Roselli's Remains
Roselli wheeled himself to the edge of the ramp and relaxed his grip. Smooth rubber tires brushed against his fingertips as he descended. The chair landed on the sidewalk with just the slightest bump. After a few breaths, his lungs felt better, cleaner. Even on a sticky September afternoon like this, where the air hung heavy with automobile exhaust, it was much better outside than inside the veteran’s home standing behind him, the blinds in every window shut tight against the sun’s strong rays.
He placed a hand above his eyes as if he might be trying to home in on something in the town’s modest skyline. But he was simply creating a bit of shadow to fend off the sun’s glare for a few seconds while his eyes adjusted. He lowered his hand, still squinting, the paleness of his freshly shaved face fully exposed to the brightness of the afternoon. If you examined Roselli’s face carefully, with its lines and scars and hard expression, a face that looked older than its twenty-eight years, if you really looked at him, you probably would gather some idea of who he had been. But hardly anyone looked at Roselli that way anymore.
Roselli planned to take himself to State Street and from there to the Yorktown Alley Pub for a bite to eat. With luck he would arrive before the evening rush and have a chance to talk to Amy. The sun beat down on him as he pushed his way uphill along the sidewalk, but he didn’t sweat. The wind cooled him and ruffled his thick hair. He’d let it grow so he wouldn’t resemble a former cop or infantryman. He was someone new now, or at least someone different, a civilian who no longer chased criminals down the street or exchanged automatic weapons fire with ragged, lethal men in the mountains of Afghanistan’s Nuristan province.
He passed a barber shop and a diner as the incline steepened. The veins in his forearms bulged as he turned his wheels forward. He wondered, as he pushed the chair hard, how what was left of his body would hold up without shins, calves, or feet. The wind billowed his shorts and caressed his knees and the stubs beneath them, the false beginnings of his missing lower legs. The stubs completed themselves as smoothly round, free of edges or bumps, weirdly perfect in their curvature. A rocket-propelled grenade and the diligent work of surgeons had left him this way, maimed and perfected.
A strong gust blew, and Roselli stopped the chair. He held still, closed his eyes, and focused on the wind. He felt it wash over him, beginning at his stubs. This reassured him, for the moment, that what was left of him wasn’t disappearing. The doctors told him that the numbness that sometimes invaded his knees was normal and harmless, but their words weren’t enough – he needed the sensation of the wind against his knees to feel whole, or as whole as he could. As the gust tapered off, he opened his eyes and started pushing with renewed strength.
Brightly dressed Sunday crowds filled both sides of State. Roselli stayed in the right lane of pedestrian traffic, careful not to wheel too fast, not to run into anyone. Parents pushing strollers, pretty girls in sandals, and teenage boys in baseball caps all passed by. Some looked down at him and promptly averted their eyes. Others stared, and from time to time someone accidentally bumped his chair. He wanted to be able to move along the street comfortably, to enter a store spontaneously like anyone else. But in the crowded shops, the stares, bumps, and whispered “Excuse me” rained on him even more relentlessly, and his movements were even more confined. So he continued along the sidewalk.
He felt a thump on the left side of his chair. A heavy bag hanging from a shoulder strap had struck him. The bag’s owner, a middle-aged man with black-rimmed eyeglasses, asked Roselli to excuse him, then darted away before Roselli could respond, weaving through the crowd while clutching the bag under his arm remorsefully. The man was nervous, and even seemed afraid, but Roselli knew he wasn’t, not really. He recognized real fear and knew it couldn’t be shaken off by a few quick strides on a sidewalk. He’d seen fear up close, in the widening eyes of a drug dealer looking at the barrel of Roselli’s Glock. He had even heard it in the screams of a Taliban fighter he’d shot to pieces. No one on the force or in his unit had caused as much fear as Roselli, and there were times he’d been told to let up. He had saved so many lives, though, in this town’s dirty alleys and in Afghanistan’s sun-drenched landscape of reddish brown rocks and pristine dust that no one ever came down on him too hard.
