The Runner

by Cynthia Voigt

  Patrice wasn’t home. His truck was gone. Bullet went out and sat on the deck of Fraternité for a while. He would have hosed her down except she was always kept clean. He ate his sandwiches, then went back along the dock to drop the crumpled-up bag into Patrice’s incinerator. He hung around the yard for a while, seeing what Patrice was up to. The fourteen-footer was almost finished. The ribs were in and boards ran its entire curved length—fitted so neatly you almost couldn’t see that it was made of separate boards. A new transom lay nearby, needing sanding before it could be set into place, the joints cut out like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Bullet ran his hand along the sides of the boat, sanded to silky smoothness, ready for an undercoat. He didn’t know how Patrice stood it, all that slow work, but he surely admired the results, and even admired Patrice for being able to achieve them.

  He turned and looked around the yard. A couple of hulls, an empty boat trailer digging its nose into the ground, motors and propellers. Then he stepped over the picket fence.

  The road by Patrice’s was lined on both sides with little houses, each house surrounded by a yard and fence. The other yards, past which Bullet jogged, were planted and tended, kept neat. It bothered his neighbors that Patrice didn’t plant and tend his lawn. Every now and then, somebody would write him a note, anonymous, of course, or a group of men would come to try to talk to him about keeping up the neighborhood. Patrice never minded them, but it made Bullet mad, and these little boxed-in gussied-up yards didn’t show him anything either.

  His return route took him through one of the colored sections. Not the higher income one, that was downtown. This was shacks along the roadside, built from tar paper over cinder-block footings; or old trailers with patches of vegetable gardens beside them; or once even an old bus, with a bedspread hung for a door. Bullet jogged past the section fast; it made him angry.

  He arrived home by midafternoon and went right upstairs to get his gun. He stopped in the kitchen for a couple of glasses of milk, which he drank standing up, looking out the window over the sink. He could see his mother off around the corner, checking the sheets on the clothesline. They weren’t dry yet, but a late-afternoon breeze was building up and that would probably finish the job. The cool milk flowed down his throat.

  He heard heavy footsteps behind him, the old man. He didn’t turn around, didn’t hurry himself. He felt the old man’s anger wash over him from behind and almost smiled. Slowly, he lifted the glass to empty it. Slowly, he turned on water, rinsed the glass, set it down slowly on the washboard. He wondered what the old man would do if he turned around to face him. He’d said he didn’t want to lay eyes on Bullet. What would he do if Bullet turned around? . . . Run out of the room?

  Bullet turned around.

  His father was staring at the toes of his shoes and his eyes didn’t even flicker, so Bullet knew the man had been staring at them all the time he’d been standing there. He could have laughed.

  “There is nothing quite so childish as getting even by wanton destruction,” the old man said to his shoes.

  Bullet wondered what would happen if ten little voices answered back: “Yes, sir . . . yes, sir . . . yes, sir,” overlapping one another like waves coming into shore. He stared at his father’s bent head, to where the face began, under the white crown. He stared hard, wanting to force the guy to look up and eat his own words.

  “You’ll repair the damage you did.”

  I did what I was told. They close now—I checked that.

  “They’ll need to be completely rebuilt now.”

  So what?

  “Then rehung. On new hinges.” The orders came marching out. “You’ll have to rebuild the frame first.”

  You can’t make me.

  “If not right away, you’ll have to do it sooner or later, whenever—”

  Bullet knew what he was about to get to. Unh-uh, you’re not going to do that to me.

  “When it’s yours.”

  You can’t make me.

  “So that you have succeeded only in fouling your own nest. Like any other animal, like some nigger. I am not surprised at that, not surprised at all.”

  —not going to hang that around my neck. Box me in with it. Use it that way. Take it away from me. Because nothing felt under his feet the way the rich, flat acres of home did.

  “Because the farm is yours, or as good as. Not that I particularly want to give it to you.”

  You don’t want to give it to anyone, you want to pull it into your grave after you like some blanket.

