The Humanity Project (31 page)

Sean kept quiet. Roberto got up and went inside, came back with the steaks on a platter.

He set the platter down and turned on the grill. There was a whoosh of gas as the flames caught. Sean wished he was sitting a little closer so he could get some of the heat.

Roberto said, “She’s almost a kind of talking animal. Eat, shit, scratch, fuck, sleep. Life reduced down to the basics.” He slid the steaks onto the grill. They hissed and crackled. The smell of the cooking meat made Sean’s mouth ache. “It doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Be a happy little, furry little creature. Sleeping in the sunshine. Singing in the rain.” He poked at the steaks with a long, two-pronged fork, occupying himself with the cooking. They sent up a fragrant, meaty smoke. Sean had thought the conversation was at an end, but Roberto wheeled around to him. “Does it?”

“Yeah. I mean no.” He’d forgotten what they’d been talking about. He wondered how long it was going to take the steaks to cook through on one side.

“The only problem with being an animal, sometimes you get eaten by bigger, smarter animals. What do you think you’d taste like, fella? If somebody made you into a burger?”

“Ha-ha,” Sean said, as if this was funny, then, seeing as how Roberto was expecting an answer, he said, “I don’t know. Salty, I guess.”

“This cow was probably pretty happy when it was running around on its four hooves. Probably just as well.”

“It’s kind of a complicated way to think about dinner,” Sean offered.

“The top of the food chain. That’s what we are.”

“Lucky for us, huh?”

Roberto swung around to stare at him. “What’s that?”

“Nothing. Say, you aiming for rare, medium-rare? You might want to turn those dudes over.”

Roberto gave him another glowering look, but he flipped the steaks. They hit the grill and the flames licked up around them. Sean drank some more of the head-slamming bourbon, just enough to be sociable. He was already tasting the cooked meat. He knew how the first bite of it would feel in his mouth, how it would give way and release its juices.

Roberto said, “You know how you tell the difference between a food animal and a predator? I mean, with humans.”

Sean shook his head. What was with the weird questions?

“It’s all about the bones piled up at the mouth of the cave. Look around you, sport. You want a house like this, cars like mine, all the toys that go along with them, you have to have the smarts and the hustle to go for it. Not to mention the killer instinct to take what you want.”

“It’s a nice place,” Sean said, wanting to steer the conversation into more normal channels. “Really nice. What’s this deck, redwood?”

“What if, just imagining, just as a kind of theoretical thing, somebody gave you a hundred thousand dollars. What would you do with it?”

“A hundred thousand dollars,” Sean repeated, to give himself more time to think. It had to be some kind of a trick question. The guy was turning into one of those screwy drunks. “Well, for starters, I’d go out and have a hell of a party.”

“Party.” Roberto nodded. One of his eyelids had developed a bad twitch that pulled his face in different directions. “I could have told you that’s what you’d say. Because it wouldn’t occur to you to think of it strategically. How to leverage that money to make you more money. How to use money as a weapon. No, it’s all about the pleasure principle to people like you.”

“Hey, buddy? No offense, but some of your remarks, they can get a little personal.”

“The ones who think they deserve a living. The lazy. The feebleminded. The crippled.”

“How about,” Sean said, “you pull those steaks off the fire, and I’ll go check on the potatoes, and we can eat instead of talk. Change the mood here.”

“Because now I’m supposed to feed you? It’s not enough that I come home and find you getting all the pussy in the place? All moved in and making your ragged gimp ass comfortable?”

Sean started to say, This is a simple misunderstanding, but Roberto took a step toward him and then he took a leap, his hands clutching and his red tongue working between his teeth.

Sean got himself out of his chair faster than he would have thought possible, dodged, and shoved a foot in Roberto’s path. He tripped over it and went down hard, face first.

Jesus shit fucking Christ.

He backed away from Roberto, who was motionless on the ground and making mewing, kittenlike noises. He grabbed the grill fork in case Roberto got up but when he didn’t, he speared one of the steaks instead. The steak dripped hot grease and he held it away from him. Quick as he could, he went back in through the kitchen and the echoing hallways to the front door. Once he was outside the dog trotted up to him in the near dark. He did a happy dance, smelling meat.

“Christ. Here.” Sean bit off a piece for himself, for the dog, then another for himself, for the dog. It was too hot to taste it right, and his head hurt and his body shook from adrenaline,
fucking loony!
Why did he keep finding these people? The house behind him was dark and silent. There was a light on at Dawn’s place. He ran downhill, his
goddamn hip
like running on knives, trying not to fall down or get tangled up in his excited dog.

