For a moment he thought about talking to Miller, as he had talked to him before, as he talked to all of the dead bodies that came his way—saying, “so … I slept with your girlfriend,” or “I took care of the guys who did this,” but he wasn’t in the mood. He wished he could have given Miller a funeral or buried him properly, but Gene couldn’t risk getting caught with any ties to the hit men Five Star had contracted, and he was sure they would be coming. In some ways, for Gene, Miller’s burial ceremony happened at Garden of the Gods, where he at least finished Miller’s chapter in this whole business. In his own mind, he had buried Miller there, not here. Gene wondered if, after shooting two men, one of them almost a friend, he had also shot off part of himself at Garden of the Gods—the part that felt things intensely, even if he didn’t always express those feelings in words or show them to anyone else. Now he felt nothing but a calculating numbness, a distancing between himself and the rest of the world, reality itself. Gene accepted this state of mind as inevitable, as necessary to have acted as he did and to finish what he still needed to do. He hoped that a range of feelings might grow back in time, but the current lack was a relief, and he dropped Miller into the hog pen, grabbed the gun, and left the hogs to their business. Rustling hungry and digging their sharp hooves in the mud, they wouldn’t waste much time since they hadn’t eaten in four days.
As a few hogs came over to inspect their dinner, Gene saw that they weren’t clustered near the rail waiting for Miller’s body because they’d already started eating one. He didn’t need to see the pizza slices on her right hip or the pink bra to recognize her lying belly down though the hogs had already chewed off part of her face, her throat, one buttocks, and much of her crotch—soft parts scavengers go for first. Before he could turn to leave, the bile came up and he spewed vomit into the dirt. He left the shed and threw up again, mostly foamy dry heaves, then sat beneath a scraggly river willow and shook until his chest heaved and thin, salty streams rolled down his face, turning some of its dust to a muddy paste.
Gene retched again, overcome with a feeling of self-revulsion. He’d killed her. If he hadn’t gone to Metropolis, she’d be alive. He’d have never met her, but she’d be alive. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, his gut burning up to his esophagus and into his throat. If he’d been more careful about where they went last night, she’d be alive. If she hadn’t rescued him at the tavern she’d be alive and he’d be dead, which he would have preferred. He hated himself and half expected, half hoped to see Romeo walking up over the little hill to put a bullet in his skull and throw him in the pen with Miller and Cora.
He sat in the mostly dry, silty dirt for twenty minutes. It hadn’t rained as much here as it had in Shawnee National Forest. He had no idea what to do next. Torn between an instinct for self-preservation and an urge for oblivion, he finally stood up. Gene moved slowly, as if to give Romeo or whichever mafia thug or casino educator who’d dropped Cora’s dead body in with his hogs, surely within the past hour or two, plenty of time to return and find him. He slowly doused Miller’s wet shoes and his own jacket with gasoline. He decided also to throw in his pants and shirt and, what the hell, his socks and boxers. His riding pants were hopelessly mud-stained and cornstalk-stained, and if he left them here they’d only rot. Gene doused more gas on the top and tossed in some kindling, too, and a few larger wedges of wood he’d split up when an old oak limb fell in his front yard, then stirred them with a large stick so the wedges tumbled down closer to the bottom. He wanted to burn everything—the clothes, the hog shed, the house, all of Southern Illinois. Slowly and strangely conscious of his every movement, he returned the gas can to a shelf under the shed’s overhang then came back to the fire barrel and dropped in a lit wooden kitchen match. The fire whooshed skyward, a barrel-shaped fireball which rolled and spun and then died almost instantly, nearly burning off his eyebrows and the hair on his right arm. The warmth felt good, but Gene didn’t want to feel good and didn’t have time to stick around and watch the fire take everything into its burning grasp as he usually did.
He knew that if Tosti’s people didn’t get him, the police would. There was nothing he could say to explain the mostly eaten bodies of Miller and Cora in his hog shed. Gene walked up the dirt road to his house with nothing but his rifle and his boots, with his knife still inside the right one, along with his phone, now at nine percent. Uncoiling the hose from the back of the house, still naked, he washed his bike first, cleaning all the mud and shredded corn leaves out from the spokes and all the nooks and crannies. It looked like the front wheel and front suspension system were bent, but he’d have to fix that later. It seemed to drive OK. He dried the BMW bright blue again with an old towel, then waxed the gas tank and fenders. He polished the chrome and worked Armor All into the seat and saddlebag, and still no one pulled into his dirt driveway.
