Hornets and Others

by Al Sarrantonio

  My old man's garage was two blocks down and one over, and we got near it by cutting through backyards. Which was just as well, because by now the police sirens were real close, and one of the cars screamed down the street just behind us as we cut into the hedges bordering a big house.

  "Ain't this Jodie McAfrey's place?" I said, and stopped to ring the side bell.

  Jodie didn't answer, but his mother did, opening the door a crack. I aimed and missed her face. She turned and ran, so I elbowed my way in.

  I aimed careful this time, and gave her two quick ones in the spine. After she went down, I put my foot on her back and planted a final one in her head.

  "Ain't you gonna ask me why I shot her in the back?" I said to Billy as we headed for the fence between the McAfrey's yard and my old man's garage. I laughed loud and said, "Because her front was too far away!"

  We climbed the fence, passed a line of worked-on cars, and then got to the mouth of the garage. I popped the clip on the gun, tossed it away, and put the gun in Billy's hand. "Put a new clip in, and do it," I said.

  Billy got red in the face, looked at the ground real hard, but then he did what I said and went in. I stayed outside, sipping from the jar, but after a minute there was no sound so I ducked inside, moving around the open hood of a Chevy and saw Billy at the door to my old man's dirty office.

  "You still a pussy?" I asked.

  "He ain't here," Billy said.

  I stared at him hard, until he looked at the ground, and then I smiled, taking a key ring off the pegboard next to my old man's desk.

  "Give me the gun," I said. I held out my hand, and he put the gun in it.

  Everything had gone bright and sharp again. I tilted the jar back up to my mouth and felt the white lightning burn down the back of my throat and jump straight into my head.

  "I'll drive," I said, walking outside, tucking the jar back into the front pocket of my pants. The key fit the door of a late model 4x4. "Hey," I said, "it's got a CD player!"

  Billy climbed in. I started the truck up, rolled out, and bent to see if there were any CDs in the case under my seat when a police car roared past and then stopped dead.

  "Hold on," I said, and hit the floor, pulling left as the police car squealed around.

  I headed for the narrow side lot between the last two houses on the block. We had drunk beer here some nights, and there was no way a police cruiser could climb the curb and make it over the mess of broken bottles and rusting old appliances. Sure enough, the cop braked behind us, took a long look, and roared ahead, hoping to cut us off on the next block.

  I drove into the woods beside the back of the lot, instead of bouncing out on Barger Street behind it, where the stupid cop was no doubt waiting for us now.

  The path in the woods widened just enough for the 4x4 to get through. I leaned over, looking for CDs. I reached under my seat, found a stack of them, and put the first one I found into the machine.

  Christian music came on, telling us about how Jesus was all around us and was going to save us.

  "Sounds good to me," I said, laughing, so I put my foot on the brake, stopped the 4x4, put the muzzle of the gun to Billy's ear, and pulled off three shots into his head.

  His body was still twitching when I pulled it out of the 4x4 and dumped it on the side of the dirt road. I put two more shots into his head, both nostrils, just to make sure.

  The white lightning jar was uncomfortable in the front pocket of my pants, so I took it out and emptied it into my throat. I had to close my eyes, but it felt like I still had them wide open. They felt like they were on fire. All of me felt like I was on fire. I threw the empty jar out the window, and it rolled to Billy's head and stopped there.

  The 4x4 was bulky at the end of the narrow woods road, but I got it through. I knew they'd be roadblocking on the two-lane ahead, and wanted to avoid it, but when I tried to climb the piney bank across the road, the truck nearly flipped over and I couldn't find a way through.

  I put the gun on the seat next to me, and turned toward where the roadblock would be.

  As I came around the corner toward it, I thought of the one way out.

  The cops were so fucking stupid. There was another narrow access road just to the left of the crossroads they'd set up on, and I barreled down on them and then clutched and cut back to second gear and turned sharp left. They were all ready with their shotguns and they let go at me, but they were fifty yards away and I got behind the trees fast.

