In front of my house, on the sidewalk, Max is staring above my head with a lopsided smile as if there’s something in the night sky more than a moon and stars. I linger a bit closer to him. He looks left and right, as if expecting someone. The wind rises.
And my mother appears in the doorway, a fragile ghost in baggy jeans and her favorite sweater. Her hair is slicked back. She’s freshly showered. She raises her good hand, as if we haven’t seen her in the center of the doorway. She favors one side, and wavers. As if I suddenly have blurry vision, I blink. I’m afraid that she will fall. But she eases against the doorframe. She has her cane and it helps her balance. I know I should go to her.
Max waves back at her, friendly and open. And she steps back into the doorway, as if satisfied. I sigh. She’s okay. And I still want to kiss him, even more right now. I want him to wrap his arms around me. On the sidewalk, King ruffles at my feet. He pants his dog breath into my palm. The moon is bright.
One kiss. I jerk forward, toward Max. He jolts backward into the shadows. Gives a dumb laugh. I feel like I loom over him, oversized and aching. I peck him on the cheek because I can. A peck is nothing, one-sided. I don’t even include a hug. That would be even more awkward. Maybe I should have been like other girls and waited to see if he would kiss me? But I’ve never been like other girls. Of course, I’ve never been kissed, either. I should have stayed home or followed everyone else down to the dunes tonight. Maybe Brent would have been there. Maybe trying to kiss him would have ended in another way. Luckily, King whines, and I can plant a smooch on the top of his head. He smells like dog sweat and grass. I hold on to him. He responds with a definitive tail wag, hustling into my side as I straighten up.
“Hey, about tomorrow,” says Max, pulling at King’s leash. “At my father’s event? At the community park?” He glances over toward my mother, placing a sweater from the hall closet over her shoulders, not paying attention to us. “The event starts at ten and it goes to about two, I think. I have to be there early.”
I don’t think I’ll go to the community park tomorrow, even though he asked me to earlier tonight, when we were on his deck, when the night felt different, the world wondrous. It’s so obvious, anyone can see, this guy doesn’t want anything to do with me. Instead of saying anything else—there’s nothing to say, not even a question left—I race up the path to our house, and brush my lips against my mother’s cheek. She kisses me back with a surprising fierceness. I press myself to the soft wool of her violet sweater, to the lavender on her neck, the scent of open fields, of my mother, too, a smell almost lost to me, and I know she’s real.
BEFORE MY EYES
Barkley
Monday, Labor Day, 10:04 A.M.
Last night, I could not act in the dark of the woods. Nevertheless, this morning, I am in the tent. Inside the whiteness. All is within my vision, a wide shot.
The Cooper family is ahead: Max; the mother, Debbi; and the father, the state senator, and his sign: Reelect Glenn Cooper, your neighbor.
PAN: Balloons, bumper stickers, lawn signs, and pencils, hundreds of pencils.
I have been given clarity. There are those among us who are given the gift of blazing foresight, and I am one of them.
After this, I will never be alone.
This is the morning, the morning to cut off the evil from the land, the voice signals. Action.
Disorder reigns. Pollution. Fragments. Atoms spinning out. Speak truth to power. Demand answers.
FAST CUTS: Light flashes. Screams bang in your head. Bodies hit the floor.
“He has a gun,” one of the tanned women shouts.
“A gun?” says another. “Just like that senator?”
“Senator? I thought she was a congresswoman?”
“From New Mexico.”
“New Mexico?”
“I thought Arizona.”
“Arizona?” One is pulling the other to run. Both of them are screaming; a lot of people are screaming.
They must all shut up. Quiet. The Glock aims at them.
Walk perfectly, the voice insists.
I am thirsty, so thirsty. I itch. I force the grin wide. The Glock discharges. The crowd splits. A car screeches. Someone is shouting my name—a cop with a face sprayed with freckles. He got my name from Max Cooper, who is also shouting. “Barkley!” The officer must not be shouting my name, that name. There is no Barkley here. Only Brent.
I spin. The Glock fires—
Fires off again and again—and the policeman, a gun in his hand, too, stops shouting. He is sprawled on the ground.
