Accounting

John Denniston scowled. “I’d like to know who keeps doing this – and when I find him, I’m going to bust his head.” Two pieces of masking tape formed an “x” on the windshield just above the steering wheel of his rusted ’73 Pontiac. Denniston peeled them off and threw them in his garage, next to the pile of crumpled tapes he had removed at different times in the past two years. He grabbed his lunch then angrily ripped open the door and started the engine.

A mixture of his breath and the early fall air had caused condensation to form on the rear-view mirror. He brushed it off and turned away quickly when the amber hue of sunrise revealed his white hair and sunken eyes, for he was ashamed of the age he showed at forty-seven. Thick blue exhaust rolled out of the black car as he drove toward the highway, rubbing the glue from the tape off his fingers and muttering about vandals who wreck what they don’t own.

“You simply have to see someone about this, Larry. I won’t put up with it anymore – I’m making an appointment today.”

“Come on, Sandy, what the heck do you care if I do this, I’m always up before you are anyway.”

Larry Barlennes had been waxing his car again – at four in the morning. His balding brow and youthful face were a contradiction in terms. At thirty years of age he was a driven, hard-working young man, motivated by things that few cared to understand.

His blonde wife screamed at him. “You’re not going to keep doing this…it’s crazy!”

“O.k., Sandy, O.k., you’ll wake the kids…what is it you want me to do…see a shrink? Alright, set up an appointment with somebody and I’ll go. But you’ll see that I’m fine and all your worrying is for nothing.” He carefully polished a tiny corner of his license plate and went in to shower.

John Denniston arrived at Dakes Manufacturing and punched the clock just before six-thirty. He dressed in his oil-stained blue denim coveralls and walked out into the plant, ritually waving to the same men he’d worked with for twenty-seven years. An industrial stench hung in the air, a mixture of grease, dirt-caked floors and grimy wooden shipping crates. Tools, buckets of rags and pressed metal lawn mower decks were strewn across the area John worked in. He kicked a bucket out of his way, then opened his toolbox, grinning like a schoolboy at the calendar hanging on the inside.

“Denniston, we got a problem on Press Seven,” a voice boomed over the P.A. system.

“Yeah, right…I’, comin’….I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet.” He pushed the red toolbox onto the shop floor amidst the thundering, rhythmic pounding of huge presses which contorted metal into a bondage they would bear until they rusted in some junkyard.

A forklift horn blasted, rousing John from his ponderings about revenge for the jerk that kept putting tape on his window. “Watch out where you’re walking, you idiot!” the trucker yelled angrily as he shot by.

“Good morning, Cory,” Larry Barlennes said as he strode into the office, impeccably dressed in a crisp white shirt and dark blue three-piece pin stripe.

“Yes, good morning, Mr. Barlennes, I have a message for you…from your wife. It sounds urgent.”

Barlennes picked up the slip of Dakes Manufacturing’s memo paper as he walked through the rows of desks. It read “Doctor Drew; 9:00, 6801 South 7th Street.”

“Thanks Cory,” he said, unlocking his office door. His leather chair exuded a thick aroma as he sat down, studying the day’s work and writing his appointment on the calendar. He lit up a cigarette, then sipped at his coffee cup, waving to some coworkers who were just arriving. He heard the sounds of the presses too, rumbling in the distance across the factory like the drums of natives preparing for war.

His phone rang. “Accounting; Barlennes,” he chimed, like he had a thousand times before.

“Larry, it’s Hal, say I need you to do me a favor…Could you pick up my boy after the baseball game tonight…I’ll be working and I won’t be able to get him home.”

“Right, Hal…another night with her again, huh?”

“What does a punk like you know about trying to live with a difficult woman for 30 years? What I do is my own business….Besides, Maria loves me. Well, will you pick him up or not? I don’t have all day.”

“Not this time, Hal – I think I better warn you that Helen knows something’s going on – and so does your boy.”

As the phone clicked an alarm went off in the plant and a loud shout came over the Public Address system.

“Press Four, Press Four…Denniston, get over here QUICK!”

John Denniston had just taken a bite out of a doughnut. “Aw, come you dopes, I told you to run that thing with more lubrication, now you got a jam.” He went running over to the machine. Powdered sugar was dusted across his hands and face like clown makeup.

“What’d you do here, Manwell?” he shouted at the press operator. He noticed a large stack of lawn mower decks stacked against a steel girder. Another laborer was painting the flaws fluorescent orange, so welders could repair them later.

