Peaceable Kingdom

by Jack Ketchum

  “No.”

  “It’s called hydrocodone, honey. In the dose you’re getting, it’s as mean as morphine, only it’s not addictive. I wouldn’t be surprised it you told me you were seeing Elvis in that bed over there, let alone some black fella.”

  He hurt himself awake again that night.

  This time he was batting at his aching face—at his nose. He was batting at the culprit, at the source of his misery. As though he wanted to start himself bleeding again.

  What was he doing? Why was he doing this?

  His dream had been intense and strange. They were alone inside a long grey tube, he and Annie, empty of everything but the two of them and stretching off into some dazzling bright infinity and he was pulling at her clothes, her blouse, her jacket, trying to rouse her and get her to her feet while she crouched in front of him saying nothing, doing nothing, as though his presence beside her meant nothing at all to her one way or another. He felt frightened, adrift, panicked.

  He woke in pain batting at his face and reached for the call button to call his nurse for yet another pill but the black man’s big hand stopped him, fingers grasping his wrist. The man was standing by his bedside. The fingers were long and smooth and dry, his grip astonishingly firm.

  He looked up into the wide brown eyes that did not seem to focus upon him but instead to look beyond him, into vast distances, and saw the wires and tubes trailing off behind him past the other bed where the squat dark form he realized was no nurse nor nurse’s aid hovered over the panel of instruments and a voice inside his head said no, we’re not finished yet, my accident became yours and I’m very much sorry for that but it happens sometimes and for now no interruptions please, we need the facilities, deal with your own pain as I am dealing with mine and he thought, I’m dreaming, this is crazy, this is the drug but the voice inside said no, not crazy, only alone in this, alone together here in this room and the nurse cannot see, cannot know, the nurse is not in pain as you and I, you’ll only disurb her, you can live with that, can’t you and he nodded yes because suddenly he thought that of course he could. Good, the voice said, a short time, stop hurting yourself and instead of her, dream of me, you’ve been doing that already but she always gets in, doesn’t she. He nodded again and felt the pressure lessen on his wrist. Stop hurting yourself. She is not the pain nor are you. Rest. Sleep.

  The man sat back on his own bed and rested, adjusted the wires, smoothed them over his chest. The dark female figure resumed her work at the lighted panel. The man’s touch was like a drug. Better. The pain was vanishing. He didn’t need the call button. Or perhaps he was just living with the pain, he didn’t know. One more night, he thought. One more morning, maybe.

  Maybe there were things he could do for her and the boy that he hadn’t done, things to make it better. But he needed to let go of that now.

  He dreamed of a ferris wheel. Only there was no wheel. He dreamed of a thousand wheels intersecting.

  He stepped down and up and forward and side to side.

  The Great San Diego Sleazy Bimbo Massacre

  Bernice came in the back way and slammed the screen door in the sick face of the San Diego sun mewling on the porch. Ramona was just sitting down to her third cup of Sanka.

  “Jesus,” said Ramona. “Kick a fucking hole in it, why don’t you.”

  Ramona was cranky today.

  “You want coffee?”

  “Gin. Got any gin?”

  “You kidding? It’s nine in the fucking morning.”

  “Okay. All right. Coffee.”

  Ramona still had on her pale blue rayon nightgown. On her feet were a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. A worker ant crawled recklessly up her thigh.

  She didn’t notice.

  Bernice sat down and crossed her legs. Nylon shrieked against nylon.

  Ramona’s hangover was a living, breathing thing. A white worm eating brainmeat. Chomp.

  She got up and poured some boiled water from a saucepan into a cracked clay mug and then stirred in the Sanka. From habit she added cream and sugar for Bernice and set it in front of her. Coagulant grains of Sanka swirled in the eddy of the teaspoon. Floodwater and debris.

  “That fucking Howard,” said Ramona. “Look. Look at this.”

  She tilted back her head, stared up at the lime-green stucco ceiling. Bernice leaned in to examine her: Just beneath her chin was a small red mark. A hickey

  “Oh, it doesn’t show, ’Mona. You can hardly see it at all unless you get right up on top of you. Just keep your head down is all.”

  “Yeah. Keep my head down.”

  She opened a can of light chunk tuna in oil and dumped it into a bowl.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m sick of that sonovabitch. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to run him over for me.”

  Bernice’s mouth dropped open, burying the mole in her neck between two folds of creamy flesh. The mole was used to the dark.

  “What?” she said.

  “I mean it. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to run the fucker over. Do it tomorrow morning. Just back over him in the car when he walks out the door to go to work and you get the money. Accident. Adjoining driveways. Oops, sorry.”

  “’Mona! I couldn’t do that.”

  “Could you do it for a thousand five?”

  “No! Of course not!”

