Incident on Ten-Right Road

by Randall Silvis

  “Understand what?” he asked.

  “You know damn well what.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes you do. Because you’re very clever, aren’t you?”

  “Why the money wasn’t found.”

  “I was beginning to think that Larry must have taken it. Even though he’s not the type.”

  “The guy from the sawmill.”

  She moved even closer. He inhaled her scent. Roses. No, that was the funeral home. She put a hand on his waist. “You did me a favor, you know.”

  “I was hoping you’d see it that way.”

  She hooked two fingers over his belt. “We had a nice night together, didn’t we?”

  “Why do you think I’m here? Seems to me we’d make a pretty good team.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “You need a man who isn’t afraid of things. Isn’t afraid to do what needs done.”

  “Is that what I need?”

  He took her hand and placed it between his legs. “Believe me,” he said.

  She did not move her hand at all, did not move it in any way. “Can you come out to the house tonight?”

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  “It’s another four miles from the factory.”

  “I already know your address. I got it from the phone book.”

  “The gate will be locked, but you can climb over it, can’t you?”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” he said.

  “Ten p.m. On the dot.”

  “Just call me Mr. Punctuality.”

  Now she moved her hand. She moved it several times. “Is Amy with you here?”

  “Only technically,” he said. “She’s at the motel.”

  “Don’t tell her where you’re going tonight.”

  “I don’t tell her anything.”

  “Don’t let anybody see you.”

  “I’m invisible,” he said.

  She smiled then and backed away from him.

  He reached for her. “I’ve been dreaming about your mouth,” he said.

  She smiled with that mouth. Kissed the air. Turned and unlocked the door. Peeked out. Slipped away.

  He relocked the door and remained in the small room a while longer.

  * * *

  It was a large estate, at least 50 acres, all of it surrounded by a wrought-iron fence eight feet high. The pickets were spiked but blunt, no challenge at all. He strolled up the asphalt lane in the moonlight, walked a full 10 minutes before the lane veered left behind a row of arborvitaes and he finally saw the house, a huge house, colonnaded, bigger than the first school he had attended back in Hickory.

  The house was dark but for one small light in a second-story window. He went to the front door and rang the bell, heard it echoing dully inside the house.

  An upstairs window slid open. “Over here,” she whispered.

  He stepped back into the yard, crossed to stand beneath the window. “Hey, beautiful,” he said.

  “Are you sure nobody saw you coming here?”

  “I was more than careful, don’t worry about it.”

  “Where did you leave your car?”

  “I stole a bicycle in town. It’s down the road in the weeds.”

  “How clever you are,” she said.

  “Didn’t I tell you?”

  She disappeared from the window then. He returned to stand waiting at the front door. But the front door did not open. Instead there was a noise at her window, a bang and a scrape, and he went into the yard and looked up again and saw an emergency escape ladder hanging against the wall. She leaned out the window and told him, “Come join me.”

  “Up that? Just come down and unlock the door, why don’t you?”

  “The security system,” she said. “Everything’s monitored. It’s all computerized and recorded. Every time the front gate is unlocked, every time the door comes open.”

  “Impressive,” he said.

  He went to the ladder and pulled himself up. The first few rungs were the most difficult, learning how to stabilize his weight, to keep himself from swinging side to side against the building. He moved slowly and deliberately, did not want to appear clumsy now, but a very clever man, as graceful as a cat.

  A few minutes later he put his hands on the windowsill, pulled himself up so that he could look inside, where he expected to see her waiting on the bed, red lips smiling.

  But she was not on the bed. She was standing off to the side of the window. She held a black-barreled .45 revolver. And now she pressed that barrel cold and hard against his ear.

  “Where is it?” she asked.

  “What, the money? Are you talking about the money? Don’t worry, it’s safe.”

  “Where?”

  “Back at the Ramada,” he said. “We’ll get it in the morning, don’t worry.”

