by Torsten Krol
“They come in a supermarket egg package, didn’t they?”
“Well, yeah, but people that run their own chickens, they use those egg cartons for the convenience, so they don’t break. I noticed you got chickens here.”
“Aunt Bree, she’s got some running around. Stupid fuckers lay their eggs where you never can find them because she lets ’em run wild. It’s those goddamn chickens brung the snake. There’s nothing a snake likes more than eggs.”
“So she doesn’t collect the eggs?”
“Listen, Bree’s a crazy old lady that doesn’t even live in the same world as regular people. She acts like those chickens are pets. I mean . . . she talks to them.”
“That’s pretty crazy.”
“You bet it is. If I didn’t know she’d throw a shitfit about it I’d chop their goddamn heads off and be done with it. I can’t stand that racket they make, you know?”
“You could tell her when she comes back the snake ate them.”
“Good plan, Odell. How big of a snake you figure can eat a dozen chickens, huh? Maybe one of those jungle pythons fifteen foot long, but you know what? We don’t have that kind around here.”
“Okay.”
He looks over at me, still smiling that evil smile. “Anyone ever tell you you’re weird, Odell?”
“No, they never did.”
Which is a big lie. Back at Kit Carson High School in Yoder there was this girl, Feenie Myers, the only person I know that graduated with honors and went on down to college in Durango, Colorado, she told me I’m weird. See, in Kit Carson High there’s three kinds of kid. There’s the Jocks that play football, there’s the Skaters that wear baseball caps backwards and baggy clothes and ride around on their boards, and then there’s the Ropers, which means guys that wear jeans and boots and cowboy hats. I never had a cowboy hat but got called a Roper anyway. You have got to be one of these three. Anyway, this Feenie Myers, she says I’m a Roper with Geek characteristics. That’s another thing you can be, a Geek, but it’s almost as rare as being a Nerd. There has never been a Nerd at Kit Carson High except maybe for Feenie Myers. They are very rare in Wyoming, I believe. They are in Yoder anyway.
We watched more TV. There is only four kinds of shows they make. Cop shows, Lawyer shows, Doctor shows and Teen shows. We watched a Teen show that has got these smart-talking teens like nobody ever met outside of Hollywood. These guys, they only ever say stuff that’s smart and cutting and they never have acne or do stupid stuff that’s embarrassing. Back at Kit Carson High these characters would have ruled the school if they were real, which everyone knows they are not. This is the reason I am not a fan of TV, the falsity of it. I am no genius but I can figure out that much. This is what made me discover The Yearling, which has got real people in it and no glamorousness to make it false and not believable. I was glad to get away from the TV after awhile and put the clothes in the dryer like Dean said.
After the Teen show we watched a Lawyer show and then a Doctor show, then along about ten o’clock Dean gets up and switches off the tube without asking if maybe I’d like to keep watching, which I didn’t so that’s okay, and he says, “Gotta get up early tomorrow if we’re gonna drop off your car at the junkyard.”
“Yeah.”
He went clomping off upstairs without even saying Goodnight or Pleasant dreams or anything polite like that. You might think that even an axe murderer could be a little bit polite, but not Dean, he just couldn’t be bothered it seemed like. I snuck along the hall to the front door where Dean’s baseball bat was still propped against the wall and brung it back to the sofa and laid it alongside where I can reach for it in a hurry. Then I turned out the lights and lay down on the sofa same as last night without even a blanket, which Dean never did make the offer of, and stared at the ceiling far away, wondering when he’d come sneaking down to do what he had the intention of – murdering.
The grandpa clock bonged soft and mellow on the quarter and half and three quarter hours while I kept on waiting. I guess it sounds crazy, me waiting around to get killed, but there’s a part of me still didn’t believe it’ll actually happen in reality, one side of my brain saying to the other side, You have got it All Wrong and the hole in the yard is for locating a leaky septic system pipe that needs replacing. Why the hell would Dean be wanting to murder a complete stranger that never did him harm? And I could leave anytime, so why lay there waiting for the blow to fall, a shotgun blast to come blazing from the darkness?
