The Terror of Living (15 page)

    "I don't like this, Nora."

    "Did I say I liked it?"

    "What did it sound like when you talked to him?"

    "It sounded like there was a whole lot of wind rushing by, a whole lot of water, and someone was chasing him."

    "We don't know that."

    "He said someone shot at him. What am I supposed to take from that?"

    "I don't know. It just worries me that we're rushing off into something we don't know anything about."

    "What do you want to do? What can you do?" Nora said in a rush. She stopped loading the horse trailer and just stood looking at Eddie, her eyes unwavering. "Do you think they're trying to kill him?" she said. "Do you think it's the man you're working for? What do you think?"

    Eddie raised his hands. "Slow down, Nora. Just slow down." He could see her staring at him. She didn't move. The two of them stood ten feet apart. "Let me try him one more time, that's all, let me just try and see if I can get ahold of him." He lifted the cell phone and punched Redial.

    THE FIRST CAR HE'D SEEN SLOWED TO A NEAR STOP, but when it drew closer and the driver could see the bag and the muzzle of the rifle behind, the car bolted away down the road. Grady tried to grab out for it, somehow thinking that if he could get his hands on the car, then he could stop it. The blood was in his eyes again, a slick layer of it from the cut on his forehead. He bounced off the metal, feeling the car slide past him. He raised the rifle and let out a quick burst. The back window blew out but the car kept moving and he didn't see the brake lights flash on.

    All around him rain fell from the sky; there was the smell of sea grass, the dirt and seaweed smell of the ocean, and the wind blowing it all off the dunes and up onto the road. He ran on. From somewhere behind, he could hear the high-pitched whine of a boat motor, and he figured two boats for a cutter that size, possibly twelve men. They had fired pistol shots at him from the cutter, perhaps too stunned in those first moments to move for the armory. But he knew now that it would be worse.

    He ran on, his lungs beating steadily in his chest, the lights passing overhead in long intervals, and the street filled with black night and the sound of his shoes. He passed beneath a light and watched as his shadow lengthened and grew away from him. The road on which he ran was a long breakwater; on one side was the ocean, and on the other, mudflats, where brackish pools of sea- water lay and waited for the tide. He could smell the foul tidal pools.

    There was the whine of a motor again, then the wind, and he didn't hear it anymore. A quarter mile away, there was the aura of light, yellow and red, and he realized he was looking at the back of a gas station. The rear, turned toward the ocean, was nothing but black shadow, but he could see the front glowing now in the night. There he thought he would get a car, either from the filling tank or from whoever worked there. It didn't matter. He would take what came.

    IN THE MORNING THERE HAD BEEN NOTHING, ONLY THE dead kid. Now there was the girl. Hunt's leg was shot through, but he had the girl and her stomach full of heroin. He couldn't decide if any of it had been a good thing. The limp grew worse, but Hunt walked on. He could feel the blood collecting in his shoe. The rain kept falling and his hair lay matted, wet and flat, to his forehead. His face slackened, then tensed, with each step. He thought of Nora. He thought of the horses and the house and everything that waited for him when this was all over. Behind him, the girl followed. He knew she had some stake in all this. Some right to it. But he couldn't think about that now. Like an explorer of new worlds, he thought only about what came next, what new surprise waited for him. There wasn't time for anything else. The wound in his leg throbbed as he stumbled forward, his legs feeling wobbly as gelatin.

    There were no streetlamps, only the lights from the houses. When the yellow light of a flood came on with his movement, he followed it up to the house. He was walking up the drive with the girl a few paces behind.

    "Don't be scared," he told the girl. They stopped for a moment in the floodlight, and Hunt felt his leg pulsing beneath him.

    "I'm not scared," the girl said. "Never scared."

    He could see a small welt along her cheek that he hadn't noticed before. "We need a car, but first we need to get those things out of you."

    The girl looked confused. Hunt took his hand and put it to his stomach, then pointed at the girl. She nodded.

