Burn, p.12
Burn, page 12
* * *
When he got to within about 150 yards he broke left and ran through the grass toward the upper end of the village. Seedheads whisked against his thighs, and he did not sprint, because he did not have to. He just had to get behind the first row of houses descending down to the water and then make his way past them to wherever he thought the batshit shooter might be, and then all he had to do was take him out. Simple.
Take him out. How a person might change in a few short days. Just yesterday he would have thought to get close enough to hail whoever it was, to yell that all he wanted to do was talk. Get shot at a couple of times and the calculus changed fast. He had become, within hours, a predator and a killer.
That’s what he thought as he ran: This crazy person with a shotgun is going to die. And I will dispatch them. Because, though I cannot come up with a great reason to live, I have no patience for people trying to kill me.
In the middle of the outer row of houses, climbing the hill, he trotted between a cedar-shingled saltbox with a half-sized lobster boat up on a two-by-four cradle in the backyard and a clapboard cottage with double dormers and a sperm-whale weather vane. What the hell is up with this place? he thought again. Why this insistence on make-believe? Was it only for tourism? He realized that he could not recall a single fudge or souvenir shop in their progress through the village. A tourist trap would have that stuff in spades. Or maybe all the voting-eligible residents got together in the Grange hall or wherever they did it up here and passed some strange charter based on the premise “If we build it, they will come.” Tourists and lobsters. But no lobsters were coming until they evolved like crawfish to live in fresh water. That could take a while. His father would have said the place was “totally pixilated,” meaning sparked with eccentric energy, not normal and maybe not quite of this earth. How he felt now. Death maybe was imminent, but he felt like he was trotting onto a movie set, or into a dream. That sense again. He wondered if all wars felt this way.
The shot, as he came out between the buildings, dashed the hope. He ducked back behind the corner of the cottage, ran behind it, and worked between it and the next house down, a neat Cape with multiple decks. He peered around it. Holy shit. There was an old man on the porch of a cabin three houses down and across the street. He was hatless, and his soft shock of white hair feathered in the breeze. He wore red suspenders and patched jeans, an L.L.Bean flannel shirt, Black Watch plaid; Jess recognized it, he had the very same one hanging in his closet at home. The old dude was right out of Central Casting. He wore battered sheepskin slippers and had a dribble of what was probably oatmeal or breakfast gravy down the front of his shirt. Jess blinked the stinging sweat out of his eyes. The man looked like Robert Frost in his last years. Could have been his brother or a twin. The same lantern jaw, doughy nose, no-nonsense farmer mouth that knew no difference between smile and grimace. He was holding a long over-under shotgun, probably twelve-gauge. If he was using buckshot, and especially if the barrel was choked, then Jess was definitely now in range.
The man hadn’t seen him, and Jess ducked back and leaned against the gray shiplap siding of his house. Damn. This was an easy shot. He could play the entire motion in his mind, the step to the end of the wall, the twisting of the left forearm through the strap and lifting of the rifle, one more half-step as he pressed the walnut forearm and barrel of the gun into the corner of the building and sighted and flexed against the leather sling, the whole rig rock-solid as he swung smoothly across on the inhale, both eyes open, and found the man in the scope’s reticle, crosshairs settling on the blue and green squares of the man’s chest, now exhale, pressure the trigger, smooth and steady: fire. He might or might not then see the bloom of blood on the flannel, because it seemed a man could drop out of view as fast as or faster than a shot deer or moose. Drop faster than a bullet could throw him or gravity could pull him—pull him home to earth, to the worn planks of a porch that he might have trod for most of a century.
I’ve gotta stop thinking so much, Jess thought. And now I’m thinking about thinking. Too many echoes in the world. Get your shit together! My mantra, hah!
Jess thought that the old coot was standing on his porch with his shotgun just the way the farmer did in Western movies: out in the open, brave and tactically challenged—stupid—and quaint, defending his homestead. Didn’t he know this was a war? Nobody cared how you looked. Maybe, like Jess, he was just sick of cowering.
“Hey!” Jess yelled from well back of the corner. “Can you hear me?”
“No!”
“No??”
“What are you, some kind of idiot?” Jesus. The voice was like Robert Frost’s, too. The same northern New England flattening, not quite Down East.
“Then you got your hearing aids in, Pops?”
“Fuck you! And your skanky mother, too.”
“Hey, I come in peace. I swear. And let’s not talk about my mother.”
“Whyn’t you step out and we’ll talk about whatever you want. You big ass.”
Jess burst into laughter. He found himself laughing out loud. First time in what seemed like months. Big ass. God. Good one.
“Hey!” he yelled and wiped the tears from his eyes. “I can shoot you from here right now. Scoped .308. You’re standing on that porch like a Beverly Hillbilly, wide open. What the hell was the old guy’s name in that show?”
“Jed.”
“Like Jed.”
Did Jess hear the old man hawk and spit? Damn. “How old are you?” Jess called.
“How old are you, you stupid donkey? Six? Were you put back in first grade? Sure as shit sounds like it. Come on out, we’ll play checkers. Or, if that’s too complicated, I bet we can find a crayon somewhere and play tic-tac-toe.”
