Rutting Season

by Mandeliene Smith

  She didn’t see Jason coming at her until his face was nearly touching hers. “Boo!” he spat. Her body jerked like she’d been shocked.

  Jason hooted. “Look how nervous! Huh? You see that?” he said, grinning at Danny.

  Tears stung Amber’s eyes, she couldn’t help it. She ducked her head so they wouldn’t see.

  “Lay off her, will ya?” Randall said. Amber heard the clunk of the bottle bumping into something, the gun maybe. “You’re a couple of numbnuts, you know that? Couple of friggin’ numbnuts who don’t know what’s what.”

  For a few minutes, no one said anything.

  “Jason,” Danny said finally, “I thought you were supposed to negotiate.”

  “I already did,” Jason said. “You heard me.” He turned back to Amber. “What are you so nervous about? Huh?”

  She glanced up just in time to see him lunge at her.

  “Boo!” he shouted in her face. Behind his head, the brass floor lamp jerked and swayed.

  Amber blinked. Now the lamp was hanging sideways at a crazy angle, tipped but not yet falling, like a person trying to right herself. Suddenly, it rocked forward and plunged out of sight with a crash.

  A shot split the air. The dogs leapt to their feet, barking furiously.

  “Jesus Christ, Randall!” Danny shouted. “You trying to get us killed?”

  Randall looked back at them, wide-eyed. “Fuckers are closing in!”

  “It was just the lamp!” Amber shouted. “Jason kicked the lamp!” But no one heard her. Her brothers were both swearing; the dogs were scrambling from room to room, barking at the windows.

  “Shut those dogs up,” Randall said. Then, when none of them moved, “Shut the fuckin’ dogs up!”

  Danny started crawling after them. “Axl! Rose! Get over here.” He made a grab for Rose’s leg and missed.

  “Jason, go tell me their positions,” Randall said.

  Jason stared at him. “What’re you, nuts?”

  “Gotta know their positions,” Randall muttered, edging toward the window. “Do you see ’em?” He turned back to look at the three of them, his face dark and featureless against the light. “Danny,” he said. “Go to the kitchen and—”

  He was already falling by the time they heard the shot. Something wet sprayed Amber’s face and arms.

  Later, when she thought back on it, Amber would remember the next few minutes unfolding in silence, like a movie on mute. The dogs were going crazy and Danny was swearing and behind the couch Jason was saying JesusChristJesusChrist, but she couldn’t hear any of that; she was staring at Randall. He lay on his face on the floor, an arm and a leg folded under him—crumpled, like something emptied out and tossed on the side of the road.

  Amber ran a sleeve across her wet face and stood up.

  “Get down!” Danny hissed.

  But she had to go to Randall; she had to put her hands on him. Not to see if he was dead—that thought hadn’t come to her yet—but to keep him from being all by himself like that. She crouched down beside him and laid her hand between his shoulder blades. His T-shirt was warm beneath her palm, like anyone’s.

  “Randall,” she said, patting him there, “Randall.” Then, because she didn’t know what else to do, she put her hands on either side of the strange, neat hole in the back of his head and gently turned his face up.

  A bloody crater, welling.

  “Oh, Christ!” Danny gasped.

  She jerked her hands away and bent over herself, sucking at the air. She could hear one of her brothers—Jason?—throwing up. She forced back an answering surge of bile.

  “IT’S OKAY,” the loudspeaker announced. “IT’S ALL OVER.”

  Another breath and another. She was trying to make her stomach quiet so she could get up and tell them to hurry and get the ambulance, get the medics or whatever they called those people—hurry up before it was too late. A train of thought like in a dream, the things she should be doing sliding like water through her hands.

  By the time she was able to push herself up, she understood enough not to call out to them. She took the few short steps to the shattered window and looked out. The blunt metal noses of the SUVs stared back at her, shiny and whole.

  “IT’S OKAY, AMBER,” the loudspeaker said. “IT’S ALL OVER.”

  She spotted the curled black cord of the loudspeaker coming out of one of the cars’ windows.

  “JUST SECURE THE DOGS, OKAY? AND THEN YOU AND YOUR BROTHERS CAN COME ON OUT.”

