Burn, p.7
Burn, page 7
“Hey!” he screamed. “You fucker! We come in peace!”
Jess said, “Jesus, Store, be more diplomatic!”
“ ’Kay.” Then: “Hey! Motherfucker! No harm, no foul! We know you’re scared! It’s scary! We just wanna talk! We are unaffiliated! Can you hear that? UN-AFF-IL-I-ATED!”
Silence.
“We’ve got no beef with anybody!”
Storey stuck out the flag, well clear of the porch. He shook it. “Okay, great!” he yelled. And the next shot cracked and bit off a corner of the porch deck, a chunk that smacked and ricocheted off the clapboard of the next house back.
“Damn!” Jess exclaimed.
Storey crouched low. “Let’s get out of here,” he breathed. “Go back to the woods and think about it. We’re clearly not welcome.”
“Shit, yeah. Okay.”
And just then the pressure wave hit. The explosion shook the ground. It was a charge from back up the hill, and they both hit the dirt, covered their heads. The thunder echoed across the lake below them like a skipping stone and rolled away.
“That was the bridge,” Storey said from under his arms.
* * *
The bridge. No way out now but across the open field or on open water. Neither a good option. Jess lifted his face, spat out grass. “Why in hell would they do that?” he said. “Trap us in?”
“Same reason they blasted a young girl into chum.”
“No witnesses.”
“Must be.”
“We don’t even know what the hell we’re witnessing. Except some creepy tourist trap.”
“Let’s tell that to the dude in the tower. Or wherever.” Storey reached out from where he lay and grabbed the rake, shoved the handle and shirt out beyond the porch again. Sharp report, immediate. His head was lifted off the grass, half cocked; he was using both ears, the way he would listen to an approaching elk. He was echolocating. “The lighthouse,” he said. “Sonofabitch. I’m taking him out.”
Jess said no word. They stood and he followed Storey behind the house, past the hanging laundry, behind a one-car garage with vinyl siding. They moved down a sort of alley now, a grassy dirt track between staggered backyards and sheds, heading for the water. A steel Jon boat on a trailer, patched with welds, stuck halfway into the right-of-way, perforated with a spray of neat holes. Jess made the mistake of looking over the gunwale. A man lay in the bottom, a big man in coveralls with part of his skull in a baseball cap that lay beside one ear. Congealed blood pooled in the scupper and under the bench seat. Storey didn’t stop. He said over his shoulder, “Someone thought they’d head up the road with this boat, had second thoughts, and unhitched. Left their buddy.”
“Maybe it was his dad. Or son.”
“Likely.” Storey’s tone was edged with a cold steel of contempt, or hatred. Jess had never heard it before.
They passed a doghouse nailed together from slabwood, a stake and chain, a Catahoula hound at one end of it lying on his side, his short cream-colored hair constellated with the dark flecks of his breed, and blood. His tongue lay on the dirt, and he did not stir as they walked by.
The last house in the line was a gray Victorian trimmed in black, with gables and a wraparound porch, all too small, like most things in town. Beyond it, the sidewalk T’d into Water Street and the dock, except the street was not so much an avenue as a cobbled plaza, forty yards across at least, lined with archaic streetlights whose lamps hung from wrought-iron hooks. Of course. Directly across was a red shack, not much bigger than a tollbooth, which must have sold berths to the dock, or held the boat keys. Beside it was another bronze statue, same style as in Randall, probably the same artist, this time a fisherman in slicker hat beside an overturned dinghy, repairing, of course, a net. They peered around a corner of the Victorian. One eye. There was the lighthouse, its broken windows beneath the block glass bubble of the light. Jess thought it looked like a very skinny coffee percolator with a small hat. He turned to confer and—
The shots clapped, one on top of the next. One tore gravel into their legs, the other punched a hole in the clapboard of the house. They dropped. As fast as a shot deer, but they were not hit, they hugged their rifles close and rolled underneath the deep porch and scrambled back into the dark.
“Whoa,” Storey huffed. “That was two. Two more. Those guys were behind us.”
