Arkansas

by John Brandon

  “So this outfit’s based in Memphis?” Kyle asked.

  “It’s not based anywhere.”

  “Why so secretive? You’re planning to kill me, right?”

  “It’s past the planning stage. First we’ll need the money, location of the bodies, the girl.”

  Kyle raised his weight off the bottom of the tub, testing. “Should question Swin. I’m not bothered by torture.”

  “If I was going to question Swin, I’d have to hurry. He’ll be dead in a minute.” The twin cracked his knuckles. “And if it’s a pain to get you to talk, we’ll go ahead and shoot you in the head. We don’t care that much about the cash and we can find the girl on our own. Or not.”

  “Girl doesn’t know shit.”

  “Apparently not, hanging out with you two.”

  “If I was you, I’d speed the plan up. I’d go ahead and shoot me in the head. Keeping me alive will only end badly for you. You’ll embarrass yourself trying to scare me.” Kyle waited for the twin to answer. “Of course, your brother’s the only one allowed to have a gun, so we’ll have to wait.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and shut the fuck up?”

  Kyle flexed his toes in his shoes. He tensed his torso. “I’m the real deal, bud. You and I both know it’s true.” He thumped his chest with his thumb. “Nothing in there.”

  The twin looked Kyle in the eyes, afraid, Kyle knew, to look away. Kyle knew he had the upper hand with this guy. The problem was, the other twin would return, the tough twin, the one with the gun. Kyle had to do something. And he felt he could. He felt light and indestructible. Frog was no longer his boss. Kyle was unemployed and homeless. He had nothing to explain. Kyle felt like himself. He felt that this was how he was meant to die, and therefore he had nothing to lose.

  The sound of the shot was a blinding, ear-boxing charge that caused Kyle’s guard to loose a shriek and duck his head. Kyle flopped onto the floor, squirmed under to the next stall, and raised his foot to the door. He was on his back, one leg in the air, the sole of his sneaker an inch from the wooden door, his strength surging. He heard the twin coming around, saw the twin’s big boots, then thrust his leg, slamming the twin, dazing him. Kyle stood, toe-to-toe with a stack of doughy muscle that would any second regain its bearing. The guy staggered toward Kyle and Kyle jabbed the only weak spot, the eye, working his thumb into the firm jelly. It seemed to take a long time for Kyle to get in up to his highest knuckle, into brain. He didn’t feel the twin crushing him against the wall, making his knees wobbly, but he was aware it was happening, that he was being pinned up by the leaning heft of this dude. He plunged into the twin’s skull, knowing he was stirring something important. The two of them buckled against the tub in a heap and it was all Kyle could do to keep them out of it. They were face-to-face. The twin’s unmolested eye floated and rocked, no target. He shook Kyle and groaned, but he didn’t know where the hell he was. He snapped his mouth open, but couldn’t speak. Kyle thought the guy might kiss him. He slid out his thumb and wiped it on the twin’s shirt.

  “It’s all right, big guy,” he whispered. “It’s okay now.”

  The twin made a noise that meant he knew he was being lied to. Kyle extricated himself and sneaked down a side hall, no clue where he was going, sticking to an outside wall. He didn’t know where the other twin was. All he knew was Swin was dead and this place had no windows. Swin was dead. Kyle kept creeping along on his toes until he ran into a set of steps. He peeked over them and recognized the front hall, then sprinted for the door, exhilarated by the thought of being felled from behind by a rifle blast. He was in the crisp air, huffing past the courtyard. He passed a car on the street and wished he had a pocketknife to puncture the tires. There wasn’t a soul around except a guy with long blond hair in a flannel shirt, riding a bicycle with one hand. Kyle got into the minivan, pulled a U-turn in an intersection, and searched out the highway. He got the van up to ninety. The twin with the rifle had to clean up whatever mess he’d made with Swin, do something with Swin’s body, then guide his lobotomized kin to their car, the poor sap drooling and pissing himself.

  Swin. Kyle had not been able to protect him. Swin never belonged in that bathhouse. Kyle didn’t know where Swin belonged, but it wasn’t in this life. Unlike Kyle and the twins and Gregor and Frog and all the rest of them, Swin had a lot to regret. Swin wasn’t single-minded enough for crime. He had too much intelligence, not enough instinct. He took crime too seriously, and not seriously enough. Kyle felt he had no business knowing Swin, but maybe no one did. Maybe Swin was his own race. Kyle had often worried about Swin, had thought about the fact that Swin might get killed, but now that it had happened it seemed impossible, sudden, hard to grip. Swin was gone. It felt like a terrible, embarrassing joke.

