The Calling

by Robert Swartwood

  From where I’m crouched, I glance once at Martin, who’s now taking a drag of the joint. He’s the hard case, I realize, the stronger—and angrier—one of the two. Why he’s not the one in color now I have no clue, though I wish he was, I wish I could look deep into his dark and twisted soul. Instead I can just glimpse into Adam’s and see how their friendship began.

  Friends since they were five, they became blood brothers the day Martin cut his hand on some rocks while they were playing down near the Newtown Creek. He made Adam cut his own hand too, on a black rock with a sharpened edge. They then held their hands together, so that their blood could become one. “All right,” Martin said, “from this day on we’re blood brothers, you got it? That means we’re friends forever.” Forever is a long time, but at eleven years old it was just a word with no real meaning—though a word both boys promised to live by, no matter what.

  Martin’s grades were never good, while Adam’s were so-so. But after Martin flunked out of eleventh grade and stopped going, Adam only went for three weeks his senior year before deciding to drop out. He has no friends besides Martin, and at times outside his regular classes, like during lunch or homeroom, he felt so alone.

  His mom was pissed but she was already too wrapped up in her own life to worry much, what with all the gin she drinks every night and the men she brings home after working nine hours at the bar. Adam has gotten used to the loud drunks who come in and fuck his mom and then leave after they’re done—only sometimes they don’t leave right away, as Adam remembers one night waking up to a man pissing right on him in bed; he was thirteen and scared and didn’t know what to do, so he started crying, which caused the man to laugh out loud. Sometimes they place money on the kitchen table before leaving (almost always two or three twenty dollar bills, never anything larger than a fifty), and at first this made Adam mad until he realized that, if he got up early enough, he could take a bill from the scattered pile and his mom would never know. His dad walked out on him when he was six and who the fuck knows where he is now, for all Adam cares the bastard’s dead, so it’s just been him and his mom and the random guy who sticks his cock in her hole the nights she brings him home.

  Martin’s parents, on the other hand, never split apart, though they never really cared for him much either. He was seven when he first started playing with fire and almost burned down the garage. Babysitters would never work twice after watching Martin. He always tried to pull up their skirts or touch their chests, and after a while it became known that Martin Luhr was not a kid you wanted to watch for five bucks an hour—after all, his mom was on welfare and could hardly afford to pay more, his dad was in jail half the time, so most of the families around the neighborhood felt sorry for him. For the first couple of years anyway.

  It was the occasional times Martin saw and talked with his dad that gave him the idea. How this world is designed for winners and losers, and how each boy and girl is destined from the moment they’re born which they’re going to be.

  “Martin,” his dad would say, his breath reeking of tobacco and whiskey, “you’re my son, which means you’re a goddamn loser like me. But that’s okay, it ain’t so bad. It’s your job to show them winners just how big of a loser you can be. Really shit on their parade, you get me? And so what if you end up going to jail once or twice. Ain’t no shame in it. I’ll tell you, sometimes I prefer it to actually finding a goddamn job.”

  It didn’t take long for Adam to see that he was a loser too, that he would always be a loser. Nothing he could do would change that. There are winners, there are losers, and as a loser himself, Adam began to hate those that weren’t like him. He began to see them differently, just as Martin did. He imagined the lives the winners would have, the wives and husbands they’d marry, the jobs they’d get, the houses they’d own and the families they’d make, the vacations they’d take during the summers to far away places. It made him sick sometimes, and even sad.

  “Come on, dude,” Martin said one night, when Adam let this slip, “it really ain’t so bad. Think about it. You wanna be a loser, or you wanna be nothing at all?”

  The answer’s simple of course, actually very obvious. But still Adam’s been having second thoughts, ever since two months ago, when they first started talking about what they could do to right the balance. How they can make those who see themselves as winners take a step down to the level of nothingness, if not for a few seconds, where Martin and Adam will then be on top. It’s beautiful, something that has made Adam smile more than once but still he’s hesitant, still he keeps wanting to talk to Martin about this seriously, not when they’re high. Martin has become determined, has become almost philosophical in the way he sometimes talks, that it scares Adam.

  Which, I realize, is the reason I’m here now, why everything else is gray and lifeless except him. He’s been scared for a while, just like he’s scared right now, and maybe I can use this to my advantage, maybe stepping into Alan Hoffman was a practice run, maybe this time, if I attempt it again, I can gain control.

  “Look at ’em,” Martin said earlier, while all the graduating seniors waited outside under the warm and heavy glow of the sun. “It’d be like shooting fish in a bucket. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” Adam said, thinking Ain’t it barrel? By then they’d already done two hits each and were working on their third. “You wanna do it now? Just mow ’em down like they’re fuckin’ nothing?”

  “Shit, Adam. You know the plan. We wait, take as many out as we can inside. Let their parents watch. Let them see how their goddamn precious winners quickly become nothing.”

