Day One (38 page)

He flips me onto my back. Silhouetted by the lamp above us, I can just make out Big Ed’s profile. His jaw hangs at an odd angle, seems to move of its own accord. His head tilts to one side as well. As he pats me down, I can hear his labored breathing. He’s hurting. Doesn’t stop him from finding Eager’s gun. He tucks it into his waistband then spends a moment feeling through his own pockets. The larynx, I guess, but he doesn’t find it. I don’t know how he expects to talk anyway, the way his jaw is sagging. Frustration seems to have him bound in knots. He grabs me roughly by the jacket front, pulls me up the hill. My ribs protest, but all I can do is grunt with each jolt. The dark sky above swims with flickering lights. They must be inside my own eyeballs. Part of me wants to struggle, but I’m too dazed by the sudden assault, or by the shock of seeing Big Ed upright and walking.

Grandpa jumps and nearly loses his grip on the crutch when Ed throws me at the base of the statue. “Jesus Christ, Ed, you scared the shit outa me.” He looks down at me like I’m a piece of rotten meat. “What the hell’s this? Where’s the kid?” The biker glances down at me too, but Luellen doesn’t seem to notice, is perhaps beyond noticing. Her dark hair hangs loose over her forehead, hiding her eyes.

Big Ed indicates his throat and shakes his head, then points down the hill. He’s trying to mouth words. Grandpa shakes his head as Ed slaps the side of his head and wheezes, his gestures increasingly
frantic. His chin shuffles side to side with each gesticulation, a loose flap. He’s got something to say, but no way to say it.

“You want something to write with?” No missing the ice in Grandpa’s voice.

Big Ed knots his fists and closes his eyes for a second, exasperated. Then he draws a breath and nods.

“Didn’t know you could read and write.” His expression is one of mock regret. “Hey, George, I don’t suppose you got a spare voice-a-ma-jig, do ya? I think Ed here done lost his.”

The biker, George, taps the gun against his thigh. “‘Fraid not, boss.”

Grandpa shrugs at Big Ed. “The Flea can’t help ya, I can’t help ya. You’re shit outa luck.”

I could help if I wanted to. From Big Ed’s gestures and urgency the message he’s trying to convey is obvious. He wants Grandpa to know about the man with the hole in his head. Even as the thought crosses my mind, Big Ed reaches the same conclusion. He points at me, tosses his head Grandpa’s direction. I have no intention of clearing things up for him. He bends over and prods me in the ear with the knuckle of his middle finger, but I just clench my teeth.

Grandpa waves him off. “Forget it. Don’t know who this guy is. I surely don’t see how I’m gonna get any leverage out of him.” He glances toward Luellen. “How about it, sweetheart? You give a damn about this lame fuck?”

Luellen lifts her head and looks at me. In the darkness of her eyes, I see the resignation I guessed at from across the road. “He’s ...” She swallows. “He’s my friend.”

“I don’t recall giving you permission to have friends.” He laughs, harsh and sadistic, then turns back to Big Ed. His gaze is now laced with pity, no more genuine than an email promise of easy wealth or natural male enhancement. “Well, Big Ed, this whole day has been one fucking mess and then some, don’tcha think?” He doesn’t
expect Big Ed to respond. “Fortunately there is one piece of good news.”

Tension flickers through Big Ed’s eyes, asking the question his throat can’t.

“George the Flea grabbed your hog leg outa the Suburban.” He gestures to the biker and his big gun. “Shoot ‘em both.”

November 19 - 4:54 pm

H
e floats in and out of consciousness. His head has the weight of a stone on the end of his neck. It’s jammed into the crook of two twisted roots. A knot digs into his back. Not a pain exactly; an awareness, a sensitivity. Rain falls through the branches of the tree above him and he blinks as drops strike his eyes, swallows when they fall into his open mouth. The drops fail to slake his thirst. He wants to move, find a spot more comfortable, a place with more flowing water. No strength. He tries to move his arms, but he has no arms. No legs. All he has is a head and a knot in the back. The rain pitters and patters against the soft fall of fir needles around him and he’s just a head with a bullet in it.

He remembers another place, somewhere far away. Stern faces and latex gloves. “Let me look at your eye. What happened?” He can’t recall what he told them. He can’t remember if he said anything at all. All he remembers is needing to get away. He’s the ace in the hole. But everything has gotten so mixed up.

A snap draws his attention, brings him back to the moment. The rain. Another snap, a footstep in the darkness. It isn’t all dark. The sun has set, the clouds closed in, but a faint glow still filters
through the trees from the west. Skin had once told him what it was called, a word. Two words. Skin used to try to teach him things, stupid shit like you learn in school. Stupid, but more interesting coming from Skin. Like, the waning light after sunset is called civil twilight. That’s it. In the fading civil twilight someone is walking,
snap-crack
through the trees. He can’t turn his head. No arms or legs. He blinks and swallows rain and listens to the
crack-snap
in the civil twilight, and then a form materializes out of the shadows.

A head. But not a head. Something is wrong with it. Misshapen, distorted. He swallows and tries to speak.

“Civil twilight.”

A man. He recognizes a man. White face, staring eyes, shaggy hair. But something wrong. The head.

“Your head.”

