by Jay Nichols
* * *
Russell tossed the magazine aside. "Why do you hate me, Mike?"
Mike looked from Huey to Russell, then back to Huey again, as if the answer to the question was printed somewhere on the dog’s ass.
Underneath the end table, Huey panted shallowly, his face wedged deep into a corner, breathing in the dust mites and crumbs that Debbie’s vacuum cleaner had never been able to reach. If he wanted to, Russell could touch the bulldog’s tail with the toe of his shoe. All he would have to do is extend his leg and tap tap tap.
O’Brien gaped at Russell, the latter’s apparent insouciance vexing the former’s resolve. Russell could almost see the thoughts billowing up through Mike’s gray matter, hitching rides across synapses, making connections, damning the hippie’s disorientating coolness in the presence of the beast before him, the beast that he’d become.
And he was a beast, this dirty human standing in front of the Graham’s TV set with an arrow notched in the draw string of Pete’s yellow Matthew’s compound bow. He pointed the contraption at his opponent’s face as if he had the guts to follow through with it. Either he had them or he didn’t. Russell wagered that he didn’t, that within ten minutes O’Brien would break down and cry. Then again, it was equally possible his right arm would fatigue and the arrow would slip through his fingers and fly straight into Russell’s forehead.
"Why did you steal Pete’s bow?" Russell asked, lifting his legs and resting them on the coffee table, then crossing them. "Don’t you know you can get arrested for that?"
"It doesn’t count if he’s dead."
Russell kept his eyes glued on Mike’s grubby right hand, which glistened mottled purple in the lamplight. Stay calm. Don’t let him see you sweat. He swallowed. "I think it does count, Mike. Are you going to tell me why you’re doing all this? I mean, what’s the point?"
"The point," Mike attempted to say wittily, "is at the end of this arrow."
Then the shirtless moron grinned as if he had made the cleverest joke in the world.
Russell clapped his hands slowly, sarcastically. "Bravo, O’Brien. Bravo! I couldn’t have done better myself. What do you think, Huey?"
At the sound of his name, the bulldog groaned.
"You see, Mike. Even Huey thinks you’re funny."
"Shut up!" The arm holding the yellow bow wavered. Russell flinched.
Noticing the tremor, Mike said, "Come on, Rusty. I ain’t gonna shoot you yet! I’m waiting for Hector to get back so he can watch."
On the wall behind the TV, three diamond-shaped mirrors hung in a diagonal. Russell gazed into one and saw out the kitchen window. It was a square of darkness now, but when Hector returned, it would glow with the Jeep’s headlights.
No. I’ll hear the Jeep long before I see it. But the question is: What’s going to happen after that?
Russell didn’t know, but one thing was certain: he wasn’t going to die tonight. He’d figure something out. For now, he had to keep stalling Mike.
"Fine," Russell began, "you’re going to kill me. But seeing as how I’m going to die and all, maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me what you’re escape plan is. You do have one, right?"
Mike stared down the arrow shaft—one eye closed and the pinnae of the fletching mingling with the thin sideburns of his right temple—and spread his legs into a kind of firing stance. The bow’s arm bisected his face; the tips flexed as he pulled back farther on the draw.
Oh shit!! He’s gonna shoot me now!
Russell kept a peaceful countenance about him as he shut his eyes. To an outside observer, he would have appeared to have slipped into a deep meditative state—a trance—where nothing could harm him, not even an arrow through his third eye.
Because he wants me scared. That’s why he’s doing this. He wants me to be the one who loses it and cries. But no way is this dimwit going to get the best of me.
Russell’s reaction to his threat threw Mike into a deeper rage.
"Why aren’t you screaming?! I hate you!"
When Russell opened his eyes, the arrow was still more or less aimed at him, but now Mike’s arms quavered, throwing the arrow tip into erratic yaws and nosedives. Mike’s face twitched; his eyes shimmered with tears. Russell had to do something—anything—before O’Brien fired that arrow, for the thin line was beginning to slip between the pads of his grimy, blue fingers.
Russell made a slow, lowering gesture with his hand and, to his surprise, Mike lowered the bow. He kept the arrow notched and ready, though.
Once I have him crying and mewling like a girl, I’ll make a grab for it. I wonder how quick he is with that thing. Shit, how quick am I? Will I have enough time to yank it from his hands, or will he raise it up and shoot me mid-lunge?
