the blue. Lazlo took it hard, struggled with drink for a while, but he was young and strong and the world drew him back in. Before long he was making enough money to get a place of his own. True to his word he asked Lillian to marry him.

     “Oh Lazlo, I thought you’d forgotten.”

     “I could never forget. I’ve waited for this moment since I was six years old.”

     “Poor little Lazlo, in love with an older woman. Your mother would be spinning in her grave.”

     “My mother thought you looked like the Statue of Liberty, something in your eyes. I think she always knew this would happen.”

     “Do you think she’d approve?”

     “She gave me these,” Lazlo took a tissue from his shirt pocket. Tucked inside were a pair of gold wedding rings.

     “Oh Lazlo they’re lovely!” she took them in her hand. “Look there’s something stamped inside.”

     “The first is from the goldsmith guild,” he held one to the light. “The last signifies 22 carats. I don’t know about the others.”

     “Where did your mother get them?”

     “From her parents. They were killed in the war.”

     Lillian’s eyes glistened. She placed the rings back on the paper and folded Lazlo’s fingers around it.

     “I will marry you Lazlo dear. On one condition.”

     “What’s that?”

     “You must promise never to take a mistress.”

     “Agreed. I too, have a condition,” he slipped the rings back in his pocket. “From now on you must call me Doc.”

    

     Doc Werner’s first arrest came in a pre dawn raid on his bother in law’s cigar store. Police broke down the back room door just as Leon was laying down a straight flush. It was a low stakes game, but the players were immigrants and for some in the department the wars still raged. At the station house they were photographed and fingerprinted, but the judge let them off with a small fine and long lecture.

     “Not so bad,” Doc shrugged as they started home.

     “For you, maybe,” Leon muttered. “Somebody owes me money.”

     “Good luck trying to collect. The others had to pay a fine too.”

     “There was over fifty dollars in that pot. Somebody owes me.”

     Doc knew that Leon had a mean streak and he wasn’t surprised to see Willie Daunt a week later on crutches.

 

* * * * *

 

     Trenton was a rough town in the 50’s, state capitol steeped in corruption and organized crime. But it was a real city with hotels and movie theaters and there was money to be made if you knew how to make it. Doc and Leon were ambitious enough. If you needed a car that couldn’t be traced or some muscle to keep a lid on things, the hineys were the men to see. Doc still worked at Palmer’s but the side money was better and the hours couldn’t be beat. Leon came up with a scheme where you contracted for home renovations then kept the sucker’s deposit without pounding a nail. He was a master at the runaround and Doc loved to listen to him work.

     “I know Mr. Myers, but Eddie’s my drywall guy and he’s been laid up. … Can’t do that. The union would shut me down in a heartbeat. … I know it’s a lot of money but you can’t expect me to work without a deposit, … Look, I swear to you on my father’s grave we’ll be there first thing Tuesday morning. … I know I said that last week, but I can’t see into the future, Mr. Myers. Tuesday. You have my word on it.”

     “I don’t know why you bother,” Doc shook his head. “I couldn’t stand to listen to them.”

     “Whaddya mean? You see how they think. All their lives they’ve been at the bottom of the list. Convince them they can get to the top and they slip us another fifty.”

     Doc had to laugh. “You gotta love the suburbs. These guys don’t even talk to each other. I got three jobs lined up on same block. All three of them think we’ll be there Thursday.”

     “Top of the list,” Leon flicked his chin.

     “But you. It’s like you’re twisting the knife, Leon.”

     “Hey, you’re the one who baits the hook.”

     “Yeah, but they’re too busy picturing their new addition to give me any grief.”

     It was true. With his overalls and his tool box Doc was the picture of contractor competence. He’d arrive at their home, talk insulation and siding then walk off with a check for a grand or two. Like taking candy from a baby. The two kept it up until License and Inspections got a whiff then they turned into roofers and worked the next township.

     Life was good for a while there.

