The Terror of Living

by Urban Waite

  From the car, the man with the bag full of hardware supplies watched all of this. He waited a beat before he, too, rose from the car, carrying the bag of tools in his hand up the stairs toward the house. The door was open like a mouth, blackness beyond, and into this the man stepped and closed the door behind him.

  DRAKE PASSED A HAND THROUGH THE ASH. HE WAS kneeling in the wreckage of Hunt's house. All around him the fire still smoldered, pieces of the frame rising out of the black shape. In front of him the bricks of the fireplace stood, painted black with carbon. A water heater that he guessed had been under the stairs was now visible. The house was a complete loss. He looked down at the ash. He put his hands together and clapped the grit from them. Little puddles were everywhere, from the fire trucks and the rain. He clapped his hands together again and stood.

  He had been here only a day before. He tried to remember the man's face, brown skin, slight acne scars near the chin, unshaven, his hand in Drake's, strong but well fleshed in the palms. No bodies had been found except for the horses. The fire had burned hot with the gas, and not much was left. But the fire inspectors guessed it wasn't hot enough to burn bones, and they hadn't found any yet.

  Nora had been generous with him. He thought of the man watching while Nora went back inside to get him the number, to offer him help. Had she known Drake had taken a shot at her husband just a couple of nights before, aimed to wound him, maybe kill him, would she have acted as she did then? Drake tried to think of taking that same shot now and he didn't think he could.

  He pictured Nora up there on that same horse. The crosshairs of the sight, the horse coming into view. He couldn't do it. Not now.

  He walked over to Driscoll, the grit and ash sticking to his boots, growing on him and caked to his soles, heavy and cumbersome. When he reached the horse fence, he hit them against the wood and watched the gunk fall. Driscoll was leaning over one of the horses. Several men in suits that looked almost like biohazard gear were milling about near another. "They've cleaned this one off," Driscoll said. "Come over here, give it a look."

  Drake stepped through an opening in the wood and ducked his head. He held his hat and walked over to where Driscoll knelt examining the body. "Quarter horse," Drake said.

  "How can you tell?"

  "Strong front legs, short, and a bit stocky."

  "You learn that on the farm?"

  "It was the type of horse my father used to ride."

  "Talked with the owner about ten minutes ago. Wasn't happy to hear about this. Says he's been boarding this one here for about three years now, never thought anything of it."

  "It's a shame."

  "Named him Hermes."

  "Good name, must have been a fast horse."

  "Says he was going to sell him this year, sixty thousand. You believe that?"

  "Can't say I do."

  "Probably just out for the insurance money."

  "It would be nice to think that was the only thing involved," Drake said. He knelt and ran a hand along the belly of the horse. He could feel the muscle, the well-cared-for coat. He tried to remember if he'd seen this horse the other day. But then he put it out of his mind.

  "This guy, Hunt, better know how to really ride. He's got one hell of a chase coming after him."

  "Wish I'd caught him that first day."

  "No, you don't. He'd be dead in that cell just like the kid."

  "No, I don't," Drake repeated. "You think he's got any chance?"

  "I think if we get to him first he does. Ask him to give up a few names. I can't say that he'll avoid doing any time, but it's surely better than what's out there looking for him now."

  Drake looked down at the horse, milky eyes, the flies already starting to land. "Trailer isn't here. Neither is that Lincoln. Honda I saw the other day is charred all to hell back there where the garage used to be."

  "You think any of those vehicles are registered to their right names?"

  "Probably not."

  "I can run it through the DMV and see what comes of it."

  "Lincoln definitely didn't pull that trailer out of here."

  "Something big?"

  "From what I saw, had to be."

  "How many horses you count yesterday?"

  Drake looked around. Far off in the middle of the pasture he could see the third. "More than this," he said.

  THE KNOCK CAME AGAIN ON EDDIE'S DOOR. HE CHECKED the slide on the small pistol and put it through the back of his belt. On the bed the case was laid out, foam interior with cutouts for four magazines and a removable silencer. He put it under the bed. He had never used the pistol.

  When he put his eye to the door, he could see Nora out there. He cleared his throat. The night was just beginning to come on, and he could see cars passing behind her on the road. She turned to look as one drove by, splashing a puddle, the sound of the wet tires running on the cement. He opened the door, and her attention was immediately on him.

  He let her into the room, and when she had gone to the small chair in the corner, where two chairs sat around a cheap wood- veneer table, she said, "I talked to Phil."

  Eddie went over to the bed and sat on the edge. "Did he tell you what happened to him?"

  Nora looked around the room. When she met Eddie's eyes, he was staring at her, waiting for an answer. "He said the boat sank."

  "Did he say where he was?"

  "Somewhere north, he didn't sound too sure. I think he barely made it down the coast after getting the drugs."

  "So he has the drugs?"

  In a way.

  "In what way?"

  "They're inside a girl."

  "Inside her?"

  "That's what he said."

  "This isn't at all what I talked to Hunt about."

  "No, I'd expect not. Didn't see yourself in this motel either?" Nora tried to laugh, but it came out strangled and fell away.

  "Did he tell you where to find him?"