“My name is Immanuel, Senor, not Manwell.” The Hispanic boy glared at the white man with a threatening glance.

“Don’t try to be a tough guy, Kid…I’ll have your job….I been here a long time and I can do anything I want – Manwell, or is it Manual Labor?” Denniston sneered as he pushed the boy aside. “You see, you stupid foreigner,” Denniston grabbed him by the shirt and stuck his head up inside the press, “If you keep enough lubrication on this thing, the parts won’t stick. Now YOU can pry that deck outta’ there.”

“I did use enough lubrication, Senor; perhaps your setup was wrong…”

“I never set up anything wrong; I’ve been a mechanic for twenty-seven years, you spic.”

Immanuel threw a punch at Denniston and knocked him over. A foreman who watched the whole exchange called out, “You – Immanuel, IN MY OFFICE, NOW.”

The boy spit on the ground next to Denniston, who was pale and visibly shaken by the violence. “I coulda’ had him,” Denniston sheepishly said with a tough look, wiping the blood from his lip. The workers around him said nothing. They stared for a minute, then walked away.

Larry Barlennes arrived at Doctor Drew’s office precisely at 8:55. He waited impatiently, shuffling through the few magazines and drumming his fingers on the end tables.

“Hello, Mr. Barlennes.” A tall woman in her fifties opened the door. She wore a grey suit that matched her greying hair. “Welcome…”

The two shook hands, then went into Dr. Drew’s office. Larry looked around, staring at the modern art paintings and the rows of books, lined up neatly on the shelves. “This is nice, very comfortable…,” he said, trying to relax.

“Your wife tells me you’re interested in some therapy.” Dr. Drew took a chair behind her desk and sat back.

“Naw, I’m not interested in any therapy. It’s my wife…she thinks I’m nuts.”

“Why?”

“There’s really no reason, I’m normal, just like everybody else---“

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Barlennes?”

“I’m an accountant.”

“Do you like your job?”

“Actually, I hate it…but it pays well.”

“Why would you take a job that you hate? Certainly you must have been aware of your aversion to accounting while you were attending college.”

“I was…but it was like something I had to do. I had to make things balance, things had to be correct…I don’t know…It was just something I felt compelled to do.”

Dr. Drew wrote a few notes on a piece of yellow legal paper. She looked up at Larry and smiled a moment, then continued with her questions.

“Your wife told me that you do some interesting things around the house…can you give me an example of what she means?”

“I, I suppose she’s talking about the medicine chest.”

“How’s that?”

“I arrange all the bottles every morning after I shave and shower, in order from smallest to largest and from A to Z.”

“Why?” she asked, putting on her glasses.

“It’s just easier to have things organized, you know, things are easier to find.”

“If you could do any job, what would it be? What would you really like to do?”

“That’s easy…I’d be an engineer. I love mechanisms, you know, I study them all the time.”

“Do you hate anyone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you HATE anyone?” she demanded.

“Probably not, I’m a pretty easy going man. I mind my own business and leave others to their foolishness.”

“Foolishness?”

“You know, extramarital affairs and that kind of stuff….” Larry reflected on his conversation with Hal earlier in the day.

“Is there any reason you think someone shouldn’t have an extramarital affair?”

“Yeah, it hurts people.”

“Hurts who?”

“Mostly little kids who are unable to defend themselves.”

“Against what?”

“Pain.”

“What kind of pain?”

“Pain, you know, hurting pains, there are all kinds of them. Certainly you’ve had pain in your life.”

“Certainly…but what kind of pain are you thinking of?”

“Little kids have pain when adults inflict them with fear…mostly.”

“Can you think of an incident when you felt fear?”

“Naw, everything’s been fine for me.”

“Are you quite sure of that? Think back, as far as you can, think about pains and fears. What do you remember?”

Larry Barlennes closed his eyes and pondered the past. Dr. Drew glanced up at the intensity of his meditations, then she wrote out a prescription. When Larry opened his eyes he saw the script laying on the front of Dr. Drew’s desk.

“What’s this for?”

“Oh, it will help you sleep a little better.”

“I thought psychologists weren’t able to dispense drugs.”

“You’re right, but since I’m a psychoanalyst, I do write out prescriptions, and I’d like you to take the medication. It will help you.”

“Psychoanalyst…Oh no, not one of those Freudians.”

“Oh, yes.” Dr. Drew smiled proudly.

“You don’t really believe all that nonsense about people being screwed up during childhood.” Larry Barlennes smirked apathetically.

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, I don’t. People are responsible for their actions.”

“I agree.”

