Lesters List

Lester’s List





Lester held the Parabellum on his lap waiting for the sound of the cicadas vibrating within his head to subside. The pistol was hefty and it felt like it was the only thing holding him to this earth. Finally he felt the vice around his chest loosen and his mind stepped away as he let out his breath. He was trying to recall just when and where his list had originated. He couldn’t quite place its source, but he supposed that everybody had one.

The vice continued to relax and he remembered this morning on his way to work. Two or three men were in line in front of him at a burrito stand talking together. They were apparently co-workers on their way to some jobsite and had stopped for breakfast.



The man furthest in the front of the line turned to ask the man behind him if he had heard about the new cameras the city had recently installed on the street lights around town, the man had replied something unintelligible to the first when Lester heard the third man say “Don’t you have warrants Henry? You better be careful and don’t run any reds or yellows, they’ll take your picture and come and get you!”



Henry laughed, “ No man not me, you need to tell your Mama about them though, the way she drives they’ll be putting you in jail, cuz you ain’t gonna be able to pay for all the tickets she gets!”



The man directly in front of Lester finally spoke up about the subject, a little edge in his voice, “Where’d ya hear that?”



“It was in the paper man, yesterday, don’t you read it?”



“Only when I’m looking for work man, there’s nothin’ any good in the paper.”



“There’s news” said Henry.



“Like I said, nothing good.”



Just then their burritos were served and they left Lester alone to wonder about the cameras attached to the traffic lights. He hadn’t seen yesterdays paper either; not because he thought there wasn’t anything good but he had refused to buy the local paper after continually finding grammatical errors and misspelled words. He sometimes read it in some Quickmart or grocery store where he could skim over it quickly and read the things he might find newsworthy. This would have been one of those things.



Lester was not a criminal; he wasn’t wanted on any warrants. He paid his taxes and obeyed traffic laws; he voted religiously even though he greatly doubted the people he voted for. He trusted that the lesser of evils would prevail in some balance of power. Lester believed that the United States might be the only country that still valued a man’s rights, but he also believed that politicians and corporations were bleeding the citizens of certain freedoms; lining their pockets at the expense of the working man.



By the time the burrito lady called his number he had resolved to find yesterday’s paper, if nothing else to find out where the cameras had been installed so that he could avoid them. It would be his quiet rebellion. At noon he stopped by the repair shop where his friend Phil worked, it was a family business. It was an all American redneck right-winged hillbilly haven. Lester could not compete with the conservatism that prevailed in this group but he knew he could commiserate here and these folks would surely still have yesterday’s paper.



A large tinted plate glass window made up the greatest part of the front wall of the building and as he stepped through the entrance he wondered how the front of a repair shop could be kept so clean, even the smell of the place didn’t hint at the grease and grime contained in the back and he had surmised some time ago that the head redneck was also one anal retentive SOB. First to greet him was brother Wil with the ritual etiquette of coffee and concern; he motioned to the coffee maker and asked, “How’s Annie? We heard she was in the hospital.”



“She’s home now, she was in for three days; pneumonia, she runs herself too hard. She’s better, already doing too much. Hey do you guys still have yesterdays paper, the one with the article about the cameras on the street lights?”



Wil bent over his large belly to rummage through a crate on the floor next to his desk a cubby where they kept old news, later when it was full they would divvy up the goods for fire starter. While Lester waited he noticed raised voices coming through the door that led to the shop in back, where he guessed the other brothers were haggling with a customer or each other.



As Wil turn in his chair, paper in hand the back door to the building burst open and a red faced redneck came stomping in the front office. It was Leon the eldest, boss redneck around here, muttering something about lazy…welfare… disability… thiev’n… the words were left like rags on the floor and trailed after him as he crashed through the quiet air to the bathroom.

Once he was inside they heard the water running, and Lester thought: Leon was washing his hands of something.



Lester and Wil looked at each other and as Wil handed over the paper he said, “Don’t get him started.” Translation: don’t even ask.



Lester looked down at the headline to the article: Cameras Capture 800 Violaters a Day, Increased Revenue for City. He looked up at the bathroom door and in a hushed voice asked, “God, how long they been up?”



They were both looking at the door now, “Bout a Month or Two.”



“Why didn’t I hear about this?” asked Lester



“Don’t cha read the paper?” Wil was looking at him.



“Shit.” Lester used the paper to motion toward the backdoor of the building.



Wil nodded, “Just make sure there’s no customers.”



As he stepped through the door he was hit by the contrast of the dirty shop and the clean office and began to wonder about these strange brothers when he was distracted by the calm.