A round-faced girl of about six walked past him slowly, holding her mother’s hand. Her blond hair was gathered under a barrette. She looked directly into Roselli’s eyes and then at the rest of him and at the air below his flapping shorts. A tiny gasp escaped her mouth, and she buried her face in her mother’s dress. Roselli looked away and shivered. The shivering continued, and, at the corner of York Street and State, it worsened. Roselli had a full case of the shakes.
He slowed to a stop next to the Farmers and Mechanics bank. People streamed passed, no longer appearing as individuals but as a babble of color and sound and movement, their particularity muted, but raw, presence intensified. Roselli’s jaw trembled, his hands did the same, and his mouth dried. His breath tasted foul with fear. He wanted to rise from the wheelchair and find a safe place. This was much more frightening than Afghanistan, where what threatened him was tangible, and he and his M-16 could fight back. He missed his M-16. The Glock he had used as a police officer was a toy in comparison. Toy or not, it was registered to him as a civilian and rested snugly inside his jacket with his pills.
He looked down, focusing on a bottle cap on the sidewalk, steadying himself enough to turn the chair right onto York Street. He made another right into a quiet, wide alley, where he pulled out the bottle of anti-anxiety medicine the VA psychiatrist had prescribed for him. He rushed two of the one-milligram pills into his mouth, swallowed them, then took another. He closed his eyes and sat motionless, waiting. Quickly his tension subsided. His heart slowed, and moisture returned to his mouth. A chemically induced calm took hold. He had skipped lunch, and the medicine worked fast. Soon he felt even better than calm. He pushed his wheels along effortlessly, coasting down the slight slant of the alley. He barely felt the chair roll over the seams in the concrete; bumps came to him only as muffled sound. The pub was coming up on the right. It was a favorite haunt from his days as a cop, and he’d been back more than a dozen times since coming home at the beginning of summer.
As he approached the pub, his wheels squeaking, he heard a shout from the narrow loading area that ran off the alley to State, a shadow-covered ribbon of asphalt that accommodated small delivery vehicles. A tiny, frail man in torn jeans and a plaid flannel shirt emerged from behind a dumpster, shouting incoherently, mainly cursing. He dragged a filthy brown sack along the ground and walked slowly and with a slight limp toward Roselli, who recognized him. He had arrested the man a few times. Chops, he was called, for reasons Roselli didn’t know. Chops was a perpetual disturbance, especially in jail, where he kept other guests awake. On the streets, people just avoided him.
“No, you get out of here,” Chops said to Roselli. “I don’t need no motherfucking cripple to compete with.”
“It’s all right,” Roselli said. Chops shuffled closer, his neck bent forward, his eyes moving rapidly, left to right, up and down.
“Don’t be tellin’ me it’s all right” said Chops. “I ain’t been takin’ in nothin’ lately.” He pointed at an aluminum bucket back near the dumpster with a few dollar bills in it. “People see you, they’ll give you their extra cash. Go on somewhere else, or I’ll kick your ass out of that chair.”
Roselli smiled. The anti-anxiety medicine cruised through his body at peak levels; besides, he knew Chops was harmless. “No problem.” He pointed to the pub. “I’m going in there. I won’t take away any of your business.” Chops tilted his head dubiously to the right. His yellow eyes glowed. “As a matter of fact,” Roselli added, “here’s a donation.” He reached into a pocket of his shorts and held out a dollar.
Chops snatched the bill. “All right then,” he said, turning away. “Man’s all right!” he shouted up toward State, where no one could hear him above the bustle of cars and people on foot. He hobbled back to the dumpster, bellowing curses. He put his sack against the wall, then sat on it.
The sky began to darken. Roselli wheeled himself up the ramp to the pub’s front door. He pulled the doorknob hard with his right hand while pushing the left wheel of the chair, which crossed into the doorway. Then he turned both wheels forward a few more inches, just in time to avoid the door’s backswing.