“Then it’s unlikely that childhood has much to do with the actions that people do now.”

“Mr. Barlennes,” Dr. Drew stated flatly, “We’re not here to debate theory. I’d like to help you with your problems.”

“But I don’t have any…My life is fine.”

“Would you be willing to come back for a few more visits?” she asked compassionately. “I really do believe you could gain from therapy. It is evident to me that there are some things buried in your past and if we exhume them you’ll stop waxing your car at four in the morning.”

Barlennes blushed a bit, knowing that his nocturnal actions were a bit unusual. “Alright, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll meet with you for the next four days, but at the end of this week, I’m done with the sessions, O.k.?”

“Deal.”

The two shook hands.

“Keep thinking about your past, Larry. I want to discuss it tomorrow.”

He nodded as if to say, “I’ll try.”

“What’d he get, suspension without pay?” John Denniston asked his coworker Laydon Stemling as they ate lunch together.

“Why should he? You caused the problem,” Laydon replied. “”You’ve always been causing problems like that as long as I’ve known you. You got a big mouth and a short fuse, John. One of these days somebody’s gonna’ kill you. Don’t put it past those Hispanics; they’re a hot-tempered bunch and they’ll deend their jobs against any intruder.”

“You don’t know nothin’, Stemling. There isn’t a Mexican in this plant that has an I.Q. higher than 25. What could they come up with?” He rubbed some more of the tape adhesive off his fingers, then he exploded with caustic fury.

“It’s him, that rotten spic…it’s him!”

“Him…what are you talking about?”

“Immanuel --- he’s the guy that’s been putting the tape on my window.”

Stemling picked up his lunch and told John he had to talk to somebody else before lunch break was over. John saw him shake his head as he walked away.

John muttered some curses while he ate his lunch, as two men in three piece suits walked by. One of them was Larry Barlennes.

“Hey, John, how’s it going today?” An older man with grey hair and long sideburns said to him. Barlennes looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing.

“O.k., don’t you office jockeys have anything else to do but walk around the plant? What about all your high level decisions?”

“We heard about a problem with press four, and we wanted to ask around. There’s a big production job going through on that press and it can’t be delayed.” Larry Barlennes answered Denniston’s question.

“No problems with that press; it’s mine and I’ll keep it running,” he said with pride.

“Good,” Larry answered, his eyes wide open, “Very good.”

Barlennes met Dr. Drew at her office at ten o’clock on Tuesday. Before she could even ask a question he blurted out, “I have something to tell you about my past. I did a lot of thinking about it and I recall an event that you may find worthwhile.”

His sudden willingness startled Dr. Drew. She raised her eyebrows, watching the man struggle as he started to unveil the darkness of his mind. “Go ahead, Larry, tell me.”

“Well there was this time when I was very small…”

“Can you remember how old you were?”

“My best guess is that I was four or five…but that’s only a guess.”

“Go on.”

“There was a man, a big black-haired man who used to come to our house after my dad left for work.”

“In the morning?”

“No, my dad worked second shift, in a factory like Dakes…Anyway this guy used to come over and sit with my mother. I was too young to think about it then, but I know he wasn’t just sitting with her. I remember telling him to go away…but he laughed at me. One time I screamed at him and told him to leave my house. He came down in the basement…”

“The basement?” Drew asked, puzzled.

“I slept in the basement.”

“And what did he do?”

“He held me by my stomach and told me he got strong because he was a mechanic. He squeezed the flesh so hard I cried. Then he held his fist in front of my face and told me it was ‘the sleeper’ and if I didn’t shut up he was going to hit me. I remember that incident very clearly.”

“You say you were scared…”

“Terrified…what could I do against someone so big?”

“Denniston, Denniston,” the P.A. system blared, “We got a jam on press four.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way.” John went running toward the press. He looked up at the office windows and saw the man with the sideburns shouting and pointing toward the press. John couldn’t hear what he was saying but he saw the rage in his face and he remembered that the press had a special job order.

“Let me in here.” He pushed everyone aside, noticing Immanuel was not there.

“Musta’ fired him,” he thought with a grin, as he worked his way up inside the huge press, searching for an obstruction. A metallic scraping sound sent a shot of adrenaline up his spine. For a moment he feared the press might move while he was working inside it. He figured the noise was coming from another press, so he continued to look for the problem. Then he heard the gargantuan press groan like the Cyclops when Ulysses had blinded it. Struggling to get out, he screamed in terror as the huge metal tooling descended rapidly toward him. In the seconds that followed, other men tried to stop the machine by pressing emergency buttons, but none of them worked. Denniston jumped to the flat metal bed, hoping the metal stop bars would prevent him from being crushed. He lay flat on the press stuck like a wolf in a trap until the great behemoth lurched to a halt, inches above his head. He turned pale and passed out. The echoes of his screams filled the plant.

