November 19 - 4:56 pm

S-s-s-shadow

What are you telling me? What the fuck ... are you ... telling me?”

Grandpa leans into his crutch, eyes aquiver, a single greased spear of metallic hair bobbing forward on each barked syllable.

“I saw him. He messed up Ed and sent the kid running.” Myra clutches Danny like a piece of flotsam at sea, her teeth bared. He struggles, but her tweaker strength is too much for him.

Grandpa looks like he wants to hit her. “How do you even know what he looks like now?”

Already a withered crone, she seems to shrink in the face of his rage. “I went to see him is all. After I heard my dad talking to Lizzie on the phone about the land and about the boy—”

“Went to see him how? His own goddamn mother doesn’t even know where is.”

“Everyone knows where you keep him. I just thought I’d tell him about his son.”

“There’s nothing there to tell anything to. He’s a fucking potato, you stupid bitch.”

I’m not really listening. My stomach feels like an overfilled tire ready to pop, and my mind keeps drifting off to a day deep in my past, the summer before I enlisted, only seventeen years old. My friend Tommy and I took a road trip, drove his cherry ‘61 Chevy Impala up to B.C. He knew a guy who knew a guy whose parents owned a cabin near Whistler. Tommy finagled us an invite for a week of hell-raising, claimed girls would be there. About that he was right. He also said everyone would be so hammered even I could get laid. About that I knew he was blowing smoke up my ass. But I figured it would be fun anyway. What neither of us anticipated was his car getting totaled by a moose.

It happened the afternoon we arrived. Tommy and I were hanging out on the porch with some guy we’d just met, one of the other guests. Drinking Molson’s and smoking a little pot and considering the nature of the sky above the deep green haze of the forest. As we looked on, a moose appeared from among the resinous fir trees and strolled across Tommy’s Impala. Sheet metal squealed and buckled, the roof took on the shape of the front bench seat. The engine appeared from under an abrupt fold in the hood. And then the moose stopped, stood there and gazed up at us, eyes serene.

The other guy—Marvin? Morvin?—muttered something about never having seen a moose before. “Cool.” Tommy made a little sound somewhere down in the bore of his throat and dropped his joint. We were poor enough in those days that I remember hoping we could find it; didn’t want good dope going to waste. I opened my mouth to say something, but Tommy was already moving. Jumped down off the porch in a single bound and charged across the wide gravel driveway. He threw his beer bottle as he ran. It bounced off the moose’s shaggy flank and fell among the rocks and lichens that lined the ditch below the parking turn-out. “Get off ... get off get off!” The moose shrugged and turned, shattering safety glass and collapsing the trunk. Tommy pulled up, realizing perhaps his impotence against a half ton of indifferent ruminant. At forest’s edge, the moose looked back over its shoulder at Tommy, expression fathomless, then vanished in a swoosh of verdant fir branches.

Something about the way the man with the divot in his head comes out of the shadows beyond the statue reminds me of that moose. Maybe I’m a little delirious; my blood has to be draining at a pace I can’t long sustain. I might be the first to notice him. I’m certainly the first to recognize him for who he is. He stared up at this very spot from the street in front of my house, and he broke Big Ed like he was made of balsa wood. And now he moves with aloof indifference across the grass and unceremoniously grabs George’s head and twists. For all his great mass, the Flea’s neck is less sturdy than Big Ed’s. He drops like a log, dead before he hits the ground. The fellow leans over him, eyes wide and curious.

“Snap.”

No one moves. Myra and Grandpa stare at the biker’s body in stunned silence. Luellen’s face is milk-white. She recognizes the man with the hole in his head—they all do. But for Luellen, he holds some special meaning. She looks like she’s about to break in half. The stranger steps over the body, puts a finger to Grandpa’s lips. “S-s-shhh.” The old fellow’s eyes bulge, but he doesn’t speak. The stranger turns to Luellen, who sits quivering, face wet with tears and rain.

“No, please.” Her voice sounds like tearing fabric. “Please, no more.”

But he reaches out and touches her on the cheek, wipes away the tears. He grins, sloppy and wide, as he puts his finger in his mouth. “S-s-s ...” His lolling, glassy eye loses focus for a moment. A potato.

Luellen puts her face in her hands. “No more.” Her voice is an echo of the wind and rain.

“S-s-s ...” He runs the back of his hand across his lips, slicking his wrist with glistening spit. “S-s-s—” Then he gulps air and closes his eyes. When he opens them again his eyes are clear, his voice strong.

“Ellie.”

I open my mouth, afraid to make a sound. Afraid to draw attention to myself. Under the statue, her arms clasped around her breasts like a shield, Luellen begins to sob. I roll onto my side, bite back a whimper at the pain. Danny notices the movement or sound and lunges toward me. Myra digs her fingers into his shoulders. A chirrup emits from his lips, a sound faint enough it could easily be missed. In my ears, he might as well be screaming. I struggle to push myself up, but my life is leaking out of me. I can feel it in the coldness in my feet and hands, in the shadows swimming before my eyes. I have no strength. Grandpa, Myra, Luellen, none of them are looking at me. The stranger consumes them. Beside me, Big Ed lies in the wet grass. His eyes stare, lifeless. His mouth hangs open as if he’s calling out. I reach toward him with my free arm.

The gun is still tucked in his belt. Eager’s gun. My gun. Two pounds of murder, too much for me to lift as my blood dribbles into the mud beneath me. But Danny is whimpering and frantic murmurs spill from Luellen’s lips, no more. Beyond Big Ed’s bulk, I see a mark on Harvey Scott’s pedestal. EG®, Sharpie-etched on marble. Eager looking over my shoulder hardens my resolve. It’s down to me, the ace in the hole. Big Ed is dead, the old man’s Flea is dead. I raise the gun, like lifting a boulder. I’ve got one chance, one shot at most. If I don’t make it count, the next shot will be the one that puts me down for good. George’s gun is closer to them than me.

Grandpa, sharp eyes wide, reaches out to the stranger. Myra pulls away from them all, yanking Danny along with her. Luellen catches Myra’s movement and lurches off the bench toward her little boy, thinking or not thinking, I don’t know. Reacting. But Myra, cranked wide, is too quick for her. She pushes Danny down into the mud and rakes her claws across Luellen’s face. Danny comes to life, not just screaming in my head, but screaming for all to hear. Everyone freezes, stunned, perhaps, by the sound he’s making, a keening wail only a terrorized child can make. His shriek awakens the last shred of strength left to me. I bring the gun up, that big ol’ .357, ace in the hole. Myra catches something in the corner of her tweaked eye, the movement of my arm. Turns.

That’s when I put the bullet in her ear.