But that is exactly what I did, telling myself if he come tiptoeing downstairs with the shotgun I’d hear him coming. And he never would’ve blasted me right there on the sofa, tearing it up and splattering blood everywhere in his own living room. Dean was not houseproud but he wouldn’t have wanted a mess like that. He would do what they do in wartime, which is take the victim at gunpoint to his grave and make him stand over it, then blast him from behind so he goes toppling down into the hole without making a big mess to clean up later. I would have to get the better of him between the time he rousted me by poking the shotgun barrel in the side of my neck to wake me and the time he stood me alongside the grave hole.
Bong bong bong etcetera. Eleven o’clock and he still didn’t show. Because he wasn’t going to, I finally told myself, it’s all just bullshit in my brain, which was a big relief. What a big idiot I was to think all that about Dean, which even if he wasn’t the greatest guy in the world was definitely not some cold-blooded psycho killer. I got that settled in my mind by the quarter hour and felt myself drifting off into dreamland. That sofa was not the cleanest I ever lay on, but it was plenty soft and the cushion under my head fit just right. I felt myself sliding into darkness the way you do when sleep is coming, like sliding down a velvet chute into a deep pool filled with stillness and calm . . .
“Odell?”
Dean was drifting alongside me in the pool. How did he get there?
“Odell?”
I woke up. Dean was squatting right by my head, whispering in my ear!
My arm had fallen down from the sofa and lay with my fingertips just barely touching the baseball bat. They wrapped theirselves around it by pure instinct for survival and begun lifting it, and at the same time I’m rearing up in slow motion with alarm bells and sirens screaming in my head and this voice saying over and over Get him get him get him . . .and Dean is looking at me strange in the darkness, just this little bit of light from the windows coming through . . . And why the fuck is he right beside the sofa on his haunches that way, practically whispering in my ear? . . .that was the scariest part, not the shotgun, which was beside him on the floor, not in his hand, which gave me the advantage while I’m rearing up and he’s saying, “I thought I heard something . . .” The bat was raised high to shut out that little-boy voice he’s using, pretending to be all helpless because he heard the boogeyman prowling around downstairs, which is the lamest kind of deceiving . . .
The bat come down like a lightning bolt from above and made this awful thonk sound as it bashed the top of his head. His face was upraised to look at me – I’m on my feet now– and there’s this expression of total surprise on it because he wasn’t expecting me to be prearmed with the bat like I am, and now he recognizes it’s too late for a surprise attack because he made the mistake of whispering my name when what he should’ve done is poke me awake with the gun barrel like I predicted. Well, it was too late now for him to succeed in his criminal intent because he’s falling backwards away from me with his eyes wide open still . . .and hits the floor with a thud.
I stood over him with the bat raised again. There’s blood hammering through my head and my heart going budumbudumbudum so fast I thought it might bust out of my chest. Dean didn’t move, so I must have whanged him good. He looked dead, he’s so still. He only had pajama pants on without the jacket, so I could see his scrawny chest heaving the breath in and out of him so he’s okay, only unconscious, which made sense because I only hit him the one time and not all that hard neither because I was ris
ing up from the sofa at the same time I whanged him, not the best position to swing a baseball bat. The shotgun was next to him. I picked it up and opened it up. No shell inside. Now why the fuck would he come downstairs to kill me with no shell in the gun? He said, just before I hit him, he thought he heard something, meaning a prowler, I guess, but again, how would an empty gun be useful as a threat against intruders, unless he was only going to bluff them with it? Or bluff me into going out to the hole to await execution. With what, though? None of it was making any sense.
