EQMM, August 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Looking aghast at the gun, Lester rapidly worked the trigger three more times before realizing in horror that the gun was not loaded.

  Then it was Hardesty who laughed. “You brainless, lowlife moron,” he said, pushing Billie Sue aside. “You're too stupid to go on living.”

  Hardesty shot Lester twice, dead center in the chest, exploding his heart, slamming his body back eight feet, dropping him like a man hit by a truck. Then he turned his gun on Cory, who was reaching for his Ruger. But before Hardesty could fire, his head was hit at close range as Billie Sue shot him in the temple with her Guardian 25.

  Cory had his Ruger out now, and he and Billie Sue faced each other with guns leveled. They stood like that for a long, taut moment. Then Billie Sue spoke.

  “Let's get the hell out of here.”

  “Let's,” said Cory.

  * * * *

  The sliding gate opened automatically from the inside for vehicles wanting to exit. Cory eased the Buick out, their own luggage back in the trunk with the million two, the bodies of Lester and Hardesty securely locked behind them in Unit 276, the rental on which, Billie Sue pointed out, was paid up three months in advance.

  We're free and clear now, Cory thought. Billie was snuggled up beside him. There was nothing else to worry about. All the pieces were now in place.

  All the pieces—

  Except for Duffy.

  The first bullet hit the Buick's windshield, shattering glass in Billie's face. She screamed.

  The second shot was low, smashing into the car's radiator. Cory swerved and slammed sideways into the back of a van parked in front of a warehouse. When the Buick came to a jolting halt, steam gushing from under the hood, a third bullet burst the driverside window and grazed the back of Cory's neck before ploughing into a seat back.

  Cory saw Duffy now, stumbling toward the car like a drunken madman, brandishing a pistol and shouting.

  “You don't put anything over on me!” he yelled. “No, sir!”

  Kicking open the driver's-side door, Cory rolled out, firing his own weapon. The two men exchanged shots, one of Duffy's rounds striking Cory in the right side, an in-and-out hit that spun him over but did not bring him down, while four of Cory's bullets laced Duffy's chest, sending him flailing back like a rag doll.

  Struggling over to the car, Cory's sense of smell was hit with the acrid fumes of gasoline. One of Duffy's shots had hit the gas tank.

  In the car, Cory found Billie sobbing, hands covering her face, blood trickling down between her fingers. “Come on, baby,” Cory said, taking one of her arms and dragging her across the seat.

  Then another shot cracked through the silence and hit the car. Duffy, not quite dead, had managed to fire one final round, and it hit the Buick's already punctured gas tank. The rear of the car exploded in a burst of growling flame.

  “Come on, baby!” Cory said again, desperately urgent now. As he got Billie almost out, another, smaller eruption of flame licked out and caught both of them, searing the sides of their faces, singeing their hair.

  Limping, half-dragging Billie, Cory managed to get them just far enough away not to be blown up when the rest of the Buick exploded.

  Along with the million two in its trunk.

  * * * *

  Sirens began piercing the humid air as police cruisers, fire engines, and ambulances converged on the cul-de-sac from all directions. On a narrow side street a block away, Cory managed to walk Billie along a row of older frame houses, where porch lights were being turned on and people were coming out to see what was going on.

  At the end of the block, where the houses stopped and only the dark night remained, Cory paused where an old man in a wheelchair sat looking toward the fiery sky above the cul-de-sac.

  “Say, mister,” Cory asked, “does this street lead out of town?”

  “This street?” the old man replied, peering curiously at their injured faces. “This street don't lead nowheres. This street ends at the cemetery.”

  Cory grunted quietly, said, “Thanks, mister,” and laboriously moved on.

  As he and Billie went on their way, the old man saw blood on the sidewalk and started wheeling toward a police cruiser that pulled up to block the other end of the street.

  * * * *

  They rested on the grassy ground next to the large headstone of a grave about twenty yards inside the cemetery. There was enough light from a full moon for them to see each other.

