A Single Shot Page 15

  John doesn’t say.

  “Plugged it eight times I counted. Mighta been more on’y drunk as I was, I c’udn’t hardly see straight.” He pushes himself with his hands into a semistanding position. John backs off half a step, aiming the gun at him. “What the hell, Johnno? I ought to kick your ass. Why you here?”

  John waves the .45 at the couch. “Sit down yonder there,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Got some questions for ya.”

  “You’re holdin’ a gun on me, John. And that’s after you broke in my house. I think I’ll jis’ go back to sleep. Try wakin’ up a whole ’nother way.”

  “I seen what you done the Hen,” says John.

  Simon straightens up the rest of the way. He runs a hand over his mouth. “Seen what?”

  “Over to the Oaks.”

  “You seen a piece a’ shit with his throat cut and figured I did it, that what you mean?”

  “I seen what I seen. It looked a lot like what the cops said somebody done to Ira and Molly Hollenbach.”

  Simon shrugs. “Go ’head shoot me, Johnno. Been workin’ up to doin’ it myself here last couple a’ days.”

  Suddenly John’s hand holding the gun is shaking. He can feel his legs begin to quiver like fish flopping on a bank. He’s afraid he’s going to fall down. To prevent it, he puts his free hand on the back of the chair. “Why?” he asks.

  “That ain’t never as complicated as people like to make it out, Johnno. Years ’fore I ever heard a’ Vietnam my daddy said I had the same wild hair’s got him dead younger than I am now, o’ny I got far ’nough in school to know wild hairs is called genes and get a damn sight wilder a man’s been drinkin’.” He backs up to the television set. “And like everybody’s mother always warns, I got in with some bad elements, baddest of which is that piece shit you found bleeding all over the Oaks’ rugs.”

  “You worked for Ira. He treated you decent.”

  “Most times.”

  “Decent as my own daddy.”

  “Gon’ turn off the set, Johnno.”

  “Don’t!”

  Simon abruptly reaches down and switches off the television. The room goes black. John hears a rapid movement. He tries to follow the sound with his gun. Simon chuckles. John says, “I know where you are!”

  A dull light comes on behind him. “Boo!” says Simon.

  John wheels around. Simon’s standing before the couch, aiming a shotgun at him. “Shit, Johnno, din’ you learn nothin’ ’bout what I taught you?”

  John lowers the .45. He feels physically and cognitively depleted. “Ain’t like you,” he says.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t shoot folks been good to me. Nor slit their throats neither.”

  “Ira was s’posed to be to a fireman’s dance that night, ’cordin’ the Hen.” Simon points the shotgun at his own toes. He sits down on the couch. John’s not sure if he’s through covering him with the shotgun or is just taking a rest. “Him and Molly both. I run into Obadiah all growed-up over the Pink Lily in Raburn, this was maybe three, four years after Ira’d shit-canned ’im for skewerin’ that cow and a coupla weeks after he’d done the same to me for not showin’ up two mornings in a row, then wouldn’t pay me no back wages. Hen says he’d been holdin’ Ira’s safe combination all these years—all we’d have to do is walk in and open it.”

  At a level deeper than conscious comprehension, John is thinking that the apparent palpability of words, acts, the whole process of human interchange, is a sham. He is mindful, though, only of his physical distress. His trembling extremities. His palpitating heart. “What I notice ’bout myself, Johnno, is the drunker I get, the more reasonable the most un-fucking-reasonable things seem.”

  “Guess I’ll sit down,” John tells him, “ ’less’n you’ll shoot me for it.”

  “Christ, John.”

  “All right?”

  Simon scowls.

  John shoves the .45 into his belt. He takes a seat on the edge of the recliner, facing Simon. Simon sighs and says, “Them first coupla years after I got back I weren’t hardly never sober ’cept when I worked for your daddy, who wouldn’t tolerate it, but seems like the longer I’d go ’long his way, worse it’d be when I did let loose, and pretty soon a lost weekend ’id turn into a lost week or two or a whole damn month.” He flicks the barrel of the shotgun at one of the chickens that’s strayed too close to his foot. The chicken squawks and runs off. “Some mess, ain’t it, John?”

