by Неизвестный
“Isn’t it bizarre?” Justin asked. “To have something so beautiful, so extraordinary, so colossal looming over an ordinary, banal American suburb. It’s like a giant Aztec god living in Westchester County. And everybody just scurries around shoveling their walks and walking their dogs like it was normal. Walt Whitman said something once about being blown away by the miracle of a mouse; it’s kind of distressing how fast miracles become part of the background.”
Kris stared out her side window wondering how much longer she’d have to be up here. Tomorrow was Monday. She’d promised Manuel that she’d be back to work in the morning. They were probably in a mess down there now. None of them could dispatch like she could. And Christmas was coming, their busiest time. She’d better call.
“This is Montana Creek.” Justin pointed to a stream the road crossed. “The turnoff is right up here.” A few seconds later, he turned right onto a road that cut through a thick forest of spruce. When it forked a ways down, Justin kept left. The trees thinned out, the road turned to gravel, and there were dirty patches of snow tucked under bushes and in hollows alongside the road.
“OK, this is it. What do you want to do?”
“We stop at each driveway and look for a pickup with a missing window.”
“You want to drive to the end, just to get a lay of the land or something?”
“What for?”
“Just to see what’s there.”
“What good’s that going to do?”
“Nothing, I suppose.” Justin tapped a finger on the wheel.
“Stop here.”
Justin pulled past the first driveway and stopped. “There’re going to be dogs.”
“I can hear them.” Kris opened the door and slid out. A second later, Justin followed.
“We should take notes, to keep track of the vehicles at each house,” he said.
Kris walked up the short driveway. A couple of dogs heaved against their chains. The pickup parked before the mobile home didn’t have any rust and had all of its windows. As she turned, someone opened the door. She waved and walked back down the drive.
Back in the truck Justin said, “That was easy enough.”
“What’d you expect?”
“Like trick-or-treating.” He laughed nervously.
They worked quickly down the road. Most of the houses were owner-built shacks or house-trailers and were widely-spaced in the trees and scrub. The yards were littered with rusting vehicles, old construction material, and other junk.
“Wouldn’t be an Alaskan homestead without a truck carcass and a couple of fifty-five gallon drums in the front yard,” Justin said, pulling up to another driveway. Kris slipped out; he’d barely gotten out of the car before she ran back and whispered: “This is it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. The passenger side window has got plastic and duct tape, no glass. Looks like the kind of truck Evie’d be around. Pretty beat up.”
“So, you want to go get the police?”
“What do you want the police for?”
“He might have a gun.”
“Of course he’s got a gun. This isn’t Kansas.”
“You want to get shot?”
“All we’re going to do is knock on his door. He’ll think we’re missionaries or something.”
“I don’t think this is too smart.”
“I thought you wanted some action.”
“Yeah, but this is serious.”
“You wanted it in Disneyland?” Kris glared at him. Her heart was beating hard against her chest, but she fed off his fear. “Come on, Justin. It’s no big deal.”
“OK.” He put the car keys in his pocket and followed her around the Subaru. The driveway was about fifty-feet long, but the pickup was parked only midway up because the upper end was littered with junk. A rusted washer, bedsprings, and a rotting mattress, a stack of bald tires, a warped pile of lumber, a differential, and other car parts cluttered the driveway and the dirt yard in front of the house. It was more of a shack: small and square and started years ago and never finished. Siding covered only about half of the weathered exterior ply on the front. Shredded pieces of Tyvek stuck out from under the siding and flapped in the spotty breeze.
The place looked empty but there was smoke coming from the stack. Kris picked her way through the junk, her eyes intent on the black windows; no light shone through. Behind her, she heard Justin falling slowly behind.
“Hey Kris,” he whispered loudly. “Look at this.”
Kris turned. Justin was squatting on his heels, trying to lift a couple of rods of rebar off something half buried in the frozen ground. He tugged it free and held it up. It was a four-inch-square piece of steel with one wavy edge.
“It’s a piece of the pipeline,” he said. “Half-inch steel. See the curve?” He held it edge-on, so she could see it. “The pipeliners used to cut maps of Alaska out of pieces of the pipe. See this.” He ran his finger across the wavy edge. “This is the north coast.”
“Justin, who gives a fuck?” She walked toward the door. Without turning she waited for him to come up behind her before climbing the two steps. He came up one. She knocked.
Nothing happened.
She knocked louder. Inside she heard a rustle and soft thump. Sweat pricked along her lower back. The door scraped inwards. Kris was standing one step below the level of the floor. When the door opened she looked up and saw a small man standing in the shadows, his hand resting on the inner doorknob. The harsh smell of whiskey settled over her like a damp familiar blanket.
“What do you want?”
Kris started. It was slurred and fuzzy with whiskey, but she knew the voice. She stared up into the gloom and saw the shadowed hollows of his eyes, the curve of his jaw, the straight line of his lips and, looping below them, a red line that glistened wetly.
“How’re the balls doing, Vern?” she asked.
Vern grunted and leaned out of the shadows. Kris saw the jagged marks of her teeth in the liquid-looking wound in his lower lip. It was the man who’d been leaning against the counter at the airport and the man who’d attacked her by the shelter.
