Shine Your Light on Me

by Lee Thompson

  She went to her car and with trembling fingers stuck the keys in the ignition. She passed someone walking down the side of the road on her way out. Mitch’s house was only a mile from the bar, but the roads were slippery and she drove forty miles an hour, slowing down way before the serpentine curves that wound through the white and black night.

  The lights were on in the house when she pulled into the driveway. She parked as close to the door as she could and the wind spit snow in her face and it swirled about her feet and the cold clung to her fingers and face, and she dragged the hair out her eyes and mounted the steps of the house and entered without knocking.

  Mitch, afraid of the violence that Pine festered, had meant to keep him out of trouble and the public eye, by letting him babysit his daughter Jessica. Aria had known it was an unwise move from the beginning, the way she sensed many things, yet had kept her mouth shut in hope that she would be proven wrong.

  But the boy of eighteen with the spattering of a star-shaped birthmark on his neck had the young child on his lap, her shirt pulled up, his hands rummaging the flesh beneath the fabric. He was grinning like a lunatic, his eyes lit with a corruption that anyone with eyes to see would determine ran into his soul like a bottomless fissure.

  She did not hesitate to grab the lamp on the end table and rip its cord free of the wall. There was no sound in the room but Jessica’s whimper, the child startled by seeing her young grandmother there, weapon raised, Aria jerking the little girl by the arm out of Pine’s lap, and throwing her onto the floor, and with her other hand, slamming the base of the lamp between his eyes.

  It rocked him good and she could smell the sharp tang of his ejaculation, and it turned her stomach and she hit him again, higher on the forehead. She couldn’t let go of the lamp. Jessica was crying on the floor behind her.

  Pine shook his head and rubbed his brow and looked up at her with genuine curiosity. Aria could never tell if he knew what he did was wrong when it came to any number of things, and he put her in mind of a child of four years old who spoke and acted on impulse and mimicry. But his voice was that of a man’s and he said, “You hurt me.”

  She ignored him, her eyes blazing, and she helped Jessica up and pulled her shirt back down and led her out into the wind and snow and to the warm, safe car.

  • • •

  Bobby Russell was walking through the snow, thinking about the booby traps he’d made and was carrying in his backpack, and what it’d be like after he broke into the school and armed them for tomorrow’s classes. He’d planned it well. The ones he’d place in the rooms, beneath the teachers’ desks, would go off simultaneously as the first bell rang at 8:35 a.m.

  And one minute later those he placed in all the trash cans would thunder, while those who had not died in the initial explosions made their ways out into the halls, disoriented, terrified, and in shock.

  And one minute after that those he placed in the shrubbery outside the exits would clap their mighty hands and reduce the exits to broken glass and twisted steel, a fitting coffin for those who had either ridiculed or shunned him.

  Three minutes for him to stand outside the building and watch the place burn before the fire trucks and police arrived, and then he’d sneak up onto the water tower, where he’d hid his father’s .30-06, and turn the rescuers into sausage.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d do then, where he’d go. It didn’t really matter. It was cold tonight and he had to get things in place for morning. He wondered what they’d call him... He liked to think of himself as an angel of death. He knew it’d been overused, but it was also easy to understand why when you considered the power you could have over other people if you had the guts for it.

  Bobby had told his girlfriend Cindy that she needed to skip school with him tomorrow, and after the bombs went off, he could test her resolve, find out if she cared for him as much as she claimed to. He doubted she’d hold up. When she knew what he’d done, he couldn’t imagine her coming with him on his rise to fame. But truthfully he didn’t need her, he didn’t need anybody but himself, that was the way it’d always been.

  He couldn’t foresee anything ever changing that.

  The shoulder of the road was slippery and hard and he saw something going on at LeDoux’s, and considered, for a moment, throwing a brick through the large window that overlooked the parking lot. It’d have been nice to interrupt their good time. It’d have been nice to watch their expressions change, for them in that split second to realize they were powerless and inconsequential as the bugs they killed in their homes during the sweltering summer heat. But he was invisible to them, and he needed to remain so for one more night, and then they’d know him, everybody would.

  Most of his classmates were already dreaming of prom, so let them dream this final night. Let them dream with all their hearts about what could have been. Let them lie down to sleep knowing that the world would remain as it had always been.

  He walked on, the back of his neck wet, his armpits sweating, his gloved hands opening and closing, and his breath pluming out in front of him like the angry snorts of a charnel god inhaling the funk of its sour worshippers.

  CHAPTER 2

  The school was mostly dark and hidden by a haze of snow, seeming to materialize like some sort of mystical island in front of Bobby Russell. He walked around the side of the building. There were only four entrances by which he could enter, and the furthest from the road, on the back side of the gymnasium was the one he planned to use. But first he had to stop at the others, pull the small packet of dynamite fitted with timer and blasting cap from his backpack. He’d already placed each package in its own Ziploc baggie, yet still needed to duct tape them to ensure they were waterproof. He did so quickly, squatting near each entrance, behind the hedges, planting the morning surprise underneath them in the snow. He went to the back of the school and found the door he was looking for and used his father’s key to enter the building. It wasn’t a large school compared to others, thirty classrooms, a large cafeteria, the gym, the wide halls where other kids moved throughout the school year, carrying the poison they’d accrued in their studies that they would rarely use in their adult lives. It was such a waste, Bobby thought. The whole system was rigged so they were all like ants learning to manufacture an insecticide.