  It was bumpier in here, but I knew where I was going and pretty sure I'd get there. Behind me, I heard one of the police cruisers try to follow and then hit something.

  Just for the hell of it, I rolled down the window, picked up the gun, and shot at a bluejay I saw up in the trees.

  Ahead, a doe leaped across the path, and I braked hard, leaped out, and chased it, pulling off shots. I hit it in the flank and it slowed, and I ran up on it and jumped on its back and fired shots into its head all around, even after it was down on the ground. For good measure I hit the skull with the butt of the gun and kicked it in until there wasn't much left that said deer. I noticed a bulge in the belly and saw that it was pregnant, nearly to term. Something was kicking around inside, so I reared back with my foot a couple of times and planted it in until the movement stopped. One last time I kicked, hard, and my boot went into the belly, making a nice hole, and something bloody with a tiny deer's head fell out.

  I went back to the 4x4, checked the clip in the gun, saw that there were only five shells left. I reached into my pocket, found it empty, thought of all the clips in Billy's pockets.

  "Shit."

  I thought of going back, heard cops, on foot, getting close behind. I floored the 4x4, kicking leaves, and drove on.

  Pisser Johnson's still was only a half mile off the road, and I was at it in another couple of minutes. The shack holding it hadn't been knocked down by the feds, so I slammed the 4x4 into it.

  The jars were in the brush-covered storm cellar ten feet away from the still. I paced out ten long steps due west, hit the sill plate with the toe of my boot, and bent down to brush away the pine needles and dry leaves that covered the door. We'd already busted the lock, so all I had to do was flip off the latch and pull the doors back.

  It was rotten-smelling down there, and the steps were slippery. There was enough light to see about halfway down, then things got dark. I felt around with my boot, trying to find the last step, but I calculated wrong, and slipped, and went down forward. I felt the gun pop out of my belt and slide away from me in the dark.

  It was then that I heard the first voice outside. I knew it was Sheriff Mapes right away; the old bastard was loud and heavy as a hog, and I heard him crunching away in the leaves and twigs. He halted, and there were other crunchings and what sounded like a motorcycle that roared to a stop.

  "Jimmy Connel, you in there?" Mapes roared in his bellowed voice. He didn't sound too happy. "You listen to me, boy!"

  I scratched around on the floor in front of me, coming up with a handful of wet.

  "You come out of there now, you hear me?"

  I heard him, and wanted to let him know. I crawled forward, scuttling around now like a crab, and my hand fell on one of the jar cases. I reached up and in, finding the empty spot where me and Billy'd taken our two jars, and there was another one next to it. I lifted it out, unscrewed it quick, and drank some down. I waited while the fire roared around my eye sockets, and when it subsided, I could suddenly see a little in the damp dark and saw the gun laying about a foot to my right.

  "I hear you, fat boy!" I shouted, jumping at the gun and scrambling halfway up the steps, holding the gun out and firing off a couple of shots.

  I heard someone shout, "Oh, shit!" and heard Sheriff Mapes say, "Is he hit? Get him the hell out of here."

  "Come and get me, Sheriff!" I yelled, and then scrambled down to get the jar and drank off some more.

  "I want you to listen to me, Jimmy Connel," Mapes said. "We know what you and your
friend did. We found Billy lying back there, all shot up. What I want you to do is toss the gun out of the hole and walk right up to me. I'll get you a lawyer and everything. I don't want nobody else hurt. You hear me?"

  Again I scrambled up the steps. I stuck my head up real quick, before they could get a good shot at me, I saw a couple of faces, one of them a deputy, the thin tall one with the hare lip who'd only been with Mapes a year, real close by, almost to the door of the hole, on his belly like a commando. I startled him, aimed, and put a hole right through the top of his skull

  He screamed once and then went quiet.

  They shot at me, but I was already back down the hole. I went for the jar again. When the white lightning went down, it felt like it was burning me all the way from the inside out to my skin. I threw the jar aside, fumbled back to the box, and got another out.

