Elgin sat naked on the bed, his arms stretched wide, waiting for the bullets to find his back, to shear his head from his body the way they’d sheared the roof from the cabin, and the yellow moon burned above him as the dogs howled and Blue and Woodson held each other in the corner of the room and wept like children as the bullets drilled holes in their faces.
BIG BOBBY CAME by the trailer late the next morning, a Sunday, and said, “Blue’s a bit put out about losing his job.”
“What?” Elgin sat on the edge of his bed, pulled on his socks. “You picked now—now, Bobby—to fire him?”
“It’s in his eyes,” Big Bobby said. “Like you said. You can see it.”
Elgin had seen Big Bobby scared before, plenty of times, but now the man was trembling.
Elgin said, “Where is he?”
BLUE’S FRONT DOOR was open, hanging half down the steps from a busted hinge. Elgin said, “Blue.”
“Kitchen.”
He sat in his Jockeys at the table, cleaning his rifle, each shiny black piece spread in front of him on the table. Elgin’s eyes watered a bit because there was a stench coming from the back of the house that he felt might strip his nostrils bare. He realized then that he’d never asked Big Bobby or Blue what they’d done with all those dead dogs.
Blue said, “Have a seat, bud. Beer in the fridge if you’re thirsty.”
Elgin wasn’t looking in that fridge. “Lost your job, huh?”
Blue wiped the bolt with a shammy cloth. “Happens.” He looked at Elgin. “Where you been lately?”
“I called you last night.”
“I mean in general.”
“Working.”
“No, I mean at night.”
“Blue, you been”—he almost said “playing house with Jewel Lut” but caught himself—“up in a fucking tree, how do you know where I been at night?”
“I don’t,” Blue said. “Why I’m asking.”
Elgin said, “I’ve been at my trailer or down at Doubles, same as usual.”
“With Shelley Briggs, right?”
Slowly, Elgin said, “Yeah.”
“I’m just asking, buddy. I mean, when we all going to go out? You, me, your new girl.”
The pits that covered Blue’s face like a layer of bad meat had faded some from all those nights in the tree.
Elgin said, “Anytime you want.”
Blue put down the bolt. “How ’bout right now?” He stood and walked into the bedroom just off the kitchen. “Let me just throw on some duds.”
“She’s working now, Blue.”
“At Perkin Lut’s? Hell, it’s almost noon. I’ll talk to Perkin about that Dodge he sold me last year, and when she’s ready we’ll take her out someplace nice.” He came back into the kitchen wearing a soiled brown T-shirt and jeans.
“Hell,” Elgin said, “I don’t want the girl thinking I’ve got some serious love for her or something. We come by for lunch, next thing she’ll expect me to drop her off in the mornings, pick her up at night.”
Blue was reassembling the rifle, snapping all those shiny pieces together so fast Elgin figured he could do it blind. He said, “Elgin, you got to show them some affection sometimes. I mean, Jesus.” He pulled a thin brass bullet from his T-shirt pocket and slipped it in the breech, followed it with four more, then slid the bolt home.
“Yeah, but you know what I’m saying, bud?” Elgin watched Blue nestle the stock in the space between his left hip and ribs, let the barrel point out into the kitchen.
“I know what you’re saying,” Blue said. “I know. But I got to talk to Perkin about my Dodge.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s wrong with it?” Blue turned to look at him, and the barrel swung level with Elgin’s belt buckle. “What’s wrong with it, it’s a piece of shit, what’s wrong with it, Elgin. Hell, you know that. Perkin sold me a lemon. This is the situation.” He blinked. “Beer for the ride?”
Elgin had a pistol in his glove compartment. A .32. He considered it.
“Elgin?”
“Yeah?”
“Why you looking at me funny?”
“You got a rifle pointed at me, Blue. You realize that?”
Blue looked at the rifle, and its presence seemed to surprise him. He dipped it toward the floor. “Shit, man, I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking. It feels like my arm sometimes. I forget. Man, I am sorry.” He held his arms out wide, the rifle rising with them.
“Lotta things deserve to die, don’t they?”
