Remains

by J. Warren

  He stopped pushing, so I didn’t move any further. I could see on Kevin’s face that he knew what we were talking about, though. He was trying to decide if he still had any fight left in him. He was thinking ‘if I just give up, this’ll be over quick’. “No, he didn’t say anything to me about it.”

  He laughed to himself as if I’d just proven something, “Well, I guess there’s no accountin’. When you got a snake in your backyard, son, the thing you gotta’ do is to root him out. You gotta’ make sure he’s got nowhere left to hide. Then, what you gotta’ do is to kill him when he shows himself. When he pops his head up outta’ whatever god forsaken hole he’s found, you gotta’ get him right then. No waitin’. You catch my meaning?”

  “You’re going to—umm—,” I started.

  “Don’t you worry yourself about what I’m fixin’ to do with this here faggot, boy,” he said, and I felt the ice and steel in his voice. “Say, how is ol’ Albert, anyhow?” he said, and though the words were friendly, the tone never changed. He reached past me and opened the passenger side door. His hand went to my shoulder. I slowly sank into the seat. He closed the door, saying “Mind your fingers, boy.”

  As soon as the door was shut, Kevin whined, “Mikey, you’ve gotta’ help me, please, oh god, he’s gonna’—”

  “Shh,” I hissed, and kept saying, “Shh! Shut up! Gimme’ a second. I gotta’ think.” The closer the sheriff got to the driver’s side door, the more panicked I felt. The inside of the car smelled like stale tobacco and piss. On the radio, someone was twanging about Tulsa.

  The door opened, and the sheriff sat down. He kept the door open for a second, and pulled a cigarette out from his shirt pocket. He pushed in the lighter on the dashboard. Holding the cigarette up toward me, he asked, “You mind?” I shook my head because I didn’t know what else to do. My stomach muscles were clenched so tight, I felt like I was doubled over.

  The cigarette lighter popped, and I jumped. He smiled to himself and reached for it. With two small sucks on the end, he lit it, and put the lighter back into the dash. He leaned over and closed his door, starting the cruiser. He turned the radio up a bit, and I could tell that the singer was a female. She kept lamenting having to live on Tulsa Time, whatever that meant. The sheriff pulled the gear shift down into reverse, and looked into the rearview. I saw his eyes pull tight. I felt more than heard Kevin shrink, and my stomach flopped. I stifled a gag.

  Death was in that look.

  The Sheriff put the car in drive, and we moved forward. “So, when’s your flight leave?” he asked.

  “Today,” I said.

  “Fine, fine” he said, nodding to himself. “Tell ya’ what I’m gonna’ do—I’m gonna’ take you to the airport myself,” he said, and smiled large. I tried not to think of a shark. “Police escort, like. Won’t you feel mighty high on the hog.”

  “That’d be great,” I said, my voice completely flat. I looked down at his gun. The holster was snapped closed; no way to grab it quickly. Part of my mind puzzled over ways to get him to unsnap it, or even pull it out so I could grab for it. The other parts of me were all screaming about how ridiculous this all was. Mostly I was just numb, all except for my mind, which raced.

  On the road, I saw the town fire truck coming toward us, its lights flashing. It was flying. “Must be a fire somewhere,” the Sheriff said. He sounded not the least surprised.

  “Shouldn’t you—umm—maybe call them on the—,” I started.

  “S’pose I should,” he said, and continued to drive.

  “It’s your house, Mikey,” Kevin said from the back.

  Without looking, the sheriff slammed his hand against the small mesh cage that separated the front seat from the back. The sound made me jump. The sheriff’s face didn’t move. A chill ran through me.

  “You shut your hole, back ‘ere,” he said, the word coming out sounding like ‘air’. His hand went slowly back to the steering wheel.

  “What did he mean by—?” I started. My stomach was already sinking. My mind was fighting against it, but somewhere inside I heard the truth in it.

  “Nothing. That little faggot ain’t got enough sense to shut up when he’s in trouble, ‘s all,” he said, and looked into the mirror again, “I ain’t kiddin’, there, polly anna. Speak up one more time and find out what I’m fixin’ to do.”

