As the van came to a halt, the doors opened and McGuinn was helped outside. He didn’t need to see to feel there was grass beneath his shoes or to know he was at a river side. Someone else was being taken from the van, but with fewer manners than had been shown to McGuinn. There was a bit of a tussle, a body hit the ground at McGuinn’s feet, and there was a distinct grunt. Again, McGuinn felt that familiar presence. The bag was removed from his head and when his eyes adjusted to the gloaming light, he understood. For there at his feet was Old Jack Byrnes.
The footballer from the slaughterhouse spoke first. “He came to kill you, Irish. That’s what he told us after we spoke to him.”
McGuinn looked down at his mentor, but Old Jack didn’t bother to shake his head in denial. Whatever was left of McGuinn’s heart sank. He’d known they would come for him eventually, but he never imagined it would be the man who was more father to him than his real da. Now it was Terry McGuinn shaking his head.
“He came snooping around work, asking about you about ten days ago. Your good luck we already had our eye on you for membership.”
“Membership! Membership in what?” McGuinn wanted to know.
The footballer spread out his arms and gestured at the woods, the waterfall, and the running river. “In this. In our church.”
“Church? And what church would that be, boyo?”
“Gun Church.”
“Gun Church,” McGuinn repeated. “One church has already failed me, son, and I’ve no heart for another.”
“But we won’t fail you, Irish, ever.”
Terry McGuinn smirked. “And what proof would you give of that, son?”
“Fair question,” the footballer admitted. Then he turned to the juicer and motioned for him to cut Old Jack’s hands and feet free. He left the gag in.
Old Jack tried rubbing some feeling into his wrists and ankles, but couldn’t bring himself to look at McGuinn.
After a few minutes, the footballer knelt down by Old Jack and whispered in his ear. With that, Old Jack Byrnes took off, running towards the woods. The footballer reached into his jacket pocket and came out with McGuinn’s Sig in his hand. He gave it to McGuinn, handle first.
“He’s all yours, Irish.”
“What if I don’t want him?”
“Well, Irish, someone’s going to get hunted down tonight. If it’s not him, then … ”
“So that’s how it is?” McGuinn asked.
“Consider it a tithe. Don’t worry, though. When you’re done with him, we’ll clean up after you. Like I said, Irish, we won’t fail you.”
The Thursday after my return from New York, when Renee grew weary of my asking what had changed between us, she turned the tables on me.
“You’re the one who’s different, Ken. Since you got back, all you do is grunt at me if I come into the office while you’re working.”
“It’s the pressure.”
But it wasn’t the pressure at all. It was that I had woven the fictional McGuinn so deeply into the fabric of my own life that it frightened me. That feeling I’d had out in the old berry patch and up in the woods during Fox Hunt, seeing things as McGuinn might, had grown stronger. Now, anything connected to the chapel was filtered not only through me, but me as McGuinn. When I stood in the chapel, I stood with McGuinn at my shoulder. When I was woozy during Fox Hunt, it was McGuinn I had dreamed as. GunChurch was proof that he was part of this before I was ever fully aware of it. I wondered how long it would be before I was found out. That the canvas on which I was painting Gun Church was a semi-urbanized permutation of Brixton County, and the characters thinly veiled grotesques of Jim and Renee and the rest of them.
Okay, it was true that the things I had my characters doing with McGuinn were nothing more than expressions of my own personal darkness. And yes, it had all come out of my head and my sense of the man I knew and wrote about as McGuinn. But I could not escape the sense that with a little push at just the right moment, the snaggle-toothed girl, the deputy, Jim, Renee, and the rest of them would gladly cross over from the real world into the world of Gun Church. That, maybe more than anything else, made up my mind for me. The time had come to see the chairman of the department.
Twenty-Nine
Buyer’s Remorse
Jean-Jacques Beauchamp, the Engagin’ Cajun, was chairman of the English Department at Brixton County Community College: a job nearly as prestigious as being the head shit-shoveler behind a circus parade. And while Beauchamp’s fall from grace wasn’t quite as precipitous as mine, it was plenty steep. Thirty years ago, he’d been hailed as the next Faulkner, which, in a literary sense, was like being hailed as the next Babe Ruth. What a curse to hang on someone. Now the only thing J. J. Beauchamp did like Faulkner was drink. He had once been quite a handsome man, but the drink had robbed him of more than his talent. Any shred of vanity had gone the way of his depleted liver. I liked J. J. and he liked me. We were kindred spirits. Neither of us bothered pretending we were anywhere but where we were or that a single thing we’d accomplished mattered more in the scheme of things than a swatted fly.
“Chairman Beauchamp will be with you shortly,” said his famously unfriendly secretary, Miss Crouch. Her mien matched her manner.
“Fine,” I think I said. I wasn’t paying much attention.