“Makes three.”
“Three at least now. Now I’m really pissed. Let’s go.”
“Where?” Jess said.
“We sure as shit can’t hang out here. They are probably moving right now. We need clear lines of sight and we need cover.”
“I’m glad you can think right now.”
“Listen, Jess, can you see the red shack by the dock?”
“Uh, yeah. Jesus, Store, they are really, really trying to kill us.”
“Jess, listen. Listen. See the life-sized sculpture beside it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s like God put that there just for us.”
“God?”
“It’s like a damn duck blind. Clear view probably of the targets, and cover. You ready?”
Jess groaned. “Yes, ready.” He started to crawl for the light. Felt Storey’s hands on his pant leg tugging him back.
“No! No!” Storey hissed. “That’s where they expect us. To bolt from under the porch. You can bet all three rifles are trained on that spot. Stick one finger out there and— Look.”
“What?”
“This thing wraps. Look, past that support post. We can get by it, squeeze between the concrete and the post. I can see light where the front porch meets the front steps. We’re going out the front.”
“The front?”
“Yes. We can stay back in the dark and get a bead on the tower. From there it should be line-of-sight. We’ll fire off two rounds into what once were windows and sprint. The dude up in the lighthouse will be taking cover, the others will be trained on the side porch. They’re gonna have to be very good to swing over and catch us running.”
Jess tried to picture it. He was having trouble stringing together the sequence, as he had with the helicopters and the girl. It was as if this lake, or maybe all the smoke, or the trauma of what they’d witnessed was scrambling his sense of time. Or timing.
“Wait,” Jess almost pleaded. “Again: We don’t go out. Not here. We crawl up front. We shoot at the lighthouse, then sprint for the statue. Take cover.”
“Simple.”
“Simple,” Jess repeated. As if repeating it would make it so.
* * *
Are you scared? she had said. They were camped at the end of a twelve-mile washboard road in southern Baja. They were alone. Until now. From the screen window of their VW bus they could see only the shadow arms of the tall Cardón cactus gesturing against the faint luminosity of the bay. The luminescent rip of waves. And flares, shooting over the beach from the top of a high dune. And they listened to the growing growl of outboard motors and the voices of men. Nothing happened in the middle of the night out here, in the middle of nowhere, but drug drops. They had heard recently of one American couple who had been camping and surfing, as they were now, and who had accidentally witnessed a drug delivery and had been buried alive.
You scared? she repeated.
Yes, he said. You?
Oh, yeah.
What should we do? he said.
Count our blessings, she said.
They barely breathed. They listened. Out of the chorus of sounds half muted by distance they heard snatches of “gringos” and “camper.” Jess’s heart thudded against the thin foam mattress. Later he thought it must be how a buck feels, frozen in a field, when he whiffs the close human scent and hears the crackling of footfall.
* * *
Now he and Storey were side by side in the shadow under the porch, in prone firing position, aiming at the windows at the top of the tower. There was only a two-foot gap off the ground, and hard to get the angle to shoot that high, but they had it. Lucky the lighthouse wasn’t full-sized. Each steadied his breathing. Jess watched the crosshairs skip with the beating of his heart. Okay, the jump in the scope was tiny, moving at that distance from maybe the heart of a buck to the lungs. Breathe. Beyond the frame of the window was an interior brick wall painted white. What it looked like. That’s what he had a bead on. Half pressure on the trigger. Jesus, calm—calm down. And an olive flash. Like a just-glimpsed bird. What he saw, and without thinking he squeezed the trigger home and the kick went through his shoulder and Storey yelled Now! And he was squirming out of the gap under the porch into bright sun, too bright, and levering the Savage and he was running. He was lighter, faster than Storey and he overtook him on uneven cobbles as the shots rang from their right, more than one or two, a fusillade crashing into the bright after-echoes of their own reports and zinging electric whine off stones at their feet, the swept cobbles a sun-shimmered expanse impossibly wide, a territory of ingots paved, heavenly killing floor of gold, and in the yellow morning he sprinted as through molasses and heard the subaquatic shouts bending, maybe Storey yelling “GoGoGoGo!”
