Just Beneath My Skin by Darren Greer Page A

says.
    â€œBathroom.”
    Charlie nods. Asks me for a smoke. I point to them on the table. Charlie leans over slow as an old man and takes one and tries to light it. His hands are shaking so bad he can’t touch the flame to the cigarette, and so I reach over, pry the lighter from his hand and do it for him. He leans back, takes a long drag, and sighs as he exhales the smoke.
    His eyes are closed.
    I feel sorry for Charlie. He’s Carla’s cousin but she don’t ever have him over. His own mother doesn’t let him past her front door ’cause he’s stolen from her purse too many times for money for booze and dope. No one knows where his father is. He left ’em when Charlie was just a kid. Most times he stays at Johnny’s house but sometimes he’ll sleep at another friend’s if they don’t mind him on the sofa for a few days.
    He’s twenty-nine, but he looks forty.
    And he’s dumb.
    In school he was in my class for a year until I passed and he got held back again for the third time. Sometimes I’d try and help him with his homework. He could never get it, and quit eventually. He didn’t have a car. He was picked up by the RCMP a couple of times a year for being drunk and disorderly, and they drove him to Oldsport and threw him in the drunk tank for the night. Everyone says Charlie Whynot is a bum, and he’ll be dead by the time he’s forty.
    They’re probably right, but still. I remember when we were kids together, and he could be kind of funny. He had more guts than any of us, even Johnny. If you dared Charlie to do something, he would do it. No questions asked.
    â€œJohnny’s acting funny today,” I say, hoping Charlie will help me.
    He doesn’t look up at me. He’s staring at his own lap, still smoking the cigarette. “Any more White Shark?” he says finally.
    â€œIt’s all gone,” I say. “Did you hear me? I said Johnny’s acting funny. He’s got a gun out and he won’t let me leave.”
    Charlie looks up at me then, but I’m still not sure he understands. “What’s the city like, Jake? You like it there?”
    â€œIt’s all right, Charlie, but …”
    â€œI should go,” he says. “Get outta North River. Nothing tying me here, ’cept Johnny. They got girls there? Nice ones?”
    â€œLots of ’em. But Charlie. I need you to help me with Johnny.”
    Charlie still acts like he doesn’t hear. Maybe he doesn’t. “I had a girl once. You remember her? Jane Marie Wambolt. Cute. Kinda fat, but cute. She could fuck too, Jake. Near wore me out she did. I never see her anymore. She still around here?”
    I shake my head. “I don’t know, Charlie.”
    He isn’t going to be any help. He’s still too high to know what’s going on, and even if he wasn’t he’d likely just get him self in shit if he said anything. Johnny doesn’t punch Charlie, or threaten him. He doesn’t have to. Charlie’s no threat.
    I watch as Charlie finishes his smoke, then watch as his head inches forward and he falls asleep again. I feel such a blackness of mood wash over me. Maybe today is the day Johnny gets to kill somebody else and maybe that somebody will be me. Maybe he and Charlie will cut me up into little pieces with the Husqvarna and it will be weeks before anyone traces me out here and finds the pieces.
    But find them they will. I have no doubt about that. Johnny has one more murder in him, and then he’s gonna get caught and sent away for good, and maybe then North River will be safe. It’s too bad I have to be the unlucky bastard Johnny Lang nails to a fucking cross in order for everyone else to be saved.

JAKE’S FATHER IS AN INDIAN.
    â€œOnly part Indian,” Jake tells me, but that doesn’t matter.
    It means I’m part Indian, too.
    I have dreams sometimes where we are all living in teepees