A Single Shot Read online

  The sun sits straight over the mountain. Puffy white clouds, shaped like beanbags, rest above both horizons. The heat from the last several days is unabated. There is almost no breeze to temper it. John thinks he might not recognize her were she to walk this very minute into the trailer, so intent had he been after killing her not just to conceal her death from the world but to expunge her life, to act as if she’d never been. That, he realizes, was a worse crime than shooting her. People who loved her—her parents, her two girlfriends, Tools and Germ—even now must be wondering where she is. And Waylon? Maybe he’d loved her also.

  He stands up, walks inside and over to the kitchen wall phone, not sure whom he intends to call, until he picks up the receiver and dials the county sheriff’s department.

  “I’m calling ’bout that girl,” he says, then, thinking he ought to disguise his voice, jerks the phone from his ear and reaches above the sink for a dish towel.

  “Hello?” says a woman’s voice.

  “Just a minute,” says John. He puts the towel over the phone’s mouthpiece. “ ’Bout that girl…”

  “What girl?”

  “The one lost.”

  “Please speak up, sir. I can’t hear you.”

  “The girl.”

  “I heard that part. What girl?”

  “The one reported missing—the runaway—I’m calling ’bout her.”

  “About who?”

  “The missing girl.”

  “Which one?”

  “Ain’t somebody reported a girl’d run off recent?”

  “We’ve got an envelope full of flyers, sir. In country and out.”

  “Flyers?”

  “About missing kids. Runaways. Are you talking about a particular girl.”

  “One ’bout sixteen? Blond ponytail? Blue eyes?”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “That’s what I’d like to find out.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know her name.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Why?”

  “I’d like to call you something.”

  “You ain’t got to call me nothin’.”

  “How do you know she’s run away?”

  “Was in her pants.”

  “What?”

  “Was a note in her pants pocket. Said she’d run off.”

  “Note from who?”

  “Her.”

  “To who?”

  “Somebody else.”

  “Do you know who she ran from?”

  “If I did, I w’udn’t be calling the goddamn sheriff.”

  “How’d you happen onto the note?”

  “What?”

  “What were you doing in her pocket?”

  “Somethin’ bad happened her. An accident.”

  “What sort of accident.”

  The phone starts shaking in John’s hand.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does she need an ambulance?”

  “What?”

  “Does the girl need medical assistance?”

  “No.”

  “Would you hold on for a minute, please, sir?”

  “What for?”

  “I’m going to let you speak to an officer.”

  “I’m just tryin’ to find out her name. That’s all.”

  “Hello?” says a male voice.

  John hangs up the phone.

  Paralyzed by his predicament, he sits in one of the plastic deck chairs, with the beer cooler resting at his feet, and watches through binoculars for the black Chevy Blazer to descend from Hollenbachs’.

  The kitchen clock ticks loudly behind him. Mutt endlessly stalks a woodchuck at the upper edge of Nobies’ pasture. The sun slowly heads for the horizon. John gets drunker. His thoughts fragment. Waylon, the dead girl, the money, Obadiah Cornish, Moira’s leaving him—each, alone, is horrible to consider. Their combined weight is staggering.

  He thinks about Ira and Molly Hollenbach’s murder, how the police had questioned about everyone in the area, including John, who’d ever heard Ira brag that hidden in his house was a safe containing over twenty years’ worth of undeclared profits from the quarry and farm that Ira would retire on. Like most of the county’s populace, John theorized that being a blowhard is what got Ira killed. He figured that whoever had cut up Molly to get Ira to open that safe was so enraged at discovering its piddling contents he’d slit both their throats. Now, though, he wonders if Ira really had been loaded and the money John has found was his. But why would the robber have hauled it all the way up to the quarry and buried it? And why would he have left it there for five years?