  Adam, really feeling it then, started to laugh. “That’s fuckin’ awesome.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Martin had parked relatively close to the gym, but not too close that the fuzz would come by looking inside. Even if they did, all they would see besides the Golden Eagles and the two black boxes of Wolf Ammunition would be a mattress and some clothes, some empty Rolling Rock cans, some skin magazines that were so obscure even Adam hasn’t heard of any of them.

  Now, nearly a half hour later, they pass their second joint and watch the empty lawn. It’s short and even, having just been mowed early this morning or late last night. The two exit doors are propped wide open. Two uniformed cops keep walking around the building, and Martin has it timed out just right. At least he says he does, Adam isn’t totally sure. They don’t know what’s going on inside or who’s speaking, and are both pissed that the ceremony was moved inside, instead of out on the football field, where they could see everything.

  Finally Martin decides to quit wasting time, and says, “You ready?” Adam, holding the joint, takes one final hit. Then he just stares at his friend, his only friend in the world, for what seems a very long time. He grins and nods, passes Martin back the joint, and it’s at this point I move forward, prepared to stop this anyway I can. I’ve already seen what the end result will be but maybe I can still change it somehow, maybe I can prevent it. So I move forward and then sit into Adam, who shivers just once, then shakes his head. Martin has taken the joint and snubbed it out on the dash.

  “The fuck you doin’ man?” I say. “That’s good dope.”

  Martin breaks out his switchblade and releases the knife. It pops up, a good six inches of stainless steel, and for a second I think that this is it, this is where Martin finally snaps and kills me. Oh shit oh shit oh shit, I think, but then Martin takes his hand and runs the blade across it. A thin red line of blood appears on his palm. He points the knife at me.

  “Your turn.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Listen now. You agreed to this. You know we might not come out of this alive, and if we do, we’ll end up going to jail where we’ll probably die anyway. But at least we won’t be nothing. Now remember when we were kids, how we became blood brothers? Okay, so gimme your hand.”

  I just sit there in my seat, my feet still pressed against the van’s dash. I want to shake my head, I want to te
ll him no, I want to get the fuck out of the van and just run away. But all I can do is just sit here, like I’m paralyzed or something.

  “Come on, Adam,” Martin says, staring at me hard. “You know we have to do this. Besides, we gave them a chance to redeem themselves and look how they fucked it up.”

  That’s right, we did give them a chance. It was my idea, my way of trying to talk Martin out of it. I mentioned this party I’d heard about, up at this one girl’s house in Breesport, and how all the popular kids would be there, all the jocks, all the shitheads who were winners just because their parents were winners. I said that if we tried to go to their party and they were somehow cool and let us in, then why should we punish them? Martin didn’t seem like he bought into it completely but still we went there and didn’t even make it through the front door, some assholes out front smoking pot and drinking beer started calling us names, started pushing us around, and then one of them poured his cup of beer right on Martin’s head. Yes, they had their chance and fucked it up, so really whose fault is it in the end?

  I reach out my hand and squeeze my eyes tight when Martin draws the blade across my palm. There’s no real pain, and for some crazy reason I’m reminded of getting a paper cut. Seconds later, though, my hand starts to tingle, the fingers going numb. Blood seeps out of the wound. We place our hands together, letting our blood become one again. I don’t say anything, but this ritual thing Martin’s so into is kinda gay.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” Martin says. His face has gone a little pale. “But three nights ago this ... this guy showed up right outside the van. He knew my name, what we were planning on doing, everything. I thought he might try to turn us in, but he said he was proud of us. He said that if and when we made it, we could have anything we ever wanted. Any girl, any time, any way.” He takes his hand away from mine, stares at it, and then wipes it on his shirt. “I thought I was crazy, but now ... now I know it was real.”

  I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. For a second I think that Martin’s just fucking around with me, but I know that can’t be right, because I never told him what happened. Thursday night, after we had come back from that bitch’s party, I smoked a bowl and lay in bed, trying to sleep, when this guy approached me too. Out of nowhere, like he was the fucking boogeyman or something. One moment I’m alone in my room, while downstairs my mom’s getting banged by whoever the fuck she brought home this time, and the next moment this guy’s standing there smiling at me beside my bed. I started up at once, really freaked out, even started to say something, when the man held out his hand.

  “Quiet now,” he said. “I’m a friend. Normally I only observe, I enjoy the show, but I have a lot riding on you and your pal. So I’m willing to offer an incentive. If you succeed, whatever you want, whenever you want it, any way you want it.” And then, standing there, the man’s face started to ripple in the dark, it started to change, until he was no longer a dude, but a fucking woman. Her face was smooth and soft, her lips big. She was completely naked, her breasts large, her pussy shaved. I couldn’t tell for sure because it was so dark, but her eyes kinda looked like they were black. She reached out her hand and set it down right where my dick was under the sheets, began massaging it into a full-blown boner, slow at first, but then picking up speed, until I couldn’t take it anymore and I leaned my head back on the pillow, squeezed my eyes shut real tight, and just sprayed my shorts. When I opened my eyes, the woman was gone, the hand that was stroking me my own. “The fuck?” I muttered, really freaked out, but then I laughed, went and smoked some more, then fell asleep. Downstairs, my mom was still moaning, she was still getting fucked, and I promised myself that if any of her asshole boyfriends ever tried pissing on me again, I’ll cut his fucking dick off.

