Black Maps

by Jauss, David

  He paused, remembering that trap. It was a rusty number eleven Victor Long-Spring, and it smelled oddly sulfurous, like the air just after a match is struck. Thinking of the trap did not give him the same pleasure that remembering the wooden rifle did, but it gave him some. He could not deny that.

  “Frank showed me how to set the trap,” he continued, “and the next day when we went to check it, there was a weasel in it.” He paused again. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  Susan’s back was against the passenger door now and her arms were crossed over her breasts as if she were cold. She nodded.

  “Okay. It was a black weasel. It wasn’t worth much, but I was happy as hell. Frank was congratulating me, shaking my hand and patting me on the back, and I felt proud to have caught something on my first try, even if it was only a weasel. Then I noticed the weasel’s mouth was bright red. I didn’t understand at first, but then I saw its leg. It had started to chew the leg off, but we had gotten there before it could finish.”

  “Oh, Elliot, that’s awful,” Susan said, and hugged herself tighter.

  “I know. I know. I felt so sorry for that weasel I took out my pistol and shot him four or five times, to put him out of his misery. Frank yelled, ‘What are you doing!’ and grabbed the gun from me. ‘You idiot,’ he said, ‘you’re supposed to shoot it in the head. Now the pelt’s worthless.’”

  Elliot could feel Susan looking at him, and he gripped the steering wheel a little harder. “That was the first animal I shot. The next one, I shot in the head, between the eyes, just to prove to Frank—and, I guess, to myself—that I could do it right.”

  “And you sold their fur?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “Yes. And that’s how this farmer found out about me. Mr. Lyngen. He got my name from one of the men at the fur processing plant, and he hired me to trap gophers in his bean field. They were damaging his crop, and he didn’t have time to trap them himself. He bought me a case of traps, and he gave me twenty cents a tail. By mid-summer, I’d earned enough to buy a .22 rifle, and by pheasant season I owned a 12 gauge shotgun too.”

  “You cut their tails off,” she said. This time it was an accusation, not a question.

  Yes, he had. When he’d found a gopher trapped in the entrance to its own burrow, he’d killed it with a single shot to the head, cut off its tail, then buried it in the grave it had dug for itself. He kept the tails in a marble bag tied to his belt, and every week or so when the bag got full, he took it to Mr. Lyngen and collected his bounty.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then Susan said, “What made you stop?”

  “Another trapper. A kid named Jake Weckworth. I’d been trapping for a couple of years when he moved to town, and he started trapping too. One morning I went to check my traps, and they were missing. I didn’t know who’d taken them, but I suspected Jake. A few days later, I found the traps set along a creek that ran into the river. I’d scratched my initials into them with a nail, but Jake had filed them off and scratched his own in. I collected the traps and took them to Jake’s house and showed his father what he’d done. That afternoon, Mr. Weckworth brought Jake to my house and made him apologize. Jake mumbled he was sorry, and his father gripped his arm and said, ‘Say it louder.’ So he said it again. I could tell Jake was mad: his jaw muscles were working, and he wouldn’t look at me. But I never expected anything to come of it.” He paused. “I was wrong, of course. The next morning, when I went down to the river to set my traps, he was there waiting for me.”

  “Did he beat you up?” Susan asked.

  Elliot shook his head. “No. Not really. Mostly, he just threatened me. I was walking along the river, looking for good places to set my traps, and all of a sudden he just stepped out from behind a tree and pointed his 12 gauge at my face. I stopped dead. Then he said, ‘Hello, Richie,’ and smiled. For a second I thought he wasn’t going to do anything. But then he stuck the muzzle of his shotgun against my throat. ‘I ought to kill you,’ he said, and poked me with the shotgun, hard. And he kept on poking me until I was crying and gasping for breath.”