“I will!”
“Okay, then.”
“If you tell me what the fuck happened here.”
“What happened here, gutter mouth, is that you screwed with my morning.”
Jess leaned his head back against the fresh-painted cedar of the house and closed his eyes. Really? The man had not killed him before only because he’d been out of range. Now he was in range. Was the old dude demented? Didn’t sound like it. Jess worked two fingers into his breast pocket and tugged out the tin of chew. He leaned the rifle against the building and twisted off the lid and took a good, respectable pinch of the long-cut and pressed it under his upper lip. He spat. Closed his eyes again and felt the quickening and instant relaxation as the nicotine hit his bloodstream. The mild sense of well-being. Crazy that it could do all that at once. He rocked himself off the wall.
“Hey!” he shouted.
“Not listening!” the man shouted back.
“Who did this to you?”
“You did!”
“I’m serious! We’re just a couple of hunters.”
Silence. Jess heard the weather-vane whale on the house next door creak on its bearing.
“There’s more of you?” the man said. Jess thought he heard a touch of alarm.
“A couple,” Jess said honestly.
“More on the ball than you, eh? The others?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“I don’t care what the hell you do.”
“Do you want to die?”
Silence.
“I’m only asking cuz I can take care of that right now. And you sincerely tried to kill me. And I’m getting tired of chitchat and I can tell you are, too. Just saying.”
Silence. Jess peered around the corner. The man was gone. Then he heard the growl of an engine. The growl got louder and here came an ATV, a one-seater with cargo box, bumping into the main street and turning down it toward the water. Jess noticed that the four-wheeler had a plastic rifle scabbard and that the butt of the shotgun was sticking out of it. The old man was probably going too fast. The engine blared, and Jess saw that he was gripping the steering bar the way a songbird clutches a limb in a big wind and he was getting tossed into air as he hit the potholes from whatever recent attack. Jess marveled as he hit the plaza and turned right onto the county road that crossed the fields. Crap. Jess ran to the back of the house and watched the crazy coot run his machine straight up the road, up the hill, right toward Storey.
He braced himself for the sound of the rifle. Easiest shot in the world, and Storey would need only one. Or maybe he would try to disable the machine; he really wanted to question somebody. Jess could imagine the initial conversation and would bet money that it would not go well. But all he heard was the clamor of the machine thinning into a whine, watched the ATV top the hill and enter the trees, heard a sort of stutter and cough and the bleep of a horn, then the pitched rev again, and the engine faded until there was just Jess’s muttered cursing and squeak of the weather vane and the hush of a gentle wind. And then he saw the two figures, man and girl. She was riding his back and they came hurrying out of the woods and down the road. Storey was hauling the wagon by the handle, not the tumpline, and his pack was strapped to the top. The whole rig looked like it might topple over with the slightest help.
* * *
They had not waited for him to raise his cap. They had heard the shots, and he guessed that they thought he might have been dumb enough to get himself plugged. So they came. Storey would do that. He might think Jess was lying injured somewhere and needed his help. They came straight down the road, as he had, and now Jess stepped into the yard of the house and waved his hat and yelled. The two stopped for two seconds, came on. Jess picked up his gun and ran to meet them.
They convened on the cobbled plaza and scared up a crowd of crows and ravens and gulls and Jess remembered the bodies of the boy and the man and he pointed away from the wharf and saw Storey’s thumbs-up as he steered the girl’s sightline up the hill. She was on his back and she had both arms around his throat, and still she craned her head back to stare at the figures lying there.
“What the hell,” Storey said as they met on the first block of Main Street.
“Telling me.” Jess did not want to laugh but he did. They were in a serious shitstorm, but still. “Take it you met Robert Frost.”
“Sonofabitch did look like Robert Frost. Fuckin’ A, spitting image. I had the same thought.”
“What happened?”
“Came right up the road—you saw, I’m sure. Right on up, with his shotgun sticking out of the scabbard like it was any other Saturday and he was going partridge hunting—”
Storey was straining against the girl’s grip, which was half choking him. He turned his head. “Wanna get down?” he said.
“No” was all she said. She said it definitively, like she was refusing a forkful of peas.
“Suit yourself.” Storey turned back to Jess. “So, anyway, here he comes, and I thought about shooting out the engine but then I thought, Hey, we could use the damn thing. I mean, at least until the gas ran out. I guess I wasn’t thinking about the cars here in the village. And then I thought, Well, I’ll just step out, raise my hands. So I did. Bastard screamed, ‘Outta my way!’ and hit the horn, slammed my leg, veered around, yelled, ‘I got nothing to say!’ and tooled off down the road.” Storey’s hand came down and he rubbed his left thigh.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just bruised. Goddamn.”
Storey turned his head back to the girl, whose head was at last out of the lion hoodie. Her hair was soft and fine and it stuck out in all directions, as if she’d rubbed a balloon on it. Her pale cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shiny. Stress, Jess thought. Yep, her lips were compressed tight again.
“Did you know that old man?” Storey said.
She nodded.
