He hiked back to his car.
He drove to the edge of Troy, out past the old covered bridge and past Experiment Farm Road, until he found a hill overlooking I-75 itself.
He left his truck parked on a gravel turnout, a mile or so from the interstate. Carrying both guns—the air rifle and the rifle rifle—he picked his way over a barbed-wire fence and sat down beside a tree, four hundred yards away. Out of headlight range.
The highway roared and whined. The headlights approached like starships, transforming into streaks, then taillights. It would be a challenge to try to hit them just as they passed. He’d have to lead them by…twenty feet? Part of it would depend on whether he used the air rifle or the real thing.
He went with the air rifle, although it grated at him. BB Sniper, my ass. The rifle bullet in his pocket seemed to announce itself, to clear its throat, to grow hot against his leg. He ignored it and screwed the scope on. Took his time calibrating, firing four shots into a pop can down in the ditch.
Patience, the dead switch whispered at him.
He was patient. Couldn’t have said what form of Perfection he was waiting for. Didn’t the headlights all look the same? And the longer he sat there, the more chance some cop would get curious about his truck, parked for no reason back there, with the empty gun rack in the rear window.
He wound up choosing a truck. A Peterbilt tanker that got his attention by pulling its Jake brake a mile upstream.
Milo let the Peterbilt fill his scope. Let the reticle hover off-center. He wasn’t trying to hit the driver. Moved his shoulders and arms and hands together, swiveling just slightly, letting the reticle pull out ahead of the truck, like a sprinter making his move.
Timing his breath, exhaling.
His lungs emptied. The oxygen in his blood hit maximum, leaving his eyes at their sharpest. He squeezed the trigger between breaths, when his body and mind were at their most still.
His ears, hyperalert, heard the crack of the shot and the distant crack of the pellet on the windshield. An adrenaline bomb went off inside him. He had a moment of Perfection that even his ancient soul enjoyed.
Then a universe of noise and confusion as the truck locked up its brakes and skidded to a stop—incredible!—less than a hundred yards down the shoulder. The stink of scorched rubber filled the night. Cars swerved and scrambled to give the truck room. A horn blared.
Milo’s body tightened up, and he almost bolted. Then the dead switch kicked in.
He exhaled. He sat like a stone.
The driver appeared, walking fast. Not your usual trucker type but a skinny guy in nice pants, with his shirt tucked in.
Flashlight.
The beam played up and down the ditch. Then up the hill, way to Milo’s right.
Milo reasoned with himself. He felt as if he stood out like a bonfire in the night, but that was just mind panic. He imagined what it looked like to the trucker, down there on the shoulder. He made a list of things the trucker saw.
Shapes. Shadows. One big rock and some fast-food trash.
Needle. Haystack.
The beam jabbed in his direction. Milo covered his scope with his hand, so the lens wouldn’t reflect.
The light passed over him without pausing.
In the dark that followed, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and focused in on the driver. The guy started walking again, back toward his cab. Milo zeroed the reticle on the back of his head. Followed.
Breathe, whispered the dead switch. Squeeze.
He didn’t. The adrenaline bomb in his chest fizzed and subsided.
The driver had hopped back up in his cab, but the truck didn’t go anywhere. He’s radioing the highway patrol, Milo thought. He won’t leave until they come.
He backed away through the weeds, uphill, crouching. Down the fenceline the way he’d come.
Dead grass. Duck under branches. Racing heart. Grunt. Gasp. Dodge a gopher hole.
Sirens. Fuck! If they had any brains, they’d send somebody down Experiment Farm Road, too. Goddammit. Even if he got to his truck and got on the road, a cop might pull him over, if he passed one.
Shit. He unslung the air rifle, wiped it down with his sleeve as he ran. When he judged it was print-free, he cast it aside, to the left, into a strip of woods.
Jogged through the tall roadside grass until he drew even with his truck, and thirty seconds later was on the road, fiddling with the radio. Rifle in its place, up on the gun rack.
He drove casually into Troy and out of danger, and the main thing on his mind was that he still wished he hadn’t told Jodi that slaughterhouse story.
Let a little time pass, he thought. Be patient, just like with firing the rifle. Make it perfect, and she’d let him in again.
Radio. Washer-and-dryer sale. Slow song. Static.
—
One day when school had been going about three weeks, Jodi stopped the school bus at the Kosmal driveway, out on Tick Ridge Road, to pick up little Rachel and Skye, and there was Milo Wood, in a brand-new Cincinnati Reds ball cap. There was his truck, parked just down the road.
“Milo!” gasped Jodi as he climbed aboard the bus.
“Hey,” he said, smiling a warm smile. “Can I sit up here in front?”
A week ago, he had sent her flowers. Five yellow roses, two red roses. A low-pressure bouquet.
Three days ago, a note on stationery paper, saying he was sorry. Saying he had a surprise for her.
At home, he built a little Jodi shrine. A plastic toy pig. A grocery-store receipt. A candle. A picture of some mums. A picture of a school bus.
Now here he was, half on, half off the actual bus.
Ten little kids and two young teens sat perfectly still, observing.
