“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
He thought, I wonder who gets on top?
Because that was the way it was in Biology departments, right? No one had any ethics. Everybody was screwing one another, and “loyalty” was such a quaint concept as to be archaic and jejune. Everyone could bury their cheating, lying, and scheming in fancy research grants. It was why he had been left out of the loop. He was too honest to fit into an academic department. People just couldn’t handle him.
I ought to kill them both, he thought. I mean what if he really is fucking her.
The thought was so real, so bitter, so palpable that it made him nauseated with jealousy. What if she’d been stringing him along and quietly banging Robert behind his back (or not so quietly, perhaps)? After all, she was the one that insisted on keeping her own place. She was the one who asked him to sleep nearly thirty miles away in Oracle. What was she so afraid of?
Or was it fear at all?
That, of course, was what she’d led him to believe: that she’d been injured in relationships before, that men had always mistreated her, that men had hurt her. So, maybe she was just getting back at all those ex-boyfriends. Maybe she wasn’t really afraid at all. Maybe she was banging Robert on the nights when John wasn’t there at her hillside Tucson home.
He could picture her with her legs wrapped around Robert’s back while he pumped away deep inside her.
“I ought to kill them both,” he whispered aloud.
There was a flash of lightning outside that brightened the bathroom window a moment. Thunder boomed.
And then there was a knock at the bathroom door.
John could tell it was Angie without even opening the door.
“John?” she said, her voice sounding delicate and nice. “John, are you okay?”
John shook his head and crossed to the bathroom door. He turned the handle and opened the door. Angie stood there with a worried look in her eyes. John glanced over her shoulder at Robert who was sitting on the sofa in front of the fire.
Robert was cleaning his handgun.
Angie looked into John’s eyes curiously.
“John, are you okay?” she said.
“Of course I’m okay,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
Angie glanced over his shoulder into the bathroom.
“You’ve just been in there an awful long time is all,” she said. “I was just curious.”
“Well, you know what they say,” John said. “‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ Angie.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Angie said.
John shrugged.
“Bathroom’s free,” he said, and he pushed past her and crossed the cabin toward the kitchen.
Thirty-One
John had it in his head that at some point during the night he would try and make it out to the shed. He helped Angie cook dinner—a kind of beef stew in a large five-gallon kettle—and he pretended not to notice what he’d deep down known all along: that Angie and Robert were having an affair. Of course, he had to look deep to see that it was there. They wouldn’t consciously let him know that something was going on, but he saw it in the friendly way that Angie handed Robert a bowl, or the pleasant way that she asked Robert if he’d like a glass of water, or the way she crossed her legs when she sat down on the sofa.
She’s practically inviting him to have sex, John thought. His thoughts flooded with blood-red murderous revenge. Jealousy. Raw, ravenous jealousy.
“Thank you, Angie,” Robert said. “That’s pretty good stew.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” she said. “John is the one that came up with the idea.”
Did she just touch her nipple? John thought. It looked like Angie looked right into Robert’s eyes and touched the tip of her left breast. Next thing you know, he’ll be calling me “old sport.”
“I think I’m going to step outside and have a smoke,” John said.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” Robert said.
“Only after dinner,” John said. And he crossed to his backpack and removed a lighter and a pack of Marlboro Lights.
“Be careful out there,” Angie said.
“I’m just going to be on the front porch,” he said.
“Yeah, but we don’t know whether our axman decided to stick around or has taken to the deep woods.”
John looked at her curiously and said, “What is that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t realize that he sounded paranoid. Angie exchanged a perplexed glance with Robert.
“Yeah, go on and look at him,” John said.
He pointed an accusatory unlit cigarette at her. Both Robert and Angie had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
“I know about you,” John said, pointing that cigarette. “Don’t think I don’t.”
He turned, opened the front door, and stepped out onto the screened-in porch. It was still pouring rain, and he closed the door behind him.
As soon as the door was closed, Robert said, “What is he talking about?”
Angie stood up and took Robert’s empty bowl from him.
“I think he’s cracked,” she said. She carried the dirty dishes over to the kitchen sink and began rinsing them out.
“Does he think that something’s going on between us?” Robert asked.
Angie just shook her head. Finally she said, “We may need to go down tomorrow. I hadn’t planned on John losing his cool like this.”
“I just don’t understand, Angie. What the hell is going on in his head? He was fine just a couple days ago.”
“I think there are two things,” Angie said. “I think he has borderline personality disorder, and he’s paranoid.”
