She made an explosive belt. She’s been planning on ending this thing like a suicide bomber. Was she going to walk into the restaurant and set it off, or was it for when the police get here? Lyn didn’t want to know the answer. Either way, Joanie hadn’t put it on yet, and she hoped the dangling wire meant it was inactive. If it were to go off, she wouldn’t have time to regret not running away with Carol in Bryce’s patrol car.
Behind them, she heard panicked grunting and a sound like a struggle. Lyn didn’t dare turn around, but when Carol whispered, “JesusfuckingChrist,” in her ear she knew it wasn’t good.
“Can we talk first, or are you going to shoot me?” Lyn asked.
Joanie tilted her head to the side, considering her options. “I don’t know what we have to talk about. But if it makes you feel better, I never wanted to hurt you.” Lyn looked at the bandages on her hands. Despite the ibuprofen from the restaurant med kit, they hurt like Hell. “What happened to you?” Joanie asked. Lyn almost laughed at the absurdity of the question.
“I had to crawl through glass to get the blinds down.”
Joanie smiled. “The blinds. That was ballsy. I hadn’t anticipated you doing that.” Her eyes narrowed. “Who’s she?” she asked, gesturing at Carol with the .45.
“She’s my backup.” If Lyn was being truthful she’d have said, She’s here so she doesn’t kill herself.
“Cute.”
“Real backup’s coming, Joanie. Can you hear them?” Lyn paused so the sound of the sirens could bleed into the room. “It’s over. Why don’t you stop now?”
“Nothing’s over. We’re still alive.” She raised her other hand. Clutched in it was a black stick topped with a red button she held down with her thumb. A little light on the side blinked green.
“What’ that?”
“Dead man’s switch.”
Lyn’s stomach did a somersault. She didn’t know the term, but she figured out the principle quickly enough from the fact that Joanie had already pressed the button and nothing had happened. If psycho lets go of the button, the bomb in the restaurant goes off––and maybe the one on the workbench, too. She realized that her hastily devised plan was as futile as Bryce’s had been. If she shoots me, I drop the gun and she goes ahead and does whatever else she has planned. I could shoot her, but then she drops the switch and she still gets what she wants.
“Why are you doing this? What can you possibly stand to gain from… all this shit?”
“I’m doing it for revenge.”
“Revenge?” Lyn remembered her epiphany behind the restaurant and knew the real reason why. But that still wasn’t worth murdering innocent people. She didn’t know how else to put that to the woman in front of her. It all seemed so absurd. “For what? For building a restaurant? For wrecking your view?”
Joanie stared at her hard. “For taking away the last things I had. Do you think this is about a fucking view, Lyn? Sure, they took that and made it something obscene. I could live with that, though. Nothing’s perfect. But it’s the whole psy-ops campaign, Lynnea. They destroyed what was left of my peace. I can’t sleep. They blast my house with music like I’m some Central American dictator hunkered down in a bunker. That sonuvabitch Beau McCann fires off a rocket every fucking night.”
“I heard.” Lyn wished that she’d pulled more than one rocket from the cellar. A full-on show might have bought us more time.
“They’ve taken everything but this house and they want that, too. He wanted that all along.” She jabbed the gun at the presence behind Lyn. The women flinched but Lyn didn’t turn around. “Go ahead. Look behind you. I won’t shoot.
Lyn turned and saw the man Joanie had tied to an uncomfortable looking high back dining chair. Adam Bischoff stared at her with terrified, bovine eyes. A hiss of breath escaped through a gap in the clear plastic tape holding the red rag in his mouth. But he didn’t whimper.
“What the fuck, Joanie!”
“I’m sorry about getting you mixed up in this. I really am. But sometimes people get hurt when they’re not supposed to. They’re just doing their jobs and trying to make it home at the end of the day and then everything goes to shit. And you don’t ever get back what you’ve lost. You get pushed out of line and you can’t start over. You’re just out. On your own!” Joanie was punctuating her sentences with the switch. Every movement of her arm made Lyn cringe.