  John’s not sure if he means his own or the cabin’s. Anyway, he doesn’t answer. It seems to him that Simon’s voice has lost its uniqueness. It sounds like a million other voices.

  “Hen drives out Route 9” it says, “and parks in the Conservancy so nobody’d see us comin’ up the hollow, then we hike the woods trail over to Ira’s, getting drunker as we go—I mean, I’m not even carryin’ a gun, Johnno, because to me it’s a sumbitchin’ lark. I figure there’s a safe at all, most’ll be in it is the couple weeks’ wages Ira owes me. We walk up the house whistling, through the front door, turn on a light, and go through the living room to Ira’s office, where the Hen gets to his knees and yanks up a piece a’ rug above where the safe is. He tries openin’ it with some goddamn numbers he’s got writ down but nothin’ happens so he curses and tries ’em a few more times with no more luck and me giving ’im the raspberry ’cause I don’t really give a shit and the Hen finally says fuck it he’ll go upstairs and take some a’ Molly’s jewels and then we’ll leave and though I’m not happy ’bout him ransackin’ the place I go in the kitchen and drink a beer while I wait and maybe he’s up there fifteen, twenty minutes tops and all I e’er heard, Johnno, was a little bangin’ round and once or twice the Hen curse.”

  Simon stops talking and runs a hand back through his hair. He’s wearing the same clothes he was two days ago. John wonders if he’s slept in a bed or been less than half-drunk since then. “Look at this shit, Johnno.” He waves the shotgun around the room. “Here’s love makin’ a damn monster out a’ man. You think my homeowner’s ’ll cover what he done?”

  John doesn’t say. He’s wondering who the monster is and how far wrong John had read Simon, what exactly his friend is capable of. Could it have been he who had shot Mutt and left the dead girl’s body in the trailer? Was it possible that he had been involved with the Hen in threatening John’s family? The belief that he might have been has on John’s already tortured mind the excruciating pain-followed-by-numbness effect of frigid water.

  Balancing the shotgun on his thighs, Simon reaches down with one hand and snatches an open beer can from the floor. “Hair a’ the dog, Johnno,” he says before raising the can to his lips and draining it. Afterwards, he scowls, fixates on a spot on the ceiling above John’s head, and in a flat monotone says, “I hear Hen come back downstairs and I walk out and see ’im covered in blood with a look on his face like the devil’s rooted up and found a home there and in one hand he’s totin’ Ira’s bloody World War II bayonet and in the other his thirty-aught and when I ask ’im what the hell he’s gone and done he walks by me toward the study and says, ‘Ol’ Ira was up there straightenin’ me out on them numbers.’ I run upstairs, Johnno, and find a mess worse than most of what I seen in ’Nam, and Ira, half butchered like he is, moanin’ from Molly’s lap and oglin’ me out the one eye he’s got left and the look he give me, Johnno, ’ll follow me into the ground and a damn sight deeper, and I mumbled to him somethin’ like I was sorry for it, then I took out my huntin’ knife and done for ’im like I would for a wounded deer.”

  Simon tosses the shotgun onto the cushion next to him. Particles of dust rise up and, in the dim light around and above his head, spin in a circular pattern monotonous as his words. “Was Hen carrying the aught-six,” he says, rubbing his temples, “so I din’ argue much when he turns it on me and says we ought to split up, with him headin’ with the money back over the Conservancy and me winding my way down the west fork the hollow where my pickup was stashed.”
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  John reaches down and squeezes his left calf where it’s cramped up. He wonders how long it would take Simon to grab the shotgun and aim it.

  “We was gon’ get together in coupla days to see ’bout divvyin’ things up, but I figured from the start I’d seen the last of him and it ain’t but a week later I hear he’s pled to and been sentenced to a six-pack for a string a’ burglaries up in Raburn he was out on bail for at the time the Hollenbach thing and I guessed he musta planned all along to stash whatever we took somewhere till he got out.”

  In the dark corners of the room, pieces of furniture silently sit like intrigued jurors. Sporadic clucks sound like the derisive barks of naysayers. “Coulda let the law in on it,” mumbles John.

  “In their eyes I’m guilty as him.”

  “You din’ have to take the money.”

  Simon laughs contemptuously. “You know what a big pile cash does a poor man, don’t ya, John.”

