The Shoebox Trainwreck

by John Mantooth

  Snakeskin asks Martin how he’s been doing.

  Martin, nervous, jumpy Martin, manages to say, “Life’s good, man. Who’s your friend?”

  Snakeskin frowns at the floor. Then thrusts a thumb at the tall man. “This is Rodney. Rodney, this is Martin.” He looks at Martin eye to eye and adds, “The one I told you about.”

  Rodney barely glances at Martin and says, “The one that sells good shit or the other one you were telling me about?”

  Snakeskin says, “The other one, man. The other one.”

  “What I thought,” Rodney says.

  Martin glances quickly at the closet door and says, “Fellas, I’m just trying to run a lab here. If it ain’t about crank, you probably got the wrong guy.”

  “Oh, I think we got the right guy.” Snakeskin pulls a switchblade from his back pocket. He nods at Rodney. “Go get her.”

  Rodney bobs his head as if to some unheard music and says, “Hell yeah.”

  An awkward moment passes as Snakeskin keeps his eyes trained on Martin, and Martin shakes and fidgets like he needs a hit of something bad.

  Rodney returns with a young girl, maybe seventeen. She walks in front of him, and he stares at her ass, barely covered by a pair of tight cut-offs. Prime jailbait, the type of girl who’s been living a life unfit for any age, much less seventeen, the type of girl who wears her sadness underneath hard looks and snarled lips. She doesn’t meet Martin’s eyes, and Doug knows why Snakeskin is here.

  “Martin, you know Emily?”

  Martin shrugs. “I think I’ve seen her around.”

  “Seen her around.” Snakeskin nods slowly. “Seen her around.”

  He makes like he is about to stroke his chin in a thoughtful manner with the hand that does not hold the switchblade. The blade is still unexposed, and he is twirling it between his fingers as if this might just be a nervous habit, nothing more. Then suddenly and with great force he thrusts the palm of his free hand out, catching Martin hard in the nose. Martin’s head snaps back. He shakes it once and thick streams of blood pour from his nostrils.

  The switchblade is open and at his throat. “You seen her around, huh? If by seeing her around you mean sticking your dick in her, then yeah, I suppose you’ve seen her around.”

  “No,” Martin says. He’s crying. “No, I ain’t never fucked her, Snakeskin.”

  “Oh, am I mistaken? Let me check my source.” He turns to Emily. “You and this fella ever do anything?”

  Emily looks at Martin then. “Well, yeah,” she says. “A couple of times. It was a trade. He gave me what I wanted. I done told you all this before, Snake.”

  “Yeah, but I needed to hear it again, baby.” He looks at Martin. “You knew me and Emily had a thing going right?”

  Martin doesn’t respond.

  “Answer me!”

  Martin shrugs. “She offered.”

  “You should have said no,” Snakeskin says and grins. A boyish grin. It makes him look younger, maybe less dangerous. This is only an illusion, a trick. “I’m not into sharing her. You think I get off on her being with another man?”

  “I’m telling you, it was a fair trade. I didn’t make the offer. She did. I didn’t know you two had a thing. How could I have known that, man?”

  Snakeskin turns to Rodney. “You believe this shit? First he didn’t fuck her. Now he fucked her but it was just a fair trade. What’s next? He going to ask me for a refund?”

  While Snakeskin’s eyes are on Rodney, Martin looks in Doug’s direction. He nods his head quickly as if to say, now or never.

  Doug already knows this, yet he feels no real obligation to Martin. He doesn’t even like him. Maybe he did once. A long time ago, when they were young. When the world was different. Somehow, Martin reminds Doug of that place, that youth, that happier time. Yet, he still considers briefly just letting Martin get what is coming to him. If he could get away with it, he might, though he realizes that the situation is more complicated than that. Snakeskin will likely cut Martin. In which case, Martin will scream for Doug to shoot them. In which case, they will come for Doug too.

  So, it really is now or never. Martin glances nervously over at Doug again, his lip trembling.

  Snakeskin says to Martin, “Rodney, we got us a little weasel here. A lying weasel. Know what that means?”