Jess dove. How he remembered it: headlong over the bronze of the overturned boat, and he crashed onto his right shoulder and rolled and shoved his whole self into a belly slide up into the lee of the sculpture skiff and shook. His face was against Storey’s back, shoulder blade through the jacket jumping as Storey shifted to his side, said, “You okay? Jess? Okay? Fuck fuck that was close!”
Silence now. Storey shifted over, got an eye past the fisherman’s bronze low-boots and up to the windows of the tower. Nothing. Shifted back.
“Did you see that? Dude up there, had to be. I think you shot him.” Faces turned to each other now, a foot apart.
Jess’s blink. Felt an ant crawling on his cheek. A tear.
“Yeah,” Storey said in sympathy. “Not what we bargained for, is it? God.” Shoved a hand down into his jacket pocket. “You got ammo? Too bad we don’t use the same.” Came up with three brass-jacketed 180-grain shells in an open palm.
Storey snapped into sharp focus. Jess fixed on his face and nodded. Felt himself reaching for his own cargo pocket on pants leg, feeling to the bottom for the loose shells there. Watched Storey thumb the brass into the open breech of his Winchester, shove down once into the magazine, load another into the chamber, and shove the bolt home. “Damn,” he said. “How’d I fire two? Could’ve sworn I only fired once.”
Now Jess. Levered the Savage and replaced the single shell that had been chambered there. The shot that had struck the tower. The flash of green, there then gone. He banished the image, felt no elation, felt nothing. Nothing?
Storey said, “Nobody up there. Not now.” He pried off his sweat-stained baseball cap. It was forest green and embroidered with a rainbow trout. Above the band in back were sewn words that read “Silver Gate, Montana.” Where they fished last September, after Jan had left, after Storey had called Jess and said, “We’re going up to Yellowstone and fish the Lamar.” He didn’t ask about the separation, just booked Jess’s ticket and picked him up at the airport in Bozeman in a rented Escalade. “Thought you’d get a kick out of going fishing in a Caddy,” he said. “You know the beast is surprisingly solid. Got XM Radio. Here.” And Storey turned the dial to the Merle Haggard station and they listened to Mama Tried and Red Sovine singing “Phantom 309” as they drove toward Livingston, and the cold breath of the Yellowstone River poured through the open windows and for the first time in weeks Jess felt that he was alive and that living might be an option.
Now Storey winced a smile and said, “Hate to do this,” and, pinching the brim, he flapped the crown of the cap up over the keel of their bronze boat redoubt and the shots cracked instantly, one striking and whining off the solid hull, the other shredding an inch-long tear in the side of the cap. “Wha!” one or the other shouted as they both flinched.
“Damn, these guys are good.” Storey propped himself to elbows, ran the cap through his fingers with a grimace. “Sorry, buddy.” Huffed. Reached across, tugged Jess’s ten-day beard, said gently, “You okay?”
Jess’s nod.
“Dude was trying to kill us. Kill your best buddy. Right?” Storey’s smile meant to reassure, but looked sad, the way Jess felt. “Right?”
Jess’s nod.
“So thanks. I mean it. You did good.” Heavy breath, reconstituting, tightening the straps, whatever cords held himself together. “Those guys, those guys that are left…definitely two dudes. Or women, whatever. The way the one ricochet sounded, it skipped. Shallow angle. They are way left, our left.” Storey motioned with the blade of his right hand, motioned past Jess’s head toward the final buildings and sheds at the bottom of the town, the ones closest to water. He shifted onto his side, winced.
“What?” Jess said.
“Nothing. Just stiff.”
“What do you wanna do?”
Storey snugged his newly vented trout cap back onto his head, brim backward. “They are really frigging good. We can’t do anything.”
Jess blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we move one inch from this thing, we die. There’s no end-around like before.”
“Okay.”
