by Cote Smith
I felt my brother nudge me, and when I looked over I saw that he was shaking with laughter. I didn’t get what was funny until I realized he was laughing at me, his scared baby brother. I opened my mouth. I tried to tell him that he was scared too. He thought of the same things I did, went to sleep each night with the same worry, and just because he had Chris and I didn’t, that didn’t mean he was any safer or better than me.
After every clip was empty, our dad gave the OK to retrieve the targets. The men held up their victims so the fading sunlight could shine through the holes where the bullets had hit. My dad examined each sheet, giving tips to those whose targets went untouched. The hand of one man, who hadn’t hit a single thing, was bleeding badly and in need of a bandage. The gun’s kickback had pinched the man on his first shot. He hadn’t fired a gun since his training, he said. “Well, that’s why we’re here,” my dad said, and grabbed a first-aid kit to patch the man up.
After the man’s bleeding was stopped, our dad came over to see how we were doing. “What do you think, boys?”
I wanted to tell him that I didn’t like this. The noise. The blood. And I didn’t want to be here.
“Can I shoot a little?” my brother said, his eyes fixed on the men and their guns.
“No, son. This is official police practice.”
“Official?” my brother said. “That guy’s wearing a tank top.”
“Some other time,” my dad said, and put his hand to his gun, as if to double-check it was still there. He often did the same thing with his wallet, tapping his back pocket to make sure it hadn’t been picked by a thief.
“Please,” my brother said, “just one round.”
My dad said no, asked my brother if he was hard of hearing. My brother dropped his earmuffs on the ground. He turned around and muttered.
“Excuse me?” my dad said.
“You heard me,” my brother said, his words a little louder.
“Try me again.”
“I said this is stupid.”
“And why is that?”
“Because … they’re shooting paper.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah, but you’re not even gonna shoot. You’re just gonna stand around and tell everyone else what to do.”
“That’s my job.”
“Then why did you bring your gun?” my brother asked.
My dad looked down at the gun on his side, to where his hand was resting, and it was obvious that he didn’t have an answer. “I just thought you’d want to see what your old man does. That’s all.”
“Yeah,” my brother said, and he turned away from my dad, so only I could see his smile, “but you don’t do anything.”
My dad’s face hardened, and he looked at me as if I could explain why my brother was acting this way. But I didn’t know what to say. I had questions of my own.
An officer called to my dad. They were ready to start the second round. “Just sit down and shut up,” my dad said to my brother. “Next time you can stay at your mother’s.”
On the way home my brother sat in the back of the cruiser with me, and our dad kept glancing at us in the mirror, like we were a couple of criminals itching to escape.
“I have to run you home,” our dad said. “I’m technically on duty now, so…” His voice trailed off as we came to a four-way stop. I knew where we were, and knew that if we went left, it would lead us to Limit Street, which we could hop on and take to our mom’s. We went straight. “You know,” our dad said, “your mother’s told me some things about you. How you’ve been acting.” He was talking to my brother, who shook his head and rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything. “Hey,” my dad said, “I’m talking to you.”
My brother didn’t respond. When it became clear he wasn’t going to apologize without prompting, or admit to any wrongdoing, our dad didn’t force him. He flipped on the police radio, and the car filled with garbled voices, battling back and forth. I stared out the window and tuned out the radio as best I could, until my thoughts were interrupted by my dad’s voice. He had the radio to his mouth and had joined the conversation. He told the woman to show him responding, but didn’t say responding to what.
My brother ceased his silent treatment. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” our dad said. “Some idiot’s trespassing. I’ve got to run by.”
“Where?”
“The battery factory.”
The battery factory was one of the biggest buildings in Leavenworth that wasn’t a prison or a grain elevator. It was more than five stories tall, and painted a grassy green that had faded over time, after the factory was shut down and everyone lost their job. We’d driven by it only once or twice in my life, but each time we did our dad would shake his head and say what a shame. To my brother, the factory was an unexplored world, one of the few places big enough to house his imagination.
“Are we going?”
“I am,” our dad said. “I’ll drop you boys off first.”
My brother grabbed the barrier in protest. “No way. Take us with you.”
Our dad told him no. He wasn’t taking his kids to a crime scene. Besides, it was nothing exciting. Probably just a couple of lonely-hearted high schoolers looking for a dark place to sneak off to.
“We won’t do anything,” my brother said. “We’ll stay in the car and watch, won’t we?” He nudged me until I said yes. “We just want to see.”
When my dad didn’t shoot him down right away, I knew my brother was onto something.
“Oh, I get it,” our dad said. “So now what ye olde dad does is cool? Is that it?”
We stopped and a red light colored my brother’s wide smile. “We’ll be good,” he said. “I promise.”
Our dad looked in the rearview mirror. I couldn’t see his mouth, but I saw his face rise, his eyes beam. He took a sharp turn, veering off our normal course, taking a side street off Main and up onto Marion, a street I’d never heard of.