He couldn’t find his keys. The sweat rolled over him. Here they were, on the truck’s seat,
dumbfuck
. “Get in,” he told the dog, who didn’t want to leave his true love, the steak, behind. “In there, Christ!” The curtain in Dawn’s window was yellow from the light behind it. He’d left some things inside that he would have liked to get back, but maybe some other time, since vacating the premises ASAP was the best idea he’d had in a long while.

He held on to the rest of the steak with his teeth as he climbed into the truck and started the engine. It always took some effort to turn around in this steep, narrow space. You had to throw the truck into reverse and back up the hill, then forward, then back again, all the while trying to keep the gearshift from popping out like it wanted to and this without having the heebie-jeebies like he did now and a hunk of meat in his mouth and the dog trying to get to it, and the last thing he needed was to run a wheel over the edge of the pavement and get hung up there, or go sailing off into the trees below, rolling end over end like he was in some
goddamn movie
.

“Off,” he told the dog, “get off.” But the dog wouldn’t shut up, yapping and throwing himself at Sean’s window, and just as he got the truck pointed downhill and in motion, there was a noise, CRACKWHUMP, and a singing zinging rush of air and glass breaking behind him and he couldn’t believe this asshole was FUCKING SHOOTING AT HIM!

Sean hit the gas. The truck bumped down to the edge of the driveway and he took off through town at high speed and it would be really, really all right if some officer of the law saw him and decided to intervene, but no such luck.

Once he reached the road that led back to Route 1 he eased up a little and checked himself and the dog for blood, found only a sparkle of glass across the back of the seat. A new layer of sweat crept over his scalp. Did he have some sign on him that said, “Please make use of me for any and all crackpot purposes”? Did he send out secret homing signals on the crazy radio? Somewhere in all the panic he’d dropped the remains of the steak and the dog was finishing off the last of it, fine. Just fine. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

Headlights were coming up behind him on the road. It could have been anyone, but they were traveling fast and gaining on him, and his mouth went dry and his hands turned slick on the wheel. Sean sped up. The lights kept pace. It was dark now, and the road was dark ahead and behind, and here was the highway, two-lane, empty, miles from nowhere in either direction. He turned right, south, then, wanting to get off the main route, jogged to the left on a road that opened up before him, powering the truck through the flats and uphill, hoping the trees would hide him.

Sean slowed, waiting, telling himself he was probably just being paranoid. Yeah, except for the actual bullet hole through his back window. No lights behind him. “Get out of there,” he told the dog, who was noodling around Sean’s legs, licking grease from his jeans.

Where the hell was he? The road was climbing up the mountain grade, narrow, twisting, practically doubling back on itself, maybe a fire road? He nudged along, looking for somewhere to turn around. The trees closed in and his headlights swung back and forth around the curves like he was on some funhouse ride. There were supposed to be mountain lions up here. People took pictures of them with trail cameras. Big tawny cats padding around with killer jaws and a hungry attitude.

Now why was he thinking about that? Couldn’t he stay positive for five minutes at a time? He wrenched his mind away, back to Dawn, sweet Dawn, fare thee well! Once he got past the actual death threats, this night might make a good story. He could even tell it to Conner, turning it into something comical, as if all this time he’d been gone he was only off having wild and crazy adventures. He’d leave out Dawn being mentally whatever she was. He’d feel funny about that part.

Behind him on the road, the noise of a car accelerating effortlessly through its gears as it climbed the grade, an expensive sound, and here he was already so wasted, so truly tired, but OK, let’s do it. He downshifted and heard the transmission drop and put his foot on the gas to take a curve. The next instant he skidded sideways with trees snapping and filling the windshield and the metal bones of the truck breaking and
shit not again.

Dear Sean,

See, I actually do know your name. I knew it all along.

I hope your OK. That sounds pretty funny coming from me. Maybe you don’t write back because you are way too disgusted with me and who could blame you? Anyway, for what it’s worth I really did like you. I thought you were kind of cute and funny. I was just so screwed up. I am doing better now. I don’t expect you to congratulate me or anything but I am.

You said you do not remember the accident. Do you remember what I told you about my son who is in jail now? I had two kids, a boy and a girl. Well I still have them. My girl is from my first marriage, she is twenty-three now. Her dad and I split up and that was sad but it happens and there wasn’t anything too ugly about it. Then I married this other character and I guess we are still married because I can’t find him to divorce him. He wasn’t the best idea I ever had. He is the dad to my son.