“People aren’t getting hurt, Joanie. You’re hurting them.” In reply, Joanie fired the pistol at the wall behind Lyn’s head. She and Carol both screamed. The sound of it concussed Lyn’s eardrums and deafened her. She flinched and tucked down, squinting her eyes shut. When she opened them again, Joanie hadn’t moved even a little bit.
Joanie’s voice sounded miles away when she spoke, like someone on a radio turned down too low. “I lost everything before I even moved here. I did everything right. I served my country. I went to war, Lyn. And what did I get for that? A medical discharge after being gang-raped.”
The revelation hit Lyn like a sucker punch.
“They destroyed my insides. But I did the right thing. I went to court to get justice and I won. I used that money to buy this place. A place where I could be alone and heal. And what? That cocksucker behind you decides that he can have whatever he wants so he builds that fucking dump you work in to drive me out. And when I don’t roll over, they start bombarding my house with the fucking fireworks. So I go back to court, like a good citizen, and you know what? He buys his way out!” Joanie jerked forward, shaking the dead man’s switch at her prisoner. “So here we are. Beau McCann waiting to die in his diner and Adam Bischoff sitting here with a front row seat thinking about his wife and kids––”
“What about my wife?” Carol said. The sound of her voice lingered in the air like the echo of a long musical note. Joanie shook her head trying to clear the ghost of the question from her ears.
Nothing I can say will keep her from letting go of that button, Lyn thought. She tried anyway. “If you went to this trouble, why not pick up Beau this afternoon and have it out with the two of them personally? Why ruin everything for everyone else? What did I do? What did Carol do? There are other people out there who haven’t lost everything yet.”
Joanie’s hard expression cracked and she smiled––not with relief, but incredulity. She laughed. “They will.”
“Why do you get to be the one to decide that?”
“Because I’m the one with the gun.” She shifted her aim toward Adam. She glared at the man shivering in his chair, trembling a little herself. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back and listened as the sirens got louder and were joined by the sounds of screeching tires in front of the house.
Lyn looked out the window over Joanie’s shoulder to see the ambulance pulling in front of the restaurant. Beyond that… the thing from the bathroom window… from her sketchbook… from the woods… it waited next to the propane shed, black eyes promising that this wasn’t the end. Its blood red tongue snaked out and licked at frightfully long teeth. It was hungry.
Staring out the window at the thing, Lyn raised her gun. “Please don’t do this.”
Joanie let go of the button.
In the second between the beep and the boom, Lyn squeezed the trigger.
#
Leonard, Hunter, and Neil, moving like a three legged race, ran through the trees until the blast knocked them off their feet. The heat of the explosion washed over them. Leonard smelled his hair singeing, but he was alive. Pieces of the restaurant began to rain down through the trees and he felt Hunter jerk on his sleeve, trying to get him to stand up, shouting something he couldn’t hear. Leonard pulled himself up and more pieces of debris crashed to the ground around them. He looked through the trees at what remained of Your Mountain Home Kitchen. The blazing ruin was half collapsed. On the highway, an ambulance lay on its side, and someone––he couldn’t tell if he was a cop or a paramedic or a firefighter––ran in circles, on fire, screaming. Finally, Hunter’s voice penetrated the du
ll hum of his deadened eardrums.
“Leonard! Please! Help my dad!”
He saw Hunter kneeling over his father. A small triangle of blackened steel jutted out of the man’s back. Neil wasn’t saying anything.
“Help him,” the boy cried.
Leonard picked himself up and began to run through the debris, toward the highway to get help.
#
The boulders above them shuddered and began to tumble down as the explosions shook the mountainside. Daniel clutched tightly at Raylynne as they slid toward the tree line with the newly formed avalanche. “Keep running,” he cried, but his words were swallowed by the thunder of the stones pushing them down, crushing them.