“I’m not supposed to have riders,” said Jodi, keeping it quiet. “Extra grown-ups, like friends or whatever you are.”
“Not supposed to” didn’t mean “no.” Milo started climbing the rest of the way onto the bus, but Jodi reached for the lever, slowly closing the door.
“You can follow me back to the garage,” she said. “Now, get down; you’re going to get me in trouble.”
All right. He stepped down. The door closed in his face.
He followed the bus to fourteen more driveways and three schools, with kids piling up in the backseats, staring. One of them made a face at him. He made a face back. The kids laughed. He could see them turn around to tell Jodi.
Schoolkids, he thought. Thumbs-up.
—
“I quit the slaughterhouse,” he told Jodi after she parked the bus at the district garage.
“So much for putting food on the table.”
“It’s okay. I know somebody who knows somebody over at SynthaGro. They might put me on.”
SynthaGro was a company in Troy that would come and spray little pellets on your lawn and keep bugs and weeds from doing what they did. If he got hired, Milo would be wearing a green uniform with his name on it and pushing a little green spreader—kind of like a lawnmower—around people’s yards. It didn’t pay as well as Dinner Bell, but hey.
“Dinner Bell is like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” said Jodi. “Anything but that.”
And she kissed him on the cheek.
For some reason, this made the dead switch perk up. In the space of his own head, Milo whipped around with a savage grin, teeth exposed, and made the switch disappear.
I’m going to have this, he thought, lashing out. I’m going to have this one good thing. And then another good thing after that. And another.
His old souls peed themselves, spiritually, in amazement.
He kissed her back.
Roses. Letter. School bus.
“What are you thinking?” Jodi asked.
“I’m doing poems in my head,” he answered.
—
She wouldn’t sleep with him unless they were living together.
“So move in,” he said, shrugging. “Your apartment’s the same as mine. What difference does it make?”
>
She squinched up her eyes.
“That’s romantic,” she said.
“It’s practical,” he said, but then he wheeled around and grabbed her and kissed her and took her hand. She shook his hand off and put her arm around him. They walked out of K’s with their arms around each other.
“The kids are asking when you’re going to follow the bus around again.”
“I thought you were going to get in trouble?”
“I did. Someone called the school. I’m lucky I didn’t get written up.”
It might be fun to be a teacher, he sometimes thought. Once he got to college, anything could happen, really.
—
She moved in that same evening.
Jodi paused in total silence when she saw the Jodi shrine he’d built. He didn’t explain. Just stood worrying, making silent finger-snapping motions.
She didn’t say anything. Just moved on, kept moving in. The second all her things were inside and she’d cleaned the bathroom, she pulled him into the bedroom and said, “You may take off your clothes.”
He saw that she had arranged some things beside the Jodi shrine. A simple Milo shrine: the word “Milo” on a piece of paper, and a candle.
Bright skin. The lamp. Twisted sheets. Breeze. Open window.
And then the list stopped. The poem stopped, if that’s what it was, and there was just her and him, one thing, breathing perfectly.
After, she lay half on top of him, stroking his chest. She said, “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I do,” he said. He loved her, too. He wanted to, anyhow. Wasn’t it the same thing?
So he said “I love you” back to her, and the dead switch screamed as if he’d poured acid on it.
—
It was a lazy afternoon and evening. They unpacked some things and arranged some things. Argued in good humor over whether to use his couch or hers (hers), which TV to use (hers), which plates to use (hers). Three times, they stopped to make love.
The dead switch calmed down and took a softer tack.
What are you doing? it whispered. This could be good or bad. You had to have something bright and human and normal going on, right? Otherwise the beautiful things you did might come to light.
After the second time, they didn’t bother getting dressed again. They sat on the living-room floor, sorting records, naked. Jodi had a tattoo of a dolphin on her shoulder.
“See my dolphin?” she asked, leaning forward, almost into his lap.
“It’s nice,” he said. It was blue.
“I like your armband,” she said.
Milo’s forearm said “Jodi” around it, in a ring.
“It’s not a real tat,” he said. “I drew it on with a marker.”
“Wow.”
“We should both get real ones. Real armband tats with our names.”
She shook her head.
“What?” he said. She wasn’t excited about the idea. He had thought she’d be excited. Why wasn’t she?
“Don’t make a big deal out of it,” she said.
Yeah, said his thousand voices. Don’t.
They were right. Milo nodded, looking away. He sat quietly, tracing her dolphin tattoo with his finger, pulling her close.
Okay, he thought. Breathe out. Be still. It’ll all be so good if you’ll just be still and let it.
—
After she fell asleep, he went for a drive.
Parked his truck off-road and hiked to a bluff overlooking Tick Ridge. Part of Jodi’s bus route.
He needed someplace totally new, after all, if he was going to shoot again. No doubt they had their eye on I-75 now.
Full moon.
Breathe in…let it go…
Crack! The sound of a real rifle, the kick of a real rifle against his shoulder.
The punch! of a real car window disintegrating.
Squealing tires. Headlights going all sideways. The car slid backward into the ditch on the far side of the road.
Warmth bloomed in Milo’s gut and spread through his chest. His groin tingled.
Had he…?
