Golden Lining

Crime and Cavorting with Animals

Photo by Joshua Ralph on Unsplash

There are around 1600 goose attacks per year in North America.

The nurse told Jackson Wright that statistic while he was waiting for Pettiford to get stitched up.

They missed the plane to NYC.

Jackson’s head bounced between relaxing and freaking: They missed the flight, no one was gonna discover that he was wearing a union suit full of barely stepped on cocaine.

He could go home, take it off, tell Debelleson to come and get it.

The entire union suit stitched with the blow, in plastic, not letting his skin breathe, suffocating him like people who wore the wrong kind of body paint to play the Tin Woodsman.The discomfort of that was only mildly annoying compared to the terror of having to call Chene Corbury and tell him that they wouldn’t be arriving at LaGuardia at the scheduled time.

Because Pettiford fucked with a nesting Canada Goose.

It was Pettiford’s fault.

All the way.

No question.

Pettiford was along for the muscle, the enforcement.

He had a 45 cal ghost he was supposed to ditch in the airport parking lot, wrapped in four turkey clubs Jackson Wright thought it was a shame to waste, but the gun would be discarded without being detected that way.

Wright also thought that Pettiford was extraneous once he was on the flight. Wasn’t like someone was gonna jump him in the airplane bathroom and demand that he disrobe from his cocaine underwear.

Corbury had guys to meet him at LaGuardia.

But Pettiford insisted he get a trip to New York out of the deal.

Corbury complied.

So in a way it was Corbury’s own fault.

Except Corbury didn’t sanction a trip to Wyandotte Park on the way to the airport.

Wyandotte Park where a girl in a tube top sells Strawberry Shortcake on a stick, and Peetiiford had to have Strawberry Shortcake on a stick.

Wright was gonna wait in the car, of course, because why just wander around with a million point three of blow, give or take, wrapped around your body like an amphetamine snake.

Pettiford had a lot of little kid in him for an enforcer. He had skipped his whole, real childhood in Stallings Juvenile Detention Center for stabbing a nun.

Jackson Wright felt sorry for Pettiford, years before they got in the car to drive to the airport.

Pettiford was trying to recapture something unrecaptureable.

The childlike fascination with things, unfortunately, was diminished by raging anger.

The goose was never gonna be Pettiford’s best friend.

And when it wouldn't accept the bite of Strawberry Shortcake on a stick, taken off the stick by Pettiford, Pettiford backed it into a corner near the Slushie truck and the restrooms and the goose lashed out.

None of which Chene Corbury was gonna care about.

He wanted his product.

Jackson was gonna have to call him.

He let his phone roll over in his hand, like he was Queeg in Caine Mutiny, rolling, squeezing, not punching numbers.

Corbury was going to fire him at best, find another mule, have him killed at worst.

A doctor walked into the hallway and the triage nurse called Phillip Carter to the desk, Jackson Wright’s current alias.

“What is your relationship to the patient, Mr. Carter? The doctor asked.

“First cousins and lifelong best friends, doctor,” Jackson Wright improv-ed.

“I’m sorry to tell you that we were unable to save Richard’s eye.”

There was a heartbeat under the cocaine, and some kind of electric impulse was sent to Jackson’s Wright’s brain.

Another impulse got sent too.

It was an impulse over the years that Jackson Wright had been good at paying attention to.

It was the shutup impulse.

He was wearing Corbury’s cocaine because he was good at shutting up.

But in this moment, thinking that Chene Corbury would kill him for having a lame excuse for missing a flight, the talent for stifling his verbal reaction escaped him.

As the doctor was telling him that they had brought in a micro-capillary adhesion specialist but even that procedure had failed to save the eye, Jackson Wright blurted “Oh thank god.”

The doctor went as pale as the hand sanitizer he routinely washed his hands with.

“I’m sorry, you misunderstood me,” the doctor said. “We had to remove Richard’s right eye. I’m terribly sorry.”

Jackson Wright, as Phillip Carter, tried to look shocked and dismayed.

He failed.

But Jackson Wright, as Jackson Wright, knew that Pettiford’s missing eye was at least a good enough excuse for Corbury not to kill him.

He sat back down in the waiting room.

The cocaine Union suit didn’t feel as stifling, and Jackson Wright had time to wonder how he had spent fifteen years knowing Skunk Pettiford, and never once knew his real name was Richard.

***

This was written as part of the monthly writing program I moderate at Passenger Recovery, Hamtramck, Michigan.

The prompt words I drew were Goose, Airplane, Bathroom, New York City.