Buzz Cut

by James W. Hall

  "Stop it, Butler. You've made your point."

  "They were snickering," he said. "Did you know that? Did you know that all your employees saw you sneak into the pool house? They all knew what you were doing, Lola? Everyone saw it. Even Irene. Monica's mother. She knew."

  "What do you want?" Lola said. "You have the money."

  "Is that why Irene killed herself? Because you were unfaithful, Morton? You were screwing Lola right out in the open, flaunting it. Is that why she took her own life?"

  "Stop it, Butler, please."

  Butler sparked one hand, then the other. Flicking his wrists toward each of them as if he were throwing darts at their chests.

  "You lied to the police and to the reporters. You lied to everyone. You didn't tell them my name. I listened to the news stories, I read the paper. My name wasn't mentioned anywhere."

  "We told them your name," Morton said. He was easing to his right, putting some distance between him and Lola. As if Butler weren't paying attention. As if Butler were stupid.

  "The authorities are looking for you," Lola said. "The police, FBI, they're all after you. You should go away somewhere, hide."

  "But my name wasn't in the paper."

  "They didn't want to frighten you, make you run. But that's what you should do. You should run. Take whatever money you have left and hide out, maybe Mexico."

  Butler chuckled. "Did you take him in your mouth back then, Lola? I bet that's it. His wife Irene wouldn't take him in her mouth, but you would. Is that what happened? Is that what you did in here?"

  "We talked," Lola said. "That's all we did."

  He jabbed his sparking hand toward her, came a half step closer. Lola standing straight, holding his eye.

  "You're lying. You didn't talk. You fucked him. You lay with him on the floor like a dog. They were snickering outside. They knew what you were doing. You were using your body, you were using your mouth and your ass and your hands and your fingers. You were doing things to him."

  Sampson shook his head. "You should've let that shrink drown him."

  Butler took two sudden steps his way and caught him as he was trying to dodge to his left. He swiped the voltage across Sampson's throat, just enough to knock him backward onto the couch. Sampson slumped there, breathing hard, head wavering. Butler stepped forward and pressed his fingers against the soft flesh on either side of Sampson's head. His temples.

  He cradled his father's skull in his hands. This man who had dishonored his mother, defiled her, seduced her away from all that was good and virtuous. Used his money to buy her affection, corrupt her. He tipped up Sampson's chin, and looked down into his father's eyes, and watched them open slowly. Clouded and dull. But still awake, still able to see Butler, see what was about to happen. Butler closing his fists. Staring down into his father's eyes to watch it happen, watch the seizure, watch the thin wire of mortality snap, watch the cool lights inside his eyeballs dim and sputter and wink out.

  Very quietly behind him, Sugarman told him to stop.

  Butler grinned to himself, let go of Morton, and turned around with a leisurely grin.

  Sugarman was holding an ice turkey against his chest like a basketball he meant to shoot. It was half melted and had lost its defining details. Just an oblong lump of ice filled with a half-dozen silver and copper coins. Water dripped onto the straw mat at Sugar's feet.

  Lola slid away to the door.

  "Where you going, Lola? Out to see Wally Bergson now? Maybe Wally wants to have sex with you. Wally has more money than Morton does. Lots more. Is he your next target? Huh, Mom? Lining up the next one already, are you?"

  Sugarman lunged forward and hurled the ice turkey at Butler Jack and came on behind it. And Butler made a mistake, a little one, but serious. He should have batted it away. He should have dodged, or even let that flightless bird, that block of ice, thump him in the chest or shoulder. Almost anything else would have been better than grabbing it.

  The zappers activated, the sparks shooting through the ball of frozen water. Butler staring at it, the sizzle in his hands, the silver coins glittering with blue light. He knew the voltage wouldn't kill him, but it hurt. It took him to a new place of pain. The current seemed to gather in his nuts and pulsate. He felt his legs give way.

  Americans called it grounding. The British said earthing. The same thing. Electricity seeking safety in the dirt. Negative charge seeking positive. Positive seeking negative. Nature always wanted to be zero. To be quiet and still and dead and empty and neutral.

