Saint Oswald Read online

  Saint Oswald, Copyright © 2020 by Jay Bonansinga

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Burns and Lea Books

  11018 Radleigh Lane

  Louisville, KY 40209

  www.burnsandleabooks.com

  Layout by www.formatting4U.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Saint Oswald/Jay Bonansinga 2nd edition

  Praise for Jay Bonansinga

  Robert Kirkman’s

  The Walking Dead: Descent

  “Descent maintains the series’ strength due to the author’s truly powerful ability to describe the series’ world and to establish tone, pacing, kinesthetics, and every other nut and bolt that holds a good novel together.”

  ―Booklist on Robert Kirkman’s

  The Walking Dead: Descent

  Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead:

  Rise of the Governor

  “Not for the faint of heart, this book runs on pressure-cooker suspense, graphically described bloodshed, and dark acts of brutality… This riveting character study adds a new dimension to the oeuvre by fleshing out established characters and plot lines.”

  ―School Library Journal on Robert Kirkman’s

  The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

  “Zombie-apocalypse stories are perfect for miserable winter weather regardless, but for those obsessed with The Walking Dead (such as yours truly), this is essential reading. This is the epitome of a page-turner, and makes subway rides just breeze by. And, that end - woof.”

  ―REFINERY29 on Robert Kirkman’s

  The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

  “An excellent companion to the The Walking Dead comic books. The story is enriched by the novel format, and the characterization of the series’ most hated villain is something no fan will want to miss.”

  ―Examiner.com on Robert Kirkman’s

  The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

  “This book stands alone and is a compelling read for fans of the series or just fans of zombies. Watch out though, because once you get a taste of the particular Kirkman brand of zombie mayhem, catching up on past issues is just around the corner.”

  ―The Ossuary on Robert Kirkman’s

  The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

  “The story makes a great novel. You’ll get sucked in and can easily visualize everything that is happening. It’s simply a great read.”

  ―Comicvine.com on Robert Kirkman’s

  The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

  “... packs in a twist so mind-bogglingly good that Shyamalan should no longer use the term.”

  ―Den of Geek

  The Ulysses Grove Series

  Frozen

  “Frozen is the latest example of author Jay Bonansinga’s impressive range, depth, and audacity... Bonansinga nimbly avoids all melodramatic traps and makes his two investigators believable and moving.”

  ―The Chicago Tribune

  “A relentless chiller that leaves you guessing and gasping again and again”.

  ―David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author

  of the Rambo novels.

  “A thrilling, beautifully paced skyrocket of a novel.”

  ― Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author

  of Ghost Story

  

  PART I:

  Body Count

  “There’s nothing glorious in dying. Anybody can do it.”

  - Johnny Rotten

  1.

  Oswald Leonardo Means pulls up in front of Northwestern Memorial Hospital at a quarter to 1, woozy from smoking an entire bowl of skunkweed en route. The doctor needs to talk to him, and when doctors say they need to talk, it’s rarely a good sign. It’s never, “Hey, your tests have come back negative and your cholesterol is normal and you happen to be our one-millionth patient so you can tear up the bill! Go have a cocktail on us!”

  He parks the Chevy S-10 at a meter on Huron, climbs out, and secures the canvas flap over the bed.

  The truck is Oswald’s branch office, the cargo bed stocked with a road case full of provisions. He has enough iron and ammo back there to wage a small insurrection. He also has some cash, an old bullet-proof Kevlar vest, a few stolen credit cards, a change of clothes, a couple of fake IDs, and enough canned goods to survive a nuclear apocalypse. He turns and staggers across the sidewalk.

  At nearly 275 pounds, Oswald walks with the wounded gait of a behemoth, his Wolverine boots shaking the earth. A full-blooded Winnebago, he has skin the color of weak coffee, and a huge, square, handsome head. His XXL chambray shirt is soaked through with the perspiration of forgotten fever dreams. His thatch of coal-black hair dangles in his face. For years, he has held his shit together in a field not known for its healthy working conditions or generous retirement packages. He has managed to survive and remain firmly entrenched in the middle echelon of his profession. But recently, with the news of Matilda’s illness and imminent demise, he has let himself go. He has medicated himself, turned inward, and gotten sloppy. In other words, he’s a hot mess.

  He crosses the lobby, ignoring the shrill voice of the desk nurse calling out for him to check in first before he goes up to Oncology.

  In the elevator, he takes deep breaths, girding himself for what he’s about to hear. Still dazed from the cheap dope and the harsh Chicago sun, he lets his senses adjust to the hermetically sealed, disinfected world of the medical center, and he focuses his thoughts on presenting himself well to the physician. Oswald clings to the old superstitions. He will never put a hat on a chair, never light three cigarettes with the same match, never ride a horse named Firecracker, and never play cards against a man named Doc. He also believes with all his heart and soul that if he’s polite and deferential to the arrogant little prick that runs the cancer ward, God will bestow Oswald with good news.

  “Mr. Smith,” a voice greets Oswald the moment he steps off the elevator.

