by Hannah Tinti
It was Hawley’s experience that retrievals like this usually went one of two ways: people put up a fight for the goods they were holding, or they got scared, in which case they went straight to bargaining or fell down crying. But Talbot’s wife was taking out a tablecloth and dishes. She spread the cloth over the rickety card table and set knives and forks and spoons, as if the men were expected guests coming over for dinner.
Jove took a chair at the table but Hawley stayed in the doorway. When the woman returned to the kitchen the men exchanged a look and then exchanged their guns. Jove watched the woman with the rifle, and Hawley slipped away with the .45 to start searching the house.
He checked the bathroom first. Inside was a tub with no curtain around it, a toilet and a sink made of pink porcelain, with a stained plastic cup and two toothbrushes on the edge. The towels on the rack were damp. The toilet was running. Hawley pulled out the vanity drawers and emptied them out onto the tile floor. Cotton balls, Band-Aids, razors, a hair dryer. He opened the medicine cabinet and sent the bottles of pills and ointments crashing into the sink.
Next he went through the bedroom. Hawley looked behind the rumpled mattress and then he went for the jewelry box, emptying it onto the blankets. Nothing but some old turquoise necklaces, hollow silver bracelets and painted earrings. He rummaged through the bureau, tossing clothes onto the floor as he searched, knocking a line of paperback mysteries from an old bookcase, turning shoes upside down.
When he’d looked everyplace he could think of, Hawley went across the hall. There was one more door, shut tight. Next to it was a framed photograph of a skeleton, holding a scythe in one hand and a set of scales in the other. Both the scythe and the scales were made with pieces of bone—vertebrae and scapula. On the mat surrounding the picture was handwritten: Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, Rome. Hawley waited a moment, listening. He looked at the picture. Then he grabbed the handle of the closet door, pulled it open and threw himself forward. He was met with a tumble of cardboard boxes falling down from above, knocking him to the floor.
“What the hell is going on out there?” Jove shouted from the living room.
“He opened the closet,” Hawley heard the woman say.
And that’s what it was: a closet so jammed full of stuff that it had collapsed as Hawley stepped inside. Now he was surrounded by mountains of old shoes, rolls of wrapping paper and unopened mail, a rusted tool chest, some kind of ancient vacuum, the broken pieces of a chair, an old dog collar, a pile of Mexican blankets, boxes filled with yellowed photographs and files of papers, overturned. It would take weeks to go through it all.
Hawley glanced over the papers. There were tax forms, a pile of handwritten letters and some pencil-and-ink sketches of nudes that looked like Talbot’s wife. In the drawings she was younger, her hair still vibrant, her body trim, her violet eye shyly gazing. The lines followed the curve of her back and shoulders, her arms and breasts. Hawley put the papers down and backed away. He left everything where it had fallen and returned to the living room.
Jove had pulled the card table over to the sofa. Talbot’s wife sat opposite, in one of the chairs, her neck stiff. In one hand she held the bag of frozen peas and in the other a wad of bloodied tissues, applying them both in turn to her face. There was an empty mug with a tea bag in front of Jove and another mug in front of the woman. Hawley took the other seat.
“Thought you were wrestling a bear out there,” said Jove.
“Felt like it,” said Hawley.
“I keep meaning to clean it out,” said Talbot’s wife, “but there’s nowhere else to put anything.” She shifted the peas across the bridge of her nose.
Hawley thought of the nudes and wondered if Talbot had drawn them. If maybe that’s how they’d met. If she’d been some kind of model, and what happened between them was strong enough and important enough that she’d stuck with Talbot through all the troubles that followed.
Jove looked around the room. “This is quite the hideaway.”
“It belonged to my father,” said Talbot’s wife. Her milky eye strayed to the window. It caught the light and clouded further, as if a shade had been pulled across the iris.
“Feels like the edge of the world,” said Jove. “I bet you thought that no one would ever find you.”
