by Mike Miner
"Conn…"
"Darrell, I'm not fucking with you. You aren't telling anybody a damn thing, hear? I know shit about you. I'll spill if I have to. I'll tell 'em about Charlene, tell 'em about Charlene and Katie and Sarah, Darrell. They'll lynch you for that, man. They'll hang your ass on the nearest tree."
"Don't fuck with me, Conn. I didn't do nothing to you."
Connor felt himself bring the rifle into both hands. "You'll wish you was dead, Darrell. Know what they do to kid-rapers in prison? I got a cousin that went in. You know that janitor over at East Hill High, the one that was banging them little girls after classes?"
Darrell pressed himself into the poplar like he was trying to squeeze through it.
"You know what the boys there did to him when the guards decided to stop looking? You know what they did? Threw him against a wall and tore his drawers off. You listening? Took eight stitches to close him up. Eight. My cousin was there watching. Said the guy screamed like a girl. Said they had him face down in a hospital bed for a week. You following?"
Darrell didn't say anything. They walked back down the ridge, called 911 and waited on the porch for the lights and sirens.
The police fenced off their crime scene with yellow tape like a mob of reporters and bystanders waited to rush in. They questioned Connor, seemed suspicious about it all, though he figured they were doing their job and didn't really think he had killed Jim.
After consulting a lawyer, he figured he was safe. The fingerprints didn't point one way or another, and neither did the powder residue found on their hands. Darrell said he couldn't remember for sure which guns the men had left the house with, and in a videotaped reenactment of the night, a stand-in for Jim achieved a few tumbling positions that approximated the ballistics on the fatal shot.
He'd be okay, though knowing it didn't do a thing to alleviate what Connor had felt since Jim's death: fear of getting busted. He made himself attend Jim's funeral, and apologized to Jim's friends and family for leading his "best buddy" on that night-blackened trip through the woods. It was an open casket service. They tried using wax or putty to give Jim back his face. Connor felt like he was looking at a mannequin. That was all he thought about it. He spent the afternoon waiting for someone to accuse him.
Watching Jim's older brother, Mike, stand by the coffin was the only other thing Connor remembered with any clarity. Mike was built like a bulldozer, and seeing him stand there like he was waiting to die along with his brother beat through Connor's fear enough to leave an impression.
The attendants all seemed to take the death as a strange act of God. The police eventually passed it off as a drunken accident, to be lumped in with the teens burned or crushed to death from drag racing, and the group of college kids a week earlier who had walked atop a trestle during a camping trip and then jumped when a coal carrier came through. Still, the fear didn't leave Connor until Jim's parents came to him one day to talk about their son and apologize for the stress that was being placed upon Connor, who "would have never done such a thing to our boy."
The only thing to remain unchanged during the investigation was work. Connor's manager hadn't given him a single day off following the shooting. Not that Connor minded much, since he could lose himself stacking soup cans and boxes of cereal. He let the stocking fill his mind until he thought only of labels and rows. Nobody bothered him so late at night, no one from management looking over his shoulder, no customers trying to jam their carts between the shelves and the boxes and pallets he had stacked down the middle of the narrow aisles.
He was in the middle of shelving cereals—the generic brands that came in bags, and had names like "Rice Crunchies" and "Fruit Hoops" when a gravelly voice behind him said, "Connor Blankenship."
Connor looked up, saw Mike standing over him. He wore loose jeans, a wifebeater, and amber-lensed aviator glasses. Liquor came off his clothes like cologne.
"Evening, Mike." Connor stood up and tried to look solemn as he offered his hand.
Mike didn't take it. "Come to ask you something," he said.
"Go ahead."
"My brother…he grab that shotgun himself?"
"Pretty sure he did."
Mike nodded. "Jim, he never did like shotguns."
"I mighta handed it to him then. Shit, Mike, we were drunk. I told the police as much as I remembered for sure. I mean, damn, this ain't easy for me, either."
"Too much kick for him, not enough range to make it worthwhile," Mike went on. "Always used rifles."
