Kiss of the Wolf

by Jim Shepard

  She realized she was sweating and felt the dampness along her hairline and in front of her ear. “Anyway, Bruno was just here. And he left. Right?”

  That seemed to calm Todd a little.

  “And we got Audrey to protect us,” she said. “C’mon. We’ll check all the doors and windows.”

  They checked them together, Todd holding his hammer out in front of them like the Olympic torch. He helped her with a sash that was jammed.

  They left some lights on downstairs. She led him up to his room and helped him clear the clothes off his bed.

  “I’m gonna sleep in my underwear,” he said.

  He hung his Levi’s over the headboard.

  “Where’s your hammer?” she asked.

  “I musta left it downstairs,” he said with alarm.

  “Don’t worry about it now.” She didn’t want to go downstairs for it alone.

  He didn’t look much reassured.

  “You know what?” she said. “I think I’ll snuggle here with you for a while. Is that okay?”

  “That’s okay,” he said. He scooted over.

  She hit the light and pulled off her own jeans and climbed under the covers in her T-shirt and underwear. She turned on her side to face him and folded her hands under her cheek. He was looking up at the ceiling.

  “See? This isn’t bad. This is pretty good,” she said, but her voice had every quality of the end of the line.

  Her thoughts rose in the dark like faint balloons.

  She could hear water dripping into the big bowl she’d mixed tuna in, in the kitchen sink.

  She lay there charged up and exhausted. She felt unexceptional and solitary, as tired as a mother who’d played all day with her kid and hadn’t tired the kid out yet.

  Tommy Monteleone’s name stayed with her, like something she could experiment with to hurt herself.

  She saw herself before she got married—sitting in the Milford library, with her shoes off and her legs folded under her—and her heart went out to herself in tenderness.

  This whole life, she thought. All this pain: didn’t she make it herself?

  She tried to calm down. She composed a letter to Todd. She composed a letter to Gary. She asked their forgiveness.

  She thought of kissing Bruno. She thought of bats rushing out of their caves, sweeping past her and kissing the air over her skin.

  She felt her soul opening up in the dark, unfolding sin after sin. In the gloom, she made out the Blessed Virgin statue on the dresser. Mary’s eyes regarded her with mild pity. Her own eyes were brimming with tears. A catechism line swam up from somewhere: God tries over and over again but the sinner will not hear.

  She sang the lyrics to “Downtown.” Todd didn’t respond. She looked closer to see if he was asleep.

  “Mom?” he said. “I still have to leave, I think. I don’t think I can stay here anymore.”

  She closed her eyes and the tears broke down her cheeks. This, she thought. This was the worst moment.

  It didn’t have to be so irreconcilable, she thought. Remember what we have.

  There was a far-off whistling.

  She controlled her breathing and focused on her hearing.

  The whistling died off.

  Audrey raised her head from the rug. Her license jingled: she was moving to hear better.

  Something cracked outside, like someone snapping a good-sized stick. Joanie’s heart started going.

  She heard a sound very near the window. It sounded like someone pouring liquid slowly out of a jar. It sounded like someone urinating against the side of the house.

  “Ma,” Todd said.

  “I hear it,” she said. “Shhh.”

  There was a quick, faint popping sound, like someone had snapped a bicycle spoke.

  They waited. Audrey woofed. She lowered her head to the rug again.

  Joanie heard the whistling again. It was in the yard. She recognized it: “O Sordato Innamorato.”

  She sat up in bed. “Call the police,” she said. “I’m going downstairs.” She got to her feet and turned on the little lamp on his bedside table. She climbed back into her jeans.

  Todd was moving for the phone. He had a sober and alert expression, like a frightened general.

  “I think he’s back,” she said. She felt as if she could throw up.

  He nodded. Nothing seemed surprising now.

  He picked up the phone and started dialing. She opened his door wider and hit the light in the hallway.

  “Ma,” he said, and when she turned he was holding the phone out to her, his eyes large.

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  He let it drop. He scrambled into his Levi’s. At the base of the house there was a slow, metallic sound like the soft scrape of a snow shovel on ice.

  “C’mon,” she whispered. She turned off the light. She had no plan. She thought she’d take him downstairs, try to locate what was going on, and push him out another window or door and run.

  She led him down the stairs. She could hear her hand, sweaty, squeaking and skidding on the banister. Audrey stayed in the bedroom, watching them go.

