by J. L. Abramo
“What’s in the safe? More jewelry?”
“Cash. Money. Our passports. Birth certificates.”
Keon let out a disgusted deep breath. He never understood why regular people kept cash in the house. “Why does your husband leave money in the house? Why not leave it in the bank?”
She trembled. “Emergency.” Her voice quivered. “We leave it when we go to Florida for our daughter in case she needs it. He’s old fashioned. He thinks people should always have cash on them.” She continued talking and shaking. “A lot of us older people keep cash at home. They don’t trust the banks. I guess Alan has some of that in him. The safe is fire-proof, too.”
He still didn’t understand. “Then why does he got money in the desk upstairs?”
Mrs. Mullins blinked her eyes and shrugged sadly.
Keon decided to move on. “You sure you know the combination to the safe?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Good. Open it now.”
They walked over to the bar and behind it, on the second shelf, sat a small beige safe. Mrs. Mullins bent down and, with trembling hands, twirled the dial three times until it opened. She pulled everything out—papers, passports, cash—and placed them on the counter. Keon could hear James and Ramone walking around upstairs, the front and back doors opening and closing. What were they doing? Keeping watch?
“That’s all there is, I swear,” she said.
He told her to come out from the bar and walk towards the glass door.
“Keon,” Mrs. Mullins began.
“Shut up,” he whispered. He looked at the glass door. He wanted her to hit him—no, to kick him, right in the groin, so he could double over and she could make a run for it. He still held the pillow in his hand.
He stared at the door once more. She didn’t seem to catch on, so he decided he would have to tell her what to do.
But there was no time. Suddenly, Ramone came bounding down the stairs, laughing. “What’re you doing, boy?”
Keon didn’t answer. Ramone shook his head, annoyed. “Give me this.” He grabbed the pillow from Keon, put it against Mrs. Mullins head, and with his other hand, pulled out his gun, sticking it against the pillow. She screamed and shook horrendously, but she did not try to get away. She only pleaded for her life, her voice desperate, her pitch high and frantic: “No! No, please! Don’t! I love my grandchildren!”
Ramone tilted his head and gazed at Keon. Keon opened his mouth to—do what—stop the motion? But Ramone returned his focus to the task before him and, simply, fired.
Her body buckled and collapsed. White stuffing dotted with red floated in the air. Ramone threw the pillow next to the body. Blood and pieces of gray seeped out of her head and onto the floor, a greenish carpet with swirling gold designs. Keon and Ramone stared at the body. “She said she taught you math?”
Keon nodded. He was stunned and sickened and it took everything in him not to cry out. “Yeah,” he muttered.
Ramone slipped his gun in his pocket. He walked behind the bar, grabbed the cash and several bottles of scotch. “Help me and let’s go.”
They shut the back door when they left. James bent down to the ground and picked up the cigarette he had smoked before. “Don’t want them getting my DNA now.”
James drove the car in reverse down the long gravel driveway. Keon watched the light in the front window disappear as it became blocked by trees, his heart so horribly sickened, he imagined it was gray and shriveled—contaminated.
They split the five thousand in cash and each of them took some jewelry and scotch. Keon got a few gold necklaces and a diamond ring. Too young to have acquired a taste for scotch, he gave his two bottles to old Mr. Cooper next door.
Keon read his grandmother’s newspaper every day as they followed the murder of Barbara Mullins, age sixty-three, mother of two, grandmother of five. Nothing was ever traced back to them, not even to Olya. “She paid me off the books,” Olya said one night, a few weeks later, while they all hung out. “And she always call me Tatiana. So I just answer to that.” Whether Olya knew the details of what happened that night, Ramone never said.
By summertime, Olya and Ramone had moved to California. She wanted to live in San Diego and Ramone said he liked the idea of her wearing a bikini twelve months out of the year. As for James, he got into some hot water with someone from the neighborhood and had to slip out of town.
On a humid July afternoon, Keon walked by an Army recruiting station. He stopped and stood before the glass windows, staring at the posters of young men and women in their military uniforms, gazing proudly into the blue sky. Keon went inside. Once he sat down, his hands stuffed in his pockets, the recruiter asked him if he liked the idea of seeing the world. “Europe, Japan, Hawaii.”
Keon thought for a moment and then said, “I could be happy in Hawaii.” The recruiter laughed. Keon took his hands out of his pockets and sat up straight, suddenly reviewing his life. He had nothing now. The diamond ring he got from the robbery was cracked and the gold bangles weren’t worth much. There wasn’t much cash left after a couple of months. He was sleeping on Old Mr. Cooper’s couch because his grandmother had kicked him out a week earlier, after had she found fifty dollars missing. Keon hadn’t taken it, but she didn’t believe him. He didn’t have a good behavioral record to back it up.
So he joined the Army. And after a few months, 9/11 happened. And after that, Iraq was invaded. He never saw Japan or Hawaii. However, it wasn’t all bad. The good thing about being a soldier in a war, Keon thought, was that so many things got jumbled up. For the longest time, after Ramone shot Mrs. Mullins, Keon woke in the middle of the night, like he did when he was a kid, dreaming of the Jersey Devil. Yet, it wasn’t just the Jersey Devil he was dreaming of now. He was dreaming of Ramone’s finger, and Mrs. Mullins and her blood and brains. But now that he was a combat soldier, the blood and brains of his kills got all mixed with Mrs. Mullins and Ramone’s finger and sometimes, on a good night, all that evil confused him. And for a brief moment, when he was sitting up, wide awake, breathing hard, getting his bearings, the last traces of the dream breaking up and dissolving, it was like he was a kid again telling himself that the Jersey Devil was just a story. For a brief moment, after waking from the dream, mercy would fall upon him, and he would tell himself Mrs. Mullins and her bloody death never actually happened.
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