by Bill Cameron
November 19 - 4:56 pm
S-s-s-shadow
What are you telling me? What the fuck ... are you ... telling me?”
Grandpa leans into his crutch, eyes aquiver, a single greased spear of metallic hair bobbing forward on each barked syllable.
“I saw him. He messed up Ed and sent the kid running.” Myra clutches Danny like a piece of flotsam at sea, her teeth bared. He struggles, but her tweaker strength is too much for him.
Grandpa looks like he wants to hit her. “How do you even know what he looks like now?”
Already a withered crone, she seems to shrink in the face of his rage. “I went to see him is all. After I heard my dad talking to Lizzie on the phone about the land and about the boy—”
“Went to see him how? His own goddamn mother doesn’t even know where is.”
“Everyone knows where you keep him. I just thought I’d tell him about his son.”
“There’s nothing there to tell anything to. He’s a fucking potato, you stupid bitch.”
I’m not really listening. My stomach feels like an overfilled tire ready to pop, and my mind keeps drifting off to a day deep in my past, the summer before I enlisted, only seventeen years old. My friend Tommy and I took a road trip, drove his cherry ‘61 Chevy Impala up to B.C. He knew a guy who knew a guy whose parents owned a cabin near Whistler. Tommy finagled us an invite for a week of hell-raising, claimed girls would be there. About that he was right. He also said everyone would be so hammered even I could get laid. About that I knew he was blowing smoke up my ass. But I figured it would be fun anyway. What neither of us anticipated was his car getting totaled by a moose.
It happened the afternoon we arrived. Tommy and I were hanging out on the porch with some guy we’d just met, one of the other guests. Drinking Molson’s and smoking a little pot and considering the nature of the sky above the deep green haze of the forest. As we looked on, a moose appeared from among the resinous fir trees and strolled across Tommy’s Impala. Sheet metal squealed and buckled, the roof took on the shape of the front bench seat. The engine appeared from under an abrupt fold in the hood. And then the moose stopped, stood there and gazed up at us, eyes serene.
The other guy—Marvin? Morvin?—muttered something about never having seen a moose before. “Cool.” Tommy made a little sound somewhere down in the bore of his throat and dropped his joint. We were poor enough in those days that I remember hoping we could find it; didn’t want good dope going to waste. I opened my mouth to say something, but Tommy was already moving. Jumped down off the porch in a single bound and charged across the wide gravel driveway. He threw his beer bottle as he ran. It bounced off the moose’s shaggy flank and fell among the rocks and lichens that lined the ditch below the parking turn-out. “Get off ... get off get off!” The moose shrugged and turned, shattering safety glass and collapsing the trunk. Tommy pulled up, realizing perhaps his impotence against a half ton of indifferent ruminant. At forest’s edge, the moose looked back over its shoulder at Tommy, expression fathomless, then vanished in a swoosh of verdant fir branches.
Something about the way the man with the divot in his head comes out of the shadows beyond the statue reminds me of that moose. Maybe I’m a little delirious; my blood has to be draining at a pace I can’t long sustain. I might be the first to notice him. I’m certainly the first to recognize him for who he is. He stared up at this very spot from the street in front of my house, and he broke Big Ed like he was made of balsa wood. And now he moves with aloof indifference across the grass and unceremoniously grabs George’s head and twists. For all his great mass, the Flea’s neck is less sturdy than Big Ed’s. He drops like a log, dead before he hits the ground. The fellow leans over him, eyes wide and curious.
“Snap.”
No one moves. Myra and Grandpa stare at the biker’s body in stunned silence. Luellen’s face is milk-white. She recognizes the man with the hole in his head—they all do. But for Luellen, he holds some special meaning. She looks like she’s about to break in half. The stranger steps over the body, puts a finger to Grandpa’s lips. “S-s-shhh.” The old fellow’s eyes bulge, but he doesn’t speak. The stranger turns to Luellen, who sits quivering, face wet with tears and rain.
“No, please.” Her voice sounds like tearing fabric. “Please, no more.”
But he reaches out and touches her on the cheek, wipes away the tears. He grins, sloppy and wide, as he puts his finger in his mouth. “S-s-s ...” His lolling, glassy eye loses focus for a moment. A potato.