Round on the one side, caved in on the other. Like someone scooped out the right side of his skull with an ice cream scoop. The fellow doesn’t seem to care. He smiles a haphazard smile and one eye rolls around all on its own.

“Your head ...”

“S-s-s-shhhh ...”

Eager thinks the fellow might say more, but at that moment a shot rings out from up above, then another. Eager hears shouting and screaming and he knows it all went wrong. She’s screaming. He tries to move, but the roots hold his head in place and the knot digs into his back and he has no arms and legs. He feels the fear, though. The fear bubbles through him and rain falls into his eyes as he strains against the inexorable pressure of gravity.

And he fails. He looks at the stranger, and in that strange, sloppy gaze he feels a moment of hope. Maybe this fellow, head awonk, can do something. Save her. “You ... she—” But the man reaches out, strokes Eager’s cheek. He shakes his half-head and grins, eyes sad in the civil twilight under the trees. Eager feels himself start to
fall away. He can do nothing. Skin can do nothing. She’s screaming, yet the man strokes his face until his fear slides away. He closes his eyes and swallows rain and listens for the pitter-pat under the trees. But all he hears now is the stranger’s voice.

“S-s-s-sleep.”

November 19 - 4:55 pm

G
eorge the Flea’s face cracks wide with a nasty leer as he lifts the gleaming handgun. Big Ed stumbles backward, scrabbling at his belt. I raise one knee, slip, and catch myself on my hands. I don’t know what I think I’m going to do, but it doesn’t matter anyway. The gunshot drowns out Luellen’s rising scream, tears at my ear drums like shrapnel. A warm, metallic spray of arterial blood douses my face and neck as I scramble to find purchase on the sodden ground.

I don’t hear the second shot, just catch a spark off the stone pedestal. For an instant I think he’s missed, but then something kicks me in the gut. I hang in space the length of a heartbeat before my strength rushes out through my hands and feet and I collapse.

For a moment, I’m wrapped in a sensation like a hot, rushing wind. Voices scatter through my mind, whispering:
you’re fine—it’s nothing ... nothing.
I hear Luellen scream through the white noise, pitched like it’s coming from the end of a tube. There’s more behind it, a wail, high-pitched and strangely familiar. I blink through tears, unaware of any pain. Or maybe the wail is the pain, fire shrieking up every nerve and coalescing in my brain as sound. She’s sobbing
now, “No no no ...,” and I know the whispers mean nothing. I’m a long way from fine. A piercing note like an eruption of flame bursts from my belly. Bullet or fragment of Harvey Scott’s stone base, doesn’t matter. I’m gut-shot.

I roll my head side to side. The old man leans into his crutch, sneering. Flashlight swings from his hand and throws light into the trees, briefly illuminating a haggard face. I recognize her from the stench. Myra. She pushes Danny before her, and her fingers are digging in to his thin shoulder. I can tell it hurts. His face is damp and his lips twisted with fear or pain. But he’s quiet, as always. Quiet Danny. I know him well enough to know how scared he is. He doesn’t notice Luellen on the bench in the darkness, but when he sees me, he twists out of Myra’s grip and runs toward me. George thrusts out a big meaty paw and snags him mid-stride. As Danny struggles, he points the gun at me, ready to finish me off.

But Grandpa throws up his free hand, hobbles toward the biker. “For chrissakes, don’t be shooting that damn thing around the kid.”

“You said—”

“Just stand there. We got this. That fucker ain’t going nowhere.”

I can hear Myra’s voice, strident through Luellen’s sobs, but I can’t make out the words. She glares at me, her eyes big black marbles, cracked lips twisted with feral glee. Somehow she’s scored a hit or three of crank since she fled the Caddy. Maybe had it with her all along. Her nostrils are flaking caverns and the cords in her neck stretch tight as she grabs Danny by both shoulders and presses him against her legs. Her hands look like talons in the thin light.

To me, she’s a horror. Luellen shrivels at the sight of her. But Grandpa is pleased. “Damn, girl, right on fucking time.” He cackles and turns his attention to Luellen. “So, Lizzie, time you and me got down to business, don’tcha think?”

But Myra interrupts him. “Hiram. Something you need to know. We ain’t alone ...”

I don’t want to hear any more. I’ve failed. Eager’s faith in me was misplaced. I shoulda stayed down in the flats. Now where am I? Sinking into the soft earth. No one pays me or Big Ed any heed. We might as well be tree limbs brought down by a storm. I can see him beside me, eyes open and staring, and I wonder if he’s looking back at me thinking the same thoughts. I’ve no doubt he’s dead, which can only mean I am too. The prospect leaves me indifferent, even if the fire in my belly gives me a pretty good idea of my next stop. But then I feel a rush of misgiving, as though I’ve left something important undone. Stove on, iron plugged in. Can’t be the coffee maker—I sent Mr. Coffee to Goodwill when Ruby Jane gave me my French press. A birthday present months before my birthday. “Long past time you learned to make a proper cup of coffee, Skin.” I still don’t have the method down to her satisfaction. As my blood mixes with rain and mud, I fear I never will.

November 19 - 4:56 pm

W
hat are you telling me? What the
fuck
... are
you
...
telling
me?”

Grandpa leans into his crutch, eyes aquiver, a single greased spear of metallic hair bobbing forward on each barked syllable.