And then, another body hits the floor. A flash of pink. Sparkly pink. Two old people tumble toward the pink. The Glock is firing in that direction.
A table topples over. Pencils spin on the ground. A dog leaps forward. Instead of backing off, his teeth bare. I roar. The dog rips into my right leg. I kick. Hard.
Fire. Fire the Glock. The Glock, the voice orders.
The black mutt careens toward the coolers. Bullets—up, down, left, right. Water spills. Red liquid. I back off. A sudden banging in my ears—heavy metal guitars and drums and cymbals clashing—drowns out all but the voice. The bodies are hitting the floor. The bodies. Nothing’s wrong. The bodies are hitting the floor.
To the side of me: Mrs. Cooper. She must be in collusion with those that would destroy me, Barkley, Brent. The Glock points at her. “Please,” she’s screaming. “Please.”
And then Claire—in the frame—at Mrs. Cooper’s side. She is not dressed in pink. Not one speck of pink. Claire is pure. Exactly. Phenomenal.
A firm stance steadies me. Focus on her.
TIGHT CLOSE-UP: Claire. My Claire. Claire’s eyes. Claire’s mouth and lips. Claire. Claire. Claire.
Soon enough, she will know me as Brent. The world is listening to me. Everything comes together: the lens, the pen, the gun.
Fire. Fire. Fire.
I grin, wider.
The Glock shudders. Jams. Thirty-three bullets. Did the Glock shoot all thirty-three bullets?
Reload, directs the voice with will and determination. The morning is not over.
Claire
Monday, Labor Day, 10:04 A.M.
The world in the tent explodes into gunshots and screams.
* * *
I hadn’t wanted to come here, to the community park. My father wanted to take my mother grocery shopping. She was supposed to work on the ordinary things, the everyday things. My mother wanted to go here first. She always liked to be involved in politics. I didn’t even dress up for this—a white T-shirt over a bathing suit and cutoffs. After grocery shopping, I planned to go to the beach for one last time this summer. Yet right before we entered the tent, Izzy slipped out of my mother’s hand, begging that she wanted to go to the playground first, running off in her sparkly pink top to the swing sets. My father said to me, “Why don’t you go inside with your mother?” But my mother said, “Let me sit, for a while. We’ll meet. Inside. How about that? Maybe that rakish young man, from last night, will be in there?” I insisted that I didn’t want to go in alone. But she gave me one of those looks, one of her classic looks, that said, “Claire, you can do this,” and so I entered the white tent alone.
* * *
Now, eyes blinking, now, I’m afraid to run and even more afraid to stay. I feel like I’m less in the air and more in the sea, underwater, drowning.
Max is screaming above the din, “Bark. Bark!”
I don’t know why “bark,” until I realize it’s a name. That in fact, it’s the name of the guy with the mirrored sunglasses on the beach—and it’s also the name of the man with a gun—and it’s the same guy. And as Max screams that name, “Bark,” that man stares straight at me. He grins, as if I know him, as if we’ve ever met. And he aims his gun at me. I’m going to die—the guy with the mirrored glasses from the beach is here, in this sweltering white tent, with a gun—and he’s going to kill me.
I fall to the ground. My knees scrape against the dirt. I see a littl
e girl in sparkly pink crying, and I think Izzy, although I know Izzy should be in the playground.
“Izzy,” I scream. The girl spins around. “Izzy!” But it’s not Izzy, is it? It’s a little girl wrapped in the arms of an elderly man and woman. All three are dropping to the ground. A flash of pink and blond curl. A cry for “Mommy” rises. A gasp. Is someone shouting, “Claire”? Is it Izzy? “Izzy!” Izzy is far away. The tent sways above my head. Mrs. Cooper is sprawled at odd angles, whimpering and crying. Her pink suit is twisted up around her hips. Her leg is bleeding, and I can’t do anything. I’m not shot. I’m not. I’m sure I’m not shot. But she is, and I can’t help her. She’s Max’s mother and I can’t help her. Just like I couldn’t help my mother. “Stop!” I order myself. “Stop!” I scream into the vastness of the tent. More gunshots pierce my screams.
I urge myself, “Swim, swim, Claire. Toward the light. Swim.”