I listened to him breathing kind of ragged for awhile, waiting for him to come around so I can ask him what’s going on here. After a time my heart slowed and I started thinking I must have hit him too hard even if I didn’t have a good swing for maximum impact. I was even starting to feel a little sorry for having hit him at all, but I mean, what else did he expect, whispering in my ear like that and a shotgun beside him? It was the dumbest way to wake someone up you can think of, so it’s all his own fault, that’s how I saw it. There was no way I could go back to sleep, not with Dean lying next to the sofa that way with air whistling through his nose, so I went and had a glass of water and come back. Here’s a strange thing – I almost felt like crying, I really did. I had never before hit anyone with nothing but my fist and only when they asked for it by needling me about this or that. I had hit someone now with a baseball bat, which is a truly awful thing to do when you think about it, not so bad as hacking at them with a machete or shooting a bullet into them, but plenty bad enough.
Listening to him was more than I could take, so I lifted him and carried him upstairs to his room and put him on the bed in a nice comfortable position, then I turned out the light and left. All kinds of thoughts kept galloping through my head and I knew sleep was not going to come back again to comfort me. I tried a few pages of The Yearling but the words kept switching around and making no sense so I quit and went outside to sit on the porch rocker and listen to the night.
THREE
It was a chicken that woke me. I was on the rocker fast asleep and the stupid bird flapped up onto my chest and pretty near gave me a heart attack. I jumped up so fast it squawked and went running away down the porch steps. I waited a minute to calm down then went inside just as the clock is striking five.
Up the stairs and into Dean’s room, where I found him still unconscious or maybe just asleep, it’s hard to tell. He had gone and urinated in the crotch of his pajamas but I wasn’t about to peel them off and put on another pair in case he woke up while I’m doing it and figures I’m doing weird homo stuff with him while he’s helpless. So I left him like he was and looked at his head, then felt it. There’s a good-sized lump there on top where the bat connected but no bleeding, a good sign I didn’t hit him all that hard. I felt better knowing that and went to fix breakfast for myself. I was fully prepared to forgive Dean for his dumbass stunt in the middle of the night and fix breakfast for him too, just as soon as he’s ready.
With food inside me everything seemed brighter. Bacon and eggs plus toast, what could be better? Bacon and ham, those are what Dean had called “pigmeat” which he didn’t eat, so they must have been for Aunt Bree. I wondered when she was coming home from Florida. Dean hadn’t said. Maybe she’d be home today! That got me thinking hard about what to do next. I went upstairs to see if Dean was awake and ready to eat but he wasn’t, not yet awhile, so I went out to the porch again and considered the situation.
According to the lawnmowing schedule Dean has got four customers today, but it was clear he wasn’t going to be ready to take care of things in that department any better than yesterday. Dean, he kept having these head problems that kept him from his work, and in a way I was the cause for both times, so I had an obligation to take care of business again today. That was the least I could do to make amends for slugging him, even if he asked for it with his dumb behavior, that’s the way I saw it, so after tidying up the kitchen I got in the Dodge and drove away to mow some more lawns. I left a note for Dean on the kitchen table explaining things for when he woke up and wondered what the hell is going on.
Halfway through the morning I stopped at Wal-Mart and got myself a straw hat like they wear in Hawaii to protect my head from the sun and some shorts to keep my legs cool while I mowed, plus cheap sneakers because cowboy boots look ridiculous with short pants unless you happen to be a topless model wearing micro-shorts. Total outlay come to less than forty dollars. I zoomed through the work with time out for lunch at McDonald’s again, and then I got hold of a phone book at a public call box and looked up the address of the recruiting center, which is on Lincoln Avenue.
I went there directly, but the store front had windows that are painted over with whitewash on the inside, so it looks like Dean was right about that, which means the phone book was outdated and should’ve been replaced but they never do that in a phone booth like they should. Just to be sure I went in the store next door which is a hardware place and asked about it. The guy there, he says the recruiting center was dislocated to Manhattan, which is a much bigger town than Callisto. Manhattan, Kansas, not New York. So that was a big pain I hadn’t counted on with my plan for military work. Still, if Dean let me work a few more days, I could buy a ticket and ride the bus to Manhattan and sign up anyway.
