THE NOTECARD MAN

Your Exclusive Sneak Peek Into THE NOTECARD MAN

Chapter 1

Jenner

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The cocktail of foul aromas was inescapable in the tiny cell. Beneath the sterile cleaning supplies and wiped-down surfaces that gave the appearance of tidiness, there was an invisible, stinking cloud of old sweat, mildew, and layered, multi-sourced urine.

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Maybe all jail cells were like this; the desperation and hopelessness transforming unsavory smells into a more permanent stain. Then again, Jenner didn’t have any frame of reference. It was his first time in the little town jail, and he’d never considered committing a crime before today. Really, it hadn’t even been a crime. Just one gigantic misunderstanding.

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He was the cell’s only occupant, which was just fine with him. It couldn’t hold much more than one person anyway, and he wasn’t in the mood for company. He was laying on a backless bench which, although it looked to be at least forty years old, seemed to have more padding than the cot across the room. His hands clasped behind his head, he stared up at the ceiling and tried not to spiral into despair.

I shouldn’t be in here, Jenner thought, still in a state of semi-disbelief. I can’t be in here. He was a hardworking, law-abiding citizen who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He clenched his teeth at the unfairness of it all, biting down hard enough to make his ears ring.

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It wasn’t just the principle of the thing. It was his reputation, such as it was. While he was far from a pillar of the community, the last thing you needed in a small town was to give people another reason to talk behind your back. Most importantly, he absolutely couldn’t afford to lose his job. As shitty as life could get as the barback at The Brew Dawg, the little money it brought in was his only source of income. He’d have to hope Brenda would give him the benefit of the doubt. His boss’s notoriously terrible temper meant he had, at best, a fifty-fifty shot. He could be out on the street within a month.

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It was an honest mistake! He curled his fists and pounded hard on the old bench. It had happened in the town’s lone grocery store. Jenner had been picking up a few meager staples to tide him over for the week. He knew exactly what to buy to stretch his money to the limit, and he tried to be as healthy as he could on a shoestring budget.

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He’d been walking the aisles quickly, his shopping routine down pat. He was listening to his favorite Gorillaz album (Humanz, and he would, in fact, die on that hill) on his ancient iPod Nano and the semi-functional headphones he’d gotten for free when he’d opened his paltry checking account. The scratched screen obscured what song was playing, and Apple had long since stopped pushing updates.

But Jenner had a powerful and, he knew, almost certainly unhealthy attachment to the little piece of aluminum. Music was his favorite way to escape a life of one disappointment after another. Today had been another doozy. While he gathered his groceries, he’d started thinking about the reaming he’d taken from Brenda the night before. He’d dropped two glasses and forgotten to restock the Jägermeister from the walk-in cooler. Why the hell were people in this town still drinking so much Jäger anyway?

Certainly not his best night, he thought, although he did feel she’d been a little hard on him. As he was going over it in his head, he walked out of the grocery store without paying. Lindy, the new checkout girl with the nose ring that made her look like an adolescent boar, had yelled, but he couldn’t hear her over the heavy thump of the bass beat and the otherworldly alien-like noises of Saturnz Barz. His brain thrummed, “Hahaha mi laugh and collect those trophy, Because mi deserve everything weh music gives mi, Bwoy, unruly nuh light like frisby, The dream, family live that wid me.”

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He was halfway down the street before a deputy who happened to be walking on the other side of the road tackled him from behind. Jenner tried to explain himself, and the manager of the store called it an honest mistake, but the new deputy seemed to want to make a name for himself, so he’d handcuffed Jenner, pushed him roughly into his cruiser, and driven him to jail. The entire process of being booked was surreal. Jenner felt like he was dreaming as he was fingerprinted and his mugshots taken. Thankfully, they let him keep his clothes. They’d given him some water and a few packets of snacks from the vending machine, but otherwise left him alone. He wished they’d let him keep his iPod. It was confiscated with the rest of his “personal effects.”

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That gave him a lot of time with his own thoughts, which was rarely a good thing. With nothing else to do, he reflected on the path he’d taken to hit this brand new personal low.

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**********

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By the time he was eight, Jenner had understood that his parents’ marriage was not a happy one. His father struggled to hold down a job and his mother didn’t work, so there was very little money. Jenner knew not to ask for much, but that didn’t stop his parents from using him as a pawn in their screaming arguments that all too often turned physical.