“Is that a clinical diagnosis?”
“John has always been a sensitive guy, and probably the stress of being up here isolated, nearly dying today has gotten to him. I think he’s just really afraid. I mean we’re all afraid, you know? But I think that it just got to him. I think it rattled him. I think he’s had a split. Now whether he’s just kind’a acting, you know, to convince us that we need to get out of here or whether he’s really screwed up, I don’t know. It’s probably not even clear to him.”
“I’ve seen some crazy shit in my lifetime,” Robert said. “I once saw a professional boxer have a nervous breakdown in the ring, start crying, and refuse to fight. The human mind can only take so much, before it just sort’a splits, you know? Maybe that’s kind of what’s happening.”
“I don’t know,” Angie said.
“What was the other thing? You said there were two things.”
She said, “I think he’s jealous. I think he thinks that there’s something going on between you and me, and that’s only adding to his insecurity, which is already over the edge. I think he’s really afraid. I love him. But I think he’s really afraid.”
Robert glanced at the closed front door.
• •
John took a draw from the cigarette and looked through the porch screen out across the yard. It was too dim to see much of anything other than that they were getting nailed with the worst storm to hit Arizona in at least two months. Rain covered most of the front porch, but John stood back as far from the screen as he could and was able to stay mostly dry.
Maybe she isn’t banging him, he thought. Maybe they were just flirting with one another. It was only a matter of time though, right? I mean, John thought, I’m a fucking loser. My writing career hasn’t taken off in more than fourteen years, man. I’ve written a million words of trash, and nobody’s going to take a chance on me. I just didn’t get the breaks, man, and it’s pretty fucking clear that I’m not going to get the breaks. It’s pretty fucking clear that my life is an appalling failure.
So, in that way, John reasoned that he’d be doing Angie a favor if he just lost it on her. She could get rid of the excess baggage. Besides, they’re crazy for wanting to stay up here.I’m doing her a favor if I go for help.
It was all mixed up in his head—his motivations
—but one thing was clear: he needed to get down the mountain. He needed to take the ATV, which was supposedly stored in the shed out back, and he needed to drive that ATV down the mountain to Grapevine. He could call for help there. He could let the authorities know that they’d been attacked by the mountain lion. He could let them know that Charlie “The Chopper” was threatening all of their lives.
John was building it in his mind that it was his duty to take the ATV down the mountain to let the authorities know what had happened. It was his responsibility for crying out loud.
He started laughing, holding the cigarette, standing there on the front porch, trying not to get rained on. Oh, the irony! he thought. They all thought he was the crazy one, but he was the only sane one of the bunch! He was the voice of reason!
“Who’s really the crazy one here?” he said aloud. “I mean really?”
He looked around him on the front porch. He saw the green tarp covering the wood pile at the far end of the porch, and he realized that he could use that tarp as a rain poncho to go out back and check the shed. They thought he was out here just taking a smoke, but he could use the tarp to cover himself, and he could sneak around back of the cabin and check the shed.
If the keys were out there, he would be one step closer to getting down the mountain.
Cigarette in hand, John bent over the woodpile and tried to pull the tarp from off of the wood. It was caught in a couple of places, but he managed to lift the thing from the woodpile. A gust of wind sprayed him with rain through the screen, and the pile got coated.
He stuck his cigarette in his mouth, pulled the tarp over his head and shoulders, and started down the front porch steps out into the yard.
He walked on around the side of the cabin in the pouring rain with the green waterproof tarp covering him like some whacked out ghost.
• •
“Did you see that?” Robert said.
“See what?”
Angie looked at him from the kitchen sink. Robert rose from the sofa. He’d seen John moving around on the front porch with the tarp over his head. There was no light on the porch, and the light inside was bright enough that it was difficult to see well outside of the cabin, but he could have sworn he saw John with something like a tarp draped over his head, walking down off of the porch.
Robert went to the front door, opened it, and looked both ways on the porch. John was not there. Angie came over and looked, too.
“John?” Angie called, but her voice was drowned by the sound of rain hitting the tin roof of the porch.
John had gone on around the side of the cabin, and they couldn’t see him.
“What is he doing?” Robert said.
But Angie was already rushing over to her backpack to grab her bright orange rain poncho.
“Come on,” she said.
• •
Despite the tarp, John was still getting wet. It was difficult to see because it was so dark and because the rain was unrelenting, but he knew where the shed was, and he crossed the backyard toward it. The thought that the guy with the ax might be out there did cross his mind, but it filled him with a crazed excitement, and he roared out into the rain, “Come on!”
