Elgin shrugged. Just like in the jungle, he wasn’t sure he was meant to see the world this way—faded to the shades and textures of old photographs. The dog, too, seemed to sense that it had stepped out of time somehow, into this seaweed circle punched through the landscape. It sniffed the air with a misshapen snout, but the rest of its body was tensed into one tight muscle, leaning forward as if it smelled prey.
Blue said, “You wanna do it?”
The stock felt hard against Elgin’s shoulder. The trigger, curled under his index finger, was cold and thick, something about it that itched his finger and the back of his head simultaneously, a voice back there with the itch in his head saying, “Fire.”
What you could never talk about down at the bar to people who hadn’t been there, to people who wanted to know, was what it had been like firing on human beings, on those icy gray ghosts in the dark jungle. Elgin had been in fourteen battles over the course of his twelve-month tour, and he couldn’t say with certainty that he’d ever killed anyone. He’d shot some of those shapes, seen them go down, but never the blood, never their eyes when the bullets hit. It had all been a cluster-fuck of swift and sudden noise and color, an explosion of white lights and tracers, green bush, red fire, screams in the night. And afterward, if it was clear, you walked into the jungle and saw the corpses, wondered if you’d hit this body or that one or any at all.
And the only thing you were sure of was that you were too fucking hot and still —this was the terrible thing, but oddly exhilarating too — deeply afraid.
Elgin lowered Blue’s rifle, stared across the interstate, now the color of seashell, at the dark mint tree line. The dog was barely noticeable, a soft dark shape amid other soft dark shapes.
He said, “No, Blue, thanks,” and handed him the rifle.
Blue said, “Suit yourself, buddy.” He reached behind them and pulled the beaded string on the klieg light. As the white light erupted across the highway and the dog froze, blinking in the brightness, Elgin found himself wondering what the fucking point of a LAD scope was when you were just going to shine the animal anyway.
Blue swung the rifle around, leaned into the railing, and put a round in the center of the animal, right by its rib cage. The dog jerked inward, as if someone had whacked it with a bat, and as it teetered on wobbly legs, Blue pulled back on the bolt, drove it home again, and shot the dog in the head. The dog flipped over on its side, most of its skull gone, back leg kicking at the road like it was trying to ride a bicycle.
“You think Jewel Lut might, I dunno, like me?” Blue said.
Elgin cleared his throat. “Sure. She’s always liked you.”
“But I mean ...” Blue shrugged, seemed embarrassed suddenly. “How about this: You think a girl like that could take to Australia?”
“Australia?”
Blue smiled at Elgin. “Australia.”
“Australia?” he said again.
Blue reached back and shut off the light. “Australia. They got some wild dingoes there, buddy. Could make some real money. Jewel told me the other day how they got real nice beaches. But dingoes too. Big Bobby said people’re starting to bitch about what’s happening here, asking where Rover is and such, and anyway, ain’t too many dogs left dumb enough to come this way anymore. Australia,” he said, “they never run out of dog. Sooner or later, here, I’m gonna run out of dog.”
Elgin nodded. Sooner or later, Blue would run out of dog. He wondered if Big Bobby’d thought that one through, if he had a contingency plan, if he had access to the National Guard.
~ * ~
“The boy’s just, what you call it, zealous,” Big Bobby told Elgin.
They were sitting in Phil’s Barbershop on Main. Phil had gone to lunch, and Big Bobby’d drawn the shades so peopled think he was making some important decision of state.
Elgin said, “He ain’t zealous, Big Bobby. He’s losing it. Thinks he’s in love with Jewel Lut.”
“He’s always thought that.”
“Yeah, but now maybe he’s thinking she might like him a bit too.”
Big Bobby said, “How come you never call me Mayor?”
Elgin sighed.
“All right, all right. Look,” Big Bobby said, picking up one of the hair-tonic bottles on Phil’s counter and sniffing it, “so Blue likes his job a little bit.”
Elgin said, “There’s more to it and you know it.”
Playing with combs now. “I do?”
“Bobby, he’s got a taste for shooting things now.”
“Wait.” He held up a pair of fat, stubby hands. “Blue always liked to shoot things. Everyone knows that. Shit, if he wasn’t so short and didn’t have six or seven million little health problems, he’d a been the first guy in this town to go to the ‘Nam. ‘Stead, he had to sit back here while you boys had all the fun.”
Calling it the ‘Nam. Like Big Bobby had any idea. Calling it fun. Shit.
“Dingoes,” Elgin said.
“Dingoes?”
“Dingoes. He’s saying he’s going to Australia to shoot dingoes.”
“Do him a world of good too.” Big Bobby sat back down in the barber’s chair beside Elgin. “He can see the sights, that sort of thing.”
“Bobby, he ain’t going to Australia and you know it. Hell, Blue ain’t never stepped over the county line in his life.”