  Ramona smashed the tuna with a fork. Added mayo and powdered mustard and a pinch of dill. Mixed it up and tasted it. She’d forgotten the salt. It needed salt. She added it and tasted it again. She handed Bernice the fork.

  “Taste,” she said.

  In Bernice’s opinion it could have used some sour pickle.

  Ramona turned to her, suddenly passionate, her eyes hard and narrow.

  The ant paused on her thigh, startled.

  “I got to have him dead, Bernice. I mean it. The bastard hasn’t got a penny. They’re taking away my charge cards one by one. Do you have any idea what that does to me, Bernice? I mean, I offer you a thousand and it’s more than I can afford. I’m desperate. I can’t stand the sight of that sonovabitch anymore.”

  She pointed to the hickey, strident and complacent beneath her chin.

  “I haven’t had one of these things since I was sixteen. And I didn’t like them then. I want him dead. Those debts are mostly all in his name, not mine. He can’t hold a job and he wants to fuck all the time and I’m sick of him. Two thousand. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Jeez, Mona. I couldn’t kill somebody.”

  “Sure you could. I could kill Albert for you, if you asked me to.”

  “I don’t want you to kill Albert.”

  “I know that but I could do it for you if you did. It’s just . . . harder when it’s your own husband. I dunno. Maybe some kind of . . . affection there for the dumb cocksucker. Really. I need your strength. Don’t bleed me, Bernice. Don’t gouge me. Take two thousand.”

  She sat down.

  “Gee, ’Mona. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You’re my best friend. Kill him for me. Please?”

  Bernice had a bite of tuna.

  The worker ant entered the dark, liver-scented forest of her pubic hair and trudged forward. Drink and anger had clouded her perceptions. She scratched her thigh where the ant had been five minutes previously.

  Bernice sighed. “You sure you ain’t got any gin?”

  She tried to picture herself as a man killer. All that came to her was an image in platinum wig and black sheath dress, smoke from her .45 mingling with the smoke from her cigarette dangling from her rouged and bee-stung lips.

  She’d run a cat over once. A little thump. Howard would be a much bigger thump.

  “I can’t” she said. “Anyway, if it’s got to be done then you should do it and don’t stop me now Ramona because here’s why.”

  She took a deep breath, aware of her heartbeat. Her nipples tingled against the tired blue terrycloth of her housedress. Nylon hissed as she crossed her legs. These goddamn garters were ruining them.
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  “You remember a long while ago, I think it was in Michigan, there was this guy who was beating up on his wife all the time? And she set fire to his bed one night while he was sleeping? Used gasoline? Well, you could do that. I mean, not with the gasoline because you don’t want to burn the place up or anything, but just say he was beating up on you and so you killed him. The jury let her off. There’ve been others too. I just can’t think of ’em. I’d back you up on it, I swear.”

  She was getting kind of wet down there thinking about it, excited.

  “See, you could kill him and try not to get caught, but if you did get caught, you could say it was justifiable killing. But, if I kill him and I get caught, I’m screwed. See?”

  Ramona nibbled the tuna abstractedly. She considered Bernice’s point. It was a good point.

  Trouble was, she lacked the confidence. You needed confidence to kill a man.

  She imagined herself with confidence.

  She saw herself lying beside him in bed, sharp scissors in her hand glinting in the light from the streetlamp, smiling as she lifts the sheet off his warm, night-smelling, fat hairy body. Then snipping at the base of his neck, a tiny incision. Delightfully, he doesn’t stir. He’s snoring. Quickly, easily, she cuts a perfect line from the incision down through his navel to his cock. His intestines pop out like a grey wet slippery messy steaming Jack-in-the-Box. She reaches in under the intestines through the sticky goo, goes up through the ribcage, and draws out his heart. The heart is still beating. Though Howard is no longer snoring. She mashes his heart against the bedroom wall, squooshes it completely.

  “ ’Mona?” Bernice was saying. “ ’Mona? What’ya think?”

  “Hmmm?”

  She lacked confidence.

  The worker ant climbed over labia arid and joyless as the desert.

  The tuna was nearly gone.

  “I can’t do it by myself,” she said. “You got to help me.”

  “Ramona, I can’t help you. What if they caught me? What excuse have I got?”

  “We could say I forced you. I was so crazy I threatened your life and Albert’s life and you had to go along. You were afraid of me. I’d back you all the way. I’d be as crazy as a fucking loon.”

  Bernice made a face. “I just don’t know, Ramona.”

  ’Mona was on a roll now.

  “Listen, Howard’s got an insurance policy for thirty thousand. If we make it look like an accident that’s double indemnity, that’s sixty. Help me do it and I’ll give you thirty. That’s half. How’s that sound?”

  “Thirty thousand dollars?”

  “Right.”

  “Gee.”

  She considered it.

  “You only offered me a thousand at first.”