  Rodney shrugs and scratches his ass.

  “Means I’m going to have to cut—”

  The sound is deafening, the recoil sudden and harsh and for an instant Doug thinks that the gun has misfired and he has been the one shot instead of Snakeskin. He sees Snakeskin’s body jerk back, sees the blossom of blood soak through the white t-shirt, and Doug knows that the bullet has hit its target. It’s like somebody presses a slow motion button. Snakeskin grimaces and lurches, tries to find where the shot came from. Doug feels like vomiting, but grips the gun tighter and squeezes off two more shots. One sails over Rodney’s head. The next one collides with his mouth. For a second Rodney twists his face up as if he has only swallowed a bitter pill instead of a bullet. His mouth begins to leak blood. He falls down hard. Doug drops the gun, doubles over, and pukes on the floor.

  Emily is screaming.

  The next thing Doug knows, Martin is standing over him, ordering him to get up and “shoot the bitch.” Doug shakes his head and throws up again between his knees.

  Martin reaches into the puke, retrieves the gun. Doug hears the front door bang shut behind him. There is another blast from the gun.

  Doug pulls himself up, wiping off his knees and hands.

  Martin comes back in and tosses the gun on the couch. He pumps his fist in the air a few times and fumbles inside a chest of drawers for his stash of crank. He does a line, inhaling hard and shadowboxes the air, shuffling his feet, bobbing and weaving like some hick parody of Cassius Clay.

  “We got to clean up this mess and hide the bodies!” He shouts and does a little two-step around the den. “But hell yeah, Martin lives on! Dougie saves the day!”

  Martin does his little jig, flailing around like a man who has just won the lottery. His face is flushed, splashed with tiny beads of blood and sweat; his nose is swollen from where Snakeskin hit him, and it’s still bleeding, staining his smile red. Doug sees the gun on the couch, blood and vomit around the trigger. It’s time to act.

  He has it before Martin even stops dancing. He aims it at Martin’s head and waits.

  It didn’t have to end like this. There were places, bumps along the journey where he could have jumped off the Martin train. He simply chose not to because the ground looked too hard and rocky and the ride was just too much damn fun. So he had held on for this.

  The gun is warm in his hand, his pulse like thunder.

  This could work. The bodies, the drugs. He could put the gun in Martin’s hand. He could be home in fifteen minutes, maybe less, leaving this part of his life forever. He could start over.

  Martin still has not noticed Doug or the gun. He is jiving to some soundtrack in his head, oblivious to everything except Martin.

  “Hey, Martin?” Doug says.

  The soundtrack ends. Martin shimmies to a stop. He turns, sees Doug, sees the gun, makes a face like he can’t believe Doug is pointing a gun at his head. Then he scoffs, making some half-assed noise in his throat, making it sound like he thinks it’s funny Doug is pointing a gun at him.

  “Stop playing, Dougie. We got some work to do.”

  “You shouldn’t have gotten me mixed up in this, Martin. This wasn’t any of my business.”

  “You got your ownself mixed up, Dougie. I didn’t pull the trigger. You did that, man.”

  It’s true, what Martin says, and somewhere below all of Doug’s anger and his shock, he realizes that the best thing to do would be to put the gun down and leave. But Doug’s best is already behind him. He has reached survival mode. Here there can be no black and white, no right or wrong, just shades of gray, melting together to form something he can barely recognize.

  There is only
one way out now.

  Doug pulls the trigger. The bullet hits Martin in the chest and he woofs loudly. Martin staggers and then collapses. Doug goes over and watches him gurgle and spit blood. Martin wants to say something, but there will be no more words from Martin. Doug aims again, this time at Martin’s forehead. He fires once and then twice, ripping chunks of flesh from bone, obliterating his friend’s face.

  He drops to one knee and carefully pries Martin’s fingers open. He almost puts the gun in Martin’s hand before realizing there is a better solution. Wiping it clean of blood and puke, he slips it inside the waistband of his jeans. On the way home, he will toss it into the river.