  Billie's face was shredded on both sides from the windshield glass, and burned on one side from the gasoline fire, and most of her hair was burnt off one side of her head.

  Cory's face and hair were seriously charred on one side, his neck wound painfully seared by the fire, and his stomach gunshot wound bubbling air-blood past the hand he held pressed tightly over it in a futile attempt to stop the flow. He had looked at his bloody hand under a streetlight just before they entered the cemetery and seen that the blood was streaked with black. The bullet had nicked his liver.

  As they sat with their backs against the cold surface of the headstone, two police cruisers pulled up at the cemetery entrance and four officers got out and moved cautiously onto the grounds.

  “I don't want to go on, Cory,” Billie managed to choke out.

  “Neither do I, baby,” Cory replied.

  They both drew their guns.

  Copyright © 2012 Clark Howard

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  * * *

  Fiction: HEY DAD

  by Joyce Carol Oates

  Booklist's description of Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel, Mudwoman, as “extraordinarily intense, racking, and resonant” could be applied to so much of her work. She is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities and many of the nation's other top literary honors. She is also the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University. This new story makes use of an academic setting and picks up on a recurring theme in her work: what Booklist calls “the persistence of the past."

  Almost wouldn't recognize you. And you wouldn't recognize me.

  Your face is gaunter than your photo-face. Your eyes are hidden by dark-tinted glasses. The goatee looks like Brillo wires pasted on your jaws.

  Hey Dad: Congratulations!

  Hey Dad: Me.

  I'm in the third row. I'm the face with the smile.

  Hey Dad this is coincidence.

  You are one of five Honorary Doctorate awardees.

  I am one of two hundred twenty-three Bachelor of Arts awardees.

  You are sixty-two years old. I am twenty-one years old.

  We both look ridiculous don't we Dad? You in the black academic gown on this sweltering-hot day in May, in New England. Me in the black academic gown on this sweltering-hot day in May, in New England.

  You in shiny black leather shoes, proper black silk socks.

  Me in black leather sandals, sockless.

  You in a folding chair on the commencement platform. First row of the select—President's party.

  Me in the third row of two hundred twenty-three graduating seniors. Seated on the hard hard stone of the quasi-Greek amphitheater.

  One of a small sea of black-robed kids. Some of us in T-shirts and swim trunks beneath the black robes ‘cause it's God damn hot in mid May on our little Colonial-college campus in New England.

  Some of us hungover from last night's partying. Some of us high.

  Some of us God damn sober.

  Confronting the rest-of-our-lives, God damn sober.

  But hey Dad: It's cool.

  Don't worry that I will make a scene. That I will confront you.

  Though I will be crossing the commencement platform twice: the first time, to be honored as the single Rhodes scholar this year from our college, and the second time, less dramatically, in a long stream of B.A. candidates, to have my hand shaken (again) by the (smiling) President as the B.A. degree is “conferred” upon us.

  Though I will be crossing the platform in my black aca
demic robe and mortar-board cap passing within eighteen inches of your knees.

  Though I seem to be, if your biographies are accurate, your only son.

  That is, biographies indicate that you are the father of two daughters, from your first, long-ago marriage.

  Biographies of M V are respectful. Mostly noting your controversial work in ethics, political commentary. Briefly noting your several marriages. And no record of your numerous liaisons.

  Hey Dad relax: I'm not the type to confront, or to confound. I have never been the type, I think.

  (For instance, I have not sought out my half-sisters. Not yet.)

  You have not shied away from public pronouncements that have caused dissension, controversy. Your books on the “ethics of killing"—war, abortion, euthanasia—that made your early reputation. Your books on “American imperialism” in the Third World, your scathing attacks on “colonization in new forms.”

  You are the egalitarian, the friend of the oppressed. You speak for those in the Third World who can't speak for themselves.

  You would not “colonize” anyone—of course.

  Your (thinning, graying-coppery) hair is still long, in the style of the 1960s. Signaling to youth in the audience that, for all his academic distinction, and the Brillo goatee threaded with gray, M V is one cool dude.

