You drop the phone as you turn. In your mind, you think you can remember hearing it clack on the rocky ground with Mary’s lilliputian voice still issuing from it, but of course that can’t be true, there is no way you could have heard that. Not in that moment.
Burdick is dead. His brain splattered behind him like a priceless Jackson Pollock. You and Chandler Norris glance at each other over your partner’s body as Norris pivots away from you and bends over at the waist. The hem of his housedress rides up enough for him to aim through his stubby splayed legs. You are in his sights. This can’t be real. It’s not possible. Because a morbidly obese child molester with his hands cuffed behind his back has taken out your partner and gotten the drop on you.
You don’t know it, but not long ago he shot and killed a grazing cow from this very position. Investigators will find out it’s a sort of party trick he likes to show off.
He fires. He shoots you.
Lying there on the ground, bleeding, you realize that you really can hear Mary’s doleful little voice squeaking from the cell phone. So sad, really. Will she ever find peace? Your last thought before the blackness takes you is that you lied to her. Mary will be alone tonight. Maybe every night.
“All right,” Sheriff Anderson says, “I want you all to spread out. Forget about the supposed chalk marks on the trees. If there were ever any there, we’d have seen one by now. Keep your lights on the ground. Look for any disturbances. Footprints. Overturned leaves. Fresh earth. Jones, try Mojo again. See if there’s any kind of scent at all.”
You stumble forward. You feel their hatred. You feel your own hatred. You feel the moon hiding itself behind the clouds. You are forsaken.
You keep moving forward. There is nothing else to do. Your trudging feet catch on an exposed root and you stumble. Your feet slip in the wet leafmold, and you land face down in a deep wide puddle. And when you put your hand down to push yourself back up, you feel the garden hose. The air tube.
“This is it,” you say, but nobody hears you. You say it again, louder, and one by one, all of the flashlight beams converge on you so that you are lit up like an actor on a stage. You point to the hose so they can see it, and you say, “Here. This is it. Here.”
Sewell picks you up by the shirt collar and tosses you aside. He has a shovel and begins turning the earth. It is watery. The spot Chandler chose forms a natural depression in the land. Standing water. Sewell tosses out muddy, watery shovelfuls of dark earth. You think about the X cut into the plastic container’s lid, and you imagine water dripping and seeping through it all this time. You think about the garden hose. Was the end of it above the water or below the water? You’re not sure. You imagine the hose conducting the pooled water to inside the container. Water gushing inside the sealed tote, filling it in a matter of minutes. A horrible way to die.
Sewell is on his hands and knees. He has uncovered the green plastic lid of the container. He uses his arms to sweep the water off of it, but it’s of no use. The water is too deep. He is about to pry the lid off, but Anderson says, “No. See if you can pull it out first.”
Deputy Jones gets on the other side and he and Sewell grab the container by the handles, but it doesn’t budge. They grunt and strain, but the container does not move. Sewell holds up a hand and both men stop trying.
Sewell takes a new, careful, firm hold of the handles and nods at Jones to do the same. “On three, okay? Ready. One, two, three.”
Each man puts every bit of his strength into it, calling on untapped reserves of force, but the container doesn’t move. There is nothing. No response. Then, as the officers strain, a deep-throated sucking sound comes from the earth, like a man with pneumonia trying to clear his lungs. The sucking sound grows into a gurgle, and with a boiling intensity, the container is wrested from the begrudging ground.
They set it beside the hole, and Sewell immediately pries off the lid.
The container is full of water. It reminds you of an illuminated swimming pool at night with all the flashlights trained on it. You can see clumpy strands of yellow hair floating like albino seaweed. The back of her fragile head gently bobs like a submerged gourd.
And then—a horrid little exclamation point—you see the butterscotch candy rise to the surface and float there. A tiny sun on a rough sea.
* * *
Through the ground-fog, you leave the woods. The flashlights are cast down. Sewell carries Cris’s waterlogged body, and this bully-faced man is crying.
