It's Only Death

by Lee Thompson

  She made up my mind for me and my heart was racing and for a moment I was afraid that I would go through with it despite her being there, having to see me do it.

  But instead, I said, “Good night,” and swung the shovel back and up over my head and brought it down—hearing Angela scream—as it fell with all the power I could put behind it, the flat edge ricocheting off the crown of his skull.

  Don’s face slackened. Looking at him you couldn’t tell that any damage had been done at all. My palms felt like I’d grabbed a handful of needles and closed my fist on them from the sheer force of the blow and how it transmitted up the spade head, through the handle, and into my hands. Angela ran over and knelt next to her father. She checked his pulse and whispered, “Oh god, he’s alive.”

  “He has a hard head,” I said, unsure if I only meant to knock him out or kill him. It would have been wiser to kill him. He’d catch up with me at some point and as well as I knew him, and as long as he’d been nursing his hate, it would take an act of God for him not to just walk up to me and fire six rounds in my chest.

  I let out a long breath, my knees shaking. Angela stroked his smooth dome, her knees bunched beneath the back of his head, cradling him as if he were a small child, or as if he were a very old man. I didn’t know what to make of it, just knew I had to get out of there before he came to and the headache I’d left him with made him more ornery than he was normally inclined to be.

  I took his pistol and tucked it in the back of my khakis and then took my dad’s gun and tucked it in the front. I checked the windows in the back of the house and didn’t see anyone inside. No sign of life. Probably at work. I wondered if I had time to dig a grave for the German Shepherd before Don woke up. I looked at Angela. She stroked his wide, bony face. She said, “You could have killed him.”

  “I should have,” I said. “I don’t want to but I think it will be him or me. It might be best if you just get in your truck and drive away and leave me alone to finish this.”

  “You hurt him and I’ll never talk to you again,” she said. “I mean it, James.”

  “He would have shot me to death right in front of you.”

  “No,” she said. “He wasn’t going to or he would have.”

  I nodded. She was right. He could have emptied the whole magazine into me before he even reached the broken fence. I said, “I think…”

  “What?”

  But I couldn’t tell her. My instincts were somewhat honed. Don wouldn’t have shot me there where it would have caused a big fuss. He would have taken me somewhere where no one could hear us. I considered pushing Angela out of the way and firing two rounds into his forehead but that would have killed her too, seeing it. I took a deep breath and smelled my own body odor and Don’s blood and the Shepherd, still half out of it, panted hotly against my ankle. I was glad I hadn’t killed it, but thought I should finish it off. I couldn’t though.

  I bent over again and found Don’s car keys in his pocket. I kissed Angela on the top of the head as she leaned over him, almost like she was protecting him.

  I remembered what Angela had said about Harley talking to Don on his cell phone. I knelt slowly and took the phone from his pocket and slid it into my own. I said, “Tell him when he wakes up that I could have killed him, but I didn’t because I don’t want this to go on anymore.”

  She nodded. She asked, “Are you leaving for good this time?”

  “What do you think?” I said.

  I walked around the house to Don’s car and moved it out onto the road and then threw his car keys into a drainage grate built into the curb. I climbed into Robert’s Jeep and started it, set Don’s pistol in the cup holder, and backed onto the road. I saw Mr. Dubois in his window. He smiled and waved at me as I left.

  8

  I couldn’t get the image of Angela in the grass, leaning over her dad, out of my head. I didn’t know why. Ten miles away, I pulled Don’s cell from my pocket and parked on the side of the road. I knew that I needed to get Robert’s Jeep back to him since Don knew that I was driving it now and that meant I’d either have to go back to driving the rental, or steal a car. I really liked the Jeep. It was a good vehicle to die in. I scrolled through Don’s most recent calls. Like Angela had said, Lou DiMaggio and Harley’s numbers were both on there. He’d spoken to Fat Lou for five minutes. He’d talked to Harley for just over two minutes. I called Lou’s number first. The line crackled. I wondered if there was some type of GPS Don could track me through once he reported the phone stolen. Lou’s number rang a half dozen times before he answered. He said in his happy voice, “Did you find him?”

  I ended the call and looked off down the road and into the distance, seeing nothing but the trees on either side of the road, the green, green flora, the ribbon of asphalt. I didn’t know who Lou was asking about but the paranoid part of me that sometimes reared its ugly head whispered that Lou was talking about me. I figured he wanted me brought to him for what I’d done with Lincoln and his friends, considering all the money it would cost not only the bikers, but also Mr. DiMaggio. I made a mental note that he was possibly an enemy. Although, I also knew that he could be talking about anybody. Maybe somebody had ripped him off, maybe Robert’s brother Derrick went through with robbing Fat Lou and was out there now seeing that the harsh reality of being on the run is not as fun as it looks in the movies. There isn’t much worse than not being able to trust anybody, when you have to watch over your shoulder constantly, when you realize that you’ll have to either turn yourself in or get settled for the long haul of keeping an eye out and feeling jumpy even years after you knew you were in the clear. Or Lou could have been talking about somebody I didn’t know. He knew a lot of people. Anybody could have disappeared on him. It was the cost of dealing with criminals.