  “Give me your room key.”

  “You can’t go there now—Amy’s there! She’ll freak if you so much as—”

  She put the lovely long fingers of her lovely left hand against his face, fingers splayed, palm of her hand against his nose, and shoved him backward off the ladder. He turned in mid-air in an attempt to right himself, arms and legs flailing, but there was not enough time and he landed first on his right knee, felt the impact like a red flare of lightning all the way up his spine, a mushroom cloud of red pain expanding inside his head.

  “Oh fuck,” he moaned. He rolled onto his left side, felt his right leg flopping uselessly, a throbbing burning flap of pain. And now he was getting nauseated to boot, he was going to pass out, going to throw up on the grass and then pitch forward unconscious. Everything was red all around him, an oscillating red on black, red stars in a swirling black sky full of pain.

  And in the midst of it all, the garage door started to rise. It ground slowly upward, grinding like his bones. He turned his head toward the sound, searched in the pulsing red night for the source of that sound, found it just 20 feet away, a three-stall garage, the center door rising. Beneath the door a golden light bled out, blessed light, he loved that light. He rolled toward it, he started to crawl.

  The door was not yet halfway up before a dark shape emerged, a dark shape that then broke into four shapes ducking under the garage door. Four dogs, very large dogs, four very black dogs with very red eyes. The biggest of the four, named Gogo, was also the gentlest. He went for the stomach. Gogo’s three younger sisters all went straight for the throat.

  * * *

  Amy was awakened by the light. She opened her eyes to find Helen McManus standing at the foot of her bed.

  “Where is it?” the older woman said. She was wearing a long brown trench coat belted at the waist.

  Amy blinked. She looked toward the window, saw darkness. She looked at the clock. Twelve-fifty-seven a.m. She looked toward the television, its volume turned low, picture still on. An old infomercial was playing, Suzanne Somers demonstrating a Torso Track. Amy squinted at Suzanne and blinked and tried to make some sense of it all.

  “One more time,” said Mrs. McManus very softly. “Where is it?”

  Amy peeled back the covers and climbed out of bed, smelled her own musky scent as she did so, a sickroom scent, sweaty and stale. She moved slowly, uncertainly, feeling for the floor before she set her bare feet down on it.

  She stood then and, her hand to the wall, went to the closet alcove near the bathroom. Looked down at the suitcases there. She felt too weak to lift both and so picked up only one for now, Rudy’s, and carried it back to the bed. Laid it atop the foot of the bed, popped it open. Pushed his shirts and socks aside. Uncovered the money. Lifted it out. Laid it on the bed.

  “Where’s the rest?” Mrs. McManus asked.

  And Amy said, not knowing she was going to, surprised to hear it from her own mouth, “What do you mean?”

  “There’s more than that. There should be more.”

  “That’s all there is,” Amy said.

  Mrs. McManus flipped the suitcase over and dumped out its contents onto t
he bed, ran her hand through the clothing, scattered it, tossed it aside.

  “Ask Rudy,” Amy said. “That’s all there is.”

  The older woman stared at the mess she had made on the bed. “That’s all you know about?”

  “That’s all he told me,” Amy said. And suddenly she felt sick again, that flutter in her stomach, that constriction in her throat. She began to stumble backward but was stopped by the wall, stood there uncertainly, both hands over her belly. She did not realize she was crying until she tasted the salt at the corners of her mouth.

  Mrs. McManus studied her for a moment. “That boyfriend of yours is a lying sonofabitch,” she said.

  Amy said, “I think I’m beginning to realize that.”

  Nobody spoke for a while. Mrs. McManus sat on the edge of the bed. Amy allowed her own body to slide down the wall, to sit on the floor. She pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them.

  Finally Mrs. McManus said, “How much do you know?”

  “About what?” Amy said. Her voice was timid and weak, a whimper.

  Mrs. McManus nodded toward the single brick of money.