  Through the glare of the late-afternoon sun, he follows the slow descent of the black Chevy Blazer. A quarter mile above Nobies’, it passes by the treeline on that side of the hill and disappears. Why was it up there so long? wonders John. Did he—or they—find the deer carcass? Maybe even the girl’s body? If so, now what? John remembers how, in front of Puffy’s, Waylon and Obadiah Cornish had suddenly changed their minds about crossing the street in front of a police car. Could one—or both of them—be wanted by the law? The phone’s ring makes him jump. He knocks a half-filled beer bottle onto the deck.

  “My lawyer’s going for an order of protection tomorrow, John. From now on, you’re to stay away from the house.” Moira’s calling from a pay phone. John hears voices in the background. “You can’t just go around breaking windows and leaving rancid meat in people’s—John?”

  “Yes?”

  She lowers her voice some. “Are you in trouble?”

  “What?”

  “Did you…?” Her voice becomes a whisper. “John, for God’s sake, where did all that money come from?”

  “It’s for you and Nolan.”

  “There’s over four thousand dollars there!”

  “A few months’ advance.”

  “Advance?”

  “There’ll be more.”

  “More?”

  “We can buy a new home if we want, Moira.”

  “What’s going on, John? Are you all right?”

  “You at school?”

  “Yes. Look, John—I can’t spend this.”

  John watches out the window as Mutt makes a blind rush for the woodchuck, which whistles harshly, then dives into its hole. Mutt puts its nose to the hole and starts sniffing.

  “Some son of a bitch looks like Ichabod Crane was fucking the babysitter when I showed up.”

  “Carla told me…”

  “I had every right to call the social services.”

  “You can’t believe I knew about it!”

  “I could go for a change in custody.”

  “You don’t want custody, John. You don’t even want to babysit!”

  “Who’s Obadiah Cornish?”

  “Some friend of Carla’s. I didn’t ask him over.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know what else. I only met him a few days ago. He used to live around here, he said.”

  “He ask about me?”

  “Just chitchat—about hunting, that sort of thing. He said he remembered you were quite a hunter—made some joke about your poaching.”

  “What do you know about the guy he hangs around with?”

  “Who?”

  “Heavyset guy, dark—they came out of Puffy’s together.”

  “I don’t know anything about him.” A recorded voice comes on the line and tells Moira to deposit another twenty-five cents. “John—I’m giving the money back.”

  “I won’t take it.”

  “I’ll put it away someplace, then. I don’t know what you’ve done, John, but…”

  “What’s it like there?”

  “Where?”

  “School?”

  “I don’t know. It’s school, John. That’s all. A lot of work…”

  John hears what sounds like a rifle shot outside. He watches Mutt’s body lift a foot in the air, fall to the ground, and lie still. “Jesus…”


  “John?”

  “I got to go. They shot Mutt!”

  John cries when he sees him. Half his head’s been blown off. He’s got a mouthful of grass and foam and lies on his side like he’s been thrown there. The bullet’s buried itself in the dirt or flown off into the woods. The shot looks to have come from down the hill, on the town side of Nobies’.

  Cecil answers John’s call on the barn phone. John hears mooing, buckets clanging, the whir of milking machines. “He leave?”

  “What, John?”

  “The son of a bitch shot Mutt!”

  “Who shot Mutt?”

  “Who was there?”

  “The one in the black Chevy Blazer. Had a picture of some girl. Wanted to know if we’d seen her.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Long drink a’ water. Said he was a private investigator hired by the girl’s family. Her boyfriend’s from these parts. S’posedly they was seen two days ago headin’ into the east entrance the preserve. That’s why he’s been nosin’ round.”

  “He show ya a badge?”

  “Somethin’ in plastic. Said the parents are offerin’ twenty thousand dollars to whoever helps find the girl. I said he ought to talk to you, seeing as how half your life’s lived in the woods round. He didn’t come see ya?”

  “No.”

  “If the girl’s found—dead or alive—with all her b’longings, the twenty thousand, he said, ’ll be paid no questions asked.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Go figure.”

  “He involve the law?”

  “Weren’t my bus’ness ta ask.”

