It's Only Death

by Lee Thompson

  “I think you’re lying to me, Derrick.”

  “I’m not. Put the goddamn gun down, all right?”

  “Did Robert tell you what Harley was using the loan for?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” he said, spittle flecking his lips. He cursed softly and said, “Please, don’t kill me, James. I didn’t take the money.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Did you think about taking the money?”

  “What?”

  “Did you daydream about it, big piles of money on your bed, Harley and Robert’s money? Money they borrowed to take care of my mom’s hospital bills?”

  “I don’t know anything, I swear, man.”

  I slammed the butt of the pistol against the table, the muzzle pointed at his chest. I smelled urine suddenly and saw that Derrick had his eyes squeezed shut and he was muttering, “Jesus, please, help me.”

  I said, “Show me your bedroom.”

  “Right now?”

  “No,” I said, “fucking tomorrow.”

  He wiped his eyes. He said, “I’ve gotta change my pants.”

  “You can do that after I leave. Show me your bedroom.”

  He rose from the chair slowly. The front of his pajama pants were dark. Urine trickled off his instep and he blushed darkly and hung his head and said, “Don’t shoot me in the fucking back, all right?”

  “Just show me your goddamn room and quit being so melodramatic.”

  He glanced over his shoulder as we walked down the hall and came to a room on the left. The door was open. The room was dark. I told him to flip on the light. He did. I told him to sit on the bed. He sat and complained about his pants. I said, “Shut up.” I went through his closet and his nightstand, then his dresser and checked to see if the heater vent pulled off but it was screwed on. I knelt down and took the lamp from the nightstand and shined its light into the ductwork certain I’d see a satchel in there. I listened for him to rise from the bed, to make a break for the door or to attempt attacking me, but he didn’t move a muscle.

  The ductwork was empty but for a few cobwebs. I dusted off my knees and set the lamp back on the nightstand. I said, “Get up,” standing in front of him now.

  “Why?” he said.

  “Flip your mattress off the box spring.”

  He did what I told him. I checked it for any aberrations but couldn’t find any hidden pockets anywhere. I looked at his closet again, at all the clothes he had, and though it all appeared designer, they were well-worn, seeming like the type you’d buy from TJ Maxx. Standing behind me, next to the box spring, he said, “I told you, James.”

  “What did you steal from her?”

  He shrugged. “Shit, the only thing I ever take from any dancer is like a bra or something every now and then. Sometimes they’ll leave them there on accident, stuff like that.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I wondered how much they borrowed, but I wouldn’t steal from Robert or Harley. I don’t like people much, but I like both of them well enough.”

  “Did Robert tell you what happened with—”

  There was a loud knock on the front door. Derrick said, “Got company. Can I change my pants?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Will you get the door?”

  “I will.”

  “Will you put the gun away?”

  “I might,” I said.

  I walked out of the bedroom and down the hall and into the living room. A fist rapped hard on the door again. I tucked the pistol in my waistband and pulled the polo shirt over it and grabbed the door handle. I pulled the door open slowly, almost expecting Robert to be standing on the other side, that he’d hold out a paper sack full of money and tell me that he found it, that it was okay for me to go now, that no one needed me anymore, if they ever did…

  But that young biker, Shane, stood on the porch, a small Tupperware container with rolling papers and maybe a dime bag of weed in his right hand. He had crutches digging into his armpits, wore a brace around his right leg from mid-thigh down to just beneath his kneecap. He was looking at the porch, deep in thought. It hadn’t occurred to me that Shane and Derrick might be friends, if only the kind to smoke a few joints together when they needed to unwind or complain about the men who towered above them, men they’d like to replace, or at least emulate.