The rain has long since stopped. The sky is clear. The stars crystalline. There is no moon.
You follow the men across the creek and see the trailer ahead. You are surprised that they have not taken their grief out on you. Or their confusion as to why one group of human beings would do something so vile to another human being—you are surprised that these feelings have not been diverted to violence toward you.
The group approaches the trailer and you hear Sheriff Anderson ask, “What happened to the lights?”
A deputy (you think it is Jones), says. “Generator probably ran out of gas.”
“I can hear the damn thing running, so it’s not—”
The trailer’s floodlights come on and two silhouettes emerge. The gunfire does not go on for very long. And really, it’s not very loud, either. A lot of pop pop pop. And when you open your eyes, everybody from the search party is dead. Everybody. It was an ambush against a group of heartsick, spiritually depleted men. It was a slaughter.
“Billy, my boy,” Chandler says. “How’d those bread crumbs work out for you?”
Chandler is triumphant, grinning, but then he looks past you and sees Cris still cradled in the fallen Sewell’s beefy arms. He goes to her, looks, sniffs, but does not touch her. He leaves her where she rests. And when he looks back up, something is missing from his face. Something is broken.
“Look what you did,” he says to you. “Just look.”
By the time you get to Atlanta, you are very concerned about the environment. Climate change. Greenhouse gasses. PCBs. Mercury contamination. Things of that nature. This is the only world we’ve got, so it’s up to all of us to take care of it. We are stewards of the planet.
At some point in your life, you have to be able to discern between significance and insignificance. What is important and what is unimportant.
Actions and reactions. Responsibility for actions. Significant and insignificant actions. Whether or not we are just specks of dust like some people say we are. How much do you contribute to the end of the world if you throw a soda can out the car window? Or if you dispose of batteries in a landfill? Or if you don’t recycle plastics? Or if you kill a little girl?
Chandler is playing one of his tapes. Something to soothe Mama’s nerves, he said. The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. Frank is reading the early edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. From the backseat, you lean forward to read it over his shoulder, your feet resting on the Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun that is stowed on the floorboard there. Chandler decided to drive Frank’s Cutlass and leave the sheriff’s vehicles and the detectives’ sedan. But he gathered up every weapon he could find. The trunk is full of guns, mace, percussion grenades, and handcuffs. He even found Bessie.
The headline says: KIDNAPPING/MULTIPLE MURDER ROCKS SMALL GA TOWN. And underneath, in smaller type, ENTIRE SHERIFF’S DEPT “WIPED OUT,” SAYS LONE SURVIVOR.
Frank tosses the paper in the backseat. “We’re fucked.”
“Don’t be such a sourpuss, Frankie. Didn’t I hear you boys say something about Canada?”
“Canada,” you echo from the backseat.
“It ain’t nothin’ but a thing.”
“Really?” Frank asks, and there is a tone to his voice that makes you think of how a ten-year-old kid might sound. A sense of wonder, a sense of possibility. A child who is used to swallowing his parents’ lies because there is nothing else to eat.
“Of course,” Chandler says.
“You rea
lly think we could make it?” Frank says, the child who believes with all his heart the promise of Christmas morning.
“Sure. We gotta get rid of this car first thing. If we’re driving to the Great White North, we need a better whip than this.”
“Where? Let’s get it now,” the child urges the parent, ready for Christmas to arrive. Then the child snorts a healthy bump of crank from the divot between his calloused knuckles. God bless us everyone.
You are the only one who seems to realize that the direction you’re heading is the opposite of north.
You pick up the newspaper, and directly beneath the story about the tragedy in Stockmar County there is another story: SCIENTISTS REPORT OZONE HOLES OVER CANADA AND GREENLAND.
“We’ll go shopping, Frankie. Just you nevermind. Hey, Billy-Boy, let Daddy see that paper. Billy? Billy-Boy? Wake up now.”
“Huh?”
“Let Daddy see the paper.”
You hand it over, and Chandler scans it.
