Clown in a Cornfield

by Adam Cesare

  Thwwuump!

  Nothing. Frendo missed. By a wide enough margin, Quinn didn’t even hear the whistle and thrum of a near miss. They were home free.

  Quinn and Janet bounded across the finish line of the corn as one, the world instantly darker, decibels quieter, the leaves around them absorbing the screams from back in the clearing.

  Quinn had no idea where she was going, if they were headed toward or away from the cars, but she figured that getting away from the barn, from Frendo, was the safest move regardless.

  A few yards into the tall corn, Janet started tugging at Quinn’s arm, asking to stop. But Quinn kept them moving. Janet’s war howls weakened and then finally stopped altogether. The girl was heavier in Quinn’s arms. Janet would lose consciousness soon. And not only consciousness, if they couldn’t stop the bleeding . . .

  Quinn didn’t want to think about it.

  She wasn’t going to let anyone else die. Not when there was something she could do to help. It wasn’t going to happen on her watch. Not again.

  “Where are the cars, Janet? Are we going the right way?”

  Janet was keeping pace beside her, leaning into her, but she didn’t answer. She only groaned, like someone trying to sleep in, snooze their alarm, resist a parent’s annoying wakeup call.

  Leaves licked at Quinn’s face, underwatered corncobs bouncing off the side of her head. The edges of the leaves felt like they were leaving tiny paper cuts. Quinn’s face was wet, her hair likely curling against the stress and humidity, the ghost of her mother crawling back into her features, taking over her body.

  It was quiet. Where had all the other partygoers gone? Had anyone else made it out? The escapees, the ones who’d be interviewed, crying, on the six-o’clock news?

  It was so dark out here. She looked up to see why. There was cloud cover now. Was it about to rain? Would that help or hurt their escape?

  Would a cool rain wake her from this nightmare? Would it wash away the sweat, blood, beer, and pain?

  If she did wake, would it be in Philadelphia or in Kettle Springs?

  “Quinn!”

  Hearing her own name jolted her back to the here and now.

  “Rust?” Quinn said into the darkness. A cloud passed as Rust emerged from the corn in front of them.

  She wanted so badly to throw herself into her neighbor’s arms, but she was the only thing keeping Janet on her feet.

  Janet, still being Janet, couldn’t help but snark: “That’s good, the Mounties have arrived.”

  “Oh, shit,” Ruston Vance said, despair in his voice as he noticed Janet’s wound. Was this the first time she’d heard him swear?

  “Help me with her.”

  Quinn let Rust take over holding Janet. She straightened herself and rolled her shoulders to get the kinks out. “We were trying to get to the cars.”

  “I was just there. It’s not good. All the tires are slashed. Batteries pulled. This guy did that first.”

  “Seriously?” Quinn started to pace, then lowered her voice, unsure if they were being hunted out here in the corn: “What is going on, Rust?”

  “I don’t know,” Rust said to her, “but he didn’t think of everything.”

  The boy swung a duffel bag off his shoulder and let it clatter on the ground. Whatever was inside, it was heavy.

  They all crouched, Rust careful to prop Janet onto her hands and knees so she didn’t fall back onto the arrow and injure herself further.

  He placed the bag on the dirt, took out a small flashlight, and clicked it on, cupping his hand to shield the beam.

  “Unzip it.” He nodded down, both hands busy.

  Quinn did, working to open the bag but somehow knowing what she’d see before she saw it.

  Guns.

  The bag was full of guns and boxes of bullets.

  Rust clicked off the flashlight.

  “Here. We can’t risk using this.” He handed Quinn the light and she put it into a pocket.

  “Guns?”

  “I had them locked in the rack. The guy’d broken out my windows. I could see he’d tried, but he couldn’t get them loose. And I keep shells and the Browning in a safe box under my seat.” He pointed down, as if she’d know which one was supposed to be the “Browning.”

  “This is insane. I’m not shooting anyone. We should be calling the police, let them take care of it.”

  “Oh yeah,” Rust asked, “and how much luck are you having with your cellular carrier out here?”

  “Give me one,” Janet said, lurching forward, hand grasping blindly in the darkness. The girl’s voice was hazy, weak, and faraway. Quinn wouldn’t trust Janet with a spork right now.