“Evie’s girl,” he said quietly. The whiskey hung in his breath thick as cotton. “Come in.” His words were limp and slurred. He left the door open and walked back into the murkiness. Kris didn’t move; he’d tried to kill her, walking into his shack wasn’t what she wanted to do. Justin lifted his foot onto her step bumping into her heel. The touch pushed her forward; Justin followed her in.
“Shut the door.”
Justin pushed it closed. Shapes emerged from the dimness. On the right was a kitchen. A battered green camp stove sat on a plywood counter and crusted dishes were piled in a little enameled sink, which drained into a plastic bucket beneath. Some of the gray water that filled the bucket had slopped over and frozen on the plywood floor. A stoved-in sofa separated the kitchen from the rest of the shack. Next to it was the bottle of whiskey. In front was a metal kitchen chair and against the wall a little wood stove and a pile of carelessly stacked wood. Only the front wall had windows and the light that came through them was too feeble to reach far into the room.
Vern went over to the stove and threw in another stick.
“Sit down.” He motioned to the chair, dumped kindling out of a wooden box, and upended it for a second seat. Then he moved over to the far wall and pulled open the drawer of a wooden table that had screws, nails, and other bits of junk jumbled on top of it. He reached inside and when he turned around, he had a pistol in his hand.
“Jeez, man,” Justin said.
“Sit down, kid.” Vern pointed the pistol at him. It didn’t waver much. Kris took the seat; Justin walked past her and sat on the wooden box.
“Where’re the cops?”
“Why’d you kill my mother?”
The pistol moved over and settled on Kris. It was a revolver; small and cheap looking.
“You know, missy, I’m a little tanked. Best not to mess wit
h me.”
Kris stared back at him.
“Where’re the cops?”
“They don’t know anything about you.”
“How’s that?”
“They’re not my friends.”
Vern grunted. “How’d you find me?”
“Evie told a woman at the Glory Hole about you, that you and she were living out here.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“You killed my mother.”
“You ran out on her.”
“Her drinking ran me out.”
“Ten years is a long time to be gone because of a drinking problem,” Vern said distinctly. He was breathing through his mouth and one of his bottom eyelids sagged, showing a sliver of red under the eyeball. “Phones don’t drink. She would’ve liked that, a call.”
Vern waited, but Kris didn’t say anything. Evie’d never had a phone in her life.
“You came back for the money, didn’t you? Your ma writes that she’s got a couple bucks and you’re on the next plane.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Remember who has the gun, missy.”
Vern sat down on the couch and rested his elbows on his knees, the pistol pointed loosely at the floor in front of her. A week-old beard bristled around his mouth. His hair was pushed up in the middle, like he’d been lying on his side and hadn’t combed it down. He wore jeans, a heavy cotton shirt, which looked new but was rumpled and had stains on it, and boots that were unlaced.
“Let me tell you about your ma and me. We had a good thing going. I dried her up –”
“She was so drunk last summer, the Glory Hole kicked her out.”
“I was in the pen. I can’t keep her straight if I’m not around can I? She sobered up when I got out. First time she ever had someone looking after her. Someone giving her things, making her pretty, making her think like she’s special. I treated Evie—”
“Bullshit.” Kris didn’t need to hear this. “Why’d you try to knife me?”
“You were in the way.”
“In the way of what?”
“Me and Evie.”
Kris was blinded by an unexpected rush of anger. Who were these men always pushing her away from her mother?
“Fuck you,” she said, hardening her voice to hide the bitterness.
Vern grunted. His eyes steadied and held hers. “That can be arranged.”
Hair moved on her scalp and Kris straightened in the chair, suddenly nervous that she’d pushed too far. Vern reached over to the side table and picked up a roll of duct tape.
“Here,” he said, lobbing it to Justin, who fumbled and had to hunt for it on the floor.
“Tape her hands.”
“Hey man, we won’t tell anybody—”
“Tape her hands, kid.”
Kris looked at Justin, sitting on his wooden box, his face drawn, looking like he was being whipped. He looked at her, uncertainly. She stared at him, giving him nothing. He shuffled over and stood behind her.
“Turn around so I can see,” Vern said to Kris.
Kris sat with her hands on her thighs and did not move. Vern stepped forward and tapped the butt of the pistol against her ear, like he was knocking in a tack. Her hands flew to her head; she gasped, then stifled the pain. Slowly, she turned sideways in the chair and put her hands behind her. She heard Justin groping for the loose end of the tape and then a ripping sound as he found it and pulled the tape off the roll. He clasped her wrists in one hand and wound the tape around them with the other.
“Do it tight, kid.”
“It’s tight.”
Vern tugged at the tape. It hurt. Kris took a deep breath and released it quietly, hiding her pain. Vern moved away and she slid back around in the chair and faced him. He pointed Justin back to his box with the gun.
“Hope the kid isn’t too good a friend of yours.” Vern waved the gun at Justin, looking at Kris. “We don’t need him much anymore.”
Justin moaned.
Vern glanced over at him and snorted.
