Mark was recovering and staying in a halfway house just two blocks from downtown, and each day, he put on a clean t-shirt, his jeans, and his sandals and walked downtown to work at a café in exchange for free meals and minimum wage. Each day, he walked through a newly built park next to a roundabout, and he thought he heard whispering.
“Help me. Why am I here?”
Mark knew withdrawals had strange effects, but he felt he had passed those and wondered if it was the wind, a bird, or squirrel that made the sound. He even wondered if perhaps his hearing had been damaged from all the alcohol and drugs.
***
A few months before, the mayor had finally convinced the City Council to vote on the roundabout because other progressive cities had one and more importantly, he agreed he would personally pay for a small park with a bust of Zeb, an old merchant who was what the mayor called a king maker. Zeb had put most of them in office with his financial support and influence and had been rumored to help three governors, one of whom had gone on to the U.S. Senate and then served under Clinton. Zeb had recently been killed in a head on collision with a beer truck. He’d been eighty-five and had weaved over the line as he was reaching in his pocket to get his glasses.
The mayor and others had a nice dedication, but the bronze bust looked like a ritualistic shrunken head from the Amazon jungles of Peru. Tribes believed shrunken heads held the souls of the deceased and wouldn’t harm the them.
One of the council members commented, “Mayor, if you couldn’t afford a realistic bust, then we could have come up with the difference.”
“Well, Zeb’s head always seemed a bit small to me,” he responded.
“But he had big ideas,” the councilman responded, and they all chuckled.
***
On his way back to the halfway house, Mark sat on the bench next to the pedestal where Zeb’s bust rested. He opened the brown paper bag and bit into his turkey Reuben sandwich.
“Get me out of here.”
Mark looked around. He recalled hearing the earlier whisper. He decided to try something.
“Is someone whispering to me?”
“Yes. You can hear me?”
“I believe so.”
“Can you get me out of here? If you can’t, can you at least get this bird shit out of my eyes and off my nose?”
Mark turned toward the bust of Zeb. He put his sandwich back in the bag and took his napkin, spit on it, and rubbed the shit off the bust. “Is that better?”
“Yes, thank you. Can you go to the mayor’s office and tell him I’m in here? I’m an old friend of his. I’m a bit pissed that he made a shrunken head out of bronze. Everyone laughs at me when they drive by. I knew I shouldn’t have supported him. Even the birds have turned me into some sort of shit target.
Mark said, “Well, I can’t do that today, maybe tomorrow if I have time.”
The next day, Mark walked a different direction to the café downtown, but walked past Zeb on the way back to the halfway house. “Hey, did you see him?”
“Not today, but maybe tomorrow,” Mark responded.
“Supposed to get cold. Can you bring me a knit cap to put on my head?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
On the third day, Mark put a knit cap on Zeb’s head. “Hope this will keep you warm.”
“Thank you so much. Will you see the mayor today?”
“You know, Zeb, I think they’ll put me back in detox or increase my meds if I go see the mayor and tell him a shrunken head statue is giving me messages unless you can give me some sort of specifics.”
“Tell you what. You got any money?”
“Dude, I’m not giving a shrunken head statue any money.”
“No, listen. Tonight is the lottery. Use these numbers and get one ticket. Don’t be greedy. You can only win once. Write them down.”
Mark took a pen from his pocket, jotted the numbers on his paper bag with his supper inside, and thanked Zeb. He stopped in the convenience store, bought one ticket, and that night when the numbers were announced, he learned he’d won 1.5 million dollars. He took an Uber to the lottery office, showed his ticket, and they wrote him a check, minus taxes. He put the money in the bank and got a couple of blank cashier’s checks and a platinum American Express. He bought a convertible Porsche, a condo on the lake, some furniture, and some new clothes. One day, he drove by the halfway house, cruised through the roundabout, and waved at Zeb. He wanted to thank him, but he thought it might be weird if someone saw him talking to a bust that looked like a shrunken head.
Niles Reddick is author of a novel, two story collections, and a novella. His work has been featured in over four hundred publications including The Saturday Evening Post, PIF, BlazeVox, New Reader Magazine, Citron Review, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Boston Literary Magazine. Website: http://nilesreddick.com/
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