Well

by Matthew McIntosh

  When she heard the shot, the girl dropped her bottle and crumpled to the floor and the cops, stumbling as they drew their guns, ran to the door [electrically, hypothalamus sends a message activating adrenal glands, muscles tense as heart rate and breathing increase, capillaries close, blood pressure soars, eyes dilate, digestion stops, as does sexual functioning], swung around and saw the man, dead. Rear window red, clots of blue and gray matter—the matter—clinging to falling from the glass. The two of them stood, clutching their heads. What was the meaning of this strange Vision?

  A group of shoppers realized that they were not alone. They looked at each other, confused, looking for answers. Then walked to the door, and stood inside, looking out. At the three men battered by the lights. Beyond them, the night was dark and cold. Cars drove by. The pharmacist stood and brushed herself off, her memory already retreating into the night. Everyone agreed they’d all thought they were going to die.

  GUNMAN

  The man who boarded the 96 Shoreline-Downtown Express, waited awhile, then shot the driver in the chest, and then himself in the ear, causing the bus to careen over the side of the Aurora Bridge fifty feet straight down, killing one passenger and wounding the thirty-two others onboard, wasn’t the same man who swiped the motorcyclist on the interstate, exited his car and jumped the sound-proofing wall, ran erratically through a neighborhood and bludgeoned an old woman watering her lawn, only to be killed within the hour by a bullet to the head from a SWAT sharpshooter’s rifle.

  Earlier this man (the second) had murdered his mother and eighteen-month-old nephew in their suburban tract house with a kitchen knife. He was twenty-one years old, a good basketball player, enrolled in junior college, a friend to many in the neighborhood. No one had seen it coming.

  And no one now has any explanation for what he did. He’d had minor brushes with the law before, but nothing serious—certainly nothing that would have led one to expect what was to come. He was a little odd, they say. A little odd, but really nothing more than that. He was friendly, kind. He loved his mother dearly. The gunman’s father, who won’t speak publicly about the incident, has told friends that the gunman was deeply devoted to her. There are reports that he loved, also, his young nephew. No one knows what was going through his mind.

  What we do know is that around three o’clock PM he entered his nephew’s downstairs bedroom and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest. He then attacked and killed his mother in a similar fashion in an upstairs hallway. A neighbor reports seeing him pull out of the driveway and drive out of the cul-de-sac at a high rate of speed. He did appear to be troubled. Tears were running down his cheeks and his lips were moving as if he were talking to himself in great agitation. We know that from there he drove onto the freeway, headed north toward Seattle, and, at speeds of eighty miles an hour and more, swerved at passing cars, clearing a space for himself three lanes wide.

  The people in their cars, many of them driving home early from work, pulled over to the side and let him pass, with the exception of a sixty-four-year-old man riding a Honda Gold Wing touring bike in the slow lane, who refused to pull over and was clipped from behind by the gunman’s 1993 Toyota Celica.

  The motorcyclist spilled over, trapping his left leg beneath his bike, and slid thirty yards down the pavement before coming to a stop. His leg was shattered, in places the bone scraped down to the marrow. Doctors at Har-borview Medical Center removed the leg later that night. He reports feeling much better today, but still suffers pain where his limb used to be.

  Possibly foreseeing that the police would now be involved, the gunman pulled to a stop. Witnesses report he signaled before pulling over, sat in the car, his lips moving furiously, pulling at his hair at times, staring blankly into his hands at others, before finally bursting from the car and scaling the concrete wall that had been put up decades before in an attempt to soundproof the new neighborhood from the onslaught of ever-increasing traffic noise.

  On the other side of the wall, parallel to the freeway and branching from a dead-end street, was a dirt driveway that led to a small shed beside a house with an upstairs view of the freeway. Beyond the shed was a ravine, sheltered by trees, a small creek running down its deep and narrow center. The gunman chose to go left, toward the street, and into a neighborhood, away from the shed, away from the ravine, which he may not have known was there. According to people who watched from their windows, once on the street, the gunman ran up the north sidewalk, eastward, a metal object (later reported to be a pipe he’d picked up from the side of the freeway) flailing wildly at his side, his limbs, they said, loose and helter-skelter, a puppet on strings. His face was wide, his teeth showed clenched. His eyes, they noted, were full of fear.