  The overhead light blazes a uniform fluorescence like a halo around the well-groomed young medico leaning against the nurses’ counter. He looks like a game-show host in his white lab coat, his hair swept to one side with such perfection it looks styled for a film or a commercial. He extends a hand.

  “Hey, Dr. Blume,” Oswald says, taking the tiny, dry, manicured hand into his grip. Oswald has laborer’s hands, calloused, rough, as strong as grappling hooks. The doctor’s hand vanishes within the muscular convolutions of Oswald’s mitt. “I came soon as I got your message.”

  The doctor puffs his cheeks and blows air out in the international gesture of hesitation. “Why don’t we go into my office?”

  They walk single file—Blume in the lead, Oswald trudging after him like a bodyguard—down the hallway. No words are spoken between the two men until they are safely and discreetly ensconced in the specialist’s private office with the door closed. The doctor takes a seat behind a massive, immaculate teak and rosewood desk.

  Oswald settles into an armchair canted across the front of the palatial desk.

  “Now, we’ve discussed the matter of hospice care for your wife,” Blume begins.

  “Um... yeah.”

  Blume looks at a document in a file, and then looks up at Oswald. “You’re self-employed, correct?”

  Oswald scrambles to follow the thread of the conversation, his mind swimming now, questions crashing. “Um... yeah. Correct. Exactly.”

  “In terms of insurance, you might want to check with your private health care provider to see whether home hospice care is covered. It can be expensive—even with co-pays—so you’ll need to make financial arrangements.”

  “Wait... um... yeah.” Oswald sinks into his seat, his chest tightening with panic. “But... can I ask... um.”

  “I’m sorry, go ahead.”

  “Home care?”

  “That’s right. I’m recommending this for your wife. I think it’s best.”

  “Wait... you’re saying Matilda can go home?”

  The doctor tents his hands with a practiced, furrowed expression on his face. He looks as though he’s pulling this demeanor from his Handbook of Bedside Manner, page 207 (See Diagram). “I’m sorry, I was under the impression that we had discussed this.” He clears his throat. “Oftentimes, the patient prefers to be surrounded by loved ones in the final stages.”

  “So she can go home?”

  “Mr. Smith—”

  “She’s in remission?”

  “No, Mr. Smith—”

  “Call me Oswald.”

  “Oswald, I’m sorry. You misunderstand. Your wife is in the late stages of her illness. At this point, it’s best if she is simply kept comfortable and allowed to be in her familiar surroundings.”

  “Wait. Okay. I’m not following. She’s still dying but she can go home?”

  “It’s what we recommend. We’ve already discussed it with her. She will—”

  “You discussed it with her? Going home? This is what Matilda wants?”

  “Yes, exactly, this is what she wants, which is why I’m recommending that you check with your insurance provider because the special equipment, the bed, the IV, the medication and whatnot, it can
be extremely cost prohibitive.” He stares. “Mr. Smith? Oswald? Are you okay?”

  The sound of the doctor’s voice fades into the drone of white noise in Oswald’s head. He looks down. He tries to breathe, but it’s not easy. His eyes have welled up to the point that he can hardly see, and his lips will not cooperate. They tremble now. He looks up through tears at the doctor and he says, “How long?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How long does she have?”

  Blume tents his hands and begins to speak. “The thing you have to keep in mind is that each and every case is different and your wife is certainly—”

  For a huge, muscle-bound stoner, Oswald L. Means can move with unsettling speed, and right now his right hand shoots out across the desk and grabs the physician’s tented fingers, cutting off Blume’s monologue. Oswald’s single enormous hand covers both of Blume’s, and the grip tightens on them like a vise. “Just. Tell. Me. How. Much. Time. She. Has. Left.”

  The doctor stiffens, mortified by the unexpected display from this normally docile behemoth. He speaks the words with a flat, unaffected monotone. “Two to four weeks.”

  Oswald swallows and lets go of the doctor.

  Across the room, a ghostly hallucination appears.

  Oswald remembers the gangly accountant with the thick Coke-bottle eyeglasses. One of Oswald’s bullets shattered one of those thick lenses.. Now the phantom accountant starts to laugh at the irony of Oswald dealing with such things as hospice.

  Oswald dries his tears and looks at the doctor. “It would be great if I could see her.”

  In the old wedding photos, many of them hidden away now in boxes and forgotten storage units, Matilda Valkenburg radiated girl-next-door innocence—the kind of fresh-scrubbed prettiness you sometimes see behind the counter at a Dairy Queen or at a regional beauty contest. Her huge, earnest cornflower-blue eyes once gazed out at the world from beneath flaxen bangs like a character in a Li’l Abner comic strip. But as she aged and negotiated the late eighties and early nineties, she began to emulate a young Madonna—complete with the fishnets, Carnaby Street gloves, and peroxide-blonde swirl—always as plucky and strong as the Material Girl, ever outspoken and spiritual to a fault. She had always believed that every blade of grass had a soul, and that karma reached into each and every molecule of the world. Although she and Oswald never produced any offspring—none that we know of, Matilda often joked—she loved children and animals and red wine and the makeshift Buddhism of Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra. But most important, at least to Oswald, was the fact that Matilda remained—all through the years of their marriage—oblivious to what Oswald did for a living.

