Bait Dog: An Atlanta Burns Novel

by Wendig, Chuck

  Atlanta takes Orly Erickson’s ruby ring and pitches it in the pond.

  He’ll never find it in there. Were she to pawn it, he could get it back one day. But unless he feels like diving in a scum-topped pond and pulling it out from the belly of a hungry catfish, it’s lost to him.

  Small price to pay for what he did.

  And she knows it was him that did this. Maybe not directly.

  But it was him.

  A rotten apple doesn’t fall far from its diseased tree.

  She gets back in the car.

  * * *

  They drop Chris off. She gets out with him. Together they stand by his mailbox.

  He holds her hand. He gives it a squeeze.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  “You heard Mitchell. I didn’t do anything but poke a stick inside a snake’s nest.”

  He shrugs. “Sometimes that’s what needs to happen.”

  “I guess. So what happens now?”

  “Maybe it’s like those YouTube videos say: it gets better.”

  “Shoot, I hope so.”

  “Speaking of getting better—you need to make things right with your Mom. She’s hurting.”

  “I’ll try. What about you and your Dad?”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Way he says it, she’s not sure that he really gets what’s going on there. Or maybe he does but just won’t shine too bright a light in that corner. Maybe that’s a good thing.

  Besides, she doesn’t mind shining that light. Not at all.

  They hug. She gets back in the car.

  * * *

  Shane is sitting on their step when they pull into the driveway. He leaps up and bolts for her, fast as a bowling ball tumbling toward the pins. He wraps his arms around her.

  “Uh, hey,” she says.

  “What happened?” he squawks, but then sees Atlanta’s mother getting out of the car. “Oh. Uhh. Hey, Missus Burns, I was… just asking your daughter about… what happened in class yesterday?”

  Atlanta’s mother smiles a sad smile and tells them she’ll leave the two of them alone.

  “Go home,” Atlanta tells Shane. “Everything in class went… fine. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.” She leans forward, whispers in his ear: “The whole thing went sideways but somehow we got it righted again. Call Chris. He’ll give you the scoop—but give him a couple hours.”

  Shane nods, clearly confused.

  She kisses him on the cheek. His eyes open up and a bloom rises to his cheeks.

  “Shoo,” she tells him, and runs him off.

  As her mother goes inside through the garage door, Atlanta hurries after.

  “Hey,” Atlanta calls. “Wait up.”

  Her mother looks at her expectantly and unsure.

  “You want dinner?” she asks the mother.

  “You want me to cook?” Arlene asks.

  “Not so much, no.” They both laugh. It’s awkward and uncomfortable but by golly, it’s a laugh. “How about we swing down to Dominick’s, maybe get one of those Hawaiian pizzas?” Up here in the Northeast, it’s pizza and Italian joints every fifteen feet or so.

  “Sounds good, baby-bird. Sounds real good.”

  * * *

  It’s Monday afternoon—quittin’ time—when Atlanta meets Bill Coyne, Chris’s father, by his pickup truck. He parks in the back lot outside the factory where he works, a factory that makes little tools like tiny eyeglass screwdrivers and the itty-bitty screws that go with them. He parks out by where the weeds come up through the blacktop.

  When he sees her, his voice goes low, low enough to be a growl.

  “You.”

  “Me,” she says.

  Then he sees she’s got the .410 with her. Leaning up against his driver side door.

  “I don’t think your son knows,” she says.

  He’s cagey. “Knows what?”

  “Don’t be coy, Bill. You’re a member of that gun club. I saw you in one of the pictures on the wall.” She’s lying about that. She didn’t see that picture. But she knows it’s true just the same, and the look on his face confirms it.

  “I am,” he finally admits. “So’s a lot of people.”

  “I heard some things. Saw some things. See? I can be coy, too.”

  He keeps eyeing up that shotgun. Like it might leap up off the ground and bite him. And it just might.

  “Get to the point,” he says.

  “Back at your house. On the wall in your garage I saw this… license plate with the number 88 on it.”

  Bill Coyne shifts from foot to foot. “Doesn’t mean anything. It’s Dale Jr’s number. In NASCAR.”

  “Except that’s not a NASCAR plate. And it looks a helluva lot like one on the wall of Orly Erickson’s office. The one that says 14WORDS?”

  “I said, get to the point.”

  “You’re a Neo-Nazi white power asshole like the others. The number 88? I can Google. Learned how to from my smart little Venezuelan friend. Turns out, the eighth letter of the alphabet is H. Eighty-eight thereby corresponds with HH. And HH corresponds to Heil Hitler. Same way that 14WORDS is a veiled reference to some Nazi bullshit about securing a future for white children.”

  “You don’t know what I’d do for my children.”