  “Here, here,” Quinn said, handing over her phone to Janet. “Keep trying nine-one-one.”

  Janet shook her head, lips turned out, an exaggerated frown.

  “No. Not the phone. Give. Me. A. Gun.” She was loud now, too loud.

  “Be. Quiet,” Quinn hissed.

  “Now!” Janet raged, an angry-toddler slur in her voice. “I’ll shoot the fuck, if you pussies . . .”

  “Shhh. Shh. Janet, here,” Rust said, whispering. He reached into the bag, pulled out a small handgun, and handed it over. “That’s it, Janet. You guard our backs.”

  “Okay,” Janet said, her head lolling down, pacified, now that she had the gun in her hand.

  “I thought you said you only have guns to hunt. How is that a hunting gun?” Quinn whispered, pointing to the small gun in Janet’s hand.

  “It’s for clean kills, Quinn. I don’t want to let an animal suffer,” Rust hissed. “First things first, we need to get that bolt out of her.”

  He removed a rifle from the duffel, took a single bullet from his breast pocket, fed it into the side, then placed the gun in the dirt next to him.

  Janet didn’t react. She was in her own world, turning the pistol over and over in her hands. Watching her play with it made Quinn unbearably tense.

  Rust must have noticed her concern. He made a gesture with his hands and mouthed, Not loaded.

  Quinn nodded her understanding. Okay. Nice work. Rust had thought fast and come up with a way to keep Janet quiet without putting anyone in harm’s way.

  “We’ll use my belt as a tourniquet,” Rust said, removing his flannel shirt, then tugging at the seams to tear off one sleeve. His undershirt was sweat-stained and there were holes, but now wasn’t the time to judge. “We’ll get the bolt out, pack the wound. Tighten it for pressure. It’s the best we can do.”

  “We need to get her to a hospital.”

  “Yeah, we do, but without a truck . . .” He clicked his tongue, frustrated. Like Quinn, he was only trying to do what he thought was best with what they had at hand. “Look, right now, I think, staying hidden out here is our best bet. The shooter would have to get really lucky to find us. Hopefully someone made it to the road and is already bringing the cops.”

  “So we wait like sitting ducks?” Quinn asked, trying and failing to mask her frustration.

  “I don’t like it, either. But he doesn’t know we’re armed. We can probably fire in the air and scare him off. And worst-case scenario, I figure we’re here a couple hours. Parents are going to notice as soon as one of the younger kids is out past curfew.”

  Which reminded her. “Oh God, my dad. He’s going to be . . .”

  “I know,” Rust said, “but don’t think about it. Nothing we can do. Think about helping me with her.”

  “Okay,” Quinn said.

  “Hold her down and I’ll pull it out, okay?” He turned to Janet, said her name, but she barely responded. “Janet,” Rust said again. Even in the low light, Quinn could tell that her color had changed. “Janet, I know you can hear me. This is going to hurt.”

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Quinn asked, squeezing Janet’s arms to her side, her flesh clammy, her body limp, Quinn playing her shoulders like an accordion.

  “We took a field first-aid course when I was a Boy Scout.”

&nb
sp; “You’re a Boy Scout?”

  “Well, I was probably eleven or twelve.”

  “Fuck,” Quinn said. “Then swap with me. My dad’s a doctor. I’ll deal with it.”

  “Suit yourself,” Rust said, sidling past Quinn to hold Janet by the shoulders.

  Slipping further into shock, Janet didn’t lose her essential Janet-ness. As Rust took hold of her, Janet tried waving him away. Telling him to leave her alone. Mumbling that he was a loser.

  “Redneck Rust,” Janet burbled. “Pew pew, small pee-pee,” she said, playing with the gun in her lap.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Rust said to Quinn, the slightest wisp of dark humor in his voice.

  Quinn yanked at the arrow. It didn’t move at first, but she pulled harder, worried she was making the wound even wider in her struggle. Janet gave a short, loud scream, but Rust didn’t bother trying to shush her.

  When the bolt loosened, it came all at once, the blunted arrowhead disengaging from the bone, and the rest of the journey out of muscle and fat rendered into a quick slurp!

