All The Way Back

by David Kearns

  Chapter Twenty Five

  I was dreaming about being in a boxing ring. I couldn’t see anything but darkness beyond the confines of the ropes, and I was fighting a faceless opponent who was much bigger than I was. My fists moved in slow motion, and my opponent was always able to move out of the way without difficulty. My feet could move, but when I threw a kick, my leg moved so slowly that my opponent simply stepped to one side before he punched me with devastating force. I kept getting up off of the canvas when I was knocked down, but each time I got up from the canvas I felt like I had less fight in me than the time before. The last time that I was knocked down I considered staying there.

  The bell announced the end of the round. I lay face down on the mat feeling the roughness of the canvas against the side of my face and enjoying the relief that I did not have to fight for a while. Then the bell sounded again, and a dog began to bark. Consciousness seeped back into my thought processes. I felt Emily roll away from me and heard the springs in the mattress squeak as her weight shifted. Then the mattress bounced once as she got out of bed.

  I opened one eye and watched Emily’s naked form walk across the bedroom to her closet. She picked a red silk robe off of a coat hanger, pulled it on, and tightened the belt. She checked herself briefly in the mirror, and I was struck by how much she really did look like Marilyn Monroe with her creamy skin, her full lips, her tiny waist and hourglass figure more than evident through the thin fabric. Her honey blond hair was rumpled, but that added to the appeal somehow.

  I rolled onto my back and rose up on my elbows as she walked over to my side of the bed.

  She put a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s just the doorbell,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

  She picked up her silver pistol from the nightstand and thumbed off the safety as casually as a smoker flicks the igniter on a cigarette lighter.

  Then she went through the bedroom door and pulled it shut behind her.

  I heard the front door open and close, and then the dog stopped barking. I heard women’s voices talking quietly in the living room before the voices moved to the kitchen and there was the sound of a pan being put on a stove. A few minutes later I smelled the unmistakable scents of coffee brewing and bacon cooking.

  The duffel bag I’d brought with me the previous day was in the corner of the bedroom. I pulled clean clothes from the bag, pulling on jeans and a pullover sweatshirt to fight the chill of the summer morning. I took my toothbrush from the zip pocket on the duffel and went across the hallway and into the bathroom. As I closed the bathroom door, I heard Emily’s voice saying that everything was quiet after Eric and I left the previous night.

  I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth, and put my toothbrush in the rack beside Emily’s. Our toothbrushes being in the same rack was a small thing that meant something much larger, as many small things do. It meant something about decisions made about the present and assumptions made about the future. I felt disquieted, but I shrugged off my concerns. I splashed water on my hair and then towel dried it before combing it into a semblance of order.

  I went into the kitchen, lured by the scents of coffee and bacon. Sandy was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of her. Emily had her back to us both. She was bent over the frying pan and using a metal spatula to flip the bacon. Emily’s red silk robe seemed out of place against the old cabinets and the worn linoleum on the kitchen floor.

  The silver pistol lay on the countertop within Emily’s reach. I wondered if the wiring in Emily’s head had been permanently affected by the stalker and by what happened on the cliffside, and that the gun had become a permanent extension of her.

  “Hey, superman,” Sandy said. “Your cape is looking a little wrinkled this morning.”

  “Rough night,” I said.

  Bacon grease popped in the pan and spattered on the countertop, and Sandy and I watched Emily bend forward to reach for the roll of paper towels on the counter. When she did that, her robe rode up her backside and exposed several inches of uncovered curvature at the top of her leg. Sandy glanced in my direction and raised her eyebrows.

  “So I see,” Sandy said flatly.

  I got a mug from one of the cabinets and poured a cup of coffee from the drip coffee maker. I went over to the kitchen table and sat down across from Sandy. She was wearing a blue blazer over a dark grey skirt and dark blue heels. The white silk shirt underneath the coat was buttoned all the way to the neck. She looked prim.

  “You’re very well dressed,” I said.

  “It’s Sunday,” Sandy said. “I went to church.”

  I nodded. I was so tired that I was only vaguely aware of what day it was.

  “Emily said that you and Eric took care of our guest,” Sandy said.

  “He’s gone,” I said. Sandy watched as Emily used a spatula to lift the bacon from the pan onto a paper towel on a plate, then cracked four eggs into the bacon grease. Emily pressed the button on the exhaust fan over the cooktop to pull the smoke from the kitchen. The roar of the exhaust fan filled the kitchen.

  “For a while? Or always?” Sandy asked, raising her voice slightly.

