by Lee Thompson
The pistol’s bark was vicious, so close, so bright, and the impact of the bullet twisted Raul around, nearly a hundred and eighty degrees, so that he hit the cop with his back, hard, but the cop didn’t go down, Raul just ricocheted off him, collided with the endcap and spilled packages of beef jerky all over himself. The blood on his stomach was hot and sticky. It felt like the right side of his body was going numb. He cried out, heard the frightened cries of others over the ringing in his ears, the quick shuffle of feet retreating, everyone hiding, everyone going to let him die there, nobody going to attempt anything to stop it.
The girl, Brandy, was on the ground, bleeding profusely from her thigh, unable to stem the flow. It bubbled up between her red hands. And beyond her the main entrance opened and Raul saw some bum walk in, haggard, frozen, young like the girl bleeding to death, her life draining out from her femoral artery, and he wanted to help her, but he wanted someone to help him even more because his rib cage felt like someone was standing on it and the harsh fluorescent lights seemed to dim and brighten in time to his jagged heartbeat.
Then he realized, with the cop stepping closer, right behind him, that he knew the bum who had come in. It was Luther, and the kid looked like he’d been through hell, and Raul raised a hand, tried to reach for him, and—
34
Luther had never felt more hope than when he reached the mouth of the Flying J Travel Plaza. The ground had frozen, and he had to watch his step. A car slowed in the dark, leaving the road, and turning into the wide driveway. It almost clipped him, the front bumper, and Luther cursed, then let out a helpless laugh as he watched the taillights shrink and disappear around a row of cars in the parking lot.
He pushed it from his mind, stumbled and slid down the decline toward the entrance, miraculously keeping his footing. The store was bright, the doors fogged by the heat inside and the cold outside and the patrons introducing the two temps to each other. A hundred or more big rigs idled in the cold with their marker lights glowing, curtains drawn over their windows. The air stank of diesel fuel and exhaust, but to Luther, they were the most beautiful scents he’d ever smelled. They were signs of humanity, a certain kind of people, and there would be justice for Herman and for their father.
He wiped his tears away before they could freeze. Grabbed the door handle, smiled weakly, thinking about how amazing it would be to hear his grandmother’s voice over the phone, to know she was all right, still breathing.
The heat from inside washed over him, flushed his face, felt so good it hurt as it attempted to drive the cold from his bones. He blinked, coughed, staggered. At first he didn’t see anyone around, then he saw some girl right in front of him, ten feet away, on the floor with a pool of blood beneath her legs. He’d never seen a living person so pale. She was weeping silently, without energy. Luther was about to take a step toward her when he saw Raul, his boss’s son, fifteen feet beyond her, and above him, the man from the Buick was holding the pistol that had killed Herman. The man had the gun pointed at the back of Raul’s head until he noticed Luther. There wasn’t anywhere to run to. The big man smiled at him. The gun was tiny in his fist. So, he was going to die here, he knew, after all he’d been through, after all the good things he’d tried to do for his family. There wasn’t any way he could welcome or embrace the coming explosion. He refused to even try. He said, “You’re a son of a bitch.”
35
Geneva had no idea how Raul had found her so quickly and as she turned and saw him, in that brief second of recognition she could see it was written all over his face, that he hated her more than he’d ever hated anyone. She would have never guessed knowing that could break her heart so much, but it did.
He was so close, almost close enough to reach out and touch, when Hazzard shot him.
She jumped back as the bullet spun him, passed through him and hit some innocent girl in the leg, and the few people in the store ran for cover.
Hazzard raised the pistol and pointed it at the back of Raul’s head. Her husband was dazed, bleeding, his shirt ripped from colliding with the endcap, and there was a hole the diameter of her index finger burned through his shirt, seeping blood, just above his hip bone, in the oblique muscle. She was certain it wasn’t a fatal wound, but the bullet Hazzard was about to put in his head would be.