I crawl next to Max’s mother. My hands are slick and raw with sweat, dirt, and blood, someone else’s blood, her blood, Mrs. Cooper’s. Now “swim” means help in another way. Now “swim” means save her life. She’s bleeding and moaning. I have nothing to help her with. I don’t have a Band-Aid. Part of me knows how irrational that thought is. She doesn’t need a Band-aid. She’s shot. Blood from her leg zigzags across her suit. Her nice pink suit. The bullet has struck a major vein, maybe an artery. I yank off my T-shirt—wrap it tight around her leg like a tourniquet, something I learned in first aid. She reaches for my hand.
Barkley shuffles toward us, the gun pointed at me, straight at my head.
Mrs. Cooper is holding on to me, as if I can save her, or myself, pleading, “Don’t leave.” Screams roar around us, seize me, but I can hear her as if only us—a mother, a daughter—exist. I want my own mother more than I have ever wanted her in my life.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
Max
Monday, Labor Day, 10:05 A.M.
The number-two pencils spin to the grass. Pots of flowers are trampled and broken. For a second, I don’t know what’s going on. I hear a pop and another and another. I smell something, turn my head, and think: flowers. It’s only dying flowers. The crowd surges out of the white tent. A car careens into another car with a deafening smash. Barkley raises his arm higher. He pushes the sleeves of his hooded gray sweatshirt up, carefully, like I’ve seen him do a hundred times this past summer. Trish shoves Peter down underneath one of the tables, flat on the ground, like they are already dead.
I’m screaming at my mother. My face is wet. I touch my cheek. Red. My blood? My pink shirt and her pink suit are splattered with blood. My mother is down on the ground, writhing, turning, screaming. And then I see her—she’s taken off her T-shirt, she’s in her Speedo and shorts—and she’s tying her shirt around my mother’s leg.
Now Barkley’s aiming at them again. I’m shouting his name. It’s like the only name that I can say out loud. “Bark!”
I don’t see King, or my father. Everything is slowing, everything is exploding—
Next to me, Jackson’s father is lying facedown. Shot in the head. I want him to get up, but he isn’t moving. More shots and—
The two old people, the two my mother hugged, crash down over their granddaughter, shielding her, or are they all—
* * *
I don’t know why everything has slowed down. Why I can’t move. Why I am thinking: run, get out of the tent, dive out of the tent, and I can’t move.
Barkley trudges toward my mother and Claire, a grin cut into his face, eyes unblinking, arm straight out as if the gun is leading him, not him leading the gun—
“Hey, Bark,” I shout with a jolt like I’m just calling for him, like we’re somewhere else, at the Snack Shack. “Hey, Bark.”
He swivels—the gun pointed at me.
I’m going to die. It’s him and me. Why the hell is he grinning? He has a gun. What is there to smile about? In less than sixty seconds, he’s shot twenty or thirty bullets into the tent. He’s aiming to shoot again, except something’s wrong. He’s fumbling in his pocket. More bullets. He’s ramming another cartridge into the gun with clumsy fingers.
From out of the corner of my eye, I spot my father. He’s screaming, “Run!” Barkley sinks the second cartridge in place.
“Run!” My father is three or four feet from me, that’s all. But so is Barkley, who aims level at my eyes. At that instant, my father bounds from the left, not thinking that he’s over fifty, that he can’t strike that hard anymore, not thinking or debating, and strikes him. Barkley rears at him, off-balance. The gun drops to his side. I duck my head—and with all my strength, everything in me, everything that every coach and teacher, everything that my mother and father ever said was in me—rush forward and head him in the stomach. Knock him back. Smash up into his lungs and heart. Nail the gun out of his hand, and send it swerving—only an arm’s length away. I’m dizzy and sick to my stomach.
Barkley lunges for the gun. I taste blood at the back of my throat. But I rush him again, more of a stumble. My father jumps up, blood on his face, and side-tackles Barkley with more force than I’ve ever seen him use. Barkley’s on his knees, but his long arms reach for the gun. He wraps his fingers around it—only for Peter to stomp on his hand with his massive yellow work boot. The gun flies out. Sunglasses clatter off his face and are also crushed by Peter. Barkley howls. But his intent is clear—he wants his gun back.
