Marvel and a Wonder (18 page)

The boy waited to see his mother fall out of the passenger-side door. Instead, when the doors opened, he saw two men, one with dark hair, one wearing a mask, the masked one walking over to the stable with a profound sense of urgency, the other, the dark-haired one, glancing back at the farmhouse again and again.

The boy flew down the hall and gave his grandfather a heavy shove, the old man coming awake with a groan.

“Sir.”

“Mmh.”

“Sir?”

“Huh.”

“Grandpa. Somebody’s outside. By the horse shed.”

The grandfather sat right up, bare feet hitting the cold wood floor.

Down the stairs and peering out the kitchen door, they saw the red pickup parked beside the chicken coop, the odd shapes of the strangers moving there in the shadows of the stable like figments from their imagination. “Stay here,” the grandfather said, and slowly opened the screen door. But the boy did not obey. So they stepped outside together, the grandfather switching on the front porch lights, the glow tracing the outline of some kind of motion—the shadows of shoulders, legs, hands—drowning out the features of the strangers’ faces. “Stay here now,” the grandfather said again, and this time the boy listened. The grandfather hurried down the back porch steps and pulled the driver’s-side door of the blue pickup open in a flash, reaching behind his seat for the shotgun. He switched the safety off and came around from behind the shadow of the old blue truck, gun upraised, taking aim at the figures in the dark.

It took Jim a good moment or two before he understood what was happening: somehow they had already rigged the fancy silver horse trailer to the red pickup. Someone was leading the mare from the rickety stable, its blue-black eyes flashing in the glare from the headlights; up the silver ramp it went, right into the trailer. The grandfather held the shotgun before him, stunned for a moment, only watching; the one leading the horse was wearing a black ski mask, and a sidearm had been shoved into the back of his pants; the masked stranger now turned and saw the old man with the rifle pointed at him. The second intruder came out of the stable, dragging a sack of oats. Seeing the lights on the porch and the old man standing with his shotgun pointed before him like a divining stick, the intruder’s face became a rictus of shock, the mask having been placed on the top of his head like a hat. In that moment, both the grandfather and the young interloper suffered the same odd pang of recognition, the young man pulling the mask down over his face, dropping the bag of oats at his feet, the first one shoving the trailer gate closed, locking it in place with the bolt, taking his time, just as coolly as he pleased, then turning, grabbing ahold of the pistol at the back of his pants, lifting it to take aim, the old man seeing the gesture but not believing it.

The grandson, screened behind the haze of the glowing porch lights, recognized the familiar face, the same one he saw every Saturday—scruffy, unwashed, goateed—the face quickly disappearing beneath the folds of the black fabric mask, the boy opening his mouth to shout something, the grandfather already taking aim at the older brother, then pulling the trigger, feeling the unsatisfying stillness of the weapon in his hands, the stock not thundering backward into the soft padding of his arm, thinking,
The dog
. . .
that dog
.
I used both shots scaring away that dog.
The slower-moving one, the older brother—saw the surprise on the grandfather’s face, the shotgun in his hands not firing—and raised his pistol eye-level, then fired. The sound of a single gunshot. The boy screaming. The grandfather falling, his white hat flung back. The two strangers hurrying around the side of the trailer to the idling pickup. The doors torn open, one by one, the two of them climbing inside in a rush. The red pickup speeding off, its taillights glowing bright, then fading, the silver trailer rocking a little over the bump at the foot of the drive; the boy having leapt off the porch at the sound of the shot, the grandfather’s body lying in the dirt like a felled tree, all stiff-looking angles, fingers splayed open, bloodshot eyes staring up at the cloudless sky; the echo of gunfire still ringing in the night.