  The phone rang and I looked at Lou’s number and rejected the call. I scrolled again to Harley’s number and took a deep breath, wiped my forehead, and hit SEND. The phone rang repeatedly. It was like her not to set up voice mail. I was about to end the call when I heard her say, “I want out, Don.”

  It was strange to hear her voice. It seemed like the last time I’d heard it had been years ago, although it was just yesterday. She’d used the pleading tones she’d had as a child. She said, “Did you hear me? I want out.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should let her know who she was talking to, or if I should just hang up like I had with Lou. But she was my sister and there was a horrible sense of loss I felt moving through me quickly. Maybe Angela had been right, maybe Harley had only told me to come home because she wanted, like Don Gray, to be there when someone put me in a pauper’s grave. She said, “Hello? Are you there?”

  I said, “You want out of what?”

  There was a second of hesitation on her part, and then the tone of her voice changed. She sounded petulant and matter-of-fact. She said, “So, you killed him too. Good for you. You must be real proud of yourself.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I could have.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Harley said.

  “What do you want out of?”

  “None of your business.”

  “What did you do with the money you borrowed from Fat Lou?”

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

  “Can we meet? I need to talk to you.”

  “I don’t have anything to say,” Harley said.

  “You have a lot to say but why you won’t just let it out, I don’t know.”

  “I’m going over to Mom’s in a while,” she said.

  “I can’t go there,” I said.

  Harley’s laugh was like a bark in my ear. It reminded me of the German Shepherd that could have killed me and had mangled Don’s arm. She said, “I’m glad.”

  “I know,” I said. “She didn’t want me coming back. I thought you did, but I can see now that it wasn’t true. Can I ask you something?”

  “I’ve got to go,” she said.

  “Do you care if I di
e?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Mom passed on sometime today.”

  “Sure she did,” Harley said.

  “She did. Angela came over there, I think her dad was following her and he knew that she’d lead him right to me. I could have killed him but I didn’t, he’s just going to have a nasty headache, maybe a concussion.”

  “I don’t know why you have to lie so much,” she said.

  “Call the house,” I said. “Then call me back. I want to see you.”

  I heard her huff. Seconds ticked by. The air was hot. At last, she said, “Fine. Hold on a few minutes.”

  I sat there, sweating, my hands shaking, looking down the road. I didn’t know where I was going. It felt like some people explain depression, how it feels as if you’re in a very dark room and the walls are closing in, and you wish that someone was just outside, that they would open the door just in time for you to escape, but you knew deep in your heart that outside the cube of your destruction there was nothing but emptiness.

  The phone rang again. Lou. I rejected the call a second time. His trying to call and me not answering wasn’t going to be good if he got word out on the street to find out Don Gray’s whereabouts. I wondered if Robert was still alive.

  Harley rang. I answered. She said, “She’s dead.”

  “I know,” I said. “I wanted to see if I could get her anything, groceries, anything, and it took me a minute to realize she wasn’t breathing. I thought she was just waiting for me to leave.”

  “You didn’t kill her?” Harley said.

  “No.”

  “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I used to have nightmares,” she said.

  I waited for her to go on, part of me glad she was going to tell me about them, yet another part of me afraid to hear because it would hurt since I had caused them.

  Harley said, “Are you listening to me?”

  “I was just waiting for you to go on.”

  “I’m at my trailer,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Fifteen minutes away.”

  “You can come over?” she asked. “I’ll say what I have to say and then I want you to leave, for good this time.”

  “Did you try to get me killed?”

  “Just get over here so we can finish this,” she said.

  She hung up. I could imagine her waiting for me on her couch, a gun in her lap, probably one of Lincoln’s. I wondered if Shane or a few of the others were there with her. It sure as hell felt like I was walking into a trap. But whether I hung around there or not—which I didn’t think I would after all that had happened in the last two days, and I didn’t see any chance of reconciliation with Harley—I wanted to hear what she had to say. I wanted her to get it out in the open because I thought it would help her in the way vomiting after being drunk can. She hated me, might have lured me back to have me killed, I could accept that, but I wanted to know for sure. I wanted to hear her say it because it would give me the strength I needed to get back out to the nothing-life I’d had before receiving her email.

  I pulled the Jeep into gear. I drove like a responsible citizen. Fifteen minutes later I parked in front of Harley’s trailer. There were cars at many of the other trailers. Many of the same ones I’d seen a few times now. I wondered if anybody ever went to a regular job anymore. It’s not going to be easy to go inside, I realized. I looked at the shoulder of the polo shirt I wore. Its whiteness was dotted with my blood and the fabric was torn raggedly. I had a brief moment of reckless fear of rabies. Of course, it was unfounded, but our minds do strange things to us sometimes.