Without time to think, she swung her purse. It was heavy due to the fifth of vodka inside it, like a massive blackjack. It caught Hazzard at the base of his neck with a terribly loud whack. He tripped over his feet, raised both hands palms out to break his fall, and the pistol skidded across the floor between him and the girl bleeding out. He didn’t hesitate, pushed himself on all fours, in pursuit. Her purse was leaking. He spotted the gun, but there was a kid by the door, on the other side of the dying girl, and he hobbled forward, trying to get to the pistol before her tormentor. He was missing a sleeve on his jacket, she thought, until she saw it was tied around one of his legs and covering his foot. She’d met him a couple of times. He worked with Raul, although both of them, now, were barely recognizable.
Luther reached the pistol a moment before Hazzard, but Hazzard, being on all fours and closer to the floor, grabbed it first.
36
Nathan was terrified Luther was going to beat him to the .38. But something was wrong with the kid’s feet and hands. Hazzard grinned, got his fingers around the short barrel, was working on getting it repositioned so he could use it, when the kid kicked him in the face. The pain was similar to how he imagined a lightning strike must feel.
Then the kid was down beside him, clawing for the gun, trying to pry it from his fingers. Hazzard couldn’t focus. He kept imagining it was Barb there with him, on a dark forest floor, the traitorous bitch trying her damnedest to drag him into a bog and drown him.
He struck out blindly and felt the kid’s grip loosen on the gun.
Hazzard hung on long enough to regain his focus. He heard Geneva urging him on, close by, saying, “Kill him!”
And Hazzard was trying, but he couldn’t see much because the kid’s shoulder was in his face, the frozen jacket like sandpaper against his forehead and nose. Their hands were stuck between them, down by their waists, grappling for control of the gun.
Hazzard tried to bite him, but Luther pulled away, and then came back in fast, driving the crown of his head into Hazzard’s nose. Hazzard’s hands were wet with sweat and he felt himself losing his grip on the pistol and the kid made a strange, low, guttural cry of victory as he claimed the gun.
A paralyzing fear seized Nathan. The gun rose up into his field of vision. First down by his chest, but rising fast, up near his chin, then coming to rest near his bleeding nose. He could smell the well-oiled parts. Geneva was still crying, “Kill him!” And he felt like he’d failed her. It wasn’t supposed to end like that.
And Hazzard, who had never dared give up on anything, twisted his hips, rolling over, so that his weight, all three hundred and fifty pounds, was crushing the kid. The pistol was right by his left eye. The steel was cold against his flesh. The kid had his finger on the trigger but seemed unable to pull it, which was good. In a minute, Hazzard’s weight would force all the air from his lungs and he’d never get to draw another.
37
Luther didn’t want to take another life, despite all this man, this monster, had robbed him of. But he still didn’t know if his grandmother was alive or dead, and the fat man beneath him rolled over on top of him, was using his weight to smash the air from Luther’s chest. His neck and face ached from the strain, from lack of oxygen. He had a good hold on the pistol, had it up under the man’s eye. All he had to do was pull the trigger. The bastard had started snapping at him, trying to bite his nose, and Luther narrowly avoided his sharp white teeth. A woman was screaming, “Kill him!”
Luther watched the wide face above him go blank with shock as Luther squeezed the trigger, the hammer drawing back to its breaking point. Luther knew in the split second that it sprang forward and the firing pin hit the b
ullet, all the fat man had ever known or had been would cease to exist, and there was a part of him, in that moment, that wished he could reverse the last two days, but the hammer fell and the fat man screamed, and Luther was surprised to find himself screaming, too.
But the man’s scream was one of relief because the hammer hit on an empty shell. Luther pulled the trigger again. Another loud, dry click. Luther hit him in the face clumsily, without any force because his arms were trapped between them, and Hazzard bit his fingers—index and middle—and Luther couldn’t tear them away. He had so little air in his lungs that black spots were forming like a cancerous cloud over Hazzard’s face.