“Where’d you find him?” he said, looking back at Kris. She could hear Justin’s breathing. His throat worked spastically like he was trying to swallow sand and he squirmed on his box. Finally, as if collecting himself, he sat up straight and crossed his arms.
“Sorry kid. Just not your day.” Vern raised his arm off his knee and leveled the barrel at Justin. The pistol was only a couple of feet away. Justin’s finger unfurled from his fist and tapped his jacket where his heart was.
“I won’t miss, kid.”
He pulled the trigger.
The blast exploded in the room. The powder flash lit Justin’s face demon-green an instant before he shot backwards, cracking his head against the wall and squirting the wooden box out from under him. Kris screamed. She leapt from her chair and charged Vern. He whipped the pistol around, both hands gripping the butt now, and Kris slammed into the barrel. It stopped her; its heat warm through her parka.
“Careful missy,” Vern said, easily holding her weight with the pistol.
His words sounded faint and distant, the shot still echoed in her head. She closed her mouth, swallowed, then stood, taking her weight off the barrel. Justin was buried in the shadows; a single leg emerged from the darkness. It twitched against the plywood floor.
“They do that for a time,” Vern said. “But then they stop. Now come over here and sit by me.”
Her vision clouded at the edges and she stumbled backwards. The back of her legs knocked against the chair and she collapsed on to it, her head falling forward. Air entered her lungs again and the muscles in her legs started to shake. She’d seen people killed before, but they hadn’t been anybody she really knew.
Then she felt him. He was standing before her. She opened her eyes and looked down through her hair at the floor. The toes of his boots were at the upper edge of her circle of sight. His hand slipped into her hair, gently, and lifted her head. His pants were open and his cock was out, stiff and runty, fluid beaded at the tip. She rolled her eyes down to the floor and tried to pull her head away. His hand tightened in her hair, the blade of his knife slid out and the point pricked lightly against her eyelid.
“You were pretty rough with your mouth the other night,” he said. “You’re going to be a whole lot more gentle now, aren’t you?” He pressed the knife into her eyelid and pulled her head forward.
“I’m not sucking that thing,” she said, pulling backwards, her hair stinging her scalp.
He tightened his grip and pulled her forward. Kris locked her mouth shut. The head, warm and wet, bumped against her lips.
“Open up.”
“Open up.”
He let go of her hair, reversed the knife in his hand, and pulled the zipper of her parka down to her waist. Methodically, he cut each button off her shirt with the knife, pulled it apart and slipped the blade behind the collar of her T-shirt and sliced it open to her belt.
“They’re small,” he said touching her breasts. He lifted one and let it rest in his hand. His face hovered close above her. Kris gathered her spit. He flicked the blade up and pressed it into the underside of her chin forcing her head back. It cut into her and a thin bead of blood rolled down the curve of her throat.
“Swallow it.”
She swallowed, the blade pushing into the floor of her chin. He lowered the knife.
“Are you ready?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s the general idea.”
“No.” Kris felt the anger draining from her voice and struggled to keep it there, knowing fear would fill in behind it.
Vern took a nipple between his thumb and forefinger and pulled her breast out. He slid the knife underneath and sliced up.
Kris strangled a cry. There was no pain for a sliver of time, long enough for her to hope that it hadn’t happened and then it came at her, like razor teeth, like the arctic cold. She stifled a sob.
“Are you ready now?” Vern whispered.
Distantly
, her head nodded and tears clouded her eyes.
He stood up; his hand gripped her hair, and pulled her head toward him.
“Open.”
Her mouth opened, her eyes clamped shut. He slid in; it throbbed.
“Suck.”
Beyond the fringes of her awareness, she felt something. A rustle. A presence in the dark. Vern stiffened. It came again. His hand suddenly clenched violently in her hair. His cock softened.
Justin cleared his throat. “Put your hands up.”
Vern spun around, yanking her out of the chair by her hair. Kris, her feet not under her, fell forward onto her knees. Vern wrenched her head back and his knife flashed down to her throat. She looked wildly up into the shadows and saw Justin standing by the back table, arms outstretched, both hands gripping the gun.
She screamed.
Justin fired twice, point blank into Vern’s chest. Vern’s grip flew apart, dropping her to the floor. She fell, twisting to see him stagger backwards, hit the wall, bounce, and then collapse on to the floor.
“No!” Kris screamed again. She rolled to her feet, her hands taped behind her, and slammed her shoulder into Justin. “No!” Terror twisted into rage, her vision crumpled at the edges. She pounded her shoulder into him again. He lurched dumbly backwards, the pistol sank to his side.
“Why did you shoot him?” she yelled.
“Christ,” he whispered. Justin’s eyes were fixed on the floor beyond her.
“You shit.” Kris backed off and stared up at him, her face warped with anger, her blood hammering in her head.
Justin focused on her. “What?”
“Why did you shoot him?” Her voice still clotted with anger.
“I shot him.”
Kris barely heard him.
“Dammit Justin!” She was panting, air wasn’t getting into her body.
Justin looked down at her and then at the gun in his hand. His hand was shaking. He searched the pistol until he found the safety, pushed it over and laid it carefully on the table, then collapsed onto the sofa, his face, even in the shack’s gloom, bone-white.