My face looks back at me. It’s a new picture. They’ve gone through the trailer. The picture shrinks to one side and the other picture, the one cropped from the Don Cherry photo snaps up beside it. I check the remote and press the volume. There is a man standing in Cashtown Corners. A reporter stands in front of pumps 3 and 4.
“Police are not telling us everything but the prime suspect, the gas jockey who was apprehended fleeing the scene with twelve thousand dollars is now either an accomplice, or a witness, or a victim himself. In any case police are stepping up their hunt for the owner, this man, Bob Clark, and are sending out a nationwide alert to the public to call immediately if they spot him. Police also warn that he may be armed and dangerous. Police are also telling us that they have put in a request to the long-running TV program America’s Most Wanted for assistance in apprehending Mr. Clark. In spite of the warning that he is a dangerous man police are only saying that he is wanted for questioning.”
Charlie Baker. Charlie Baker saw me. I look in the mirror in Patty’s bathroom. I am thinner. I have a beard. I pull my eyes open. They are brown but I detect an orange fleck in there that wasn’t there before. My mouth. My eyes. Even with the beard. Even thinner. Even with the orange fleck. I am him. I look exactly like him. Oh Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. But you think I’m Patty’s father. I hear him. He says to someone, “You know, that guy that killed all those people looks an awful lot like Patty’s father.” He might doubt for a moment, the coincidence, then some responds, “But Patty’s father isn’t Bob Clark, right? I mean, they know the guy they’re looking for. They aren’t looking for Patty’s father.” Charlie Baker would have to concede to that. He’d know right then and there that the man who looks like Patty’s father is simply someone else. Then he’d reason to himself the other part—This guy here is heavier, anyway, and clean shaven.
My heart is punching my chest so hard I can see my shirt shake. I have to stay fixed on that scenario. It is the most likely and certainly the only way it plays out. But there’s something else. Something else. Charlie came around here asking after Patty. He wanted to know what happened to Patty’s head. The head I shot. Did he suspect something? How could he? Patty can’t be walking around with a bullet hole in her forehead. Suddenly I can’t hear Charlie thinking anymore. I can’t really say what’s going on in there. There are too many variables. The dots are too scribbled around to see their connections. I have to call the school.
“Good morning, Duntroon Secondary.”
Nice voice. Good morning. The morning is going good.
“Hi. Could I speak to Charlie Baker, please?”
“I’ll check if he’s teaching a class.”
The line is held. It goes to local news radio. I hear the name Bob Clark and press the phone to my chest. My heart tires to escape through my back so I push the phone against my thigh. I am convinced that I am going to slip now. I’m going to say “Hi, Charlie, it’s Bob Clark.” In fact, there’s a terrible pressure in the back of my head pushing the name down onto my tongue. This is what happens when you think you are thinking clearly when you are not. I have damaged all my minds now and there is no time to establish a working one.
“Charlie Baker.”
“Hi, Charlie, it’s Patty’s father.”
“Oh, hi. I was going to call you.”
“Oh yeah? What were you going to call me about?”
“Just wanted to check on Patty. How is she?”
It’s almost too normal. I need to confront facts. I need to refute things.
“She seems a lot better now. How’s she doing in school?”
“Well, Mr. Lerner, to tell you the truth, she seems a little . . . a little off. I don’t know how to describe it.”
I am the thinner, bearded man with an orange fleck in his eye.
“Well try, couldja, Charlie?”
Silence. What tone did I just use? Something went funny there. Charlie coughs.
“Okay. Well, she’s really isolated. Just not the same girl. Not eating either.”
I hurry to pick up the major points.
“Isolated. That doesn’t sound too good. Not eating?”
Silence again. I think I must be coming off wrong here. I should never have called. I need to get out. Now.
“Well, I’m aware that teenagers, especially teenage girls, go through—”
“Uh, oh. Charlie. I gotta go.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Bye, Charlie.”
Phone hangs up. We shared some concerns and then I had to go so we’ll just hope for the best and that she’s going to be okay. That’s where we stand and I’m Patty’s dad who is a bit weird to talk to but that doesn’t make him a crazy killer on the loose. I should never have called. If he comes around here I know I will kill him. When I squeeze my eyes I see scribbled faces again. I need Patty to come home.