  The fire truck screamed past us so fast the wind rush moved the car a little.

  “But, I mean, why would he say that it was my house if it wasn’t my house?” I asked. Then, silence. No one talked. Even the wind outside the car seemed to die down.

  “Well, son, I s’pose that it might very well be your mama’s house,” he said. Just then, the doors locked. It’s amazing where your mind goes in situations like this; I remember thinking that there was no way a car this old had power locks. My body went almost limp. “I s’pose it just might be at that. I cain’t be for certain, mind. But considerin’ how much gasoline I poured on ‘er, that might just be your mama’s house.”

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “Come on, now; you know very well why. You little lovebirds been just a’ chirpin’ away, ain’tcha? You know very well why. Shame, though. Damn shame,” he said, and in his voice there really was a note of sadness. “Shame about Ol’ Albert, havin’ to go that way.” he said. My head was filled with the white noise of panic.

  “Your daddy, son—your daddy was the meanest man I ever met, god’s honest truth. That ol’ boy was tough as nails. Thing was I didn’t think he had it in him. I wan’t in town but two months ‘fore he came stormin’ into my office. I’d seen him around, y’know? Saw he’d gotten all grown up since I’d left.

  He came up to me, all puffed up, and started accusing me a’things. Things I didn’t do. Your sister was a dime store hooker, son,” he said, and my eyes got wide, “now don’t go shootin’ the messenger, boy; I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’ you don’t already know yourself. When she walked out of this town, I tried oncet to bring ‘er on back. She kept on truckin’.” he said, and went quiet for a time. My mind was starting to come back to me, but the only thing I could hear was his voice. “Your daddy tried to accuse me of diddling his little girl oncet she took it on the run. Now, there’s a lot a’things I done, boy, that’s between me and the lord. But I’ll tell you right here and now, I ain’t never, and I mean never in my life, diddled no little girl. You can take that to the bank. I tell you what, though; that cocksucker was the only man in this town ever stood up to me, and I mean ever. I hated having to put him down like ‘at. Was a shame. Thing was, it wan’t just you that got to snoopin’. Your daddy got a might bit nosey, too.”

  “He killed them, Mikey, he—,” Kevin said, his voice quivering.

  The sheriff’s jaw bulged. He pulled the wheel to the side and the car started to slow. “What did I tell you, little girl? What did I tell you?” he started asking with a hiss in his voice.

  “So it’s true.” My whole body sagged under the weight of it.

  “What’s true?”

  I looked back through the mesh at Kevin, who nodded. His eyes were blurry, and his chin quivered. The sheriff looked over at me out of the side of his eyes, then glanced lazily back at Kevin. He shook his head, and turned his eyes back to the road.

  “Boy, when I took this here town over, it wan’t nothin’ but a truck stop, ‘cept for trains. People bringin’ drugs through, women whorin’—I put a stop to that,” he said, poking himself in the chest three times with his finger. “I did, not any of them pansies on the town council, y’hear?” He shook his head. “Y’know, don’t nobody say mean things when you’re gettin’ results, now, do they? No, sir. I come in here and start cleanin’ this little shithole of a town up, and it’s ‘Aiken saved us a’gin. But a man starts to try to get cozy and—,” he trailed off. “After a while, son, you’ll see what I mean. You try to do your job, but all the little red tape starts to mount up in your way. All the little pencil boys start to pile up on ya’ thinking they can get
some dinner of’n ya. Well, sir, I wan’t gonna’ take it.” He was slowing the car down. I watched as the needle started moving from 45 down to 40. I knew that if it ever reached the big white ‘5’, I was going to die. I knew it in all of my bones.

  “Boy, don’t you never watch none of them Discovery channel shows?” he asked, and I waited. “First thing a lion does when he takes a buncha fee-males is to kill off all the cubs. Don’t want to have to support another man’s issue,” he said, jutting his head forward a bit and screwing his eyes nearly closed. The look would have been comical, if it wasn’t for the situation. “Way I see it, I’m just doin’ what I’m s’posed to be doin’” he said. “I could try to fight ‘em down all I wanted, but in the end, I knew I’d have to breed ‘em down. Only gawd damned thing the Brits ever did right, son: you can’t just burn ‘em out, you got to breed ‘em out, too.”