  “I think I do know. I think I know that you’d hire the children of some of your White Power dickhole fuckface buddies to try to scare your son into going straight. Not straight like, don’t end up in jail, but straight as in, stop liking the look of other men and start getting down with the lady-parts.” He doesn’t say anything, so she continues. “They burned him with cigarettes, Bill. Then shoved stuff up his ass. Which, for the record, is about as gay as it comes. Methinks they doth protest too much.”

  “Unless you got proof of something, you best leave this alone.”

  “I got all the proof I need.” It’s right there in his face. She picks up the shotgun. Doesn’t point it at him. Not yet.

  “He’s a good kid,” Bill says. His voice has a ragged edge to it, like rusted saw-teeth. His hands are shaking. He licks his lips. “Just needs guidance is all.”

  “You gave him guidance, all right. Now it’s time for you to get some guidance, Bill.”

  She pulls a crumple pack of cheap-ass Natural American Spirit cigarettes out of her pocket. The ones with the peace-pipe smoking Indian on the front. She tosses them to him. “I bought those. Amazing how easy it is for a kid like me to buy cigarettes. And meth, too, but that’s neither here nor there. I tucked a lighter in the pack.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “You do today. I want you to light one up. Get it good and cherry. Then put it out on your hand.”

  “What? Fuck no.”

  She cocks the hammer of the .410. Still doesn’t point it at him. “Did you know, when you shoot the sack off a wanna-be pedophile rapist, you gain a certain reputation? People know you ain’t fooling around all of a sudden. Gets their attention. Have I gotten your attention, Bill?”

  He says nothing.

  “Light up,” she says.

  With an unsteady hand he taps a cigarette out. Tries to screw it between his lips but drops it. He goes to grab it off the ground but she tells him to just get another. He does. This time, he gets it between his lips. Tries flicking the red plastic piece of shit dimestore lighter and it takes a few times to get a flame going but then, just in time, it does.

  He lights up, as commanded.

  He inhales. Blows smoke.

  “Looks like you smoke just fine,” she says.

  “I quit ten years back.”

  “Well, you can quit again in a couple minutes. A few more puffs. Go on.”

  Puff, puff, puff. The cherry glows nuclear orange. The smoke stings her eyes.

  “Now put it out on your hand.”

  “Which hand?”

  “I don’t give a shit. Just do it and stop jawing at me.”

  He takes the cigarette out of his mouth. Holds it like he’s ready to stub it out in an ashtray, like a tiny spea
r with which you might nab a minnow. Bill Coyne winces, but she points the shotgun toward him, toward his crotch, and scowls.

  Bill Coyne presses the cancer stick against his hand. His left.

  She can hear the hissing. Can smell the burn.

  He cries out but chokes it back . Closes his eyes and stomps his foot. Whimpers.

  When he opens his eyes again, she’s already walking away.

  Bait Dog

  An Atlanta Burns novel

  Prologue: The Boy in the Pear Tree

  On the north side of town, not far from the park, not far from the water tower, a pear tree sits on Gallows Hill overlooking much of Maker’s Bell.

  Given that it’s springtime, the pear tree is presently in bloom.

  Atlanta isn’t there when it happens, and in fact it takes a day for her to hear the news, but it’s there that a couple middle-school kids go to sneak a smoke and there that they find Chris Coyne in a sweater-vest and a pair of Yves Saint Laurent jeans hanging by his neck, dead.

  The rope isn’t lashed around a branch. The branches of the pear aren’t strong enough to hold that kind of weight. Rather, the hanging rope is wound around the trunk and cinched against the base of a branch—a rig-up providing enough support for the branch. So that when he hung there, back against the trunk, his legs would seek purchase but find only weaker, lighter branches that would not and could not save his life.

  Many of those smaller branches are broken. From his kicking feet.

  His tongue out, swollen. Eyes open, the whites full of blood

  A note tucked in his pocket, written in his own handwriting: “If you want a rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.” Then a second sentence:

  “It gets better.”

  It’s Shane that calls and tells Atlanta what happened.

  “It’s not suicide,” he says. “They’re saying it’s suicide but it’s not. He’d never do that. You know that someone did this to him. You know it.” Then he starts crying. He can’t talk anymore. Chris was his best friend. And now Chris—who they all just hung out with a week before—is dead.

  Part One: Withers Quicker Than the Rose

  Graveyard. St. Mary’s Church.

  Maker’s Bell, Pennsylvania.

  * * *

  Everybody stands around in the wet grass, all wearing sunglasses or squinting against the light. The thought running through Atlanta’s head is that funerals shouldn’t happen on nice days. Should be illegal. Doesn’t seem right. Big bright sun and broad blue sky above. The night before saw weather far better suited to the day at hand: rain and thunder and clamor and clatter, and that’s what Atlanta feels inside, a tornado in a teapot screaming and howling so loud in her ears she can barely hear the graveside service. A service ringed in flowers.