“Hey, what’s the occasion?” It was Phil grinning up from under his glasses, he was bent over the front of a car between hood and engine. Phil was the most soft spoken of the bunch, was the only reason Lester knew the family at all and as intimately as he did. He would never breath a word about some of the things Phil had told him about his brothers, things like that could get somebody buried in the desert. But Phil was easy going and they shared a lot in common, mostly they shared their views of the world.



“Lights, cameras, action.” Lester help up the paper.



“Yea, thought you’d heard.”



“Shit.’ Lester whispered, “When did they decide on this? It wasn’t in the last election, there was no vote on it.”



“City council, your old friend Fernando got the ball rolling. I thought you’d heard about this a while back”



“Fernando!” He was incredulous, “Fernando Lujan is a snot nosed trust fund baby, he’s never held a job in his life; Daddy pays for everything, he ain’t worth spit and I didn’t vote for him. How’d he get elected anyway, Daddy’s money, that’s how, scratchin’ some fat cats back, that’s how.” Lester could feel himself being pulled up the steep hill of his personal roller coaster; he could feel the click, click, click of the cars being carried up the slope.



He looked over at Phil who was leaning on the front of the car propped on both elbows waiting quietly for the dust devil to settle down or pass by. Lester thought that Phil was probably used to these outbreaks, he implored Phil with his eyes and raised his hands waving the paper like a patriot. Phil shook his head and smiled as if to say, what do you want me to do? Lester really wanted him to join him in his tirade, wanted him to help push that rollercoaster on up the hill.



Finally Lester sat down on a stool near the workbench opposite the car to read the article in its entirety. He noted the cross streets where the cameras were located: Foster and Brown, Lincoln and Burk, Cottonwood and Ames, Front and Banks. “Shit.” He said and put the paper on top of the workbench.



“What?” Phil looked up at him.



“I’ve already driven through the one at Cottonwood and Ames two dozen times I’d bet. Took that rout when I took Annie to the hospital, and more times back and forth to see her. “



“Yea,” said Phil “ I don’t think you can get there from your place or anyplace for that matter without going through that one.”



“Shit. I think they got me already.”



“Whadatya mean?”



“When I took Annie up there she was wheezin’ real bad and I think I ran the yellow turning red, a fiesta ya know. I didn’t know about the cameras and I was really worried about Annie, she sounded real bad… she looked really bad too.”



“So pay the ticket, they’ll mail you one.”



“Fuck that.”



“What’s the big deal Lester, it’s not like you can’t afford it.”



“Fuck that, it was an emergency and I didn’t vote for it.” He was yelling at poor Phil. Then he said “Sorry Phil, but those fuckers didn’t even put it to a vote, know one wants this, they’re lining their pockets and after the hospital bills, no I can’t afford it.”



Lester knew that Phil was oblivious to the fact that only people with money could afford to make bad decisions and sometimes the people who couldn’t afford it made them anyway. Like deciding to pay for Christmas with a credit card or getting sick.



“So I’ll pay it for you Les-”



Lester cut him off, “That’s not the point.”



“What’s the point?”



“The point is their lining their pockets, revenue Phil, they’re calling us violators, I don’t know anybody out there intentionally running red lights,” he felt a click, another notch on the climb. “We’d be killing people left and right doing something like that, they’re getting the people on the yellows, the ones where your halfway through and can’t stop- and calling us violators.”



Just then Phil’s cousin Luke came in the bay door at the very back of the shop, he kind of strutted and grinned at them.



“What?” asked Phil, who was looking suspicious.



“Nothin.” Said Luke eyeing him back.



Lester knew that Phil didn’t like Luke, Lester didn’t like him either. He was a know-it-all without having done much of anything, he was 37 and still letting his mother support him. He had fought for mental disability and won. He had become mentally disabled due to the use of drugs but they all knew it was a scam and he wasn’t one bit disabled, because when you took away the drugs all you had left was a spoiled brat kid that didn’t want to work; wanted everything given to him and still wouldn’t be happy. Lester unconsciously narrowed his eyes at the younger man.



“Still think work is the enemy?” asked Phil.



Luke sneered back at them as he stepped through the door to the front office.



“That there is why my big brother is in such a pissy mood, that boy’s worthless as teats.” Phil looked over the engine at Lester. “So what now?”



“Shit.” Lester was looking at the door through which Luke had escaped.



“How’s Annie?”



“Changing the subject, huh?”



“Yea,” said Phil, “but I really do want to know.”



Lester shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair front to back, “you know she’s a rock, but she said something yesterday, said it like it was just something in passing; like the weather’”



“What?”