This house is where I made things better. I wander out into the hall. The photos I straightened. This is where I grew up. I put my fingers on the family. I miss them. It’s strange how memory attaches itself to things. Memories adrift cling to whatever floats to stay alive. The thing that preserves a memory isn’t anything like the memory itself. A smell or a colour or a sound. That row of trees behind Patty in this picture is gone now. We put the wall there instead. I step back from the pictures. I have been talking. It’s time to sit on the settee carefully and figure out how we protect Patty.
I have done this before. Discarded myself in order to be here. I have to accept certain things if I am to return properly. First: They are coming to get me. Once I allow that fact then I can begin to make some real final moments possible. They are coming to get me. I have to say something that will help. Like this: You are not going to run. I am not going to run. All the rest of it. The magic. That is coming to an end. My heart is slowing. It doesn’t matter what I said to Charlie Baker. It doesn’t matter what I remember. I am going to be taken away soon. There are thoughts you can have that actually cause chemicals to be released in your blood that make you feel that everything is okay. And there are thoughts you can have that release chemicals in your blood that tell you that you are going to die. I need to find the thought that releases both. Specific thought, regardless of where it comes from or how it is made true. A simple chain of words and a little bead of plausibility. A grackle lands in the empty bird feeder, turns twice to defend it, then flies off. I need a thought that has the effect of music. Two finches sneak up from below. They’ve been pecking seed that has fallen into the grass. Smarter bird. I wonder where the bird feed is. I could fill it. I go down into the basement and root around in the boxes under the stairs. I find a bag of bird feed sitting on a cross stud in the unpanelled wall. I also see a bottle of red wine. I take both.
The front door opens upstairs. No ring. No knock. Just someone walking in. Patty’s home early. I am apprehensive. What if her face is scribbled out? What if I go up and I can’t even look her in the eye? I return the bag of seed and climb the stairs with the wine.
Patty runs down the hall with her boots on. I look down, afraid as she passes me. I hear that she’s crying. I turn to follow. She’s on the stairs running up to her room. Part of me wants her to get there. To close the door. I would leave her. I would leave this house. But she stops suddenly halfway up the stairs. I can’t look at her. I don’t want her face—that beautiful broken face—to be chopped to pieces by the mad lines.
“You know what?”
I don’t look to answer.
“What?”
“Everybody can go fuck themselves.”
The thought. The chemicals just moved. I look up. It is her face. Tears in black and blue and a slippery smile.
“Yes, they can.”
I reach my hand up and she looks at it.
“You can go fuck yourself too.”
I nod, accepting this. She comes down and takes my hand.
“So what are we going to do about it?”
She hooks her arm in mine. I stoop to pick up the wine.<
br />
“I am going to pour this wine into your brothers’ skulls.”
She stops and looks up at me.
“Well, that’s big.”
We reach the barred door and I carefully unhook her arm. I pull on each brace until the nails give up then I put my hand on the doorknob. Patty steps back and raises her hand.
“It’s been redone.”
We step out into the kitchen and the sun has moved lower in the sky so that the rays are creating colour in the crystal surface. Pink and blue and yellow shapes move in crisp patterns across the floor. Patty gasps. I pick up the skulls and drag two chairs out into the yard. Patty follows, making soft disbelieving sounds. I place the chairs on patio stones that seem iced and powdered like fresh confections. Patty walks out into the yard. She moves slowly, watching how nothing stays still, how even the dirt is luminous now. I let her. This is something I don’t think anyone has ever seen before. I open the wine and carefully pour it. I know she is crying. I don’t have to look. I am too. It’s what we should be doing.
I raise my cup.
“To terrible life.”
I hold Patty’s cup in an upturned palm and pass it. She accepts demurely.
“To terrible life.”
We tilt the bones at our lips and empty them. Patty swallows and coughs.
“Sorry. I don’t drink. Not old enough.”
I arch my eyebrows. Scandalous.
“How was your day?”
I like her asking me this.
“Well. I found this.”
I stretch my arm out, presenting the yard again.
“This is something.”
I am refilling the cups.
“And I called Charlie Baker.”
I drink half in one gulp. Patty keeps hers in her lap.
“Oh. I didn’t have his class today. Why did you call him?”
I like wine.
“Oh. Just to see how you were doing.”
“Charlie Baker doesn’t know.”
“I got that. How was your day?”
I refill my cup and watch Patty take a sip.
She doesn’t swallow.
I put my hand on her knee.
“Are you okay?” The wine slips from the corners of her mouth. There’s something wrong. “Patty! Oh my god.”