It was dark when we pulled up. The streetlights weren’t alive. There were no cars in front of the factory, or dusty bikes lying in the gravel. Whoever trespassed had traveled by foot. Our dad aimed the headlights at the front doors, chained shut with a dungeon lock. It felt like we’d stumbled into a movie someone else had rented. Our dad was the cop in the opening credits, the one who was just doing his job, and everyone knew would get it. Wrong place, wrong time, we would think, right before a monster snatched him from the rafters. I glanced at my brother, who was sitting on his feet trying to get a better view. I didn’t remember a single movie where the worthless cop brought his boys.
“Stay put,” our dad said. “I’ll be back in a second.”
He rolled down our windows a little more than halfway and stepped out of the car. He didn’t approach the chained door with his hand on his holster, like I thought he would. He walked up hands free and tried the doors, held fast by the chain. I kept waiting for the worst possible thing to burst through the doors, but the night remained quiet. Our dad stepped back from the building and looked up, as if the monster had scaled the walls and broken through one of the dirt-caked windows. I pictured the monster bashing the glass with a rock, not his fist, and suddenly the monster became the burglar. A criminal. And because I didn’t know what the Stranger looked like, never got a good look at his face on the tape, in my mind I made Chris play the part.
Our dad took one last look at the police cruiser, at us, and ducked out of the headlights, into the darkness. I heard my brain shouting the same things it shouted when we watched a bad movie. The things I never said out loud, because if I did my brother would tell me to shut up. They can’t hear you, he would say. They’re already dead.
For a few minutes, we did as we were told. For a few minutes, we sat there and listened. But my brother grew bored. He stuck his head out the window to see if he could see anything. He wormed half his body out, and announced he was leaving. That he was going to help our dad and that I should stay here.
“Don’t,”
I told him. “You know what’ll happen.”
My brother ignored me and slithered out the window. “Dad needs backup,” he said. “If you see or hear anything, the radio’s right there.” He poked his head through the window, and his arms dangled to the side, like he was seated at a guillotine, waiting for the blade to fall. “Now remember what Mom always says,” he said, a sick grin stretched across his face. “Don’t talk to the Stranger.”
And with that, he left. He ran in the same direction as our dad, the gravel crunching under his feet. Soon I heard nothing, and the night opened before me, into what could have passed as an eternity. I tried my best to hide behind my dad’s seat, glad at first that he had left the headlights on, a little night-light for this new and scary world. But as the minutes ticked away and neither my brother nor my dad returned, I wondered if I would be better off without the lights. If it would be better for me not to see whatever was coming. Still, I didn’t close my eyes. I sat there. I watched the yellow oval the headlights made. Cover the front, I told myself. You can do that much.
A shadow streaked in front of the car. A flash of black. Before I could doubt what I’d seen, another flew by. Two shadows, flying through the headlights and back into the night. I grabbed the police radio, like my brother told me, and waited for the next thing to happen. Whatever it would be. But the shadows didn’t return. They stayed in their shadow world, and the only sound I heard was the dispatch lady reporting another possible break-in, this one off Tenth and Limit, not far from where we lived. Where our mom was if she wasn’t with Rick. Still, the thought of another criminal gave me comfort. For some reason, I found it hard to imagine two criminals at the same time. If the danger was on Limit Street, I thought, then we should be safe.
I heard a gunshot.
That sick pop. I closed my eyes. I imagined the sound of the shot bouncing off every empty room in the battery factory. I imagined the bullet finding its target, and could only hope that whatever shadow it sank into, it was the right shadow. It was the bad ghost, not the good. I put my hands together and prayed. Or I wished. I opened my eyes and realized I never understood the difference.
When neither shadow returned, standing tall and triumphant, or sinking low and clutching its gut, I decided to get out of the car. I couldn’t breathe, so I wormed my way out like my brother.
The air didn’t smell of smoke, like it did at the range. It smelled of mildew, of the river nearby. At I first I stayed next to the car. I walked around but made a deal that at all times I must keep a finger on the cruiser. I pretended it was a space shuttle and this was my first trip outside the ship. My first space walk after months of space crawl. But when I made it to the front, the lights were too bright, and without thinking I backed away. I floated out and someone cut my tether. I felt exposed, to the dangers and coldness of space. The universe was infinite and any part of it could get me.
I heard footsteps. I heard something being dragged on the ground. My mind made an axe, a sword, a maniac or monster lugging its deformed foot around. I saw a shadow drawing near, the bottom half of its outline like nothing I’d seen. Multiple legs, inkblot limbs limping toward me. I turned and ran, like I always swore I wouldn’t if I was in this situation. I ran around the side of the factory and found a door propped open by a brick. I ducked inside, where it wasn’t as dark as I’d thought. A big moon speckled its way through the dirty windows, shining a light on the grimy floor. There were no rooms in the factory. All the walls had been torn down, leaving one enormous open space, where huge pieces of abandoned machinery waited for someone to spark them to life. A mad scientist. A deranged professor. If my brother made it this far, his imagination would have unfolded like a flower, blooming with possibilities. It was the type of place I imagined Chris would take him, if they kept taking their trips. It was the type of place where the Stranger would hide, make a home, until the cops gave up on the search. It was the type of place my brother would use for every story he ever told when playing with our Joes. The battery factory, with all its machines and secrets, was the perfect hideout for every bad guy my brother ever knew.