Blood ran from his fingers, around the rim of the cop’s pale purple lips, like two streaks of red tears, dripping onto Luther’s neck. Now that he knew the gun wouldn’t fire, he wanted to kill the sloppy, cruel fucker. Yet his energy was gone. He was afraid if he closed his eyes, he wouldn’t open them again. And then he saw the woman—she looked vaguely familiar—leaning over the man’s shoulder and she held something that glinted in her right hand.
38
Raul was leaning back against the endcap with one hand pressed tightly to the exit wound in his side. He didn’t know why the cop had attacked Luther, but he was glad it got the man away from him and Geneva. For a minute he thought Luther was going to end it all right there, with the squeeze of the trigger, and then there was only the loud slap of the hammer hitting the spent casing, and the cop’s teeth chomping at Luther’s face, and Raul knew the kid was done for—the cop had all his weight on Luther, had him trapped, had him dead to rights, or so it seemed, until Geneva pulled a shard of glass as long and as nasty-looking as a Buck knife from her wet purse, and she leaned over the policeman, behind him, and she drove the glass into the back of his neck.
He had never heard anyone scream like Hazzard. He tried to reach behind his head and bat the pain away, and only sliced his fingers. Geneva tried to break the glass off in his neck, but his twisting his head side to side only cut her palm to ribbons. But she tried to hang on. It looked like she’d saw his head off if she could.
The cop attempted to backhand her, and Luther, with the weight off him, drew in a lungful of air, and he poked Hazzard in the eyes and squirmed out from beneath him.
Hazzard got a hold of his foot before he could get away. The torn sleeve wrapped around the kid’s foot unwound and Hazzard tried to wiggle after him.
Geneva pulled another piece of broken glass from her purse. It was shaped like a triangle, four inches long. She lunged forward, landed with her knees digging into Hazzard’s back, her left hand clutching his hair, wrenching his head back, exposing his neck and throat.
She stabbed him below the right ear, then again, lower still, and as she jerked the improvised weapon free, a spray of blood came with it, and a growl deep in her throat that could have been born in the belly of hell, and she stabbed him again, and again, and he was deflating, and Raul thought, Kill him, kill the sonofabitch… and then, with his heavy head sagging, the life nearly out of him and splattered across the glistening tiles, she grabbed a fistful of his hair, near the crown of his head, jerked back, drew the glass as deeply, and as savagely as she could across his throat.
The sounds he made—gurgling and gagging—smearing his blood, so red it was almost black in the shadow beneath his body… And emergency flashers outside and Regina, his old lover, whom he felt he didn’t know at all anymore, came in the entrance with policemen right behind her, Geneva kneeling by Hazzard on his vast belly, stabbing him repeatedly in the back, until Regina got a hold of her and the boy too, Luther, and for a second Raul thought Geneva would slash Regina across the face, give her a scar to remind her for life what she’d done and of what she’d lost, but Geneva was in Luther’s arms and he was shushing her until the police were questioning people, and the paramedics were leaning over the girl, Brandy, and another was headed toward Geneva and Luther and Regina.
And Raul couldn’t move because he thought he saw his son outside the steamed door, wiping his small hand across the fogged glass. He wished Geneva could see this with him, their son’s peaceful, innocent face, not smiling nor frowning, his eyes backlit by something eternal, waving goodbye…
But maybe she did see him because she was crying like he’d never seen her cry, like with every wound she’d opened on Hazzard, she’d opened an equal amount of holes in herself…
39
With Luther’s hands bandaged and healing, Raul got to go back to work, at least temporarily. His father never said a word to him unrelated to his job, yet Raul could see he wanted to say something. He was glad he didn’t. It would have been about Raul’s mother and her broken finger. He’d only seen her once, at Dominic’s funeral that following Saturday. He’d moved slowly because of the wound in his side. It caused him trouble sleeping in the guest room at his house. At the funeral though, standing four feet from Geneva (as close as she’d allow him to) and with him wishing Regina were there, so he’d have someone to hold his hand as they lowered Dom’s small black shiny casket into the earth. He was a hoverer, flitting about Geneva and his mother and extended family, afraid to say anything, picking up condolences and bits of useless adage that he somehow believed might give him hope.
