Incident on Ten-Right Road

by Randall Silvis

  The worst thing for him was to be embarrassed. To have people whispering and chuckling at him behind his back. To me that was pretty pathetic. What does it matter what other people think? Then on the other hand he once told me, you can be the wolf or you can be one of the sheep. Eat grass and weeds all your life or stuff yourself every night on lamb chops.

  That made more sense to me than anything else he ever said. That’s why I enrolled in business administration at the college. He said I could work summers for him, starting at the bottom of course, which meant detailing the cars and keeping the lot clean and the lounge stocked and so forth, and then maybe by the second summer he’d give me a shot at selling. Said the sooner I proved myself to him, the sooner a college degree would be redundant and just a waste of time, which was why he never got one and had no desire to, he said, but figured I should at least get started so as to get some discipline. Whereas he got his from four years in the Army. Which was a shit show of mostly lost boys and power mongers, he said, but did him and lots of others some good nonetheless. He said as long as the economy kept chugging along like it was, none of his people would have anything to worry about.

  I guess he didn’t know who he was talking to. Ha ha.

  * * *

  I was watching this TV show one time, one of those cop shows in the big city, and there was a detective checking out a crime scene on the street. He got up real close to this one car and was looking at the bullet holes. Even put his pinkie finger in one of the holes; claimed he could tell the gauge that way. And maybe he could. I don’t know about that. What I do know is that when a bullet goes through a painted surface, it wipes off a little circle of paint right down to the bare metal. Like a silver ring around the moon if the bullet hole is the moon. And there were none of those rings around the bullet holes the detective was looking at. So the show lost me right there. That’s just being sloppy is what it is. How many hundreds of people do they have working on that TV show, and not one of them knows enough to say hey, there should be a little ring of bare metal around each of these bullet holes?

  That’s the kind of stuff that interests me. Little details like that. How I know about what bullet holes in metal look like, that’s hard to say. I’ve seen plenty of bullet holes in road signs is probably why. Never made any of them myself, but they are all over the place out in the country. I don’t know why people want to shoot up road signs. I mean, what do they get out of it? Especially since bullets aren’t free. You’ve got to be pretty dumb to waste your money putting holes in a road sign.

  A couple of years back I wanted a gun really bad, just to have one, you know? But Al says no guns in this house, no way. Why not, I asked, and even Mom said the same thing. Why can’t he have one? And Al says, because he’ll end up killing somebody with it. Maybe me.

  It makes me laugh now to remember that. For a long time after that I was so mad I used to picture him walking around with bullet holes in his chest and the blood seeping through his shirt. He’d be walking around in the morning, slurping from a cup of coffee, talking to Mom about this or that. He’s chattering away and she’s half-asleep at the table and I’m sitting there spooning up my Cheerios and smiling to myself while watching blood seeping out through a half-dozen bullet holes in his chest.

  I wonder if Al remembers me asking for a gun. If he does I bet he’s thinking, I should’ve said no to knives and baseball bats and lug wrenches too. God, that’s funny. Good old Al. I bet he’s shitting bricks right now.

  * * *

  Sometimes I wonder about being alone. I mean why I am? Why it’s always been that way. Right from the start I always felt like an orphan, like I didn’t come from nobody and had nobody to go to, even if I’d wanted to.

  There are some people who just seem to attract people to them. My mother was like that. Al too. Me, it’s like I have a force field around me. One of those invisible fences. It’s nothing I do, not as far as I can tell. But something made me that way. What was it?

  Back in that motel in Tennessee with the Stipes’ girl I was almost ready to take her with me. Figured she’d have to get used to it sooner or later and stop bawling her eyes out. But then I just told myself, it’s not worth the trouble. But now I wonder why I even had that thought. Do other people think the same way? If they do, how do they get past it so they can actually live with someone? With my mother, she seemed able to do it for a while, but then she’d always get the itch for somebody else, and we wouldn’t see her for days or weeks at a time. Al on the other hand seemed to like having us around. Needed an audience, I guess. Somebody to preach to. The gospel according to Al.