“So we wait. We’ve gotta wait ’em out. For all we know, they think they hit one of us on that run and just hit the other in the head. If we wait long enough they’ll come to check.”
“What if night falls?”
“I know. We’ve gotta stay alert.”
“Crap.”
“I know. Maybe patience isn’t their number-one virtue.”
“They’re fishermen, right?”
“They’re fake fishermen, seems like.”
Jess grunted. “I could really use a chew,” he said. “Look.” Jess pointed the barrel of his rifle to a metal sign that dangled by one corner from a post behind the statue of the fisherman. It spun slowly in the light breeze and read in stamped letters, “Lobsterville, Beryl, Maine. Thanks to a generous grant from Maine Tourism and the Cabot Foundation.”
Storey grunted. “Weird.”
“I thought the Cabot family made cheese,” Jess said.
“Cheese and dreams,” Storey said, and closed his eyes.
* * *
Sun rose at their backs and the morning warmed. Jess shucked his jacket where he lay and turned his collar up to cover his neck. Good light ahead on the bottom houses. Houses gussied to look like fishing shacks on the coast, red clapboard and colorful lobster buoys striped with blues and yellows and greens. Mesh traps in the yard, stacked haphazardly, as if just unloaded from a day’s lobstering. All like a postcard in the long light. Or the picture on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, the kind he and Jan used to do on rare rainy evenings, quietly murmuring, I found the corner, here…Here’s the next…I need a red and black, black stripe…Dude, don’t force it!…Patter of a life proceeding on smooth waters. The scene here so disorienting Jess seemed to smell salt water, drying kelp. Actual laugh of a lake seagull didn’t help, the herring gulls here veering among the masts of moored sailboats, chattering and crying. As surreal, he thought, as everything else in the past week.
No sound, footfall or gunmetal. Jess crawled to the stern of the bronze skiff and put his eye to a pencil-thin crack between bronze transom and bronze rudder. Have to hand it to the sculptor, he was literal. There were screwheads on the rudder post. Good thing—the gap provided a prospect, however narrow, and Jess was certain the crack was so thin they would not detect the movement. Blank windows, blank doorways, empty porches. No one at the corner of a shed. Whoever was shooting at them was patient. Because they were somewhere up there—at least two—kneeling or prone or benched, maybe leaned into a rifle propped on a sandbag, maybe behind one of those lace-curtained windows. Unwilling to give away position, willing to wait it out. Maybe they even had a spotter standing behind them, calling the shots.
He slithered to Storey, rolled on his back, closed his eyes against the sun. Just a second here, he thought; a second of repose. Storey made no comment. They both knew that now was not the time to take a nap. Knew each other well enough to know that the other would not fail and sleep. That if one closed his eyes now it was only for a needed moment.
Jess’s eyelids seemed crimson in the full bore of sunlight. If any color at all. Veined as if a map of rivers viewed from very high, a satellite view. A blood country, rivers and mountains washed in it. He felt his mouth twitch. If he had killed a man. Was the man afraid of him? He couldn’t imagine, but that was clear. Was the man in the tower defending his own family, who were hidden somewhere in the town unmoving, as he and Storey were huddled now? Was he a restaurant owner? A busboy? They had seen the sign: “The Black Pearl, Chowder House and Spirits.” Too cute. Anything too cute always seemed to be hiding something, maybe nothing more menacing than the daily pain of normal life.
Whenever he had killed before—an animal—he had thanked it. Elk, grouse, deer, trout. Thanked it for surrendering a life so that he might eat. It never felt contrived. He recognized every being’s right to exist, knew that everyone—ant, mushroom, mouse, owl—was just trying to make a living, and so the thanking always seemed a transaction steeped in rightness, and it seemed the least he could do. But this. The person in the tower had clearly died. He had clearly done it. It had happened lightning fast, but the dude was the first to shoot and the green swatch had vanished as his own shot rang. He felt himself drifting. Untethered. In his torso a rising nausea. He rolled onto his side, away from Storey and out of the full sun, and forced his thoughts away. Gratitude. Return to something like appreciation—it always grounded him.
