“Where are we?”
“This is called Centennial Park,” he said. “Colorado is the Centennial State because they were made into a state in 1876, a hundred years after the Declaration of Independence. This is supposedly the site of some battle where the National Guard slaughtered a bunch of Indians or something.”
Fred pulled into the parking lot, dragged the car to a stop, and crunched up the brake lever. There was a massive cannon, dull green with oxidization, next to the parking lot, with a plaque on it. A half-moon showered light on the faces of the mountains heaving up in front of them to the west and tapering off into the distance to the north and south. Below them in the valley, the lights of civilization curled up the sides of the mountains and dispersed into darkness. A thin worm of railroad tracks coiled around the bottom of the hill, which sloped into fields and woods and a grid of dirt roads. Just below the hill there was an artificial lake and a coal-burning power plant: a tangle of power lines and a squat, ugly building with two char-blackened smokestacks towering from the top of it. The power plant glittered with yellow and green lights that were reflected as cleanly as in a mirror in the lake below.
“It’d be a beautiful view if it weren’t for that fucking power plant,” said Lana, squinting as if she was trying to imagine what the landscape would look like without the smokestacks.
“Yeah,” said Fred. “It’d be dark.”
“I like the dark.”
They stood in the parking lot of the scenic overlook and absorbed the landscape. Fred turned to Lana, who was standing on the gravel with her hands on her hips, her thin, naked, painted body iridescent in the moonlight.
“You cold at all?” he asked.
“No. The paint’s warm. And there’s all the beer and whiskey.”
There was an old white pickup truck with a crack in the windshield parked in the parking lot. Fred pointed at the truck.
“I don’t know if I like that.”
“Maybe somebody just left it here,” said Lana. “It looks like a piece of shit.”
“Well, I don’t see anybody.”
Fred’s camera dangled from a leather strap that cut into the thick flesh of his neck. He got the bag containing the film and his camera equipment out of the car and slung it over his shoulder, stuck the tripod under his arm, its telescoping legs contracted and folded together, and clicked on the flashlight. Fred started plodding down the narrow trail that wound out of the parking lot, down the hill and into the woods. Lana followed. Fred’s pink plastic flip-flops slapped against his heels. Together they scrabbled a little ways down the trail, then turned off of it into the grass and brush. Tall sprays of grass thrashed all around them.
“All right,” said Fred, turning around to Lana. “Let’s take some shots here.”
Fred aimed the camera at her and took a picture with the flash. Slackit. The flashbulb spat a piercing blank field of light at her, and for a fraction of a second her monstrous shadow stretched high up into the trees. The light of the flashbulb bounced off the paint on her skin; it made her shine with false light, the stolen light of a reflective surface—a mirror, a moon, a satellite.
At first it looked like Lana didn’t know what to do with herself. Her skinny adolescent body was positioned in an awkward, unattractive way, her arms cradled against her torso like she wanted something to hold on to.
“What should I do?”
Fred ratcheted back the lever to advance the film, sank a finger into the shutter-release button—flash, slackit.
“Just, uh, I dunno. Do whatever,” he said. “Relax. Pretend you’re a . . . Pretend you’re a wild animal or something.”
As Fred took more pictures Lana appeared to gradually loosen up and get into it. She started to become comfortable with being his model, with being naked, being vulnerable, on display, outside, in a place she’d never been before in her life, with him. She was hopping around, thrashing around in the grass, being a bunny, being a fox, being a deer. Slackit, slackit. Again, Fred was sinking into that trance of concentration that he went into when he was working intently on something, and he began thinking exclusively in images, or how to capture the images. He was thinking about lines, framing, exposures, depths of field, and the distribution of light, and in his mind this stuff pushed away all the thoughts about all the things he hated in the world, and all his problems, and all his troubles: troubles with money, troubles with drugs, not having health insurance, forgetting to pay his bills or brush his teeth or clip his toenails or reregister his car, the government, people who don’t love music or art or any of the other things that make life worth living, being an adult in general.
At some point Lana said: “Look.”
She was pointing up. Fred followed her finger, looked where she was pointing. An object, like a tiny, dim moving star, was scrolling slowly across the sky. The light moved in a shallow arc, gathering in brightness until it became a bright white flash, and then the light, though still moving in the same direction and at the same speed, began to fade, until it disappeared from the sky.
They were still and silent for long enough that the crickets forgot them and started chirping again.
“Whoa!” Fred whispered, awed. “Was that a fucking UFO?”
Lana rolled her eyes.
“No, Fred,” she said. “I think it was like a satellite or something.”
Then they heard someone, someone not too far away, screaming in the dark.
• • •
“Jesus, dog, why you gotta go all psycho on the motherfucker,” said Jackson. “I mean you just fucked him up bad, dog. I seen some shit before but I ain’t never seen ’at much blood come out of a motherfucker’s head like ’at.”
Maggie squirmed out of Jackson’s hold, kneeled down on the ground and hugged Caleb Quinn. She was crying. Jackson picked up the flashlight.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here. I can’t fuckin’ believe you brung the bitch with you, dog. You wanna look like a cowboy and shit in front of her? Is that it? Fucking stupid, dog.”