All three of them sat still for a while, Jove tapping the mug in front of him and Talbot’s wife swapping the peas for the bloody tissues. Hawley was thirsty but he didn’t want to ask the woman for anything. Then Jove stopped tapping and Hawley knew he was going to give the speech.
“You know what they call us?” said Jove. “The Takers. That’s what we do. We take things. And if we don’t get what we want we take something else. Anything that matters. Anything that you care about.” He wiped his fingers on the tablecloth, then sat back against the couch. “We’ll take your husband, if he doesn’t give us what we want.”
The way Jove said it was final, and the room, which was already charged with their coming, got tighter. Jove was good at this, at squeezing a place so there was hardly any air left.
“He didn’t mean to cross anyone,” she said.
“But he did,” said Jove.
Talbot’s wife took the frozen peas off her face. The skin underneath was red, a dark bruise starting from the bridge of her nose to the corner of her clouded eye. Something hit the window, a tiny thud, a small bird or a giant bee. They all turned to look, but there wasn’t anything there, just clouds and the rippling water and rows of firs and pines. Talbot’s wife put down the peas and the tissues. Her nose was nearly twice the size it had been when she opened the door. She began to unbutton the cuffs of her flannel shirt and roll up the sleeves. She did it slowly, like she was getting ready to clean the house.
The kettle started whistling on the stove. Talbot’s wife went into the kitchen and Hawley followed her. He stood in the doorway with the gun and watched her turn off the burner, his mind going to the drawings in the closet. Her beauty was still there, behind the swollen nose, haunting the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the sloping of her waist and shoulders.
She looked up at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” said Hawley.
Talbot’s wife turned away and took down a mug from the cabinet. “You want some tea, too?” Her voice was flat. “There’s coffee but it’s instant.”
Hawley saw a bottle of whiskey on the top shelf. He thought of asking for it. “Tea’s fine.”
She took a pot holder and lifted the kettle to fill his cup. She added a tea bag from the box on the counter.
“Milk and sugar?”
“Oh, I’m sweet enough,” said Hawley.
It was something he always said to waitresses, and it came out automatically now, but the words just hung there between them, out of place. She let out a cough that could have passed for a laugh and handed Hawley the mug. It was white with a photograph printed on the side, the kind you get at the mall. The picture showed her and Talbot, their arms around each other. The man was older, maybe by ten or fifteen years, with thick, gray, hairy sideburns that came to the edge of his chin. He looked like some kind of Amish farmer.
The woman caught Hawley examining the side of the mug. She probably hadn’t looked at it closely in years. But she looked now. Then she said, “He gave it to me for Valentine’s Day.”
“Oh,” said Hawley. He felt strange then and didn’t want to drink from the cup anymore. He carried it into the living room instead and set it in front of Jove on the table. He pointed at the picture.
Jove leaned close, but didn’t get up from the sofa.
“I’m not going to beat on some old guy,” said Hawley.
“We’re not beating on anyone yet.”
“I’m just saying.”
The toilet was still ringing in the bathroom. Hawley thought of going to fix it. He wished that Talbot would arrive, so they could be through with this. His palms started getting sweaty, just considering what he might have to do. There was an ache in his s
tomach and another in his back by his ribs. He put his hand there. He touched the scar. He wished he’d asked for the whiskey.
Talbot’s wife came out carrying the kettle, her arm elbow-deep inside a quilted pot holder. “Let me fill your cup.”
Jove lifted his mug. The tag of the tea bag was stuck to the side of the porcelain. Talbot’s wife began to pour. The water came spilling out and then it was spilling everywhere, on the table, on the mug, on the floor, on the sofa, on Jove’s hand and arm and face and hair and he was screaming.
Talbot’s wife threw the kettle at Hawley’s head. He ducked as she ran for the door, then lunged and caught her around the waist. She clawed at his arms, but he pinned her tightly against him. For a moment all he could feel was her struggling along his side.