The smell of fried onion rings, breaded fish and cigarette smoke mingled in the pub’s cluttered air, undisturbed by the slow-turning ceiling fans. To Roselli’s right, steam and sizzling from the grill filtered out of the kitchen, which was visible just past the bar. Amy was behind the bar, emptying ash trays and putting down coasters. She smiled at him, walked over to his usual table and pulled a chair away to make room for his wheels. He thanked her and ordered a half-pound cheeseburger and fries with a Budweiser from the tap.
Roselli devoured his meal, the charred exterior of the burger a delight to his tongue. His stomach warmed. He had always loved red meat, had practically lived on it as a kid. The burger and the fries and the Budweiser tasted better tonight than they ever had. Roselli knew this was at least partly because of the medicine. He ordered another Budweiser and watched Sportscenter highlights on the wide flat-screen television behind the bar. More customers entered the pub, and some of the regulars shook hands with him as they arrived. A few knew him from before; others knew him as the ex-cop whose legs had been blown off in Afghanistan. Some stopped to talk about the stretch run of the baseball season or who would beat the spread in next week’s NFL games.
The pub wasn’t too busy yet, and Amy came over. She sat across from him and folded her hands together on the table. She smiled and asked how things were going. The steam from the kitchen had put a sheen of sweat on her face, giving her a pleasant glow. Roselli and she had flirted with one another before Afghanistan when he’d come to the pub, checking on her when she worked a late shift. She seemed more serious these days. Roselli felt uneasily responsible for this.
“Hey,” she said. “I asked how things are going.” She squeezed his right forearm gently, the warmth of her hand radiating through his sleeve. Roselli smiled back but withdrew his arm.
“Things are good.” He told her how Chandler, his former partner on the force, had paid him a visit earlier in the day. He didn’t mention the many awkward silences the visit had included or how relieved he’d been when Chandler left. He let her know how he’d been starving when he got to the pub, and how the burger had hit the spot. “And you? How’s school?”
“Good. Classes are keeping me busy.” She laughed when he asked whether her accounting texts were giving her headaches, and whether she really liked crunching all those numbers. “Yes, I like it when assets and liabilities balance out. You should try it,” she said, teasing him back.
”No, thanks.” He smiled and raised his palms in surrender. “Not me.”
“Okay, then, maybe something else.” She had been bringing up this “something else” during his last few visits. She meant his future, his plans, what he wanted to do next. He’d always changed the subject, or if he didn’t, she’d change it for him. But now she drew her mouth into a straight, serious line. She wasn’t going to change the subject, he sensed, and she wasn’t going to let him change it, either.
“Sure,” he said. With his right thumb and forefinger, he lifted a packet of sugar from the top of the stack in the metal caddy and pushed the granules around. “I’m going to come up with something else. It’s just a little tough, though.”
“Why? Why is it tough?”
He looked at her and shrugged. “I’m just not sure what to do. A lot of the things someone in my situation can do involve sitting.” He spoke the last word sharply. “Sitting,” he repeated. “At a desk. I’ve never been much for sitting at a desk.” He took a breath. “The things I’ve done have all been outside.” He flipped the sugar packet back onto the table. “And I’ve always been able to see the results of what I do right in front of me.”
Amy unclasped her fingers and placed her hands on the table, close to Roselli’s. Her long, light brown hair with its layers of wavy curls framed her face asymmetrically, pulled behind her left ear but hanging forward over her right. She had a few tiny freckles on each cheek that Roselli had never noticed before but that nevertheless reminded him of something, took him back to the times before the war when he’d kidded with her, and she would blush or laugh hard and let him buy her a drink when her shift was over.
“There are all kinds of things you can do that would let you keep moving,” she said. “Where you could help people out, too.”
“Like what?” He leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “Who could I help?” A tinge of bitterness pushed its way into his question.
“Plenty of people. You could go into insurance. You could visit people whose houses have burned down or who’ve been hurt in an accident. Go out and meet them. Help fix their problems.”
“Right,” Roselli said. He sipped his beer. “Insurance.” The flatness of his voice matched his expression, and several seconds of silence passed.