  He was pulling the car to the side of the road while he slowed down.

  Then he reached down, and unsnapped his holster. He meant to kill Kevin. Once he killed Kevin, I knew he was going to kill me for having seen him do it. I knew I had to get the gun. Even then, though, my mind kept screaming at me to be still; that this would all pass soon if I was just a good boy and sat still.

  I lunged for the gun. Or, better, I tried to. My muscles were rubbery and my breathing was wrong. The only thing I managed was to hit the sheriff in the stomach with my limp hand. I missed the gun completely. By happenstance, though, my arm was lodged up under his, and he couldn’t steer well. He looked down at my hand and then back up just in time to see the telephone pole we were about to careen into. He put both his hands on the wheel and tried to jerk it to the left. I’ve never been able to figure out if he did that to try to avoid the pole, or to make sure my side smashed into it instead of the front.

  It didn’t matter, though. The front end hit.

  The last thing I saw before I went out was the dashboard coming toward me in slow motion. The last thing I heard was someone on the CB radio trying to reach the sheriff about a fire at my parent’s address.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I was standing in a clearing, surrounded by miles and miles of trees. It must have been fall, because the leaves were this explosion of color. Overhead, a huge airplane screamed by, barely above the tops of the trees. I followed it with my eyes. Just as it went out of sight above the trees, I saw someone’s hair blowing in the wind. The hair was black. I wondered why I couldn’t see more of them.

  When I looked down, it was Randy. He was dressed in his school uniform. He smiled at me, and reached out to take my hand. I put my hand over his, and then immediately jerked it back. His hand was warm, and that scared me.

  I tried to talk, but nothing happened. He smiled again; his hand was still out for me to take. “It’s okay,” he said, but I never saw his mouth move.

  I put my hand over his again, and closed my fingers. His palm was impossibly warm, almost too hot to hold. He turned and tugged me along behind him. We walked for hours over the fallen leaves, and uneven ground. The wind was blowing hard. I knew that because I could see his hair flying around, but I couldn’t feel it against my skin. The sun was moving faster and faster across the sky. As night came, a storm moved in. The moon came up and over us, flying. The trees were enormous and went on mile after mile. I thought, my legs should be tired, but they weren’t.

  When the sun rose again, it seemed as if we’d jumped far ahead of ourselves without walking. We were standing next to an open space in the ground. He was beside me, and our hands, clasped, hung between us. The hole was perfectly six foot. I don’t know how I knew that, but I knew it as surely as I knew I was breathing air. Six foot long and six foot deep. I looked at him, and his eyes seemed to take up my entire vision. I could hear the buzzing of flies. “Katy,” he said, and smiled that smile of ‘I’m sorry’. He pointed into the hole. I looked, and with just the sliver of light that fell to the bottom of the hole, I could make out some finger bones nearly covered by dirt.

  He let go of my hand. I looked back at him quickly, and saw that he was climbing down into the hole. “Where are you going?” I tried to ask, but there was no sound except the buzzing of a fly.

  “This is where I go,” he said without looking up, and then disappeared. The flies seemed to be growing, because the buzzing was louder, now. It seemed like a horde of bees were above me.

  I looked up to see where they were, and the buzzing got louder. I was sure they were all over me; that I was covered in them. I knew they were crawling through my bones and out my mouth. Still, they got louder.

  When I opened my eyes, the buzzing was earsplitting. I wanted to tell someone to make it stop, but I couldn’t see anything. I could feel my body starting to wake up under me, though. It seemed hot and loud inside me. I wanted to move, but something told me not to. I wondered where Randy had gone, and then I remembered. ‘In the hole’ I thought.

  “Mikey, please. Mikey, please get up. Mikey—,” someone kept chanting my name over and over, in a whisper. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were nearby. “Mikey, Mikey, please—,” it kept saying.

  “I can’t see anything,” I mumbled.

  “What?” someone whispered from behind me.

  “I can’t see anything,” I said, trying to speak more clearly.