  There was a beaten pickup out near the road and it was pulling away from the curb when Shane looked up and noticed me and I planted a foot in his stomach, knocked him back off the porch, his crutches flying out the sides and his arms pinwheeling, trying to catch anything to grab onto and break his fall. He hit the ground hard and his head bounced off the walkway that led to the porch. He lay stunned for a second. The truck on the road hit the brakes. I saw Lincoln climb out from behind the wheel and throw the bench seat forward and pull out a rifle and make to lean it over the box, using the pickup as a shield. He wore his leather vest with no shirt. I could see the sheath of a big knife, maybe a Bowie, running below his armpit down to nearly his waist. And here I thought he’d been joking when he said he had a knife under his vest that he’d intended to gut me with. The knife had saved his life, and I’d been a fool to leave him outside his burning clubhouse without shooting him in the head.

  Shane was coming to his senses. His forehead was sweaty and lined. He clawed blindly, more instinctually than voluntarily, for the pistol tucked into the front of his pants. I jumped back and flung the door shut just as Lincoln’s rifle peppered the hard front of the house and a stray bullet shattered the living room window.

  I crouched close to the door, thinking, Fucking Christ…

  I heard Derrick calling from his bedroom, “What the hell is happening?”

  “It’s your friends,” I said, certain I’d just wasted breath because there was no way he could hear me over the din of bullets ripping through wood and plaster and glass. The dust created by their passing made me sneeze. I crawled on all fours as fast as I could for the back of the house, as bullets whizzed by overhead. The kitchen had a double glass door like I’d hoped it would. I glanced back toward the front door as Shane swung it open and let loose with a half dozen rounds, not really aiming at anything, just trying to pin me down or catch my soft flesh with a lucky shot.

  He hobbled into the house and called out my name. There was murder on his face. I ducked back into the kitchen and slid the door open that gave way to a run-down patio, the wood grayed and warped, the air warm and bright, and I thought, I have to get out of here before they call in more of their friends…

  The patio creaked under my weight and I could imagine one of the decking boards snapping under my feet, feel the bite of the broken board as it scraped my shin and knee and inner thigh, but nothing like that happened.

  I was down off the rickety thing and on the soft green grass, looking out over the backyard, past a wooden swing set with a small climbing wall and a fort above it, and I looked into other backyards and saw several people in their windows that were smart enough to stay indoors. A chain-link fence enclosed Robert’s backyard. The house behind theirs had a small garden, and off near the corner, wedged close to the fence, a sixteen-foot boat sitting on a trailer.

  Before I had time to head for the boat, I heard Shane let loose with a few more rounds, and I turned to face the kitchen so he couldn’t shoot me in the back. Things inside Robert’s house broke and a bullet whined off a hard surface. I wasn’t sure which way to run. They’d know now that Robert had leant me his vehicle, much like Don Gray had learned, and there was no way I could drive it now, not that I could even make it back to it. Wherever I went, it would have to be on foot, and I hated walking anywhere, had had my fill of it over the last ten years.

  Then Shane was in the back door and he had Derrick by the arm and was using him as a shield, as he popped off two shots that hit the grass and threw up a geyser of turf four feet away from me. I dove toward the swing set and behind
a four-foot-high fake rock climbing wall that led up to a little fort where children had once played.

  I stole a peek around the cover the slats provided and saw Shane shoving Derrick forward, and I saw Lincoln round the corner of the house and head straight for Robert’s little brother. I fired and blood burst from his left arm. Lincoln hit the ground and tried to turn the rifle but the sling caught on his elbow and he writhed about.

  Shane collared Derrick and pressed his pistol to the back of his skull. Derrick looked lost, confused, and he had his hands out to his sides. Shane said, “Come out or I’ll blow his brains out and it’ll be your fault.”

  Lincoln gritted his teeth and got the rifle butt against his shoulder. Blood was smeared across his left cheek. He blinked, scanning the yard for me. I heard him say to Shane, “Shoot him in the leg to show that peckerwood that we’re serious…”

  And Derrick was saying, “No, don’t do that, please, I—”

  But Shane had lowered his gun and he shot Derrick in the foot and the boy screamed and Shane looked a little tore up about what he’d been ordered to do and a little proud of himself at the same time that he’d actually went through with it.