  “Permanently,” I said.

  Sandy nodded before saying “I don’t think that’s a bad choice.”

  “Me either. Now I need to sort things out with Peck.”

  For the first time since I’d sat down, Sandy made direct eye contact with me.

  “How are you going to do that?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “You sure you don’t just want to hit the road? I’ve got my car out front with a full tank of gas. We could be two states from here by midnight.”

  “And let Peck chase me out of here?”

  “And find a new place to live, Del. Going after Peck won’t change what happened to your parents. If you really think about it, you know I’m right.”

  “I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

  “Even if it costs you everything? It’s really worth that to you?”

  “I’m not running,” I said.

  Emily shut off the exhaust fan over the oven. It suddenly seemed very quiet in the kitchen. Emily brought a plate of eggs and bacon and put it on the table in front of me. Then she went over to the cooktop, brought her plate back over to the table and sat it next to mine. She laid her silver pistol on the table with the gun barrel pointed towards Sandy.

  Sandy gave Emily a hard look and then made eye contact with me. Her expression seemed to say “Are you sure about this?”

  “I offered Sandy breakfast, but she’s already eaten,” Emily said. She looked down at her plate and cut her eggs with a knife.

  “I’m just not hungry,” Sandy said. “Thank you, though. I won’t be staying.”

  Emily used the salt and pepper shakers to season her eggs.

  “I’m going to have to go,” Sandy said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you sure you can’t stay?” Emily said.

  “Thanks,” Sandy said. “I’m good.” She stood from the table, and Emily and I also stood. It felt like I was saying goodbye to Sandy for the last time. We’d been having a conversation just moments before, but a bridge had been crossed and burned when Emily sat down.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I’ll let you know when I get there,” she said. “How ‘bout that?”

  Sandy went out the front door. I followed her outside onto the front porch, and then closed the door behind me. I stood by the door and watched her go down the steps and walk to her car. She opened the passenger door of the Camaro, tilted the seat forward, and reached into the back seat. She retrieved the shotgun and re-wrapped it in a towel. After she did that, she carried it across the yard and held the bundle up to me as if she were making an offering to the gods.

  “I’m not doing this anymore,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t watch you kill yourself, Del. I know that I can’t fi
x you, and I can’t save you any more, either. And I’m giving up on waiting for you to notice me. I have to move on, and you have to save yourself if you can.”

  I wouldn’t take the shotgun from her, and she laid it carefully on the porch at my feet.

  “I’m going to try to face the world in a new way,” she said. “I think I’m going to look for a new job that doesn’t require a gun, too.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a small semiautomatic pistol.

  “Take it,” she said. “You’re going to need this more than I will.” She held the pistol out to me at arm’s length.

  The front door opened. Out of my peripheral vision I saw that Emily had the silver pistol in her hand.

  Time moved in slow motion. I felt the cold concrete of the porch through the soles of my bare feet. I was exquisitely aware of the colors in Sandy’s blue cotton coat and ivory silk blouse, of the way that Sandy’s blonde hair fell delicately along the side of her neck, and of the amplified presence of Emily in the blood red robe as she shouted and raised her pistol.

  I moved towards Emily as she extended her arm to fire, pushing my palm against her forearm and slamming her into the door frame. The silver gun went off with a sound like a firecracker, and the pistol snapped out of Emily’s hand and skittered across the front porch, pinwheeling on the smooth concrete until it came to a stop. I let go of Emily’s gun arm, and after glaring at me for a moment, Emily swung at my face with a backhanded slap. I jerked my shoulder up to protect my face, and I took the blow with my deltoid muscle and the top of my head.

  “Don’t ever hit me like that again,” she said. “I’ll kill you if you do.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said.

  The dog came onto the porch tentatively, as if it were afraid.

  I moved past Emily towards the silver pistol. I picked it up from the concrete and sensed the weight of it, felt the heat that Emily’s hand had imparted to the mother of pearl grips, and smelled the odor of burnt gunpowder. I looked at the filigree and the chrome on the gun’s frame. Stylish, feminine, and lethal power collected into one shiny package. I hopped off of the porch onto the cool grass of the lawn.

  “I thought she was going to shoot you,” Emily said.

  “I was giving him my gun,” Sandy said quietly. “Why would I shoot him?”

  I wrapped my fingers around the butt of the gun and walked across the grass towards the street. “Lucky, lucky, lucky,” I thought. I stepped to the curb, bent over the storm grate, aligned the gun barrel parallel with the rusted bars, and dropped the pistol through the slot into the muddy water below.