Mutiny was not my game and the familiarity of the surroundings was distracting. We were on the outskirts of the world of Mom, the place in which I was nothing but a squatter. Here, uprisings were not tolerated and loud protests never given. I had never been a path blazer or a rebel, a fighter or even an underdog. I followed here. I followed and hoped one day to grow magically into my right to drum up alternatives.
Kyle was going to kill Lucy and I could not stop him.
The weeds were thinning a bit. It was happening fast now. Everything itched and my mouth was bone dry. We were at the edge of my back yard. Kyle took the last bit of camouflage, a stalk in the middle of a wide growth of prairie grass, and moved it an inch aside.
It was lucky that we had averted the muddy little run back there. If we had continued in that direction it would have brought us to the middle of the property and that is exactly where my mother was looking.
She was on the back deck, hands in fists on the hips. She stared into the woods just to our right. Her blouse was a soft pastel green, an absolute irony to the steel beneath drawn into high tension you could see in the tendons of her forearms, the cords in her neck. Strands of her reddish-gray, bobby-pinned hair had come loose and they flew around her face like sharp tendrils of smoke. Her nostrils flared and I immediately thought "dragon." Her shock-blue eyes looked both ice cold and blistering hot at the same time.
It was a bad sign. I was not permitted past the weeds and into the forest, and if Mom thought I was desperate enough to try a sneak-in from this angle, it surely meant dinner was long past burnt. How long had it taken for me to rake the area and dump the shovels once I had found the watch? How long had I argued with Kyle about strategy? How many minutes were lost in the wild sprint over here? I had not taken the Mickey Mouse timepiece with me to keep a running check, and it was one more piece of poor preparation. When was I going to get with the program and be ready for shit like this? My dinner was probably into that ugly stage between cold and crusted. It would be a massive badge of failure in my mother's eyes, and God help us all if a Raybeck dinner ended up in the trash. Lord have mercy on children of all ages, that lecture could go on until midnight!
A gust of wind swept across the yard and my terrier stretched out her paws. She was lying on her side at the edge of the patio with her snow-white chest aimed at the sun coming in from the left. She snorted a little breath through her nose and ran her tongue along her whiskers.
Mom ignored her. The nylon lead kept the dog out of her perennials and that was all she cared about. Lucy was out of the way, chained there, and basically out of mind.
Lucy was our best hope and it killed me inside. Kyle was right. There was no fooling the blue-jean queen at the door. I was amazed at the absolute power my mother exuded when you were displaced to the side and observing her as a stranger would. I thought she was bad in the kitchen when she was up in your face, but this was actually awe-inspiring.
A sudden shrill, mechanical buzzing cut into the breeze and Kyle tensed up beside me. A sick rush went through my stomach. Mom turned toward the sound and made for the kitchen door.
The clothes were done.
This was it. The dryer in the garage had completed a cycle and Mom would be tied up for ten minutes or so, folding shirts and piling skivvies. Our window of opportunity had arrived.
The screen door swept shut behind her and Lucy barely noticed the exit. Her ear flicked. Kyle gave me a shove.
"Go," he said. "Now."
I paused. I couldn't.
"Fucking go, Jimmy! What the hell are you waiting for?"
I did nothing and he exhaled in a way to make me notice the sound. He started to stand and I grabbed his shirt sleeve.
"No," I said. "I'll do it."
I did not want Kyle Skinner touching my dog. I would take her myself. Hold her one last time.
I took one more second to look between the stalks of wild grass, and Lucy crossed her front paws. She opened her muzzle, curled her tongue, and gave a yawn.
I swallowed hard, blinked twice, and rose up out of the brush.
7.
Lucy sensed me right away and sprang to all fours. Her ears perked up. I came across the lawn hunched over as if someone was about to strike me. It was a nightmare and a blur.
The silence about the house seemed to boom a sickly pulse. I could feel the threat in my throat. At any moment, Mom's face could swim into one of those windows, her surprise quickly spreading to a look of alarm. Then fury. Lucy dragged the lead taught. It caught on her water bowl and dragged it across the concrete patio deck for a few feet. She went up on her hind legs and pawed at the air.