 

* * * * *

 

     “I hate him. He’s a liar and a thug.”    

     “Come on, Lil, he’s your brother. Nothing will happen.”

     “Leon ruined my parents and now he’s ruining you!”

     “How can you say that? You don’t like this? You want to go back to living in an apartment?”

     “Yes, if that’s what it takes to keep him away from you. Get out while there’s still time, Lazlo. Please.”

     “OK, soon. I promise.”

 

* * * * *

 

     In the sixties everything changed. The capos came looking for greener pastures and the laissez faire went up in smoke. They didn’t just want in, they wanted it all, in Italian top to bottom. With money siphoned off the city began to crumble, plants closed or relocated, the railroad went bust and the whites started packing it in. Urban renewal made the bad thing worse. They tore down the hotels and movie theaters and made downtown a pedestrian mall. Death to retail but the junkies liked it fine. They pork barreled a brand new skyline but the buildings stood high and empty. A Holiday Inn opened by the state house with an underground parking lot and revolving restaurant. It shut down six months later, along with the minor league baseball team, the opera and two of three daily newspapers.

     Palmer Printing went belly up a week before the president was shot. Doc took it stride. He caught on across the river at Bennett Brothers, but business dried up and they had to let him go. With unemployment and side jobs the Werners weren’t starving, but Doc could see the writing on the wall.

 

* * * * *

 

     “So Leon, what’s up?”

     “I gotta meet a guy at the diner. Jump in.”

     “I don’t know, man. The kid’s been sick and Lillian has to work tomorrow.”

     “Come on, it’ll take half an hour.”

     It took less than that. Leon pulled in the lot and parked in back by a row of dumpsters. Five minutes later a dark colored Caddy rolled up alongside. Doc spotted at least one passenger, a black kid with a bushy head. Windows went down, bags were exchanged and the Caddy drove off into the night.

     “Is this what I think it is,” Doc poked at the bag.

     “Did I tell you? I had to sell the cigar store. Jimmy D offered me ten grand.”

     “What are you talking about? The place is worth five times that.”

     Leon gave him a look. “It was a one time offer.”         

     “So what, we’re dealing with spooks now?”

     “Hey, I don’t like any more than you. What am I gonna do take my ten grand and retire to Florida?”

    “This stuff is poison. You see what its doing to the city. Walk three blocks in any direction and you’re in the jungle.”

     “Hey, the niggers want to kill themselves, who are we to stand in their way?” 

     “You can count me out on this one, Leon.”

     “Suit yourself, partner.”

 

* * * * *

 

     To help make ends meet Doc took a job at a box factory on the edge of town. Union Camp. He worked days one week and nights the next and the shifting routine was hard on his system. A machine called a corrugator ran the length of the plant feeding six presses that never shut down. The noise and the heat were unbearable. Morale was low, turnover high and safety was not a priority.

     Doc hated everything about the place. Brick dust settling into lungs and gear teeth. Floors slick with grease, windows so grimy the light couldn’t penetrate. To reduce down time every safety in the plant had been bypassed. Injuries were frequent and severe. Doc’s clothes always smelled of sweat and his fingernails were rimmed in black. It was dirty work, unsuited for a man of his talents. He missed the beauty and precision of process printing and the thundering pulse of his old Heidelberg. Here the stink of the corrugator drifted for blocks and driving in every morning his heart would sink.

     And then it all began to crumble.

 

* * * * *

    

     “Lazlo, come in here,” Lillian called from the kitchen. Doc struggled from the couch and joined her at the window. The girls were jumping rope in the yard. He searched out his daughter slouched on the swing.

     “What’s wrong with her, Lil?”

     “I don’t know. She doesn’t look right.”

     As if sensing their concern the girls shouted for Ellie to join them. She slid from the swing and headed over but her movements were slow and awkward.

     “I’m calling Greenwald,” Lillian snatched up the phone.

     “It’s probably nothing,” Doc said just to say it. “A bug going around school.”