  He moved silently into the men’s locker room and planted a bomb in one of the empty lockers. He’d been made fun of here, in this room, more times than he could recall. He didn’t like to think about it, yet couldn’t stop himself. The jocks had the looks and the confidence he had never possessed, and there wasn’t much he could do about it except kill them. He didn’t think the majority of them were much of a loss. There might have been one or two who could, or would have, went on to play college football or basketball. They were big fish in a small pond, weren’t they? Better to put them out of their misery now. He’d seen too many of their kind all over town, thirty years after school, pushing their children to live just as they had, regardless of what their children wanted to do with their lives, with their time. He knew one kid, Dewey Langford, who wanted to write poetry, and Bobby didn’t care much for poetry, but what he’d heard Dewey reading in the halls, his lean back hunched and pressed to the cool wall, his voice alive as he read to passing students, had sounded good, it had a depth to it that not many parents would have appreciated because they felt slightly stupid in Dewey’s presence.

  And no one had felt more threatened by him than his father, Mark Langford, a man who was still in the graduating class pictures of 1994. And Dewey’s father had burned all of Dewey’s books, flushed all his poetry down the toilet, part of Dewey’s soul with it, no exaggeration, and the kid refused to play sports like his old man wanted, and instead of throwing a football, he took a week to craft his final piece of poetry and he left the letter on his bedside table and his brains all over the wall.

  Bobby had heard snippets of it and he couldn’t remember them now, but it was real beautiful. There was a waste, he thought. But fa
r as he could tell, Mark Langford did not blame himself for his son’s suicide, he seemed to simply write it off as something wrong with the boy; thought there had always been something wrong with a boy who put more weight in words than he did the cheers of a crowd.

  Fuck ‘em, parents like that, Bobby thought.

  He left the locker room and kept close to the wall. He heard a maintenance man waxing the floor somewhere in the building, the man singing a tuneless rendition of Tommy Petty’s Last Dance With Mary Jane.

  He took the first branch to his right. The hall had four rooms, one he wasn’t certain of, then the Home Ec room on the right, the art room across from it, the shop at the end. He went straight down the hall, heard the singer drawing closer, and slipped into the classroom. It smelled of freshly cut and routed pine, glue, sweat, stale laughter. The people who loved this place weren’t so bad. They weren’t like the guys that raced the loud cars, drove the big trucks, had big egos to protect the scared little boys living inside them. The kids who enjoyed this room just liked to work with their hands, building something that gave someone else pleasure.

  Bobby had tried it himself and found that he didn’t have any talent for woodworking, although he wished he would have because it seemed like a great way to pass the time. His teacher had scarred hands, an easy smile, but his words had been hollow (hadn’t they?) when he’d told Bobby that he could still do it for the process and the love of it. There were few who were a Michael Jordan of anything. But Bobby had a bad night at home the day before, and when the teacher told him that he’d broke down crying, fourteen at the time, three embarrassing years ago, and Mr. Mackey had tried to console him, to find the true meaning of his heartbreak, but Bobby couldn’t tell him that he’d heard his whole life that everybody was great at something, and he’d been searching real hard, and couldn’t find a goddamn thing he was even competent at. He’d been suicidal for a while after that, but he didn’t even like the sight of his own blood, so how was he supposed to end his life?

  He held one of the small bombs in his hand. He still loved this room and the feeling it gave other students, much the same way the art room did, and both of them had offered him such hope, a chance for meaning in his life, a direction he could point his endless energy.

  All for naught.

  All a waste of time in the end.

  He set the timer and placed the bomb under Mr. Mackey’s desk. It would be a fitting end for the man. He was just like Bobby, not exceptional at what he did, mediocre if anything, and the world wouldn’t miss him. Bobby would though. He’d think about Mr. Mackey as he moved on with his life, think about the lessons he taught, and the patience he’d had, the easy-going smile, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the slap on the shoulder when a student created something that truly impressed him.

  He had given everyone creative freedom. Bobby was offering him the same. An early start, he figured, to find his place in the big workshop in the sky, all of Mr. Mackey’s unaccomplished dreams would finally be within his reach and he’d have an eternity to master his discipline.

  He backed away from the desk. The coffee mug on the top said #1 DAD!

  Bobby shook his head.

  There was no such thing.

  He left the woodshop and planted a bomb in the art room, then another in the Home Ec room. He avoided the man polishing the floors. He planted a bomb in the bathrooms on both sides of the school and dropped them into garbage containers he passed.

  There were only two places left, and both of them frightened him for different reasons.

  The girl’s locker room was off the back of the cafeteria on the south side of the building. He stood outside the door for several minutes, so deep in thought a noise behind him startled him. He expected to turn and see his father sitting at one of the tables in the cafeteria, nearest the locker room, that knowing smile on his face, his large hands brandishing the paddle. There would be no moral light in his father’s eyes, only a cold certainty and a determination to correct his son of behavior he did not approve of.

