Strange Weather

by Joe Hill

  July 1, 2013

  ON JIM HIRST’S BIRTHDAY, KELLAWAY drove out of St. Possenti and into the smoke, with a gift for his old pal in the passenger seat.

  The smoke blew across the highway in a gray, eye-stinging haze, carrying the stink of a dump fire. It was kids that had done it, getting started on the July Fourth celebrations a few days early, tossing Black Cat firecrackers at one another in some scrubland out behind their trailer park. Now there were something like three thousand acres on fire. The Ocala National Forest was going up like a pile of straw.

  Jim Hirst’s farmhouse was a quarter of a mile from the highway, at the end of a gravel track, crowded on either side by black mangrove and swampy ground. It was all a single story, the roof sagging in places, overgrown with moss and mildew, the gutters choked with leaves. Plastic sheeting covered half of the house, where the siding had been pulled away and windows had been extracted like teeth, leaving gaping sockets behind. It had been that way for three years. Jim had scraped together some money to begin a remodeling project, but not enough to finish one. The lights were off, and the wheelchair van wasn’t there, and if Kellaway hadn’t heard someone shooting out back, he might’ve thought no one was home.

  He walked around the unfinished half of the house. The big sheets of plastic flapped desultorily in the breeze. The gun went off with the steadiness of a metronome sounding 4/4 time. The shooting stopped just as he came around the corner into the backyard.

  Jim Hirst was in his electric wheelchair with a six-pack on the ground beside him, two cans already empty and tossed in the grass. He had the gun in his lap, a small automatic with a fancy sight, the magazine out. An AR rifle leaned against the wheelchair. Jim had a lot of guns. A lot of guns. He had a fully automatic M249 light machine gun in the garage, hidden under some floorboards below the workbench. It was identical to the one mounted on the Humvee they’d shared for six months in the Gulf. Kellaway wasn’t in it, though, when it went over a Russian land mine that nearly tore both the vehicle and Jim Hirst in two. By then Kellaway had been transferred to the MPs, and the only thing that blew up on him there was his future in the army.

  “I didn’t see the van. I thought you forgot I was coming by, maybe went out somewhere,” Kellaway said. “Happy birthday to you.”

  Jim turned and held out his hand. Kellaway tossed him a bottle, a Bowmore Single Malt, aged twenty-nine years. The scotch was a brassy, mellow gold, as if someone had found a way to distill a sunrise. Jim held it up by the neck and admired it.

  “Thank you, man,” he said. “Mary bought a lemon cake at the supermarket. Get a slice and come play with my new toy.”

  Lifting the pistol out of his lap. It was a gray Webley & Scott with a laser sight like something out of a spy movie. He had a box of 95-grain Starfire rounds next to his hip, hollow points that would open like toadstools when they struck soft tissue.

  “Mary get you that? That’s love.”

  “No, man, I got me that. She massaged my prostate, that was what she did for me.”

  “Is that the finger up the ass?” Kellaway said, trying to mask his distaste.

  “She has a vibe. That and a vacuum pump on my cock, it all works out. That’s love. Especially since for her it’s less like sex, more like clearing a clogged drain.” He started out laughing, but it turned into a rough, rumbling cough. “Christ, this fuckin’ smoke.”

  Kellaway scooped the bottle of scotch out of Jim’s lap. “I’ll bring us glasses.”

  He batted through the screen door and found Mary in the kitchen, sitting at the table. She was a thin, bony woman, with deep lines around her mouth and hair that had once been a rich, glossy chestnut but had long since faded to a shade of mouse. She was texting and didn’t look up. The garbage pail was full to the brim, an adult diaper on the very top, and the room smelled of shit. Flies buzzed around both the trash and the lemon cake on the table.

  “I’ll trade you a glass of scotch for a slice of cake.”

  “Sold,” she said.

  He rooted in the cupboard, came up with a few coffee cups. He poured her an inch of whiskey and set it down next to her. When he leaned forward, he saw her texting a series of hearts to someone.

  “Where’s the van?” he asked.

  “It got took.”

  “What do you mean it got took?”