Big Bobby polished his belt buckle with the cuff of his sleeve. “Well, what you want me to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you. Next time you see him, Bobby, you look in his fucking eyes.”
“Yeah. What’ll I see?”
Elgin turned his head, looked at him. “Nothing.”
Bobby said, “He’s your buddy.”
Elgin thought of the small panties curling out of the dust under Blue’s bed. “Yeah, but he’s your problem.”
Big Bobby put his hands behind his head, stretched in the chair. “Well, people getting suspicious about all the dogs disappearing, so I’m going to have to shut this operation down immediately anyway.”
He wasn’t getting it. “Bobby, you shut this operation down, someone’s gonna get a world’s worth of that nothing in Blue’s eyes.”
Big Bobby shrugged, a man who’d made a career out of knowing what was beyond him.
~ * ~
The first time Perkin Lut struck Jewel in public was at Chuck’s Diner.
Elgin and Shelley were sitting just three booths away when they heard a racket of falling glasses and plates, and by the time they came out of their booth, Jewel was lying on the tile floor with shattered glass and chunks of bone china by her elbows and Perkin standing over her, his arms shaking, a look in his eyes that said he’d surprised himself as much as anyone else.
Elgin looked at Jewel, on her knees, the hem of her dress getting stained by the spilled food, and he looked away before she caught his eye, because if that happened he just might do something stupid, fuck Perkin up a couple-three ways.
“Aw, Perkin,” Chuck Blade said, coming from behind the counter to help Jewel up, wiping gravy off his hands against his apron.
“We don’t respect that kind of behavior ‘round here, Mr. Lut,” Clara Blade said. “Won’t have it neither.”
Chuck Blade helped Jewel to her feet, his eyes cast down at his broken plates, the half a steak lying in a soup of beans by his shoe. Jewel had a welt growing on her right cheek, turning a bright red as she placed her hand on the table for support.
“I didn’t mean it,” Perkin said.
Clara Blade snorted and pulled the pen from behind her ear, began itemizing the damage on a cocktail napkin.
“I didn’t.” Perkin noticed Elgin and Shelley. He locked eyes with Elgin, held out his hands. “I swear.”
Elgin turned away and that’s when he saw Blue coming through the door. He had no idea where he’d come from, though it ran through his head that Blue could have just been standing outside looking in, could have been standing there for an hour.
Like a lot o
f small guys, Blue had speed, and he never seemed to walk in a straight line. He moved as if he were constantly sidestepping tackles or land mines — with sudden, unpredictable pivots that left you watching the space where he’d been, instead of the place he’d ended up.
Blue didn’t say anything, but Elgin could see the determination for homicide in his eyes and Perkin saw it too, backed up, and slipped on the mess on the floor and stumbled back, trying to regain his balance as Blue came past Shelley and tried to lunge past Elgin.
Elgin caught him at the waist, lifted him off the ground, and held on tight because he knew how slippery Blue could be in these situations. You’d think you had him and he’d just squirm away from you, hit somebody with a glass.
Elgin tucked his head down and headed for the door, Blue flopped over his shoulder like a bag of cement mix, Blue screaming, “You see me, Perkin? You see me? I’m a last face you see, Perkin! Real soon.”
Elgin hit the open doorway, felt the night heat on his face as Blue screamed, “Jewel! You all right? Jewel?”
~ * ~
Blue didn’t say much back at Elgin’s trailer.
He tried to explain to Shelley how pure Jewel was, how hitting something that innocent was like spitting on the Bible.
Shelley didn’t say anything, and after a while Blue shut up too.
Elgin just kept plying him with Beam, knowing Blue’s lack of tolerance for it, and pretty soon Blue passed out on the couch, his pitted face still red with rage.
~ * ~
“He’s never been exactly right in the head, has he?” Shelley said.
Elgin ran his hand down her bare arm, pulled her shoulder in tighter against his chest, heard Blue snoring from the front of the trailer. “No, ma’am.”
She rose above him, her dark hair falling to his face, tickling the corners of his eyes. “But you’ve been his friend.”
Elgin nodded.
She touched his cheek with her hand. “Why?”
Elgin thought about it a bit, started talking to her about the little, dirty kid and his cockroach flambés, of the animal sounds that came from his mother’s trailer. The way Blue used to sit by the drainage ditch, all pulled into himself, his body tight. Elgin thought of all those roaches and cats and rabbits and dogs, and he told Shelley that he’d always thought Blue was dying, ever since he’d met him, leaking away in front of his eyes.
“Everyone dies,” she said.
“Yeah.” He rose up on his elbow, rested his free hand on her warm hip. “Yeah, but with most of us it’s like we’re growing toward something and then we die. But with Blue, it’s like he ain’t never grown toward nothing. He’s just been dying real slowly since he was born.”
She shook her head. “I’m not getting you.”