  An elderly woman, two blocks east of where the dead-end street met the freeway wall, was watering her lawn, hose in hand, shooting a stream of water up into the air from a metal attachment. As the gunman approached her, running in that same erratic manner, he shouted. The woman, still holding on to the hose, became afraid and attempted to run in the opposite direction. According to witnesses, ever had she chosen another direction—any other direction—there would have been no chance for escape. The woman, moving very slowly in her old age, stumbled over the hose and fell to the ground. She frantically called out to her next-door neighbor, a twenty-eight-year-old man sunning himself in his backyard. The young man got up from his blanket and looked over the fence. As the old woman attempted to lift herself to her feet, the gunman, wielding the metal pipe, began battering her about the head. Witnesses say the old woman lost consciousness and remained motionless as the gunman continued to beat her. She died.

  The young man shouted out to the gunman: “What are you doing here?” But he reports that there was nothing he could do.

  By now the police had been called onto the scene. Officers at the gunman’s suburban home were finding the bodies of his mother and nephew; officers and an ambulance crew were now attending the fallen motorcyclist. Probably hearing the sirens, the gunman ran another block and attempted to enter a large two-story tan house on the north side of the street. The front door was locked, so he went around to the back, scaled a pylon and entered through an unlocked door on the upstairs deck. It’s not known exactly what his next course of action was, but one would surmise he then went from room to room, searching for weaponry. We know that he did this at some point, because eventually he found an unlocked gun cabinet in the master bedroom belonging to the head of the family, a thirty-seven-year-old machinist, husband and father of two high-school-age girls.

  The unlocked gun cabinet contained various types of hunting rifles, a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun, two World War I vintage rifles, a 20-gauge single shot shotgun, two semi-automatic machine pistols, and over 100 rounds of ammunition. Hanging from a hook was a black kung fu robe with a red dragon insignia.

  The gunman removed his clothes and put on the kung fu robe.

  Now armed, he must have walked down the upstairs hallway, past the lady of the house’s collection of ceramic Scottie dogs, down the stairs, and into the living room, facing the street. He closed the curtains all but a crack and backed the couch up against the front wall, below the windows. Then, he waited.

  There are a hundred things the gunman might have done in the moments before the police arrived. From autopsy reports we know that he did not eat, he did not defecate, he did not consume drugs or alcohol, he did not masturbate, nor vomit. He probably watched television, which was found turned to the news after his death. He probably talked to himself, nervously. He probably pulled at his hair at times, and stared blankly into his hands at others. But what else he did in those last moments before the police arrived and the shootout occurred, we can only surmise. It is up to the reader to speculate for him/herself.

  Soon, news and police helicopters were flying high above the area. Police were barricading the street, evacuating residents through their back doors. SWAT teams were called in, placed on rooftops throughout the neighborhood—a m
ulti-tiered net was constructed around the house. The freeway was closed in both directions. A nearby elementary school was locked down, the classrooms locked, window blinds shut.

  From aerial shots taken above the scene we see men in black crouching on rooftops, squad cars in formation, blocking exits and entrances, officers crouched behind their cars, arms outstretched, guns in hand. We see the brown-shingled roof of the house where inside the gunman sits; the back deck, patio furniture, a scorched lawn. But nothing happens. Some report seeing the curtains move from time to time in the living room, but the gunman only sits and waits. What he is waiting for, we don’t know.

  Nor will we ever know what possessed the thirty-nine-year-old U-District man to shoot the driver of the 96 Shoreline-Downtown Express, then himself, causing the bus to plummet fifty feet off the Aurora Bridge, only yards before the point where the bridge begins its stretch over Lake Union.

  An East Coast native, trained as an architect, the gunman had been retired for years due to a troublesome back. He was not supported by the government, he received no Unemployment, L&I, Workers,’ Compensation—besides social security and bank account numbers, the government had no records of him at all. Instead, he received a monthly check from his parents, a well-to-do couple in their eighties residing in a suburb of Newark, New Jersey. The mother of the gunman reported later that he had been a normal child, a normal man, that he had never been known to have significant psychological problems. He was a kind and gentle person, according to his mother. Two weeks before the incident he had paid a visit to her New Jersey home. There had been no warning signs, she said, other than a certain irascibility.

  The gunman, called by Seattle Metro officials “an habitual bus user”, was a man obsessed with schedules. After the incident, police would find current bus schedules taped to the walls of his meager basement apartment. They would find stacks of outdated schedules, many from other cities. Aluminum foil had been stapled over the windows, blocking the light from outside. Garbage spilled from garbage cans. Food was rotting in the refrigerator. The police would report an overwhelming filthiness, an overwhelming squalor.

  Taped to the walls, below the bus schedules, were notes detailing the busses the gunman would ride, and the dates, fares, and times of each ride. He would tour the city on busses at all hours, planning his destinations beforehand, most often having no reason to travel. He was known to complain loudly if a bus were late, or if conditions on the bus were too warm or too cold. He would pace the aisle, opening and closing windows. His mother has stated that he’d often phone her long-distance, complaining when a bus had not arrived on time. On the wall beneath his notes were charts of alternate bus routes, with times, pick-up and drop-off points, should any of the busses he’d been trying to take not arrive.