Driving along on the road home I got overtaken by a beige Cadillac going way over the limit. I had to wind the window up to keep his dust from coming inside. I didn’t think any more about that Caddy until I pulled in off the road at Dean’s place and there it is parked in the front yard and some guy standing on the porch by the front door. I pulled up inside the barn and took my time getting out, thinking Dean would be talking to the guy by now, but he wasn’t. The guy’s turned around and he’s looking over at me. Where was Dean? He should’ve been up and about by now, or maybe he was just in a bad mood over what happened last night and didn’t want to talk to anyone so he’s ignoring the doorbell.
I went on over to the porch and the guy meets me at the steps. “Mr Lowry?” he says. I considered what to say. This is one of those times I mentioned about being slow with a conversational response, only this time there’s a reason for it, namely not knowing how bad Dean is, maybe still unconscious, which would be a bad thing, and not wanting to explain about last night’s weirdness to this guy who might have been selling insurance for all I knew. So I just kept looking at him while my brain whizzed and sputtered, then I said to him, “What can I do for you?” That was the correct response to his question under the circumstances, because it showed politeness without me admitting I’m not Dean like he thinks I am.
He put out his hand which I had to reach up to take hold of because he’s at the top of the steps and I’m at the bottom. He’s an old guy, way past sixty with gray hair that’s still thick and neatly barbered. He’s wearing a suit and tie and there’s a little neat mustache on his lip. I could smell the aftershave on him, which reminded me I hadn’t shaved in a couple days plus I’m stinking with sweat after a long day pushing lawnmowers in the sun. “Chet Marchand,” he says. “Thought it might be you I passed on the road. Saw the sign on the truck door. How’s business this fine day?”
“Okay, I guess.”
I come on up the steps and opened the door, still hoping maybe Dean’s going to come out yawning and take care of this, but that didn’t happen, so I had to step aside polite and let this guy into the house. I led him on through to the kitchen, glad I tidied it up this morning, and invited him to take a seat, then thought maybe I should’ve taken him through to the living room instead, but it’s too late now. The living room was kind of a mess anyway, so this way is better. I sat down too, thinking maybe I should offer him a glass of water, which I wanted one of myself but it could wait. Obviously this guy Chet was nobody Dean knew, so the visit couldn’t be important and wouldn’t take long to finish off. I was still thinking it’s insurance he’s selling. The note I left for Dean was still on the table so I scrunched it up good.
Chet gave me a smile,
very friendly and says, “Is Mrs Wayne at home today?”
Who the fuck is that, I’m thinking, then it strikes me Mrs Wayne must be Aunt Bree. Where the hell was Dean who should be answering this family stuff?
“She’s in Florida on vacation.”
“Florida on vacation,” he says. “That’s a fine state to visit and see the natural wonders.”
“I’m going there someday myself. The Yearling, that’s a Pulitzer Prize book, it happens there in Florida, only a long time ago.”
“That’s a fine book. I remember reading it when I was young.”
He was starting to make me nervous. What did he want?
“Well,” he says, getting down to business, “I must say I’m a little bit surprised Mrs Wayne isn’t here, but no matter, we can discuss matters just between the two of us. Okay if I call you Dean?”
“Sure.” He could call me Donald Duck, but that didn’t make it so.
“Please call me Chet. Now about my little trip out here, Dean, has your aunt given you any indication what this might be about?”
I looked up at the ceiling like I’m thinking hard about it. “No.”
“Oh, well, I’m surprised about that, but that’s okay. Given the nature of the correspondence between us, I assumed there’d be discussion between the two of you concerning the matter.”
“Nope, she never mentioned a word about it, not to me.” That was a true statement. I was finding it’s possible to tell people lies without actually lying. This was something I never thought of before and was a big surprise.
“Well, then,” he says, “maybe I should start at the beginning, as they say.”
“Okay.”
“Mrs Wayne is concerned about you, Dean. I might have said worried, I might even have said distraught, but the word I’ve chosen, just to keep things in perspective, is concerned. This good Christian woman is concerned for your future, Dean, and I apologize for the dramatic nature of what I’m going to say next, but she’s concerned for your very soul.”