  Derrick bounced around, holding his wounded foot off the ground, Shane holding tight to his shirt, trying to stay behind him. I didn’t see any way out of it for both me and Derrick. And I wasn’t ready to sacrifice my life to save his. I scooted over to the other side of the wall, where I was hidden from Lincoln and popped out where I could see Shane and Derrick, and took a second to aim at Shane’s exposed right shoulder. I pulled the trigger and the pistol barked and I saw Shane drop his pistol and teeter back, his left hand squeezing his right upper arm.

  Lincoln sprayed the wall with bullets and I lay flat on my stomach and covered my head with both hands as bits of woody shrapnel dusted me and felt like I’d been hit with a handful of gravel.

  I heard Derrick cry out, “Wait,” and then Lincoln’s voice telling me to look at what I’d done. My insides were hot and moist and I didn’t want to look but I couldn’t help it.

  I peeked out, at ground level, around the base of the wall, only exposing the left half of my face. Shane sat on the porch, cradling his damaged arm. Lincoln had his pistol and was shoving Derrick toward me, closing the distance between us, and I was pretty sure he was crazy.

  Once he got to within ten feet it was a fact that we’d both die. I knew that I couldn’t shoot him in the same spot—beneath his left arm, where his knife had obviously saved him outside his clubhouse—and with Derrick in the way there was a better chance of him snuffing my candle and Derrick taking any bullets that I fired at Lincoln. It wasn’t a good feeling, feeling trapped like that, knowing that you had to do something you really didn’t want to do to make a way out for yourself...

  I inhaled, exhaled, try to think over another route, but there wasn’t any, so when they were fifteen feet away, I rolled out and shot Derrick low in the side, hoping to only wing him without killing him, and he doubled over, pulling Lincoln forward, his eyes going wide, and I fired again, aiming for Lincoln’s face, but he’d raised his pistol and my bullet knocked it back into his face and he fell, with little more than a bloody nose.

  I sprang up and Shane took a shot at me with the rifle but missed, his face contorted by pain since the rifle had bucked against his bloody shoulder.

  I leapt the back fence and crawled beneath the neighbor’s boat trailer and crab-walked my way around the far side, breathing hard, sweating, my father’s polo shirt torn and grass-stained. I stood slowly, my knees shaking and I fought to control the tremors working through my body. It’s not easy to know that you brought a heap of trouble on yourself, to believe, if only idly that you can handle anything, and then, at the last minute, realizing that you’d rather not.

  Shane was cursing, cradling the rifle across his lap. He’d live though, that was the hell of it. The way he’d raised the weapon to take a potshot at me was enough information to know that my bullet hadn’t broken any bones. He asked Lincoln what he was doing.

  I watched them, knowing I should make tracks down as many side streets as I could while dusk began its slow descent, turning everything to an off-colored gray, but I watched and I listened, and I wanted to believe that Derrick would be all right, that they wouldn’t think he’d told me something that might jeopardize any operation that they had working. Even if Robert’s brother had blabbed about their business, what could I do about it? I was a wanted man with too many enemies and not enough time to make things right, and not enough sense to walk away.

  Lincoln knelt over Derrick, and he pressed Shane’s pistol to the boy’s head. He called out, “I’m going to tell his brother that you did this, El-more!”

  He pulled the trigger and in the dying light I watched the muzzle flash and Derrick kicked hard a couple of times, his bare feet slamming against the ground, and then he went still and you’d think the dumb kid was simply sleeping.

  Lincoln looked for any sign of my movement beneath the boat but I was still and lost in shadow. I expected him to grin as he rose next to Derrick’s corpse, but he looked sad in a way, and I could almost hear him saying: It shouldn’t have been this way…

  10

  I don’t know how I ended up at the cemetery. It was well after dark. I used Don Gray’s phone to call Robert as I sat near my father’s headstone (I hadn’t read the inscription, it was too dark for that, and I didn’t want to) but Robert didn’t answer his phone. I wondered if Lincoln and Shane got out of there before the police arrived. More than likely they had. The response times for most police forces are ridiculous in any city and they always seemed to lag worse right after suppertime.