“There are other possibilities,” Amy said. “Maybe you could go back to the force. Help solve cases. Help question the guys who get brought in.” Roselli looked at her skeptically. “You can still be a good cop,” she added.
“No,” Roselli answered evenly. “I never was a good cop. I was a bad cop.” He smiled now, and a bit of his old feeling came back.
Amy shrugged. “No one can throw punches forever. At some point, you’d probably want to switch to ‘good cop’ anyway.”
Roselli laughed. “Maybe, but not now.” Definitely not now, he thought.
Amy shook her head, still smiling. He hoped she was letting the subject go. “Whatever you decide to do, you’ll be great at helping people. Even if you insist on being a badass while doing it.”
“You really believe that?” Roselli asked, chuckling. “That I can help people?” He raised his hands above his wheels demonstratively.
“Sure,” she said. “Anyone who knows you would believe it.” Her tone was casual, as if she were saying something obvious.
Roselli wondered where the certainty of her belief came from. He woke up every morning in a state of disbelief about how the smallest task required the greatest effort, how hard it was to use the bathroom, to shave, to get dressed, to move from one present moment to the next, too drained to think about the future. Amy kept watching him. “Thanks,” he told her.
He knew she’d have to get back to work soon. “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t we catch a movie when your shift is done?” He was surprised to hear these words come out of his mouth. “Over at the Colonial,” he added, gesturing with his thumb in the direction of the old theater a few blocks away. “If you’re free.”
“I’d like that.” She stood from the table and smiled.
“What do you want to see?”
“Pick something,” she said. She squeezed his arm again, her fingers still warm.
They agreed to meet in front of the movie house at nine-fifteen, and Amy walked over to another table where two customers had seated themselves. Roselli looked into the kitchen and gave a salute-wave to Mel, the pub’s owner, who smiled and waved back from behind the bar. Roselli took a breath, felt a warmth spread inside him, a different kind than the one that had accompanied the burger, a feeling he hadn’t experienced since coming home. He finished his beer and watched the crowd thicken.
He didn’t recognize any of the customers flowing through the door, bumping into each other, then jamming together near the bar and in the pub’s small foyer, waiting in a messy semblance of a line for tables to become available. Roselli felt his medication wearing off. His stomach fluttered a little. He closed his eyes and sought distraction by picturing Amy still sitting across from him, recalling the feeling of her fingers as she touched his arm, then imagining the two of them at the Colonial, both seated quietly, his awareness of her next to him cutting through the theater’s darkness. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.
A big man, about Roselli’s age, stood a few feet away. He wore a leather jacket zipped only at the bottom and looked at Roselli and his table. The woman on his arm did the same. They separated themselves from the congestion by the front door and hovered nearer to him, like Christmas shoppers closing in on a parking space at the mall. The man’s eyebrows were tensed into a hard expression as he surveyed Roselli’s plate, clean except for some grease and a few spots of ketchup. “Looks like this guy’s about done,” he said, more loudly than necessary, nominally addressing the woman.
Roselli thought about ordering a cup of coffee, returning the man’s scowl with a nod and a smile, saying something like, “Busy night, huh?” But the flutters in his stomach became more insistent and severe, as if he’d swallowed something unstable. He needed fresh air so he calculated his tab in his head and decided to pay without waiting for the check. He placed the cash on the table and secured it with his empty beer glass.
A hand touched his shoulder from behind, and he started. It was Amy. She knelt, bringing her face down close to his, so she could be heard above the crowd’s rising din. “I’m glad I caught you,” she said. “Mel is insisting that I work late. He says it’s too busy for me to leave at nine.”
“Sure,” Roselli said. He lifted his right arm and gestured toward the crowd. “I can see why.” But even as he spoke, he felt the disappointment sink in, another ingredient added to the cauldron of anxiety inside him.
“Is this table open?” The man in the jacket now stood at the spot behind where Amy had been sitting earlier, his jaw jutting out. His thick fingers rested on the top of the chair’s curved back. His girlfriend stood next to him. He wasn’t as big as Roselli had been. Roselli knew the look, recognized how quickly the tough veneer could be melted away when confronted by someone tougher.
