THE NOTECARD MAN

Your Exclusive Sneak Peek Into THE NOTECARD MAN

Chapter 1

Jenner

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The tiny cell stank. As far as jails went, it looked pretty clean and neat, but the smell was nothing short of God-awful. The cocktail of foul aromas featured a little bit of old sweat, a touch of mildew and a lot of urine. Maybe no matter how often you cleaned a place like this, you could never get rid of those smells. Maybe they were just part of the fabric of this depressing and desperate place, and they always would be.

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Then again, thought Jenner Rhysone, he thankfully didn’t have much of a frame of reference one way or the other. It was his first time in the little town’s jail, and he’d never so much as considered committing a crime before today. And that had all been one gigantic misunderstanding.

He was the cell’s only occupant, which was just fine with him. Looking around the little cell, it didn’t seem like it could hold much more than one person; the entire thing couldn’t have been more than 70 or 80 feet square. He was laying on the cell’s backless bench which, although it looked to be at least 40 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,” he thought, still in a state of semi-disbelief. “I can’t be in here.” He certainly wasn’t a felon, and although he’d been mistaken for one a few times given the sorry state of his clothes, he wasn’t a vagrant. He was just another hard-working, law-abiding citizen who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But it wasn’t just the principle of the thing that was causing Jenner’s anxiety. 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 about you behind your back. And maybe 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 local pub, the little money it brought in was his only source of income. He’d have to hope his boss Brenda would give him the benefit of the doubt. And her notoriously terrible temper meant he had, at best, a 50/50 shot. He could be out on the street within a month.

Feeling simultaneously sorry for himself and mad at the world, Jenner fumed at the unfairness of the whole situation. None of this should have happened, and it was an honest mistake! He’d been in the town’s lone grocery store, picking up the little food he could afford to tide him over for the week. When you didn’t have much, and Jenner had never had much, you learned to live with less. He knew exactly what he could 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, as he had his shopping routine down pat. He was listening to his favorite Gorillaz album (it was Humanz, and he’d decided that he would, in fact, die on that hill if it ever came to that) on his ancient iPod Nano and the semi-functional headphones he’d gotten for free when he’d opened his paltry checking account. He honestly couldn’t believe the iPod still worked; the screen had so many scratches he could no longer see what song was playing, and Apple had long since stopped pushing updates for its software.

But Jenner had a powerful and, he knew, almost certainly unhealthy attachment to the little piece of aluminum. He had loved music for as long as he could remember, it had become one his favorite ways to escape a life that had been one disappointment after another. And today had been another doozy. After he’d gathered his groceries, he’d started thinking about the reaming out he’d received from Brenda the night before. He’d dropped two glasses and forgotten to restock the Fireball from the walk-in cooler. 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. Apparently, Lindy the checkout girl had been yelling at him, but he couldn’t hear through his headphones.

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He was halfway down the street before he was tackled from behind by a deputy who had happened to be walking on the other side of the road. Jenner had tried to explain himself, and the manager of the store had said it seemed like 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 the jail. The entire process of being booked into prison was surreal. Jenner felt like he was dreaming as he was fingerprinted and getting his mugshots taken. Thankfully, they let him keep his clothes. They’d given him some water and some snack food but had otherwise left him alone.

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And 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 rock bottom.

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His family had never had much money, but his younger years passed without him being able to tell the difference. By the time he was eight, though, he understood that his parents’ marriage was not a happy one. As time went on, it only got worse. His father struggled to hold down a job and his mother didn’t work, so there was very little money coming in. Jenner knew not to ask for much, and he found he didn’t need much. That didn’t stop his parents from using him as a pawn in their screaming arguments that all too often turned physical.

Then, just like that, everything changed. It was three days before he turned 18, and Jenner had been relaxing on his beanbag chair, long ago flattened from many years of use, reading Amazing Spider-Man #361. He’d read it so many times that every edge was dangerously frayed, and the spine was held together with scotch tape. It had been a birthday present years before, and he knew his mom had spent more than she could afford to get it for him. He had loved almost every comic book he’d ever read, and Spider-Man was his favorite hero. Maybe it was because Peter Parker was really only an ordinary kid who found out he could do incredible things, or maybe it was because Jenner felt a kinship with him in that they were both always struggling for money, or maybe it was just the objectively cool super strength, acrobatics and web shooters. Whatever it was, he was hooked, and 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.

He heard a knock at the door and wondered who it could possibly be (the family didn’t get a lot of visitors). Curious, he padded into the living room and unlocked and opened the front door. Bert Landis, the potbellied town sheriff who Jenner had always thought looked almost exactly like a basset hound, stood on the stoop, hat in hand. When Jenner answered the door, Bert looked up at him, and he could see in his eyes that he was not there to deliver good news.

“Jenner, son, I…can I come in for a minute?” Jenner stepped aside to let him pass.

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After he shut the door, the two stood facing each other in the poorly lit living room. The sheriff was turning the beige campaign hat over and over in his hands and looking down at the floor. It was clear he was nervous. Jenner said nothing, waiting for Bert to speak.

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

Although he had been expecting it since he saw the sheriff on the doorstep, the words still hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. He nodded dumbly, then realized he felt lightheaded. He staggered back a step, and the sheriff put his hand on his shoulder.

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

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The two sat together in silence. The only sound was the ticking of the Mickey Mouse wall clock in the small kitchen. The clock his mom had always loved. Ah, Mom. He put his head in his hands and the sheriff placed a hand on his shoulder and left it there. Jenner could feel its warmth through his threadbare shirt.

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Jenner had always been thankful to the man 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, it was significant. He had not grown up to be able to expect any such intimacy or empathy from any adult, with the exception of his mother. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. He willed the tears to flow, as he knew that’s what the sheriff expected to see, but they wouldn’t come. He was certainly sad and scared and in some level of shock, but his first thought when he heard the news had been 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 his dad. He would miss her, and he knew she had loved him with all of her heart. He was mostly just glad her nightmare was over. And his dad? Jenner hoped that, even as busy as he was probably going to be in Hell, that he would still have the opportunity to go f*** himself.

They sat there 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 that the near-silence was what he was craving anyway. He wanted to shut 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 17, that answer would not have placated the sheriff. Bert either didn’t want to press the grieving Jenner or he 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, and then turned back to look at Jenner. “You can call me any time you need to, son, ya hear?”

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 into the driver’s seat, and drove away.

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