He waited.
Faint car radio.
Scraping noise.
The driver’s-side door opened, and a woman got out. Walked to the middle of the road and stood there with her head down. One hand on her hip, the other rubbing the back of her neck.
Okay.
That was good, right? She wasn’t hurt. Right?
The old voices and the dead switch locked grips and wrestled.
When he got home, Milo was momentarily startled to find Jodi sitting on her couch in his living room, wrapped in one of his blankets, watching her TV.
When people move all their things in together, it takes a while for their minds to follow.
“Where were you?” she asked.
He leaned over and kissed her.
“I drive around when I can’t sleep,” he said.
“Well, watch out,” she said. “There’s those asshole kids that shoot BBs at people.”
—
Two days later, he had his first day wearing the SynthaGro uniform.
There wasn’t even any training.
“It’s just like a lawnmower,” the foreman told him. “When you’re done, put up three or four of these tags.” He handed Milo a bundle of wire stakes with little yellow flags on them, warning people that the lawn had been treated and to stay off the grass for a couple of days.
“Good to go?” he asked.
“Very good,” said Milo. And he climbed into his SynthaGro truck, which smelled like poison. It burned a little, just the smell going through his nostrils.
But it was the smell of having a job, too. It was the smell of having a real life and of someone at home, someone he liked being with. It was the smell of love.
He sprayed three lawns and then stopped at the pay phone outside the Stop-N-Go in Troy.
Jodi answered the phone.
“Hey, precious,” she said. “Whatcha doing?”
Want to meet for lunch?”
“Maybe.”
“Pizza Hut.”
“Healthy choice. Okay. Now?”
“I’ll wait for you. I’ll get a table; I’m like a mile away.”
Jodi made a kissy noise as he hung up.
—
Four minutes later, Milo died on his way to Pizza Hut.
He was going down Main Street thinking how Velma from Scooby-Doo was actually hotter than Daphne, although you were obviously meant to think the other way around. Now, why is that? his brain had just begun thinking, when the thing that happened happened.
It was fast and bad.
A Camaro came screaming down Main Street, decided Milo was going too slow in his SynthaGro truck, and screeched by in the oncoming lane. (Jackass.)
The Camaro went slightly airborne over the railroad tracks by the Sunoco station.
On the other side, a church bus full of kids, on a road trip from the Liberty Baptist Church in Columbus, swerved to avoid the Camaro. Swerved into Milo’s lane, just as Milo came over the tracks. Milo had about a tenth of a second to quit thinking about Velma from Scooby-Doo and process whether to hit the bus or take his chances in the ditch.
Fast fast fast: Milo yanked the wheel and rolled the truck into the ditch. Fell through the driver’s door when it flapped open. The door scissored back on him, chopping him in two and trapping both halves under the truck, with lawn chemicals pouring all over. His dead switch didn’t have time to arm.
It took him three seconds to die, but it was a long, terrible, slo-mo three seconds.
—
Jodi passed the wreck on her way to Pizza Hut, and by then there was a collection of vehicles on-site: the bus, the Camaro, five cop cars with lights flashing, an ambulance, and two fire trucks.
She stopped. She knew. She started shaking.
The same instant, the chemical smell washed over her.
“That might be my boyfriend,” she told one of the cops, gagging as
she spoke, covering her face with her hand.
The cop nodded. He looked sympathetic but raised his hands, saying, “You need to back up, ma’am. Please. There’s some nasty stuff spilled here.”
Jodi backed off.
She stared into the ditch.
Truck. Chemicals. Crashed and smashed. Part of Milo. Red lights blue lights.
She thought of all the different things that could have happened or not happened, and how different things were going to be now from the way they would have been.
Looking down, Jodi noticed that she had forgotten to put on shoes.
Barefoot. Asphalt. A faded Pepsi can. They wouldn’t have let me in Pizza Hut, anyway, she thought.
Milo woke up half in, half out of the water. As if he’d washed up there like a dead animal.
For a moment, it was very nice. The smell of earth and grass and wildflowers, the cool of the water on his skin. Then, as always, memory came. First a whisper, then a roar, and Milo gagged on it. The memory of the rolling truck and the chopping in two and the crushing and drowning in chemicals was still immediate, still tangible.
This memory backed off, leaving him wild-eyed. Leaving him with other memories, things he had done, like shooting at people. Things he was probably going to do, if the accident hadn’t—
He rolled over on his side, convulsing, and puked all over some dandelions.
His whole body shook.
Milo wasn’t surprised by his condition. He had led enough questionable lives to know that bad things worked their way into your soul. When you had done wicked things, you arrived in the afterlife with a berserker of a hangover.
Footsteps approached, crashing through soft grass. Milo winced.
He didn’t look up. He spat, cleared his throat, and said, “Hey.”
“Indeed,” said someone. “Hey.”
Someone who was not Suzie.
A cat trotted up and rubbed noses with him, then trotted off again.
Towering above, wearing something like a ruffled funeral dress, Nan frowned at him.
“And how,” she said, crossing her arms, “would you say that went?”
—
Milo took a few seconds to get his thoughts in order.
Reincarnation Blues Page 21