  John straightens up. He looks at Simon, trying to figure out if he’s making generalizations or knows that John, in many ways, had come to the same crossroads as Simon and, as John now guiltily realizes, taken the same wrong turn. “Makes ’im greedy,” says John.

  “Like a rich man.”

  “More you talk, dumber I feel.”

  “Dead’s dead, Johnno. On’y sense I e’er made a’ life.”

  In John’s mind, beyond fear and disillusionment, lurks his own culpability. Was his hiding the dead girl and taking the money as bad as what Simon had done? He’s not sure. Nor of what Simon knows about John’s own involvement. “Day ’fore yest’day I’m up to the Oaks where Big Colette Gans’s hidin’ from her old man and son of a bitch, Johnno, if I don’t run smack-dab into Hen-shit-for-brains, still with his convict’s tan and hellish s’prised to see me. Probably planned slippin’ in and out town like a ghost with what he come for, though he gives me the song-’n’-dance ’bout lookin’ me up soon’s he had his hands on the cash on’y he swears after it got dug up from where he buried it somebody ’sides him snatched it.”

  John flicks his eyes at Simon. “Said it was him dug it up?”

  “Din’ say one way the other.”

  John glances nervously at the shotgun. “You shoot Mutt?”

  “Wouldn’t shoot no dog, John. Not your’n nohow.”

  “He say it was me took it?”

  “Said he had a hunch. Then I drive up there and find you loaded for bear.”

  “Figured I’d be too busy studyin’ on tattooed mountain lions see you’d searched the place?”

  “Shit, John. Thought a’ that money got like a cancer in my gut. I couldn’t cut it out and couldn’t live with it. Next morning I drove to town got even drunker. Figured you had it, after a while you’d get to feelin’ scared or upright and give it the law. I weren’t gon’ shoot ya for it. And couldn’t talk to ya ’bout it.” Simon slowly picks up the gun. “ ’Cept I kep’ goin’ over what the Hen might do to you or your’n for it and finally I made up my mind go over there put a sick chicken out its misery.”

  “Done more’n that, what I seen.”

  “I wouldn’t wasted so much effort killin’ that sumbitch. How I left ’im’s how I found ’im.” He tosses the shotgun at John. John puts out both hands and catches it. “There’s one in the chamber, Johnno. Be ’bliged you’d put it in me.” He reaches down and starts untying his boots. Holding the shotgun, John watches him, acutely aware again of the living sounds and smells in the house, of animals, under darkness’s blanket, eating, scratching, defecating, performing instinctual tasks as boundless as John’s befuddlement. Simon kicks off his boots, then, sighing, reclines on the couch. “Headache weren’t so bad, Johnno,” he says, “till I passed out and was woke up half-sober in the same mess I passed out in.”

  “Was it Waylon killed ’im?”

  Simon scowls confusedly at him. “Don’t know no Waylon.”

  “Stocky guy with a beard? Got somethin’ do with the money?”

  “Not Ira’s money.”

  “Was boyfriend to the girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “Cornish din’ mention her? Or ’bout havin’ a partner?”

  Cocking his head at John, Simon reaches down and picks up another half-dead beer. “Want to tell me what you been up to last couple a’ days, Johnno?”

  John shrugs. “Found some money, that’s all.”

  Simon puts the can to his lips, drinks from it, then drops it on the floor. He scowls. “Why you here?”

  “Was ridin’ round confused.”

  “Guess Moira ain’t come back.”

  “Got herself a boyfriend. My lawyer told me.”

  “ ’Member what I said ’bout the end of the world, John?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That ain’t it.”

  “Okay.”

  Simon turns sideways and puts his feet up on the couch. “Keep in touch with your son, though. My daddy never did with me like your’n did with you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mean somethin’ to him later.”

  “Okay.”

  Simon sighs. “What you gon’ do with the money.”

  “Ain’t figured it out.”

  “I’d burn it’s what.” He puts his hands behind his head. “Less’n you want to end up that fiery place Old Ira already sentenced me to, I’d stick a match to her, John.”

  “Maybe I’ll give it the cops.”

  “They can spend it good’s anybody else.”

  “I’ll keep your name out a’ it.”