  You and your brothers. Not Randall. Randall was dead.

  She turned around to see what her brothers were going to do, but they seemed oddly unconcerned. Jason was still standing behind the couch, wiping the puke off his mouth with the hem of his shirt; Danny was chasing after Axl. He glanced back at her from the other side of the room, his face white and strangely askew. “I guess we should get some rope?” he said.

  To secure the dogs he meant.

  “IT’S ALL RIGHT,” the loudspeaker said, “YOU CAN COME ON OUT NOW.” The tone was one of practiced, professional kindness—the sort of tone her teachers used, and the social workers at the state children’s agency. Smooth, friendly sounding voices that hid the hard shove of command underneath: Sign here. That’s enough, now. Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be. You did it, of course. Over the sickened, hangdog feeling of not wanting to, you did what they said.

  But that was Randall lying there.

  “Amber, give me a hand, will ya?” Danny said. He was trying to get Rose now, lunging at her collar as she streaked past.

  Amber didn’t answer. Something was sharpening in her chest, furious and cold.

  “IT’S ALL RIGHT NOW,” the loudspeaker said again. “IT’S ALL OVER.”

  No, she thought; not over. Randall’s gun lay under the window in a scatter of glass. She bent over and picked it up. It was heavier than she’d thought it would be, and there were two parts that stuck out from the barrel, so at first she grabbed the wrong one, the one without the trigger. But it didn’t matter, she was still moving, still gliding on the sharp, clean blade of her rage.

  “JUST LEASH THE DOGS,” the loudspeaker was saying. “OR YOU COULD JUST SECURE THEM IN A ROOM. WHATEVER’S EASIEST.”

  “Amber,” Danny called from the kitchen, “you gonna give me a hand or what?”

  She didn’t bother to crouch down like Randall had; she just pressed the butt of the gun against her shoulder like she’d seen him do and felt for the trigger. There it was, curved and smooth; it hooked around her finger like it had been waiting. She pulled it and the gun kicked back hard against her. Through the concussion in her ears, she heard the dogs burst into another frenzy of barking. She lowered the gun and looked. One of the SUV’s headlights was gone.

  “Amber!” Danny shouted. “What the fuck!”

  But she was feeling all right now, she was actually feeling sort of good. She raised the gun again. This time she put her eye to the looking thing on top: four thin black lines in a cross. She moved a little so that the other headlight floated into the middle. Bam! Gone. Elation opened in her chest like wings.

  “HOLD YOUR FIRE,” the loudspeaker blared, “HOLD YOUR FIRE!” There was a flurry of activity behind the line of vehicles; she could see boots scurrying in the narrow gap just above the pavement.

  “Amber! Put that down!” Danny cried, his eyes gone dark.

  “It’s okay,” she shouted to him over the noise of the dogs. They were going nuts now—howling, leaping at the windows, flecks of saliva flying off their mouths. “Axl!” she called. “Rose! Get over here!” They stopped barking and came across the room to her, wagging their butts. This did not surprise her—it seemed of a piece with the rest of it: with hitting the headlights, with the strange, clear power that was guiding her. She put her free hand on Axl’s back and pressed. “Down,” she said. Whining, he buckled his legs and settled tensely on top of them. Then she put her hand on Rose and pushed her down, too.

  When she looked up again, Dan
ny was standing right in front of her. Her heart skidded in her chest.

  “Give it to me,” he said. “Now.”

  She didn’t mean to turn the gun on him; it was just a reflex, like raising her arm to ward off a blow.

  Immediately he stumbled backward, his hands flying up. “Okay! Okay! Jesus!”

  For a long moment, they faced each other, not moving. There was a noise in her head, a roaring, but under that nothing, blankness.

  Danny let his weight shift forward. “Amb—”

  “Get back!” she gasped.

  They stared at each other.

  “Sit!” she said. “Sit down!”

  Amazingly, he did what she said; he backed up and lowered himself onto the couch.

  “No way,” Jason said. He started walking out from behind the couch. “No way is she doing this.”