  He leaves Martin’s trailer. The wind has picked up, howling through the bare trees, banging the back door of Martin’s trailer. He steps over Emily, feeling sorry for her. She’s just one more piece of debris caught in the windstorm he’s been plunging headfirst into his whole life.

  Out by the road, someone has thrown a pumpkin from their car, and Doug starts toward it, thinking Maci might like to have a Jack-O-Lantern to put on their doorstep. As he gets closer, Doug sees that the pumpkin’s been smashed, and the orange pulp lay in glistening strings against the blacktop. It’s gone rotten and stinks. Doug turns away and circles the trailer, beginning the walk into the woods where he has parked his truck, hidden away from a world where things so often go to ruin.

  Walk the Wheat

  Mama called the doctor when Cody’s head wouldn’t stop bleeding. The doctor, an old man who could barely sidle in through the doorway and kept hitching his pants up over his belly, looked at Cody’s white hair and silver eyes for a long time before removing the damp cloth Mama had placed on his forehead.

  You should’ve took this boy to the hospital. Gash is an inch deep.

  No hospitals, Mama said.

  The doctor frowned, the lines on his bald head furrowing into criss-crosses of light and dark.

  I’ll get my surgical stuff.

  We waited as Cody stirred. Expression came back into his eyes instead of that scary, glazed look he’d been wearing. His mouth was no longer a flat line. His face no longer a dead, blood-streaked thing.

  The doctor wiggled back through the door, carrying two leather pouches. He put them down, kneeling beside Cody, his large frame shifting the trailer with a loud creak.

  This’d be a great deal less painful if you’d call an ambulance.

  No, just do it, Mama said. Do it quick.

  Fifteen minutes later, Cody had seven stitches in his forehead and was sitting up, drinking a glass of water.

  I’ve got to ask, you know, the doctor said, mopping sweat off his forehead, how it happened this time.

  He hit his head. Outside, playing.

  The doctor turned to Cody.

  Cody shrugged, his white hair sliding over his collar, his thin, pointed face, expressionless unless apathy could be considered an expression.

  I hit my head. Like she said. Can’t you tell?

  The doctor did not look satisfied. He looked worried. He glanced from Mama to me to Cody and back to Mama as if trying to break the complex code that existed among us and decipher all the unuttered words we wished to speak.

  I’ve been here too many times. And that last time. . . . He trailed off, as if unsure how to speak of such a thing, or maybe he was afraid to speak of it, afraid that saying the words out loud would make them true. Next time, he said, I won’t come. Do not call me. Call the hospital. I wash my hands of you, all three.

  Let me pay you, Mama said.

  He waved her off. I shouldn’t have come. Something is wrong in this place. You people have done something so wrong I can smell it. Don’t call me again.

  That night we lay in the cool dark of the room, the windows half-up, the blinds tied back, opening the night and the miles of wheat beyond like a story book except the words were written in a strange tongue.

  Cody? I said. Did you really drown? Or did I just dream it?

  Cody sighed. Just forget about all that stuff, Davy.

  I can’t. I mean, I try, but then you start bleeding again, and I want to tell Mama about what happened, but then I think she knows, but I’m not even sure if I know. It eats at me something bad.

  Okay, he said. I’ll tell you what I remember. But you can’t tell Mama. I don’t think she can handle it.

  I promise.

  He told me of the day just a few months ago when we’d gone to the rock slide up in the cove, where the water runs off the creek and slicks the rock and pools at the bottom. I remembered it well, going out with our towels and shorts, getting sunburned before we even made it to the cove, and then letting the big oaks shade our skin like a balm.

  We found the place, a dark and magical oasis where the sun did not break through the forest canopy and the sound of water was in our ears like the sound of silence, deafening and impossible to hear all at once.

  I’ll go first, Cody had said.

  Shouldn’t we check the pool? I said. Cody had told me before never to slide down the rock until I was sure there were no logs or other debris submerged beneath the dark water.

  I’m checking it now, he said, and slid, his feet flung up in the air, his arms spread out as if he were trying to hug the whole damn forest. Down he went, gray water pluming out from under his cut-offs, his body spinning round and round like a top. He let off one whoop of joy before hitting the water.