    As if this was how things always went on these runs, she showed little surprise. From the way she was acting, Hunt thought it could have been her tenth trip, or maybe it was her first. She was either scared shitless or tougher than anything Hunt had seen before. He held out a hand and introduced himself. "Phil," he said.

    The girl looked at him. He must have looked ridiculous to her, bent with his leg, somewhat bowlegged from horse riding and aged from the sun and a number of sad years. He probably looked more like a man of sixty to her, though his muscles were still as strong as a young man's.

    She took his hand and said, "Thu." All around them the rain fell, and her shirt and pants were nearly soaked through.

    Hunt looked her over, trying to decide what she had just said. He repeated it, and she said it again, and then Hunt let go of her small hand and they continued.

    THE ATTENDANT STOOD TRANSFIXED, UPRIGHT ON HIS toes, held at the tip of Grady's twelve-inch chef's knife, blood welling from the knifepoint. A man in his thirties with pink skin and brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, he was wearing a green polo shirt with the emblem of the gas station over his left breast. Pop music played softly from the speakers overhead. A drop of blood collected on the man's chin and fell to the floor. Still alive. Grady felt that urge there inside him, tickling at his brain stem, pushing him toward things he could not help. The knife held beneath the attendant's chin, pupils fighting for focus, the dark wall of vision closing in on his life.

    In one motion, Grady pushed the blade up into the skin beneath the chin, up through the soft palate, and into the brain. There was a slight tremor on the attendant's face as Grady twisted the handle of the knife and scrambled the man's brains. The attendant's warm blood came dripping down off the knife onto Grady's gloved hand and the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

    The weight of the man falling carried him off the knife, and Grady went around the counter. Like a barber readying the man for a shave, he cleaned the blade on the shoulder of the attendant's uniform. He took from the dead man's pockets a small lighter, a half- empty pack of gum, and a set of car keys. Beneath him was a widening pool of blood. When Grady stepped back he could see the tread of his shoes on the white linoleum floor.

    He looked up at the blinking red light of the camera. He looked for the recorder but couldn't find one. "Fuck," he said. There was no time for this. He flipped the pump switches from closed to open, took up the AR-15, and loaded a fresh clip into the belly.

    He put the knife back into the bag and zipped it closed.

    He exited the gas station, carrying with him his gun and the bag, and went quickly to the attendant's car and threw both in. With the door opened he listened to the night air. The rain had moved off and he heard only the tall marshland grass moving in the wind. No sound of boat motors. No clank of armed men, or equipment, or anything.

    He drove the car around to the pumps and sprayed the lot down in a wash of gasoline, leaving the trigger on the nozzle locked and the gasoline flowing. He drove the car to the edge of the widening pool of gasoline and lit it, watching the flames suck back along the cement toward the pump nozzle. He was driving when the pumps went.

    THE HOUSES WERE ALL WOOD SIDED, SOME STANDING two stories, but most one-story prefabs that lay in lines along the street. Hunt couldn't remember which one belonged to his friend. His mind wasn't working right. He stopped, tried to adjust his vision, tried to find his bearings, but the pain in his leg sat on top of him, hot as molten lava. His head floated on a string over his shoulders. Surrounding them, the green pines took the yellow light from kitchen windows and entranceways. The trees and shrubs had grown since he'd been here last. Nothing looked the same. Hunt took the bag from his shoulder and let it down onto the asphalt street. He took out the Browning and slid the clip out. There were droplets of water clinging to the bullets. He blew into the clip, then locked it back in. Next he pulled the slide back and gave the breech a blow. He didn't know if the gun would work if needed, but it was all he had and he held it with a tight grip. He looked up at the houses. One of these was the one he was looking for. He tried to remember. He needed to choose.