  “Bastard killed my dog, Cecil! Didn’t ya hear the shot?”

  “I can’t hear nothin’ ’bove this racket. Why would he shoot Mutt?”

  “I’d like to know. You watch him leave?”

  “Had better things to do. I saw him walk out the barn, get in his car, and head for the hollow road’s all. You gon’ call the sheriff?”

  “I ain’t. Don’t you neither.”

  “I got nothin’ ta say to him.”

  The first time he showed up at the trailer he had a faceful of porcupine quills. Moira and John had been married less than a year. They spent two hours with pliers, pulling the quills out. Mutt, who was only half grown, never even whimpered. “You’re one tough mutt, Mutt,” Moira kept telling him.

  He was a fighter. He fought for fun—raccoons, foxes, even a bobcat once. Following his bouts, he’d drop in at the trailer, showing off his wounds, looking to be patched up, fed, patted, bedded down for a few nights on the living-room floor. Then he’d get restless. He was a good dog. Never caused any problems. Just lived his life. Someone had house-trained him once or he’d learned himself. Moira was real impressed with his cleanliness. She called him “a mannered rogue.”

  John picks the dog up in his arms, carries him over next to the garden, lays him on the grass. He digs a hole in the soft loam there, places Mutt in the hole, then slowly covers him with dirt. Afterwards, he sticks a large flat stone vertically into the soil. Standing above the grave, he folds his hands, closes his eyes, and thinks about Mutt’s wagging tail causing his whole body to whip side to side like a rod yanked by a hooked fish. He thinks of the three of them—Mutt, Moira, and John—lying together in front of a fire on cold winter nights. He says a short prayer. He asks God to let Mutt fight in heaven.

  He sits in the kitchen, listening to crazed bugs battering the screens. It’s dark down the hill. Frogs croak. They sound like giant frogs. Monstrous frogs. The Night of the Frogs.

  He turns on the television set, tunes it to the one station he gets. Something’s wrong with the horizontal hold. He switches the set off. He’s aware of the bugs again. Then the frogs. He plays a game of quarters against himself. He wonders how, in this world, he could ever have thought his luck would be good enough to allow him to walk away unscathed with a case full of cash. The phone rings. He answers after the third one. On the other end, someone hangs up.

  Five minutes later, it happens again. Beyond the lighted window, darkness cresting in a watery black wave. Minutes that feel like hours. Hours that feel like days.

  He brings the radio over to the kitchen table, sits down, tunes the radio to country music. He listens to three songs. Four. His feet and armpits start to sweat. He kicks off his sneakers, pulls off his T-shirt. A commercial for Delco batteries plays. The phone rings once more. He picks it up. A man’s voice says, “The dog got in the way.”

  “Who is this?”

  “You know, right?”

  “What?”

  “How things get in the way.”

  “What things?”

  The phone clicks dead.

  A set of headlights slowly serpentine their way up the hollow. They turn onto Nobies’ road, then continue on up the hill. Sitting on the deck, drinking the last beer in a six-pack, John is too tired and drunk to stand. He reaches down, picks up the .45 from beneath his chair, and flicks off the safety.

  The vehicle lurches before skidding to an uncertain stop adjacent to the trailer. It backfires once, then stops running. A loud fart from inside. Raucous laughter. A female voice baying, “Gawd!”

  Doors open to a loud creak. Another fart. “Je-zus!”

  Simon Breedlove and two naked women exit Simon’s beat-up old Cadillac. “Pool open, John?”

  John waveringly sticks his arm holding the pistol straight up into the air and squeezes the trigger. In the still night air, the report is deafening. “He’s worse than you, Simun!”

  More laughter.

  “I’ll get the lights,” says Simon.

  John fires again.

  Their loose flesh glabrous and silvery in the moonlight, the women charge hell-bent for the water.

  “You must remember big Colette,” Simon insists from the pond’s grassy banks, where they watch the women, yipping and laughing, frolic in the water like overfed seals. “Is married to Ralph Gans.”