  “We were six months behind on the payments,” she said.

  “What about the check from the VA?”

  “He spent it on other necessities.”

  “What other necessities?”

  “He’s out there squeezing the trigger of one right now.” The gun began to go off again. They both listened until the firing stopped. Mary said, “He’d rather finger one of those than me.”

  “That’s a lovely thought, Mary. I want to thank you for putting that image in my head.”

  “Well, maybe if he sold one or two off, we could have windows in the living room instead of holes in the walls. That might be nice. Live in a place with windows.”

  He cut two slices of cake. As he did, he leaned in for another look at her phone. She didn’t glance up at him, but she did turn it over so the screen was facedown.

  “Jim already had a slice this morning. He doesn’t need another.”

  “No?”

  “He’s overweight and diabetic, and he didn’t need the first slice.” She looked tired, dark rings under her eyes.

  “What are you doing to get around without the van?” he asked.

  “I got friends from work who don’t mind helping out with rides.”

  “Was that who you were texting with just now? Friend from work?”

  “How’s your kid adjusting to only seeing Dad on court-supervised visits? That must be strange for both of you. Like family visits in prison.”

  Kellaway put a slice of cake on a plate for Jim and another on a plate for himself and went out, mugs under one arm, scotch under the other.

  He balanced one of the plates on Jim’s left knee and took the gun away from him. Kellaway began to feed rounds into the magazine, while Jim ate cake with his fingers. Jim had been a big man even in the army, but in those days most of it had been in his chest and shoulders. Now he was carrying it around the waist, and his fat, round face had a corrugated quality, pocked with little dimples.

  At the back of the yard was a splintery, tilting slat fence, with targets pinned up along it: a zombie version of Barack Obama, a zombie version of Osama bin Laden, and a blown-up photograph of Dick Cheney. Politically speaking, Jim Hirst was a man who liked to spread his contempt equally among all parties.

  “You bought this gun for yourself?” Kellaway said, hefting it. “Feels like a squirt gun. What’s up with this grip?”

  “Why don’t you shoot it before you bitch about it?”

  The gun was so small it almost disappeared in his hand. Kellaway lifted it, looked down the sight, and saw a green dot floating across Barack Obama’s forehead.

  “When did you start to go for James Bond shit like this?” Kellaway asked.

  “I’ve always dug the James Bond shit. Laser sights, incendiary bullets. I look forward to our smart-gun future if the NRA ever lets us have it. I’d like a gun that knows my name and how I take my coffee. Who doesn’t want that?”

  “Me,” Kellaway said, and fired. He put one in Obama’s left eye, one in his forehead, one in his throat, one in zombie bin Laden’s mouth, two in Dick Cheney’s pacemaker. “Give me Bruce Willis over Roger Moore any day. I don’t want a gun with a laser beam and a British accent. I want a gun that speaks American and looks like it was built to make holes in school buses.”

  “Why would you need to shoot through a school bus?”

  “If you knew what my neighbor’s kids were like, you’d understand.”

  He traded the gun for a glass of scotch, had a swallow. It tasted sweetly of vanilla and went down like kerosene, ignited the lining of his throat, made him feel like an explosive just waiting for someone to pull the pin.

  “Mar
y is in a mood,” he said.

  “Mary’s always in a mood,” Jim said, and waved at the haze in the air, blinking reddened eyes and coughing weakly. Kellaway wondered if it was just the smoke or if he was carrying a cold. “She was gone late Saturday night, and my piss bag got too full, popped a tube, and soaked my pants.”

  Kellaway didn’t have any sympathy for that. “You can’t change your own piss bag?”

  “I forget to check it. Mary does that for me. But she was off getting shitfaced at TGI Fridays with the girlfriends. They like to go out on the weekend and talk trash about their men. I assume Mary has more trash to talk than most. Her friends can say they don’t get laid enough, but none of their men need a hydraulic device to get a thirty-second stiffy.” He reloaded methodically. “I’m sitting there in urine, she gets back and starts in on me about money, about how her credit card bounced. Like I haven’t already been pissed on enough.”