I kneeled and she exploded into me, a flurry of paws trying to take me in all at once. She was jumping to get up onto my back. I grabbed at her collar and unhooked the lead. I had a moment of disorientation during which I saw what I must have looked like in symbol world. I was no longer a boy, but a demon with no face, wearing black with the collar up. Lucy started in with her licking and lapping. I did have a face and it was covered with the blood of a dead blonde. I almost threw up.
I turned away my face and gathered the awkward moving bundle. She was still trying to mash her muzzle against my lips, craning in, cold, wet nose. I turned and made for the woods. At any second I fully expected the squeal of that screen door, the sharp call of my mother, the footsteps in pursuit.
They never came.
I broke through the weeds and pushed down the hill, past Kyle, down the steep rise. I almost tripped and went headlong down the slope. I caught myself just in time and widened my steps. I heard Kyle's hoarse breath behind me. He was panting and I don't think it was just the rapid pace. I think he was excited as hell. Lucy was nervous now, nearly motionless for all but an occasional kick from a hind leg.
I reached the bottom of the gully and stopped. Lucy's nose was nuzzled into my neck and I could hear her curious sniffing. Her body felt warm with trust in the arms of her best companion.
My mind went red and I heard roaring in my ears. I could not do it, not in a million years, not ever. A hand fell on my shoulder. I shuddered so badly I almost dropped the dog. Kyle slipped in front of me wearing his fake-me-out smile. He reached for Lucy.
"Hand her to me, Jimmy. You've taken her as far as you can go. I can tell. Give her up. It's almost done."
He stretched a set of grubby fingers to the fur on her neck and I exploded.
"No, you fucker!"
I stepped to the side and tilted back my head.
I brought it down. The air whistled. Contact. A splatting sound. He was rocked back with the violent contact and my motion brought me just past his shoulder. In the corner of my eye I saw his palm race up to the middle of his face. I got my balance and took a good look. Bright blood squeezed through his fingers and dripped down his wrist. Got him square in the nose. Bull's-eye.
"Argghh," he said.
"Take that, you fucker!" I shouted back. I was fuming at a height so great and so new that the boundaries seemed endless. Kyle was hurt. I had caused it. Now my breath was starting to race and Lucy started to kick.
I held her tight.
Then I just dropped her. Maybe Kyle could chase me down in a dead heat, but he would never catch Lucy once she got going.
She fell between us and scratched for a footing. Kyle dove in at her and missed, landing hard on his forearms and pitching up dirt. Before he could recover I stamped on the back of his left hand.
"Run!" I hollered. "Go, Lucy, run!"
She skidded across the sewer pipe in a fast break for the far hill. Kyle clawed to his feet and spit blood to the ground. I shrank back and covered up. The rain of blows was going to be heavy and motivated.
But no punch was thrown, and by the time my eyes fluttered open Kyle was past the pipe and tearing up the side of the hill. He was going for Lucy. Thirty feet above him I caught a glimpse of her hind legs disappearing over the peak and into the trees.
And suddenly I knew.
I knew whe
re she was going and Kyle did too. She was not running blindly. She was following our scent back to the pit.
I put down my head and pushed my aching legs as hard as they could go in chase of the boy who was stalking my dog. My heart was pounding. My lungs started to burn.
This was all far from over.
8.
By the time I crashed through the trees and down into the clearing it was almost too late. The unfolding scene was repulsive and odd, with Kyle bent over and making a slow tiptoe along the far lip of the grave. One bloody hand was pressed to his face and the other was dangling down and out, thumb rubbing against forefinger. His breath rattled. His voice was a muffled "come hither" from beneath the bloody hand and kept repeating "Here, kitty, kitty," between more muffled curses from the back of his throat.
Lucy was not buying into it. Yet. Her tail was down and her neck hair was up. Every time Kyle got close, she pranced away. Then she would slow and stop, never escaping but always keeping a cushion of a couple of feet between herself and her coaxing assassin.
I ran long to the left where they were instead of where they were going and wound up at the edge of the circle across from the rooted path I had driven a car down in what seemed another age. My hands went to my waist, then my knees. My shoulders were heaving up and down, my lungs raw.