On Wednesday Dr. Drew and Barlennes continued their discussions, entering deeper into the crevasse of Larry’s mind.

Dr. Drew was interested in the effect of the medication.

“Have you been taking your medicine like a good boy?”

Barlennes laughed. “Now you sound like my mother…yes, I’ve been taking the stuff. It makes me a little tired, but I don’t notice any major difference.”

“You probably won’t for a while. It generally takes two to three weeks to work effectively. But keep taking it,” she added quickly, “Now, what can you add to the experiences you told me about yesterday?”

“I thought about it again last night, and there were so many times that man hurt me and scared me. He did many things to keep me from telling my dad about the situation between him and my mother.”

“Is there any other incident which really stands out, other than the ‘sleeper’ you told me about?”

“He accused me of stealing something from him once.”

“What’s important about that?”

“I recall my mother holding my hand over a gas stove to punish me from taking something from him. He watched the whole thing – grinning like a pirate.”

“Apparently your mother was quite taken with this man.”

“She was…how could anyone do something like that to their child unless they love someone else more?” Dr. Drew listened closely as the bitterness dripped off his words.

“Continue…share your feelings about the event…”

“He’s in stable condition, nothing serious, just some minor burns.” Two nurses stood by a hospital bed where John Denniston lay sleeping under the influence of a mild sedative.

“Any idea how it happened?’ John’s foreman asked Laydon Stemling, who had accompanied the ambulance to the hospital.

“No, there’s never been a fire in the maintenance area before…but it was kind of dirty. He had a lot of stuff layin’ around.”

Denniston was slowly coming back to consciousness.

“What happened, John?” the foreman asked.

“Some jerk did this to me…it’s that spic, I’m tellin’ you. He did this to me.”

Laydon and the foreman looked at each other, confused by Denniston’s words.

Denniston watched their reaction. “You guys thing I’m nuts, well I’m tellin’ you that Immanuel Fortez is responsible for this and I’m going to prove it.”

Stemling looked at him and tried to persuade him otherwise. “Immanuel left the company after your fight the other day…he couldn’t have caused the fire. You must have left some solvents open…”

“You know I’m careful with that stuff. Admit it. He’s been putting the tape on my windshield and he set the fire. And for all I know he screwed up the press that almost killed me yesterday. Come on, both you guys know it was him.”

“We don’t know anything,” John’s foreman said, “Just get some rest and we’ll see you tomorrow.”

Denniston lay back on the emergency room bed, his brow furrowed in a bitter rage, studying his burned hands and arms. The phone in the emergency room rang. He listened to the conversation between the nurse and the caller.

“Yes, he’s been slightly burned but generally he’s fine…Who am I to say is calling? His accountant? O.k., I’ll tell him you were interested in his condition. Thank you for your concern. What’s that? O.k., I’ll tell him.”

She hung up the phone and walked to Denniston’s bed. “Your accountant called and wanted to know if you were hurt. I told him you were going to be alright. He was glad to hear that and he would be looking forward to settling the last account.”

Denniston said nothing, but he knew he had never used the services of an accountant in his life.”

“Good morning, Larry. How are you feeling today?” Dr. Drew asked, smiling.

“You know, I AM feeling better, and I haven’t waxed my car in the last two days.” He grinned, thinking that Dr. Drew was impressed.

“Quite frankly, I’m glad to hear that. We only have two days to go – that is unless I can persuade you to continue to take the therapy.”

“No, I think two more days is probably enough. I’ve faced a few feelings and I think things will change. My wife has mentioned she noticed a change in me already…”

“Now, about this man you keep mentioning – there is something I think we have to face – do you know who he is?”

Barlennes hesitated, like a child standing at the top of a slide, ready to go, then climbing back down the ladder out of caution.

“I’m sorry,” he said mechanically, “---I do not know who the man was.”

“Yes, you do,” Dr. Drew reacted sharply. Her many years of experience told her Barlennes was hiding something.

“I remember what he looked like back then, but I don’t know his name. My mother just referred to him as ‘honey.’ He had thick black hair and brown eyes, and as I mentioned, he seemed to be very strong. Of course anyone would have seemed to be strong to me then, at five years of age.”