  Already when my mom knew M V in the long-ago, you were a person of distinction. And, for sure, one cool dude.

  Not that Mom talked about you. Never.

  Not that Mom thought about you. In recent years.

  Not that my stepfather knew (much) about you.

  Hey Dad this isn't about them. This is about me.

  And this is about you.

  This is about coincidence.

  What a brainteaser to calculate the odds: not just M V receiving an honorary doctorate at his (unacknowledged, unknown?) son's commencement but the son existing.

  For that hadn't been your intention, hey Dad?

  It isn't an operation, it isn't surgery. It's a medical procedure. It's commonplace as going to the dentist.

  And, later, losing patience: Don't be ridiculous. There is nothing to be frightened of.

  I've been through this before. More than once.

  Mom did not tell me any of this—of course. Mom is not the sort of person to burden others with bad memories of hers; Mom is precisely the sort of person who protects people from bad memories. And so, Mom did not ever tell me about you. When Mom spoke of her life of long ago when she'd been a graduate student at the distinguished Ivy League university in which you've been on the faculty for thirty years it was of the “intellectual ferment” of the time—the “exciting atmosphere"—"politically involved faculty.” Surely she was thinking of you and yet—she did not speak of you.

  And there you sit—having slid your watch to a position on your wrist, where the heavy black sleeve of your robe has fallen back, so that you can see the time: slow slow passing of time until your name is spoken by the President, and you will rise from your seat to be honored.

  No other reason for you to be here today. Of course.

  Blinding sunshine! Heat.

  The quasi-Greek amphitheater looks like it has been hacked out of stone in some primitive time of public ritual, sacrifice.

  In a lurid TV melodrama I would have brought a weapon with me to commencement. A weapon hidden beneath the ridiculous black robe.

  But this is not TV, and it is not melodrama. The mood is too measured, stately, and slow for melodrama.

  Or so you would think—hey Dad?

  “Pomp and Circumstance” played by the college orchestra. Loud, brassy, militant. Pompous old music but hey Dad, your mean old heart quickens, I bet!

  Your picture in the papers, your squinting-smiling photo-face.

  Maybe the face is wearing out, a little. Corroding from within.

  Decades now you've been winning awards. Decades you've been a known figure.

  Graduate students and post-docs and interns and assistants. And young untenured professors. You are their General. They do your bidding.

  Hey Dad it's a strain, isn't it: listening to other people speaking.

  But hey, no one is going to confront you here.

  No one is going to accuse you.

  She hadn't accused you. Maybe by the standards of that long-ago era you hadn't violated university policy. Maybe there were no rules governing the (sexual, moral) behavior of faculty members and their students in those days.

  It just isn't going to happen—that we can be together. Not just now.

  I will pay for the procedure. I can't accompany you for obvious reasons but I will pay and I suggest that you make arrangements to have it done out of town and not here; and I will pay for your accommodations there of course.

  Which you did not, Dad. Because Mom refused.

  Which pissed you off considerably, Dad. Because Mom refused.

  Because Mom wanted me. If it meant pissing you off considerably, and losing you—still, Mom wanted me.

  Hey Dad guess how I know this? Reading Mom's journal.

  Mom's journal—journals—she's been keeping since 1986 when she was a freshman at the university first enrolled in your famous lecture course.

  More than three hundred students in that legendary course.

  The Ethics of Politics. From Plato to Mao.

  But it was later, Mom met you. When Mom was a graduate student in your seminar. And Mom became your dissertation advisee—a coup for the twenty-three-year-old since it's known that M V chooses few students to work closely with him.

  Hey Dad we know: you've forgotten Mom's name.

  Or if you haven't forgotten the name exactly, you've forgotten Mom.

  For there were so many of them, in your life. Available/vulnerable women.

  Though Mom went on to teach in universities herself. Mom became a professor of American history and politics at a good state university and Mom has a career not so distinguished as yours but Mom too has published articles, reviews, and books.

