This Is Not a Confession
George Bandy
Late at night I tagged in red paint across the width of Mr. Conroy’s dirty white garage door: We Are Watching. It was mostly a joke. I knew that old man was a bit off, but I did it anyway.
I hadn’t done anything like that since I was a kid.
He’d paid me two hours short of what we agreed. He didn’t need the money. I counted the hours on my fingers and told him again and again.
Mr. Conroy said, “I wrote it down.” Like that was the end of it.
And it was.
Shit, this was all the work I’d had, since being laid off at the orange plant. Doing whatever needed doing on his properties, mostly carpentry and painting. Sometimes for the whole day, sometimes a couple of hours.
“Okay,” I said and felt sick. That was the problem with being off-book—nowhere to go. I needed the hours. It wasn’t fair, but that’s life ever since I lost my high steel work. Lots of guys lose their job.
But I know what time I started.
The next day at work he told me to paint over the red. He didn’t say anything more. And I didn’t ask. He made a point of coming out every few minutes. “Let me know when you’re done.”
Yeah, I’ll let you know.
I took my time.
About noon, he poked his head around the garage corner to see how far I’d got. I told him it’d take a couple more coats. When I was sure he’d gone away, I dry brushed some of the paint off. I planned to get my two hours back.
Fair’s fair.
After a couple of hours, I started thinking about Irellas’ fancy burgers with fries washed down with a Moretti or two. There’s only so much puttering you can do watching paint dry.
The next time he came out, he startled me. But I didn’t jump or anything—that’s how high steel workers are, nothing fazes you, or you’d be on the ground. I just sat back in that folding chair and wiped my brow with a do-rag. “Yes, sir, Mr. Conroy, just catching my breath and cooling.” Then he saw that red bleeding through, again, like I’d planned. I pointed and said, “It’s that damn Floridian humidity.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I was thinking,” I said and left him hanging like there was no god damn hurry in him. Let him wait. “Break for lunch … let that get good and dry … then knock it out by two or three.”
“Looks like shit. Paint the whole goddamn door.”
“I’ll just go get lunch.”
He gave me a look, walked away, and then stopped and turned to me. “Don’t worry about coming back. I’ll take care of it.”
And I wondered, Did I just get fired … again?
He started off, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I get paid for working.
“Mr. Conroy,” I said. He heard the grit in my voice and I might’ve sounded louder than I meant. He spun around faster than you’d think an old man could.
He said, “Come along, I want to show you something.”
We went through what he called his “reception.” It was nothing like a doctor’s office. He led me to a tiny room where his desk sat, his twinky-dink office. Anybody else would call it a walk-in closet.
In six months I’d never saw nobody there, but he did overnight radio and stuff from his house. I’d listened to him before, once or twice, on the AM, when I’d just started working at the orange plant. Goddamn that was a step down, a leap into hell. But it had cheap insurance. And the work unimportant. And the pay shit.
They called me “night security” but I was a glorified janitor riding around in a golf cart emptying trash cans when not securing the facility. When they let me go, I was glad, but not the wife. She wanted to know what I was going to do for money.
“There’s unemployment.” She gave me a disgusted look, so I said, “There ain’t a lot of jobs out there.”
She said they’re hiring at Crawler Rail and Roller out on 301—they want a full-time master diesel mechanic to work on the big earthmoving machines. Never did that—but could if I wanted—it’s just mechanicing. Told her, if I was recovered enough to do that, I’d be working high steel.
If she had her way I’d kill myself or finish breaking my back or neck climbing some rig. Damn, I fell.
She knows I ain’t ascared.
Nothing ever scares me. You don’t work high steel for fifteen years … if it wasn’t for my back. But I am better and better in every way.
Anyway back at the orange plant, a few of the boys and me would listen in the break room to Mr. Conroy’s radio show. We’d catch snippets of his nightly Art-Bellian-weirdness: alien aliens, alternate universes, free energy devices built in somebody’s garage gone rogue ... Once he even interviewed the messiah. Well, a couple of times—different ones.
It must’ve been a ratings game.
I ’member the night he got this dope on, another messiah. He got them pretty regularly. He asked this one to help out on a commercial. The guy said sure Don I am here to help. Mr. Conroy gave him the script and he read: “Raise the dead with Dade City’s number one microbrew Bright Lights, Dead City. Go into the light.” We hear the beer pour. The messiah smacks his lips and says, “I love it, who wouldn‘t?”
We all laughed. That was our kind of messiah. We all had a little something, beer or wine. Nobody cared. ‘Cept the big boss who told me not to let nobody drink on the line: “H-R ain’t paying for no more canned fingers.”
And he had a point.
“Take a chair,” Mr. Conroy said, but there was only the one. I’d been here before and knew that low rider, all shiny brown leather, tufted and plumped, which you’d think would be comfortable, but was hell on the spine and a bitch to climb out of.