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Then everything changed. It was three days before he turned eighteen, and Jenner had been relaxing on his beanbag, flattened from use, reading Amazing Spider-Man #361. He’d read it so many times that every edge was dangerously frayed, the spine held together with tape. It had been a surprise present on his eleventh birthday. He knew his mom had spent more than she could afford on the thin volume.

He loved every comic book he’d ever read, but Spider-Man was his favorite hero. Maybe it was because Peter Parker was an ordinary kid who could do incredible things, or maybe it was because Jenner felt a kinship with another teen always struggling for money, or maybe it was just the objectively cool superstrength, acrobatics, and web shooters. Whatever it was, he read every Spider-Man comic he could get his hands on. This particular issue was one of his favorites—it was the first time Spider-Man meets Carnage, who also happened to be Jenner’s favorite villain.

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He jumped when he heard a knock at the door. The Rhysones didn’t get a lot of visitors. Most neighbors had learned to stay away years ago. Curious, he padded into the living room and opened the front door. Bert Landis, the potbellied town sheriff who Jenner privately thought looked like a basset hound, stood on the stoop, hat in hand. Bert looked up, and Jenner could see in his eyes that this wasn’t a social call. Before the sheriff looked quickly away, the flash of sadness, regret and something else – maybe pity – had been as clear as crystal.

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“Jenner, son, I . . . can I come in for a minute?” Jenner stepped aside to let Bert pass and shut the door behind him.

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They faced each other in the poorly lit living room. The sheriff turned his beige campaign hat over in his hands while looking down at the floor. Jenner said nothing, waiting for Bert to speak.

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Finally, the sheriff looked into Jenner’s eyes. “Son, it’s like this. Your parents . . . they . . . there’s been an accident. I’m . . . I’m so sorry. They didn’t make it. Well, they’re . . . dead.”

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The words hit like a punch to the solar plexus. He nodded dumbly, then realized he felt lightheaded. He staggered, and the sheriff put a hand on his shoulder.

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“Sorry son, stupid of me—I should have had you take a seat first. Here we go, that’s it,” he said as he guided Jenner to the faded love seat.

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The only sound was the ticking of the Mickey Mouse wall clock in the small kitchen. The clock his mom loved. Had loved. Ah, Mom. Jenner could feel the warmth of the sheriff’s hand through his threadbare shirt.

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Jenner had always been thankful to the sheriff for his kindness in that moment. It was just a little thing. An absurdly small gesture in the grand scheme of things. But to Jenner, who had grown up without the expectation of intimacy or empathy from any adult other than exception his mother, it was significant. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. He willed tears to flow, but they wouldn’t come. He was sad and scared and in some level of shock, but his first thought was a sense of relief for his mom. She may not have wanted to die, but she’d found a concrete way to get away from her horrible husband. And his dad? Jenner hoped that, even as busy as he was probably going to be in hell, he would still have the opportunity to go fuck himself.

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They sat for what could have been minutes or hours. Jenner had lost all concept of time. Neither could think of anything to say, and Jenner found the near silence was what he was craving anyway. He wanted to turn the world off. Shut everyone out. Slip into a soft darkness where we could curl up and lay there forever. The sheriff finally cleared his throat and asked, “Do you have someone you can call?”

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“Yes,” Jenner lied. His parents had been only children, and his grandparents were all long gone. The only person he would call was his best friend Rainy, and she had a foster “family” who they both agreed were only doing it for the extra money every month. But as she was also seventeen, that answer would not have placated the sheriff. Bert either didn’t want to press the grieving Jenner or just wanted to get the hell out of the house, because he took the answer at face value.

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“OK, son,” he said, pushing his considerable bulk up off the love seat with an involuntary grunt. Jenner stood too, and they walked to the door together.

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On the stoop, the sheriff fit his hat back on his head, then turned back to look at Jenner. “I'm...so sorry, my boy. You can call me any time you need to, ya hear?”

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Jenner, touched, just nodded. The sheriff nodded too, and Jenner could see that his eyes were wet. He’s a good man, Jenner thought. Then the sheriff walked to his aging Crown Victoria cruiser, pulled himself heavily into the driver’s seat, and drove away.

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