  It had happened twenty-five years ago, but as he described it, he could feel the cold steel against the soft flesh under his Adam’s apple. He touched his throat gingerly with his fingertips as he steered the car through the dark tunnel formed by the huge oaks that lined the street. In a few minutes, they’d be home. In a few minutes, he’d walk into his house, a grown man with a son who was himself almost grown. It seemed amazing that all these years had passed and, at the same time, somehow not passed too.

  “That’s terrible,” Susan said. “What happened then?”

  “Not much. He took the traps back and warned me not to tell his father or ever show my face in the woods again. If I did, he said, he’d kill me.”

  “He couldn’t have meant it,” she said. “He must have just been trying to scare you.”

  Elliot thought for a moment. “Probably. But I don’t know. He looked like he meant it.” He turned to Susan. “There was something in his eyes. It may sound strange, but it was something like fear. Not fear exactly, but close to it. I remember thinking, Here he is, the one with the gun, and he’s afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?” she asked.

  He looked away. “I’m not sure. Afraid he might actually do it, I think. Afraid he was capable of it. Maybe even afraid he’d enjoy it.”

  He didn’t know whether he should say anything more. Then he did. “I wanted to kill him, Susan.” And as he said those words, he remembered picturing Jake dead, his face turned to pulp by a shotgun blast, and for an instant he felt again the comfort and pleasure that thought had given him then. Leaning back in his seat, he let out a slow breath. Then he continued. “I never did it, of course, but I thought about it for weeks. And night after night, I dreamed about it. I must have killed him a hundred times in my dreams.”

  Susan was silent. He waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t, he turned to look at her. He had thought she was punishing him with her silence, thinking thoughts she didn’t dare let bleed into words, and he expected to see her glaring at him, her face a mask of anger and disgust. But even in the dark, her face looked pale, and she was wincing as if his words had wounded her. “Susan?” he said. And then she put her hands over her face and began to cry.

  Elliot turned away. He had tolerated her self-righteous questions, but her tears angered him. She wasn’t crying for him and what he had gone through; she was crying for herself, pitying herself for having married a man who had once killed animals and dreamed about killing a human being. She had no right to take his past so personally. It was his past, not hers. And she had no right to judge him.

  “In one dream,” he went on, his voice thick with a bitterness that was directed more at her now than at Jake, “I trapped him just like an animal. His foot was caught in the trap, and he couldn’t get it out. He kept asking me to let him go, but I just—”

  “Stop it,” Susan said. “Please stop it.”

  And then he was ashamed of hurting her, and of wanting to hurt her. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t want you to—” But he couldn’t explain. He sighed, then drove on without talking for a while. When he finally spoke, his voice was gentle. “I know it’s awful even to think about killing someone,” he said, “and I don’t know why I did it. I’ve never felt that way about anyone else, not ever. All I know is that it wasn’t real, it was just a fantasy. I never really considered doing it.” He glanced at her. “You know that, don’t you?”

  She was drying her eyes with a Kleenex. She nodded.

  “At any rate, that was the end of my hunting and trapping. I never went back to the woods, and the next time my mom had a garage sale, I sold the rest of my traps and all my guns.”

  He looked at her and tried a smile. “That’s it,” he said. “The whole story. The End. Fini.”

  She didn’t return his smile. “I’ve never wanted to kill anything,” she said. “
I can’t imagine feeling that way.” Then she added, almost as if she were talking to herself, “It makes me wonder. What if he hadn’t threatened you? Would you have kept on hunting and trapping? Would you be the same person you are now? Would you even be married to me?”

  “You’re making too much of this,” he said. “It happened years ago. I didn’t even know you then.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “It was a big mistake to tell you this,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Susan said. “I don’t mean to make you feel bad. It’s just that I never thought of you like this before. I always thought you were different from the kind of people who hunt and trap.”

  “I am,” he said.