  Flowers on the ground. Flowers on tripods. Flowers on lapels.

  And early though the laurel grows…

  Her friend is dead. Lowered into the earth. And she wants to be there with him.

  With the worms and the roots. It’s where she belongs.

  * * *

  The beer bottle breaks against the grave with a pop. Green glass flicks into the grass. She has nothing against Nancy Tottlemeyer—the grave against which she’s broken three Yuengling bottles—but it’s the easiest target and Atlanta doesn’t give much of a shit right now. Because dear Nancy got a long life, damn near 80 years long, and for that, fuck her right in the dead old lady ear.

  Atlanta rubs her eyes. Sighs to ward off crying. Drinks more.

  The bitter beer taste coats Atlanta’s tongue like a soap scum sheen. Time, then, to wash it out. She fetches a bottle of cheap Polish vodka from her bag, spins the cap, takes a pull. Clean white fire. Liquid. Bright.

  She sits like that for a while. Next to Chris’ gravestone, which is a modest stone that does not suit him. The stone shows a copse of pine trees and the silhouette of a mallard duck flying from the brush. Then, his name, and the dates that frame his life like a pair of parentheses.

  A stone chosen by his father. One last spite by a man who did not understand his son. And didn’t want to.

  “I hate that stone,” Shane says, tottering up. His hands are flat and tucked into his pockets. The little roly-poly Venezuelan with the well-coiffed hair and the poochy belly plops next to her. His voice is raw, like it’s been run across a cheese grater a few times. Like he’s been smoking. He hasn’t, she knows. He’d never touch a cigarette. Hell, he’d never touch one of those candy cigarettes.

  But he has been crying.

  They both have.

  “It’s all wrong,” she agrees.

  He sighs. And he says, with all seriousness, “It’s not fabulous enough.”

  Chris. A king of fabulosity. Like the vodka, he was liquid and bright. (Speaking of, she takes another pull that sets flame to the sorrow in her belly.) His life, cut short. And why?

  Because of me, Atlanta thinks. A thought that deserves a third glug of bad potato juice.

  “The flowers,” Shane says, “they were all wrong, too.”

  She agrees. “All wrong.”

  “Roses, carnations. Roses, carnations. Chrysanthemums. Easel sprays, baskets, wreaths. Bo-ring.” Shane’s not one of the school’s gay mafia, the so-called La Cozy Nostra, but he has style. Much of that coming from his friendship with Chris. His best friendship. Two geeks in their geek burrito: Captain America and Star Wars and books about kings and dragons and spaceships. Stuff Atlanta doesn’t really get but suddenly she wishes she did and it makes her heart hurt in a deep and hollow place.

  She passes Shane the vodka. He sniffs at it. Raises an eyebrow.

  “Just drink it,” she says.

  To her surprise, he does. Two seconds later he’s on his hands and knees next to the grave, coughing, eyes bulging like they’re trying to get out of his fool head.

  He spits in the grass but does not hurl.

  When he’s done he hands the bottle back.

  “Delicious,” he groans.

  “What kind of flowers would he have liked?” Atlanta asks. “You knew him better than I did.” And longer.

  “I don’t know. He had an orchid plant but be barely took care of it. I think for him it wasn’t so much the flowers as much as it was the arrangement.”

  “That sounds right.”

  “He would’ve wanted bigger.”

  She nods, fills her cheeks with vodka before gulping. After the gasp, she says, “More colorful, too.”

  “Like, he would’ve wanted it to be kitschy. Sparklers and tiki torches.”

  “And naked fire dancers,” she adds.

  “And a robot.”

  She snorts. “Okay, now you lost me.”

  Above their head, the sky darkens toward evening. A plane drifts. White contrail behind it. Shane continues:

  “He liked robots. He had a bunch of old toy robots from the 1950s and stuff. Lot of them still worked. I mean, not as actual robots.”

  “I kinda figured.” She stands up. Arms crossed. “He needed a better outfit, too. You see the suit they stuffed him in? Like a used car salesman. Surprised they didn’t go for the powdered blue tuxedo. A classic. You want kitsch, there it is.”

  Shane affects a haughty voice, holds his nose in the air along with an index finger thrusted skyward. “I consider the lack of a sweater-vest to be a glaring oversight. A vicious error that will surely have Monsieur Coyne dancing the watusi in his grave. Beware his fashionable zombie vengeance!”

  They both get a small laugh out of that, a laugh that’s like a small light in a dark tunnel. But like the saying goes, sometimes the light at the end is really just a train, and that’s true here: because opening the door to that moment of mirth—of feeling anything at all—also lets in a charging locomotive of grief.

  “He looked plastic,” she says. Mouth dry. He did, too. Didn’t really look like him. Looked like a wax representation of him. Good enough for fake. But bad because it was real.