"Well, shit, it's what he ended up with, okay? Goddamn, I don't know what else to say. We was drunk, and we was rushing around like hell."
Mike tilted his head to the rows of fluorescent lights gridding the ceiling. "Same thing your friend was saying, that goofy fuck working here tonight." He shook his head, blinked like he was waking up. "Goddamn, I'm sorry to be ragging on you like this. Police won't tell me a damn thing. They say it was quick. Was it?"
"Yeah. He couldn't have felt a thing."
"Sorry, sorry to be bothering you." He reached under his cap and rubbed his scalp. "Guess I'll be getting on."
"I wish to hell it hadn't happened."
Mike nodded and walked off. "Yeah, same here," he answered without looking back.
Connor watched him leave, then went back to stocking. He wanted to find Darrell and grab him by his neck, though he made himself stay and look calm. For all he knew, Mike was still pacing around the store, waiting for him to find Darrell. So Connor waited. His hands got fidgety and he backtracked to fix mistakes, dumb things, like not getting the right brands together.
He finished two pallets before he had to find Darrell, who was a few aisles down, throwing bags of broccoli florets into a freezer case.
"C'mon, let's go take a break," Connor told him.
They walked out back to the empty loading docks, where there weren't any security cameras, and stood behind a Tyson's trailer.
"Been running your mouth?" Connor asked.
"I didn't tell him nothing I didn't tell the police."
"Jesus fucking Christ. We're in this shit together. You're an accomplice, you know that?"
"I know."
Connor spat onto the pavement. "Then start acting like it."
When his shift ended, he went to his truck and sat. He began to realize he hadn't thought about Jim at all the past two weeks. He'd been so wrapped up in not getting arrested that the death of his friend never registered. Jim was gone, stuck in a hole next to a few piles of bone and dust that used to be members of his family.
"Goddamn," Connor whispered. He had killed Jim. Ripped the man's life away.
He remembered when he was a kid and his grandfather had taken him out deer hunting. While they were walking to a tree stand, they spotted a buck standing by itself near a crumbled bank of shale. Connor sighted the buck, an easy shot, and fired. It was an unwieldy gun for him, a .30-30 he couldn't even get his face near the back sight on, and the round went through the deer's hip.
They followed the blood trail over the ridge and found the buck slumped against the branches of a young hemlock. Its forelegs swam against the dirt. Connor lined the deer up for a shot through the chest when his grandfather stopped him.
"No use wasting another bullet," the man said. "Factory cartridges are damned expensive. Go grab you a rock."
Connor had been hunting three times before that, though he'd never spotted a deer. His grandfather took him out of season for the fourth trip, so the deer would do dumb things like stand still on hillsides—all so little Connor could end up finishing one with a piece of limestone so heavy, he'd nearly fallen backwards trying to lift it over his head. It took him two years to hunt again.
And now he had killed Jim, and he didn't feel a damn thing about it. He only felt focused by Jim's death, like his brain slowed things gone haywire—a feeling he remembered from batting leadoff in high school. Before the opening pitch, he'd be frozen at the plate, worrying about the first baseman hugging the line, abou
t the wind blowing in from left field, about the fastball that might be coming at his head at seventy miles an hour. A few pitchers figured him out, started firing easy ones right down the plate that Connor never hardly looked at except to make sure he didn't need to duck or back off. Then that first pitch landed for strike or ball. He'd hear the ball pop into leather, and the crowd and his coaches faded into the periphery. It was him and the pitcher.
And Connor was going to win.
It was almost noon when he got back to his house and flopped into bed without changing clothes. The cellphone rang once; he killed the ringer and tossed it away. When he woke later, it was to moonlight and the distant sound of crunching gravel. He got up and padded through the dark house.
Outside, the doubled headlights of an idling truck cut into his driveway.
Connor felt his way back to the bedroom, searched the gun chest until his fingers touched the finely engraved stock of his grandfather's shotgun. He pulled it from the rack and carried it by the pump to the living room, where he crouched between a window and his front door and peered out to the driveway.