  As soon as the arrow was out, blood started to flow, filling the wound. Quinn could’ve counted Janet’s pulse against the ebbs, a slow bubbling fountain. She quickly applied Rust’s ripped flannel sleeve to the hole, pressing down with all her might, then worked his belt around Janet’s arm and chest, cinching it as tight as she could.

  “I hope this works.” Quinn sighed, sitting back, her hands caked in Janet’s blood.

  Somewhere during the short procedure, Janet had passed out from the pain. Quinn smiled to think that, with Janet’s final words, she’d been able to roast Rust.

  Rust checked her pulse. “Weak, but there,” he said, easing off his haunches, onto the dirt. He exhaled before reaching over to lay his gun across his lap. He grabbed his balled flannel shirt, not to supplement the thin white undershirt, but to search the pocket for more bullets.

  “Great party, by the way,” Quinn said. The flush in her cheeks was like the tingle from a roller coaster, and before she’d spoken, she’d felt tears crowding her vision. She shook her head.

  “You should see what they do for New Year’s.” But his heart wasn’t in it—he was focused, feeding at least five or six more rounds into the long rifle.

  Quinn craned her neck and looked up. There was a thick black cloud encroaching on the moon, blocking out the stars. But still the sky in Kettle Springs was too big to be blocked out. It was so much bigger, so much brighter here than in Philadelphia; it was almost impossible to imagine both places were under the same heavens. But imagining home, even for just a moment, only made her remember that she was in Tillerson’s field, which made her think:

  Where is their house?

  She was about to ask the question aloud when she smelled it:

  That wasn’t a cloud moving across the moon.

  That was smoke.

  Fifteen

  “Holy shit! He set the barn on fire! They’re going to die!” Cole screamed, then broke Ronnie’s grip on his shoulder and dove for the latch. He grabbed hold of the bolt, which was still coated with Erin Werther’s blood and hair.

  “Don’t, Cole,” Matt said. “You’re not the only person in here, you know. We have to decide as a team.”

  Cole stopped, turned back in place to look at his friend.

  Matt Trent was standing, hands out, at the junction where the dirt floor of the old silo met the slating of the grain pit. Behind him there were hay bales and antique farm equipment. It must have been years since the Tillersons had used this building for its intended purpose: the silo was miscellaneous storage now.

  Behind the door, Cole could hear frantic screams, some muffled, some out in the open of the clearing. Maybe the crowd in the barn had gotten the doors open and was fleeing the flames.

  Thwack.

  The thrum of the crossbow.

  Cole’s hand tensed on the improvised latch, ready to pull out the bolt and open the door.

  “Don’t! He’s right out there, Cole. And he knows we’re in here,” Matt continued.

  Then the thrum came again. Where most people would be fatigued, pulling back at least seventy-five pounds of pressure to reload over and over, this maniac seemed to be getting faster as he fired.

  The clown was shooting the kids in the barn as they tried to escape the fire! Cole had to help.

  “We know you want to be a hero, but you have to be reasonable. We could get out of this alive,” Ronnie said, backing up her boyfriend. She crept a step closer to Cole, Matt matching her, the two of them surrounding him. “You remember a few years ago? You said we’d all be running this town one day. Well, we can’t if we’re dead.”

  Cole let go of the door and the bolt, his fingers tacky from Erin Werther’s blood.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  Matt made calming hands, trying to defuse what his girlfriend had started: “She just means that you’re not thinking clearly. And you have other people in here to think about. Even if you don’t care about your own safety. Haven’t since Victoria.”

  “We know the Baypen fire wasn’t a mistake,” Ronnie said, cutting to the point. “Tucker told us that you wanted to die in there.”

  “Bullshit,” Cole heard himself saying, not wanting to get into this now. “We were drunk. We were all drunk. I’m not fucking suicidal.”

  “Then if you’re not,” Matt reasoned, “don’t open that door. We’re safe in here.”

  The smell of smoke was stronger now. Smoke and something else . . . Cole’s mouth started to involuntarily water, which in turn caused him to gag.

  “Get him, Matt. Now,” Ronnie said, but Matt hesitated.

  Fuck them. Cole whirled, was able to pull the bolt through the latch before Matt’s hands were on him.