“You boys see that? I’m the mastermind. They’ll be setting up check sites. Let’s get that new car now. Then get into Atlanta.”
“What about Canada?” you ask and cough. Now when you cough, you cover your mouth with a dirty paper napkin. You found a wad of them on the floorboard, under the shotgun. The napkin is spotted with blood. You ball it up and stash it under the seat with the other bloody napkins. You wonder if there is an infection somewhere inside you, because you feel cold one minute and hot the next.
“First we have to get some m-o-n-e-y. Money, honey. We can do that in Atlanta. Then we’ll turn our happy asses right around and head north.” Still driving and thumbing through the paper, Chandler says, “Listen to this, kiddies. Some sicko is killing people and putting their heads in jars. Maybe I’ll send him Uday’s head. That lying bastard.”
Chandler cackles, rolls down his window, and tosses the newspaper. You turn around and watch the pages separate and tumble in the car’s backdraft. And you wonder what kind of impact that will have on the environment. The planet. We are its stewards.
The rest stop on Georgia 400 is mostly empty. There is not a lot to it. A squat brick building with bathrooms and vending machines inside. A long-haul rig is parked to one corner of the lot, the driver probably sleeping inside. The faded Cutlass pulls directly up to the structure and parks between a white Chevrolet Equinox and a pristine 1978 caramel-brown Cadillac Eldorado.
A boy of about twelve finishes walking his Chihuahua on the dog path and climbs into the backseat of the Equinox. To you, the little boy is shiny and has a kind of halo around him and you remember how the world looked like that to you when you were little and sick with tonsillitis. After a few minutes, the mother, father, and a little girl emerge laughing from the restrooms and join the boy in the car. The father gives the Cutlass and its occupants a disapproving once-over as he backs the SUV out of the parking space. You watch as they merge back on the highway, the white vehicle glowing in your altered vision.
The three of you continue to sit there, not talking. After several more minutes, a big-bellied man in a business suit and a creamy white cowboy hat comes out of the building. He is still drying his hands on a paper towel and his pink face has a look of relief, as though he just took the world’s biggest dump. The suit plus the cowboy hat makes you think of Boss Hogg.
Chandler pours himself out of the Cutlass and intercepts the man before he can get to his Eldorado.
“Excuse me, sir?”
Boss Hogg finishes drying the delicate area between his fingers, drops the paper towel in a wire mesh trashcan, and cocks a questioning eyebrow at Chandler.
“I was just wondering,” Chandler says, “do you know if, to get to Atlanta, do I need to be on 400 South, or 400 North?
“South,” Boss Hogg says, grinning, happy to oblige an idiot who can’t find his way to the biggest city in the Southeastern United States. “Just stay on 400 South till you cross 285, you’ll hit 85/75, then just follow the signs.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Sure thing.”
The businessman sidesteps Chandler and continues to his car. Chandler waddles forward toward the bathrooms, and then, Columbo-like, he turns around and calls out to the man.
“Oh, sir, uh, just one other thing.”
The man pauses, his thumb resting on the chrome push button of the door handle, his eyebrow once again arched, this time in mild irritation. Need me to draw you a map?
“Have you ever met Bessie?”
“Bessie?” the business man asks, that eyebrow of his taking on a slant that no longer communicates irritation, only confusion.
Chandler’s hand disappears inside the draping crenulations of his garment, his eyes, recessed in their swollen sockets, scan the rest area for witnesses.
“Yes, sir,” Chandler nods and brandishes the gun. “Bessie. She speaks only the truth.”
Satisfied that no one is around to see or hear, Chandler fires twice in rapid succession. Both bullets strike the man directly in the face, and the shrapnel-like effect of the bone fragments and shattered teeth cause the man’s head to more or less explode. Gore spatters the smooth candy-brown hardtop of the Eldorado and Boss Hogg crumples to the ground, dead. Interestingly, the creamy white Stetson tumbles to the pavement about a half second behind its former owner. And it is unscathed. Pure white. No bloodspray or perforation from bone fragments. Just like new. Chandler scoops the hat up and perches it atop his own head. He looks at you and Frank and gestures to the car like a showroom hostess. He looks bright and sparkly to you. Glowing. You are cold.