  Amy said, “I’ve had the flu ever since we got here. I haven’t been out of this room. All I know is that he said he was working on some kind of deal over at the Walmart. That’s what he does down in Hickory, he works for Walmart there. In the distribution center.”

  “I hate Walmart,” Mrs. McManus said. “They’re driving everybody else out of business, you know.”

  “Tell me about it,” Amy said.

  Mrs. McManus shook her head. She was disgusted about something, but Amy could only speculate. Finally Mrs. McManus reached for the brick of money and held it on her lap. She looked at it for most of a minute. Then she removed the rubber bands, separated the brick by half, slipped one handful into the pocket of the brown gabardine trench coat, tossed the rest onto the bed.

  “That’s because he’s not coming back,” she said.

  “He’s not?” Amy asked.

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “You saw him tonight?”

  Mrs. McManus gave her a look.

  “What did he say he was going to do if he’s not coming back?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  Amy started to cry again. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  Mrs. McManus stood up and headed for the door. “Thank your lucky stars.”

  Amy sniffed a couple of times. Then said, “You think?”

  “Trust me,” the woman said. She smiled at the girl and then opened the door and went out.

  Amy sat there on the floor for quite a while. Eventually it dawned on her that her nausea had subsided. She stood, testing her legs, and was surprised to find them steady. Apparently it had done her a lot of good to get out of bed at last, to take that short walk to the closet and back again. Just look at all the good it had done her.

  She went to the bed and sat at the foot of it and watched the television. Suzanne Somers was still extolling the life-changing benefits of the TorsoTrack.

  “I’m going to get me one of those,” Amy said. And this time she meant it. Considering the circumstances, she felt a whole lot more energetic than she had ever thought she would.

  And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You

  Grayson Rath voice recording

  I can’t remember exactly when it was I first realized how good it feels to hurt somebody. There’s not a lot I remember about the past. It’s just not there in my head. I have a good memory for things that happened recently, right down to the tiniest of details sometimes, but the farther back I go in my life, the less I remember about it. I imagine that’s more normal than odd. What’s truly odd are the people who claim they remember every little thing the whole way back to birth. I don’t believe that’s even possible. Those people are lying, or else remembering what somebody told them. People will lie about anything, just to make themselves feel better about their miserable little lives. That’s normal too.

  I do remember playing basketball with my grandmother back when I was 11 or 12. Mom and I were staying with Al then. This was before the time she took off and said she wasn’t coming back, so he became my legal guardian, even though they’d never married and he wasn’t my real father. My grandmother would come stay with me while Al was at work. He put in long days, what with all the socializing he liked to do after he left the office. He called it schmoozing. Or networking. Either way, it reeked of booze.

  Mom did come back eventually though, and after that she used to bring guys to Al’s house too when I was at school. I could smell them when I got home. Not just a booze smell but also something different. Somebody different in the house. I never could figure out why Al couldn’t smell them too. Even I knew how stupid it was to let guys come to the house like that. Didn’t she realize she was going to get caught sooner or later? What really irritated me was that he didn’t do anything about it. She’s the one decided to leave after he caught her that time giving a blowjob on the back deck. If you ask me, she was just embarrassed is all. Embarrassed to have him catch her with some other guy’s dick down her throat. Or maybe she wanted to be caught. Some people are impossible to figure out.

  She left us lots of times. Sometimes just for weekends, sometimes for weeks or more. The longest time was for most of a year. And every time she came back, he acted like nothing had ever happened. I never got that either. Seemed to me on a par with watching your dog shit on the new carpet, and just cleaning it up without a word to the dog. That kind of behavior just isn’t productive. Not for any of the parties concerned.

  A little while after adopting me, Al adopted those three black labs that the shelter was planning to put down and he treated us all pretty much the same. Gave us a cage to live in, kept us fed and that was about as far as his parenting skills went. He liked to show us off to people too. These are my dogs. This is my Lainey. This is my boy. As long as he could do that, he seemed happy. I wander how happy he is now. And if he would take me back without a word after what I’ve done. I bet he would.