  This wasn’t Matt’s job on the football field, and it was clear he wasn’t used to it. Nowhere in the playbook was Matt Trent expected to put hands on another player. His job was the opposite: avoid contact, run and glide and catch. Everything about Matt’s small, strong hands latching onto Cole’s shoulder’s felt wrong, a violation of natural law.

  “Let go of me,” Cole screamed, wedging his hand in between the doorframe, pulling the door open at the same time that Matt was pulling him back. Cole still held the crossbow bolt, was waving it.

  “He’s crazy,” Ronnie screeched. “Knock him out or something, Matt. Do it.”

  Cole could see the flames outside the silo. The barn crackled and spit, the smell of smoke and burned hair strong in Cole’s nose and eyes.

  He didn’t let go of the doorframe, though, got a second hand on it and pulled, still not dropping the bolt. Matt may have been strong, but he was still small and Cole had leverage.

  “Nooooo!” Cole gave a straining yell. Ronnie had added herself to the tug-of-war. Cole’s arms felt like they were about to pop right out of their sockets.

  And then, suddenly, Frendo’s face was covering the foot-wide sliver of doorway.

  The tapered end of a crossbow bolt pressed into the hollow between Cole’s left eye and his nose, a dot of blood welling there.

  “Fuck you!” Cole screamed, angry, scared, but above all: ready.

  Cole gave one final burst of strength, pulling against Ronnie and Matt, getting closer to the loaded crossbow, the metal cool, then let one hand off the doorframe so he could try to stab at the clown with the bolt.

  But he didn’t get there. Almost, but he only nicked him.

  The result of removing the one hand was like an elastic band snapping and the second hand pulled loose. With a crossbow pointed into Cole’s skull—Cole waiting for the trigger to be pulled and his brain to be scrambled—Matt and Ronnie’s combined strength slingshot all three of them back into the silo.

  Matt screamed, Ronnie screamed, and all three scrambled to their feet, trying to close the door as on the other side, Frendo dropped the end of the crossbow down, yowling at the wide scratch in his exposed chin and neck.

  Cole had done be
tter than he thought.

  Matt was the first to the handle, pulling to shut the door, but the space now wedged open six, seven inches.

  Frendo had placed his foot in the tread, wedging the door open. The shoe wasn’t a polished red clown shoe, bulbous and exaggerated, but a simple black combat boot.

  “Open it!” Cole yelled, reeling back with his fist.

  “No!” Matt yelled.

  “Just a little!” Ronnie responded, finally in agreement with Cole, finally saying something tonight that wasn’t hateful and cruel.

  Matt yanked the door back and Cole let loose, punching the clown in the face, staggering the tall man in combat boots enough that they could get the door shut and close the latch, Ronnie returning the bolt.

  They all stepped back from the wall, Cole nearly tripping over Erin’s body.

  “Okay,” Ronnie said, all of them breathing heavy. “Can we please agree to keep it closed for now?”

  And before Cole could respond, somewhere in the distance, maybe even outside the clearing, there was the distinct crack of a gunshot.

  Sixteen

  The gun felt alive in Quinn’s hands.

  A poisonous snake, ready to turn its head back and bite her on the wrist.

  “I can’t do this. I don’t want to take this,” Quinn begged.

  “Yes, you can do this,” Rust said. “You need to.” He pointed to the barn fire, then looked down to his empty duffel bag.

  At least he hadn’t traversed the corn with a bag full of three loaded guns. Which did seem responsible. In a way. While Rust took the time to load the rifle and the shotgun, he taught Quinn the phrase “trigger discipline” and explained the different nobs, levers, and safeties.

  It was hard to pay attention as the smell of smoke grew, but she tried.

  “This is a shotgun and it has a fairly wide spread. You will hit whatever you fire at—and everything standing nearby. So keep your finger here”—he moved her hand in his, calluses scratching in the cold—“and do not touch the trigger unless you intend to fire.”

  Quinn nodded. The weapon’s stock was beginning to warm against her skin. It felt like the weapon was breathing.

  “Safety’s on and it’s already cocked. No movie stuff, you won’t need to work the pump, just flick this off,” he said, pointing, “and squeeze.”