He plopped in his swivel and rocked back and forth looking through a pile of papers and junk on his desk. He found what he was looking for and said, “Here.”
I struggled to climb out of that damn chair to get the legal-sized envelope he held. All I could think: Where’s my check? And he better pay for the time he’s wasting here.
When I scooted to the edge of the chair, he pulled the envelope back and dumped a bunch of black and white pictures printed on typing paper. He spread them around on the desk. He tapped a dark, pixelated print out. “Who is that?”
The picture showed a man about my size with his back to the camera with a spray can in hand and what might’ve been the beginning of a big “W” on the garage door.
I sat numbed. I grabbed the rest of the printouts, sorted through, and then saw a fuzzy view of my face—it could’ve been me.
“That’s the best one. Got it all on VHS.” He saw my sick look and said, “Is that you?”
“Sure looks like me.”
“Is it?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s what I thought. You need to be careful.” He gave me a pamphlet entitled:
DOPPELGÄNGERS
What You Can Do.
At the bottom of the page was the publishing imprint for his hand-cranked letterpress which I knew he kept under a tarp in the garage. I’d seen him cranking hard and paper flip-flopping. He never wanted my help, not there, though I’d offered several different times.
PENURY PRESS
1234 Foxglove Road
Dade City, Florida 33525
“For some reason they targeted you. It’s sure as hell ain’t for money, or quality of life, though your wife is a looker—but that’s nothing to them.
“Why you?
“You need to start thinking like you’d need an alibi for everything you do for a while. Or next time … who knows, it might not be somebody as reasonable as me.”
I tried to give back the pamphlet. I’d heard enough shit already.
“Read it. These damn things will steal the world from you. I knew a guy that lost his entire family. When his wife and kids realized the new guy was a better father and provider, they stuck with him.
“The real father and husband was a fucking bastard. He killed himself.
“Maybe.
“Do these things to stay safe. Warn your wife. You need a code word, so you both know where you are. Just like you and me—”
He stopped and stared at me.
He was pondering, just like me, if I was really the me he knew. I sure as hell didn’t act like it defacing his property. That was just low-down mean. And stupid.
He had cameras everywhere.
I knew that. I’d helped install them.
But I’d been drinking and pissed.
“Tussock.”
“What?” I said, not sure of what I’d heard, but didn’t like it.
“That’s code.”
I didn’t want to hear about no code. “Code?” Here I’d been working for him almost six months, sometimes six days a week. And now? I was this close to losing it. Him … using code … didn’t want to hear any more.
“If I ask, ‘Who are you?’ You say?” He waited jacking the air with his hand paddling before him.
“Come on,” he said.
“YOU-SUCK.”
“I ain’t playing. This be something your double don’t know.”
I frowned. At my side, I opened and closed my clenched fist. “How can I be sure who you are?”
“I write your check. That’s all you need to know.” Then he confirmed himself by giving me today’s check.
I hated lying, but I needed the money. ‘Sides he owed it, and then some.
I sat in my Olds 88 with a nip in a Styrofoam cup and jumped about in the reading of the pamphlet.
Doppelgängers
17 Varieties of Bastard
All for You
… They’re a son of a bitch to deal with. Look like you, act superficially like you—but they get close to your loved ones. They want to steal your life. And when they do—well, you’re person non gracias.
…
They get into your memories, but only up to a point. They don’t own them the way you do. I mean, you love your wife, right?
The one that would take your place will too; but he’d love her with the same intensity that you love your dog or car or that little girl you fell for in first grade: A kind of affection or infection that, eventually, they get over with and then move on according to their need.
Main thing to remember is that they're not human no matter how much they look and act it.
They’re parasites.[1]
I can’t prove it, not yet, but I think they live on negative psychic energy—they go for the node, the focus of it. Or why else would they stir up all these emotions: bad-feelings and anger?
…
If you catch up with one of these arrogant types, don’t listen or you’ll find yourself thinking they (your family, wife, and friends) deserve better than you. Life isn’t about deserving, but about what you got.
Don’t give in.
Do what’s necessary.
Don’t get caught.
Authorities have been highly infiltrated from your local police department to the highest offices of state. Nobody knows the extent of infiltration.
Don’t risk what is yours.
The life YOU SAVE is yours!
When I got back to the trailer park late that night Betty-Jean was waiting. The boys were asleep. She knew I’d been drinking, she always knew, no matter how straight I acted.
She brought me cold chicken and biscuits for supper and sat and watched me eat at the kitchen table, while giving me the most hateful stare.
“Well?” she says.
I know she wants to talk about our supposed problems. She’d been going on about them for weeks. Every little thing like it was all me.
So I lost a job. It happens.
And the drink?
I’m a grown man. Man alive, what does she think I’m doing? I’m here. Every day I’m here. She should thank God, most men would break.
She says again, “Well?”
“I heard you.” I stuff my face. God, just a little peace. Ain’t it enough I got to put up with everything else? “This is good.”
