Destroyer 78:49

A Short Story

Editor’s Note:

For your consideration, a Christmas short story written by

Zack Grafman

. This month, P3 will publish a collection of Christmas tales for our readers to enjoy. Please note that our series will take a brief pause the week of the 25th.

Enjoy,

- Frank Theodat

It was the beginning of twilight at the end of Christmas Eve, as the final tangles of time allotted to 1948 raveled towards a conclusion. In the town, short-lived sleet flicked down to die on the pavement and the hoods of cars, and some on the shabby gray hat perched atop Dan’s head. Dan poked a thumb-length of pencil across a fistful of long cards, checking carefully. He sighed out a cloud of cigarette vapor that imprisoned the suspended snow in the glint of the streetlamp, a glittering cloud to settle damply at his feet. He watched the milling stream of distracted shoppers. He watched the well-fed beat cop strolling to the corner. He watched the shopkeeps and the shopkeeps’ boys and the shopkeeps’ flustering wives. Then he walked over to the panel van chugging idly at the curb and reached inside a compartment by the cab, right underneath the big painted lettering reading Destroyer 78:49. He yanked out a telephone handset and started talking.

“Fifteen, thirty-one, and one-hundred twenty. No, I don’t. Well, we would need another truck.” Dan huffed just enough to ensure receipt of disappointment at the terminus of the phone line. “Ok I’ll start the next neighborhood then. Yeah...standby for the numbers. Merry Christmas.”

He let the phone rest in the pocket of his neck and shoulder as he punched long strings from his cards into rows of chunking type keys. Satisfied, Dan swung into the cab and jostled the driver’s shoulder. “Ok Sam, long night. Let’s go.”

The van disappeared down a dead-end alley. Three streets down they exited a row of houses and merged with the flow of traffic. Sam picked at his teeth with a soggy toothpick and mumbled questions as he whitelined the van down Main Street. 

“What’s these ones done?”

Dan flicked a crumbled stub of cigarette out the window, where it disappeared in a pale flash. “We both know that isn’t a question we ask.”

“I just think on it, sometimes.” Sam mused. 

“Yeah, well. Don’t.” reminded Dan. He poked a new cigarette with one finger until a white spark spat out one end, followed by a curl of smoke. “Just turn here and let’s get to work.”

The van sputtered to a stop on a side street as the final streetlamps and tree lights flickered alive. Dan riffled his cards until he found the right one. 

“Ok, we watch and then send Mike in. Keep it running.” He slapped the rear of the cab compartment. “Ok Mike?” There was no answer, except for every light on the block dimming for an instant. Dan was settling in until he saw a painfully angular man fade out of the shadows and approach the truck. 

“Well it’s you boys, out so late on your special night!” A tinkling laugh like a bone xylophone. The newcomer was cloaked in crumbling splendor, a fraying peacock gathering his final feathers. He carried a mildewed stack of volumes bound in red leather, and was outfitted in the sort of imitation finery seen in the caskets of men born high and cast low. “Anything unique this evening? Let’s see the itinerary then!” He was standing on driver’s side running board now, coughing and stamping in the lowering evening chill. Sam’s nose wrinkled with the dueling stenches of rotten roses and cracked black pepper. 

Sam tried not to flinch, failed. “Hey. Uh...hey. Dan?” He always looked to Dan for instruction, for slicing finely through the layers of the confusing world to discover their exact duty. 

“Look Nick, we’re doing our job. You know the score.” Dan glowered from under his hat at the fastidious smile this comment raised. “And anyway, nothing you say here makes one lick of difference to us.”

Nick smirked and flicked a pale yellow business card into his slender, outstretched fingers, which he stuck directly under Sam’s nose. “As you gentleman can see, I am also pursuing my vocation. Interlocutor, prosecutor, defender, observer. Watching those who watch, as it were.” He withdrew his hand, leaving the card to flutter slightly before it popped into sullen chartreuse smoke. Sam gagged in surprise and Dan glowered some more. “So then...let us watch?”

And so they did. For seven hours they stared at the perfect little townhouse, ringed with jagged teeth of pickets and glowing faintly with internal fire from the Christmas tree perched just inside the parlor window. They watched as the entire town drifted off to sleep. They kept solemn vigil waiting to hear the clock in the square. They watched until two o’clock, when a man eased out the side door and started walking down the alley. Dan scribbled onto a card and then checked a little row of bulbs on his side of the dash, patiently waiting for another hour as each amber light faded and died. He put his hand on the cab door and then flinched slightly as he realized Nick was on his side of the van now, leering through the window. Dan popped the door open sharply and gave an exasperated “What?”

“Surely, I cannot imagine that for this crime of leaving his house you are going to act?” Nick fizzed out a laugh and slapped his armful of volumes. “We both know that you have no case.”

“I’m not arguing anything with you, not tonight. We are going to follow our instructions and you can take your law library back where it might do you some good,” Dan snapped. He shoved past the apoplectic figure and collected a small pile of sleet in the brim of his hat as he circled the van. His hand was on the padlock when the words he had been fearing all that holiday night slid through the chill to settle in his heart. 