  “I know. I just had too much to drink tonight, and I’m taking everything too serious. I’ll feel fine tomorrow.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Then they were out of words. They drove the last few blocks in silence, and when he had parked the car in their garage, they got out and went quietly into the house. Stepping softly so they wouldn’t wake their son, they went down the hall to their bedroom. There, they undressed slowly in the dark, then put on their pajamas, got into bed, and lay on their backs, breathing quietly. Susan’s hand was lying palm down on the sheet beside him, and he traced its small bones lightly with a fingertip. After a while, she moved her hand away. “Goodnight,” she said, and turned her back to him.

  Elliot lay there for a long time, looking at the dark ceiling. He could tell by Susan’s breathing that she was still awake, but he knew she didn’t want to make love now, or even talk, so he didn’t say anything. But after a few more minutes, he couldn’t bear the silence anymore. Turning to her, he said, “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she answered.

  But still she kept her back to him. He lay there on his side, facing her rigid back, awhile longer, until the distance between them was too much of an affront. Then he put his hand on her shoulder and, whispering her name, turned her beautiful body toward him.

  FIRELIGHT

  Jimmy hadn’t planned to break the windows; he hadn’t thought about it at all. He’d just been walking around the neighborhood, as he always did on the Saturdays his mother’s boyfriend came to town. He’d left the apartment so quickly that he’d forgotten his mittens, and he walked with his hands balled in his jacket pockets. He thought about going back to get his mittens, but once when he’d gone home before he was supposed to, his mother and her boyfriend were in her bedroom with the door closed, making noises. He knew what those noises meant because one day at recess a third-grader named Evan was talking about what grown-ups do in bedrooms. “It’s the same as dogs,” he’d said. Jimmy couldn’t imagine his mother doing such a thing with anybody, especially that vacuum salesman from St. Paul with his thick glasses and hairy ears. And maybe she didn’t do it after all. Maybe they were in her bedroom because she was too tired to sit up in the living room and talk. She was always tired, even though she didn’t work at the cafe anymore, and she spent most days in bed anyway. But what were the noises then?

  He tried to think of something else. He thought about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the frog his friend Greg brought to school in a jar once and let loose in the lunchroom. Michael Jackson kept a brain in a jar in his bedroom, and Greg said that proved he was crazy. But Jimmy thought he probably just wished he could put that person’s brain in his head, and that didn’t seem crazy to him. But maybe that was because he was crazy, too. If he had Greg’s brain, he’d know if he was or not. He imagined lying in bed, with Greg’s brain in his head and his own brain in a jar on the dresser, and wondered what he’d think. But he couldn’t guess. If his brain was normal, shouldn’t he be able to guess what someone else would think?

  His mother’s brain definitely wasn’t normal. Ever since his father left them, she’d had to take pills for her mind. Jimmy used to blame the way she was on his father, but maybe she wasn’t much different before he left. His father used to call her a crazy bitch, so maybe that was why he left, because she was crazy even then. Jimmy didn’t know. He couldn’t remember much about that time, because he was so little. He barely even remembered his father. He just remembered that he was tall and had a mustache and smoked brown cigarettes. And he remembered how his big hands would hurt him when he picked him up under his arms, and how he liked him to pick him up anyway. Jimmy wondered where his father was now and what he was doing. His mother said he lived in Nebraska with his new family, and Jimmy wondered if Nebraska was a town or a state and how far away it was. And did his father ever pick up his new son the way he used to pick him up?

  He was tired of walking around, so he decided to go over to the school playground. Kids were always there on weekends, playing on the swings and monkey bars or tossing a football back and forth. But when he got to the playground, no one was there. Even the houses across the street seemed deserted. Everywhere he looked, there was nothing. Not even a stray dog. And suddenly he felt all alone. A long shiver snaked up his spine, and he wanted to go home and sit on the edge of his mother’s bed and talk to her. But it wasn’t six o’clock yet. Her boyfriend would still be there.