Calmer now, Mike wiped the pie filling from his lips and chin with the back of his arm, then wiped his arm on his dirt-stained shorts, which had once been gray but were now the color of puce. Threaded through the belt loops of his last remaining article of clothing was a makeshift band of animal hide. This belt consisted of three twisted, oblong strips tied together in three equally sloppy knots. Through it, Mike holstered a black-handled kitchen knife.
Russell spoke. "Where did you get that knife?"
Mike looked down and said, "I found it in the woods."
Of course you did. That’s where you’ve been hiding. You never went back to your house after I kicked you out of mine because you couldn’t. People were looking for you there. So you fled into the woods for—God, I don’t know…two weeks? Three? And you found that redneck kid’s knife.
"I bet you did. Now, do you mind telling me what the hell is going on here? If I promise not to be sarcastic, will you tell me?"
Mike stared at him. Defiant. "I’ll only tell you what you need to know."
"And what is that?"
"That you’re going to die tonight."
"You’ve already told me that. Give me something else."
Mike stroked his chin like the wise Chinese sage in a samurai movie. "Hmm, let’s see…Oh! I know! You deserve to die, and I have to be the one who kills you. And Hector has to be the one who watches me kill you."
"Really?"
Mike backed up and sat down on top of the large TV set, kicking up dust plumes around his legs and thighs. The bow he rested across his lap (arrow still notched); his feet he dangled.
With his crafty eyes, Russell inspected Mike’s sooty, bare feet. What he saw repulsed him to the core. It wasn’t so much the feet and their layers of grime and pine sap that made him feel such unease as much as it was the ankles above the feet. Hundreds of maroon pockmarks extended up his calves and shins, abating in number the closer they came to his knees. Russell immediately pegged them as the healing wounds of multitudinous animal bites.
"Yep. You’re the one I gotta kill."
"Why me?"
Mike pressed a finger to his lips "Nuh-uh…I can’t tell you that."
"Can you tell me what bit your legs?"
Mike looked at the ceiling and sighed. "I can’t tell you that either."
"That’s okay," Russell replied. "I already know the answer."
"Then why did you ask, numbnuts?"
Russell shook his head and clucked his tongue. "You haven’t changed a bit."
Mike’s stomach caved in. His eyebrows scrunched together. He heaved a single deep breath, raised the bow, and drew the arrow in lightning flash speed. "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?!!"
Russell made the same lowering gesture with his hand, but this time Mike kept the arrow fixed steadily on his face.
He’s so fast!!
"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?!" Mike repeated.
Russell responded placidly. "I said you haven’t changed a bit."
"Are you blind? Or do you not see what I’ve become?"
"And what have you become?"
"I’m a man."
To that, Russell chuckled lightly. Then he laughed. Arrow pointed at his face or not, what Mike had said struck him as so abs
urd that his only recourse was laughter. The notion was that ludicrous. He had known from the moment he saw the moronic kid in the kitchen that he was trying to prove something. But, a man? What Mike was selling, Russell wasn’t buying.
"A man?!"
Russell cackled even louder. Yet in the pit of his soul, where dark things lie, fear scrambled for a foothold and an escape hatch. Fear wanted to climb out of the murky soup and enter surface consciousness. He wouldn’t grant it entry, though. So he suppressed, he restrained, he smothered the troublesome emotion before it could grow into something he could no longer control.
"WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?! DON’T YOU SEE WHAT I AM NOW?!"
Flummoxed, O’Brien lowered the bow and eased the tension on the line. He then climbed on top of the TV, stood, and flexed his noodle arms in what Russell assumed was supposed to be a pose of intimidation.
The sight caused Russell to laugh even more raucously, and when Mike turned his head in profile, Russell lost it completely. His eyes watering, lungs burning for air, Russell blurted out: "Is that supposed to scare me?"
Mike stepped down from the TV, an embarrassed expression creeping over his smudged face. He glared at the person rolling on the couch. "Sounds forced to me," he said. "Like you’re pretending all of this is funny but are really scared on the inside. I smell the fear in you, Rusty. It’s coming off of you in waves."
To that, Russell quickly sobered and peered across the room at the abomination holding Pete’s bow. "Is that right?"