  But this day I remember when I first realized how good it feels to hurt somebody. It was in the fall, just like now, and there were red and yellow leaves all over the driveway where the basketball hoop was. Nobody else was there at the house except me and Grandma, so it must’ve been after school. I missed a shot and the ball rolled off toward the neighbor’s yard. But this time instead of going after it, my grandmother said, You need to start getting your own ball. She was no bigger than me, maybe 4’10” or so, maybe 80 pounds, and I remember looking at her and actually thinking that, like I’d just then noticed it, thinking she’s no bigger than I am. And I just walked over to her and socked her in the stomach. Don’t ask me why. I wasn’t angry or anything, I just wanted to do it. She doubled over and couldn’t get her breath, and the way she was crying and gasping for air at the same time, I don’t know, it just made me laugh.

  I doubt that was the first time I hurt somebody, but it’s the first one I remember well. Had lots of fights in school before and after that, and lots out of school. Kids calling me trailer trash and my mom a gold-digger and worse, and them just relocated rednecks themselves. Probably their sisters were their own mothers and they were just too brain deficient to figure it out. I’m guessing I hurt more people in the few years since socking my grandma in the gut than your normal person does in a whole lifetime. And that’s not even counting the animals.

  I remember sitting in the principal’s office with Al and the guidance counselor, and her saying, this kind of aggression is serious, Mr. Murcko. It’s not uncommon among boys his age but that doesn’t make it any less serious. Al was sitting there with his arms crossed over his big chest, and the principal, he was doodling on a yellow tablet, I could see it from where I sat. He was making spirals that started out small like the tip of a funnel and then spread out wider toward the top. Little tornadoes is what they were. One after another all over that tablet. And the guidance counselor, she was the only person really
into the conversation. I sat there looking back and forth from her breasts under that white sweater to those little tornadoes filling up the page. And she knew I was checking out her breasts, because pretty soon her nipples were standing up against the cloth. Al was giving them a good look too, but me, I was having a hard time not getting up and walking over there and sticking one of them in my mouth.

  This was just a couple of years ago. I was 17. One big walking hormone.

  Anyway, to make a long story short, she asked me into her office again the next day. Just me and her. So you can guess what I was thinking. But then she pulls open a drawer and brings out a little box and opens it up and shows me this recorder I’m talking into right now. Said I could always talk to her when I needed, but sometimes she wouldn’t be available, so whenever I felt like smacking somebody, instead I should get my thoughts down on the tape recorder. It comes with earphones and a charger, she said, See? It’s digital. You’ll probably never fill it up, it has so much storage space. You can use it to record lectures if you want to. Just let your teacher know you’re doing it. But mainly it’s for your private thoughts. For whenever you’re sad or feel angry or whatever. Just talk it out, she said. Nobody ever has to listen to it but you. Just take it and use it, okay? Talking into it will curb your negative urges, she said. Will you take it, she said, as a favor for me?

  So I took it and shoved the whole box down into my pocket, which made her happy. Like she’d really accomplished something. Which, to be honest, made me a little pissed off for some reason. So out of nowhere I said, Should I use it every time I think about screwing your brains out? And her face turned the reddest red I’ve ever seen on a person’s face. But she said, Yes then too, and reached past me and yanked open the door and sort of pushed me out into the secretary’s office.

  I used to get hard just thinking about her. I’d sit in class and be sending her telepathic thoughts to try to make her wet and come to the classroom and get me. I was so sure it was going to work. But come senior year, she was gone. Rumor was that she’d been banging Mr. Epps, the Driver’s Ed teacher, and his wife found out and called every member of the school board. Whether it was true or not, I don’t know, but old Eppsy did seem a lot quieter that year. Of course I already had my license by then, so there was no reason for me to care one way or the other.