  Still, I keep thinking about that Grace. I could’ve taken better care of her, I guess. Shouldn’t have left her the way I did. I can smell her on one of the sleeping bags. I don’t sleep in that one because it will start to smell like me and not her. I just like to keep it close to me and lay it over my face sometimes.

  I’m living in their tent now. Don’t know if I already said that or not. I caught a tiny little fish yesterday in this stream I found, but by the time I cut off its head and tail and scraped out its guts, there was barely a bite. I used up all that survival food they’d packed. There was only six bags of it to begin with, and I finished them in the first three days. I do like it here, how quiet it is. And I’ve gotten pretty good at building fires. Richie packed one of those little fire guns for starting barbecues with, same as Al had back home. Plus those real guns of his are pretty cool. I spent some time figuring how to load and unload them but I haven’t actually fired them yet. Dry fire, I think it’s called. I’ve done that a lot. But from up here where I am, if I walk down this hill and up the next one, which is higher, I can see a house over on the far side of a little valley, maybe three or four miles away. Mostly just the red metal roof is visible and the chimney with a stream of white smoke coming out of it. It sets about halfway up the hill, with no other ones visible till closer to the bottom, where there are a couple of dozen or so. I keep scoping the place out with Richie’s binoculars, hoping to catch sight of somebody around the house, but so far nothing.

  I can’t stay here forever, that’s all I know. I finished my partial case of water a long time ago and am already halfway through Richie’s. I drink a lot of water. Seems like I’m thirsty all the time. Thirsty and hungry both. And while this is nice it’s not a good way to live, not having anything to do but to walk through the woods and lay in a tent and feed little sticks to the fire. I used to think it would be great to be so rich that I could just lay around all day and do nothing, but now I want just the opposite. A person’s got to have something to do.

  I wonder what Mia Swain is saying about me. I bet my little message turned her on and made her want to touch herself. If I could talk to her I’d ask her up here to go camping with me a while. Though I’m sure that would get stale in a while too. I’ve never yet met a girl I want to keep around after I shoot my load. Later, sure, I’ll wish I hadn’t chased them away so soon. It’s like Chinese food. Or ice cream. Smoked almonds. Those little sugar cookies with raspberry filling in them Grandma used to make. It’s good until you’ve had your fill, then you don’t want any more, then four hours later you wish you had some again. I guess that’s true about everything, isn’t it? Even being alone. I need to keep reminding myself that every time I was with somebody more than 15 minutes or so, all I wanted was to be alone again.

  * * *

  from the blog And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You by Mia Swain

  I know I said I was going incommunicado, but I am just so enraged by the message that little coward left on my blog. I hope you know that’s what you are, Grayson Rath. Nothing but a weaselly, disgusting coward. Do you think it makes you a man to insult someone on social media? Does that make you feel important? You’re pathetic.

  Do you want to know who was a good man? A strong man? A brave man? Richie Stipes, that’s who. He grew up in poverty, worked hard to get through high school, took a job in a furniture factory and never mis
sed a day’s work until he and Grace started their honeymoon. That is a man who will be missed. He was loved. He was appreciated. And you? You were given everything you wanted. Every opportunity. And what did you do with it? You flushed it down the toilet.

  And now you’re flushing yourself away. That’s good, because you’re nothing but a turd, Grayson Rath. A stinking piece of shit. Nobody cares about you. Nobody wants you around. And how do you feel about that, asswipe?

  * * *

  Grayson Rath voice recording

  So you know that house I saw from where I was camping out? The one across the valley that I looked at through Richie’s binoculars? Guess where I’m sitting right now. On a big brown leather sofa in the living room. Drinking a cold beer and watching out the window as the clouds roll by. It took me a while on those mountain roads to find this place, but I did it. And getting inside the house was touch and go. But here I am.