The truck diesel rumbled, and the brights kept Connor from seeing inside.
Then the engine and the beams died. Mike sat behind the wheel, solid and impassive beneath the dome light. A gun rack with a rifle was fixed to the back window. Mike stared into the woods before shoving the door open, the hinges screeching as he stumbled out.
"Connor!" he roared, his face turned as much to the sky as to the house. "Connor, you bastard, I know you done it. That friend of yours told me everything. You're going to jail, Connor. You'll rot in there."
The rifle hanging from the truck's back glass worried Connor more than jail did. He scampered low-backed to the bedroom to pocket his phone, then stepped onto a dresser and eased himself through a window that was left open to the night. The grass was cold and damp on Connor's feet. Mike was coming up to the house—Connor heard his boots squishing. Maybe he could wait it out. Mike would poke around and leave, or he'd stay put waiting for Connor. If Connor called right then, the cops wouldn't be more than twenty minutes out, closer if someone was pulling patrol nearby.
But that left Mike still around to cause problems. So Connor kept working his way along the house, and by the time he reached the front corner, Mike was on the porch with his face nearly pressed to the storm door. Connor stood taller and walked unseen to the porch stairs, iron sights fixed to Mike and trapping the intruder against the door.
"You coward, I know you're in here," he yelled. "Open up."
He pounded the glass, then tried the handle. It gave, as did the interior door, and before Connor could react, Mike was inside the doorway, staring into the darkness of the kitchen.
"I'm gonna go tell the police, so you might as well call and confess," Mike said.
The door sprang back and smacked into Mike's hip. He lurched around and saw Connor.
"Well, fuck," he said. "Gonna shoot me, too, you little shit?"
The two men were separated by the front door's glass and a few breaths of air. The sight jittered on Mike's chest. Connor pulled the gun tighter and hoped Mike had a knife on him or something. Then he remembered the rifles.
The blast was like lightning. Mike stumbled onto an open reclining chair. He slumped across the extended footrest, legs sagging to the floor, his frame gradually sliding out of the seat. When Connor got close, he fell out and lay propped against the base. Flecks of glass stuck to his face like sleet, and dusted his shirt and arms, turned red in places by blood spray.
"Fucker," Mike whispered, "you shot me." He looked down at the ragged spot across his ribs, then up like he had something to say.
Connor pumped another round and watched. There weren't any neighbors closer than six miles away, and they would probably mistake the shot for some idiot spot-lighting deer. If Mike managed to stand up, he would shoot him again from the same place, so it wouldn't look like an executioner's shot. If Mike didn't stand, Connor would wait for shock or blood loss to get him.
It didn't take long. Mike died silently, motionless except for a tremor against the recliner. Connor walked to Mike's truck, covered his hand in his shirt, and pulled out a Ruger Magnum. He brought it back to the doublewide, stepped over and around the blood and glass, and wrapped Mike's hand around the stock. He gauged the scene for a moment: Mike's ripped-up Harley Davidson shirt with a bloody hole where an eagle's wing used to be; his head, lolled against an armrest, mouth drooped open—and that gun, sitting in stiffening fingers.
"No, sir, he came into my house with the gun," left his mouth two dozen times that night, a perfect chant, constant in tone and seriousness. He told them about Mike coming to the store, and that they could see it for themselves on the interior and parking lot security tapes. The phone call he missed had been Darrell calling, and his message was a convincing clip of fearful warning about Mike's approach, but with nothing said about the breaking of his pact with Connor.
They released him a few minutes past midnight. At home he drank beer and paced his house for half an hour before the worry settled. He decided to take the night off, and if his manager gave him any shit about missing work, he'd say something dangerous sounding, like, "You better not piss me off," or "The only man that's ever messed with me is dead," so she'd ease off. Connor could stay in, drink and watch late-night television, maybe call over an ex-girlfriend or something. He knew one or two who would probably be turned on by him being a killer.
Other things could wait. Darrell, for one. He'd straighten the chickenshit out when the scene had calmed, assuming he wasn't pissing himself already over the thought of Connor coming after him.