    Hunt knocked at the door until a light came on. The man who appeared at the door wore sweat shorts and a white jersey top; in his hand was a small bat. Hunt stepped back and the man looked down at Hunt and Thu. In the grainy light from behind the screen door, Hunt could see the rough shave of the man's head, his dark skin, and the almost relaxed way he held the bat in his right hand. Hunt couldn't tell if this was his friend.

    "We crashed," Thu said. The man, who had been studying Hunt, now shifted his gaze to the girl.

    A woman appeared in the doorway behind the man, pushing the door open to get a better look at Hunt and Thu. With the screen out of the way, Hunt was sure the man recognized him, ten years older, but still the same man. Hunt shrugged, as if perhaps cold, and in the same movement put the gun into his back pocket, hoping they hadn't seen it.

    The man stepped back, letting his wife through. "Nancy," the man said to his wife, tilting the end of the bat toward Hunt, "this is an old friend, Hunt."

    "I didn't know you were married, Roy," Hunt said.

    "What's going on here?" Nancy said.

    Thu stepped forward again. "We had an accident."

    "Is anyone hurt?" Nancy asked.

    Thu looked from the woman to Hunt.

    "If we could come in for a moment," Hunt said. He shifted his weight, and the pain was evident on his face.

    "Oh my," Nancy said. "Get out of the way, Roy." She opened the door wide. Thu grabbed the handle as it swung out.

    Roy stepped to the side, forced back into the kitchen behind him. Thu continued to hold the door. Nancy now reached out her hand and said, "Get in here."

    As soon as Hunt lifted his leg, he knew something was wrong. He felt suction in his shoe, the blood all through it, gumming his toes. The kitchen floor was patterned cream with small ornaments of wheat grain along the edges. It was a prefab, production kitchen, and Hunt bet that if he were to go down the block he might find two or three more with the exact same design.

    Wherever Hunt walked, he left a small trail of blood; it was coming over the edge of his shoe and appeared in a line at the ankle and again around the laces, where it filtered up through the eyelets. Nancy pulled a chair away from the kitchen table. Roy put the bat on the counter and directed Thu into the kitchen. "You've got a good bump, don't you?"

    Hunt had forgotten about the gun, and when he sat, it tumbled from his back pocket onto the floor. Everyone stared at it. Hunt felt his head go for a swim. He lowered himself down and picked up the gun. He didn't point it, just sat there with his head down and the barrel of the gun against the floor. It looked almost as if he were using it as a crutch, his hand on the grip and the barrel to the floor.

    "What kind of accident did you say you were in?" Roy said.

    "Come over here, Roy, and just sit down a moment." Hunt's words were beginning to falter, "just sit" coming out like "jus it." He looked to Thu, who went over and sat down in the chair beside him. He still hadn't pointed the gun at them. He made a motion with the barrel, rolling it over as if a fishing line were attached at the end and he was pulling the line in. Nancy looked scared and tried to move out of the way of the gun when Hunt rolled it over. Roy just looked angry. "Come on," Hunt said.

    All four of them sat at the table in the kitchen, with the gun flat in front of Hunt. He was bleeding onto the floor from the wound in his leg, his shoe completely full of it and a thin line of blood escaping near his anklebone. On the floor a syrupy puddle was developing. "We should do something about your leg," Nancy said.

    "Do you have any laxatives?" Hunt said, his head beginning to nod.

    "You need a little more than that," Roy said. The bat rested on the counter across the kitchen, and whenever Hunt's head rolled, Roy would look over at it.

    "Go find the laxative," Hunt said, speaking to Thu and half gripping the gun on the table. He was half-intelligible, but he thought "laxative" had come out clear.

    Thu looked at Nancy, and Nancy nodded toward a doorway where the bathroom must have been. "Second on your left," she said. She watched Thu get up. Hunt felt the wave of nausea hit him again. "Let me give it a look," Nancy said. "I'm a nurse. The least you should do is let me give it a look."

    "You should let her," Roy said. Hunt's eyes looked back at them with a dull, glazed look. He didn't blink. "Is he dead?" Roy said.