  What I did was to drive up to the house and sit there in the truck at the end of the driveway. It wasn’t long before some woman comes peeking around the back of the house. She looks about as old as my grandma but bigger, and instead of wearing jeans and a sweatshirt like grandma always did, she’s wearing baggy pants and a jacket and a pair of work gloves and carrying a pair of pruning shears. She’s just standing there squinting at me, so I give her a wave. And yep, she comes walking about halfway to me. I roll the window down and yell to her, “I think I missed a turn somewhere!”

  She comes over and puts a hand up on the windowsill and looks in at me. That’s when I shoved the 9mm in her face. She flinched some but then her face tightened up and she just glared at me. Then damn if she didn’t turn around and start walking back to the house. When I jumped out, she started running, and just before I got to her the front door comes open and there’s some old guy, probably her husband, aiming a rifle our way. But I’m right behind her so he can’t take a shot, so I fire off three over her shoulder and she drops down on her knees and he falls backward into the house. I grab her by the hair and pull her up and she’s trying to get turned to scratch my eyes out, but all I have to do is to give her hair a hard tug and that straightens her out again. And that was pretty much the highpoint of the day’s festivities. As soon as I finish this beer I’m going to go see what other treats their refrigerator holds.

  * * *

  So it’s my third day here and I’m bored stiff. They don’t have cable or internet and I can’t risk using one of their phones. And I am dying to know what Ms. Mia Swain had to say about my little love note to her. I’m thinking a quick trip to the bottom of the mountain might be justified.

  There’s got to be some place down there with wi-fi.

  * * *

  Whooee she was ticked. I couldn’t stop laughing. I wish I’d had more time to sit and think before writing back to her, but I couldn’t chance it. Some kid came out of the store carrying a bag of garbage for the dumpster, and when he looked in at me I just gave him a nod like I had every right to be sitting there sucking up the free wi-fi. And then I just hurried up and wrote, I bet you won’t talk like that when you’re laying underneath me. I bet you love every minute of it. See you soon. Stay wet for me. The Gray Man.

  I didn’t go back up the mountain right away but pulled over near the bottom to see if anybody from the store was following me. While sitting there I thought of lots of better things I should have written. Why is it all the good ideas come too late?

  Anyway, I’m back in the house now. And I kind of wish I was back in the woods instead. I wonder how long I could live there with Richie’s tent and sleeping bags? I don’t remember ever feeling as peaceful as I did there before I got antsy. Let’s say I loaded up the pickup, drove there and unloaded and set up camp again. Then I could drive back, fill the Rav4 with everything I wanted from the house and drive back to my camp. These old folks have all kinds of stuff I could use. And if anybody came there looking for me….

  I don’t know. Maybe I should just stay here. The nights are getting cold. I could maybe make a life for myself here. If anybody finds out I’m staying here, I’ll just say I’m their grandson from Texas or somewhere, and that I’m watching the house for them while they’re off somewhere taking the grand tour.

  That might be the better choice. I haven’t shaved in weeks, and my hair’s getting longer. Nobody’s going to recognize me. I’ll just be a different person. Whoever I want to be. After people get used to seeing me around, I could probably even get a job in town somewhere, something simple like washing dishes or driving a snowplow after somebody shows me how. That’s what I’d really like to do anyway, is to become another person. See if I could make that work for me. I could even go to Alaska if I wanted to. Nobody would ever look for me there. I just might give it a try. What do I have to lose?

  * * *

  from And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You, by Mia Swain

  He’s dead. Brain dead, anyway. Thank God for that.

  And now I can tell you the whole truth.

  No doubt many of you have been questioning my sanity. Maybe even my morality. Why would I ever walk away from my safe little life to go wading through the swamp and misery of a person like Grayson Rath? Hadn’t I said I was giving it up? What made me keep going?

  The men in black, that’s what.