The morning began with a headache and an empty bed. He took a pack of Marlboros to the deck and planned on sitting out the afternoon in the shade of his roof's overhang.
He found the deck coated in crunched dog food, ripped paper, and chewed Tupperware. In the far corner was a stack of drying spoor stacked up like charcoal briquettes dumped from a bag. He looked to his hound, head protruding from a particle-board doghouse, his jowls draped over dusty paws, barely-open eyes watching Connor.
"Thanks for nothing," Connor said. He grabbed an overturned chair and flung it into the yard. Then he remembered some ribeyes that had grayed in his refrigerator. He'd leave them on the deck and wait in the kitchen, windows open, his shotgun and a box of one-ounce slugs ready.
Animal Control
by Don LaPlant
Josh
Jimmy paused just inside the door and took off his baseball cap like the Fulton Street Tavern was a church or something. It was 12:15 Friday afternoon and I was behind the bar serving a weak vodka tonic to this alcoholic who thought I really cared about what a bitch his ex-wife was. Once Jimmy's eyes had adjusted to the dim light, he scanned the room for Tiffany, trying to figure out where to sit so he could be in her section.
"Take that one by the window," I told him. "She'll be with you in a minute."
He nodded, shuffled over to the corner booth, and slid himself around the cracked Naugahyde bench until he had a clear view of the front door and the rest of the room. Probably a prison thing, wanting to make sure no one could sneak up behind him. Maybe I'd get Tiffany to ask. He'd tell her anything. I could hardly get five words out of him even when I turned on the charm full-blast.
I encountered guys like him every once in a while—guys determined not to like me no matter what. Usually older guys who envied me for being in my twenties, for being good-looking, for playing in a band, and, most of all, for getting more action in a month than they'd get in their whole pathetic lives.
"Need a menu, Jimbo?" I asked from behind the bar.
"I'll just get my usual," he said.
"I'm not taking your order," I told him. "Just asking if you needed a menu. I'm a bartender, not a fucking waiter." I turned back to my chatty drunk at the bar.
Jimmy came in every Friday like it was a job he couldn't afford to lose. Sad thing is, this was probably the highlight
of his week: sitting alone in this shithole, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife as he waited for a cheeseburger and longed for five minutes of small talk with a waitress he had absolutely zero chance of fucking.
Tiffany banged through the swinging door with a tray of "specials," blowing hair out of her face. She gave me a look that said the cook was being an asshole again today. As she walked past the bar toward a four-top of used car salesmen, I nodded toward Jimmy. "Loverboy's over there waiting for you."
Drunky McGee at the bar cracked up and looked over at Jimmy. I saw he was about to say something stupid, so I whispered "Careful, buddy. That guy's an ex-con. He'll kick your ass."
I looked over at Jimmy to see if he'd heard me, but his eyes were glued to Tiff. He wasn't checking out her ass or anything blatant like that, but you could tell he enjoyed watching her.
Jimmy looked like the kind of guy you'd cast as the racist sheriff of a small southern town in some '60s movie. Sweaty pits and a red neck, sunburned face with a little pig nose and watery blue eyes, a crew cut with a receding hairline, and two days worth of stubble. Probably mid-to-late 40s. You look at him and think, "Give this guy a badge, some mirrored sunglasses, and a shotgun; send him back to Alabama." He wore charcoal-gray Dickeys and a matching grease-stained work shirt with his name stitched in an oval over his heart. Heavy, mud-colored workboots with steel toes and insulated rubber treads. The standard uniform of guys who drink cheap beer unironically and probably do all their shopping at Wal-Mart.
After unloading her tray, Tiffany flashed the big, fake smile all successful waitresses master. The one that made middle-aged men think they had a shot with her. Every time I saw her do that, I imagined hearing the cha-ching of a cash register and seeing dollar signs in her eyes.
She wasn't that bad-looking for someone in her early 30s. Starting to get a little saggy, thick around the middle, big ass. Still fuckable in a dry spell, but just a little past her prime.