“It is,” said Roselli. “I was just leaving.” He broke eye contact with the man.
“Are you all right to get through this jam?” Amy asked, giving a quick nod toward the crowd.
“Yeah,” said Roselli, quietly. He turned the chair until he was perpendicular to the standing customers lining one end of the bar to the other. “Excuse me,” he said. The crowd let him squeeze through. He didn’t look up at any of them.
The temperature outside had dropped considerably, and the sudden chill and change of scenery made Roselli shiver. He grabbed his tires for a moment to steady himself. His breath fogged the air, and he zipped up his jacket. The rush of patrons entering the pub had ended just as he’d left. The alley was as quiet as it was cool; even the buzz of State Street had eased. “It’s all right,” he whispered as he wheeled his chair slowly toward York Street, taking in the relative peace. It’s quiet out here, no crowds. It’s wide open. Everything is wide open. But his heart began to race. “It’s all right,” he said again. “This had been a good night.” It was all good. Like hell it was, some other part of him said. Like hell. He chastised himself for putting Amy on the spot. What was she going to do, say no right away? Sure, she had to work late. Sure she did.
Roselli shook all over. Then the sweating started abruptly, quickly soaking his back and chest. He zipped his jacket open, desperate for a breeze that would dry him. First too cold, now too hot. He had been so comfortable in the pub, until the end. Had it all been just a buzz from his pills?
He heard a shrill cry. “God damn!” Chops roused himself from the ground by the dumpster and limped towards him. “I knew you’d fuck me up!” he shouted. “I just knew it!” The man stood in front of Roselli and looked down at him. “All them people linin’ up to get in,” he said, waving an arm towards the pub. “And none of them give me a dime.” Roselli looked at the ground. “And you know why?”
“Leave me alone,” Roselli said, still looking down. He gripped his tires and took a hard, shaky breath.
“I’ll tell you why. Because of you!” Chops poked a bony finger into Roselli’s chest. “They knew you was in there, and they kept their money in their pockets until they got inside and gave it to you!”
Roselli’s chest stung where Chops had poked him. People, he told himself, didn’t do this to him. No one did, not someone like Chops, and not the hard guy in the pub. The guy with the girlfriend. This was not something he could stand for. “Get away from me,” he said. Anger mixed with his resolution.
“Ohhh, no,” said Chops, bending his neck forward, coming face to face with him. “Not so fast. Let’s see what they give you. You give me half, cripple. Give me half, and we’ll call it even.” He reached inside Roselli’s jacket.
Roselli’s left hand, as if moving on its own, darted forward and grabbed Chops by his frayed collar. He breathed hard once, then twice. The second breath came more easily, and the third felt deep and healthy, reminding him of how he’d breathed during a firefight in the mountains or in the town’s rough neighborhoods, adrenaline at full tilt. He squeezed Chops’ frayed collar inside his fist, dug his knuckles into Chops’s throat, and yanked. The wheelchair rattled as Chops’s face collided with the left post supporting the backrest. Roselli kept a tight grip on the collar, then brought him forward and shoved him away as hard as he could. Chops flew backward and landed on his rear, hard. Roselli smiled.
Chops struggled to stand. He rose slowly, his movements spasmodic, as if his limp had intensified and spread to all his limbs. He touched his face, saw blood on his hand, and hurled a stream of expletives at Roselli before charging. Roselli caught him again with his left hand, absorbing most of the shock from the collision. The wheelchair backed up about a foot. Again he held Chops’s collar and pulled him down until the foreheads of the two men touched. Chops cursed and tried to get loose, flailing his fists ineffectually into Roselli’s upper arms. Roselli could do whatever he wanted with Chops now – punch him out with a right hand, head-butt him.
Instead he reached into his jacket with his free hand and found his Glock. His palm and fingers eased around it, and he pressed the barrel against Chops’s left temple. “Put your hands on the back of your head and stay still,” he told him. His voice was ice.