  “Don’t matter either way, Johnno. Like I told you, I grew too old for this shit.” He nods at the room. “Got to admire the man who can still feel the monster a’ love this bad, though, don’t ya?”

  “You gon’ tell me who or ain’t ya?”

  “Left his calling card on my steer’s ass. Din’ ya see it?”

  “Gans?”

  “Had that half ear, Johnno, ’member?”

  John three-quarter smiles.

  “Tell me ya do.”

  “I think maybe I do. Got a junkyard ’hind his house?”

  “Filled with nothin’ but American-made wrecks.”

  “Weren’t barely full-grown?”

  “Widdled-down son of a bitch din’ know how bad the monster had him till Big Colette walked out.” Simon reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out one of his hand-carved harmonicas. “Guess he’da shot me too, if I’da been here.”

  “Prob’ly too drunk to aim straight.”

  “I feel kind bad ’bout it, Johnno. Man that afflicted.”

  John stands up from the recliner.

  “Guess you ain’t gon’ do me no favor either, huh, Johnno?”

  “Not tonight,” said John. “Not never.”

  “Bring that 12-gauge over here then and put it down next the couch ’fore ya leave. And there ought be a pint a’ Beefeater’s lying there somewhere.”

  John finds the half-drunk Beefeater’s. He carries the bottle and shotgun over to the couch and places them on the floor next to Simon’s head. “You’re a good boy, Johnno. Just like your old daddy taught ya. He don’t call ya first, couple days you ring up Daggard Pitt.”

  John stares wordlessly down at Simon. “He ain’t a bad little fella, John, for a lawyer. Just too easily took in, is all. Thinks all his clients—like you, me, and the Hen—is troublesome kids, gon’ one day grow up.” Simon rests his head against the arm of the couch, then reaches up and shuts off the light. “Good night, Johnno.”

  Feeling for objects with his hands, John starts blindly making his way out of the darkened house. Behind him the harmonica softly plays the sad but spirited tune that Simon often plays as the two of them, after a long hunt, exhaustedly tread their way back through the woods toward home. As John steps out of the cabin, the music, rather than abruptly ending, gradually fades out. Shivers of first light, like parasitic worms, riddle the night’s dying body. The dispersing fog exhales a slumbering, organic smell. John crosses the road, then starts
walking parallel to the cornfield toward his truck. From the cabin comes a single shotgun blast.

  FRIDAY

  FORGETTING HE had slept, he wakes with his hands gripping the wheel. In his head the memory of a gunshot echoes the last remnant of his fitful dreams. The unimpeded sun is straight up in a harsh blue sky. The truck is locked, its windows sealed. In a glade of red oak, it sits behind a large boulder draped in fox scat. The unregenerated air is stodgy and moist, hard to breathe.

  John reaches down and jerks open the driver-side door. Fresh air enters like a shout. He stumbles into it, voraciously hungry all of a sudden. He walks over to the boulder, around the base of which grow Saint-John’s-wort and raspberry bushes, and starts foraging for berries. A cottontail darts out of the thicket and the ground there is rife with deer and bear droppings.

  John strips off his sweat-drenched shirt, twists it into a two-cornered sack, and tosses the picked berries into it. When it’s full, he sits down with his back to the truck and eats what he’s picked, once snarling at a chipmunk that wanders too close to his cache. Nothing in his recent memory has tasted better. When the shirt is empty, he fills and empties it again, remembering that he has not eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. Afterwards, partially sated, he climbs to the top of the boulder and gazes several hundred yards down through the trees to where his half-obscured trailer sits. His hunter’s eye spots nothing amiss, but his brain is no more convinced now than it was hours before when he drove up the road in the fading dark.

  Standing again on the floor of dogbane and clover, he is overcome by the enormity of his life’s upheaval. He longs to be an anonymous part of the mountain’s wildlife. Another nonhumanoid who at the merest whiff of man’s odious stink retreats deep into the woods. He falls, trembling, to his knees. Inspiring his own foul-smelling exhalations, he sees his father, even while breathing death’s rattle, mumbling, “Weren’t no damn dog, tell ya. Was a wolf. A goddamn wolf!” What had he meant? No one in the family knew or had ever hazarded a guess. And Simon? While pulling the trigger on his life of excess, what enduring image had he tried to carry into the next world?