Jackson pointed the flashlight at Kelly, who looked down at himself and saw that his clothes were covered in blood. Maggie was still hugging Caleb, and now she was also covered in blood.
“What time you reckon it is?” said Kelly, trying to sound casual.
Jackson pointed the flashlight at his watch.
“Eleven thirty.”
“Shit. I gotta get to work. I should’ve brung a change of clothes.”
“We gotta get this motherfucker off the trail,” said Jackson.
“Get off him, Maggie,” said Kelly.
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Get off him or I’m gonna smack the teeth out of your head, bitch,” said Jackson.
Maggie looked at Kelly. Kelly mumbled something too quiet or unintelligible to hear. Maggie stood up. Her face was wet. She was soaked in Caleb’s blood.
“Pick up that end of him, I’ll get this end,” said Jackson.
Jackson picked him up by the legs and Kelly grabbed his limp arms. They were able to pick him up and move him, but he was heavy. It was kind of like moving a couch. They were forced to look at each other. Jackson’s eyes glowed pale blue in the dark. They struggled to carry him off the path and into the woods. They carried him about twenty feet through the grass and into a dirt clearing where the trees around were thick, and dumped him there. In the process Jackson got a lot of blood on him as well. Maggie remained on the trail with the flashlight and refused to follow them, so they had to do it all in the dark. They walked back to the trail with the tall grass thrashing all around them. Up above, the sky swarmed with stars. When they got back to the trail they saw that the place where they’d been was covered in blood.
“That was some bad shit, Kelly,” said Jackson. “You fucked that dog up real bad. We’re gonna have to lay real low, you understand? I mean I just got done doing time for my drug shit and I’m still on probation, so I can’t be goin’ around being accomplice to no goddamn murder and get sent away
till I’m an old man. And you too, dog, you understand?”
“What do you mean murder? He’s not dead.”
Jackson snatched the flashlight out of Maggie’s hands like you’d snatch something dangerous out of the hands of a child.
Maggie was crying again.
“Kelly, you have got to shut up your bitch, dog. I cannot fucking think straight with all this bawling.”
“Please be quiet, Maggie.”
“Please be quiet? ‘Please be’? What the fuck kind of shit is that? ‘Please be quiet.’ If you don’t shut your bitch up I’m gonna have to shut her up.”
“Don’t you fucking touch her.”
“Oh, what, so killer here goes all batshit on some motherfucker with a crowbar and now all of a sudden he thinks he can take me? Fuck you. Don’t insult me, dog.”
Kelly didn’t say anything to that. He reached out to touch Maggie—just to touch her—and she flinched and shivered and flicked her hands like she’d been touched by something so loathsome she’d have to wash herself later, and she walked faster up the trail away from him.
They made it up the hill and back to the gravel parking lot and scenic overlook at the top of the hill without anyone saying anything to anyone else. Kelly’s truck was parked in the far corner of the parking lot under a tree. A pool cleaning van with a mermaid on it holding a pool net was parked in the opposite corner.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Jackson. “I gotta go back down there and get his goddamn keys off him and move his van. Should’ve took the money he said he got on him, too.”
“No. Please no, no, no,” said Kelly. “We ain’t got time for that. We gotta get the fuck outta here. I gotta go home and clean up and get to work. I ain’t slep in twenty-five hours. And I ain’t gonna sleep in like twenty more.”
Then they noticed that there was another car in the parking lot. A little blue Honda Civic. Jackson pointed at it.
“The fuck is that all about?” he said. “That little blue piece a shit wasn’t here when we pulled up in Caleb’s van.”
There were needles of fear under Kelly’s skin.
“I don’t like that,” he said.
“I hate you,” said Maggie.
“Ain’t nobody talkin’ to you,” said Jackson.
Kelly threw the crowbar, which was slick with blood, into the bed of the truck and it landed with the hollow clunk of metal against metal.
Maggie was wearing a dark green hoodie with a kangaroo pocket in it, and was hugging herself with her arms in the pocket. She was refusing to look at him. Jackson stood in the parking lot with his arms akimbo, looking at the little blue car and then at the pool cleaning van.
“Let’s just shut up and get the fuck out of here,” said Kelly. “I do not like that there’s another car here.”
“No shit,” said Jackson. “We should bolt.”
They got in the cab of the truck. Maggie said she didn’t want to sit next to Kelly, so she sat on the passenger side, Kelly drove, and Jackson sat in the middle. If they hurried, there would still be enough time to drop Jackson off at his grandma’s house, go home, wash up, swing by Kelly’s mom’s house to pick up Gabie, drop him and Maggie off at home, and then tear back up the highway to report to work. Kelly’s palms were wet. They were getting blood all over the seats. Maggie sat still with her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead out the windshield.
Kelly jingled the keys out of his jacket pocket, inserted them into the ignition, turned them, and prayed. The motor didn’t come on the first time, or the second time or the third or the fourth time. Then, it did. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t. The headlights came on and the engine groaned as Kelly pulsed the accelerator. The radio came on. It was playing “Friends in Low Places.”
I’m not big on social graces
Think I’ll slip on down to the O—asis
Oh, I got friends in low—places.