  He started walking slowly toward home anyway, kicking rocks as he crossed the gravel playground. But when he’d rounded the south wing of the school, he stopped. The sun was setting in the long row of windows, making them glow with a beautiful, cold fire. He’d seen those windows many times before, but only today did he realize how easy it would be to break one. All you had to do was pick up a rock and throw it. Anybody could do it, but nobody ever did. Maybe you had to be crazy to do it. He picked up a rock, to see if he would throw it. What would Greg think if he saw him now? Would he try to talk him out of it? And what about his mother and his father? What would they say? Jimmy imagined his father walking down the sidewalk and seeing him with the rock in his hand. “Hey, Jimmy,” he’d say. “Is that you?”

  Then one of the windows exploded, and Jimmy jumped back, startled, and looked at his empty hand. He couldn’t remember throwing the rock, but he had. And now that he’d done it, he felt so good, so suddenly happy, that he kept on picking up rocks and throwing them, breaking window after window, until he heard a car coming down the street and had to run away.

  By Monday morning, when Jimmy went back to school, the janitors had swept up the glass and taped cardboard over the eighteen broken windows. After the bell rang, all the kids in his class were still standing by the windows, talking excitedly about who could have done it, and they didn’t take their seats until Mrs. Anthony threatened to keep them inside during recess. And even before the class could recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker and said the guilty party would eventually be caught so he might as well turn himself in now. The guilty party—that was Jimmy. He tried not to look guilty, but the more he tried, the more he felt everyone knew he had done it. Ever since he’d broken the windows, he’d felt like a stranger in his own life, someone just pretending to be who he was, and he was sure everyone would see the change in his face if they looked. He stared at his desk intently, as if merely to look up would be a confession.

  Later that morning, as the class was on its way out for recess, Mrs. Anthony stopped him at the door and asked if she could talk to him for a minute. He was sure, then, that she had found out, but when the others were gone, she only asked if he was feeling all right. He nodded. Her forehead furrowed then, and he looked away. “Jimmy,” she said. “You can tell me. Have things been bad at home again?” Her husky voice was soft, like his mother’s when she was trying to make up for something she’d said. Somehow it made him angry. “Yes,” he lied, and the word seemed to take his breath away. “My mother was mean to me.” And then he ran outside and sat under a maple tree near the swings, trying to get his breath back. Greg came over then and challenged him to a game of tetherball, but Jimmy said he didn’t want to play. “Why not?” Gre
g said. “You chicken?” And even though Greg started to flap his arms and cluck like a chicken, Jimmy did not get up and chase him.

  School ended that day without anyone accusing him of breaking the windows, but he was still certain he’d be caught. Maybe somebody already knew, but they hadn’t said anything because they were testing him, trying to see if he would confess on his own. He didn’t know what to think. It was like he had to learn a whole new way of thinking, now that he’d broken the windows. As he walked home, he tried out different things to say when he was accused. He could say it was all an accident—he’d been trying to hit some blackbirds that were flying past or something—or maybe there was a robber, somebody breaking into the school, and he’d chased him away by throwing rocks at him and some of them hit the windows. But nothing he thought of sounded good enough, and after a while he gave up and tried to think of something else.

  Though the afternoon was bright and sunny, the temperature had dropped below freezing. He hunched his shoulders against the cold and started down the street to the rundown clapboard house where he and his mother rented an apartment on the second floor. He was hoping his mother wasn’t too tired to make hot chocolate for him. But then he saw the social worker’s yellow Subaru parked in front of the house again and knew he wouldn’t get any hot chocolate—or even any supper. After Mrs. McClure’s visits, his mother was always so exhausted she’d have to go to bed for the rest of the day, and he’d have to make his own supper, and hers too. And that meant he’d have to eat hot dogs or toast again because they were the only things he could cook. And he’d have to watch TV by himself all night, too, and every now and then he’d probably hear her crying in her room. He knew better than to go in and try to comfort her, though; that only made her cry harder or, sometimes, yell at him.