  But I didn’t tell Martin any of that, because it had to just be my fried imagination. Had to be. But now, after my best friend just tells me the same thing ...

  Martin says, “Ready?”

  We waste no time getting the rifles. Each box contains twenty rounds, and as the Golden Eagles take up to thirty, we split it down the line. We figure we have enough to make a few solid kills. Hopefully if we get close enough and have enough in a line, we can take out more than one. Maybe do a hat trick or some shit, I don’t know what it’s called when taking out three people with just one bullet or if that’s even possible. Martin puts on his trench coat, which I think is a bit tacky, like he’s trying too hard, but what the fuck, and then he slips his switchblade in one of the pockets.

  For one fast second I get the sudden feeling that we should stop. This is wrong. And it has nothing to do with the guy—

  I’m a friend

  —who might or might not have appeared out of fucking nowhere Thursday night in my room.

  Thinking this now, I say, “Martin?”

  He turns and looks at me, his face hard.

  “What did he give you? As ... as an incentive?”

  For a moment Martin just stares back at me, like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Then he grins. “What do you think?” he says, and then he opens his door and steps out. Once again, that feeling that we should stop hits me, but I ignore it and jump outside. The air is cooler than the van and feels good on the sweat that’s already on my face. Martin, holding the rifle with both hands, turns to me. “Remember what my old man told me,” he says, and then starts toward the gym.

  I follow a step behind. I know exactly what Martin’s dad told him. It has to do with lemons. That when life gives you lemons you don’t make fucking lemonade like them cheery assholes always say. No, what you do is stomp on those lemons until they’re dead on the bottom of your shoe.

  Nothing more than that.

  Nothing more at all.

  • • •

  WHEN IT WAS over, when those three consecutive gunshots were fired, everything went silent. The world seemed to stand still for an instant. I was again in my body, I was again Christopher Myers. I realized somewhere along the line I’d held my breath. When I opened my eyes I saw everything in color, just like before. Then a second later, when the world started back up, I knew it was over and began to breathe again.

  Chapter 32

  “So that’s it?”

  Moses placed the Metro in park, turned off the ignition. “You’re talking to me now?”

  “Does this mean it’s over? Did we ... did we beat Samael?”

  It was six o’clock in the evening, the sun already sloping toward the horizon, sending a fading orange glow down on the valley just beyond The Hill.

  Moses turned in his seat and stared at me for a couple moments. “What happened to you back there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before those two kids with the guns came in, something happened to you. I could feel it. It was like ... like you were sitting next to me but you weren’t.”

  It was Dean who’d seen them coming into the gymnasium. He shouted a warning and when it was clear that he’d be ignored he did what he had been trained to do: shoot to kill. The first boy, Martin Luhr, had died only seconds after hitting the ground. The second boy, Adam Grant, had only been wounded and was taken away in an ambulance.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Do you really want to fucking start with me right now?” I held his gaze, and when he didn’t answer, I said, “I didn’t think so. As far as I’m concerned, thirty-four people were supposed to die at that graduation. But they didn’t. And now it’s over.”

  I unclipped my seatbelt and reached for the door handle when Moses spoke.

  “Christopher, there’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

  “Let me guess—you and Joey did kill my parents after all.”

  He didn’t even flinch. “I told you before we didn’t.”

  “No, but you knew it was going to happen. You could have prevented it but decided not to. So yes, in a way, you did kill them.”

  I opened the d
oor, started to get out.

  Moses said, “Joey didn’t pass anything on to you.”

  I stood frozen, one foot in the car, the other foot on the grass, staring at a red, white and blue pinwheel spinning in front of someone’s trailer.

  “It’s important for you to understand. There are people just like Joey in the world who know things. They don’t know how they know what they know, or why they do, or how to control it.”

  The pinwheel kept spinning and spinning, the colors mixing into one all-American shade.

  “Christopher, do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  My body unfroze, and I stepped fully out of the car, turned and ducked back down so I could see the man in the driver’s seat.

  “Moses, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t ever want to fucking see your face again. Got it?”

  I slammed the door shut before he could say anything else. Then I was walking, taking slow deep breaths, trying to forget everything that had happened today. My plan was to check on my grandmother but I wanted to stop at my own trailer first, take a shower and change out of these clothes.

  As I headed down the drive, a screen door banged open and a voice called, “Christopher! Christopher, wait!”

  Carol, my grandmother’s friend who had only eight more months to live before dying alone in a hospital bed, rushed down the steps of her trailer. I hurried over to her, asking what was wrong.

  Catching her breath, she said, “I was keeping an eye out for you.”

  My gaze shifted over to my grandmother’s trailer. “What is it?”