  “And I hope it chokes you like it’s choked me.”

  Anger burned up in Bullet’s guts and his bones closed in around it. He got his hands on his gun and got out of the room. His father wanted to make Bullet take it from him because he hated it; he couldn’t make Bullet take anything from him. Nobody could do that, but nobody. They kept trying to box him in, and he kept breaking out—and he’d keep on breaking out, damn them.

  He went around behind the barn and into a thin patch of woods. He moved fast, and his noisy progress routed two crows out of the branches. Without thinking, he shouldered, cocked, aimed the gun and fired twice. He got one. Not bad. Even with this second-rate gun, his marksmanship was okay, maybe even good. When he could pick up the Smith and Wesson in Salisbury, he’d be good enough for it.

  Bullet slowed down, moving more quietly. In another couple of weeks the hunting season would begin, and he’d have to get himself a bright orange hat. But now he didn’t have to worry about being picked off by some jerk from some city who mistook him for a deer, or maybe a duck. He thought, sliding the clip into place and shoving the bolt home, if he saw some ducks he might shoot for them. Game wardens stayed home as long as they could, earning their salaries by shuffling papers on a desk until they had to get out into the cold to actually keep an eye on things. It wasn’t even cold yet, just crisp in the shady woods. If he flushed any ducks and was close enough, he might just shoot for them. Who’d see him here? Who could catch him?

  All of his senses alert, he walked the woods and fields as the afternoon gathered in around him. Once he got a shot at a rabbit, off to the left inlaid, but he missed. He opened the bolt, picked up the empty casing and jammed it into his pocket, then slid the bolt home again, hearing the bullet click into place. For a while, he sat in a clearing, just in case a deer might come browsing by near enough to justify trying for it. Across the open space, the bare trees rose into a gray sky, each branch clear. A breeze flowed along the land, running for the water. It soughed through the pines, and the top-heavy loblollies swayed under its hands. No deer came by.

  When Bullet moved back into the woods, it was twilight there, darker than in the open, the light dim and shadowy. He stopped, pulled his sweater over his head, and then—holding the twenty-two ready, like a pistol at his right hip—he tossed a couple of dead branches up into a pine, seeing if anything flushed out. Nothing moved.

  But something moved off to his right, low and on the ground, at the edge of his vision. . . . He got the shot off before he even properly saw, a sweet reflex shot, his whole body coordinated and working like a perfect machine.

  A good shot too, he heard the cry and the muffled thud of a small body falling to ground in mid-movement. His hands worked the bolt to reload the barrel automatically as he went over to the bushes to see what he’d gotten.

  OD—the stupid mutt—lay on her side with blood coming out every time she breathed. Her eyes were closed.

  Bullet knew what he had to do next. He raised the gun to his shoulder and aimed just behind her left eye. At this range, even this gun wouldn’t fail him. “I told you,” he said to her. He hooked his finger around the trigger. He wanted to do this in one clean shot. Why did she have to be so stupid?

  At the sound of his voice she opened her eye and her tail wagged a couple of times. It barely rustled the leaves and branches she lay on.

  “You stupid mutt,” Bullet said. “What am I supposed to do?”

  The tail moved again, and sh
e tried to lift her head to see him, but apparently she couldn’t.

  Bullet crouched down beside her and took a look at the wound. It was a kind of ragged hole in her rib cage. She tried to turn, tried to get up—her front legs kind of scrabbled and her chest heaved; her back legs didn’t move at all. Blood came out of the hole, slow and steady.

  “What did you think you were doing?” he demanded. But she hadn’t been thinking, and now look what had happened. She’d just been following him around and got in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stupid, just like Liza, and wagging her tail at him when he’d just pumped lead into her.

  Bullet forced his rib cage outward with a breath.

  Not his fault, he knew that.

  His rib cage and the banded muscles of his diaphragm closed in again, putting pressure on his lungs.

  She walked into it. Time and again, over and over, he’d sent her home. The stupid dog just wouldn’t learn.