The ground hadn’t stopped shifting under my feet simply because Renee had returned to my house and to my bed. I still couldn’t make sense of her veiled warning about getting out of town and, no matter how I prodded and cajoled, she continued to be disinclined to help me understand. I recalled that Renee had suggested I leave Brixton once before, a few months back when Meg had first called to discuss the rights deal. It hadn’t seemed like a warning then. It did now. Look, it was easy to understand why she might think it a wise idea for me to get out of Brixton, but why would she want me to do it in the middle of the night, to just get in my car and go? That was the part I couldn’t get my head around. Did she have a jealous ex-lover I didn’t know about? Was Stan Petrovic making threats that hadn’t yet gotten back to me? I didn’t know what to think. Beyond that, I was worried that I’d hurt Renee by admitting I didn’t love her, worried even more that she had come back to me knowing it.
Maybe some of the ground shifting had to do with the fact that we were coming to the end of the fall term. Final papers were due in a few days and the new term would begin in mid-January. Maybe the end of the term had something to do with Renee and Jim’s recent confusing behavior. Were they worried that the end of the term would mean a severing of the bonds between us? Were they distancing themselves from me before I could do it to them? Maybe so and maybe they were right. For even as I sat there, trying to make sense of the last week, these past few months, the last seven years, it dawned on me that it was useless to pretend things hadn’t changed. During my early morning run, I realized that no matter how little New York City felt like home, neither did Brixton, not really. It was clear to me that the subtle and not so subtle changes I’d noticed in Renee and Jim since my return were a kind of blessing. A blessing because it disabused me of whatever fantasies of domestic and rustic bliss these last few months had engendered.
How long did I think playing house with the St. Pauli Girl was actually going to last, especially after our little chat the other night? She was back now, but for how long? How long would it be until it wasn’t enough for her? A week? Two? A month? Six, at most? Could I envision another seven years of shooting in the woods with Jim? Me, I never had to grow up-academia was Never-Never Land without Smee and Hook-but Jim would grow up. Brixton made its inhabitants grow up. Even if Cutthroat turned into a bimonthly event, it would become like any other high. It would flatten out, get old, get boring.
Frankly, Jim had scared the shit out of me with this change of weapons thing. I wanted to live long enough to finish my book, to spend my money, to see Amy again. When I thought about it, I just could not imagine facing another crop of student-zombies and their illiterate ramblings. I hadn’t been mu
ch of a teacher to begin with and I didn’t think I had it in me to fake it for very much longer, not now that I was a writer again. And finally, there was my own uneasiness about being found out, and the sense that the world I lived in and the one I created weren’t really so far apart.
“The chairman will see you now, Professor Weiler.”
When I walked into his office, J. J. Beauchamp was seated at his desk, pouring himself a tall bourbon of questionable heritage. Some of his straggly gray hair nearly got to taste the cheap whiskey before he did.
“Well, fuck me if it ain’t the great man his own self, Kip Weiler,” Beauchamp said, a broad smile on his face. “Drink?”
“No thanks, Chef.”
“Chef! Mondieu. Kip, you call me chef, it mean you wantin’ sometin’ from me, non?” Beauchamp slipped easily into his childhood patois. “If not a drink, what it is, then?”
“A sabbatical.”
“Next fall should be no problem. I’ll have Miss Congeniality start drawing up the papers.”
“Not next fall, J. J. Next term.”
“Little late in the day for dat, ami, non?”
“I know, but I got it coming. More than that, I need it.”
“Not to get too technical about it, Kip, but you’re supposed to give me some more notice than this.”
“I’m not fucking around with you, Chef. If I didn’t need it, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Porquoi?”
“The truth or the horseshit?”
He laughed. “There’s a difference? From where I sit it’s hard to divine the one from the other. Why don’t you say your piece and I’ll cipher out what I need to know.”
“I just signed a book deal with Travers Legacy.”
“Is that the horseshit?” he asked.
“No, J. J., that’s the truth.”
He jumped out of his chair and threw his big arms around me. He kissed both of my cheeks. His breath smelled strongly of bourbon. “Well, kiss my fat Cajun ass. Congratulations. Do I get a free copy?”
“Two.”
“Then you let ol’ J. J. worry ’bout dat sabbatical. I’ll say you requested it last term and I lost the paperwork. You may have to come back in and fill out some forms, but I know some folk who owe dis ol’ Cajun beaucoup favor.” He winked at me. “A man doesn’t chair a department in a shithole like this without people owing him.”
“Thanks, J. J.”
“Forget dat. You go finish dat book, ami. Where you going to?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, then, just go get there.” He waved his hands at me to leave. As I turned to go, he was on the intercom asking Miss Crouch to come into his office.
It had snowed again that afternoon, lightly, but enough to evoke memories of the night we drove to the old berry farm for Cutthroat. Jim didn’t take that turn away from the river and we were clearly headed to our usual spot in the woods above the falls. Jim wasn’t very talkative and that suited me fine. I was feeling a little like a man who’d just pulled the rug out from under his own feet and found myself wishing that J. J. Beauchamp had been less amenable to my request for a sabbatical. I was okay until J. J. asked the question about where I was going.
I didn’t think I could stay in Brixton and hope everything-my writing, playing house, running, and shooting-would somehow return to the way it had been before I’d gone to New York. It had already changed. I had already changed and recognized there was no going back. Once you learn how a magician does his tricks, you can’t regain your innocence. There were a lot of places I could go to other than New York, but even I knew that going anywhere else would just be running away. In my gut I understood that if there was such a thing as destiny, I was going to find it there, not here or some other town or city in which I’d first be establishing myself.