So when you said you had a boy who was the same age as mine that made me I guess mad at you before I even met you. That somebody else had a boy who wasn’t in trouble. I don’t claim this was a good way to feel. But I did.

I also did not plan anything out in advance. I did not know I was going to do anything until I did it.

My son wasn’t any problem growing up by which I mean only the normal things for a boy. I think you will know what I mean. Because of your own boy. They like to get into things! He always did OK in school. He liked riding his bike and playing games on the computer. The same as other kids. I made sure the games weren’t bad ones. It’s not like he was raised in a house where there was no attention paid. And there was never such a thing as a gun on the premises. Never. I had no use for them.

I don’t know whether his father is to blame for never being much of a father or if it was a bad mental character being passed on and nothing anybody could have done. But his father at least did not end up in all the newspapers and television for killing two little girls and one man which is what my boy did. I still can not get used to saying that.

He was my own child and I loved him the same as any mother although it was easier when he was just small.

How is your boy? I hope he is doing well. The way you talked about him I could tell you were so proud of him and happy.

Our problems started up when he was a teenager but nothing big at first with answering back and disrespect. What can you do about that but hope they get it out of their system. He was not easy to live with but in no way a matter for law enforcement. When he was not being snotty to us he was very quiet which was not like him and there was no way of telling what was in his head. I still don’t know, how could you? People sure seem to think I should have. Or that I raised him to be vicious and we all sat around pulling knives on each other. Anyway it was all my fault one way or another for doing or not doing what I should have.

I could not stay living where I was. My daughter left too because all of a sudden we were the evil ones. She is a good girl now living in Kentucky and sometimes we talk but that is still hard for us.

I send my son cards for his birthday and Christmas but truth is I do not want to do even that much.

When I told you about my son and his troubles you said something like you were trying to be funny and that flipped the switch in me. I think you did not actually mean it, you just didn’t know what to say like most people don’t know. And I had been drinking a lot which sounds like a big fat excuse but it’s the truth. Plus I’d been riding that crazy train for a long time.

I was so heartsick. And lonesome. But who would want to be with me if they knew who I really was?

My son was seventeen at the time of his crime but he was considered an adult due to the serious nature of his crimes. The court determined he was not mentally competent and so he is incarcerated where he can get treatment. This is the best outcome for him. But I had not thought he was crazy! When did that happen? They worked backwards from what he did and decided that anyone who killed people he never even knew would have to be crazy. If I acted crazy myself it was out of trying to understand him. He was angry and unhappy and frightened. I could have told them that much. So I became angry and unhappy and frightened.

He had gotten so he did not like going to school. He would not say why. It was supposed to be his senior year. I wanted him to at least finish up and graduate because if not you spend your whole life working jobs where other people tell you what to do, it is hard enough to earn a living these days anyway. I myself have worked many different jobs as head of a household, sometimes two or three at once.

He stopped having friends. They didn’t come around any more. I saw this happening but what could I do? He didn’t want to talk to me about it or about much of anything.

I think he is one of those people who feel there is not enough of him and too much of everybody else. That he was not important. Or that everybody else was a different sort of creature than him and it wasn’t like actual killing.

There is one thing I know I should have done different. Tell him I loved him more often. Back when I still did.

Anyway when I told you about my son and you tried to say something funny, I don’t even remember what it was, I said the hell with you and everybody else. I did not think it through at the time. I was surely trying to hurt myself and you were just along for the ride. Maybe I wanted to do the same as my son did and make an evil act against someone I did not know and for no real reason.

I opened my car door and you said Hey watch it and the air was black and loud and seemed like a solid thing you could jump onto. You started hollering and then the noise of it was cut off because I stepped out into the air. I don’t know how I did it I just did. I was driving in the left lane and I went right on past the road shoulder and into the dirt beyond. It knocked me on the head but no worse. I did not see the car go off the road or hear it wreck.

It was like I had jumped out of my whole life. I wasn’t thinking in any normal way because of my head. I think I thought I was already dead and it took me a while to decide I was not. I picked myself up and walked back the way we had come and after a while I came to where I could look around me and decide what way of living I wanted to start new with.

That is what happened and some of the why. I apologize for bringing you distress which you did not deserve any more than the rest of us deserve our bad fortune. I will sign with my real name and you can look it up. But you will understand that I do not tell you the name I live with now or where I am making my new life.

Sincerely yours,

Shelly Ann Rosa