“That was stupid,” Hawley said. He twisted her arm up behind her back so that her knees buckled. He shoved the card table aside and used his belt to tie her to a chair. Jove wailed the whole time, his hands covering his face. His clothes were soaked through and steaming. Hawley went over and tried to pick him up and his own arms stung from the heat and then he felt Jove’s skin slide and come loose under his fingers.
“Fucking fuck! Fuck!”
Jove pressed his hand to the place Hawley had touched him, the skin bubbling into blisters. Hawley supported him into the bathroom. Once they were inside he turned on the cold water full blast and Hawley helped his friend into the tub. Jove fell back against the porcelain with a grunt. The water filled quickly, billowing his pants and shirt around his thin frame.
“I think I’m going to pass out.” Jove’s face was stretching tight, ridges of boils rising across his cheeks. Hawley grabbed a towel and soaked it in the cold water. He pressed it to Jove’s neck.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”
Jove’s hand came out of the water. He grabbed on to Hawley’s sleeve.
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhit.”
There were footsteps on the front porch. A jingle of keys. The lock on the door turned, followed by a shuffling of boots, the creak of hinges, the sound of something heavy being set on the floor. And then the old man’s voice called down the hallway.
“Maureen?”
There’d been no sound of a car. Talbot must have taken a boat, climbed up from the beach. Hawley drew the .45. It was only a few feet from the bathroom to the hall, but before he could move, the woman started shouting.
“They came for it!” she screamed. “Get out of here!”
The door slammed shut and footsteps pounded across the porch. Hawley hurried out of the bathroom, turned the corner and tripped over an enormous plastic cooler, now sitting in the middle of the hallway. By the time he scrambled off the floor and got the door open again and stumbled outside, Talbot was only a few paces from the woods.
Hawley caught sight of a rifle, just as the man disappeared into the trees. Before he could make it across the lawn Talbot had found cover and started firing in earnest. Hawley sprinted back to the house, counting the shots as they rang past, and when they stopped he guessed Talbot was carrying a rifle with a five-round magazine. He slammed the door and drew the bolt behind him. It would be only a minute before Talbot got the rifle loaded again, less if he had extra clips ready. The old man’s aim had been off, but there was no telling what he was capable of once he’d had the chance to collect himself.
For a moment Hawley just stood there in the hallway, breathing hard, wondering what else could go wrong. He opened the lid of the plastic cooler. It held two salmon—a Coho, still silver, with dark-blue specks along its back, and a good-size Chinook, at least twenty-five or thirty pounds. The fish stared up at Hawley, their eyes round and flat and unblinking.
He carried the cooler into the living room and put it next to Talbot’s wife. She’d been nervous before but now she smiled like she’d won some kind of contest. Hawley felt like slapping her but he didn’t. He stepped next to the windows and peered out. The line of trees was closer than he’d like it to be. Talbot’s wife wasn’t trying to get loose anymore. She just sat there, grinning, blood running down from her swollen nose into her mouth.
“I guess you love him,” Hawley said.
“I guess I do.”
“And he loves you?”
She turned her face to the window, her cloudy eye catching the light. She nodded.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, we’re about to find out,” Hawley said, because the rest of the job now depended on it. If Talbot came back for his wife, they’d get what they came for, and if he didn’t, all they’d have is some dead salmon. The tap was still running in the bathroom and he could hear Jove groaning. A piece of skin was stuck to Hawley’s thumb, thin as a flower petal, and he wiped it off on the curtains.
The fire was nearly out, the logs smoldering. To Hawley the room seemed unbearably warm, the midday sun beating across the carpet. The fish had just been caught but he could smell them. Hawley kept the .45 in his hand and stayed next to the window, watching for Talbot. A shadow moved through the trees at the edge of the forest and then it disappeared.
“Untie me,” the woman said.
“I don’t think so.”
“I could get you a drink,” she said. “A real one.”
Hawley thought of the whiskey he’d seen in the kitchen. Then he shook it off and glanced at Talbot’s wife. She’d guessed this about him just by looking, five minutes with her one good eye.