Blue smiled. “Well, I wasn’t quite thinking along those lines, but now you bring it up…”
Elgin said, “Who deserves to die, buddy?”
Blue laughed. “You got something on your mind, don’t you?” He hoisted himself up on the table, cradled the rifle in his lap. “Hell, boy, who you got? Let’s start with people who take two parking spaces.”
“Okay.” Elgin moved the chair by the table to a position slightly behind Blue, sat in it. “Let’s.”
“Then there’s DJs talk through the first minute of a song. Fucking Guatos coming down here these days to pick tobacco, showing no respect. Women wearing all those tight clothes, look at you like you’re a pervert when you stare at what they’re advertising.” He wiped his forehead with his arm. “Shit.”
“Who else?” Elgin said quietly.
“Okay. Okay. You got people like the ones let their dogs run wild into the highway, get themselves killed. And you got dishonest people, people who lie and sell insurance and cars and bad food. You got a lot of things. Jane Fonda.”
“Sure.” Elgin nodded.
Blue’s face was drawn, gray. He crossed his legs over each other like he used to down at the drainage ditch. “It’s all out there.” He nodded and his eyelids drooped.
“Perkin Lut?” Elgin said. “He deserve to die?”
“Not just Perkin,” Blue said. “Not just. Lots of people. I mean, how many you kill over in the war?”
Elgin shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“But some. Some. Right? Had to. I mean, that’s war—someone gets on your bad side, you kill them and all their friends till they stop bothering you.” His eyelids drooped again, and he yawned so deeply he shuddered when he finished.
“Maybe you should get some sleep.”
Blue looked over his shoulder at him. “You think? It’s been a while.”
A breeze rattled the thin walls at the back of the house, pushed that thick dank smell into the kitchen again, a rotting stench that found the back of Elgin’s throat and stuck there. He said, “When’s the last time?”
“I slept? Hell, a while. Days maybe.” Blue twisted his body so he was facing Elgin. “You ever feel like you spend your whole life waiting for it to get going?”
Elgin nodded, not positive what Blue was saying, but knowing he should agree with him. “Sure.”
“It’s hard,” Blue said. “Hard.” He leaned back on the table, stared at the brown water marks in his ceiling.
Elgin took in a long stream of that stench through his nostrils. He kept his eyes open, felt that air entering his nostrils creep past into his corneas, tear at them. The urge to close his eyes and wish it all away was as strong an urge as he’d ever felt, but he knew now was that time he’d always known was coming.
He leaned in toward Blue, reached across him, and pulled the rifle off his lap.
Blue turned his head, looked at him.
“Go to sleep,” Elgin said. “I’ll take care of this a while. We’ll go see Shelley tomorrow. Perkin Lut too.”
Blue blinked. “What if I can’t sleep? Huh? I’ve been having that problem, you know. I put my head on the pillow and I try to sleep and it won’t come and soon I’m just bawling like a fucking child till I got to get up and do something.”
Elgin looked at the tears that had sprung into Blue’s eyes, the red veins split across the whites, the desperate, savage need in his face that had always been there if anyone had looked close enough, and would never,
Elgin knew, be satisfied.
“I’ll stick right here, buddy. I’ll sit here in the kitchen and you go in and sleep.”
Blue turned his head and stared up at the ceiling again. Then he slid off the table, peeled off his T-shirt, and tossed it on top of the fridge. “All right. All right. I’m gonna try.” He stopped at the bedroom doorway. “’Member—there’s beer in the fridge. You be here when I wake up?”
Elgin looked at him. He was still so small, probably so thin you could still wrap your hand around his biceps, meet the fingers on the other side. He was still ugly and stupid-looking, still dying right in front of Elgin’s eyes.
“I’ll be here, Blue. Don’t you worry.”
“Good enough. Yes, sir.”
Blue shut the door and Elgin heard the bedsprings grind, the rustle of pillows being arranged. He sat in the chair, with the smell of whatever decayed in the back of the house swirling around his head. The sun had hit the cheap tin roof now, and after a while he realized the buzzing he’d thought was in his head came from somewhere back in the house too.