Only Claire is quicker. She throws herself toward the gun. It slips from her hand, spins away.
I scream, “Barkley!” He glances at me. In the breath of two syllables, Claire grabs the gun again. This time she gets it with both hands. She stands up, clutching the gun aloft. Barkley grins at her, that sick grin, as if she knows him, as if she is on his side. The gun quivers in her hand. Barkley crawls toward her and my father leaps on his back and flattens him to the ground. Peter bears down on legs. Trish kicks him in the side. Sirens swirl around us. Claire screams for her sister, for her father, and the loudest, for her mother. The gun quivers in her hand. A dozen police cars race right up to the entrance of the tent.
I’m having a hard time keeping my head up. The room skews off its base. I’m going to be sick. Bile sears my throat. And now, Barkley is whimpering. His sleeves flop around his face. My father is pounding Barkley’s shoulders and head, my father’s face a volcanic red. The police have to tear him off Barkley, throwing him on the ground, separating them. Barkley lifts his sweatshirt up like he’s on fire. He scratches the white flab of his chest and sides like he’s infested. A female cop wrenches his arms back with one swift yank and handcuffs him, and he doesn’t say a word.
I’m afraid that Claire is going to shoot off the gun, and the police must think so, too. They circle around her, their hands on their guns, ready to be drawn.
One muscle-bound cop demands the gun. “Just put it down on the ground between us.”
And she sinks her arm with a twitch and a pulse of breath. The cop jerks forward and screams, “The gun!” She kneels and her fingers unfurl, as if having lost function, and the gun slides to his feet with a thud.
Quickly examining the weapon, the cop says, “Shit. The bastard went through an entire 33-round assault clip, and was ready to go through another.” He removes the second cartridge. The cop’s hands are gripping the gun in one hand and the clip in the other. If he could crush the clip in his hand, he would. If he could bend metal, he would. If he could turn into Superman and have the bullets bounce off him, harmless to all, he would. A second, older officer relieves him of the weapon and the ready clip shaking in his hand.
Sounds pop in and out of my brain. I have to get up. I try, but I can’t get up.
My father stumbles over to my mother, who is shouting my name. I can’t respond. Her hand reaches for mine even as two paramedics are helping her. They are saying that the shirt, Claire’s shirt, probably saved her life. Barkley is being shoved out of the tent in handcuffs. He drags his feet and
tilts his bald head to look directly at us. He’s grinning. I want to punch him in the face, and more. I look to where he’s looking: Claire. I want to shoot that grin off his face, except I can’t move.
“Claire,” he shouts, and it’s like all the babble in my brain drops silent. “I am Brent. He is I. I am he.”
“I don’t understand,” she says, standing just a few inches from me.
“He is I. I am he. Perhaps a new poem, Claire?”
What is he talking about? He’s Brent? And where is King? I don’t have the strength to call for my dog.
All I can see: brown eyes. Large and questioning and full of hurt. Her father rushes up to her, going on about being out in the playground, about swings, grabbing her toward him. Her mother, with a cane, follows, pushing forward, not letting anyone stop her. Her little sister looks scared at the overturned tables and chairs and pencils strewn across the floor until Claire kneels and scoops her into her arms. “Don’t look,” I want to scream, but can’t.
The muscled cop snatches Barkley and propels him forward, out of the tent. All around is more chaos: ambulances, police, hurt bodies, blood. Peter and Trish are going from person to person, offering water and hugs.
“You’re a hero,” some lady is harping above me, and another is agreeing. “A hero. You and your father are heroes. Aren’t they heroes?” Suddenly, they are crying, too. I don’t know why they are sobbing.
“King? King?” I want to scream, but my voice is lost, like it’s been kicked out of me. Why are Claire’s mother and father leading her away? I want to take her in my arms and tell her it’s over. I want to kiss her. I want to tell her I’m sorry about the other night. I wanted to kiss her back, really kiss her, but I couldn’t, not with her mother so near. I want to kiss her now and never stop. Why is she leaving? And why are my father’s arms around me, damp and heavy, and why is he crying and shouting my name?
Before My Eyes Page 19