     “She hasn’t been eating and she’s always trembling. Something’s wrong with her, I know it.”

     The doctor took one look at Ellie and put her into the hospital. The Catholic one, St. Francis. Tests showed she had Huntington’s chorea, a nervous disorder marked by jerking and twitching, a rare virus with no known cure. Doctor Greenwald smiled grimly as he broke the news. Lillian sank to a chair while Doc felt the life drain right out of him.

 

* * * * *

 

      “I’m her uncle, for Christ sake! What do you mean don’t call?” Doc could hear Leon’s phone rant from the living room.

     “We don’t need your concern,” Lillian spoke in an angry whisper.

     “Let me talk to Doc. Jesus, my own goddamn sister.”

     “He’s not here. He doesn’t want to see you.”

     “You’re wrong about me, Lil. I’ve been clean for a year. I just want to help.”

     “Stay away, Leon.”

    

* * * * *

    

     Lillian took a leave of absence to tend to Ellie while Doc struggled to pick up the slack. They were late with the mortgage two months running and the gas company threatened to cut them off.

     “Fuck them,” Doc cranked up the thermostat.

     “I’ll call tomorrow. Maybe I can buy some time,” Lillian slipped behind him and turned it back down. “Look at this way, Doc,” she forced a smile. “Things couldn’t get much worse.”

      He looked at her with tired eyes. “I wish you hadn’t said that, Lil.”     

     But she had and things did. On a drizzly day at the end of November the Union Camp workers walked off the job.

 

* * * * *

    

     “Hello?”

     “It’s Lazlo. We need to talk.”

     “Hey Doc, say how’s my little girl?”

     “Not good, Leon. I won’t lie to you. I don’t think she’s going to make it.”

     “What do the doctors say?”

     “Doctors! They just lay on the bullshit. Listen, I’m in a pinch. You got something for me?”

     “You know how it is. There’s always something shaking.”

 

* * * * *

       

     A week before Christmas, 1969, Doc hijacked a truckload of liquor bound for Boston. His end was ten grand and a case of Bushmills, not enough to dig them out but it covered the bills while the strike stretched on. Ellie’s seizures were shorter and less pronounced. The doctors were encouraged, but Doc suspected she was just too weak to keep it up. On Christmas morning he carried her downstairs and held her in his lap while she opened her gifts. Her own phonograph, new records by the Beetles and the Rolling Stones, a paint by numbers kit and a leather purse with a fifty dollar bill inside. She played the records until Doc knew them by heart, but the paintings were beyond her and she’d howl in frustration as her brush flew off the page.

     “Well, at least it isn’t brain surgery by numbers,” Doc flipped through the paintings, wincing at the wild slashes of color.

     “I won’t ask you where you got the money, Lazlo.”

     His face flushed with anger. “It’s Christmas, Lil. What am I supposed to do?”

    “Keep Leon away from my baby,” her voice was flat and her eyes had that Statue of Liberty look. “He’ll charm her like he always charms you.”

 

* * * * *

 

     On the night Ellie died, Doc was at the mall hauling furs through the roof of Lord and Taylor’s. If he’d looked over he might have seen the hospital across the freeway, the dim light through the fourth floor window. But it was windy up there and he worked fast to keep from freezing. Thinking back he could recall no chill of recognition, no sudden flash of awareness, nothing to indicate that his one child had passed from this earth.

     They buried her in the cemetery where his parents rested. He knew it was foolish, but Doc took comfort in knowing his mother was near. Lillian kept her composure at the funeral, buckling only when they lowered Ellie down. Lillian would live for twenty more years but she would never be the same. Every morning she went to Mass, slipping in late to avoid neighbors. She visited the cemetery once a week and she kept Ellie’s room just how she left it.

     In April the Union Camp plant closed down for good. Lillian got her old job back but by year’s end the business was sold and the new owners phased out her position. Doc hired on as a feeder at print shop in Burlington, lifting and loading for half his old wages.