  I sat there in the hot, still air, wishing for a breeze, a shower, food, and clean clothing. I tried Robert’s phone again, mumbled something that didn’t make much sense other than those bikers killed your brother after it went to his voice mail.

  I waited for him to call me back.

  I thought about that morning when I was eighteen and had woken feeling different than I had any day prior to it. I’d dressed and slipped on my red Converse shoes and walked into my dad’s den and took his twelve-gauge from the gun cabinet. I leaned it against a chair in the kitchen and made a bowl of cereal and watched a rabbit cross the backyard as I ate. It was a small rabbit and its nose labored and it seemed skittish until some other creature spooked it and it darted into a patch of overgrown weeds at the back of our property. I rinsed the bowl in the sink when I was finished. I listened to my mother in the bathroom upstairs, whistling to herself, and I grabbed a ski mask from the closet and found an old blanket and wrapped the shotgun inside it.

  I went to my car, not thinking about much of anything. I drove around for a while, watched kids playing on the streets, watched old people talking animatedly in their yards, tried to keep my head clear, but there was something like a horn blaring behind my eyes. The sound of it filled me. I parked on the curb in front of the bank and watched a police cruiser drive by. I saw Don Gray in the passenger seat, and he turned in the seat and looked back at me as they passed.

  I pulled the ski mask on, unwrapped the shotgun, thinking that I should have checked to make sure it was loaded, yet I didn’t really need to do that because my dad always kept it loaded with buckshot in the event that some late-night prowler picked our house to invade.

  I walked casually into the bank, the shotgun light in my hands, my index finger flipping off the safety behind the trigger guard. People looked at me strangely, trying to figure out if I was truly there perhaps, and then a woman screamed and fell on the floor and a dark puddle of fluid spread beneath her. I thought at first that I’d shot her, but she’d just pissed herself, and I felt a little bad for her because other people were looking at her and she must have been ashamed.

  I pointed the shotgun at a teller and she was young and blonde, not much older than Angela. She had pointy breasts and wore a lot of red lipstick. Her hands trembled as she raised them. Her throat
worked and her lips moved but no words came out. There were seven other people in there. Three other bank employees. Four customers. It was 9:15 a.m.

  I said, “Everybody fill bags of money.” I waved the shotgun right and left. People moved. They became very busy. In less than a minute they had more canvas bags full of money than I could carry. Six in all, full of cash. I tied four of them together and slung them over my left shoulder so that two bags banged against my thigh and two bounced off my buttocks as I shifted the shotgun. I said, “Thank you for not making a scene.” Most of them nodded dumbly. The little cashier tried to smile and she said something like: Have a good day. Thank you for doing business with us… but then the door opened and I saw my dad in uniform and he looked from his shotgun, to my red Converse shoes, and then he looked me in the eye. His face was very red and he looked winded. He opened his mouth to say, “Listen to me, son…”

  But I shot from the hip and the buckshot peeled the flesh of his face back and he knocked over a golden sign that pointed where customers should form a line to wait their turn. He crumpled there against the granite facing of the wall, with the sign bent underneath him, and my ears were ringing and some of the women were screaming.

  I ran outside, feeling like that rabbit I’d seen out the kitchen window that morning. Don Gray was hiding behind the door of their cruiser. I shot a load of buckshot into the car and he cursed loudly. I ran down a narrow alley, brick walls on both sides of me, a beaten dumpster off to my right, and I could see blocks away and cars passing on the streets ahead. I found a sewer grate and used the barrel of the shotgun and pried it up and moved it away and climbed down inside, throwing the gun into the water below so I could muscle the heavy lid back into place. I stood there on the cold, steel ladder for minutes. I heard someone rush by overhead, the heavy clump of their shoes. I heard lots of sirens then and somewhere far off, and far above, the heavy thud of a chopper’s rotors whirring.

  I left my dad’s shotgun there and moved on down the dark tunnel. For some reason I felt incredibly sad and yet incredibly alive…