He wondered if he had the strength to open the fridge. He wondered if he should call Perkin Lut’s and tell Perkin to get the hell out of Eden for a bit. Maybe he’d just ask for Shelley, tell her to meet him tonight with her suitcases. They’d drive down 95 where the dogs wouldn’t disturb them, drive clear to Jacksonville, Florida, before the sun came up again. See if they could outrun Blue and his tiny, dangerous wants, his dog corpses, and his smell; outrun people who took two parking spaces and telephone solicitors and Jane Fonda.
Jewel flashed through his mind then, an image of her sitting atop him, arching her back and shaking that long red hair, a look in her green eyes that said this was it, this was why we live.
He could stand up right now with this rifle in his hands, scratch the itch in the back of his head, and fire straight through the door, end what should never have been started.
He sat there staring at the door for quite a while, until he knew the exact number of places the paint had peeled in teardrop spots, and eventually he stood, went to the phone on the wall by the fridge, and dialed Perkin Lut’s.
“Auto Emporium,” Shelley said, and Elgin thanked God that in his present mood he hadn’t gotten Glynnis Verdon, who snapped her gum and always placed him on hold, left him listening to Muzak versions of the Shirelles.
“Shelley?”
“People gonna talk, you keep calling me at work, boy.”
He smiled, cradled the rifle like a baby, leaned against the wall. “How you doing?”
“Just fine, handsome. How ’bout yourself?”
Elgin turned his head, looked at the bedroom door. “I’m okay.”
“Still like me?”
Elgin heard the springs creak in the bedroom, heard weight drop on the old floorboards. “Still like you.”
“Well, then, it’s all fine then, isn’t it?”
Blue’s footfalls crossed toward the bedroom door, and Elgin used his hip to push himself off the wall.
“It’s all fine,” he said. “I gotta go. I’ll talk to you soon.”
He hung up and stepped away from the wall.
“Elgin,” Blue said from the other side of the door.
“Yeah, Blue?”
“I can’t sleep. I just can’t.”
Elgin saw Woodson sloshing through the paddy, the top of his head gone. He saw the pink panties curling up from underneath Blue’s bed and a shaft of sunlight hitting Shelley’s face as she looked up from behind her desk at Perkin Lut’s and smiled. He saw Jewel Lut dancing in the night rain by the lake and that dog lying dead on the shoulder of the interstate, kicking its leg like it was trying to ride a bicycle.
“Elgin,” Blue said. “I just can’t sleep. I got to do something.”
“Try,” Elgin said and cleared his throat.
“I just can’t. I got to…do something. I got to go…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “I can’t sleep.”
The doorknob turned and Elgin raised the rifle, stared down the barrel.
“Sure, you can, Blue.” He curled his finger around the trigger as the door opened. “Sure you can,” he repeated and took a breath, held it in.
THE SKELETON OF Eden Falls still sits on twenty-two acres of land just east of Brimmer’s Point, covered in rust thick as flesh. Some say it was the levels of iodine an environmental inspector found in the groundwater that scared off the original investors. Others said it was the downswing of the state economy or the governor’s failed reelection bid. Some say Eden Falls was just plain a dumb name, too biblical. And then, of course, there were plenty who claimed it was Jewel Lut’s ghost scared off all the workers.
They found her body hanging from the scaffolding they’d erected by the shell of the roller coaster. She was naked and hung upside down from a rope tied around her ankles. Her throat had been cut so deep the coroner said it was a miracle her head was still attached when they found her. The coroner’s assistant, man by the name of Chris Gleason, would claim when he was in his cups that the head had fallen off in the hearse as they drove down Main toward the morgue. Said he heard it cry out.
This was the same day Elgin Bern called the sheriff’s office, told them he’d shot his buddy Blue, fired two rounds into him at close range, the little guy dead before he hit his kitchen floor. Elgin told the deputy he was still sitting in the kitchen, right where he’d done it a few hours before. Said to send the hearse.