"Lucy!" I gasped. "Come here, now!"
She stopped fast and twitched up her ears.
"Come, Lucy, come," I said, suddenly hating myself for having let my pet roam for her entire life as a wild child. She was never the type to sit or to heel. She had not been taught to obey like my inferior and now it was going to kill her.
"No, Lucy," Kyle said. "Come to me, little honey-bunny, come to me."
His eyes darted back and forth between me and my dog. Lucy cocked her head and eyed us both in turn. She had moved off from Kyle, but had not yet committed to me. Her tail was wagging. She thought it was a game.
For a moment the three of us held our positions at the rim of the abyss, Kyle at due west, myself claiming south, and Lucy at dead east.
Kyle jumped for me. I ran to meet him head-on. I ducked under the raised bucket of the Bobcat and it cost me a second. Kyle was coming hard. I passed under the steel tub and put on a burst of speed. He matched it, and we both closed in with such determination Lucy became a temporary afterthought.
We rammed each other chest to chest, and while his momentum was a bit stronger, backing me up two steps on impact, my grip around his shoulders was firm. I bear-hugged him and tried to throw my feet, to bring us to the ground. I would have been stronger there. He reared back and kept us standing. I clapped his ears hard and pushed off. Our hands slapped out and gripped at the shoulders of the other. Heads buried in the crooks of necks as we grunted and pushed and tried to gain superior holds. The footing was bad. We were atop a small spread of rocks and the sound of heels raking across stone seemed to fill up the world.
He was strong. His biceps were iron.
I was desperate, my limbs slippery and quick.
He tried to shoot his arm under to clamp onto my shoulder blade. I countered by flapping down my elbow like a chicken wing and pinning his hand in my armpit. Our heads were mashed ear to ear and locked there by pressing fingers. I was holding my own.
He yanked loose the hand that was trapped and got a palm flat to my collar bone. He dug in and pushed, shifting me a quarter turn and a full step backward. I tried to plant my sneaker flat and it slid farther back along the rocks. Then suddenly it was not the whole sneaker on the ground. It had become just an arch and a toe. I was at the very edge of the pit and Kyle had almost succeeded in pushing me over. Loose pebbles cascaded down into the void.
I suckered him.
I pushed as hard as I could, gained back two inches, then released all my pressure. He came in to me hard. I nimbly leapt to the side, a half-inch to spare from the drop, put my hand on the back of his neck in passing, and helped him right into the motion he initiated with a hard shove. He took a header into the hole. I heard him swear and hit the dirt we had thrown in there. It hadn't been a long fall. We had filled it up almost all the way, and he would be back out of there almost as fast as he went in.
I turned to make a run for Lucy. I did not know exactly where she was, but I was pretty sure she would still be at the hole somewhere. The fight had only gone on for a few seconds and I didn't think she would have wandered yet to go on a sniffing tour. I saw her up by the edge of the rooted path, and when I ran to get her I stepped on the business end of a square-mouthed shovel. The thick wooden handle snapped up and I saw it snapping up, just not fast enough to avoid it altogether. I jerked my head to the side and it whacked me just below the hollow of my throat on an angle. I didn't want it to stop to me, I willed it not to slow me up, but it put me down to a knee. I saw red and black stars dance in front of my eyes, and a wave of dizziness threatened to drop me the rest of the way. I shook my head hard. It cleared. I turned.
Ten feet back, Kyle's fingers came over the lip. Then a dirty face, a palm placed flat, an elbow and an arm propped to make a perpendicular angle, a foot sideways and ankle down, and a knee pushing into the dirt. I grabbed the shovel and ran at him. I was holding the thing like a soldier going through a swamp, flat across a bit above chest level, one set of knuckles out, one set in, but I was not moving slowly like a soldier pushing his knees through the muck. I was charging as if chasing the American flag down a hill in a blitz.
It happened fast.