“Look! It’s a Caddie.”
* * *
In the dream, it’s like you are a bird, looking down. You can see the Cadillac making its way down the interstate, the top glittering brown like an insect’s back in the midday sun. Your birdself wants to swoop down and snatch it with your talons. Eat it. Or maybe feed it to your young.
Chandler’s music penetrates the dream, so that even as you soar free through the clean air, it taints you. Round and round, round and round. Your birdself soars over lakes, streams, golden fields. A green forest. You see a stream in the forest and glide down to it. There, you see Frank and Chandler and your humanself.
You and Chandler are in the water. He is drowning you, but Frank doesn’t see it. Frank is unaware. Frank is on a dry flat rock in the middle of the stream, warmed by the sun. You cry out, but Frank doesn’t hear, he doesn’t see. And Chandler pushes you deeper and deeper into the cold mountain runoff. He holds you down and you take water into your lungs. You are dead. Drowned. Beep beep beep, beep beep beep.
Chandler lets your body go, and the current whisks you away, buoyant, like a plastic milk jug tossed away as trash.
Your birdself watches Chandler pull himself onto the flat river rock and lay down next to Frank. Chandler is pale and obese with rings of fat that make him look like the Michelin Man.
Frank sits up and looks around. And you know it is you that he is looking for. He calls your name three times, and then he jumps into the water. His artificial leg remains on the rock, the not-quite-flesh-colored plastic warming in the sun.
Chandler picks up the leg and it turns into a glass jar. The glass jar holds Mrs. Lovejoy’s severed head.
Chandler looks up and he is looking into the eyes of your birdself and he says, “You don’t know what an ozone hole is. I’ll tell you about Chaos Theory.”
Swish swish swish, swish swish swish.
* * *
You wake up and feel Frank’s palm on your forehead. You hear him say something about a fever, something about a drugstore.
Kids. It’s always something. Always.
You ease the Eldorado into the parking lot of an all-night drug store. And you think yet again, This Eldorado is a really fine automobile. It floats along like a dream and was built in a time when the comfort of plus-sized people was still of importance. It is roomy. Plus, you just like saying the name. The sound of it. Eldorado. There is a promise in
there. The promise of a promise.
Little Billy has a fever. The poor dear. Always something. Always! What would these children do without you? You are half mama and half daddy and everything that these kids need. You are their protector. That is what these laws out there fail to understand. Yes, you are sick and something inside you is different from what is inside other people, but in the end, what these “officials” will never admit is that you make lives better. You improve the lives of your children. You are their protector. Their steward. In the end, you plead the blood of Jesus, and that is all you can do.
What about the little girl? What about Crisium?
But you are not ready for that thought. You do not yet want to bring that thought to the surface. Not now. Probably never.
You tell Frank to stay in the car with little Billy. Poor Frank. His leg. Hard for him to get around, so you end up doing for him. See? It really is always something. He’s like Tiny Tim. Hobbling around. A dirty little street urchin. You love him so. Maybe you should look for a crutch or something. He’d like that. But money is tight. This economy has been tough on everybody. Might have to use a five-finger discount.
You look at your image displayed in an overhead security monitor as you walk through the door. You have really let yourself go. And that diet powder hasn’t helped at all. You haven’t lost an ounce. Goddamn Uday, that lying bastard. Frank needs to lay off that stuff, too. It’s messing up his mind. Giving him pimples. Teenage blemishes. He doesn’t even need to lose any weight. Frank has always been svelte.
You grab a little shopping cart and push it forward, but it has a clacking, wobbly wheel and your nerves simply just cannot take that racket, not today, so you put the cart back and select another one, and goddamnit, wouldn’t you know it, the second one is worse than the first one. It’s always something. Always. You take that cart back and get a third one and that third one is juuuuusssst right.
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