  After the incident on the Aurora Bridge, the gunman was identified as the man who a month earlier had jumped onboard the 72 University-Lake City off-peak and put a gun to the driver’s head, pulling the trigger twice. The gun made two sharp clicks. The gunman jumped from the bus and fled.

  When police responded to the scene below the Aurora Bridge they found people wandering around bleeding and disoriented, they found men and women lying on the ground with lacerated kidneys, lungs, livers; they found a massive wrecked articulated bus lying on its side, people trapped inside, piled one on top of the other, some crammed in the small spaces beneath their seats. They found the body of the gunman and that of the driver, holes in each of them, eyes closed, chest to chest.

  One passenger died later of internal wounds at Harborview.

  Another had an arm and a leg removed. Today he lives with government assistance in a housing project in the Central District.

  Most of the witnesses hadn’t seen what led up to the accident. Most don’t remember the gunman getting on the bus. The ones who remember hadn’t thought anything of him at the time. He was dressed in dark slacks and a white, buttoned dress shirt. He was clean-shaven. His hair was dark and cut short. He was not the sort of person you would have worried about, witnesses say. You would not have looked twice. But the ones who remember say he boarded the bus two stops before the place of the shooting and sat down near the front in a sideways-facing seat. He held on to the rail and stared out the front window.

  What was going through the gunman’s mind at that moment, we don’t know. How did he choose his moment? Why hadn’t he used bullets in the attack on the 72 a month earlier?

  There are pictures of a mangled metal bus, rods and wires, opened and torn from the inside like the corpse of a rotting animal. Firemen cut through the wreckage to free passengers. There are close-ups of hands and faces. On our TV sets, we see the lights of the ambulances rushing over everything. People stand around watching, crying. The victims huddle under blankets. That’s how we know who they are.

  Why do these things happen? What is it that allows them to happen? We wonder if there is a higher order to the universe. We wonder if there is a higher order to our world, at least. We report that our world is falling apart. And we report that we are falling apart.

  As the bus approached the bridge, the gunman stood, reached into his pocket and pulled out his gun, then walked to the front, where he shot the driver three times in the chest. Before turning the gun on himself, the gunman took hold of the wheel and veered the bus off the bridge.

  The bus shattered the concrete railing and plummeted fifty feet into the garden of a Fremont apartment complex.

  IT’S TAKING SO DAMN LONG TO GET HERE (V)

  Then there was nothing. A dial tone. I’d hung up on her. The first time I called back it went to her voice mail. So I hung up. Then I called right back and it started ringing but then nothing—I thought she answered it but just wasn’t going to say anything—you know, the silent treatment. I said, I can hear you. I know you’re there. But I couldn’t and I didn’t. Finally it went on too long so I figured there was a problem, and I hung up and called back. I got her voice mail again. I left a message: Baby, I’m sorry I hung up. I’m trying to get through. I hung up. I called back. This time it stopped ringing and she answered but here’s the thing: it was her but she was this tiny little voice, this still quiet voice that sounded so far away. You could have breathed over her. She said, hello? hello? Then she paused, hello? And I’m talking back at her the entire time: Baby? Can you hear me? But she just said hello again and hung up. I called back. It went to voice mail. I hung up. Called back. It happened again. I mean, she answered it. hello? And now I’m nervous. This tiny little voice calling out to me through space, an enormous space, and I’m nervous and I’m praying she knows I’m there, I’m getting desperate, I’m yelling into the phone: Can you hear mel Can you hear mel Hold on! I’m trying! I’m sorry I hung up! I’m trying to get through! I don’t know what’s happening! I’m—But just …hello? And then she hung up.

  IT’S TAKING SO DAMN LONG TO GET HERE (VI)