  I heard them arguing outside, and then there was some more crunching in the leaves. I checked the clip in the gun, angling it toward the light, and sure enough there were only two more shells. I snapped the clip back in and waited while they argued.

  A lot of them wanted to come in, storm the hole, but Mapes didn't want that. There was more discussion about tear gas. They all decided on that except Mapes, who wanted to try something else first. The rest of them said the hell with it, but Mapes was loud and he got them to shut up.

  "Now, Jimmy' Mapes yelled out to me, "I'm going to try one more thing with you. I'm going to try it, and then you're going to throw the gun out of the hole and come out of it with your hands in the clouds."

  He didn't wait for me to say anything or shoot, but then I heard Mapes say, "Go ahead" and I heard my old man's voice.

  "Jimmy boy, you hear me?"

  I said nothing, but unscrewed the jar lid quick and took a long swallow down.

  "Jimmy, I know you hear me, so listen to me now. You've done a lot of bad things here today. I want you to stop it now. I think you know what kind of trouble you're in. What if your Momma—"

  I couldn't help myself. I started to cry. I clutched the jar hard, and took a hard swallow. "Don't you do that!" I shouted out.

  "Now, Jimmy," my old man said, reasonable, "these folks out here want to help you. No one's gonna hurt—"

  "Tell them about my Momma!" I shouted out. I took another swallow of white lightning. "Tell 'em how you beat her when I was four till she left! How you beat her again when she came back to get me, so bad she had to crawl away on her hands and knees! Tell them what you told her, that you'd cut my balls off if she came near the house again! Tell 'em what you been doing to me every night for the past eight years, how you been buggering me and making me use my mouth on you, and what you told me you'd do if I ever told anybody!" I was crying big tears and screaming. "Tell 'em!"

  There was no sound out there, just silence. I heard myself weeping. Then I stood up tall, right out of the hole, and took a shot at my old man. But he was hiding behind Mapes, and I winged the fat sheriff instead in the shoulder, and heard him curse and saw him go down to one knee.

  They fired more shots at me then, and I ducked back down and swallowed the rest of the jar, and waited until the commotion calmed down.

  "You listen to me, Jimmy," Mapes said, a little of the bellow out of his voice, 'cause he was breathing hard. I heard him tell someone, "Leave me alone!" before he talked to me again. "Jimmy, you listen to me. You know what we're going to have to do."

  I was still crying a little bit, but I made myself stop and yelled good and loud. "That's all right, Sheriff! I'm just going to sit here and drink the rest of this white lightning!" I took the empty jar in my hand and tossed it out of the hole as far as I could in the sheriff's direction, then opened another jar.

  No one said anything, and then Mapes said, "Now, Jimmy, you got to realize that Pisser Johnson never did anything with those jars. We checked them with the fed man last week. There's nothing in 'em but good, clean Housack river water."

  But I guess I already knew that, so I put the barrel of the gun in my mouth as far up as it would go and pulled off the last shot.

  The Glass Man

  Johann Pinzer peered into his shaving mirror one morning and discovered that he was now made entirely of glass. A clear crystal visage, perfectly filling the contours of his old face, stared back at him where once a fleshy one had. He could see straight through the back of his head to the wall behind; there were no organs, skull or brain to block his vision.

  He gave a little gasp of "Oh!" and turned his head away from the mirror, noticing that the hand he had brought up to his mouth was also made of glass, of a perfectly pliable sort. He could move his fingers quite easily, as easily as always, and yet when he tapped against the porcelain sink with one it gave off the unmistakable ping of crystal.

  At least I'm made of fine glass, he thought fleetingly, and then the full horror of his position struck him and he began to tremble. He opened his robe, shaking, and discovered that, yes, his entire body was composed of perfectly clear glass.

  The possibility that he was dreaming, must be dreaming, suddenly passed through his mind, but he quickly dismissed it. He knew he would never dream of such a thing, and his dreams were never so vivid.

  His predicament was too real. His next thought was that perhaps the whole of humanity had turned to glass, and a perverse thrill ran through him. "Perhaps I am not alone," a part of his mind said. He ran to the bedroom to observe his wife.