Geneva drove her own car and he drove his Jeep. When the service ended, his mother held him, then kissed his cheek and walked away. He was not hungry, so he didn’t go to eat with the others. He stood over his son’s grave for a few minutes, alone, until Regina joined him, approaching as silently as a ghost, dressed all in black. She took his hand and hers was warm and Raul whispered, “We’ve made such a mess of things.”
“Maybe we’ll learn something,” Regina said.
“And if we don’t?”
“Then we’re doomed, aren’t we?” she said.
He nodded, searched inside himself for what lesson he was meant to learn in the wake of chaos and destruction. He shook his head and said, “Maybe in time.”
“What?”
“Do you want to go back to your place?”
“Nothing better to do,” she said.
He nodded again and wrapped his arms around her waist and led her back to her car hidden among the trees, near the ivory water fountain at the heart of the cemetery grounds. He cupped her cheeks and kissed her and said, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Trying to cling to someone else, someone who matters to you,” she said. “It’s the same here. When I finally saw you in that truck stop, when I’d realized you’d been shot.” She wiped her eyes. “It terrified me.”
“Be happy you weren’t in my shoes.”
“We’re in the same shoes,” she said.
“In a way.” He kissed her again, surrounded by those lost to the world, beneath the shadows of the oaks, drawn together in the bitter wind with no more than the heat they shared, the mistakes, their tears, and what hope they could only find in each other to cling to.
40
After Dominic’s funeral, Geneva went home to the quiet house with all its ghosts whispering in her ears. Her lacerated and bandaged hands did not tremble as they opened the door to her son’s bedroom. The dying light and drawn curtains shadowed the room. She could still feel him there. She sat on his bed and stared at her feet and what lay between them and whispered, “It’s okay, baby. You can go. I’ll see you soon.”
41
Luther spent the following weeks with his grandmother fretting over him. He felt fortunate he hadn’t suffered frostbite, although he knew there was something similar residing in his chest, attacking his heart. The abrasions on his hands and the fingers Nathan Hazzard had bitten hurt even when he was high, which was most of every hour, of every day.
He’d hear his grandmother sometimes, talking to herself, or in the living room, in her rocking chair, looking at an old photo album he imagined, as she tried to connect who her grandbabies had been with who they were now. Luther, quiet, reserved; Herman silent now forever.
She’d wa
tch him sometimes, when she thought he was sleeping. Like his guardian angel, as tarnished and broken as he felt inside. So, as soon as he had enough strength and enough distance from what happened out there by the lake, and in the truck stop, he put on a strong face and told her frequently that he loved her, thanking her for all the light, all the goodness, she’d shown him.
On the seventh day, he was home, with Herman and their dad three days in the ground, and he was still exhausted from going to their funerals. She came into his room and asked if he was awake.
She held a manila folder, creased with wear, in her hands, and she set it by his bed. He didn’t have to ask what was in it. She said, “There used to be about fifty or more, now there are only six or seven. But they’re the most important ones. Read them when you think you’re ready.”
She leaned over him, her heavy breasts like a weight on his chest, reminding him briefly of the cop’s weight, until she kissed his forehead and faded away into the house.
He clung to the manila envelope, fell asleep with it in his arms, able to tell by its dimensions that it was full of long letters, long explanations, both of which he had wanted so badly, for what felt like so long now. He fell asleep and dreamt he was in Herman’s room, watching his brother build model planes, his face sweaty, brow drawn together with immense concentration, until he sensed Luther there, turned around, said, “What do you have there?”
And Luther held out the envelope, his eyes stinging, and said, “Answers.”