Luellen puts her face in her hands. “No more.” Her voice is an echo of the wind and rain.
“S-s-s ...” He runs the back of his hand across his lips, slicking his wrist with glistening spit. “S-s-s—” Then he gulps air and closes his eyes. When he opens them again his eyes are clear, his voice strong.
“Ellie.”
I open my mouth, afraid to make a sound. Afraid to draw attention to myself. Under the statue, her arms clasped around her breasts like a shield, Luellen begins to sob. I roll onto my side, bite back a whimper at the pain. Danny notices the movement or sound and lunges toward me. Myra digs her fingers into his shoulders. A chirrup emits from his lips, a sound faint enough it could easily be missed. In my ears, he might as well be screaming. I struggle to push myself up, but my life is leaking out of me. I can feel it in the coldness in my feet and hands, in the shadows swimming before my eyes. I have no strength. Grandpa, Myra, Luellen, none of them are looking at me. The stranger consumes them. Beside me, Big Ed lies in the wet grass. His eyes stare, lifeless. His mouth hangs open as if he’s calling out. I reach toward him with my free arm.
The gun is still tucked in his belt. Eager’s gun. My gun. Two pounds of murder, too much for me to lift as my blood dribbles into the mud beneath me. But Danny is whimpering and frantic murmurs spill from Luellen’s lips, no more. Beyond Big Ed’s bulk, I see a mark on Harvey Scott’s pedestal. EG®, Sharpie-etched on marble. Eager looking over my shoulder hardens my resolve. It’s down to me, the ace in the hole. Big Ed is dead, the old man’s Flea is dead. I raise the gun, like lifting a boulder. I’ve got one chance, one shot at most. If I don’t make it count, the next shot will be the one that puts me down for good. George’s gun is closer to them than me.
Grandpa, sharp eyes wide, reaches out to the stranger. Myra pulls away from them all, yanking Danny along with her. Luellen catches Myra’s movement and lurches off the bench toward her little boy, thinking or not thinking, I don’t know. Reacting. But Myra, cranked wide, is too quick for her. She pushes Danny down into the mud and rakes her claws across Luellen’s face. Danny comes to life, not just screaming in my head, but screaming for all to hear. Everyone freezes, stunned, perhaps, by the sound he’s making, a keening wail only a terrorized child can make. His shriek awakens the last shred of strength left to me. I bring the gun up, that big ol’ .357, ace in the hole. Myra catches something in the corner of her tweaked eye, the movement of my arm. Turns.
That’s when I put the bullet in her ear.
November 19 - 5:01 pm
Lucy-Loo
Her name is Luellen Bronstein. When she orders a hot dog at Zach’s Shack and they ask her name for the ticket, she tells them, “Luellen.” When someone calls from Franklin High School to find out why Jase isn’t in class for the fifth day running, they ask for her by name. Her Discover Card is embossed LUELLEN BRONSTEIN. Her friends call her Lu. When he’s got the sillies, Mister Kadash across the street calls her Lucy-Loo. Luellen. It’s her name. It’s been her name all her life.
What she doesn’t like to acknowledge is her life began three years before on the summit of Mount Tabor amid falling rain and gunfire. The latest of many resets, a string of women and girls stretching back to Opal Kern’s crowded womb. Crazy Lizzie. Penitent Ellie. Stuart’s Ellie. Clam Dip Ellie, Scissors Ellie. Waiting and Watching Ellie. Heartbroken Ellie ... Danny’s Mother Ellie. Luellen. It’s her secret—only two people even know. Neither, she believes, will ever tell, though if they
do she’s already rehearsed the explanation. “Someone had to look after the baby. Ellie was in no state to do that. It had to be Luellen. I wanted us to be safe. I thought we were safe.” She hoped to never have to explain. If only she kept her head down, everything would be fine.
And then, so many safe years later, she found Hiram Spaneker in her Luellen Bronstein kitchen at six-thirty on a school day. Now she’s here where life began, where Luellen’s life fell in ruins at her feet. Givern Valley arisen from the darkness like one of those creatures in the movies Jase likes so much. It will never let her go.