  She was sleeping on her side, away from him, and he had to turn her over to discover that she was still corporeally formed of flesh and blood. His heart sank. The act of moving his wife awoke her, and she opened her eyes on his new face. "Oh!" she cried, sitting straight up in bed and pushing herself back against the headboard with her legs. "Johann—oh!"

  He sought to reassure her that what she was seeing was really him, but it took some moments to calm her. She did not, however, become hysterical, and it was not long before she was peering at him with a new interest and a fascinated curiosity. "Is it you, Johann? Is it really you in—there?" Her eyes, which he had always thought of as doe-like, were even wider than normal; he thought tenderly of their marriage and how that look of innocence always brightened her face.

  "It is I, Ilse. What am I to do?"

  His wife shook her head. "I don't know, we must think." She slipped out of bed and into her robe. "Come."

  She made a small breakfast for them—Johann was amazed to find that his appetite was as full-bodied as ever and that food was easily ingested and was not visible through him after he placed it in his mouth ("I imagine the glass somehow absorbs it," he thought)—and they discussed his plight.

  "I suppose," his wife said, "that you must try to continue life as normally as possible. People no doubt will make remarks, but you must try to bear up under your changed condition and go on as if nothing were different. That would seem best."

  Johann sat chewing his toast thoughtfully; he was content to listen to Ilse since she had always been the more practical of the two of them and he knew her reasoning was sound. A sudden thought, though, a possible way to avoid the problem, occurred to him.

  "What of disguise?" he said.

  Ilse shook her head immediately. "Impractical," she said. "Paint would peel or chip, and a mask would turn you into a cartoon figure. I'm afraid you must bear your cross. I will be with you," and she took his hand though she wanted to pull away from its hard, crystalline touch, "and I'm sure there is a reason for this transformation. God has his ways."

  Johann took his hand away; for a moment his glass visage turned, looking into a vague distance, then suddenly it revolved back on his spouse. "I wonder if I will be left alone," he said suddenly, a hard brittle edge coming into his voice; he nearly hit the flat of his left hand with his right fist but thought better of it at the last moment, fearing to damage himself. "I somehow suspect not." He looked to his wife. "I will go to work." He stood up, and his wife stood up with him.

  He dressed quickly, covering as much of his body as possi
ble, and his wife helped him with his coat and muffler at the door to their apartment. "Good-bye," he said stiffly, turning to leave, but she pulled his face down to hers and kissed his cold, clear mouth. "Remember, I am with you," she whispered, and then she turned away, a tear in her eye. "I will see you tonight."

  He arrived at work late, deciding to take an out of the way route which would not expose him to as much scrutiny as his normal, busy path. Even so, a few passersby noticed his downturned, translucent face, and one woman, who he bumped into by mistake, gave a short cry before turning and scurrying away. She gave a glance back at him when she was some distance away, and Johann saw on her face a look, not so much of fear, but of something else: a growing envy, almost. Johann got quickly away from her, and he climbed the back stairs to his office and was able to make it to his desk before anyone noticed him. He feared his anonymity would not last long, however.

  He was in the midst of a small stack of papers when his coffee companion, Biber, pushed open the door to his cubicle with a greeting. He drew up short, though, on seeing the glass man before him.

  Biber flushed, turning abruptly to leave with a muttered apology for barging into the wrong compartment, wanting only to get away from this transparent thing in clothes, but a movement of the glass man's head, a personal attribute of Johann's that Biber knew well, made him stop. "Johann—?" he said tentatively, bending down to peer into his friend's transmogrified face. "It's you?"

  "Yes, it's me," said Pinzer, leaning back with his hands behind his head, fighting desperately to appear normal when he only wanted to bolt and hide in a closet, under a desk, anywhere.

  Biber's look of mystification turned to one of astonishment. "What's happened to you! How can you be this way?"

  "I don't know," said Johann, and he then went on to explain his discovery on waking that morning. He was glad that Biber had been the first at the office to see him this way; he was a good working companion and would help to smooth the way for him.