  There was a splash and the whole cove got quiet. Even the noise of the water seemed to recede, and all I could do was wait for him to come back up.

  But he didn’t come back up. Not for a long time. And when he did finally emerge, his hair and eyes were silver, and his body looked put together wrong.

  I think I broke my back, Davy, he said. A slight breeze wandered through our window and settled on my forehead. There was pain, like my whole body screaming out at once, then numbness. Then I was trying to come back up, but I couldn’t move. And then I couldn’t breathe.

  He shuddered.

  You were down there a long time, I said.

  You should have pulled me out.

  I was scared.

  Cody stood up and crossed the room. He sat on the edge of my bed and put his arm around me. I know you were scared. So was I. But I’m back now and that’s all that matters.

  What was it like? I asked him. When you were gone?

  After I ran out of breath, I just closed my eyes, and waited. I couldn't feel anything, not even the water. It was like I was in a vacuum. And then I opened my eyes and it was just like darkness. Just pure, clean darkness. No noise, no light, not even smell. Nice. I liked it right away.

  And then what’d you see?

  I told you I couldn’t see nothing.

  Well, what happened?

  Nothing. At least not for a while. Long enough for me to realize that I didn’t exist like I thought I did.

  He got off my bed, his long white hair hanging over his eyes and continued: I remember leaving the cove. I remember walking. Wanting to come home bad. There was a wheat field . . . like a maze. It was this wheat field— he said, pointing out the window —but it wasn’t this wheat field either. I dunno. I saw things. Things I can’t explain. Shapes and shadows and so many things that just don’t have names. Then I heard your voice, Davy. I heard you talking to me and I listened hard and kept moving toward the sound. Next thing I knew I’d come out of the wheat and I was wet again, and my leg was stuck in something, some deadfall or something, and I jerked it free and it tore my knee up something awful, but I was alive again. And I swam to the top and saw you standing beside the pool, reaching out to me.

  Mama shit herself when you came walking in that day. None of your bones fit right.

  Yeah, he said, popping his shoulder in and out of place with a sickening crack. Still don’t.

  I’m glad you came back.

  Me too, he said and began to cough. It was a shallow, sputtering noise and it sounded like there was gravedust in his lungs.

  He wen
t back to his bed and we didn’t talk anymore. But I wondered why he’d come back and how long he’d stay.

  The wind started blowing wide open outside the trailer and our beds rocked to and fro and the moon sat high and fat in the heavens, an unlidded eye that never slept.

  A woman came to visit us the day after Cody’s knee started bleeding. His kneecap looked crooked and there was a gash above it that ran the width of his leg. The woman said her name was Victoria. She was pretty, prematurely gray, and concerned.

  Mama tried to hold her at the door, so she wouldn’t see inside where Cody was bleeding all over the newspaper, but the woman pushed past her and into the house anyway.

  Doctor Fitzsimons called me. I work for the state, family services.

  She looked at Cody, the blood, the newspapers balled up in the corner of the room—stained so red they barely looked like newspapers and more like skins from some moulting demon.

  She knelt beside Cody. Tell me what happened. Tell me the truth.

  It just opened up and started bleeding.

  And nobody touched you? Nobody at all?

  No, not this time. Not anymore.

  What do you mean, anymore?

  Mama ain’t never touched me. Then Cody shut his eyes and refused to talk.

  She turned to me.

  How old are you?

  Fourteen.

  Do you know what happened?

  I nodded.

  She smiled. You can tell me.

  He just bleeds. These cuts open up on him and he bleeds. He’ll be okay. It’ll stop in a few hours.

  I see. She stood up, keeping her distance from the newspapers. She looked at Mama. I’ll be back, Mrs. Langer.

  I didn’t see her again for a long time.

  Cody sat up in the bed during the thunderstorm so suddenly I thought lightning had struck the trailer. Outside, the storm was brewing hell and bringing it down hard and relentless. The rain sounded unending, like the sound of being in your own skin, like a sound that had stopped being a sound and had become a wall, a physical thing that couldn’t be broken or even shaped anymore beyond a single concussive drone. A thousand bees synched with one heartbeat.