Chops obeyed. “Shit, man, let me go,” he said in a faint, raspy whisper. “You can keep all of it. Just let me go.”
“Shut up,” said Roselli. He felt calm, like himself. His old, real self. No more shakes or sweating. Maybe this was the medicine he needed. He pulled the trigger slightly, just enough to release the safety on the gun. Keep your Glock cocked, as they’d said back on the force. “Did you know I’m a war hero?” he asked Chops. He watched beads of sweat squeeze out of the pores of the man’s leathery skin, just above where the Glock’s barrel pressed into him. That’s right, Roselli thought. Your turn now.
“No man, I didn’t. I didn’t know. Just let me go, all right? I won’t mess with you no more.”
Roselli looked into Chops’s eyes, saw red lines in the yellowed, watery orbs, and felt the vibrations in his arm – not his own trembling but Chops’s. It was different to feel it, different than just watching him shake. But he also felt the steel of the Glock’s trigger, smooth and cool against his forefinger. It pleaded for him to squeeze it. He pushed the end of the barrel harder into Chops’s head. Chops closed his eyes, and his trembling grew worse.
“Please, man.” The rasp was barely audible now.
Roselli breathed in, gathering his resolve. At that same moment, Chops exhaled a long breath of stale air. Roselli recognized the smell – the distinctive, acrid flavor of the fear he’d tasted in his mouth on State Street a few hours ago. It was still there when Roselli took his next breath. His right hand began to shake while it pressed the barrel into Chops’s temple, and Chops shook even harder as a result. They trembled violently for several seconds longer, or maybe several minutes. Roselli wasn’t sure how long he’d been shaking when he finally let go of the trigger.
The gun’s safety reengaged. Roselli relaxed his grip on Chops’s collar and slowly uncurled the fingers of his left hand. He removed the gun from Chops’s temple, revealing a circular imprint, a temporary tattoo from the Glock’s barrel. He put the gun back into his jacket. Chops, no longer in Roselli’s grasp, still didn’t move, and kept his hands on the back of his head. Roselli backed up a few feet, but Chops remained bent forward. Roselli nodded at him. “Stand up,” he said. Chops complied, tentatively, and took a few small steps backward.
“Take it easy,” Roselli said calmly. “I won’t hurt you.”
Chops lowered his hands. He looked left, then right. Then, in a burst of movement, he took off toward the dumpster. Roselli had seen him run before, but never this fast. He thought about shouting after him, telling him something to take his terror away. But he couldn’t come up with anything. Chops grabbed his sack from the ground without breaking stride and kept going, disappearing with a left turn onto State.
Roselli breathed in deeply, then exhaled, fogging the evening air as he had before, as anyone’s breath would. But the cloud he produced this time was shaped differently from anyone else’s, and differed from the one he’d made earlier. He felt his heart beat again, this time not too fast or hard. He reached back into his jacket, feeling again for the gun.
He removed the magazine and its fifteen cartridges with his left hand, one at a time, and placed them into his pocket in groups of three. Pointing the gun downward, he pulled the trigger, disengaging the firing pin, and then held the gun in his right hand. He squeezed the levers on either side of the weapon with the thumb and index finger of his left hand and, with his right, pushed the slide forward off the frame. He put the magazine, the barrel, the spring, and the slide in the same pocket as the rounds; they all pinged against one other as he wheeled himself to the dumpster. He reached up and opened a side panel. Gently, he tossed the gun frame inside. It vanished and barely made a sound, its fall cushioned, Roselli supposed, by a bag of garbage.
He turned his chair around and wheeled it back to the broader alley, feeling the bumps but not bothered by them. The muscles in his face were relaxed. If you looked at him now in the bright light thrown off by the pub’s neon sign, you would see a man of twenty-eight, seated. Tomorrow, he told himself, he’d come up with a plan. For now, he was grateful to have made it this far. He pushed his wheels toward York Street.
Previously published in The South Carolina Review, 2010