  But his father wasn’t there, and he saw that a poster plastered to the wall had come free and banged a table across the cafeteria. He took a deep breath. He only had two bombs left and then he had to get out of there before his luck ran out.

  He pushed the door open. It was red, steel, heavy. His limbs shook. He hitched his backpack higher and exhaled as he crossed the threshold into a private place. It smelled so much different than the boy’s locker room. The scents of various perfumes, feminine deodorants, hair sprays, nail polish, bubble gum, baby powder, and other things he could not decipher, nearly overpowered him.

  The floor was cement like the boy’s room; the lockers were the same color red as the door. The shower stalls were partitioned. He grinned nervously and looked at the coach’s small office in the corner of the room closer to the door he’d passed through. There were rumors that she was a lesbian, and Bobby’s father said it was pretty disgusting if it was true, and Bobby, like many boys, wondered if she touched herself when she watched the girls strip after P.E., watched their bodies glow beneath the water, heard their laughter like some kind of siren call, and what kind of restraint she must have had to resist the temptation to bed one of those young lambs, because Ms. Mercedes was a fine looking woman and one most of the girls respected and tried to emulate. It wouldn’t have been the first time a teacher was caught in a relationship with a student, not at this school, or any other.

  Bobby imagined all the naked flesh that had moved through here, his girl Cindy among them, her pale, thin body, her stringy hair, her too far apart eyes, looking with envy and appreciation of the finer specimens among her peers. He felt sorry for her in a way. Cindy was just as much an outcast as he was. Her parents worked themselves to the bone just to pay the bills and didn’t have money left over to buy her nice clothes; her aunt cut her hair for free and you could tell; her shoes were ratty; she had a hand-me-down purse of such a violent yellow that it assaulted the eyes; her hair was dirty blonde and greasy and thinning; her nose seemed to always be running; her eyes always looked moist.

  Yet she was a pretty good person, despite all that, he thought. Stupid in some ways, maybe just in the way she hoped and dreamed that she would do something worthwhile with her life. Bobby had tried to talk about it with her once, asking her how she was supposed to build castles when all her parents and life had supplied her with for material was dry sand. But she was stubborn, and that might help her. And far as he’d seen she wasn’t afraid of working, which was more than he could say for himself.

  He walked around the girl’s locker room and wondered what Cindy was up to at that very moment. Probably reading, soaking up some kind of knowledge she figured she could use to improve her circumstances. Bobby shrugged and pulled a bomb from his pack. He taped it under a bench in the center of the room. He wasn’t sure if anybody had first hour P.E. but it didn’t hurt to put one there just in case.

  The enormity of what he was doing hadn’t really had time to sink in. How many kids would die? How many teachers? There were only three hundred students, junior high through to seniors like himself. There were thirty teachers, a few groundsmen, about a half dozen women that worked in the kitchen, preparing lunch. He estimated that the bombs would kill at least half, and injure the other half.

  Roughly three hundred and forty people.

  A lot of funerals. A lot of flowers.

  Walking back to the door, he paused, unsure why he was hesitating. But then it came to him that Cindy didn’t listen to him like she should, and he feared that her too hopeful ass might come into school tomorrow anyway, and really she was the only person he’d met who had really given him a fair shake. He passed kids every day who never asked how he was doing, if he was all right, mostly because they didn’t like him, but some just because of who his father was and they suspected he might be some kind of rat. But he wasn’t and he could never prove that to anybody if they didn’t offer him the chance to mess up.

&nbs
p; The cafeteria was quiet but far off he could hear the drone of the floor polisher. It sounded like it was on the other side of the school, but in all that stillness, among all that concrete and glass, it was hard to tell how far away exactly the man was working. His melancholy bothered him, and he felt as if he were somehow jinxing himself.

  A couple minutes later he was standing outside the office. His dad’s secretary and the teacher’s lounge and his father’s private room were on the other side of the glass crisscrossed with steel wire. It reminded him of a warden’s chambers. He went inside, through the swinging half door that led into the rear quarters, the teachers’ breakroom, the counselor’s office, his dad’s room. The sign on the closed door read Principal Russell.

  Bobby frowned.

  He started sweating.

  He’d saved this room last because it made him feel so many things he didn’t like to question, let alone explore. Inside the room he sat in his dad’s chair. It was expensive, leather, high-backed. The desk was organized, nothing out of place, the pictures of their family and the awards his father had earned were straight on the wall.

  A big sham. This was only the man he pretended to be. Nobody really knew what he was like at home once he took off his suit and let his real skin breathe.

  • • •

  Aria pulled back into LeDoux’s bar at ten after eight. The snow was giving way to rain but the white wet powder was everywhere, and it slushed beneath her shoes as she pulled Jessica from the back seat and held her hand and approached the door full of trepidation.

  At first she thought it was because of what she caught Pine doing to her granddaughter, but it was more than that. She could hear the people inside the bar talking, some crying, some passed her, coming outside, just to dump their beers out on the snow and carry the empty bottles back inside.