He staggered across the backyard toward the shed. The tarp kept tripping him up, and had anyone seen him, they would have thought he was completely crazy.
“Bring it on, man!” he shouted into the rain.
He reached the shed and turned the handle. It smelled like gasoline and motor oil inside the shed, and sawdust, and faintly in the recesses there was a fragrance of saddle leather. It was dry inside, but the roof was only about six feet tall, and he had to stoop to keep from banging his head. He let the tarp fall from his shoulders, and he saw the ATV over in the back left corner. He crossed to it.
It was dark, but he felt around the handlebars of the thing, and he felt a single key already in place in the ignition. He remembered ATVs from his childhood, and he knew that the thing probably had an electric starter button but that the key had to be turned over in order for the electric starter to work.
He played around with different switches, feeling in the dark, when suddenly the headlights came on. It was so bright it blinded him for a moment, and then he heard the faint sound of Angie’s voice calling to him through the pouring rain outside.
“The bitch,” he said. He hit the electric start button, and the engine fired up loudly inside the shed.
He turned the throttle, and the engine revved. With his right foot, he felt around for the foot-operated gears. He popped the clutch with his left hand and snapped the gears into place.
The ATV lurched backwards hard, slamming into the back wall of the shed. It made a horrible aluminum-wrenching-metal sound, and he thought for sure that the whole thing was going to collapse on top of him. But he managed to get the handlebars straightened out and got the ATV pointed in the direction of the front door.
He popped the clutch and was just about to put it into gear, when Angie appeared in the doorway. The headlights shined brightly on her, and then John saw Robert appear behind her left shoulder.
Angie held both hands up cautiously, telling him to hold back.
“What are you doing?” she shouted.
“I’m going for help!” John shouted over the roar of the ATV engine.
“John, you’re going to leave us stranded,” she cried.
“Get out of the way, Angie,” he said. “You two are crazy!”
“John, I love you. Please don’t leave us alone here.”
“You don’t love me.” John thrust an angry index finger at her. “I know about you! Both of you! I’m not stupid, you know? I can see. Now, get out of the way!”
Angie knelt down on her knees in the middle of the doorway.
“Please, John.” It looked like she started crying. The ATV lights shined brightly on her. The rain continued to pour. “I love you with all my heart. We don’t want to hurt you. We’re your friends, John. I love you.”
John sat there on the ATV, staring at her in the headlights. She was blocking his way through the door, just like she’d been blocking him from succeeding in his writing career their whole time together. Oh, it was subtle, alright. She’d never arouse suspicion, but by God, everything she did undercut his chances for success.
“Get out of the way, Angie, or I’ll run you down!”
“Please, John.” She was on the verge of tears.
He felt so humiliated, he almost wanted to get off the ATV. Maybe she really did love him. Maybe he was just afraid. Maybe all of this had been some huge misunderstanding. But he felt ashamed. He looked from Angie to Robert, and he felt sheer, unadulterated shame, and suddenly he started to cry.
“Get out of the way, Angie! You don’t love me! Nobody loves me! All of you people have perfect lives, and I’m a loser! A goddamn loser! Do you know how that makes me feel? I am nothing! Nothing!”
“That’s not true, John,” Angie cried. “You matter! You matter to me—”
And then, by accident, his hand slipped on the throttle, and the ATV lurched forward. Angie was on her knees and unable to get wholly out of the way, and it shocked John so badly and he had so little time to react, that before he knew what had happened, the ATV struck Angie and raced out into the yard.
Robert managed to leap out of the way.
John was twenty meters out into the yard, and he turned the ATV around to see what had happened. Angie lay on her back by the shed’s door. Robert looked stunned, his eyes moving from John on the ATV to Angie.
“Angie,” Robert said.
John sat there. The rain poured on him. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. He wanted to get off of the ATV and run to her. He wanted to make sure that she was okay. He wanted to say that it was an accident. But he did none of those things.
Instead, he looked up around the side of the cabin, and in the headlights of the ATV, he saw the path that they had climbed earlier that night, the path that led down to the clearing where the helic
opter was supposed to pick them up. He turned, hit the accelerator, and raced away from the only woman who had ever actually loved him.
Thirty-Two
Rain hammered him on the ATV. It was a cold, stinging rain, and he raced through the woods. The ATV’s headlights shined through the pouring rain, illuminating the narrow path in front of him. He had no idea where he was going, but he figured he would follow the paths down the mountain.
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