  “She ain’t familiar.”

  “Colette Gans! Ralph’s missus?”

  Watching them water-wrestle beneath Simon’s jerry-rigged lights, John has the feeling that this day and night are an eternal hell to which he is doomed. “Don’t know him, either.”

  “Sure you do! He’s got that scrap-metal yard outside Blenham. Three, four years ago we hauled a couple demo wrecks over there—was right after the Fair. Bunch of us tied one on after with Gans. I know you remember. Ralph Gans? Had that half ear?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember that set a’ inner tubes she’s carrying? Christ, you got to! She comes sashaying into Gans’s living room ’round midnight wearing this little-bitty nightshirt could see right through and says, ‘Raaaa-lph, these boys gotta go home now! Colette needs tendin’ to!’ Christ, we ’bout died. Who even knew the man was married? Don’t you remember? Said it just like that—Raaaaalph!—funny thing is come to find out that’s how she really talks—takes her ’bout an hour to get a sentence out.”

  “Nuh-uh,” says John.

  “You’re bullshitting me, right?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “The hell you say!”

  John shrugs.

  “I ran into her earlier this evening at Benders with this other one who’s her cousin and a daughter to Beano Dixon, the mechanic down to the Chevron station? I didn’t even know Beano had a daughter, but turns out he’s got three he’s been sendin’ regular support to all these years up in Red Hook and this one here’s the oldest. She’s got a mountain lion tattooed to her ass. Got its teeth bared and its claws open. She gets out and shakes herself dry, you’ll see.” Simon caps the gin bottle he’s been drinking from and tosses it into John’s lap. “Figured I’d roust ya. Shape I’m in, don’t know as I’d been able to handle the pair of ’em.” Smiling broadly, he places his elbows into the bank and leans back. “What happened your arm, Johnno?”

  “Buck gored me.”

  “No shit?”

&n
bsp; “Dry-gulched me after I wounded it, then chased it for miles. Keep it yourself.”

  Simon grunts. “When haven’t I?”

  “I mean, don’t even breathe it.”

  “You thinking it’s like a vampire buck or what?”

  John flicks his eyes at him.

  “It’s the middle of the night, Johnno.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re sitting here shit-faced with a loaded pistol.”

  “And you’re sitting next to me.” John plucks a piece of hay from the field and starts chewing on it.

  “I guess Moira ain’t changed her mind?”

  “She’s educating herself. Worries about missing classes.”

  “That ain’t so bad. Wished I’d had a little more.”

  “Why didn’t ya?”

  “Vietnam come along fucked with my aspiration. I was gonna be a nuclear fizzy—you know like Einstein was?”

  “I think she’s got a boyfriend.”

  “That ain’t the end of nobody’s world neither. The end of the world’s when your heart stops beating.”

  “Yeah,” says John. He thinks of the dead girl, the end of her world a 12-gauge slug. He remembers Simon, thirteen years older than John, once saying that the world is divided into those who’ve killed someone and those who haven’t and that the second group doesn’t know how lucky it is or about the danger it’s in. That was the closest he’d ever come to discussing the war with John. “You ever heard of a guy named Obadiah Cornish?”

  Simon raises his eyes at John. “I don’t brag on it. Why?”

  “He pulled a gun on me last night over to Moira’s.”

  “You don’t mean to say, Moira…?”

  John waves dismissively. “Cornish was over there balling the babysitter. He seemed to know a lot about me. I don’t know diddly ’bout him.”

  “Last I heard, he was upstate, though that was a lot of years ago.”

  “How come I can’t place him and he can place me?”

  “He ain’t much to place is why you can’t him. Probably why he can you is ’cause he was foster kid one summer to Old Ira Hollenbach. This was back ’fore the killings—when Ira had the stone quarry. Cornish I guess got sent to Ira’s after he wore out ’bout every other family in the county. Reason I know is I used to work for Ira. I was there when this psycho Obadiah stabs one Ira’s cows to death.”