He thought of the mildew that used to soak the walls in Blue’s mother’s trailer, of the mold and dust in Blue’s shack off Route 11, of the rotting smell that had grown out of the drainage ditch when they were kids. The way Blue looked at it all — seemed to be at one with it — as if he felt a bond.
Shelley said, “Babe, what do you think about getting out of here?”
“Where?”
“I dunno. Florida. Georgia. Someplace else.”
“I got a job. You too.”
“You can always get construction jobs other places. Receptionist jobs too.”
“We grew up here.”
She nodded. “But maybe it’s time to start our life somewhere else.”
He said, “Let me think about it.”
She tilted his chin so she was looking in his eyes. “You’ve been thinking about it.”
He nodded. “Maybe I want to think about it some more.”
~ * ~
In the morning, when they woke up, Blue was gone.
Shelley looked at the rumpled couch, over at Elgin. For a good minute they just stood there, looking from the couch to each other, the couch to each other.
An hour later, Shelley called from work, told Elgin that Perkin Lut was in his office as always, no signs of physical damage.
Elgin said, “If you see Blue ...”
“Yeah?”
Elgin thought about it. “I dunno. Call the cops. Tell Perkin to bail out a back door. That sound right?”
“Sure.”
~ * ~
Big Bobby came to the site later that morning, said, “I go over to Blue’s place to tell him we got to end this dog thing and —”
“Did you tell him it was over?” Elgin asked.
“Let me finish. Let me explain.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Let me finish.” Bobby wiped his face with a handkerchief. “I was gonna tell him, but—”
“You didn’t tell him.”
“But Jewel Lut was there.”
“What?”
Big Bobby put his hand on Elgin’s elbow, led him away from the other workers. “I said Jewel was there. The two of them sitting at the kitchen table, having breakfast.”
“In Blue’s place?”
Big Bobby nodded. “Biggest dump I ever seen. Smells like something I-don’t-know-what. But bad. And there’s Jewel, pretty as can be in her summer dress and soft skin and makeup, eating Eggos and grits with Blue, big brown shiner under her eye. She smiles at me, says, ‘Hey, Big Bobby,’ and goes back to eating.”
“And that was it?”
“How come no one ever calls me Mayor?”
“And that was it?” Elgin repeated.
“Yeah. Blue asks me to take a seat, I say I got business. He says him too.”
“What’s that mean?” Elgin heard his own voice, hard and sharp.
Big Bobby took a step back from it. “Hell do I know? Could mean he’s going out to shoot more dog.”
“So you never told him you were shutting down the operation.”
Big Bobby’s eyes were wide and confused. “You hear what I told you? He was in there with Jewel. Her all doll-pretty and him looking, well, ugly as usual. Whole situation was too weird. I got out.”
“Blue said he had business too.”
“He said he had business too,” Bobby said, and walked away.
~ * ~
The next week, they showed up in town together a couple of times, buying some groceries, toiletries for Jewel, boxes of shells for Blue.
They never held hands or kissed or did anything romantic, but they were together, and people talked. Said, Well, of all things. And I never thought I’d see the day. How do you like that? I guess this is the day the cows actually come home.
Blue called and invited Shelley and Elgin to join them one Sunday afternoon for a late breakfast at the IHOP. Shelley begged off, said something about coming down with the flu, but Elgin went. He was curious to see where this was going, what Jewel was thinking, how she thought her hanging around Blue was going to come to anything but bad.
He could feel the eyes of the whole place on them as they ate.
“See where he hit me?” Jewel tilted her head, tucked her beautiful red hair back behind her ear. The mark on her cheekbone, in the shape of a small rain puddle, was faded yellow now, its edges roped by a sallow beige.
Elgin nodded.
“Still can’t believe the son of a bitch hit me,” she said, but there was no rage in her voice anymore, just a mild sense of drama, as if she’d pushed the words out of her mouth the way she believed she should say them. But the emotion she must have felt when Perkins hand hit her face, when she fell to the floor in front of people she’d known all her life — that seemed to have faded with the mark on her cheekbone.
“Perkin Lut,” she said with a snort, then laughed.
Elgin looked at Blue. He’d never seemed so . . . fluid in all the time Elgin had known him. The way he cut into his pancakes, swept them off his plate with a smooth dip of the fork tines; the swift dab of the napkin against his lips after every bite; the attentive swivel of his head whenever Jewel spoke, usually in tandem with the lifting of his coffee mug to his mouth.
This was
not a Blue Elgin recognized. Except when he was handling weapons, Blue moved in jerks and spasms. Tremors rippled through his limbs and caused his fingers to drop things, his elbows and knees to move too fast, crack against solid objects. Blues blood seemed to move too quickly through his veins, made his muscles obey his brain after a quarter-second delay and then too rapidly, as if to catch up on lost time.
The Best American Noir of the Century Page 64