Kyle gained his feet and I was on him. He was surprised. He threw up his hands and grabbed the shovel right before it blasted him in the face. His feet had no choice but to mimic mine and I ran him backward. A bicycle built for two, our feet in perfect synchronization with Kyle facing the wrong way. The Bobcat and its bucket filled with crushed stone came up behind us and when Kyle struck into it there were three distinct sounds that matched up with three graphic visuals. There was a rip, and Kyle's eye's jerked open to the point where you could see the nests of bright red veins along the watery rims. There was a light crunch as the bar of the shovel came in contact with his already flattened nose, and a piece of the bridge tore through the skin between his red, watery eyes. And finally, there was that sound that really has no fitting name, the flat and final sound known mostly to butchers, that occurs when something sharp at the edge runs through living matter. The front of Kyle's throat bulged, the foreign shape pushing out the skin like a book shoved into the bottom of a trash bag. The last digging tooth on the right side of the bucket had impaled him straight through from the back of the neck. Everything stopped. Just like that.
I was amazed that I did not feel even the slightest bit sorry. I dropped the shovel.
He froze there like a doll. His mouth was a forced grin baring teeth in an eerily similar copy of the shape the tine made against the outer surface of his neck. I looked into his eyes for a moment. Blind as stones. I marveled for just a moment more about how something round like an eyeball could look so flat. Then I moved around behind him, put my palm against the back of his sweaty head, and pushed.
He went over in a rumpling cascade of elbows, knees, and head lolling around like a balloon on a stick. His blood streaked along the tine, marbled, and beaded up. I had the vague impression that these claws would have been too blunt for this kind of event, and most of them actually were. This one, however, must have hit a big stone or two in prior journeys, because it was turned up to a sharp little edge in the middle and nicked worse in a divot on the outer corner that curled to a point like the end of a knife.
I was numb now. I was thinking in a far-off way, but not so far-off, that if the police felt their find was a layer deep there would be no reason to dig into the same hole twice. Could I actually explain away Kyle? Maybe. He tried to kill my dog, that fucker. And the woman? Never in a million years. I picked up the shovel and whacked the chain holding up the bucket. Dust and dried dirt gusted back in a small cloud and there was a "ping" when the broken link popped free. T
he taut lengths on both sides snapped and the dozer's bucket came down. It dumped the load of rocks over Kyle in a flat roar.
It didn't get all of him. An ear, two fingers, and the cuff on one of the legs of his jeans protruded. I jumped down into the hole. It had to look like I panicked and tried to hide the body. There had to be something to find. I kicked rocks over him and smoothed the surface over one last time with my toe.
"Bye, Kyle," I said.
I climbed out and looked for Lucy. She was gone. I had nothing left now but Mother, my "story," and dumb purpose. I trudged up the rooted path to the jobsite to retrieve our bikes, because that is what Jimmy Raybeck would do if he killed his best friend for trying to kill his dog and he wanted to cover it up.
The last lap was a tough walk, but I did it. Sometimes I wheeled Kyle's bike and simply let my old Huffy crash down the embankments like a wild marionette. At other times I couldn't help but toss Kyle's Schwinn, but I tried to baby it when I could. He had a sissy bar that I didn't care about and extended forks that I cared very much about. They were fragile, and I didn't want to lose the front wheel. Dragging the bike up the steep parts would be a lot harder that rolling it.
It was cold at the edge of my lawn even though it was hot and I was sweating. With the jobsite behind and my fate out in front it felt cold in the space between nightmares. I let Kyle's bike drop into the thick grove of weeds and pushed forward.
The sun was finally on its last legs, deep into the clouds above the horizon and the back yard was vacant. Garden in a rough square to the right of the patio. Moldy birdbath with the stone dish set unevenly to the left. Empty leash. A harsh light from the kitchen window.
I let the Huffy fall to the grass. I walked forward and thought that in another life Mother would have scolded her boy for not putting what was his into the garage.
I opened the screen door to the kitchen.
Bulb light washed over me in an angry glare. The house smelt of burnt broccoli. The door clapped shut behind me and for the moment, Mother's back remained turned. She was reaching up for something in the cabinet over the utensil drawer and struggling with the weight it put on her wrist. Yellow Pages. She hugged it in and then said to the wall,
Seven Deadly Pleasures Page 24