  “Don’t forget my slippers,” she admonishes her husband only seconds after Oswald brushes into her hospital room, trying to paste on a fake smile for her benefit.

  She instantly puts him to work getting her stuff ready to go home. Nestled in a warren of pillows and blankets, she’s a lot thinner now, the signs of age and suffering having their way with her looks. The cords in her graceful neck appear more prominent, her face a little more lined, and her once lustrous blonde hair now the color of wheat, pulled back in a tight ponytail. But that lovely small-town girl still resides in her eyes—those passionate, stubborn, spiritual, twinkling aqua-blue eyes. “I left my last pair at Mayo when we were up there in the spring.”

  “Got ’em!” Oswald finds the little Bedazzled flip-flops on the floor of the temporary closet next to her purse. She hasn’t actually used the purse in months, maybe a year. Lately, her existence lies between the margins of medical institutions and her bedroom at home. She has no opportunities anymore to dig for makeup, search for her little weed pipe, or whip out her debit card like a gunslinger. The purse is merely nostalgia to her now. This kills Oswald. “What about your nipple clamps? Your crotchless panties?”

  “That’s a bad joke.”

  He grins at her. “You’d miss my jokes, admit it. I wasn’t around, you’d miss ’em.”

  “Actually, that’s the one thing I will not miss when I’m not around.”

  His smile collapses. He swallows hard and goes over to her. Gently, carefully, he pulls back the covers and reveals her emaciated form, which is dressed in a travel robe. He tenderly slips the flip-flops on her tiny feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The way Oswald meticulously positions each slipper on each tiny, bony foot reveals a certain care, a concern that would rival an altar boy at high mass preparing the host for communion. “You ain’t going nowhere, you’re gonna be dancing on all of our graves.”

  “Oswald, honey, you don’t have to lie.”

  He stands up and looks at her. “I’m just reporting what Dr. Blume told me.”

  “That’s another lie. That asshole hasn’t said a positive thing since I came to him three years ago with back pain. Oswald, just cut it out.”

  Oswald feels the barricade within him cracking. He wipes his eyes and lies down on the bed next to her, the force of his weight making the high-tech gurney creak. He puts his gnarled, muscular arm—the one with the Indian headdress tattooed on the bicep—around the tiny woman. He plants a kiss on her ear. She smiles and kisses his tattoo. “It’s okay, Ozzie. I’m fine with all this.”

  He swallows again and says in a small, strangled voice, “That makes one of us.”

  She sits up, brushes herself off, takes a deep breath, and looks into her husband’s eyes. “I’m going home to die, and I’m okay with that, and you should be, too. Now get off me before you break the bed.”

  2.

  The next day, Oswald enters the laundromat’s sultry-soapy atmosphere, fighting waves of dizziness from too much weed. He pauses just inside the entrance and scans the fluorescent-drenched space for any sign of the Candy Man. At the moment, all Oswald can see through his double vision are sullen black matrons loading battered dryers with yellowed linens. Muzak drones accompaniment to the ranks of rumbling washing machines, and the air smells of soap-perfumed mildew. Oswald hears a familiar voice coming from the rear, outside the open doorway of a tiny office.

  “It ain’t whatchacall rocket science, Shirley, awright?” The Candy Man is back there waving a pair of stained Lane Bryant panties that look as though they might fit a Volkswagen Bus, making a point to an obese woman in a house dress. “You put them colors in a different machine from the whites.”

  The old woman snatches the panties away in a huff and shuffles back to her perch.

  “And lay off the bleach!” the Candy Man calls after the matron, shaking his head. An emaciated black man in his middle years, the Candy Man wears velveteen bellbottoms and waffled sandals. His lime-green Nehru jacket is buttoned up against his wattle, and a small yarmulke sits atop his big bush of an Afro. A part-time pimp, shylock, and drug dealer, the Candy Man is the only two-bit player left in the game who is desperate enough to hire a reprobate like Oswald. The rest of the criminal world has long since written off “the Big Chief” (as Oswald is known in Mafia circles) as a basket case, a dead man walking, a besotted casualty of “the life.”

  Now the Candy Man is about to turn back to his office when he pauses and does an exaggerated double take, noticing Oswald lumbering toward him. “Now lookee, lookee, lookee what the cat done dragged in. Mr. Means, I presume.”

  “Afternoon, Candy.” Oswald approaches like a faltering ship about to capsize. He struggles to avoid slurring his words. “Got a minute?”

  “You been hittin’ the Maddog again?”

  “No... I mean, what do you mean?” Oswald stands there wavering slightly.

  “You look like eighty miles of bad shit is what.”

  “Can we talk for a second?”

  The Candy Man gives him a non-committal shrug. “Just so long as you don’t sit down-wind—you smell like some kinda stinky-ass wet dog fur.”

  The skinny pimp turns and leads Oswald into a cluttered office filled with moldering tapestries of naked Nubian goddesses and marijuana plants. Behind a massive desk stacked with homemade porn DVDs and eight-by-ten glossies of nameless C-movie starlets, hangs a row of purple grow-lights, their sickly pallor shining down through veils of smoke at rows of pot plants.