Even when we got to the bluff by the falls and began our trek up the hill, we didn’t have much to say to each other. That changed when we got to our usual spot. He asked me if everything was all right.
“Got a lot on my mind,” is all I said.
“Like what?”
I wasn’t going to mention the sabbatical, not to Jim, not now, but he had known Renee longer than me and, according to her, they’d dated a few times. I figured it was safe enough to ask him some questions.
“Do you know if everything’s okay with Renee?”
“Why?” he said, pressing rounds into the Browning’s clip.
“She’s been acting a little different since I got back from New York.”
“Maybe she’s mad you didn’t take her.”
“No maybe about that, Jim. I wish I had taken her, but it’s more than that.”
“How do you mean?”
“She seems edgy.”
That got his attention. “Edgy. Edgy how?”
“I don’t know, it just seems like there’s stuff she wants to tell me and when she hints at things, she won’t explain them.”
“What kind of things?”
“Jim, if I knew, I wouldn’t have to ask you about it.”
“I guess you’re right. Here.” He handed me the Browning. “We got a lot of work ahead of us today, Kip.”
“Why’s that?”
“We’re shooting tomorrow night, me and you. Vests only.”
My hand was shaking and I couldn’t will it to stop. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to stop. Jim saw it. I was glad he saw it. I was rushing all right, but it was the kind of rush that was going to make me puke.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, that unwelcome smile rising on his face like a cold winter sun. “I’m hard to kill. You’ll see.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for-”
“No one is ever ready for this, Kip. No one. Ever. Now let’s get going.”
Suddenly, I found myself imagining my body on the chapel floor, the blood spurting out of my neck, my limbs getting as cold as the concrete beneath me, my eyes staring up into the blue tarp. I imagined my last thought not being of Amy, but of Renee, tears pouring out of her like the blood out of me, telling me to get out of Brixton before it was too late. Of course, by then, it would be too late. I wondered if it was already too late.
Thirty
Ragged Little Tunnel
We shot last. Who the fuck knew why the rules were the rules? I mean, I had come to understand some of them. I knew why we did a lot of the things we did: the ashes, the number of paces, the hierarchy of crosses, et al. But I was at the point where I believed that some of the rules were just another name for Jim’s fancies. Some of the rules didn’t make any sense except in the worlds of the chapel and Gun Church; but this one, the one about shooters in vests going last, made perfect sense. After all, there was real drama when people were actually risking their lives and that’s what Jim and I were doing. Given my penchant for drama, I should have been all for waiting, but waiting just made me want to run. I couldn’t force myself to run. For some godforsaken reason it was still important for me to not disappoint Jim. Renee was different. I think she would have helped me run.
The usual cast of characters was on hand, with the exception of the maintenance guy from the college. While I wasn’t exactly tearful about his absence, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was lingering resentment about his getting shot by Jim. I remembered the look on his face when we were in the berry patch, how he stared at Jim. All that vanished: Any thought about anything else disappeared the moment we stepped out onto the chapel floor and counted out our paces. Suddenly, I felt naked without the security blanket of the protective suit. I even missed the stink of sweat and puke left behind by the gun junkies who’d worn it before me. I felt utterly stripped bare there in my white T-shirt and vest.
When Jim turned to face me, I began to shake, and the harder I tried to stop it, the worse it got. Even my attempts to summon up McGuinn’s callousness paid no dividends. He’d abandoned me at the worst moment. There across from me, exactly thirty feet away, was Jim: rock steady, expressionless, calm as an executioner. It di
dn’t help that Renee was the one to hand us our weapons. Felt like everything that could unnerve me had been heaped on me. My shaking hand did not escape her notice. Her eyes were wide, but not with fear. Her expression was unreadable and she did not say a word to me as she stepped back. Instead, she asked us if we were ready. Jim said that he was. I lied that I was.
Renee said, “Begin.”
Then, as I raised the heavy.45 in my shaking hand, Jim did me a favor. He smiled that smile at me; the smile I had grown to hate, that smug, all-knowing smile. Suddenly, I didn’t need McGuinn. My hand stopped shaking and what I felt in my heart for Jim was nothing like love. I squeezed the trigger.
The emergency room doctor-the same guy who’d treated me for the concussion-was, to say the least, skeptical. “You’re getting to be a regular around here, Mr. Weiler. Let me guess, you fell off a ladder again.”
“Amazing,” I managed through teeth clenched in pain. “Do you… do … tarot card … readings … too?”
“I’ve worked trauma rooms for twenty years, five of them at Cook County in Chicago,” he said, gently pressing his gloved fingers against the bruised and swollen area on my right side. “You develop a sense about people in this line of work. You might say I have a built in bullshit-o-meter and the needle’s spiking pretty high at the moment.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh. Funny thing about working in a big city hospital, you see a lot of gunshot trauma. In fact, on about five occasions, I treated cops who’d been shot at relatively close range. Lucky for them, they’d been wearing their protective vests,” he said, pressing hard on the center of the bruise. I nearly passed out from the pain.
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