It’s not wine. It’s blood. Blood is running from her nose and her mouth. She grunts and leans forward then snaps her head back. When she speaks there are holes erupting on her chin.
“How many? You cocksucker! How many?”
I don’t understand and I’m frightened.
“How many what?”
Three of Patty’s teeth have fallen into her hand.
“How many days?”
She coughs and blood comes out in a puff.
“I don’t know what . . .”
I extend my hand to catch teeth falling from her chin. She turns to me as her face pulls in at the middle. Her mouth deforms her words now.
“How many days is today?”
“How many? How many? My fuckin’ God, Patsy, if we knew the answer to that maybe we could get on with this horseshit, and have the proper fucking day we planned to have.”
25
I am at the side of the house when Patty comes home. I hear the door slam shut. Luckily I have the axe with me and it’s just a matter of where’s the best place to surprise her. The downstairs kitchen would be best but if I start splattering that door in with an axe she’s going to skip out the front door like Pollyanna. It has to be the front door. I put the heft of the handle in both hands and let it pull my muscle. She will die for sure. The front door is locked so I go to the tall bay windows at the ballroom. Looks like it’s going to be a splashdown this time. Rear the axe up so it’s directly centred over my head and I bring it down. The glass and wood rip like paper and with a quick side to side I get a hole big enough. Points of glass catch me on the way through, but that’s okay. I was never going to do this without a little blood of my own. Her music is on and fills the entire upper floor. I’m disappointed for a second. I wanted that to be my entrance, but this will cut out the chance that she might get away. This is the kill that matters. This is the one that didn’t stick the first time.
I feel sweat running down one side of my face and from my elbows. I look. It’s not sweat, it’s blood. I have some deep cuts all through the outline of my body. I come up the stairs slowly. I hear my breath retreating from the music to a dark bladder that palpitates in the middle of my head. I reach the wind from the kitchen and turn to face her door. She has nowhere to go. I am here now. I reach over and softly turn the handle. I’m going to kick it open and fly through.
My foot lands higher on the door than I expect and I have to hop to get my balance back. Patty is lying on her bed, face down, with her arms up under her pillow. Her head lifts slightly to look but the axe comes down like a comet. The blade cracks in halfway down her spine and presses clear through to her stomach. I try to pull it up but it’s like a gaffe hook in a big fish. I drag hard, trying to pull her from the room. If I can get her out then I have better swinging options. The axe pops out and I fall. I hold tight, afraid that Patty may not die properly. She is moving but it’s a death seizure. Trembles fed by profound neurological damage. She will not live. I send the axe up and down again for good measure and clap the back of her head in half. This is the big success I was looking for. I pause over her for a moment. This is a dead person. I chuck the axe onto the bed. My day ends here.
26
In the morning I hear them coming. They are setting up the perimeter. I see the roofs of cruisers through the trees up the driveway. I watch, hidden, from the upstairs kitchen. They have removed the doubt in Charlie Baker’s mind. They helped him get the answer he was looking for. Trees rustle with movement and I even hear the bleating of a radio here and there. These people aren’t too worried if I see them coming. They just want to be in the right place no matter what. I turn back into the house, past Patty’s room and drop my foot onto the top step. I won’t let them shoot me. I realize that I have no interest in dying. I wonder if they’ll storm in or call for me on a megaphone. I have to be careful not to surprise anyone. I am calm again and I have done what I came to do. In the hall I hear them jostling around on the front porch. Probably arguing over who gets to swing the battering ram. I stand far enough back and centre myself. They’ll see me in time and I’ll lay down when they ask. No stupid squiggle faces. No more fingering loose change in convenience stores. All my little moments are over. It’s time to just live my life.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank ChiZine Publications for their hard work on this: Brett Savory, Sandra Kasturi, Erik Mohr, C. A. Lewis, Matthew Moore, Helen Marshall, Laura Marshall, Clare Marshall, Samantha Beiko.
Derek McCormack for his thoughtless taunts early on and his thoughtful cleaning later.
Charlie Baker who supplied himself. Ed Gatavackas, Jayde Barlowe, Sophy Pollack, and Jesse Burgess.
About the author
Tony Burgess writes fiction and for film. He lives in Stayner with his wife, Rachel, and their two children, Griffin and Camille.
BACK COVER
People Live Still in Cashtown Corners Page 9