I accidentally kicked an empty bottle, sending a ting into the farthest corners of the building. I froze, remembering where I was, the shadows I was supposed to be running from. The bottle found a wall or a machine and knocked up against it, spinning loudly like a flicked quarter waiting to settle.
The side door lurched open behind me. I turned around and saw a shadow standing in the doorway. Normal-shaped, not the monster I’d seen before. But I couldn’t make it match the bodies of anyone I knew. Not with my mind in its terrified state. I made the shadow the worst. I made it Chris with my brother in the woods. I made it Rick after discovering what we’d done to his course. I made it into the Stranger. I put myself in the tape.
“It’s over,” the shadow said.
I tried to run, but couldn’t. I thought of my brother’s phone call to the golf course: Please … Send help … We’re dying.
The shadow floated toward me, drawing nearer and nearer. “C’mon,” it said. “It’s done. I’ve got your brother.”
“No,” I said. “Please, no. Leave my family alone.”
“It’s OK,” the shadow said. “It’s going to be OK.”
It reached out toward me.
“Don’t,” I said. “We didn’t do anything bad. You did. You hurt that woman. Not us.”
The shadow didn’t respond. Its hand came at me, like my mother’s in the rain. So I let it have me, and told myself to think of my mother. Whatever happens, wherever it takes you.
“Ow,” I said. The shadow’s hand hooked itself under my arm and raised me to the shadow’s face. The shadow’s mustache.
“What the hell are you doing?” my dad said. “What did I tell you?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He started dragging me to the door, to the car. My dad threw me in the back, next to my brother, and when he released me I felt the immediate burn where his hand had hooked me hard.
“Buckle your goddamn seat belts,” our dad said, and when my brother didn’t move fast enough, our dad threw his hand to my brother’s throat. He clasped his hook around my brother’s neck and squeezed, until my brother’s mouth opened involuntarily, begging for air. “Do not test me, son.”
“Dad,” I said, but he told me to shut up. Stay out of it. He held on to my brother for another long second, watching him struggle, clasp at my dad’s wrist, before releasing him with the same violence he’d used to throw me in the car.
“Now,” our dad said. “Seat belts.”
* * *
Our dad would have to write a report. Not about the trespassing. There hadn’t been one, or if there was, they were long gone by the time we arrived. There was no Stranger. No Chris. No shadowy monsters stalking me in the night. There was only my dad, my brother. There was only me. But every time an officer’s weapon was discharged, my dad explained, a report had to be filed, detailing when and where and, of course, why. That last part was the one my dad said he would catch hell for. How could he explain what had just happened at the battery factory?
I cobbled together a hazy picture from the different things my dad shouted on the drive home: What the hell were you thinking? After what I told you! After you promised to stay put!
But my brother had not stayed put. That much I already knew. What I didn’t know was that after my brother snuck out the window, he followed my dad. He pretended he was my dad’s backup, his secret partner. He crept around, his finger the shape of a gun, slicing this pie, slicing that. How long was it before my dad noticed he was being followed? How long before he turned on my brother and beamed his flashlight in my brother’s face? My brother would have put his hands up, instinctively, and pleaded his case. I just wanted to see, he would say. I just wanted to help. And maybe part of my dad forgave him. Maybe my dad lowered his flashlight and said, Well, that’s OK. But this is no place for boys. Only trained professionals. Go back to your brother. I’ve got it covered.
/> What about your gun? my brother would say.
What about it?
Aren’t you going to use it?
My dad would frown. We’ve been over this, he would say. Go to the car. Wait for me there.
I wasn’t sure how my brother did what he did next. How he got the jump on our dad. I imagined after he was told to head back to the cruiser, he pretended to do so. He took a few steps, yes, but only enough to fool our dad. Now, as he followed him, my brother was more careful. He matched his pace to my dad’s, so the crunch of their shoes canceled each other out. When my dad found the entrance to the battery factory, my brother waited a full minute before following. He had to be patient. He had to wait for the perfect opportunity, when my dad’s mind was elsewhere, to sneak up on him. To, with one motion, pop the button snap on my dad’s holster and swipe his gun.
Never in a million years.
Aimed the gun right at me.
You were right. Something is wrong.
These were the words my dad said to my mother. After he walked my brother to the basement, his holding cell, and dared him to move. My dad stretched the cord to the stairs, where he sat with his head in his hands, mumbling words of apology into the receiver as he finished the story. I didn’t say anything. I was so shocked. Never had a gun pointed at me. Yeah. Mm-hm. No, I don’t think he knew what he was doing. He looked afraid. Like he’d realized what he’d done.
My dad pulled the phone away from his face, and from my spot on the couch I could hear my mother’s voice. I couldn’t understand her words but I could hear their force. The way she launched them at my dad like missiles. I pictured my mother on the other end, pacing the entire apartment with the cordless space phone, not bound by any tether. I saw her going into our vacant bedroom. Going out on the porch, staring at the moon. When she said all the mean things she could think to say, she gave my dad his punishment. His sentence, she would say, for being so thoughtless.