  Kyle wished he could drive straight to the pawnshop and beat the guy to death. He wanted to throw Frog against a wall over and over until he was dead. Kyle was embarrassed that he’d glamorized the guy in his mind. Kyle wished he had time to search him out, probably hiding in Little Rock until his little plan was carried through, but the twin with the rifle had already sent the alert. People would be looking for Kyle. For Johnna’s good, and his own, he needed to forget about fucking Frog. He needed to see if this van could do a hundred.

  At the park, Kyle saw no strange tire tracks. The porch Christmas lights glowed in the daylight, but the inside of the house was dark, the door locked, Johnna back at her apartment because Kyle and Swin had been away on the run to Fort Smith. Kyle slipped inside and hit the switch, illuminating a glinting birdcage on the kitchen table. A blue and yellow parrot stared at him distastefully. There were other birdcages in the room, the birds in them still and serious. A man shot up from Bright’s big chair, causing Kyle to bump the cabinet of whiskey.

  “So sorry,” the man said. “Dozed off there.”

  “Lazy bones,” said the bird on the kitchen table. “Lazy bones.”

  “Oh, put a sock in it, you.”

  The man introduced the bird as Rodney, a macaw, then directed Kyle’s attention to a kookaburra named Shemp and a pair of fluffy cockatiels. He approached Kyle with his hand out, a small man with an uneven mustache and a bulging vein in his forehead. “Ranger Marcus from Wyoming. My guess is you’re Ed.”

  Ranger Marcus was early. Kyle did not have it in him—did not feel he had the time or energy or will—to kill this man who had already made this house his own little zoo, this man who evidently was not Frog’s man and who probably had only his feathered pets for friends. Kyle reared back from Marcus’s handshake and peered about, horrified, as if seeing menacing spirits. He dodged, pursued, pitching into the cabinet, hard enough this time to send plastic bottles of FILED TALON thunking down on top of one other. He asked the ranger who the fuck Ed was, man. It seemed to him that crazy people said “man” after their questions.

  “Where the fuck am I, man? Why are those birds looking at me?”

  Marcus had frozen, his hands open but not raised, his face almost mirthful. Kyle didn’t know how else to act crazy so he walked in a tight circle on the balls of his feet and grasped at the front of his pants.

  “I’m just a ranger,” Marcus offered.

  Kyle crouched and tackled him by the legs. The little man seemed to throw his weight with the impact, causing the two of them to tumble across the living room as if ejected from a moving car.

  “Good move, Grace,” the parrot said.

  “That bird knows my sister,” gasped Kyle. He held Marcus down with ease and quaked from the inside out, yawping.

  “We just got here,” Marcus said. “We’re your friends.”

  “How do I know you’re in charge, man?”

  Marcus looked at Kyle as though he’d asked a valid question. “They do whatever I say,” he whispered.

  Kyle dragged Marcus into the kitchen and bound his wrists and ankles. The ranger kept assuring Kyle it was okay to feel suspicious of birds, that he’d often felt the same. He was on Kyle’s side.

  �
�Rodney loves you,” the parrot squawked.

  Kyle took Marcus to a bedroom. He asked where Marcus’s car was, if he’d flown here like a bird.

  “I haven’t had an automobile for ten years. I took a cab from Little Rock.”

  Kyle stormed out of the room, shut the door, and breathed deeply. He unzipped Marcus’s red suitcase and dumped out bags of birdseed, packages of fig cookies, bundles of newspaper. In their place, he packed armloads of juice drinks and energy bars, then fetched T-shirts, socks, another jacket, and anything that seemed important from the bathroom. He hoisted the suitcase onto his shoulder and, as he left, stomped at the parrot, causing the bird to flutter and crow in its own language.

  Kyle went to Swin’s trailer and threw the rubber container of jewelry in the minivan, then ducked into his own trailer for Bright’s old bones and his Strauss tape. He sped to the hardware store where the cash was hidden, loped into the garden section, threw bags of fertilizer this way and that. A litter of kittens was cozied up on the money. They were sweaty and relaxed. They were not in a nest that could’ve been lifted intact, so Kyle gently unzipped one end of the bag and slipped out the wads, replacing them with handfuls of mulch. He plumped the pockets of his pants and jacket with bills. His socks. Some of the money he carried out in his hands and dropped in the glove box.