"I smell everything."
Strike him now! While he’s still small.
And that’s what Russell did.
"So I guess it’s your extraordinary sense of smell that makes you a man then. You know, when it comes right down to it, isn’t that all men are? Aren’t they all just Bloodhounds—trained animals only good for one thing, possessors of that one unique gift their masters warp and twist for their own selfish desires? If that’s the case, then my question to you, Mike, is: Who’s your master? Who’s running the show in your pea-sized brain?"
"Liar! I’m not a dog."
"You’re not?" Russell asked, smirking. "Okay, keep telling yourself that. What do I care? If you want, I’ll lay it on you the way I see it—and believe me, Mike, if you smell everything, then I see everything. I’m able to pick shit up about people—connections, ties—you’ve never even dreamed of."
Russell didn’t wait for a response. He fixed O’Brien in his gaze and continued. "So here’s how I see it: All you are, Mike, is a dog with a weapon. You’re not a man, because you don’t want to be a man. You want to be special. But the sad fact is that most adults—and most kids, for that matter—aren’t special. I’m the rare exception. And I don’t mean that in an arrogant way; it’s just the way it is. I’m not ruled by the same desires as the rest of humanity. Maybe it’s because I create songs—beautiful works of art—that make me, and the people around me, temporarily immune to the callousness of the world. When life gets too rough for me, I disappear inside my music and daydreams. It’s my escape route and I use it liberally. You, on the other hand, have nothing. You’re like Hector: you have no skills, no talents, no imagination. You’re a dog. For you, the world ends at the horizon. You’ll never be able to leap up and go beyond it. You’re doomed—no, damned—to a life of emotional barrenness, where nothing gets you so excited that you lose all sense of time but where everything that happens, happens to your detriment. You play the victim, just like Hector, and you play it for the whole world to see. You turn your craziness on and off, but that doesn’t mean you’re clever. What you lack—what most people lack—is the only thing you need in life. Believe me, I know. Saying you’re a man? Psshh—why would you want to be one? Why would you ever want to be so boring?"
"You’re wrong."
"About what?"
"About everything."
"I think I’m about as right as they get."
"You don’t know how I am, Rusty. I have imagination and I’m a man."
"You’re just a dirty kid with a bow and arrow set. Having a weapon and declaring your manliness doesn’t change a fucking thing."
"I’ve changed! Don’t you see?"
Russell examined the standing figure from greasy head to grimy toe. "You look like the same kid I kicked out of my house three weeks ago. You’re a lot dirtier, though. A lot. And you stink, too. Other than that, you’re exactly the same. You haven’t changed a bit."
"I’ve grown," Mike tried to convince.
"No, you haven’t. You took off your shirt. And your shoes. But that doesn’t mean you outgrew them. It just means one more screw has fallen out of your already screw-loose head."
"SHUT UP!" O’Brien screamed, raising the bow with the same breakneck speed he’d exhibited before.
"Put it down, Mike," Russell demanded. "I don’t like you pointing that thing at my face."
"Why?" Mike asked, not lowering the bow. "Because you think I’m gonna shoot you?"
"No. Because I think you might lose your grip and accidentally shoot me."
"Oh, it won’t be an accident. I’m good with this thing. You’d be surprised how many critters I’ve killed over the past couple of weeks. I’m a natural."
"And is that what makes you a man—shooting animals?"
O’Brien smiled. "It’s part of it."
Russell nodded toward the dog under the table. "Why don’t you shoot Huey then? Put him out of his misery."
Mike looked at the dog’s stub tail. When his lips quivered, so did the bow. "He’s not dying. He’s just a little sick, that’s all."
"You don’t sound so sure of yourself."
"Why do you always try to make me feel so sad?!" Mike yelled. "I never do that to you!"
"Point that thing somewhere else."
Mike did as he was told.
“You’ve done plenty to me," Russell said, ticking the offenses off with his fingers. “You betrayed me with that silly letter you wrote Hector; you made your dog puke on my kitchen floor; you nearly broke Apollo’s back when you jumped on him. The list goes on and on."
"I never meant to hurt Apollo. He was supposed to take me away."
Russell ignored him. "And now you’re threatening my life with Pete’s bow. I really wish you’d just drop it and walk away."
"You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I know what you’d do if I put it down. You’d attack me."