“She said the doctor had found something, or something showed up in the tests. She said she thought he might have meant cancer, and that it had just dawned on her.”



It was Phil’s turn, “Shit.”



“You know that doctor, Wagner’s his name, told me she was sick because of her life style, like he would know, she doesn’t even smoke.



“Doctors think that they’re Gods gift.”



Just as the two men were frowning at each other wondering what to say next, Luke the younger strode back out of the office. He hadn’t said anything or done anything in particular but suddenly Lester wanted to beat him, wanted to beat the smugness right out of Luke. Instead he turned back to the news article and decided to read the whole paper, give Luke enough time to exit the premises.



Lester left by the back bay door and he was almost to the truck, pulling his keys from his pocket when he saw that the passenger-side door was open. He couldn’t see anyone through the windshield but there was one leg propping a body that was leaning on the seat. Lester walked quietly around the back of the truck so that he could get in a better position to see just who was doing what. As he peered into the cab his jaw clenched in recognition, it was Luke. Figures he thought, “Findin what you need in there Luke?”



Luke jumped so hard he hit his head in the steering column and scrambled making worse the wedge he had made of himself between the floorboard and dash where wire’s hung from the gutted stereo. When he finally disentangled himself he stood breathless between Lester and the door of the truck and began edging toward the only opening available. After he had gone two steps, before he knew what hit him and before Lester knew what he had done Luke was sitting stunned on the hard ground. As Lester climbed into his truck he looked down at Luke and said what he felt in his heart, “Why don’t you do the world a favor and jump off a bridge.”



Lester gunned the truck through the disabled cars in the parking lot leaving Luke sitting in the dust. He made a lawful stop at the exit and before pulling into traffic he planned his route in order to avoid the cameras. He had been born and raised in this town and had watched it grow, had waited and hoped for its growth and now he thought he wasn’t so sure he liked it. People from other states had populated and polluted his riverside community. Things had not changed for the better, there had been plenty of work but illegal contractors had driven wages down. He had begun thinking that people like Phil and his cousin Luke were people who should be ashamed of themselves; they had been offered every opportunity and had pissed on it. Luke had done so many drugs he was stealing broken stereos and Phil had gambled away his earnings losing his wife and sons in the process. .



Lester thought about the fact that he and Annie had no family, no inheritance, and no windfalls. Sure they had plenty of brains, talent, and fortitude, but he knew in the long run that it takes money to make money and if there had ever been an opportunity for him, his father had pissed that away in the form of whiskey long before he died. He drove the speed limit on the road that took him over the river that once fed farms whose owner’s sons had sold out to unscrupulous developers or who had become unscrupulous developers themselves in their quest for more. The land was now scarred with avenues and cul-de-sacs and the houses that were built stood abandoned because the housing bubble had burst and the developers had scurried away. Lester was passed on the left by new cars with model names like Volvo, Cadillac, Lexus, two ton dually’s driven by single occupants. Sometime during this dark reverie the song of the cicadas had begun.



By the time he reached the driveway to his house, the cicadas were screaming in his head. He left the door to the truck open and stumbled to the garage behind the house, he fumbled with the keys to open the deadbolt on the side door and after entering he shut and locked it. He went directly to a small shelf over which a locked cabinet hung and after fumbling with the keys again he had it open, had the soft leather pouch on his lap and unzipped.

Lester was holding the Parabellum in his lap as the cicadas continued their vibrations; the Parabellum had been the replacement pistol for the Colt M-1911 as the standard issue sidearm for the United States Military forces in 1985 and was a favorite semi automatic pistol of many law enforcement officials. As he held the gun he thought about his list, how and when it had originated he couldn’t recall but he could clearly read the names on it: Fernando Lujan, Dr. Robert Wagner, Luke…he was always adding to it. As he stared past his list he could suddenly see his mother standing outside in the middle of the night, hair straight up on end, in that ratty pink rob with the belt trailing out behind her. She had been holding a garden hose, spraying the trees that surrounded the property where they had lived when he was little, the cicadas were vibrating there and she was trying to make them quiet. Lester suddenly burst out in laughter, he had felt the roller coaster almost go over the top of it’s steep incline, had been ready to let gravity have it’s way. Now he laughed hard, shoulders shaking until he took a last gasp, let out a shuddering sob, and through bitter tears Lester knew he had returned from a wasteland.



After returning the gun to the cabinet, Lester stepped out of the door through which he entered and as he locked the deadbolt he looked up at his reflection in the safety glass cocked his head and said, “I thinks it’s time to buy a rifle.”