“My husband made a pledge to give it up,” she said, “on our wedding day.”
“Then why do you keep a bottle around?” Hawley asked.
“I didn’t say he’d stopped.”
The belt Hawley had used to tie the woman was cutting into her wrists. He could see the marks. She leaned her head to the side and wiped her nose on her shoulder. Even with the blood on her face she was lovely. In her men’s clothes she looked tough and worn-out, but there was a softness, too.
“He wrote me a letter,” she said. “It was the most wonderful letter. When I read it, I was so happy I cried. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”
“But he broke his promise,” said Hawley.
She rolled her violet eye at him. “Love isn’t about keeping promises. It’s about knowing someone better than anyone else. I’m the only one who knows him. I’m the only one who ever will.”
The woman seemed convinced but Hawley knew a raw deal when he heard one. He thought of the whiskey in the cabinet, and all it represented—the weakness and the lies. He wondered what would happen if he left now and took Talbot’s wife with him, if they walked away from her husband and Jove and all the rest. There was at least twenty years and a world of differences between them, but Talbot’s wife held something deep inside of her that Hawley knew he could spend the rest of his life trying to uncover. He took a step toward the chair. He reached down and touched the belt, and that’s when the first rifle shot came through the window.
It hit Hawley in the shoulder, the pain searing like a hot poker driven through and turned, the bullet twisting and tearing and then continuing out the other side of him, through the air, and jamming into the frame of the skeleton photograph, hanging next to the closet. A second bullet went wide and hit the wall and then another shattered the glass and tagged Talbot’s wife in the neck.
Hawley’s left arm was useless, and he dropped the .45, spun away, then fell to a crouch on the floor. If he counted right, Talbot had two more bullets before he’d have to reload. Hawley waited until another windowpane broke and then he yanked a napkin from the kitchen table and pressed it against his shoulder. It hurt like hell but he’d had worse.
The gunshots stopped. The only sound was Talbot’s wife, still tied to the chair and wheezing. Hawley slid over and managed to untie the belt. As soon as she was free her fingers dug at her throat like she was trying to strangle herself. Hawley pulled her hand away—there was a lot of blood. He gathered the .45 and together they crawled into the kitchen
. By the time they reached the linoleum, her face was pale, her shirt dark red. She pressed her back against the cupboards. Hawley pointed the gun.
“You give him some kind of signal?” he asked.
“No,” she managed.
Hawley pulled a pot holder from the counter and ran it under the sink and pressed it to the side of her throat. “You’re going to tell him to quit. You’re going to get him to come inside here and talk.”
“He’s not one for talking.”
“Well, then, you talk,” said Hawley.
They both heard someone outside the front door, shaking the handle against the lock, and then the old man’s voice came through. “Maureen?”
“She’s here,” Hawley called out. “She’s hit.”
“Fuck,” said Talbot.
“Don’t come through that door,” said Hawley.
“If you hurt my wife I’ll kill you,” said Talbot.
“You’re the one who shot her,” said Hawley.
“Maureen!” Talbot was shouting now.
“Doug,” Talbot’s wife said. “I’m all right. Stop yelling.”
“She’s bleeding, though,” said Hawley. “She’s bleeding a lot.” And she was. The pot holder was soaked through and turning the same rusted color as her shirt.
“We just want what we came for,” said Hawley. “We don’t want to hurt anybody. Just tell me where it is and you can take her to the hospital.”
They were all quiet. The only noise was the running toilet, still chiming through the door to the bathroom. Hawley started to worry that Talbot had left and was coming in another way. Then he heard a thud against the wood, like someone had punched it.
“It’s in the closet,” said Talbot.
“Fine,” said Hawley. “That’s just fine. She’s coming with me to check, so don’t try anything. Okay?”
Talbot didn’t answer.
“Doug,” the woman said.
“Okay,” said Talbot. “Okay.”