     At night they watched TV in silence.

 

* * * * *

 

     “You OK, Lil?”

     “I’m just not hungry. You finish it, Lazlo.”

     “Come on honey. You gotta keep your strength up.”

     Lillian said nothing. She could stare into space for hours on end and the look scared him more than anything. More than the late night crying or the liquor on her breath, the phone calls to the psychic or the candles in Ellie’s bedroom. He’d lost his daughter and he was losing his wife. All the worst things were coming down.

     They sold the house and moved to an apartment out by the airport. Doc worked security at the cargo warehouse and in no time things were falling off trucks all over the city. Leon handled the wholesale end. To bypass the meatballs he worked directly with distributors, small time freelancers. Latinos,  Russians. Russians! Doc marveled that such a thing could happen.        

     It wasn’t the way to do business, but Leon had never let caution get in the way of commerce. Then one morning his car was found under the bridge with a riddled Leon stuffed in the trunk.

     Doc placed a call to his cousin in Germany, packed up their dwindling possessions and booked two seats on the first flight east.

    Refuse in, refuse out.

     

 

EAST BERLIN

 

 

     He watched the wall come down on CNN, though you could see the crowds from their apartment window, the young and the brainless clogging the streets, wielding picks and hammers, carrying off wheelbarrows of concrete for souveniers. He’d considered joining them, putting together a stockpile of his own, but his back was no longer up to it. He could hear bullhorns leading cheers down in the square and he knew that Lillian was listening, staring up at the ceiling from her nest of quilts and pillows. Thinking God knows what. This morning he’d stood in the doorway as she slept, watching for the rise and fall, wondering how a whole person could make such a small lump. It hadn’t been so bad in the beginning. She had old friends and family, but those ranks quickly dwindled and the old look returned. He’d done what he could, keeping the house, doing the wash, even taking her to Mass in the bone chilling cold. But nothing could keep Lil from her troubles and months had passed since she’d left the apartment. Lazlo wrapped the afghan around his shoulders and held his coffee mug in both hands. If reuniting the Fatherland meant the landlord would repair the boiler, Lazlo was all for it. If not, he didn’t really give a damn.

     After showing the spectacle a half dozen times the station resumed regular broadcasting.  He watched a fat woman in braids show how to make a baked bean casserole then caught a replay of last year’s World Cup, Belgium versus the Czech Republic - an upset that had cost him a bundle. In a few hours he would take the bus to the warehouse district where he would spend the night playing cards with the other security guards. Until then he would sit here, drifting in and out in the dim TV light. He no longer thought much about the future, just getting through the day took all he had.

     Once again he heard a cry go up outside but the noise fell to a ringing in his ears. A sound he’d first noticed weeks ago, but may have always been there. He set the mug aside and stuffed his hands in his armpits. His fingers were numb and if he crossed his eyes he could see snot dangling from the end of his nose. When the noon whistle blew he would fix himself some lunch, but until then he would sit. A few minutes passed in silence then the telephone rang somewhere down the hall. Cold settled over his legs and he wrapped the ends of the afghan around them. He knew he must look pathetic bound up like a mummy, but vanity was a luxury he could no longer afford. As a gesture of defiance he reached for his knit cap and pulled it down over his ears.

     That’s how Lil found him hours later, his body cold, his face drained of expression. She called the priest from the public phone then slipped into the bathroom with Lazlo’s razor.      

 

WEST BERLIN

 

     Walter Beech scanned the display trays of personal effects.  The offerings struck a note of melancholy, a lifetime’s trinkets passing for an estate. He assumed the pose of indifference, as if his lingering was more a matter of inertia than interest. Subconsciously, he tallied the take. The pewter shakers might fetch a few pounds along with the wedding band, presuming it was really gold. The rest was junk. 