“Maybe we can discover his name if you think back again to the most threatening experience you had with him. Think hard. This is important.”

“I don’t have to think hard. I remember the experience as if it were yesterday.”

“And?”

“I told him to go away. I told him to stop hitting my mother and I told him I would hurt him someday if he didn’t leave us alone. He told me to get in the basement where I belonged. I said no. My mother told him to leave me alone. But he picked me up and threw me against the wall. I told him to stop hurting us…but he wouldn’t listen. Then he said he could fix it so I couldn’t see him hurting us. I remember clearly that he put two pieces of masking tape over my eyes. He said if I took it off he would hit me again. So I left it on until he was gone. I remember how my tears stayed inside until he was gone. It hurt real bad when my mother tore it off.”

Dr. Drew closed her eyes with a mild anguish. “Larry,” she said forcefully, as if she were talking to a child, “do you remember the man’s name?”

“What’s the difference if I tell you?” Barlennes was angry now, clenching his teeth, leaning forward with stern look. “What are you going to do about it? What could anybody do about it? The guy got away with it. He hurt me, he hurt my mother, he hurt

my family. What could you do about it today? What good will it do? I’ll never tell you his name. Yes, I remember it, as clearly as anything I’ll ever remember. And I know where he lives and I know where he works, and I know what he eats for lunch. I know everything about him. You bet I know his name, but I’ll never tell you. Never. This is between him and me.”

He got up off his chair, pacing furiously, shouting now with a venom. “What about all the little children out there right now? What about them? What will your theories do for their wounded souls and minds? Who is going to settle the accounts for them?”

Dr. Drew watched him closely, observing the agony tearing apart his psyche. It was like so many others she had seen throughout the years, torn, beaten, abused. She worried more about him though. His abilities, his intelligence were dangerous weapons in the hands of one driven so hard by revenge. She worried most when he asked who would settle the accounts, for now she understood his intentions.

On Friday morning, Larry cancelled his appointment with Dr. Drew. He left her a message: “Feeling much better. Thanks for all your help.” Larry walked through the plant at about 10:00, during the normal break time. He saw John Denniston leaning up against the coffee machine, talking with Laydon Stemling and Charlie Hobbs.

“Good morning men, how are things going today?” Larry asked cheerfully.

Stemling answered, O.k., same problems as usual, but nothing we can’t handle.”

“Hey John, heard you had some real bad times the last couple of weeks.”

“Yeah, nearly got killed by press four.”

“That’s too bad, you got to watch out for that thing, it’s a real sleeper.”

Denniston screwed up his face with a perplexed look. Then it hit him. After twenty-three years he remembered. He tried to be calm. After a few gulps of coffee, he crushed the cup so Barlennes could see it, then threw it in the garbage can. “You work in the Accounting department, don’t you?” Denniston asked Barlennes, trembling a bit from anger, and more from fear.

“Yes I do. And I make every effort to balance the books, no matter how long it takes.”

Denniston stared at Barlennes. Larry smiled and walked away.

Three years passed. John Denniston continued to tear masking tape off his windshield, still threatening to “bust the guy’s head” but never going to the police about the problem. He grew more fearful every day, for he remembered what he had done to little Larry Setzer so many years ago.

Although Dr. Drew had moved to another city, she called Mrs. Barlennes from time to time, asking about Larry’s progress. Sandy Barlennes was glad to report that Larry didn’t wax the car any more about 4 A.M. Still, she was a bit concerned about his growing interest in dueling pistols. Dr. Drew assured her that a hobby would do Larry a world of good and that she shouldn’t be concerned about it.

One autumn morning John Denniston woke to find his windshield had been sprayed with fluorescent orange paint. The same “x” was located on his windshield, and though he tried to scrape it off before going to work, he had to leave or be late. As he approached a bridge across the freeway Denniston saw the black figure of a young man etched against the blood-red scarlet of sunrise, pointing a gun at the “x.”

Dr. Drew sat quietly in the morning sun, reading her newspaper. She was disturbed when she read an article about a man who had been shot by a dueling pistol while on his way to work at Dakes Manufacturing. She put her head in her hands and wept, for she was torn by her feelings for the victim and her duty to the murderer.

The police chief said it was the most bizarre murder he had ever seen. He had the spray paint checked out thoroughly and ultimately traced it to the shop floor of Dakes Manufacturing. Detectives scoured the bridge for clues, though they never discovered anything significant except some crumpled masking tape. Dakes hired someone to replace Denniston, and Larry Barlennes left the Accounting department to go back to school full time. He plans to be an engineer someday.