At the end of a long day, just before bedtime, I’m not going to stir myself up and have her tell me again and again what I ought to be doing. I’ve heard it all. None of it changed, and wouldn’t until I got back to my real work.
I put Mr. Conroy’s check on the table for her to see. That should’ve been the end of it.
“You make the best chicken.” So I led her into my work day: Told her how somebody graffiti-fied Mr. Conroy’s garage. And how I spent the morning fixing somebody else’s mess, and how that crazy old man worried for me.
“What for?” She puckers and rolls her lips like she might spit. “He could give you a raise and regular hours.”
“He would, if I asked. But I’m going back to high steel, when I’m recovered. You know that.”
“You say that.” And she just sits there with that stupid smile like she knew everything. “When?”
“Look at that. It’s for his new book.” I drop the pamphlet on the table and push it across to her.
“Why give you this?”
“He just did, he’s a funny old man.”
She picks it up and flips a few pages to get the gist. Then she laughs at something she’s reading and says, “Hunh! You believe in this?”
“Not me.” I edge Mr. Conroy’s check in front of her, and didn’t say anything about that. “He gave me a code word though.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“Gave me a secret word so he knows it’s me.” She turns the check over and taps the back for me to sign, but I’m talking. “It’s in there somewhere.” I grab the pamphlet. I explain it to her and make myself sound a fool. “That’s him and his crazy books. But he pays.”
She sits there with her mouth open like she can’t breathe or just bit into something awful.
“Tussock,” I say.
“What the fuck?”
“It’s code!” She slaps a Bic pen in front of me. “I looked it up in his unabridged. It’s a bunch of matted and rotting leaves and stuff from the bottom of a lake or swamp that floats to the surface.”
“Just sign the goddamn check.”
She never used to say her mind so easily. She taps the check, again, and then glides it to me with just the tip of her middle finger. I sign.
“But get this,” I say. “This is real interesting. Decay gases—get caught up under there … SO IT FLOATS. Sometimes it grows trees and shit like an island and it gets so big people and animals walk on it.”
“And,” she says, “don’t know, until it’s too late. I know how they feel.” I laugh; she snatches the check and is on her feet. “I’ll see to this.”
I laugh some more and say to her back, “We should have a code word so you know it’s me.”
“Asshole.”
I felt for Betty-Jean but she wasn’t in bed.
It was way early for her to be up, though once in a while, when she got worried about the boys, me or something, I’d find her in my bark-o-lounger reading one of her Girl Friday Romances or watching late night reruns of JC. I heard some low whispering, but couldn’t make out who was talking. Figured it was Johnny.
I tried to go back to sleep and did for a bit.
I woke when she said something, not real loud, but with a nasty tone to it. She’d often talk back at the TV and tell some goof what they got wrong. It didn’t make no difference if they listened or not, she always had something to say. She said, “Not again.”
Then I heard the croak of a man’s voice trying to keep it low.
I peeked through the partly open bedroom door, a man stood with his back to me. Then clear as day he says, “You know you want him gone.” The voice was very familiar. It wasn’t no jokey JC or laugh-machine McMan. It was somebody I knew, sneaking around before sunrise, whispering nothings to a man’s wife, a recipe for disaster. “He’s asleep?”
“Passed out. Might as well be a rock, he’s asleep even when he's awake.”
I looked for my .38 Police Special. It wasn’t in the nightstand. Then I remembered it was in the closet on the top shelf … inside the steel box she’d insisted upon. A box with a combo. I grabbed the folding chair from the back of the closet. Squeaked it open. Held the closet doors, while I stepped up and leant in banging my head against boxes and shit. She’d told me what the combo was. Make it easy, she said.
It was a birthday. Mine? Or one of the boys?
There was the box—all the way in back.
What was the point of having guns if you couldn’t grab and shoot?
I heard the bedroom door open. He stood backlit. Light flooded in, spotlighting my tightey-whitey ass—not even a full moon for him. I said fuck you and fell.
Fell hard with the wind knocked out of me.
He stood over me, reached down and rocked my head from side to side. I had murder in my heart, but nothing moved. He said, “You suck,” and then laughed.
Then I heard my boys in the living room. Betty-Jean said, “Go back to bed, babies. Daddy tripped but he’s fine.”
The guy threw a bedspread over me. From the bedroom door, he said, “That’s right boys. Now go to bed. But first, give your old man a hug.” They ran to him. He gave a grunt. “That’s my boys.”
[1] The Mind Parasites, by Colin Wilson, Arkham House, 1967. This is a real book, independently researched in Great Britain at great personal risk by the author, Colin Wilson. Corrupt governmental powers managed to block its initial publication as a serious exposé of the truth. Wilson cleverly resubmitted his manuscript to the above mentioned press, as a work of fiction. But those in the know, know it for what it is: The Truth Incarnated. Don Conroy, author.