     But Beech was a thorough man, and though he was running late to his grandson’s wedding rehearsal, he took the time to go through all of it. That he might inconvenience the parents of the bride concerned him not a whit. The bloody Huns could bloody well wait!

     It was the binding that caught his eye. He knew enough about antique books to recognize the period. Turn of the century, if he wasn’t mistaken. Stealing a glance around he pried the book from the row and checked the condition, very good to excellent. He felt his pulse rate soar as he opened to the title page. My God! Could it be?

     Later, at the reception, he would tremble to think he might have missed it, first edition Frankenstein, certainly priceless. Sure, he’d had to buy the whole lot, but it was a small enough price to pay. The sort of find a scavenger dreams about. Wait till Roberts got a gander at this!

     “Are you OK, grandpa?” young Roger sidled up beside him.

     “I can safely say that I’ve never been better.”

     “Why don’t you ask Gretchen to dance. I shouldn’t tell you this, but she’s got a thing for older gentlemen.”

     “What a pity,” Beech’s eyes fairly twinkled. “You should have thought to invite one.”

     He waltzed the new bride around the ballroom feeling as if he could dance all night. He didn’t mention his find to anyone, partly because it hadn’t been authenticated, but mostly just to savor his good fortune. In his 68 years he’d never had a feeling quite like it.  Oh, he’d known a measure of success. He owned a flat in the city and a cottage in the Cotswolds and his reputation as a collector was modest but solid. That he could go to his grave with a crowning achievement brought a rush of well being that beamed like a blush.

     Or, possibly, it was the badly occluded femoral artery that would put him there by week’s end.

 

* * * * *

 

     Three weeks after Beech’s funeral the estate of Lillian Werner arrived at his London flat without a word of explanation. His widow, Sheila stored it in the basement with the rest of Beech’s junk where it gathered dust for the next twelve years.

 

ENGLAND

 

     Ellen bought it for him when they were in Castle Comb, a plain gold wedding band, 22 carat gold according to the inscription. Not an inscription, rather four embossed symbols rubbed to a blur.

     “Try it on,” she handed it to her husband. The old boy selling it beamed behind the counter. A group of women dawdled at a nearby shelf of Depression glass. The rummage sale was in the basement of a church and the buzz of a sale drew the browsers closer. Billy slipped on the ring with some trouble and held his hand up for Ellen to see.

     “I’ll take it,” she said, more to Billy than to the old man.

     “Awwww, “ the women stepped up for a closer look.

     “A handsome ring for a handsome gentleman,” a matronly type gave him a wink. The old man slid a drawer open and took out a polishing rag.

     “Here, let me put a little shine on it for you,” he smiled to beat the band.

     It took some time for Billy to get the ring off his finger. He yanked and twisted but couldn’t work it over the knuckle. The onlookers strained in sympathy and Billy could hear the old man chuckle.

     “Stuck, is it?” he leaned over the counter.

     “It’s the humidity,” Billy grinned. “Makes my fingers swell.”

     “Be a shame to have to lop it off, now.”

      The church ladies shrieked with laughter as the ring pulled free. After he’d rubbed it clean the old man passed it around so that everyone could see. Ellen was at the end of the line and when she slid it back on Billy’s finger the crowd gave them a rousing cheer.

 

* * * * *

 

     “I wonder who it belonged to,” Billy studied the ring by the bedside light.

     “The lot card said Beech. A limey name if I ever heard one,” Ellen took it from him.

     “It might go back for generations.”

     “I wonder if it’s ever been to the states.”

     “I doubt it. The Brits are hoarders. They’re up to their ears in heirlooms.”

 

* * * * *

  

     He never took off the ring except to study the row of symbols. Billy wasn’t the sort who went in for jewelry. He couldn’t stand anything around his neck and his wrists were too thin to fill a watchband. The ring was it, a piece of Mother England to celebrate their love. So much a part of him it would eventually lose itself in knot of arthritis and wear a groove around the bone.

 

END

 

Copyright © 2010, by Thomas Larsen