#
The howl of the explosion echoed off the mountains into the forest below and the ground trembled. Beau ran as fast as he could through the woods, barely careful enough not to clothesline himself on a low branch or break his ankle tripping over a raised root. The rumble reminded him of the childhood tale of the giant who’d slept so long he’d been covered by grass and trees and become another mountain. He laughed as he ran. He laughed as he soaked his Wranglers with piss imagining a fiery, tree-covered behemoth towering above him, looking for a tender morsel with which to break the centuries-long fast.
“There’s a restaurant back there,” he shouted at the burning giant. “It’s Your Mountain Home Kitchen!”
Beau despaired, but he didn’t stop running until his legs gave out and he collapsed in a heap at the edge of a large clear pond. He knelt in the mud on the bank of the water and sobbed into his hands.
He cried and he waited for his sins to catch up to him. By sundown, when no one came, he got up and walked back to the diner, letting the light of the fire guide him.
#
Lyn, red faced from the heat of the blast through the open window, picked herself up off the floor and looked at Joanie lying in a pool of spreading blood. The woman choked and sputtered as the wound in her throat frustrated her attempts to get air into her lungs.
Sobbing, Lyn stumbled over to Adam Bischoff’s overturned chair, stooped down, and pulled the tape off of his face. He spit out the rag. “Jesus Christ! She did it! Untie me. Let me the fuck out of here!” When Lyn paused at the straps holding down his wrists he bucked hard against the chair. “What are you waiting for? Untie me. Let me go right now!” She took a step back and looked at him. “What? What are you waiting for?” he asked.
“I want an apology,” Lyn said.
“An apology! She’s the one that did––”
“I want to hear you say that you’re sorry.”
Adam Bischoff pulled against the ties holding him to the chair until his hands turned purple. He shouted for help. “In here! Come on! I’m in here!” Lyn held a finger up to her lips.
“Tell Carol you’re sorry her wife died.”
“You’re as crazy as she was.” He began to kick and buck. Lyn took a step back, getting the impression that whatever impact Joanie had intended to have on Bischoff perception, it hadn’t taken. He was the same. Everything had changed for her and everyone else inside Your Mountain Home Kitchen. For everyone outside of it, life continued on as it always had. She imagined that there would be news reports and dissections of Joanie’s life and her motivations. They would talk about out of control violence in the culture and what can be done to stop people from being cruel and doing horrible things. But when the news cycle wound down and a new source of fascination emerged to take the place of the old, nothing would have changed.
The smell of smoke drifted in through the window. Burning pine and rubber and scorched earth assaulted her senses. She blinked against the stinging breeze, trying to focus. The sounds of sirens outside, the screaming and shouting brought her back to the present.
You can put out fires, but that doesn’t get rid of fire. You just survive if you can.
“I’m in here!” Bischoff shouted again. “I need––”
Lyn saw Carol out of the corner of her eye only a second before the woman pulled the trigger on Joanie’s .45. Twin red blossoms bloomed in Adam’s torso.
“Jesus! What are you doing?” Lyn shouted.
“She said it was all his fault,” Carol said. “He started everything.”
Lyn stepped away and gently took the gun from Carol’s hand. She held the woman close. Carol let her hands hang at her sides as she stared down at what she’d done.
Adam Bischoff groaned, unable to get his breath. Drowning alongside Joanie.
He hadn’t started tearing down Joanie’s life. He had been intent on finishing the job, however, and brought in the wrecking crew. Lyn was part of that plan. She’d helped him get his wish. Joanie lost everything and Lyn had a hand in it.
There is no end to horrible things.
So what do you do? How do you live in a world like this? She thought about Joanie’s attempt at a fresh start. She said she’d done everything right and nothing paid off. It was all for nothing. I can’t accept that. It has to be worth trying. It has to be worth holding together.