She has no strength to move. She watches, helpless, as Stuart gently extracts the gun from Mister Kadash’s hand. He struggles to speak, pushes out words she cannot hear. For a long moment, he gazes at the gun like he’s examining an alien artifact. Then he draws a breath through his nose and turns to Hiram. The old man hobbles toward him, one hand raised, whether to take the gun or reach out to his son Ellie doesn’t know. “Boy—” Stuart shakes his head.
“Stop.”
Hiram stops.
Stuart’s head rolls around on his neck as loose as a top, searching. After a moment it finds its target. Danny. He holds the gun aimed uncertainly at Hiram’s feet as he moves toward the little boy. She reaches out to stop him. Stuart ignores her, brushing past. He looks down at Danny, a broad grin splitting his face.
She doesn’t know what to do. Everything has gone so wrong. She only ever had one goal, all this short life. Take care of the boy. Luellen’s baby. Thoughts of her previous lives flood through her, memories of the damage done throughout her many histories by the elemental force within her, and by this other standing with her. Stuart. But not Stuart. Something else, something larger than Stuart.
Hiram Spaneker.
It had always been Hiram. Stuart was his creature from the start, a creature made of anger and need and desperation. He’d come to her in the darkness outside the Victory Chapel and claimed her as his own, but at his father’s behest. Hiram Spaneker, lord of a petty fiefdom in out-of-the-way Givern Valley. He took what he wanted, and used whoever he needed to take it. Stuart. Myra. The man who’d pursued her years before and again today. Many others. She was an inconsequential obstacle between him and the Kern water.
But maybe not so inconsequential, because now here they are on the top of a faraway mountain in a city that couldn’t be more disconnected from all her lost history. Hiram, Stuart, and Danny. Luellen’s boy. Stuart’s—
“Son, we need to get you back to the hospital, okay?” Hiram’s tone is solicitous. She recognizes the feigned concern. “We’re a long way from home, don’tcha think?” She knows he cares about no one except himself. But Stuart stares his father down. “Silence.” Then he turns to Danny again, smiles again.
“Son.” He pats the little boy on the head, a familiar gesture, as if he’s known Danny all his life. For an instant, his expression grows troubled, as if he’s come to some realization there on the hilltop. But how could he? Half his brain is gone.
When he looks up at her at last, eyes loose, he has one last thing to say.
“S-s-sorry ... Ellie. Sorry.” With that, he grabs Hiram by the neck and drags him thrashing and shouting into the darkness.
November 19 - 5:09 pm
Forgotten
Grandpa and the stranger have left, but we’re not alone. Big Ed sprawls beside me, dead eyes unblinking in the rain. George looks away, his body twisted into an unlikely pose. Myra is somewhere off in the shadows under the firs. Maybe I can make out her spindly legs, maybe that’s her blood on the stone pedestal where Harvey Scott perches. I can feel them all in the darkness, a stillness like pressure in the base of my skull. My own blood collects in my belly. Slowly, but fast enough. Danny and Luellen, at least, are still alive.
Luellen dials 9-1-1 on her cell phone. I can only make out bits and pieces of what she’s saying. “... a shooting ... I’m not sure LOST... bad.” I might offer my own interpretation of my condition. Gunshot wound to the abdomen, musta missed the spleen, liver, pancreas, kidneys, aorta—I’m still alive, after all. Possible tamponade is slowing blood loss, but not enough they should dawdle. “... Mount Tabor near the statue ... a retired police officer, Skin Kadash ... please, hurry.” She closes the phone, drops it in the grass. They won’t like that back at the 9-1-1 call center. They want you to stay on the line, answer a million questions. But they’ll send someone to check it out. Luellen leads Danny to the concrete bench next to Harvey, sits him down with her coat draped over his shoulders and a kiss on his little cheek. Then she joins me on the wet ground below the statue and cradles my head in her lap. My gaze takes in the night. It hurts to even shift my eyeballs side to side. He’s a shadow above us, old Harvey, though I can make out his arm pointing toward the horizon as a silhouette against the blue-black sky. In grade school he’s presented as an Oregon treasure. I suppose he is, but from my angle at the foot of the statue, he strikes me as a sinister old bastard. If not for him and his goddamn pedestal, maybe my blood wouldn’t be pooling in my abdomen right now. On the other hand, better a ricochet than a direct hit from George’s goddamn hand cannon.