When he finished cleaning his bike, he went up the steps to the house and took a long hot shower. He suddenly realized he was starving, that he hadn’t eaten anything except a few Tums since yesterday evening, so he fixed two fried egg sandwiches, charged his cell, and started packing. He packed as many clean clothes and as much deer jerky as he could cram into his saddlebags, this time also remembering a toothbrush, toothpaste, and his biodegradable body wash shampoo. Gene also grabbed the wad of cash he kept behind the few books in his bookshelf—two thousand dollars tucked behind the first half of the Harry Potter series, the only books he’d read since high school before he grew bored with them, too—and put some of it in his saddlebag along with the cash he’d received in Miller’s pockets and stuffed some of it in his sock as far down as he could reach over the rim of his boot.
His answering machine had been blinking since he’d first walked in, but he’d ignored it until now. Checking the caller ID, he saw that the only person who had called was Danise, several times, and he deleted the messages without listening. Then he picked up his cell from the charger and called Keith.
“Hey, you at work?”
His voice was raspy and toneless, but he hoped Keith wouldn’t notice.
“Nope. Furloughed again. They said for a month.”
Keith didn’t sound bothered by his lack of employment. A master wood carver, he worked for a furniture company specializing in handmade furniture, but these days the company faced a bleak future with sporadic work orders. Like most businesses in the area.
“Can you do me a favor?” Gene asked.
“Maybe.”
“Can you come by and pick up Pretty Girl?”
“You going on another trip?”
“Yeah. I may be gone a long time.”
“Like over a week?”
“More. I don’t know. I’ll call you. Just take care of her, can you?”
“Sure, all right.”
Keith sounded like he wanted to ask what was going on but had decided Gene would tell him if he wanted.
“I got half a bag of food by her cage and a full bag here. I’ll leave it for you. Just take it all.”
“Sure. What about the hogs? Do I need to feed them, too?”
“Naw, I took care of them already. Leave them alone, OK?”
“All right. Anything else?”
Gene thought about it, wondered if anything at the house needed taken care of, but couldn’t think of anything.
“One thing,” he added. “Don’t hang around the house too long, OK? Just come by and pick up Pretty Girl and leave and don’t come back. And don’t stop by if you see anybody else around, OK?”
“All right. You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so. You in trouble?”
“Just be careful, OK? Maybe don’t come alone, either. In fact, maybe you shouldn’t come by at all.”
“Gene, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. Forget I called.”
“I’ll come by and pick up Pretty Girl and take care of her and don’t worry. I’ll be careful. All right?”
“I’ll do it this morning. I got time.”
“No you don’t. Be fast and get the fuck out of here.”
“All right.”
“OK, thanks. I gotta go.”
Gene had on his old riding clothes. He checked his computer for the closest BMW bike dealer that wasn’t Cape Girardeau and found one on 170, just north of St. Louis.
“Figures,” he snorted, then wrote the directions down. He erased the browser history and then thought better and smashed the whole computer by picking it up and breaking it against the desk. He picked it up and smashed it some more and trampled pieces with his boot. It felt strangely good, and he smashed the lamp on his desk and kicked over a coffee table, too, thinking somewhere through his foggy mind that he could make it look like someone else had come in and caused the damage in a scuffle. It might not work, but it felt good.
Back outside, he carried down the unopened bag of Iams and set it by the cage. He said goodbye to Pretty Girl one more time then started up his bike and rode down to the hog shed. Starving for days, they were making fast work of Cora and Miller, smacking their chops and foraging in the mud with their sharp toes. Once on NPR he’d heard a story about sky burials, practiced by people of Tibet, but he could only call this a mud-and-shit burial. Miller probably deserved more, and Cora definitely did, but there was nothing he could do about it. Gene pushed in the pen door and fastened it open, then came outside and left the shed door partially propped open with a five-gallon bucket. He knew the hogs wouldn’t want to venture out into the light any time soon—they’d lived in the dim shed all their lives—but they’d leave when they got hungry and probably head down to the slim bit of woods along the river. The area could use some wild hogs. With the exception of one sow, the mother, all the hogs were sterile, so none of them would propagate. He wished the hogs weren’t all sterile, like him, but he enjoyed the idea of them running wild along the banks of the Wabash for the remainder of their barren lives.
The family farm, the land his mother prized, was all but gone. He knew better than to ask Miller’s ex-wife if she’d want any part of it for the kids, now the only surviving heirs. Besides him. And who knew how long he’d survive. All the extra jobs he’d taken and all the dead bodies, culminating now with Cora’s and Miller’s, had been for nothing. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to give the land back to the trees. Gene got back on his bike, rode up the hill, and turned, once more, onto the highway.