  He forced breath into his lungs.

  He felt like kicking her. It made him angry . . . what she’d done.

  His muscles bunched together and moved with anger. He rose, bent to pick up the twenty-two, stared down at the dog making a puddle of dark blood on the dried pine needles.

  She lay there uncomplaining, breathing, bleeding—dying.

  It wasn’t his fault, but he had fired the shot. And now what was he supposed to do. He felt boxed in, helpless—caught in somebody else’s trap, like always. He needed to yell, he needed to move, before the sides of the box pushed in all around him and crushed him.

  He felt himself explode into action, swinging his arms—and he cracked the twenty-two against the twisted trunk of a swamp oak. The shock of the impact ran along his bones, jarring the shoulder socket and moving on, like a lightning bolt, down through the muscles of his back. He slammed it again and again. The noise he was making with his voice had no meaning, it just exploded out of him.

  At last, the gun broke, snapped apart where the barrel joined the stock. The barrel flew off into the dark woods, landing with a crash. He threw the stock after it, listening to it fly through branches and crash down somewhere in the dark circle beyond visibility.

  He was breathing heavily. He turned to look down at OD before walking away.

  Her ears were up, listening. She didn’t even know what was going on.

  Bullet sat down on the rough ground by her head. “All right,” he said aloud. “But hurry up.” He put one hand on her head, rubbing a little with his fingers. He could feel the shape of her skull under the smooth hair. Her skull fit into his hand. If he wanted to, he could take his two hands and crush that circle of bone—if she’d been in pain he would have. His fingers moved behind her floppy ears. Along the edge of the delicate layer of bone.

  She was small, OD, smaller even than that kid in the picture Frank showed him. Liza’s kid. He didn’t believe Liza had gone and had a kid, with Frank for the father—and maybe two. How stupid could anyone be.

  You’re not looking too smart to me right now, he told himself.

  It wasn’t my fault, he answered.

  Yeah, but it’s your responsibility.

  Well, I’m accepting that, so shut up.

  He shut up.

  OD breathed slowly, patiently, waiting. Bullet breathed beside her, waiting. Night settled slowly in around them, sifting in among the trees. She wasn’t complaining, OD. She wasn’t scared. Little night noises moved around them, scurryings and flutterings, the rustling of leaves and sometimes a distant motor, some boat moving back to harbor.

  Bullet felt the hard ground under his backside and his legs. His shoulders rested back against a fallen tree. His one hand rested on OD’s skull, the little finger going down along her neck to register the shallow rise and fall of her breathing.

  He sat between anger and sad. They felt the same, the sad and the anger. He could see the shapes of trees and the massy shape of undergrowth, but nothing more. He could see, turning his head slightly, the whitish shape of OD.

  “I’m sorry, OD,” he finally spoke aloud. He barely recognized his own voice. He heard a rustle of dried pine needles where her tail was. “I dunno, I wish you hadn’t walked into it. I wish I hadn’t taken that shot—I didn’t mean to.”

  If she knew anything, which he doubted, she’d know that was true. Which didn’t make any difference. “You’re such a stupid mutt, OD,” his voice said, trying to tell her, “but you’ve been okay.” And she couldn’t possibly understand, he knew that. “You’ve been an okay dog, all things considered.”

  Shut up, he told himself.

  Well, she was.

  Night folded in over them. The wind picked up, and he could no longer hear OD’s breathing. He could only feel it through his fingers. The moon must have risen, because the woods were infiltrated with silver clouds of light that made patches of dark shadows. The shadows moved, where they ran through trees. The wind washed cold over Bullet. He didn’t move. He stayed and waited. He had no idea how much time passed and he didn’t care. And then, quietly, OD was no longer breathing. Because he had killed her.

  He got up, stiff and angry. But he was angry at himself. He didn’t know what to do about that.

  Johnny was right, you’re a breaker, he told himself. She had courage. She was nothing but a stupid mutt, and she did it right. Good for you, OD.