The song lightened the mood a little. (A little.) Kelly mouthed along to the chorus out of habit.
The truck’s fat, soft tires rocked over the dirt road, bits of gravel popping under the wheels. They crept down the hill toward the stop sign. The red octagon flashed in the headlights and went dark again as they passed it. No cars coming in either direction. Kelly goosed the engine and the truck rolled out onto the main road and died.
The truck died across both lanes of the road, without enough space on either side to drive around it. The first car nearly plowed into them at about fifty miles an hour. Tires screamed, the sulfurous odor of burnt rubber. The driver jammed a fist into the horn. Then another car coming from the other direction did the same thing.
Kelly kept trying the engine, and the engine kept making a chortling noise and then choking off, until it failed to start completely, and then there was just the sound of the starter clicking, and then that stopped too, and now he turned the key in the ignition and absolutely nothing happened.
A line of cars began to stack up around them in both directions. There were four or five cars on either side of them, then six, seven, eight, and then there were two long trails of headlights and winking red brake lights on either side of the truck. Idling motors panted up and down the hill like tired dogs. Horns honked futilely. A few cars peeled out of the line and turned around.
Kelly didn’t want to get out of the truck with all the blood on his clothes. He just kept trying to start the engine. He put the transmission in neutral and tried to coast out of the way, but the truck didn’t move much. It took up a lot of space, and the road here had no shoulder. Jackson and Maggie were talking to him the whole time, but Kelly wasn’t listening to what they were saying. Kelly’s vision seemed almost to be flashing with white light, and all he could hear was a thin, high-pitched, nearly silent whine.
Somebody rolled down a window and shouted, “What the hell’s going on here?”
It was a stupid question, and Kelly didn’t answer it.
Kelly sank his forehead into the wheel and prayed. He silently prayed to God to start his truck. Then he tried the ignition again: silence. The radio came back on, though.
Just wait ’til I finish this glass
Then sweet little lady
I’ll head back to the bar
And you can kiss my ass—
Kelly looked at the lit green displays on the dashboard—radio, heater/AC, speedometer, odometer, check oil light, fuel gauge—and realized what the problem was.
“We’re out of gas,” he said.
Maggie was laughing. Kelly started laughing too.
Jackson slammed a fist into Kelly’s ribs. He wasn’t laughing.
“Ha ha ha ha,” he said. “You fucked us over, Kelly, but you fucked me over most of all. So figure out how you gonna move this goddamn truck or I’monna fucking kill you. You understand me, dog?”
Kelly only kept trying to start the car, hoping that enough gasoline fumes were wafting around in the tank to kick-start the engine, which had happened before. If he could fire up the engine, he could pull out and coast all the way down the hill in neutral to where he knew there was a gas station, or thought there was, maybe. He thought there was a gas station down there.
The red and blue lights of a police cruiser flashed beside them. The police car emitted a truncated hoot from the siren, just a single, short rising-pitch wooop, and they heard a cop get out of his car and shut the door.
The cop’s face materialized in the driver’s-side window. He clicked his knuckles against the driver’s-side door because the window was down.
“Damn thing won’t start,” said Kelly, half laughing, smiling as much as he could. “Hell of a place to break down, in’n it?”
Unsmiling, the cop aimed a flashlight into the car. He was a young cop, his throat thick with dense cords of muscle, eyes taciturn, cheeks scraped smooth. Kelly turned the key in the ignition, listened to the engine not starting, staggered the accelerator with his foot.
Somebody up the hill buried a fist into a horn. Farther down the line there was the snarl of
somebody juicing a motorcycle. The cop trained the flashlight on Maggie and Jackson, then at their laps, and saw that all three of them were covered in blood. The cop’s eyes darted to the bed of the truck, where there was the crowbar, and more blood.
Kelly was looking up at the cop, and he could see the exact moment, the slight change of expression on his otherwise emotionless face, when he must have thought something like this: Looks like this is going to be more interesting than I thought.
The cop kept his flashlight on Kelly as he unsnapped his holster and rested his right hand on the handle of his gun.
“Would you please step out of the vehicle, sir.”
Kelly turned to the cop.
“I ain’t slep in twenty-five hours.” Kelly knew it was obvious, it was obvious to everyone from the hideous croak in his voice that he was about to cry. “And I ain’t gonna sleep in twenty more.”
The cop repeated: “Sir, would you please step out of the vehicle.”
• • •
Somebody was screaming. Fred and Lana looked at each other. The screaming stopped. There was a long silence. Everything around them was still and dark. Lana and Fred stood ten paces away from each other, still, listening. There was another scream. It was a woman’s voice, screaming in either fear or fury.
“What the fuck is that?” Fred whispered.
Fred and Lana stood there in the grass without moving or speaking. The screaming had stopped, but there were some faraway but audible voices somewhere.
Amid a mumble of things they couldn’t understand, a male voice shouted: “Let go of her.”
Neither of them spoke. Fred and Lana listened to each other’s breathing.
The voices came closer. There were at least two male voices, talking. It sounded like the two men were angry at each other. Or Fred thought so, anyway.
The Fat Artist and Other Stories Page 8