  “Audrey, who’s down here?” she whispered. The dog kept her chin on the rug.

  They waited in the dark at the bottom of the stairs. Most of the blinds were closed, but she went cautiously around the living room, leading Todd, peeking out where she could see.

  “My hammer’s around here,” Todd whispered. “I can’t find it.”

  There was a sliding sound and a small clank from the kitchen. She felt a breeze at the back of her head and a familiar congested feeling of helplessness. “Stay here,” she said. She edged down the hall.

  They’d left on the small light over the sink. She crept onto the linoleum. Everything was quiet. She headed for the back door. When she passed the spice cabinet, she sniffed vanilla extract. It always smelled to her like heart, like her love for Todd.

  From where she was, it looked like the door was still locked. She slid along the cellar door, trying to get brave enough to get close enough to make sure.

  She looked back at Todd. He’d gotten as far as the edge of the kitchen and was squatting all the way down to the floor, the way when he was sick he’d fold himself over on the toilet.

  She looked into the sink. Drops of water were falling softly into the brimming bowl.

  The cellar door crashed open, knocking her across the room and into the kitchen table. The table went over. She fell on her front on the linoleum. The champagne bottle bounced and rolled into the living room. Todd screamed.

  Bruno was standing in the cellarway, holding up her underwear from the car.

  “You forgot your things,” he said.

  She turned on the floor and tried to tell Todd to run, but he was already running down the hallway. Bruno was over her in one long stride and after him. She got up and chased them. Bruno caught him on the stairs and dragged him down by the legs, Todd’s torso and head bouncing as he came down each riser. Audrey was up and barking in an uproar. Joanie punched and tried to kick, and Bruno let go of one leg and forearmed her across the head so that she pinwheeled over a low chair in the living room and landed on the rug. Something shot through her back.

  She pulled herself up on an elbow, stunned. She heard a heavy thump and a high-pitched bark from Audrey. Bruno dragged Todd into the room by the feet and dumped him on the floor beside the coffee table. Then she heard him hustle the dog through the kitchen by the collar and pitch her down the stairs. There was a spectacular crash.

  He came back into the living room and stood over them, breathing hard.

  Audrey was barking and crying in the basement, and Joanie could hear her dragging herself around, but her voice was getting weaker. Bruno ran his hand over his hair. He flexed his shoulders to fix his shirt. He waited until there was only one solitary bark. Then he turned on the lamp and took a seat on the couch.

  Todd was up on his elbows, too. His nose was bleeding. He was crying, but he wiped his face fiercely.<
br />
  Bruno was looking into her eyes. “‘Sordo come una compana,’” he said. “‘My stone-deaf love.’”

  There was a stabbing pain in her shoulder blade when she tried to put weight on her other elbow. She cried out.

  “Pretty good tumble you took,” Bruno remarked.

  “Fucker,” Todd said. It was the first time she’d heard him use the word.

  “Fuckin’ Flyin’ Wallenda,” Bruno said.

  “What’re you doing?” she said. “What do you want from us? We don’t have your money.”

  He put his hand out flat toward her. “Forget the money. The money’s history. Did I ask about the money? The money’s over. Please. Let’s talk about you.

  She went faint and cold and momentarily had the impression she couldn’t make out the color of the rug.

  Todd was sniffling and got to his hands and knees. Bruno put a foot on his rear and pushed him over.

  “Let me tell you a little secret,” Bruno said. “Tommy was coming to meet us that night. He parked a mile or so up the road. We were far away and had a bad angle on it, but we saw him get hit. It was pretty dark but we saw some of the car. We saw someone get out.”

  Joanie remembered the darkened parked car right before the accident. She leaned more on one elbow and pulled her other arm closer to her body to lessen the pain. “Why didn’t you do something?” she asked.

  “How did we know what was goin’ down?” Bruno said. “The people whose money we had were already a little upset.”

  “You knew then?” Joanie said. “You knew then it was me?”

  He shook his head. “Not until I saw you again. Saw the two a you again. You’re not exactly fuckin’ archcriminals.”

  He stood up and leaned the brass floor lamp at a forty-five-degree angle between the sofa and the floor. The neck of the lamp assembly was on the arm of the sofa. He kicked through it and the lamp part snapped off. He picked up what was left, the rod and base, and wrapped the electric cord around it. Her insides seized up and then released. “Why didn’t you do something then?” she whispered.