  "No. I gave him the address here. He said he'd come to us."

  "Good," Eddie said. "I hope he has those drugs. It could be the only thing saving us."

  "What do you think happened up there?" Nora had her hands on her legs, and when she said this, Eddie could see the worry in her eyes. He looked away.

  "I don't know what happened up there."

  "Something went wrong, right?"

  "Something went wrong."

  "What is a girl with a stomach packed full of drugs doing in all this?"

  "I think she has very little say in it."

  "It's sick, you know."

  "It's how it is, Nora."

  "I don't understand it anymore."

  "It's the same as it's always been. People need a product. We take it from the producer and bring it to the seller. That's how simple it is. This thing isn't going to stop because the government says it will. We're happy when they get involved-drives the price up. We can sell it for anything we want, and people will buy it because they can't not."

  "But a girl?"

  "What am I supposed to say to you?"

  "You didn't know about this before?"

  "Not a thing."

  Nora looked to the window; the shades were drawn, but she could pick out the shapes of things beyond. "I told him if things went bad to get out of there. I told him to come right back to the house. Now I'm not even there, and I don't know where he is."

  "We just need to wait this thing out a little bit longer. Phil's a smart guy. He'll come here and then you'll see."

  THE MAN SAT NAKED IN AN ARMCHAIR PULLED FROM his own dining room. It was not this that seemed the most startling to the driver, but the blood that ran from his ankles and from his wrists. The man with the hardware tightened the hose clamps around the naked limbs of the man seated in the chair until the skin tore against the thin metal bands.

  Both the driver and his boss stood back and watched as the man raged against the chair and the metal that held him. His arms began to grow slick with blood and finally he stopped, and it was at this time they b
egan to ask him questions.

  A litter of kittens had recently been born in the house, and their mother sat in a bin on the warm living room floor. The driver had drawn the shades, and the house had the tin smell of fabricated metal and blood as well as the warmth of the body and the close smell of skin that the pull of the shades only made closer.

  As the man answered the questions, the driver sat on the couch and played with the kittens. They were blond like their mother, but a few had black markings, and as they climbed along his lap, he could feel that their new claws had emerged. They were not yet attuned to the screams of the man or the strain of his voice. Life in this house had not yet taught them these things, though the driver wondered if they would ever be well acquainted with this kind of thing.

  The driver's boss had come to the point in the questioning at which Thu had arrived at the boat and the two men had taken her out onto the water. The man in the chair had answered as best he could, though at times the driver's boss had tightened the bands on his wrists and around his ankles.

  "We waited a full day for the girl," the driver's boss said. "It is not a secure feeling, this waiting. To invest your own time in something from the beginning and feel the whole operation has been fouled in the process by an outside force that has been fully out of our control. Do you understand what I'm saying to you"

  The man shuddered, and a thin vein of spittle stretched from his lip and fell to his thigh. "I don't know what you want me to say. I did what I was told."

  "We expected you would, but in the absence of the lawyer, we have come to you, because you were identified as the one who picked up the girl at the airport. Do you see why we have come to you now?"

  "I didn't steal the fucking heroin," the man said. He was at the point of crying, and the man who was questioning him hit him hard across the face and let the sting sink into the flesh before speaking again.

  "You have been identified as the last one to see the heroin. I don't think we can make this any clearer."

  The man in the chair didn't say anything.

  "You are accountable in that way. Unless the lawyer tells us different, we have nothing to go on besides this fact."

  Still the man would not speak.

  "We are missing ninety thousand dollars of heroin, almost a quarter of a million if you count the other girl, though we know she is not your fault, and I only mention her to show you our obvious agitation. I am only trying to be truthful with you, as I would hope you could be truthful with us."

  The tears came then, and another slim line of saliva, tinted pink with the blood from a cut in his mouth. "I didn't take the heroin."

  "Yes, that is what you keep saying, but again, we don't have it, nor do we have any other names but your own." The boss motioned for the driver to get up from the couch. Several of the kittens he had been playing with followed after him and slipped, purring, against his leg where the two men stood together. The boss reached into the hardware bag and brought out the blunt-nosed garden shears and handed them to the driver. The driver seemed to know what to do and he went to the man with the funny smile and pulled up his pinky and stretched it away from his hand.

  "This is very simple," the boss said. "You have three knuckles on that finger. You will lose one every time you don't give me the right answer. Do you understand?"

  The man in the chair did not look away from his pinky.

  "Hey," the driver said, "do you understand?"

  A half nod of the head.

  "What happened to the heroin?"

  "I gave it to the man in the other boat."

  "Where is this man now?"

  "How am I supposed to know that? He should have brought her to you."

  No one said anything, and the driver cut the first knuckle away from the man's pinky. It fell to the floor, the man screaming. The kittens that had been at the driver's feet soon picked up the nub and began to toy with it.

  Blood fell freely from the severed finger and pooled on the floor, first one drop, then the next. The pool grew. The man who had been screaming clenched his jaw and held back something that looked to boil inside him.

  "Where is this man now?"

  "He was older, sandy hair, maybe six feet, he was wearing… fuck… I don't know what he was wearing. You're fucking crazy."

