Canis Major

by Jay Nichols

  * * *

  Maybe he went home.

  The longer he sat in the dark truck on the dark street, the more he believed that to be the case. If Hector was going to hurt Mike tonight, he would have returned by now and done it. Russell angled his wristwatch to catch the street lamp’s sickly, yellow glow.

  Twelve thirty-two.

  "He went home. That, or he rolled his Jeep in a ditch somewhere."

  He drives like a maniac. Especially when he’s been drinking. Let’s just hope that he did tumble that old Wrangler into a ditch, because if he comes back drunk—

  "I should’ve called the cops," he said to the night. "This isn’t my thing. This isn’t my fuckin’ thing. What the hell am I doing out here?"

  For its reply, the night offered up only the trill of crickets and distant bark of an insomniac dog.

  Unable to bear the tension of impending violence any longer, Russell shoved open the door, climbed out of the truck, and did something he should have done three hours ago. He jogged the tramped-down trail to Mike’s front porch and rapped his knuckles against the splintered door.

  "Is the son of a bitch even home?" he mumbled, pounding again. Carefully, he eased his ear to the door.

  Then it hit him, contorting his face and making his eyes water.

  "Gross."

  Immediately after catching the whiff, the odor vanished.

  "That’s what you get when you don’t support your floors, Mike. Pipes burst, shit goes flying out everywhere." Imagining the fecal sludge brewing below the decrepit, sinking house, Russell shuddered. "I told you to get some cinder blocks but nooooo—you had to ignore me."

  He spoke to the door, something he wouldn’t have normally done, but he knew the scamp was on the other side of it, listening to his every word. He could almost see the cowardly peon crouched beyond the crumbling plank: O’Brien and his stupid un-housetrained dog, both with moronic mouths agape in mock disbelief.

  "Yeah, Mike, I’m talking to you. If you’re still pissed at me, fine, but I’m warning you, you better stay inside tonight. Grab a kitchen knife or something, because Hector’s coming to get you. Ya hear me? Hector’s coming."

  Why would he be scared of Hector? They’re friends.

  Russell pressed his forehead to the door and whispered, "He knows you tried to trick him with that letter you wrote. But I explained to him what you did—how you tried to pit him against me. And guess what? Now he’s out to get you instead of me! Pretty cool, huh, how I switched things around on you? You see, Mike: I’m the clever one, not you. I move the chess pieces; you’re just a lousy pawn. I know you’re in there, Mike. I can hear your dog breathing."

  Then, for no reason, Russell pounded his fist against the door as hard as he could. The house’s termite-ridden frame shifted and sank closer to the ground.

  "You see what you’ve done?" he said, the tides in his eyes rising, spilling over. "You see how you made me sic him on you? Why did you have to write that stupid letter?!"

  At that, he turned and ran back to the truck, catching another rank whiff of O’Brien shit as he went. Once behind the wheel, he cranked the engine and, in an effort to escape the memories trying to force their way to the front of his strained and fatigued mind, sped up the remainder of Peach Street. Keeping those memories at bay wasn’t the hard part. Acknowledging the fact that Mike O’Brien and Hector Graham had once been his friends, was.

  "Me and Pete should have never gotten mixed up you two fucks. We were doing just fine on our own."

  Turning onto Hibiscus, he reached for the radio and dialed in the farm reports, hoping for a longshot that the broadcasters’ droning, rural voices would soothe his nerves. But as he expected, they had the opposite effect. He cut the rednecks off just as one of them, in passing, mentioned something about a burn ban.

  Burn ban? Since when?

  [While you were hiding out in your bedroom, moping around like a little bitch, the county issued a burn ban. You should try reading the news. Or are you above doing that, too?]

  I’m not listening to you because I’m not crazy. Only crazy people hear voices in their heads.

  [Oh Russell, you’re the craziest one of them all.]

  You’re a liar. You’re a stress-induced phantasm that is really my own conscience trying to sabotage itself. But I’m not going to self-destruct, no matter how much you want me to, because I see right through your cozening little lies. You’re trying to lead me down paths I don’t want to go down, and you know what? I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. So you can just go fuck yourself.

  [I’ve been nice to you. I don’t have to be.]

  And I can drown you out if I want to. You’re not the one in control. I am.

  [You think so? Well, listen to this:]

  Before the voice could sing, scream, whisper, plead, crank out a riff on an electric guitar, or do whatever it planned on doing, Russell focused every fiber of his being onto conjuring the loveliest, most alluring melody imaginable and playing it in his head for the traitor to hear.

  See what I can do? Russell thought at him/her/it/them. Do you like that? I wrote it myself.

  He cranked up the volume on his mental stereo and envisioned the chords and harmonies wrapping around his body, protecting him, cushioning him like a huge, billowy cloud.

  That’s who I am, Russell told the nonexistent voice. I’m not some other thing, like you said earlier. I’m only one thing.

  But he was talking to no one. The voice was gone—for now. It would come back. Russell was sure of it. And when it did, it would continue with its venomous lies, which it spat like acid over its forked tongue.

  "And I’ll just ignore him—it—whatever."

  He was fast approaching Deer Street when the idea bloomed in his mind. He knew it was crazy—perhaps suicidal—but he couldn’t stop himself from driving past his street and heading for the one house he swore he would never visit again.

  "I’m just checking to see if he’s there. That’s all. If he’s not, I’m calling the cops."

  O’Brien, I hope you appreciate all I do for you, you little ratfink.

  As he made for the outskirts of town, the familiar, odd, nauseous feeling mushroomed through his gut and mind, the surreal vertigo that was way too real to be vertigo. The dizziness simultaneously seized and guided him, and while in its grips, the part of Russell that could still think wondered not only who was driving the truck, but who was driving the whole damn ship. It certainly wasn’t him. He was in another world, one in which he stood still yet moved. In this reality, his life existed on conveyer tracks, and these tracks were dragging him toward an inescapable black void. And gliding forward, inch by inch, he had all the time in the world to ponder his fate once he reached the end of the line. Would he stick to the tracks and roll over to the other side of this flat earth? Or would he plummet like Pete had plummeted? He didn’t know, but he had a sneaking suspicion that if he did fall off the face of the earth, he wouldn’t be hitting ground any time soon.

  Am I really in control? Am I ever in control? At one point, I had thought that I was. I had told the voice inside my head that I was. But if I am, then why am I out here in the middle of the night, on my way to Hector’s house? Am I just an actor in that traitor’s play, doomed to play out my part no matter what? Why can’t I fight it? Why am I compelled to do the things I do? Why can’t I find the resolve to turn this hunk of metal around and go back to my dog?

  The answer to the last question was simple: Because he had to see.

  I’m sorry, boy. I shouldn’t have locked you in my room. You should be here with me. I need your help. I need your protection. More now than ever.