She wiped Carol’s prints off of the grip and the trigger with her torn shirt and returned the weapon to the dying woman’s hand for a moment before kicking it away.
“What are you doing?” Carol said.
“I’m trying to hold it together. Trying to give us both a second chance.”
She held Carol’s hand tightly as they walked upstairs and out the front door, leaving Adam Bischoff and Joanie Myer staring at each other for the rest of their lives.
Together, they walked out of the only thing Joanie couldn’t bear to see destroyed.
#
10 October 2013 –– 1801 hrs
The newsreader on the television with her perfect hair and sun-wrinkled cleavage recounted the lead story of the last several months. “With a hot summer drought and uncleared forest debris providing ample fuel ready to burn, the wildfire that consumed Gunsight Peak was the largest in Idaho’s Boundary County in over seventy years. It took firefighters from both the Bureau of Land Management and volunteers from British Columbia until the first snowfall this week to finally get the blaze under control. Although officials say the fire is now one hundred percent contained, they estimate the cost of putting out the conflagration to be close to one billion dollars. Twenty-two homes have been lost. Six, who refused the order to evacuate, are dead. The human cost of the tragedy, which began with the Mountain Home Massacre, continues to rise.” The anchorwoman’s eyes sparkled as she said the words, “Mountain Home Massacre.”
Cherie winced at the words. Real people’s pain reduced to a B-movie tag line. And that was just the local station. She didn’t have the heart to follow national coverage. When she refused to open the door for them, the big networks lingered outside her house until her dad made a plea for privacy. Surprisingly, they’d respected that, and left. Although the phone, on occasion, would ring.
She turned off the television and called her kids for dinner. She still set a place for her husband.
Dinner was interrupted by a knock at the door. When she answered it, she found Steve Pullman waiting there. “I’m sorry for dropping by unannounced,” he said. “But no one answers the phone.” He stood on the stoop waiting, not asking to be let in.
“I’m glad to see you,” she said. It was the truth. “Would you like to come in and have something to eat?”
“Only if it’s no trouble. I don’t want to impose; I just dropped by to make sure you and the kids are doing all right.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” She stepped aside and motioned for him to come in. He smiled and walked through the door before pausing to give her a big hug and tell her how sorry he was. He glanced over his shoulder at the children sitting at the table. And the empty plate.
“Are you expecting someone else? I can go.”
“No,” she said, pulling him toward the empty chair. “It’s for you.” Bryce hadn’t been gone long, and she was sure the neighbors would talk. But then, it felt like a lifetime
ago and it was good to have another warm body at the table. Someone to talk to.
#
Kreewatan moved on.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several people were instrumental in helping shape this book and to them I owe a huge debt of gratitude for their invaluable assistance and support. I must thank my Mad Dogs and first readers, Errick Nunnally and Christopher Irvin. They were the first ones to spend time in Your Mountain Home Kitchen and the book is stronger for it. Jan Kozlowski deserves special thanks, not only for being an early reader, but also for the effort she put into helping me refine the story and characters and for her commitment to making this novel the best it could be. All three of these people went above and beyond, and let me abuse a notion introduced to me by Ann Patchett at the Muse and the Marketplace Conference in 2009: “No one you’re not sleeping with should ever be asked to read your manuscript more than once.”
I owe thanks to the people who’ve helped me become a better writer by providing instruction, superior example, and encouragement. My teachers at Grub Street center for creative writing and my very good friends, K.L. Pereira and Adrian Van Young. You both helped me break down walls and free myself creatively; thanks for taking me to the dark places. Thanks also to several writers whose work I so greatly admire and who have always encouraged me and treated me like a colleague and a friend: Michael Rowe, John Mantooth, Chet Williamson, and Amanda Downum. No list of acknowledgements would be complete without singling out Papa Necon, Bob Booth. If it weren’t for you and the entire Necon family I doubt I’d be writing this. You all have my undying affection; you are my feast of friends.
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