  Has, or had. Mom isn't working now, Mom is pretty sick.

  Mom has been pretty sick for a while. Struggling as they say.

  Determined to beat it as they say.

  And maybe she will. Odds are a little better than fifty-fifty she can make it.

  Which is why Mom isn't here this morning. Mom and my stepdad. Why I am alone here this morning.

  With my friends here at college, I'm a popular guy. Girls like me pretty much, too.

  Maybe I resemble you, in some ways. Raffish-good-looking and thick wavy hair—the way you once looked, Dad.

  The way you once attracted girls and women with that “kindly” smile.

  But no more. You're old now, Dad. Eyeing girls like any old-man lecher.

  But mostly I'm not like you—in any way. Mostly I'm alone. My truest self is alone.

  Of course Mom doesn't know that I've been reading her journals. Handwritten notebooks kept on a high shelf in her study. They are not for anyone's eyes except Mom's, it seems.

  And if Mom dies—maybe my stepdad will read them. Or maybe Mom will have destroyed them.

  Mom isn't famous or distinguished enough for the journals to be published, I think.

  So you don't have to worry, Dad. Not that you're worried.

  And not much chance is there, Dad?—you're going to peruse the columns of names of the class of 2012 in the commencement program you've been given. For no name listed there could interest M V in the slightest.

  Even my name with its little red asterisk to indicate summa cum laude.

  Hey Dad here's a question: If you had known me, if you'd foreseen me, including the summa cum laude and the Rhodes scholarship for next year at Oxford, would you have insisted upon the procedure, just the same?

  No? Yes?

  “The ethics of killing.” Did you ever wonder what it feels like to be the killed—hey Dad?

  I have planned my strategy carefully this morning. The first time I'm called to the platfo
rm, I will shake the President's hand and pass by you without glancing at M V or any of the other honorary doctorates.

  (Politely, you will clap for me. Without glancing at me. As politely, a glaze of boredom on your face, you will clap for other graduates singled out for such honors.)

  But then, the second time, when I pass within eighteen inches of M V on the platform maybe I will pause, for just a moment—a “dramatic” moment.

  In the phosphorescent heat of the sun. Nearing noon, the sun will be overhead. Even the shade beneath the stage canopy will be hot, humid. Perspiration will run in little trickles down your face, Dad. Inside your clothes, Dad.

  You aren't a young man any longer. You may notice a shortness of breath, climbing stairs. A shimmering wave of vertigo at the top of the stairs. A dark place in your heart opening—I have been a shit. My life is shit. Whatever terrible death awaits me, I deserve.

  I have rehearsed. I will leave nothing to chance. This is a “procedure"—a matter of strategy and execution.

  After the President shakes my hand and the dean hands me my diploma and I am crossing the platform in a slow steady stream of Bachelor of Arts awardees all in ridiculous black robes flapping about our ankles and I pass no more than eighteen inches from M V in dark-tinted glasses and goatee I will stop, I will turn to you, and I will approach you, and among the buzz and hum of this part of commencement not many will notice. At first.

  Whatever I may be carrying inside my black robe, I will have shifted in such a way that I can grip its handle. Tight.

  And I will say—Hey Dad it's me.

  Copyright © 2012 Joyce Carol Oates

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  * * *

  Reviews: BLOG BYTES

  by Bill Crider

  * * * *

  * * * *

  If you're at all interested in espionage fiction, then have I got a website for you. It's Spy Guys & Gals (www.spyguysandgals.com/), and it has detailed information on 617 (so far) espionage series, encompassing 4,541 books. And when I say “detailed information,” I'm not kidding. Here's what the site delivers: the name of the author of the series, the name of the series character, the name of the series, the character's code name (if applicable), the character's nationality, the number of books in the series, the time span during which the books were published, and a description of the series. That's just for starters. You'll also find pictures of dust jackets and paperback covers, articles, and the webmaster's grades for each series. And more. If you start exploring this site, be sure you have plenty of time on your hands.