  The driver made his next cut, and for a moment there was only the sound of the second knuckle falling to the floor, then the scream, and the blood pattering on the floor.

  When the man looked down at his pinky, he saw first the red nub and then, farther down, the kittens at his chair and the blood falling. One of the kittens had looked up and was standing with its back legs on the floor and its front on the leg of the chair, and it was licking at the drops of blood as they fell from what remained of the finger.

  "Where is the heroin?" the boss asked again.

  "Fuck you, fuck both of you." He was crying again and he wouldn't look up. The saliva dripped from his mouth and slipped in a train along his thigh, where it fell to the seat of the chair.

  When the two men left, he was still sitting there. The driver could see the beat of his chest and the defeated way in which he sat in the chair, no longer trying to break free from the metal bands but submitting to them. He was still bound, still naked. The pool of blood had grown to a puddle, and the kittens sat licking at it and mewing to each other. When the driver closed the door, the last thing he saw was the little cat that had leaned upright against the chair with blood all over its face, climbing the leg of the bound man, using its newfound claws to dig into the man's flesh and pull itself up.

  HUNT DROVE AWAY FROM THE HOSPITAL. HE'D GONE through the town fast before, with not even enough time to give it a look. But he looked now. Watched the streets. Sure at any moment that a police cruiser would come after him, that someone would have called him in. Someone from the hospital. Perhaps even Nancy and Roy.

  The town was what he expected it to be, houses that looked much like the rest. At the center of town he stopped for a light, and he saw people staring at him. Across the street was a pharmacy. Next to that a diner, then a bank and a post office. He sat in the little hatchback and he figured they knew the car. They might even have known Roy and Nancy. He smiled and gave the people a wave. A father of two kids waved back, but the kids just stared.

  How had he gotten here? Hunt had been asking himself this with increasing frequency. He didn't have an answer. He felt a strange pause, looking up at the light, waiting, a pause that didn't seem to belong to the days that had come before. He'd been an office janitor downtown when he left prison, emptying wastebaskets after everyone had gone, he'd worked as a prep cook in a kitchen, he'd even, for a time, worked as a refrigerator salesman. He had a good face, lean, with thick lines that stretched down and outlined his mouth; it was a trustworthy face, a face that said more than it ever could aloud. People bought refrigerators off that face, went home, lived with what they'd purchased, enjoyed. The job had been honest. There had been only a small chance that he would die, that a fridge would fall over and end his life. Now, sitting in the car, with the windows up and the heater spilling in hot engine air, he felt unsure. Something had gone wrong somewhere; despite all his efforts to lead a good life, to support his wife and make a living, he had failed. What good had running bets and smuggling done him? What had been wrong with an honest job? Jobs that paid him as much as he needed, nothing more, nothing less? But he'd never liked the feeling of answering to someone, like he was back in prison, like he was being watched, like he wasn't his own man. He wanted his actions to count for something. He didn't know what that was yet, but he thought that if he could just get free of these drugs, of Grady, maybe he could make a go of it.

  The light changed and he pulled through. He knew life just wasn't as simple as loving a job, as making money. It didn't boil down to that. Hunt had chosen his path, known from the beginning what it would be like. Money couldn't buy everything, it couldn't buy his safety or Nora's, it couldn't protect Eddie and the horses. He
'd seen that now, he'd heard it, listening over the phone as Grady executed the things he loved, one by one. There was nothing he could have done, and he was working through that, working it out the best way he knew how, just driving, moving forward, hoping everything would turn out for the better, as he'd always hoped it would.

  Hunt kept driving, swinging his head down side streets, looking for an exit. He was on an island. There was a ferry, and he pulled up to the ferry booth and tucked his left foot into the door and paid the fee. At the loading dock he waited for the ferry but didn't get out of the car. His pants were half-cut-off, his leg in a bandage. He looked down to see a red stain where the blood had come through. He felt the air from the car vents blowing on his naked thigh. A man in an orange vest directed the other cars into lines. People got out of their cars and waited for the ferry. They stretched, they looked in on Hunt. He was just sitting there. Something strange about him, a man in his car with no book, just sitting there, staring straight ahead.

  Hunt lowered the window. He smelled the ocean again. The calls of seagulls, one landing between the line of cars, the yellow feet dancing on the cement. They looked like little dinosaurs the way they stalked after trash, rolling their eyes, their beaks swinging from one side to the other as they two-stepped through the parked cars. He could understand that specific pursuit, that necessity, stalking after what he desired most. Now, to him, it was safety. It was getting away and not looking back.

  He thought about Thu. He hoped she'd be okay. On the floor of the car he'd found her purse just sitting there. He didn't know what else to do with it but push it back under the seat. Something suspicious about a man sitting alone in a car with a woman's purse. From the backseat he fished out the zippered survival bag. He could see the shape of the little pellets in there through the orange material. It hadn't occurred to him yet to cover it-the gun in there, the bag thin enough to show the shape of the gun where it met the orange material. In his hand he held the bag, worked it over once in his fingers, and felt the little latex balls. A woman passed near the car and looked in at him. He smiled. And when she was gone, he let the bag drop to the floor, where it fell into shadow.