Due to the fact that Perkin Lut had no real alibi for his whereabouts when Jewel passed on and owing to the fact there’d been some very recent and very public discord in their marriage, Perkin was arrested and brought before a grand jury, but that jury decided not to indict. Perkin and Jewel had been patching things up, after all; he’d bought her a car (at cost, but still…).
Besides, we all knew it was Blue had killed Jewel. Hell, the Simmons boy, a retard ate paint and tree bark, could have told you that. Once all that stuff came out about what Blue and Big Bobby’d been doing with the dogs around here, well, that just sealed it. And everyone remembered how that week she’d been separated from Perkin, you could see the dream come alive in Blue’s eyes, see him allow hope into his heart for the first time in his sorry life.
And when hope comes late to a man, it’s a dangerous thing. Hope is for the young, the children. Hope in a full-grown man—particularly one with as little acquaintanceship with it or prospect for it as Blue—well, that kind of hope burns as it dies, boils blood white, and leaves something mean behind when it’s done.
Blue killed Jewel Lut.
And Elgin Bern killed Blue. And ended up doing time. Not much, due to his war record and the circumstances of who Blue was, but time just the same. Everyone knew Blue probably had it coming, was probably on his way back into town to do to Perkin or some other poor soul what he’d done to Jewel. Once a man gets that look in his eyes—that boiled look, like a dog searching out a bone who’s not going to stop until he finds it—well, sometimes he has to be put down like a dog. Don’t he?
And it was sad how Elgin came out of prison to find Shelley Briggs gone, moved up North with Perkin Lut of all people, who’d lost his heart for the car business after Jewel died, took to selling home electronics imported from Japan and Germany, made himself a fortune. Not long after he got out of prison, Elgin left too, no one knows where, just gone, drifting.
See, the thing is—no one wanted to convict Elgin. We all understood. We did. Blue had to go. But he’d had no weapon in his hand when Elgin, standing just nine feet away, pulled that trigger. Twice. Once we might have been able to overlook, but twice, that’s something else again. Elgin offered no defense, even refused a fancy lawyer’s attempt to get him to claim he’d suffered something called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which we’re hearing a lot more about these days.
“I don’t have that,” Elgin said. “I shot a defenseless man. That’s the long and the short of it, and that’s a sin.”
And he was right:
In the world, ’case you haven’t noticed, you usually pay for your sins.
And in the South, always.
ICU
THIS WOMAN, CARRIE, regular in the bar, she says to him, “There was a guy around asking about you.”
Daniel turns on his stool. He catches the reflection of one of his eyebrows in her iris, and it bothers him, makes him feel as if it’s trapped in there and she might not give it back.
He says, “What guy?”
She shrugs, taking his eyebrow with her as she turns back to her vodka-n-whatever. “Some guy. He was in earlier. Wore a tie and everything. I asked him if he sold cars.”
“Did he?”
“He said no, but guys, you know? Lie about a fucking hangover they’re puking in the sink. This guy once, right? Calls me Doreen, okay? Doreen. Shit…”
She rattles her ice cubes. She takes a hit off her cigarette.
He waits for more but she juts her head forward and bulges her eyes to get the bartender’s attention.
He says, “So this guy who didn’t sell cars…”
She nods several times, quick, but she’s nodding at the bartender and she says, “’Nother, hon’, thanks.” She turns toward him, blowing smoke. “Your name’s Donnie, right?”
“Daniel.”
“Danny, I got to tell you, this guy? He said I should stay the fuck away from you.”
He doesn’t know how to respond to this. He’s never bothered this woman. Barely spoken to her. She’s a regular, he’s a regular. He’s bought her a drink or two. (Once, yeah, back in December when they were the only two in the place the entire night, he bought her four and danced with her once, the jukebox playing “You Got My Sugar but I Got You, Sweet” as the snow fell like cotton swabs outside the high green windows. Then the bartender said closing time and Daniel asked her if she was okay to drive and she laughed and the sound of it was like a bird screeching above the ocean and she slapped both hands on his chest and said, “Yeah, I’m fine, sweetie. You go on home.”)
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