  There was a word for what Butler was feeling. There was a word for looking up and seeing his mother and father and his brother floating in the air like angels. A word for the dark roar of voltage blistering his circuits. A single word that encompassed all of this. A word with a history, that carried every moment of its past into the ever-changing future. There was a word for the pain and for the cessation of pain. There was always a word. But at the moment, that crucial juncture, he had none of them. He had nothing but the pure sensations, the sound of crackling wildfire, the sharp sputter of bacon left too long in the pan, the smell of flesh turning hard and black, the tinkle of silver dollars falling to the concrete floor.

  CHAPTER 39

  In the week Thorn was away, Rover turned wild. He refused to come when called. He stood in the center of the yard and stared at Thorn, then slunk away into the deep woods when Thorn whistled for him. Thorn tried putting out his favorite dish of grits and fried grunt on a stump beside the sapodilla tree, but Rover simply sat on the edge of the woods and stared at the dish.

  Rochelle had abandoned the dog, left him to fend for himself. It had only been seven days, but it was a week that might take months to fix. The dog had lost his faith in humans. Lost his fragile domestic connection and now he cowered in the thick bear-claw ferns, his muzzle wrinkled into a snarl, while Thorn whistled and cajoled.

  Rochelle had hired a local company to paint the house yellow. There was a bill from the painters on the dining room table. The shutters were green, the interior was a salmon pink. It looked like someone's sappy honeymoon cottage.

  Rochelle had moved out of her apartment. Her parents weren't sure, but thought she might be traveling back to Boston to pick up her studies again at Harvard. They smiled at Thorn nervously and cringed when he stood up to go as if they thought he might be about to thrash them both for their daughter's misbehavior.

  Jeannie came home from California pregnant. She was going to have twins next August. Sugarman was elated and terrified. He handed out cigars for a week before Thorn told him he had it wrong. Cigars came later.

  Monica found a job five miles away in Tavernier. Cutting and pasting advertisements for one of the local papers. It wasn't much, but it was better than making beds and cleaning toilets, and it was close to her apartment, and gave her considerable free time to pursue her drawing. Her father and Lola and Butler would be going on trial separately sometime in the spring. With any luck at all, their defense attorneys would guzzle every last nickel of the family fortune. The papers had fun with it for a while. Reporters had shown up, trying to speak to Thorn. But they didn't stay long. Sugarman and Thorn caught the evening news one night and there was Morton, speaking earnestly to Brandy Wong. Somehow he'd managed to resurrect his smile. Telling her this was a huge, unfortunate mistake. They'd sort it out. He was looking forward to his day in court.

  Thorn went fishing. He left at dawn each morning and returned at sunset. He had some luck at first at a couple of his familiar haunts, but it fell off and a week went by without a strike. Then he found some shallows that had formed in the last month or two from a shifting in the tides through channel five, and he caught seven bonefish there one morning, two tarpon and a permit in the afternoon. He stayed out in the skiff till it grew dark, drinking beer and staring at the surface of the water.

  Monica started dropping by in the early evenings, and she and Sugarman and Thorn worked together with steel brushes and sandpaper, scraping away the yellow paint, mov
ing foot by foot around the house, restoring the weathered wood. It probably only took three or four days for the painting crew to do the house, but it was going to require a month or two to scratch it clean. That's the way it was with some things, Sugar said one night as they were standing out on the porch watching the moonlight coat the bay with iridescent silk. "Some things are just a hell of a lot easier to do than undo."

  Rover sat out in the yard that night and peered up at them while they drank wine on the porch. Thorn called out his name but the dog wouldn't budge. Sugarman tried with the same result. Then Monica went over to the rail, gathered herself for a moment, and whispered Rover's name so quietly that Thorn, standing beside her, could barely hear her voice, but the dog stood up, hesitated for a few seconds, then came running up the stairs, his tail beating with all his old forgotten joy.