  “Yeah. She was saying inside. She wants you to sell some of your guns.”

  “Like I could get anything for them. Everyone is selling guns online. They’re cheaper than the steel they’re made out of.”

  “You got anything you want to dump? I mean, the kind of thing you can own without shame as an American. Not one of these guns where you feel like you got to shoot it with one pinkie sticking out, like it’s a teacup and you’re sitting down to scones with the queen.”

  Jim lifted his mug of scotch, held it under his lips without drinking. “You want to feel like a gunslinger, I’ve got a .44 SuperMag that’ll make holes the size of a cabbage in the unlucky target of your choice.”

  “Maybe something a little smaller.”

  Jim drank deeply, swallowed, coughed a rough, barking cough into his fist. “I got a few things. We could talk, I guess. It would get Mary off my back, you wanted to take one of the older guns for a few bucks.”

  Kellaway said, “Jim, I can’t pass a background check. I’ve got that injunction hanging over me. That bitch lawyer of hers destroyed me in court.”

  “Hey, you didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. I don’t got to do a background check. I’m not a gun dealer. I won’t get in trouble. You might, but I won’t.” Jim touched the joystick on the right armrest of his wheelchair. The chair spun halfway around with a whine of servo motors. Then he stopped and angled a dark, almost belligerent look up into Kellaway’s face.

  “I sell you a gun, though, you gotta swear one thing.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “You ever decide to go on a killing spree,” Jim Hirst said, “promise you’ll start with me.”

  July 6, 2013

  9:38 A.M.

  ROG TEXTED HER TO SEE if she could pop into work a half hour before opening. Becki texted him back, I need it 2, SO BAD, but he didn’t reply.

  In the car she put on a pale lipstick that gave her mouth the appearance of being lightly frosted in jizz. She adjusted her cardigan so the upper lacy bits of her black-and-emerald bra were showing, and after consideration she reached under her skirt and wiggled out of her panties. She poked them into the glove compartment, next to the present that had been there ever since Christmas.

  The Miracle Falls Mall was cool and quiet at that hour, hardly anyone there, most of the stores still closed, steel grates pulled down across their wide entrances. The gate was pulled up at Boost Yer Game, but the two dudes who had the morning shift were just horsing around, taking three-point shots on the basket located in the center of the store. Their happy shouts and the squeak of their sneakers echoed all the way down the corridor to the central atrium.

  Becki didn’t see anyone else the whole walk to Devotion Diamonds, except for Kellaway, the top cop in the mall—although of course he wasn’t really a cop at all. Rog said the real cops didn’t want him, that he’d done some skeevy Abu Ghraib shit in Iraq and had been discharged in disgrace. Rog said Kellaway would follow black kids around in the mall, fondling his foot-long flashlight, like he was just looking for a reason to crack some skulls. Becki and Kellaway were both heading in the same direction, but she fell back a few paces, let him march away from her up the central staircase. He had oddly colorless eyes that gave an unsettling impression of blindness. He had eyes the hue of very cold water over very pale stone.

  Devotion Diamonds was at the top of the stairs, the Plexiglas doors halfway open. She turned sideways and slipped between them.

  The display area always smelled like money to her, like the inside of a new car. The gems weren’t out yet but still locked away in their drawers.

  When it was closed, the door to the office blended in with the fake cherry paneling in the back of the shop, but at the moment it was partly ajar, looking into a cube of fluorescent light.

  She pushed it the rest of the way in. Rog was behind the desk, wearing a yellow shirt and a wide brown knit tie. He was smoking, which surprised her. She had never seen him smoke in the morning. The big window at the back of the room was cranked open, probably to air out the smell of the cigarette, which was funny, actually. He was letting more smoke in than he was venting, the haze from the Ocala fire giving the air a filmy texture. He typed something on his big silver iMac, clicked a key, and pivoted in his leather chair to look at her. He flicked his cigarette out the open window without looking to see where it went. His gestures were jerky and abrupt and unlike him, and it made her nervous.

  “Hey, Bean,” he said.