  Yep. They called me. The same day the first comment from Grayson Rath appeared on my blog. The same day his comment brought me to a screeching halt in a diner south of Wytheville, Virginia. They said I could be of assistance. All I had to do was to be the cheese in the rat trap. Keep him talking, and maybe he would drop a clue as to his whereabouts. Just keep writing, that’s all I had to do. And pray the cheese—me—didn’t get eaten.

  In the meantime they told me to go home. Two beautiful wonderful splendiferous agents stood guard outside my apartment. So I was never in any danger. They took very good care of me.

  And I thought, Wow. So this is why I have been so obsessed with him. This is why I needed to write about him. This is why I’m still constipated and jittery from living on junior cheeseburgers and coffee from the place across the street—delivered, by the way, by those wonderful FBI agents, who kept admonishing me to eat a salad once in a while, girl. Eat a salad. Yes, this is why: had Grayson Rath not responded to my posts, nobody would have known where to find him.

  What happened is this: Grayson kidnapped a retired couple at their remote home in the mountains of northwestern Georgia. Reed and Carole Ellsworth, both in their early 70s. What he didn’t know was that the couple were regular visitors to the little village of Holmes at the bottom of the mountain. Every Friday afternoon before the post office closed, they would come down off the mountain to collect their mail. Then they would drive to the general store, enjoy a couple of bison burgers, coffee and pie a la mode, and load up on groceries for the week. When they didn’t show up that Friday, the delivery boy, 17 year-old Pete Steiner, boxed up their usual grocery order in his dad’s Wrangler and drove up the mountain.

  But he knew right away that something wasn’t right. First off, there was a beat-up old pickup truck parked near the back door. Not in the driveway, not in the garage, but pulled up close to the back deck. And Pete could hear heavy metal music playing inside the house. And, just two days earlier, on Wednesday, he had spotted the Ellsworth’s Rav4 parked next to the store, but with “a scruffy young man” in the driver’s seat. The Ellsworths were nowhere to be seen. So Petey had a bad feeling. He had a very bad feeling.

  He memorized the truck’s license plate number and got his butt back down the mountain as fast as he could. There he checked in at the local two-man police department. A deputy called the Ellsworth’s home. Several times. No answer. Then he ran the plate. The owner of the pickup truck turned out to be a Richard Stipes of Tennessee. The deputy didn’t recognize the name, so he did a database search. And bingo. He called the FBI.

  The feds surrounded the place and ordered Grayson to come out. He promised to kill the Ellsworths if anybody so much as jiggled
the doorknob. Then he refused to answer the phone, refused to speak to a negotiator or anybody else. The stand-off lasted for two and a half days. Then, in the middle of the night, a single gunshot sounded inside the house. The FBI fired gas and percussion bombs through the windows, then stormed inside. They found Grayson Rath in the back corner of the loft bedroom, with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. But he managed to screw even that up, because he wasn’t dead. He had blown half of his brain away, but his body was still alive. It still is. But it won’t be going anywhere, or hurting anybody else, not ever again.

  Sadly, the Ellsworths’ bodies were discovered in the basement, pushed into a crawl space that was being used as a root cellar. The medical examiner estimated that they had been dead for three or more days, though the coolness of the root cellar had slowed decomposition.

  But here’s the ironic part of all this. When Grayson was finally taken into custody, he had a voice recorder in his pocket. He was keeping a kind of audio blog throughout the entire trip from Gilford, Ohio! From Day One of his rampage to the very end. That just blew my mind. (Whoops! Unintentional pun. Sorry, Grayson. No, I’m not. But I should be; I realize that. And I am determined to try harder.)

  I don’t believe that anger is inherently either good or bad. What matters is what we do with it. How we use our anger. It is normal to feel anger when we or someone else is hurt, but our reaction to that anger should be empathy and compassion, not violence. Violence gives anger a negative charge.

  I am not saying that we should feel sorry for monsters like Rath. Or maybe I am. The whole thing is still very murky for me. They must be stopped, yes, and by whatever means necessary. More importantly, they must be stopped in their incipiency. We must be alert for the earliest signs of such behavior. We must not encourage or incite these people to act.