That’s exactly what I’d do. I’d bash your face in with my fists until it was gone. Then I’d keep punching until I hit the back of your lousy, rotten skull. It might ruin my hands, but it’d be worth it.
"I would never do that. I’m not a violent person."
"There you go with another lie. Why don’t you ever tell the truth?"
"It is the truth," Russell shot back with mock sincerity.
"No, it’s not. You’re too afraid to face up to what you really are."
"And what am I?"
"You’re a killer, just like everybody else. You killed Lola!!"
Russell shifted his weight on the couch and prepared for the lunge he didn’t want to make. The furor dancing in his bone marrow was beginning to seep out. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to refrain from jumping over the coffee table and wringing Mike’s skinny neck. Bow or no bow, he’d do it.
Because what he’d said about Lola was about as low of a blow that he could’ve thrown.
Because to call a creator a destroyer is the worst insult imaginable.
I don’t create. I only rearrange.
Russell pointed a stern finger at Mike and said, "Don’t you dare call me a killer. I only killed Lola because I had to. You’re killing Huey out of negligence—out of selfishness—and it’s going to be something you’ll have to live with for the rest of your miserable, worthless life."
"Oh Rusty, always so dramatic. You keep bringing up Huey. What’s your preoccupation with him—and, yes, I know big words, too. I know what you think, that I’m dumb. Just because you tutored me in English,
don’t mean you’re better than me. I’m better than you!! And you’ll see why when Hector gets back."
"Hector is going to kill you. He didn’t see through you’re stupid, phony letter, but I did. I told him all about what you were trying to do. He’s looking for you right now, as we speak, and when he comes back and finds you standing in his living room, he’s going to rip your head off."
"I’ve got that covered."
"Do you really? Because if Hector’s charging at you, trying to rip your head off, how are you going to kill me? And if you’re killing me, how are you going to keep Hector from killing you? You can’t have it both ways. If you turn your back on me to shoot Hector, I’ll just attack you and steal your bow away. You already know I won’t kill you, so—"
"I don’t believe that at all. You’d kill me the moment I let my guard down. I see right through your sneaky-snaky ways."
"Do you now?"
"And stop doing that!"
"What?"
"Answering with questions. It’s pissing me off!"
"I’m sorry, but this whole situation is ridiculous. I mean, you obviously broke in here with some sort of grand plan in mind, but as it turns out, you didn’t think things through all the way and now you’re fucked. When you’re either dead or in jail, it won’t be because the universe conspired against you. You sealed your own fate by underestimating me. You thought I’d cry for my life when I saw you with that bow, but now that I’ve exposed your shitty plan—and it was a shitty one—you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place."
"Oh, yeah—"
"Yeah. You can’t fight us both off. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but right now Hector Graham is my bestest friend in the whole wide world. You didn’t count on him turning on you, did you?"
"Actually, I did. I know how to manipulate him, too. He’s stupid."
"But he’s big. And when he sees you, he’s going to destroy you. You might be able to get a shot off, and that shot might kill him, but there’s no way you’re going to kill us both, unless you shoot me before Hector gets here. But like you said, your plan is to have Hector watch you kill me—why you want me dead, I don’t know—and now that plan is moot."
"You think so?"
"Now you’re answering with questions! Yes, I do think so. Because right now, you’re just a man without a plan."
"Well then, Rusty, if you’ve got things so figured out, why don’t you tell me how I got you to come here in the first place. It’s not like I called your house and asked your mom, ‘Can Russell come over and play?’ Huh? Rusty Whitford’s got an answer for everything, but do you got an answer for that one?"
He didn’t.
But he’d figure it out. As long as he let go and allowed the solution to flow to him, like dandelion fluff on a breeze, he’d reach out at the opportune time and seize it. The only way it wouldn’t come would be if he used logic, that crude five-letter four-letter word.
Little did he know that logic was no longer an option, that logic had died sometime in early August when a fat bully named Hector Graham chose to sock scrawny Pete Oscowitz in his hollow, sunken gut.
It had all started in the doorway to the little room that housed the little piano, which really was the prettiest thing in the entire house. And that would also be where it ended. Under the watchful keys—so like eyes—of the antique baby grand, whose bass register leaned sharp, Russell Whitford would meet his fate.