  Johnna knew something was wrong. She stood in the doorway of her apartment in a sweater and faded camouflage pants and said, “Jesus, go ahead and tell me.” Kyle told her Swin was never scared, never begged or tried to sell Kyle out, that Swin had been exactly Swin to the last. Kyle hoped this was true. He hoped Swin had turned off the salesman in himself and said, “Pull the trigger, you piece of shit.”

  Kyle told Johnna she had ten minutes to pack up her Oldsmobile and leave Arkansas for good. She would take half the cash and, of course, Bedford, and she would find the Kentucky town where Swin’s family lived: Gray Cypress.

  “Kentucky?”

  “Kentucky.”

  “I thought he came from Florida.”

  “Originally. When you get close, get a good map. I think Gray Cypress is in the center somewhere.”

  Johnna pushed a laundry basket out of the way with her knee, then slid two book bags from under the end table. “One for the hospital, one for skipping town.”

  She zipped open a satchel and stuffed it with bottled water and candy. There were three dozen postcards tacked on the wall, each bearing a Razorback football legend, and there was no way, Johnna said, she could face a new life without them. Kyle took them down one by one, dropping the pins in an orange coffee mug. He handed the stack of cards to Johnna, who was heatedly gnawing on a wad of taffy, realizing she would never see her possessions again, her coworkers, the leafy brown hills that marked the petering out of the Ozarks. She dropped her name tag from the clinic in the trash.

  Something ran through Johnna—rage, it seemed. She glared down at a small table standing nearby, and Kyle thought she might kick it. She didn’t. The rage passed, slackening her shoulders.

  “The baby knows something’s happening,” she said.

  “Swin’s got like forty sisters,” said Kyle. “The little guy’ll have more attention than he knows what to do with.”

  She gazed at her belly. “Kentucky,” she said.

  Kyle said, “His real name is Ruiz.”

  “I know. But I’m looking for the Dutch stepfather’s name.”

  Bedford had plodded out from the bedroom. Kyle scooped him up and put him in Johnna’s car, then took her bags out. The bags contained mostly clothes, but Kyle could barely keep them off the ground. The world itself was getting heavy. The air, the light, the scent of Arkansas—it was all weighing Kyle down. Maybe this was sorrow, he thought. Whatever had brought himself and Swin and Johnna together—fear, mostly—the thought that he’d never see her again was wearying him physically. He had to get her on her way before he collapsed.

  When Kyle came back in, Johnna was slipping packages of Swee-Tarts into the pockets of her army pants. He approached the television and unplugged it, cutting off an English guy who was complaining that American teenagers had killed punk rock.

  “Dog food,” Kyle said. He was trying to think of practical things.

  “My son will hear all about you,” said Johnna.

  “I’d like that.”

  “You and Swin’ll be his heroes. Come visit him sometime, when he’s old enough to know who you are.”

  Kyle couldn’t manage even to nod his head. Johnna yanked him by the hair and hugged him. She forced herself out the door, jangling her key chain and shushing Bedford. It was early afternoon, the sun roaring, drowning out the chilly breeze. Johnna shaded her eyes. She turned back toward Kyle, squinting, her mouth in a hard smile. He wondered if it was crossing her mind that she and Kyle could flee together. It was a terrible idea, terrible for Johnna, and Kyle wouldn’t have allowed it, but he hoped it crossed her mind.

  “I’m sorry,” Kyle told her. “So is Swin.”

  Johnna’s face went stony. “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I’m sorry for myself. I liked it here. I liked living with you and Swin.” This seemed, to Kyle, an important thing to say, but as soon as the words were out he knew there was nothing he could say that would mean anything.

  Johnna stared at Kyle, ignoring Bedford, who was making timid noises at her knee. She dragged herself the last couple steps, steadied herself on the open car door. “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “North, I suspect. Or maybe west or east. I’ll see what feels right when I get behind the wheel.”

  Johnna nodded. “I’m not crying,” she said. “I need to cry.”

  Bright’s house. No car outside. The blue Christmas lights on the porch make everything seem even more still. In the living room, you find some sort of birdie zoo. The things don’t bat an eye at you. You search the refrigerator, looking for some juice, and don’t find any. There are all those nature books you saw when you spoke to Kyle and Swin after the chili cook-off. There are the half-empty whiskey bottles, some cheap brand you’ve never heard of.