  Ramona didn’t comment.

  She could see Bernice’s nipples stiffen under the terry housedress. Let her think about it. It took two years for Albert to make that kind of cash. Ramona felt pretty good about things for the first real time that day.

  Though Bernice ought to lose some weight in her opinion. Those nipples could stand to ride a little higher.

  “Okay,” said Bernice. “I’ll do it. Only I’m not doing this alone, either. No riding over him in the driveway or anything. Whatever we do, we do together. Is that agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Now what the fuck was that?

  She stood up and brushed hard at her belly. The itching, crawling feeling stopped abruptly.

  It took three more hours for the body to be discovered curled in the hollow of her navel.

  “Want more Sanka?” she said.

  “Fuck Sanka,” said Bernice. “Haven’t you got any gin?”

  Ramona sighed and pulled out the bottle.

  Two more weeks had elapsed and Howard was still alive.

  They sat alone together in a bar. The bar was all pink and red. The lighting was dim. It was like sitting in something’s stomach.

  Ramona was on her third banana daiquiri. Bernice ordered another pink gin from the barman. She was one ahead, but the liquor made her happy.

  “Make it a double,” she said.

  “Bernice, don’t get drunk, for chrissake, will ya?”

  “My head is perfectly clear, ’Mona,” she said pointedly. “It’s not me who keeps coming up with these ideas.”

  “Don’t be a smartass.”

  “I’m not. I’m not the smartass here.”

  It was loud enough and testy enough so that the topless dancer behind the bar, an Irish girl with a face as broad and squat as a piano and breasts the color of old tin cans, missed a bump.

  The barman put the double pink gin in front of the fat one, wishing these two would stop arguing. It was giving him a headache. Besides, the thinner one wasn’t so bad looking. He crossed a pair of treetrunk arms and smiled at her.

  Ramona caught the glance. Right here was a side of beef.

  “So what happened?” asked Bernice.

  “He didn’t eat it. The fucker.”

  The two of them were the only customers. The barman and dancer each found them interesting—for different reasons. The barman was trying to discern the elusive outline of Ramona’s pale nipples beneath her open cardigan and sheer mauve blouse. The dancer waxed more introspective: he didn’t eat what? She moved her legs listlessly forward and back and tried to remember not to knit her brow.

  “Jeez,” said Bernice, “and here I am spending the whole day cutting the sacs off the goddamn bugs and baking the pie. Doesn’t he like apple pie?”

  “Of course he does. He ate the crust. He said it was good, by the way. I guess it’s the tarantula he doesn’t like.”

  She gulped the drink.

  “It was pretty disgusting to look at, tell you the truth. Poison turned it kind of greenish brown. I wouldn’t have eaten it. I told him the apples must have gone bad or something.”

  “He bought that?”

  “Of course he bought it. He bought the wax on the front steps, didn’t he?”

  “He has a wonderful sense of balance, ’Mona.”

  “And he bought it when I dropped the toaster into the bathtub, didn’t he?”

  “We should of scraped the insulation better. We’d of had him.”

  “I know that. The point is Howard’s the dumbest jerk walking. That’s what got me into this mess, remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  Melancholy set in.

  Bernice downed her double and motioned to the barman for another.

  They watched him move down the bar. Enormous shoulders on the guy. From the rear you couldn’t see his big pot belly and his ass and hips were nice.

  “Not bad, huh,” said Bernice.

  “Jesus, no. Big sonovabitch. You might need a shoehorn to get him in, though.”

  “Yeah. A guy like that could be awful big.”

  “You never know. I’ve seen his type with peckers no bigger than a car key.” She smiled conspiratorially. “I bet we can find out, though.”

  She slipped off her sweater and draped it over the bar-stool. Then took each of her nipples between thumb and forefinger and twisted gently. They gorged and grew.

  The barman returned with Bernice’s pink gin and noted the improvements. He met her eyes and saw the promise there. Ramona ordered another daiquiri. He swallowed and turned away. And Ramona saw what she wanted to see.

  “That’s a cattle prod he’s got in there,” she said—betraying her West Chicago background. “One more drink and I’m gonna want to suck that.”

  Bernice giggled. “Want company?”

  “Hell, no.”

  The barman returned with her drink. There was an easy familiarity in his manner now. It spoke of long exposure to cheap and beautiful women in every dark corner of the damp, pungent continent of sex. He leaned close over the bar.

  “Anything else I can do for you ladies?”

  “We gotta talk,” said Bernice.

  “Later,” said Ramona.

  The barman felt certain he could afford to
be expansive. “Sure,” he said and moved away.

  “I say we disconnect the brakes on the Mercury,” said Bernice.

  “I don’t know how. Do you?”

  “No. But we could climb in under there and disconnect everything we saw and probably something would be the brakes.”