EIGHTEEN
AT THE STOPLIGHT on Main and Oak, Gene could hear the Carmi High School Marching Bulldogs practicing above the purr of his engine. At first he could only hear the drums, then, as he tuned his ears, he could make out the brass honking through the Marines Hymn. He hated hearing that song, and it made him want to shoot the band practicing it. A Carmi parade was probably about to honor some Marine coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan, alive or dead. Or both. The words came immediately and unbidden:
From the Halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country’s battles
In the air, on land, and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
Of United States Marine.
Now the song would loop through Gene’s head the rest of the day. He didn’t even know where Montezuma or Tripoli were, but he imagined Montezuma as some fat Aztec god with a gold crown and man-tits sitting on a throne in a stone hall and drooling over a pile of bloody human hearts. One of these days he’d have to look it up and maybe get the image out of his head.
A little after 9:00 a.m., Gene drove out of Carmi and headed south on Highway 1 again. The day was already heating up, steaming the rain from the surrounding cornfields and the swollen Wabash once again into a thick Southern Illinois stew. He had no idea where he would go, but he knew it wasn’t Montezuma, Metropolis, or anywhere in Illinois. He was sick of the heat and humidity and figured maybe after he stopped in St. Louis to work on his bike, he’d keep heading north, perhaps the cool remotes of Canada. He’d always wanted to ride through the mountains of Alaska and remembered some Jack London novel he’d read as a kid and could easily imagine himself living in the wilds. Too bad he hadn’t thought to bring his bow, but he wasn’t turning back now. He wondered if he’d ever come back. He wondered where he’d end up dying. He wondered if he’d loved Cora. Then he wondered if he’d even come to love Miller in these last two days. Probably not. He still felt numb and empty, but it was good to move and do things and be active.
Gene patted his back pocket to make sure he had remembered his checkbook. He planned to pay several months ahead for Elizabeth in Norris City, and he wanted to tell her goodbye, even if she didn’t understand what that meant—or even know who he was. There was a good chance she would die before he returned from wherever he ended up, if he would ever return.
He wouldn’t miss her. He wouldn’t miss Miller either, but he would miss Cora, though he barely knew her. Thinking about her again, he could feel the pressure in his eyes as they grew moist. It hurt but felt better than the numb nothingness that had spread through his whole body like a virus.
As he pulled into the nursing home, he saw a Five Star shuttle bus parked on the apartments’ side and couldn’t help but snort. A line of old ladies, bright white and pale blue hair shining in the sun, stepped up into the doorway, helped by a young man wearing the Five Star valet uniform. It took almost a minute to get each one up the step and then to her seat. Several clung fiercely to their purses, no doubt a Social Security check inside each one. Some carried bags of change for the slot machines, as well as canes or walkers or oxygen tanks, making it more difficult to maneuver them up the steps. Hogs in line for slaughter.
Gene parked his bike and walked across the steamy black asphalt parking lot. Puddles from the rain, like oily black slugs, shrunk into themselves, evaporating almost before his eyes. He stepped on the large welcome mat, and the glass doors slid open for him. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to St. Louis Regional Arts Commission for the Individual Artist Fellowship that made completing this book possible. Thanks for all the support and readership and suggestions and friendship to Kelli Allen, The Baba Yaga Orchestra, Francesca and Mandy Bell, Scott Berman, Sierra Carbrey, Amy Clark, Danny Elfanbaum, Kathleen Finneran, Jim and Maia Funkhouser, Shanie Latham (extra special thanks to her), Kimberly Lozano, Pat Magee, Kristina Blank Makansi (extra special thanks to her, too), Kerry and Ricki Newman, Natalie Newman, Nick Nihira, Lizzy Petersen, the River Styx family, Andy Ploof and Ghost Junction, Julie Scott and Jordan Carbrey, Earl Scruggs, Tanya Seale, George Singleton, Le Shabby Chateau, Jennifer Dunn Stewart, The Sunday Poetry Group (Travis Mossotti, Jenny Mueller, Erin Quick, Stefene Russel, and Steve Schroeder) Chuck Sweetman, Catherine Tufariello, and The Vision of Peace Hermitages.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RICHARD NEWMAN is the author of the poetry collections All the Wasted Beauty of the World (Able Muse Press, 2014), Domestic Fugues (Steel Toe Books, 2009), and Borrowed Towns (Word Press, 2005). His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, Midwestern Gothic, New Letters, StoryQuarterly, The Sun, and many other periodicals and anthologies, and have been featured several times on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. His plays have been performed in San Diego’s North Park Playwright Festival and the Spectrum Festival in St. Louis. A recipient of a 2014 Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellowship, Newman served as editor of River Styx and co-director of the River Styx Reading Series for over twenty years. He currently teaches at the College of the Marshall Islands.
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