  “Stupid bird,” you chime. “Shithead bird.”

  Kyle and Swin have their crap everywhere. Swin seems to have gotten the master bedroom, so he either won a coin toss or, more likely, Johnna had been living here. Yes, you see the womanly touches now, not exactly subtle—the fruit motif, the frilly curtains. There are baby books. You push back a door: a dead man, splayed face down, stinking. You tug your gloves on and kneel for the man’s wallet, and when you touch his leg he flops over like a fish. The man has crazed eyes that remind you of a gym teacher you once had. He has a stiff mustache and there is no distinction between the hair on his head and on his back, which combine at the scruff of his neck. You know his type; he’s a ranger. You straighten his shirt and fasten the top button, but do not untie him. The room you’re in is some kind of nursery, with circles and triangles on the walls and a model of outer space hanging from the ceiling. Jesus, a baby?

  “So, you’re not dead,” you say.

  The man is pained, dramatic. “Don’t kill me, sir. Do not kill me.”

  “Did you shit yourself?”

  The man swallows.

  “You couldn’t have been tied up more than what, five hours?”

  “I’m still tied up. You can get bad burns this way, you know.”

  “I’ll untie you in a minute.”

  “I wanted to stay in Wyoming. Just me and my birds.”

  “Let me guess. Young white guy, pretty tall, nondescript haircut.”

  “That’s the guy.”

  “You’re initiated. They won’t bother you again.”

  “Into what?”

  “There’s a whole band of them, like to shake up newcomers. It’s all in fun. One visit per customer.”

  The man looks you over, discouraged by what he sees.

  “We think of it as a prank,” you assure him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I sell thin
gs—go around and see what people need. Like you, you need a pocketknife and an extra hand, which I’ll provide free of charge.”

  You rest your hand on the man’s head and he doesn’t mind. You tell him he reminds you of Coach Zoll, a guy that failed you because you didn’t have the right shoes, because you only had work boots.

  “PE sucked,” the man agrees.

  “A lot of folks would think less of you, a lawman, if they knew you were brought to this sorry state by one of our random punks. We can keep this between you and me, be the best thing.”

  “I’m not a lawman.”

  “You got an outfit, don’t you? Around here that’s enough.”

  You take Thomas and Tim to your shop, to your home, to stay in the boonies awhile. You hire an Asian nurse with hammer thumbs to look after Tim. You and the nurse train him to stay in his wheelchair, though his legs work perfectly, because he’s too large to be stalking about. You teach him to call for help when he wants something. You train laziness into him and he takes to it. He laughs without making a sound when the nurse tries to squeeze her shoes onto his giant feet. He will only eat cold, bite-size cubes. The nurse bakes pan after pan of chicken and stores it in the fridge. He loses weight, no longer appears to be Thomas’s twin. Thomas cannot stand to look at his brother but asks the nurse endless questions and reads hour upon hour, evening upon evening, about brain injury. Thomas often stands behind his oblivious brother, a few feet distant, and stares at him, trying to accept the fact that there’s no hope. Tim is healthy, in good spirits, yet there’s no hope—no surgery for this, no therapy, nothing but ... what, prayer? The pain in Thomas’s face sometimes looks like a smirk, like he’s up to mischief, like he’s getting ready to snap the strap of Tim’s eye patch. You’re almost sure you’ve convinced him not to go after Kyle, to stay in Arkansas and attend to his legitimate business, to stay here and build up the courage to face his brother.

  As the weeks pass, you grow accustomed to Tim’s condition. He’s a demanding pet. You let the nurse fully take over his care, which allows you to concentrate on Thomas, who moves from room to room with no purpose, who sits and listens to audio tapes from the library about who-knows-what. Thomas is the one who needs you, who needs purpose, who needs marching orders. The lying low is over. The sooner you get yourself together, the sooner Thomas can get himself together. You begin waking each morning feeling like things could be a lot worse, feeling relieved to be through with retirement. You feel more alive than you’ve felt since first moving to Little Rock, when you had to dig up mismatched pieces all over the state and assemble them with your bare hands. Soon you will go back to the city. A new plan is needed, a plan to make Thomas a legitimate businessman, strictly aboveboard, to have Thomas sitting across from Southern Ivy League types, having his meetings in broad daylight, at brunch and at golf courses. He will be safe. One day, he will tell your story. He’ll knock all his designer-suited cronies out with the tale of his old boss.