  “Lift up your head,” someone whispered, “and try to be quiet; I don’t think he’s dead.”

  I tried to lift my head, and it moved. I tasted blood in my mouth. My nose was starting to wake up with the rest of me, and it hurt badly. I lifted my head some, and saw that I had managed to go partly into the dashboard. Blood was everywhere; on the spidered glass of the windshield, on the smashed dashboard, all over my shirt and legs. I looked around for a few moments, still dazed. The world kept swimming in and out of focus.

  “Mikey, you have to get his gun. Mikey, hurry, please; get his gun and his keys and get us out of here. I don’t think he’s dead,” someone said. I turned, and saw Kevin lying up against the mesh divide between the front and back seats.

  I looked down where I knew the gun was. The holster was unsnapped, and I reached for it, but my hand went awry, and hit him in the stomach. The wet smack of it made me retch, but there was also a grunt. I heard Kevin flinch back from the meshing with a startled yelp. I felt more than saw bloody mess coming from my mouth and hitting my pants. My mouth was alive with the taste of wet copper, like sucking on pennies. I moved my hand again, and got it around the gun. I pulled and it came free. It was enormously heavy, though. It took everything I had to lug the gun from the sheriff’s hip onto my lap. I reached for the door, but everything was still moving far too slow.

  “His keys, Mikey; you’ve got to get his keys,” Kevin whisper-pleaded.

  I stopped moving, and looked back over at the Sheriff. His head had gone sideways, for some reason, and had smashed a hole in the window just big enough for the top of his head to fit through. The broken glass was the only thing holding his head up. His body had gone forward into the steering wheel. As my hearing came back, I could tell that the bees I’d heard earlier was actually the car horn. Just past his shoulder, which was slammed against the wheel, I saw the sheriff’s key ring. The keys were in the ignition. I reached over to get them.

  I was so weak that it took some wiggling to get the keys loose. “Okay, good; you’ve got to get out and open the door so I can get out, and then we can get away from the car,” Kevin whispered. I reached for the door handle, and didn’t have enough strength to pull it. I pulled again and again, and nothing happened.

  “It’s stuck,” I mumbled.

  “Hold onto it, and push yourself sideways; use your weight,” Kevin said.

  I did, and the door clicked. I leaned back toward it, and couldn’t stop myself. I fell out of the car. My body was still numb enough that, while I felt the ground under me, I didn’t feel any of the pain of hitting the doorway of the car, or the stones under me. The horn was much louder outside the car than it had been inside. I looke
d up and saw Kevin peering out the side window. He waved and made a motion for me to hurry. I knew I needed to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move any further.

  Just then, the horn stopped. I thought maybe I’d just gone deaf, and I let my eyes loll closed. A continuous banging sound, though, brought my attention back. I opened my eyes with the certainty that the horn had stopped. Kevin was pounding on the window, yelling. Something in me moved, and for the first time I understood what the something, the mysterious something that was always alert and awake in me was.

  I sat up. The world spun around me, but I knew I had to stand. I made my legs move. I managed to get the key into the slot on the door, and turn. The door flew open, and Kevin jumped out. I felt someone grabbing at my hands, and then I felt lighter. Then someone was under me, and my head was cradled against someone’s shoulder. I could hear their breathing; it was ragged and shallow. I felt like I should tell whoever it was that they needed to relax or they’d wind up dead, but I couldn’t.

  That’s when I heard the shot. It sounded like the muffled thump of someone fluffing a pillow, or the snap of someone putting fresh sheets on a bed. I knew it was a gunshot, though. It didn’t sound right.

  “Wha?” I asked, trying to move to see.

  “Gawd dammmit, you cock suckin’ mother fucker! You twisted little nancy cock sucker!” someone was yelling from nearby.

  Whoever had me, moved me against something solid. I could see over the top of an enormous white field of metal. Someone was stilling yelling mean things, but I couldn’t see who it was. I saw Kevin go in front of my eyes, then disappear below the field of white.

  “Don’t you dare, you nancy cock sucker! Don’t you mother fucking do it, you faggot piece a’ trash!” someone was still yelling.