Snow

Snow hides a multitude of sins. Beneath the purity of it’s white covering lies dog shit, discarded rubbish, and various other signs of humanity’s disregard for the planet and their fellow beings. For me, the most important sin covered by the masking snow is the blood left spattered on the ground by my craft.

My name is Barry Anderson, but all my friends and colleagues call me Legs. This isn’t because I have toned strong legs, which I do, but because they’re the part of body I tend to focus on in my craft. I’m an enforcer: a thug who is dispatched by my employer to issue gentle reminders to overdue debtors.

As I wait for my target to emerge from his local pub, the streetlights illuminate the pavement. The snow can’t maintain it’s mask of purity forever, and the passage of feet on the footpath has turned the snow into a slush that allows the corruption of the earth to seep through the cover of the snow.

The snow has stopped falling for now, and people are venturing out from their homes and pubs to brave the cold. It’s the last weekend before Christmas: gifts must be bought and supplies obtained for festive Christmas dinners.

As I stood shivering in the cold, tonight’s target emerged from the pub. He said farewell to his friends and turned toward home, then – failing to be more careful in his inebriated state – slipped on the treacherous ice formed by the icy slush freezing in the cold. Slipping on the ice and slipping behind in his payments could both have the same result: he could be hurt. He picked himself up and headed towards his apartment building, with me following in the shadows and waiting for him to turn off the busy thoroughfare.

Just like any other operation, my colleagues and I have a huge increase in business towards the end of the year. Punters borrow from our employer to pay for their Christmas expenses, and then they fail to meet their payment obligations. Cue the enforcers.

The snow started to fall again as I followed my target. It started as hard tiny grains of ice, then soon transformed into large fluffy flakes that drifted down from the heavens as though seeking a patch of ground with exposed sin or corruption to cover. My target turned into an alleyway.

When I reached the entrance to the alley, I peered around the corner of the building and saw my target gently swaying as he pissed against a rubbish dumpster. Using the sound dampening effect of the snow, I crept up behind the target and introduced myself by gripping his neck and forcing his head down onto the lid of the dumpster. A cut opened up on his forehead, smearing some blood over the lid of the dumpster which was immediately covered by snowflakes seeking to cover the sin.

In my fifteen years as an enforcer, I’ve heard every conceivable excuse. Punters seem to think that just because they’ve borrowed money from an individual rather than a large bank, they can appeal to my employer’s humanity. However, like a bank, it’s none of my or my employer’s concern if your child is sick or you’ve lost your job. My employer is of the opinion that if you’d like to be able to continue caring for your child or looking for employment, you have much more motivation to do so with your limbs intact. Cue the enforcers.

“My employer would like his money,” I said in a deadpan voice. The target struggled under my grip.

“I don’t have it!” he cried. Now comes the part my employer leaves to my own discretion: how much pain to inflict and whether or not to leave the target with the ability to walk.

“How much do you have on you?” I asked calmly, relaxing my grip on the target to allow him to stand upright. “Get out your wallet.”

The target turned and faced me as he reached into his jacket pocket. The snow was starting to cover his eyebrows and hair as though he were a patch of corruption to be masked from the world. He withdrew his hand from his pocket, but instead of his wallet he was holding a small revolver.

I hate guns. I never carry one, and I despise having them pointed at me. As the target waved the revolver at me and opened his mouth to speak, I launched myself at him.

We struggled with the gun held wedged between our bodies. My decision was made: I would work over his legs once he was disarmed. Confident in my superior size and strength, it was just a matter of time. Suddenly a gunshot sounded in the alleyway, strangely muffled by our bodies and the falling snow.

The target staggered back a step or two; his eyes wide and his torso covered in blood. He sank to his knees with a lifeless expression on his face. Knowing the gunshot would soon bring the police, I walked away from the scene as briskly as the slippery pavement would allow.

Walking calmly so as not to draw attention to myself, I wandered back to my apartment. Another enforcer may have been concerned by my employer’s reaction to the incident: a dead debtor finds it difficult to repay loans. However I was confident that with my years of service and excellent record, my employer would overlook this incident.

I arrived back at my apartment and entered its warm cosiness. Deciding I wasn’t hungry and was too tired to shower, I collapsed on my bed and fell into the deep sleep of the righteous.

* * *

I was awakened by a buzzing sound. Someone was at the main door of the apartment building and pressing my buzzer. I shook off the fog of sleep and stepped quickly to the window that overlooked the main door. Two police officers stood there in the falling snow. Were my eyes playing tricks, or was the snow actually avoiding falling on them? The snow appeared to whirl away from the police officers as it fell, as if it believed they weren’t patches of sin and corruption that needed to be covered.