  CHAPTER 14

  In the shadowy woods, there wasn’t anything he could dig a grave with. He started digging with his fingers where he’d been sitting, but after the layer of dead needles and dried leaves scraped off, and the top dusty layer of soil, all he could do was scratch uselessly. He felt around until he found a stick, strong enough. He used that to scrape and pry and dig into the soil. With his hands, he scooped out the handfuls of soil he loosened that way and piled it by his knees. Then he scraped and pried again.

  After a long time, he had made a shallow grave. He picked up the body of the dog—just a body now, empty—and put her into it. Scraping with his hands, he covered her over with dirt. After the dirt, he piled on armloads of leaves, and finally, with the heaviest branches he could find, he made a covering. He set the branches side by side in a straight row over the grave.

  He stood up, cold and stiff, but not tired. That was such a stupid thing to do. A stupid mistake. Mine.

  Bullet made his way down to the water and went north toward the farm. Along by the water the sky showed stars and moon overhead. Liza should have taken OD with her. Liza knew what it was like. Leaving OD there was like— Bullet splashed up through the cold shallows. It was like lions, the way the old man—and he did it too—devoured things. Like lions attacking and chasing down, teeth and claws and the powerful relentless bodies. Then ripping her apart, ripping the flesh and bones apart, and the blood, guts, everything lying on the ground. . . . Poor OD didn’t have a chance, nobody could have stopped them.

  Come off it, he said to himself. What kind of an idea is that?

  It’s just an idea, he answered, but it’s my own, and maybe even the first one all my own. So get lost.

  Get lost (scornfully), how can I get lost? Jerk.

  Bullet agreed.

  He turned at the dock, to go inland. Over the marsh grasses the sky lightened to silver, and a streak of orangy pink heralded the sunrise. Bullet stopped to watch. He wasn’t in any hurry.

  As the light rose above a line of trees, it flowed like water over the grasses, turning them warm brown, almost gold. They swayed, as if the light were a hand passing over them. The distant trees assumed color.

  Bullet headed up the path. He came through the pines into his mother’s vegetable garden. There the brown harrowed earth shone under early sunlight, and the few dark leaves hanging on the tomato plants glowed. A couple of pumpkins were hidden away under broad flat leaves, their vines twisting along the rough earth. Tiny tentacles went out from the vines to hold the soil. He bent down and took a handful of dirt, rubbing it with his fingers against his palm, letting it shower down. You grew things out of this,
and his fingers could feel its richness.

  He looked toward the house and met his mother’s eyes. She was sitting on the back steps, still in the clothes she’d worn for dinner, red shoes with heels, blue skirt, the white blouse. He walked toward her. Her hands held a blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes were fixed on his face. She had been waiting for him.

  “Maw,” he said.

  She didn’t answer. Her face stayed expressionless.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “You took your gun,” she snapped.

  He turned, looked where she was looking, over the garden to the marsh. He sat down beside her, so his shoulder almost touched hers. He could feel how she was feeling, and he didn’t like feeling that; he didn’t like her feeling it either; it made him angry that she should have to.

  With his shoulder touching hers, he tried to tell her. “I shot OD.” He waited, and she didn’t say anything. “It was an accident. Anyway, I waited with her—and then I had to bury her.”

  The two of them sat looking out. He waited for what she would answer. He wouldn’t blame her if she let fly at him.

  “People like us,” she finally said, “I dunno, boy. Innocent, weak things come into our hands, and we do such a bad job by them. We destroy them.”

  “It wasn’t like that; it was an accident,” he told her.

  She turned her head to face him, her eyes burning. “Don’t pretend, boy. Are you pretending to yourself you didn’t do it? Because if you are, you’re lying to yourself. Are you doing that? Are you going to do that to yourself?”

  Her anger drove the breath out of him, and he pulled his body back from hers. “But,” he started to say, and her mouth moved without saying anything. She wasn’t talking to him, he understood that; he understood her anger.