_________________

Out on the highway the night became a town, a fortress, a structure of fluorescent radiance, shadow upon shadow, light upon light: the billboards, the signposts, the unconvincing trees, the weeds, the abandoned cars, the startled animals, the sagging wire fences, each becoming the beams and joists from which a complete city materialized. The city was cyclopean in its dimensions: a city tremendous in its bleakness, a city staggering in its quiet. They were lost in this nameless world of night and no matter what speed they drove, what direction they headed, they still could not outdistance it, nor find its boundaries. An anxious throb of dread filled the cabin. The tires spun. The radio antenna rang back and forth along the right side of the hood. It was not the darkness now but the emptiness of the land that was so terrifying, stretching out forever in all directions beyond the limitless, unseen horizon, so that the late hour was not only the numbers flashing there on the dash but a place, as real as any town, state, country, extending in front of them; humid, stormy with the inexhaustible current of late-summer static, heat lightning splitting the black sky every few moments, then growing calm again, the taste of rain in the air but none coming. The wind through the open window was no comfort; it was warmer than they had hoped or expected, the sound of it rattling the panes of glass, winding itself along the contours of their agitated bodies, striking their screwed-up faces, one more irritation, making it impossible to keep a cigarette lit, the worry of which caused the older of the two to curse, finally rolling up the driver’s-side window in a fit and a fury.

In the darkness, the hood of the truck would flash from red to black for a moment, then back again, as they passed under the highway lights, crossing beneath an overpass, heading away from some unwelcoming exit, the miles on the speedometer ticking up, the hulking, insistent shape of the trailer behind them giving them the feeling that they were being followed.

On and on, the infrequent blur of a vehicle passing in the opposite direction drew out the vague shapes of faces, hands, limbs in the skeletal figures of solitary trees, fence posts, and highway debris. Every thirty miles or so there was the expression of the younger brother, white, tightened around the mouth, appearing and reappearing, the shocked look of a plea welling up in the eyes—the plea being ignored, then rebuked by the older brother—the truck hurtling itself farther and farther away.

* * *

Indianapolis. The lights and structures of tall buildings, houses, backyards, streets, cars moving back and forth even at this late hour, going on two a.m. The faces of the people behind the windshields of the cars passing by were dark, indistinct. A billboard advertising a new movie. An ambulance screaming past. A child, curled up asleep in the backseat of a station wagon. The sound of someone else’s music roaring through gigantic car speakers. Lights in the office buildings, in the houses, red taillights arcing before them. Smokestacks that even in the dark spoiled the sky with dusty smoke, signifying the unalterable presence of man. Cigarette stubs. Beer cans. The detritus of a civilization concerned only with itself. The city rising up before them, with its concrete barriers, metal railings. The shape of it suddenly like a graveyard, the lights the hallowed glow of thousands of unknowable spooks. The skyline captured in the rearview mirror. The return of darkness. Then the eerie silence. Them driving on.

The farmland having been recently harrowed. The plow marks stretching out infinitely in all directions, the upturned earth reeking of musty growth and decay, the fields sodded with manure. All of it like a ripe wound. A fistula of stalk, metal, seed, excrement, and dirt.

An apple core on the dashboard, a crumpled pack of cigarettes, a half-drunk bottle of whiskey, three plastic bottles of Coca-Cola, all purchased from a twenty-four-hour Quik-E-Mart. The songs of Hank Williams, like an accusation, echoing from the AM band, then fading.

Over the plains, leaving the farmlands of Indiana behind, the highway darting past slowly rising hillocks, thatches of woods, the flatland of the Midwest giving over to the slanted, unsteady ground of northern Kentucky. Then farther still, the road signs marking their approach toward Louisville, a smallish city, a half-dozen skyscrapers reigning over a crooked skyline, the billboards promising food and gas and somewhere to rest for a moment but the older brother shaking his head, keeping the accelerator pressed flat with the edge of his boot, the younger brother silent, watching another city pass before his eyes, then the land once again growing flat, the deciduous woods cropping all along the newly paved highway, the radio once more losing its reception, the younger brother listening to the static for a moment, the static the sound of his conscience now, his clouded mind, then switching the radio off, the noise of the truck’s engine and the trailer rattling behind them the only distraction to his troubling thoughts.

The guns they had gotten rid of as soon as they were out of town, ditching them in Deer Creek, standing beside the long metal railing, the older brother wiping them down with a red oil rag from the truck, then tossing each one over, watching them vanish into the slowly moving stream.

It was past three o’clock in the a.m. now, going on four, Friday, the first of September, and the cab of the pickup had begun to stink like the cage of two animals, the sweat of their bodies, the unchanged clothes, the discarded wrappers of candy bars and empty soda pop bottles—all gave a particularly unpleasant crookedness to the air inside. The younger brother noticed it and took it to be a sign of the mistake they had made. He lifted the collar of his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose, then leaned his head against the vibrating window, once again trying to sleep.