  “Fuck you,” Bruno said.

  He unscrewed the base and yanked the cord out of the rod. What was left in his hands was about three feet long and hollow and an inch thick.

  “Now, what Joey’s up to, I don’t know,” he said. “He was up in Hartford with us, I know that. This I took to be a bad sign. But I’m in deep shit. You understand me? I’m up to my fucking ears.”

  “We don’t have the money,” she said.

  “Nobody else can have it, Joanie,” he said matter-of-factly. “Where else could it fuckin’ go?”

  “Maybe it blew away,” she said. “Maybe the cops took it.”

  He snorted.

  “Think of it like having a overdue book out of the library,” he said. “Having a real expensive book out of the library. And a real cranky librarian.” He stood up. He hefted the brass rod. “Where is it?”

  “We don’t know,” she said.

  He brought the rod down on Todd’s backside. Todd howled.

  “You son of a bitch,” she screamed. He stepped across Todd and put a foot on her bad shoulder and pinned her. The pain spiraled through her, and she saw lights.

  He stood back off her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, Todd was on his side, curled and holding himself.

  “What am I gonna do with you?” Bruno asked, like he was talking to a dog that was resisting being house-trained. “What am I gonna do?”

  “I can’t believe you hit him like that,” she said. She was whimpering from the pain and the shock.

  “Deal with it,” he said.

  Rage flooded her and she thought, I’m not sitting still for this, goddamit, and she rocked forward. The pain was blinding. She got more upright, though.

  “You think maybe now I should be convinced of your sincerity and I should just go away, maybe with a heartfelt apology. Right?” Bruno said. “Is that what you’d like?”

  She looked at him with hatred and nodded.

  “That’s very nice,” he said. “That’s nice to know. Now here’s some news for you: I give a fuck.”

  “You son of a—” she said, and he hit her again, a baseball swing, in the ribs. He hit Todd across the thigh.

  She thought, I have to kill him. He’s going to kill us.

  “Ask yourself,” Bruno said. “Why did you do this? Say: why did I do this?”

  “I’ll kill you,” she managed to say.

  “You did it because it was me, didn’t you, Joanie? Because you had me so far on the fuckin’ hook. ‘What’s Bruno gonna do about it? The sappy fuck.’”

  He hit her again.

  She shook. She crossed her arms. She tasted blood in her mouth.

  “Ah, you’re gonna go all the way to the end, aren’t you, Joanie? You’re gonna go down with me, aren’t you?” he said.

  Joanie opened her eyes and could see he was leaning closer.

  “Joanie remembers from Blessed Sacrament: martyrs get the crown,” he said. “All those saints, Joanie, huh? All they had to do was die.”

  “Maybe he never had it,” she said.

  He leaned even closer. He was only inches from her face. “We searched his house,” he whispered. “We searched everything.”

  She closed her eyes and ground the back of her head into the rug. He had her bad arm. The pain was like someone sawing a wire through her shoulder socket.

  “All that time,” Bruno said. “You know what I was waiting for? I was waiting for you to tell me the truth.”

  He got closer still.

  “What did you want from me?” he whispered. “What did you ever want from me?”

  “Oh, God, oh, God,” she said.

  “What you did to me,” he whispered. “After all I felt about you.” She saw tears in his eyes through her own. Todd was on his knees behind him and swung the champagne bottle by the neck, and the sound it made on Bruno’s temple was new, was nothing she’d heard before. He made a guttural noise, like a fishbone was caught back in his throat, and he went over. And she had the brass rod in her hands, and Todd had the bottle, and in agony and together they pulled themselves over him and fell on him, as if their retribution were absolution. As if for now it was the only grace imaginable.

  About the Author

  Jim Shepard (b. 1956) is the author of four short story collections and seven novels, most recently The Book of Aron, which has been shortlisted for both the Kirkus Prize and the American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal. Originally from Connecticut, Shepard now lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is the J. Leland Miller Professor of English at Williams College, where he teaches creative writing and film. He won the Story Prize for his collection Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Shepard’s stories have appeared in the New Yorker, theParis Review, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, among other publications; five have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and one for a Pushcart Prize.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1994 by Jim Shepard

  “Down in the Boondocks” written by Joe South. © Copyright 1965 by Lowery Music Co., Inc., Atlanta, Georgia. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Cover design by Kat JK Lee

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2667-3

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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