  “Take it easy,” Danny said, holding up his hand. “Don’t—don’t—”

  “No,” Jason said, knocking Danny’s arm aside. “No, you know what? I’m gonna handle this. Amber! Drop the fucking gun!”

  “Jason!” Danny hissed.

  Jason whirled around to face him. “Fuck off and let me handle this, okay? Just fucking fuck off for once in your life.”

  “AMBER, THIS IS DEPUTY O’NEILL,” the loudspeaker said. “I CAN SEE YOU’RE UPSET. I’D LIKE TO HEAR ABOUT WHY, OKAY? SO LISTEN, I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU A CALL ON THE PHONE NOW. SO WE CAN TALK, OKAY?”

  “Listen, you douche bag,” Jason said, “you put that gun down now. Or no—you know what?” He took a step forward. “I’ll get it myself.”

  “Sit!” Amber squeaked. And then, like an idiot, “Or else.”

  His eyes lit. “Or else what? Huh? What’re you gonna do, shoot me?”

  She raised the gun shakily to the level of his chest. Danny reached out and grabbed Jason’s arm. “Sit the fuck down,” he said.

  “Fuck off,” Jason said, jerking away, but he let himself fall with exaggerated slowness onto the couch.

  Their eyes, looking back at her, were hard and merciless.

  “ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PICK UP THE PHONE. YOU CAN STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE AND WE’LL STAY RIGHT WHERE WE ARE AND WE’LL JUST TALK ON THE PHONE. OKAY? HERE GOES.”

  The phone on the little white table began to ring. It had been her mother’s table, the one next to her bed. The memory of its smell came to her: baby powder and vodka and the waxy perfume of the ancient pink lipstick that used to roll around in the back; the queer, mixed-up odor of comfort and disease.

  But it was too late for that now.

  A darkness closed over her brain and she felt her knees give way, and then the hard surface of the wall against her back as she slid down toward the floor.

  * * *

  They had taken the back roads that morning, she and Danny, driving out of the city in a lazy-morning hush, past the strip malls and the trailer park to the place where the buildings thinned out and the road began to climb and curve. The lots were larger here, the houses separated by stray, forgotten patches of woods, the occasional field with its tumbledown wall of stones. The air flowing past the car window was cool enough, but Amber could feel the heat that was coming. Over ninety, it was supposed to be, a record for April. There was an odd sensation of rooflessness, even in the woods; the trees hadn’t leafed out yet and the shade they cast was thin and veiny.

  Amber had told her Springfield friends she didn’t want to go home, but secretly she’d been excited. She had washed her new pink leopard skirt the night before, waking up early to blow-dry the damp spots, and she’d taken extra care with the hair gel and black eyeliner she’d started using. She wanted Danny and Randall to see her as she was now—not just her changed body but the boots and the spiky hair and the rest of it. A look that would be strange to them, that would mark her as belonging someplace else now, someplace they didn’t understand and might not be welcome.

  That was what she had thought, anyway, although Danny barely seemed to notice. “Hey,” he’d said when she came out to get in the car—friendly enough, but after a “how ya doin’?” and a few other standard questions, they had run out of things to say. He was silent, driving with one hand, slapping his leg along to the heavy metal on the radio.

  The house had come up suddenly, as it always did, from behind the clump of evergreens by the road. It had been her grandfather’s, built with his own hands—or so the story went, although once their mom had admitted that the pieces had come premade in some kind of kit. Amber and her brothers had moved in with their mom after their grandfather went to jail, when Amber was seven.

  The house looked smaller than she remembered, and dirtier—more gray now than white. Little trees had sprouted all over the lawn, whip-thin above the pale, knocked-down winter grass. Someone, probably Randall, had hacked back the ones against the house and now the new growth was coming straight out the top, like knots of shiny hair.

  Danny drove to the end of the driveway and cut off the engine. In the quiet, they could hear the dogs barking inside the house. Amber got out of the car and smoothed down her skirt, suddenly nervous.

  “Look, we can’t hang out, okay?” Danny said, slamming the car door. “I gotta be back at two to take Theresa to the doctor’s.” Theresa was his girlfriend, the same one he’d had since high school. One of those perfect girls with layered hair and just the right amount of makeup. She’d been a majorette, back then.