The older brother drove on steadily, amusing himself with a toothpick.

_________________

Although Rick West preferred pussy for breakfast, this was fine, this was all right. He said as much out loud, leaning over the counter at the greasy truck stop; the runny eggs and coagulated sausage gravy and biscuits stared back up at him, looking like slop. The waitress—peroxide blond, black roots, dark eyebrows, fake beauty mark, with smudged lipstick and a man’s name tattooed on the side of her neck in blue-black ink—did not seem upset by the remark. She set down the plate, itched at her nude-colored nylon, and went off to refill somebody’s coffee. The truckers on either side of Rick—both independent operators—chuckled a little, though not too loudly, as they were regular customers, the little truck stop near the Arkansas–Tennessee border being the only one around here with clean showers. Rick looked down at the plate of food once more, then over at the waitress, and began to dig in, shoveling forkfuls into his gaping mouth, exaggerating his pleasure with a low, vulgar moan. He made sure to keep his narrow, well-trimmed black mustache clean, dabbing at his upper lip with the corner of the paper napkin so as not to appear uncouth. When he let out another moan, the waitress—a big girl somewhere in her forties, a single mother, definitely divorced—shot him a dirty look, then immediately smiled a little, shaking her head at the man’s coarseness. Rick was handsome-looking in a black Western shirt and black jeans, hair slicked with pomade, silver bolo tied about his sturdy neck. Beside him, on the counter, sat a white Stetson hat, the band having recently been replaced. Rick groaned with pleasure again and the waitress rolled her eyes, her smile widening even more. It was the smile, in response to his offensive antics—her eyes half-lidded, partly amused, partly embarrassed—that told Rick West all he would ever need to know.

“You’re wasting your time on that one,” the large trucker beside Rick whispered. “She got two kids. And a husband in and out of stir.”

Rick grinned, turning to see the trucker’s face. It was wide and red with uneven blotches. “I appreciate the information,” he said, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with the edge of the paper napkin again. “But she ain’t my kind,” he called out a little too loudly, the words rising above the clatter and din of the other dishes being served. The waitress grimaced, shaking her head, jotting down someone else’s order, hurrying back to pick up a hot plate from the line.

When he had eaten as much of the eggs and biscuits as he could—the taste of it piling up like vomit in the back of his throat—he peered down at the check, calculated a generous tip, pulled the bills from his wallet, and offered both the check and the cash to the dark-eyed woman as she floated past. She sped behind the front counter, handed the money and check to the hostess near the door, went and got some elderly couple’s drink order, sped back to the hostess who had made her change, then bustled around to where Rick was sitting. She placed the odd dollar bills and change in front of where his two large hairy hands were folded. She began to speed off again when Rick lifted a finger and motioned in her direction. “Can I get a receipt, please? Hate to bother you but I’m on business.” The woman sighed, still with a smile, hurried back to the hostess’s station, grabbed Rick’s receipt, and plunked it down in front of him. He nodded, thanked the woman, finished his coffee, and slid the receipt into his front pocket. Then he stood and approached the end of the counter, where the waitress was now taking a quick break, sucking orange juice through a straw. Rick reached into the front pocket of his dark jeans and then held his hand up to the glittery-eyed waitress. He slowly opened his fingers, revealing a motel room key with a forest-green plastic key chain resting in the center of his palm.

“How about you and I go watch some dirty movies?”

* * *

After the breakfast shift was over, Rick knelt above the woman, her hands and feet bound behind her back with nylon—the string having been cut from the motel room’s gaudy flowered curtains—a pillow sheet pulled over her head, knotted along the side. He raised his hand back and smacked the woman’s posterior playfully, then less so, again and again until it was red, welted, the woman screaming out, the sound muffled by the pillowsack, the flickering light of the cable television casting lurid shadows on the woman’s bare skin; there was the sound of some other woman, an actress moaning in pleasure, jerking her head back and forth in nearly the same motion as this woman’s own, though the waitress’ screams rang out dully with anger and then pain; behind her, somewhere floating above the bed, there was the expressionless glare of Rick West’s face, the hardness in his dark brown eyes, a slight sneer on his lips, the flat, enormous hand rising up and down, up and down, over and over again, until it became a fist.