“Do you know his name?”
Silence. Then she said, “Are the bad men coming back?”
Storey winced. “No, honey,” he said.
“Why is Cody lying down there with the birds?”
No answer. Then she started to yell. She yelled, “Crystal! Crystal! It’s me!” Screaming it over and over.
* * *
It took a while to calm her down. Storey carried her into the shade of the closest porch and set her on a wicker love seat and he sat beside her and put an arm around her, but she threw it off and tried to run. He grabbed her, saying gently, “Hey, hey, let’s stay here. We wanna stay here, where it’s safe.”
She twisted back and bit his arm and screamed for her mother and her dog. Storey could almost not contain her. In his own panic he reached back for a wool throw blanket on the seat and yanked her to him and wrapped her in it, the way you would a clawing cat, and let her squirm and scream. Jess thought that if she had another fit like this when they were trying to stay hidden, they’d all be toast.
He stayed on the sidewalk and watched nervously up and down the street and in the broken-out windows of the houses across the way. He did not think there was anybody left, certainly not any shooters, but one couldn’t be sure. There might be people hiding in basements, in attics, scared teenagers with their parents’ guns, who knew. The wagon was on the sidewalk beside him, and after a couple of minutes of enduring the girl’s screaming, which somehow cut him in two, he unstrapped Storey’s pack and slipped the sailcloth off the wagon and rummaged until he found rolls of apricot leather bundled into gallon Ziplocs. He took two out. Storey was now repeating, “Okay, okay, calm down, we’ll go look for them in a minute…” Jess climbed to the porch’s top step and unfurled half a roll and peeled off the sticky skin and began to eat it in thin strips, closing his eyes and muttering, “Yum! Apricot leather. My favorite.”
The girl’s screaming petered out like a fire quenched with a bucketful of water. She craned her flushed, tearstained face toward Jess. “Roll-ups!” she said.
“Yes, yum.”
“Mommy makes that. That’s mine.”
“It is?”
She nodded emphatically.
“It’s delicious. Do you want some?”
She nodded, very dramatic.
“Okay. I got one for you. Maybe we won’t give Storey any.”
Storey still gripped the blanket and looked like he’d just barely survived eight seconds on a rodeo bull. The girl pursed her lips and thought about it and said, “He can have some.”
* * *
Storey put her on his back again. Her chin and one cheek were smeared with sticky fruit leather. Again they left their gear, took only rifles. There were the two long streets climbing the hill and three cross-streets, that was it. Storey said, “Let’s go to your house. There?” He pointed up hill. She nodded. “Okay.” They went to the grassy alley between the streets and climbed. Jess followed, guarding their backs. Seemed like the right thing to do, but if anyone remained and wanted to kill them they were sitting ducks now. She kept twisting back. Gripping Storey’s neck and throat like the harder she clutched the safer she might be. But she was looking behind, past Jess, at something on the lake or who knew where.
“Hey,” Storey said gently. “Little lion. Is your house this far? Hey.”
She squirmed back around, and her attention swam back up the hill. She seemed confused. Her vagrant eyes swept the alley, the backs of the houses. “This is Cody’s house,” she said.
“Cody? The boy who—” Storey stopped himself. It was a light-gray Cape with a snowmobile on a trailer parked off the alley. One of the second-story back windows was curtained with a flag that had a large “49” in the center, red and white, same design and colors as the patches. The window next to it had been blown out, and there were streaks of char up the clapboard and a ragged hole in the roof.
“Is Cody nice?” Storey said.
“He’s the best.” It’s what she’d said about Crystal. “He taught Crystal how to fetch ducks.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, and he can whistle.”
“Cool.”
“We play tic-tac-toe. He taught me how.”
Jess thought, Tic-tac-toe is big in this town.
They were walking slowly. Storey would be guessing that when she saw her house she would react. Storey said, “Cody’s dad is super-nice, too.”
She shook her head vigorously, swinging the hooded mane at her back. “He’s mean,” she said.
“He is?”
“Yep. He told Skye she was too little.”
“Too little for what?”
“Cody got his own gun.”
“Ahh.”
“She cried.”
“Like a baby.”
“Like a baby,” the girl repeated but she trailed off. Her attention was wandering up to the half-burned roof they were just passing, to the German shepherd with the bloody neck stretched out at the end of a chain. She twisted far around as they passed and Jess saw her mouth quiver and her face begin to collapse.
“Is Princess sleeping?” she whispered loudly with her mouth against Storey’s ear.
“Yes,” he said. “She’s taking a nap.”
“Taking a nap,” she repeated. “Princess is taking a nap.”
Storey had sounded so convincing even Jess almost believed it. The beautiful dog, who was the color of wheat on her belly and wet maple bark on her back, would rest awhile, then twitch and wake up. Jess thought how Storey’s clan, all of them, were great at pretending. If the current reality is too hard to bear or just, for some reason, unacceptable, invent a new one. Hannah. It was not that they went on as before, exactly, he and Hannah. It wasn’t that they pretended nothing had happened, nor was the act so clean and unfettered it created no ripples. There were…ripples.