  “I know,” Amber said.

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  The screen door flew open and the dogs burst out, slobbering and whining, wagging their stumpy tails. They found Randall inside, sitting at the kitchen table in an undershirt, his hair sticking up every which way.

  “Hey, Randall,” Danny said over the noise.

  “Hey,” he said without looking up, like they came by every day. Or had never left.

  “I just came to get my clothes,” Amber said.

  Randall raised his eyes and looked her up and down, and she saw herself part by part, as though she were being illuminated with a flashlight—hair, breasts, skirt, boots.

  “You’re lookin’ growed,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She thought he might say more but he just looked back down at the paper he was reading.

  Danny was opening the fridge. “Hey, Randall, you got any food? I’m fuckin’ starved.”

  “I dunno, take a look. Hey, you two know about this Zionist government we got going? ’Cause I got some materials right here’ll blow your mind.”

  His newest obsession, probably. Amber looked around for a place to sit. Randall was sitting in the only free chair; the others were covered with stacks of paper, as was the table. She bent down to look at the pile nearest her: Massacre at Ruby Ridge, the top paper said. She picked it up and looked at the official-looking letter beneath it: Notice of Intention to Foreclose.

  Whatever, she thought, letting the papers flap back down. Randall was still talking—the government was after his rights. Or his house? She couldn’t really follow it. The spark of interest she’d felt at the idea of seeing him had fizzled. She leaned against the wall; all her energy seemed to have drained away.

  “Randall, there’s nothing fuckin’ in here,” Danny interrupted.

  “Check down the bottom. Seriously, you gotta take a look at this. It’s got facts here you ain’t gonna believe.”

  Danny started opening the drawers at the bottom of the fridge, where the fruit and vegetables were supposed to go. “Randall, this shit is blue,” he said, holding up a plastic package. “What the hell is it, anyway, bologna?”

  Randall shrugged. “Could be.” He shoved the paper he was reading toward Danny. “So check this out.”

  They seemed to have forgotten her, both of them. Jerking herself upright, Amber walked into the living room, the dogs at her heels. It was the same—dustier, the furniture more beaten down maybe, but basically the way it’d always been. On the far wall, beyond the stairs, was the curtained glass door to her mother’s old bedroom. If this sigh
t had filled her with sadness or made her eyes tear up, she could have made a story out of it to tell her friends when she got back to Springfield. But what she actually felt was nothing she could tell anyone: boredom, it seemed like, or restlessness. A buzzing, dragging dissatisfaction.

  There was no place to sit down in here either; no place clean enough, anyway.

  She wandered around picking things up, putting them down. A china cat, a picture of her mother from back when she was beautiful, in a blue summer dress and high heels; a little Statue of Liberty with the torch busted off. None of it seemed to have anything to do with Amber, or if it did, not in any way she wanted to think about. After a while she stopped in the middle of the room. What was she even doing there? It was embarrassing now to think back to the anticipation she’d felt, getting ready that morning.

  I should just get the clothes and go, she thought. But she stood there, leaden, her limbs drained of life.

  She was saved by the wheezy rumble of a vehicle coming up the driveway—a big, dark-colored SUV with tinted windows. She had just enough time to notice the large gold star on the side of it before Randall scrambled into the room and threw himself at the front door.

  * * *

  “UH, AMBER, HI.”

  She was watching the floorboards jump up at her and then drop away. Up when she went forward and the sick feeling of falling took hold of her; away when her body snapped back and her spine hit the hard edge of the baseboard. A lot of time had passed—dimly, she was aware of that. The phone had rung and the loudspeaker had gone on and off, and once, from the opening and shutting of Jason’s mouth, she’d realized he must be yelling at her, but these sounds were far off and broken and didn’t seem quite real. She just held the gun across her like the safety bar on a carnival ride and slammed her back against the wall.

  This one, though, she heard.

  “OFFICER KOTLOWSKI HERE. REMEMBER ME?”

  She looked up, blinking. The light was different now—reddish, slanted. Late afternoon light. Her brothers were still sprawled on the couch. Danny had his face tipped up toward the ceiling, but Jason was staring right at her. She dropped her eyes.