Danny shivers on the bench. Luellen looks back at him, her face worried. Luellen. Or—?
“You’ve always reminded me of someone I used to know, another man who helped me. Pastor Sanders.” I’ve never been mistaken for a holy man before. “You probably have a lot of questions.”
I could write a book. “You don’t need to stay with me. Someone will come.”
She continues to gaze at Danny. He rubs his cheek and sighs. “Where else would I go?”
Somewhere rattling around behind the pain is the thought that I want her to be away from here before the police arrive, Danny with her. This mess will take a year to sort out, and I don’t want her to be tangled up in it.
“Who ... ?”
I hesitate. Maybe I don’t want to get into this. Maybe I want to let her be who she is. Danny is safe now, the man who came to take him is gone. Eager is dead, of that I’m sure. Maybe what I want is to let things drift backward a bit, back to a time when all I knew about her was that her name was Luellen Bronstein and she was the young mother of a good little boy who called me Mister Skin. I can’t go back too far, because nothing I can do or say will unshoot Mitch Bronstein’s gun. But maybe that doesn’t matter anyway. His path will be veering off on its own no matter who the girl beside me really is. And mine as well. The pain in my gut is a credible augury of my own fate. Every passing moment brings me a little bit closer to too late.
Luellen strokes my forehead. “When I was a little girl, I wanted to grow my hair out and wear it like a dress.”
The grass is cold against my wet ass. I lick my lips. Wince.
“Yes, I know what it sounds like. But I was young. What did I know?”
I think of Danny finding his way into my backyard. Looking for a place he thought was safe. No way he could know about Big Ed. He knew about the birds, though. “Maybe you knew more than you realize.” My voice is a whisper.
“The thing is, I remember thinking it. I remember telling my family. I even remember my mother getting angry at me about it. I can picture it all in my mind. But I can’t remember what it felt like. That little girl who wanted to dress in hair is gone. She’s just a snapshot in my mind, faded and cracked. Everything else is gone. Forgotten.”
I don’t have the strength to respond, but Luellen doesn’t need my encouragement.
“I miss her.”
She’s so young. I want to explain to her how as you grow older you leave behind a whole long history of shed skins. The girl she misses is just one of many, one who will never be truly gone. I have my own long history of the forgotten, the men and boys I once was. My newest iteration formed bare days before when I let my feelings for another young woman overcome reason. And before him was the Shiftless Skin, retired and without purpose, a man with nowhere to go, only places he’d been. Going back, the Skins I’d shed pile up like discarded
clothes. Detective Skins, first Property, then Person Crimes. Eventually Homicide. Officer Skins, schools and traffic and patrol. Skin the student. Skin the enlisted man, Vietnam MP. Teenaged Skin with the ugly mug and oft-bloodied fists. I miss all of them, a little. Glad I’ve left them behind too, a little. And kept them all close by. A little. But how am I going to explain to this girl, this lost girl who stepped into another’s skin in order to protect something important? How can I get her to understand that what she’s lost, what she’s forgotten, is just a piece of what it means to be alive?
I close my eyes. I want her to get away. The way the bodies are piled up around us, it’s hard to imagine another threat, but I still know too little about what’s been going on to be sure. Big Ed, the grandfather, the crazy tweaker. The man with the divot in his head. It’s all a jumble in my head, stirred into a roiling soup by the fire of my wound. I draw a breath, feel my whole body tremble with the pain.
Luellen strokes my forehead again. “This is all my fault, you know.”
I find that hard to believe. “What did you do?”
“Besides try to kill my husband?”
I attempt a wry smile. Probably comes off as a grimace. “Mitch does inspire a certain—”
“Not Mitch. Mitch has always been kind to me. Kinder than I deserve.” She sighs and shakes her head. “No, the man who came, the man ...” Her voice trails off, and I realize she speaking of the stranger.
“The man with the injury to his head.”
“My husband. His name is Stuart.”
“But—?”
“Yes.” She breathes, long and slow. “I guess I can now add bigamist to my list of crimes.”
“You didn’t know until tonight he was still alive.”
“The last time I saw him, I jammed a pair of scissors into his head.”
“Why?” A shadow passes over her face and I regret the question. I know a host of reasons a young woman like Luellen might need to stab her husband. “You don’t have to answer.”