  I’m walking out the door and I turn around and I wave bye for some reason, and I don’t even know who I’m waving to, I don’t know now, and I probably didn’t know then, and one thing I notice as I’m walking away is the lawn could really use some watering because all that’s left is practically dirt, and when I walk down the walk, dust and dirt go swirling up in the air around where the grass should be, which is another weird thing, because also it gets really windy, then it stops, then it gets windy again. But anyways the grass needs watering so I make a mental note to water it later since there’s no time, and it’s not my house anyway, it just appears very obvious that it needs to be done. This is all occurring to me in seconds I think and by the way I’m carrying a briefcase and wearing a suit which is odd for me, I’m sure you’ll agree, and I’m smiling although I don’t know if I can see the smile, or feel it, because really, this one was so strange I can’t remember if I saw everything from inside my skull, like with my own eyes, or if I was following myself, like panning the scene with a camera and I’m just watching it. I’d have to say if I thought about it, this part I was p
robably seeing it like it was through a camera, but from here on in I’m back in my head again, and I stay that way until the end, I know that because what happens becomes very personal to me, like I’m not just watching it on TV—what happens isn’t special effects, although like I said, that’s how it was in the beginning because I do remember seeing the suit, and me in the suit, and thinking how dumb it looked on me. So I walk out of the yard and I guess I’m just walking down the road or something but the next thing I know I’m getting on a bus and the bus driver looks at me and says, “It’s on me,” or something like that, and I’m relieved because I don’t know if I have any change because these aren’t my pants or something, I don’t know. A lot of this is pretty murky. But we get going in the bus, and I don’t know where I’m going, or like why I’m wearing this suit, and these kids on the bus, these punk rockers, these kids like the ones I used to hang out with before that big problem I told you about, they start going, Look at the suit, and, Check out the suit on the man, and shit like that, nothing really mean, though, not the way I used to be, nothing violent or obscene, just sort of observations, and maybe a little bit of respect—I don’t know, it’s all just a bunch of weird shit. Then one of the kids goes, Jesus! and he’s looking out the window and there is a bright orange sky like you have never seen, like you could have painted orange all across it, like the orangest color in the world, that’s what the sky looked like, and I’m talking about the entire sky, no matter what window you looked through the sky was bright orange, and behind us it was too, and through the windshield it was orange. And then what happens is the wind starts going again outside the bus, the trees start really moving and things fly through the air, and then I see we’re coming to an airport and the driver drives onto the runway and stops, and it’s like becoming obvious to me the way everyone’s turned around in their seats and staring, that this is my stop. So I make my move and I walk down the aisle, and this redheaded girl with enormous boobs goes, like, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHO DIE IN THE LORD FROM NOW ON, and she squeezes my hand, and I go, What? What’s that supposed to mean? What are you talking about? and it starts getting really trippy because everyone stands up in their seats and starts clapping, like they’re applauding for me, really applauding and I’m sort of thinking they’re all crazy or something, but I do a sort of little bow and step off the bus, and when I’m off the bus, they drive away, and I’m convinced those motherfuckers are the craziest motherfuckers in the world, and I look up at the sky again, and I can’t really tell you much about it except it was very orange and if the sky ever turns that color, you will know that something big is about to go down. I remember standing there looking at all that and the bus driving away and thinking, I wonder what that chick meant about Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on, like what could she possibly have meant by that, and I start walking onto the runway, because it’s suddenly obvious, I don’t know why, that I’m supposed to, no matter what might go down, and there aren’t any planes or anything—the whole place is deserted. No cars, no planes, no people, nothing. I just keep walking until I come to the middle of the runway, far away from all the buildings and everything, just asphalt and dying grass, and I walk the line—you know the line they paint in the middle—I walk that line for awhile and this is a long runway and I’m not getting anywhere so after a few minutes I get the feeling like I should sit down. And now comes the part that is the hardest part for me to explain, because what happened was I sat down in the middle of the runway and I started crying. I’m not talking about just crying either, I mean, this wasn’t normal, there wasn’t anything normal about this; my eyes are going crazy and I’m rolling around and I’m whimpering and I’m sobbing, like anybody would take one look and go, that motherfucker has got a lot on his mind. And afterwards, like even now, I’ve been trying to put together why I cried like that, when it’s not in my nature, and I came up with that it’s not subconscious or anything, and it doesn’t have to do with growing up, even though I had it rough, or with how hard or disappointing life seems to be; anyways, the point is, I wasn’t crying for myself, but for the world. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. I’ve been putting it together and this is what I’ve come up with. When I was crying I felt like the entire world was wrapped around my back and it knew it was dying and it had this heaviness to it like you probably get when they’re about to pull the plug on you and you’re laying there thinking, I didn’t know when I started that it was going to end up this way. I don’t know how long that went on for but at some point I stopped crying and I think it was because I heard a noise, like a roar—I know I heard the noise, I just don’t know if that’s what woke me up—something did—and the next couple of minutes are a little blurry because what I am doing in the next couple of minutes is waiting for the roar to get closer so I can make it out, because now there is a dark spot against the orange sky, and it’s getting closer and I’m waiting, and I don’t know what I was thinking while I waited other than it’s taking so damn long to get here, and I’m tired and I feel like I’ve been waiting all my life.