Hastily I threw on my jacket and boots, then opened the window to my fire escape. Now was quite an inconvenient time to be talking to the police. Now was also not the time to be curious as to how they traced the murder of the target back to me so quickly. Now was the time to relocate and go underground. I climbed down the fire escape, making sure I left the window open a little to allow for re-entry to my apartment if I needed it. Snow swirled through the opening and into my apartment, seeking more corruption to cover.

As I hurried off into the eerie light that comes with falling snow, I decided to visit my employer and seek his help with relocation. Just as I was confident that he would forgive my indiscretion with tonight’s target, I was also confident that he would help me relocate: after all, he’s my baby brother.

Larry – yes, our parents didn’t have much imagination – had much more ambition than me. Whilst I was content to be an enforcer, he wanted to be so much more. He worked his way up through the ranks until he eventually had his own patch to work and could be his own boss. Initially I was his only enforcer, but as his business grew so did the number of employees.

Larry lived in a building quite close to the scene of tonight’s bungled enforcement with his wife and newborn baby, so I stuck close to the shadows to avoid any police presence near the location of the target’s body. The closest I would come to the scene is half a block away, where I would have to cross the street at an intersection close to where the alley branched off the main thoroughfare.

As I crept closer to the intersection I prepared myself to see police cars and flashing lights at the end of the alley. I imagined the flashing colours of the police lights would refract beautifully in the falling snow, so as I hugged the corner of the building at the intersection, I stuck my head around to take in the view at the end of the alley. I was very surprised to see an empty street; devoid of police, police cars, and even pedestrians. Even the snow seemed to avoid the street, as it had stopped snowing here within the last few minutes.

I walked to the end of the alley and peered into the gloom. The eerie glow created by the snow softly illuminated the body in the alley. It was covered totally in snow, as if the snow knew it was the body of a man full of corruption and sin that needed to be hidden from the world. I was surprised that the police hadn’t discovered the body yet. I was also surprised to see Larry standing over the body. He had no snow on him, so he must have left his home as soon as the snow stopped.

“Nice job,” he said, taking his gaze from the body on the ground and directing it at me. Sarcasm dripped off his tongue like an icicle in the spring thaw.

“It was an accident,” I defended myself. “He had a gun.”

“What’s done is done,” Larry stated, then looked back down at the body.

“I need your help relocating,” I said to him. “The police are already looking for me.”

“You sure do,” he observed.

Larry agreed to come back to my apartment and help me pack the few items I wanted to take with me. The snow had totally ceased and the wind had died, making our stroll quite pleasant. We climbed the fire escape and entered my apartment through the open window.

“Do you really need any of this stuff?” he asked as we stood and looked around the apartment. Snow had covered a fair section of carpet near the window.

“I guess not,” I replied. Then it struck me: for someone who is generally quite bright, alert, and intelligent, I can be quite stupid and slow at times.

“How come the police were here if they haven’t discovered the body yet?” I asked Larry.

“Maybe it had to do with something else,” he answered. “Let’s go and dispose of the body. Maybe you won’t have to relocate after all.”

We left the apartment, this time through the front door, and worked our way back to the alley. As we rounded the corner of the last intersection we were confronted by the sight of three police cars and several police officers mulling around. There was also a coroner’s van.

“Too late,” Larry said. He always liked to state the obvious. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

I resisted his pull on my arm and he stopped in his tracks.

“They’ve only just found the body,” he said. “They won’t be looking for you yet.”

Seeing the logic in this argument, I followed Larry down the street towards the end of the alley. Snow started to fall again; quite heavily this time. The two police officers that had been at my apartment building were talking to a third officer.

“We just came from his apartment,” one was saying. “It’s no wonder he wasn’t home.”

“What were you doing there?” the third officer asked.

“Notification of his brother,” came the reply.

Confused, I looked at Larry. The snow appeared to be avoiding him; not a single flake had settled on him.

“Come,” he said, taking my hand.

The Coroner was crouched over the body, supervising the lift of it onto the gurney. As we made our way down the alley we passed a police car with a passenger in the back seat. It was hard to tell through the snow, but the passenger looked remarkably like the dead target, complete with wide eyes.

“Why is nobody stopping us?” I asked Larry as we stepped up to the gurney with the body on it.

“Just look,” he said.

Looking down at the gurney, the next question caught in my throat. The face of the body on the gurney was familiar; it had been reflected back at me every time I looked in a shiny surface for the last thirty years.

“The police were looking for you because it was my turn to be covered in snow earlier this evening,” Larry said. “Now we both have to relocate.”

Understanding and acceptance flooded me. The heavy swirling snow passed through our bodies, filling the voids and cleansing the sin and corruption left behind as we disappeared.

Copyright © Brett Kiellerop December 2009. All Rights Reserved.