  “What’s up?” she asked. The thing about calling her “Bean” unsettled her even more. That was what he had called her right up until they started fucking. He called some of the other girls who worked for him “Bean,” too, a term of fatherly endearment.

  He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “So one of my wife’s friends told her to look at your Instagram feed.”

  Her stomach cinched tight, but she kept her face expressionless. “Yeah? Who cares? There aren’t any photos of us together.”

  “There’s a photo of you on my boat.”

  “How would anyone know it’s your boat?” She narrowed her eyes, trying to visualize what had been in that picture. A selfie, her grinning up into her phone, holding a green appletini in one hand, a drink that matched her lime-green bikini top. The caption read something like, Until we go to the south of France, the only place to sunbathe naked is on bae’s yacht! LOL. “It could be anyone’s boat.”

  “You think my wife doesn’t know my boat when she sees it?”

  “So . . . tell her I asked if I could use it. Tell her I was out with my boyfriend.” She put her hands on the edge of the desk, using her arms to squeeze her breasts together, and leaned in to kiss him. “You won’t even be lying,” she breathed.

  He wheeled back from her in his chair, putting himself out of reach. “I already told her a different story.”

  She straightened up and hugged herself. “What’d you tell her?”

  “That you took the keys out of my desk without asking me. That you must’ve gone for a joyride. She asked if I was going to fire you. I said you’d be gone by the time we opened.” He pushed a small cardboard box across the desk. Until he touched it, she hadn’t noticed it there. “I had some of your stuff in my car. And you had a few personal items in your cubby. I think I got all of it.”

  “Well, shit. I guess we have to start being more careful. Sucks you have to fire me, though. I made plans around my next few checks. It also sucks that your first instinct was to lie to your wife in a way that made me sound like a skeeve.”

  “Bean,” he said. “I don’t regret one minute of it. Not one. But I will if there’s one minute more.”

  So. There it was.

  He gave the box another slight nudge. “There’s something else in there for you. Token of my feelings.”

  She folded back a flap and picked out a small black velvet box on the top of the mess. It contained a silver bracelet, crafted to look like a stave on a piece of sheet music, with a fake diamond G clef set on it. Cheap junk they couldn’t give away.

 
“You were the music in my days, kiddo.” That sounded cheap, too. It would’ve been corny in a sympathy card.

  She dropped the black velvet box on the desk. “I don’t want that shit. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “You know what I’m doing. Don’t make it any harder. It’s hard enough already.”

  “How can you pick her over me?” Becki found it hard to breathe. The room had a bitter blue campfire smell, the stink of the Ocala blaze, and it was impossible to get enough air. “You hate her. You told me you can’t stand hearing her voice. You spend all day trying to figure out how to avoid spending time with her. Besides. What do you have to lose? You told me you had a prenup.” Thinking that sounded very adult, calling it a “prenup.”

  “I do have a prenuptial agreement. Her prenuptial agreement. Becki . . . these stores are all hers. I don’t keep the shirt on my back if she walks. I thought you understood that.” He looked at his watch. “She’s going to call in ten minutes to see how it went. Plus, I have to open. We better go over the ground rules. Don’t try to meet up with me. Don’t come back to the store. I’ll send you your last check. Don’t text.”

  Her throat tightened some more. It was the blunt, almost impersonal efficiency in his voice. He might’ve been discussing store policy with a new employee.

  “This is bullshit,” she said. “You think this is how you get to end things? You’re out of your fucking mind if you think you can just throw me out like a used rubber.”

  “Hey, now.”

  “Something you blew a load in and don’t want to look at anymore.”

  “Don’t. Bean—”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Becki.” He laced his fingers together and looked tiredly down into the bowl of his palms. “Things end. Cherish the good times.”

  “And get the fuck out. With my shitty half-price bracelet.”

  “Keep your voice down!” he barked. “Who knows who’s walking around? Anne Malamud in Bath & Body Works is friends with my wife. Personally, I think Anne is the one who told her to look at your Instagram feed. She must’ve seen us together, making out in the Lamborghini or something. Who knows what Anne has said to my wife?”