“What do you think you should do, Daniel Seventeen?”

He could hear the grating rasps inside the van accelerate as Mike sensed that the time was close. All down the block now, the strands of festive starlight and the porch-lights and the streetlamps began to dim and brighten in breathing rhythm. Dan tried to think, but the knot in his stomach was hard to push past. So he just stood there in the snow while the engine chuffed away merrily. He was very tired, he realized. This job made him tired, settling in the wadded-up space between his shoulders and never quite leaving as long as he was on duty. He wanted someone else to decide. A fistful of cards fluttered into the slush in the gutter.

“You want to see where he went? Would that be good enough for you?” Dan wasn’t sure exactly who the question was for. 

Nick nodded and smiled. “You have to be sure before you act, you know. It is your job, after all.” 

Dan shoved past him into the cab again and practically snarled “Take us there, Sam!” 

Confused, Sam reached for the large dial at the center of the dash and looked questioningly to Dan. “So...you want us to go back?”

Dan reached over and clicked the dial counterclockwise until they heard the clock toll two. “Follow him,” he said gently, and pointed at the figure sneaking from the side door of the neat little house into the snow. Dan flashed a grim smile to Nick. “See you around.”

The van clattered to a stop after weaving its way through a sleeping block of apartments. Dan saw Nick waiting at the corner, of course he was, darting glances at the unseemly surroundings and picking his teeth with a pen that looked like a fingerbone. Dan took a look outside the cab window and wasn’t much more impressed than Nick. A jagged row of three-story shotgun houses huddled against each other, for warmth and to keep from tumbling into the gutter. It seemed that if anyone in the whole town remained awake on this newborn Christmas morning, they had found their way here; to shout loud enough and bury their minds deep enough to stop thinking about just how sad they were. A mass of intertwined revelers sloughed its way into the street as they pulled up, and Dan could feel the buzzing start from the box behind the cab. So Mike saw it too. They watched as the gutter-piled partiers muzzily untangled themselves and began charting a course back inside. They watched as their man giggled and pawed at an equally giggly girl, who managed to wear a matted fur against the chill and yet not seem significantly dressed in any sense. They watched. 

“Wait here, Sam” Dan murmured. Then he trudged sloppily back to unlatch the cargo door. Instantly Nick appeared, pressing up close enough for Dan to feel his breath. 

“You mean to tell me this is the answer? A family man, a good man, loses everything. For what? A few too many cocktails and an hour huddled in a pair of caring arms? Oh this is indeed fine judgement. You should be proud of your job, Daniel,” He minced as he splayed a bow.

Dan didn’t know what to do, so he just ignored the annoyance. Mike filtered out of the truck and rasped out a single query that hung in the snowy air like a gibbeted body.

Death?

Dan nodded mechanically. “Yes. For him, death. Not her, though.”

Nick’s face transformed into a tight mask of bitter hilarity as he shrieked and cackled. “Oh bravo, is that what it says on your little pieces of paper? A man of solid standing is to die, and yet you’ll leave this useless piece of trash, this little...” and the last word cracked out to slap the girl in the face. Her eyes filled with tears and Dan wondered if she had heard the tirade or just felt the depth of disdain somewhere behind her eyes. 

“You aren’t gonna touch her.” Dan looked around the street for an answer, listened for one. He only heard the wind through the snowy street and the shreds of music through the door. 

“Check your machines and ask your cards to tell you. I have it right here,” and Nick chortled and rustled through his books. “Yes, you see? I’ve got a job as well, you simpletons. Neither or both, tonight. It’s not like I care which!”

Since Dan couldn’t think of anything else to do, he stripped his trenchcoat off and hammered Nick in the face with a both fists. They grappled and stumbled together, battering each other in silence over the two bodies sprawled on the sidewalk. If the barely conscious pair saw them, they didn’t pay attention. It took a few painful minutes, as Mike stood watching impassively and Sam worried behind the steering wheel. But eventually Nick must have sustained enough damage to decide interference was no longer worth his trouble, and he suddenly disappeared in a sour cloud. Sam collected himself for a moment sitting on the curb.

“Alright Mike, take care of it.”

Under the glow of neon signs, Mike towered like a phantom giant. The street was empty, the sidewalk bare except for the slush piles and the two comatose forms. From the depths of his pale grey coat, Mike extended an arm of gilded bone. He lifted the sleeping man without visible effort, dumped him face-down into a puddle. Then he stood and watched for three minutes. Satisfied, he turned to the girl. He threw the bottle she clutched to smash in the street, then bundled her into the corner of the doorway and spread the fur coat over top. Dan watched and smoked shakily. When it was done he threw open the van doors and beckoned to Mike. 

“Alright, let’s go.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then, just before the van disappeared, Sam spoke up. 

“How do we know?”

“Know what?” Dan grunted.

“How do we know that we did right?” 

Dan sighed. “The don’t call us the Knowers, Sam.” He fished in a pocket for another smoke and squinted against the glare of Christmas lights in the windshield. “Let’s go home.”