  I climbed out and felt my dried blood molding the torn polo tight to my flesh. I thought I should at least see if Harley had peroxide so I could clean the surface wound. I hadn’t really pulled the shirt away to check the severity of the wound, but it didn’t hurt much, and it hadn’t bled much, so I figured it was nothing more than a simple breaking of the skin. I approached the door and Harley opened it. She said, “You stole Robert’s Jeep?”

  “He let me borrow it,” I said.

  She looked at me and said, “What happened to your shoulder?”

  “A dog. It got a bigger piece of Don. Can I come in?”

  She gestured for me to come inside. I passed her. She closed the door. The trailer was cool, an air conditioner running in the bedroom just off to the right of the entrance. It reminded me of sitting in Angela’s Tahoe with her. I had been sweating then, and I was sweating now. Harley said, “I have a first-aid kit in the bathroom. Hold on.”

  She was gone a moment, then came back out and pointed at the couch. I sat on the edge of a leather cushion and she sat next to me, placed the first-aid kit on the coffee table and opened it. She ordered me to take my shirt off. I did so. I didn’t look at the wound. Harley said, “It looks like you might need stitches.” I felt her fingers around the wound. My vision grew black as she pushed the edges out. “It’s pretty deep,” she said.

  “Do you have any butterfly Band-Aids? Use them to close it up after you clean it.”

  She cleaned the wound with peroxide and a Q-tip. She put the Band-Aid over what I suspected was a hole from the dog’s incisor, and then taped a piece of gauze over it that felt as if it puckered my skin. The small hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. For the briefest of moments I had the feeling that our mother’s ghost was standing in the room watching us. What would she think about Harley tending to me the way she once had? I closed my eyes tightly and tried to modulate my breathing, the sudden pounding of my heart.

  Harley said, “I can’t believe Mom is dead.”

  “I know. But it happens to everybody.”

  She leaned back into the couch and crossed her legs, folded her hands in her lap.

  I said, as much to my own surprise, as to hers, “What do you hope for, Harley?”

  “That’s a weird question.”

  “Humor me.”

  “I don’t even know what you’re asking,” she said. “What do you mean what do I hope for?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted.

  “I can tell you what I used to hope for,” she said.

  “Please do.”

  “Okay,” she said, scratching the back of her hand so that bright red lines stood out sharply in contrast to her natural paleness. “I used to hope that I’d grow up and be happy.”

  She looked at me to see what I thought of that. I said, “I used to hope for the same thing, probably a lot of kids want to grow up and be happy.”

  She nodded. Harley said, “I feel like I should be, my life isn’t all that bad.”

  “You should call Robert and let him know you’re okay.”

  “For what?” she said. “That will only lead him to keep chasing me.”

  “He loves you,” I said.

  “So? I’m supposed to love him back? That’s not going to happen,” she said, “and do you know why?”

  “You’re not attracted to him?”

  “No, it has nothing to do with attraction, if anything I am attracted to him, but he’s got the same thing wrong with him that you do. He hides it really well, but I’ve noticed it. I think he’ll snap one day and it won’t be good for anybody.”

  “So you settle for somebody like Lincoln?”

  “He isn’t hiding anything,” Harley said. “He’s just what he is and doesn’t pretend to be normal.”

  “Robert is normal.”

  “Go say that in the mirror and look at your expression.”

  “I don’t need to,” I said, thinking about the rush Robert had felt on that bad street, and as he unloaded his shotgun on a room of unarmed men. I nodded more to myself than her. I said, “He’s got some issues.”

  “The same issues you have,” Harley said.

  “I guess so.”

  “But back to what I hoped for. Happiness. I don’t know why I can’t have it, or anyone else for that matter. It’s not for a lack
of trying, trust me. I’m not a bad person, even if someone else might think I am for taking off my clothes for money—that doesn’t make me less of a person anyway, if anything it makes me more of a person than those people who pretend nakedness and lust are something only animals enjoy, when they fucking love it when no one’s looking, and those people probably fantasize more than anybody.”

  “I understand, and I never judged you for it, but I was wondering why you went that route when you could have done something else.”

  “Don got me a job there,” Harley said.

  I wanted to ask her how well she knew him, what he had done for her, what she had done for him. It wasn’t as uncommon as people liked to think: a young girl falling for her father’s best friend, and him, possibly resisting at first, but eventually succumbing to man’s oldest nature as he watched her mature and he began to take her teasing more seriously.

  I said, “He got you the job.”

  “As a waitress,” she said. “But Lou didn’t want me to waitress. He told me I’d make a lot more money stripping. He was right. I made a lot more, and I bought this cheap-ass trailer with cash after a few months, thought after I did that I’d be okay and I could spend any future cash on helping Mom with her bills. But it wasn’t enough, no matter how much I worked. Her bills are so high.”

  “Robert told me you borrowed a sizable sum from Lou.”

  “Why would I do that? It’d just tie me to the club, and to Lou, and to Robert.”

  “You’d do it because you were the only one here to take care of our mother.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes. She sucked on her lower lip and looked at the floor. She said, “It’s been way too hard for her.”

  “What about for you?”

  “What about me?”

  “How long have you worked for Lou?”