by A J Grayson
His next shot was meant to kill, and Joseph executed it perfectly. He aimed the gun squarely at the old man’s chest and pulled the trigger twice. Straight into his heart. I’ve said before that I’m no expert on guns, so I have no idea what calibre it was that he fired, but the heart seemed to explode. His chest was eviscerated.
I couldn’t breathe. Kneecaps and shoulders and forearms were one thing, but this was something different. This was a life, deliberately taken. I felt new acid in my throat. My skin went slick and cold.
But Joseph didn’t stop. The shots had obviously done the job, but it wasn’t enough. He spun his rifle around again, butt forward, and began to beat the man as he lay on the floor. It was as brutal a scene as my mind could ever have imagined. No, I could never have imagined a scene like that. He went after the man’s head, his face, his torso. Every swing brought new blood, new horror, and long after it was clear that the man was gone, Joseph kept beating him. The whole time his voice was a brutal, angry roar.
For an instant I caught sight of his face. I’d never known anything so wild. But it was also as if something in him had disappeared. What was moving and acting now was a shell, more than it was a man. The teenager who’d found me in the woods wasn’t in possession of himself. Joseph had gone hollow.
And that’s the only way I can explain what happened next. We’d been there what seemed like ages, though probably it had only been a few minutes. The woman, the dead man’s wife, heard the noise and suddenly came into the room. She did the only thing any rational person could have done at that moment, at the sight of such carnage. She released a scream of absolute, sheer terror.
Joseph spun his gun automatically and fired. I don’t think he thought about it – the shell of him just acted on impulse. The single bullet that flew out of the rifle pierced the woman’s chest while she was still screaming. But Joseph didn’t seem to notice this either, didn’t seem even to see. His eyes were open, but his vision was somewhere else. He ran over to her body as it fell to the floor and began the same brutal beating he’d just enacted on the old man. His voice was uncontrolled rage. ‘Why? Why didn’t you stop him! Why didn’t you protect me? You were supposed to be there when I needed you!’
There were tears streaming from his eyes. For a second his was the face of a small child, innocent and confused, pleading for help. Despairing that it had never come.
But there was no more innocence behind the tears. Joseph was an enraged beast, and he attacked until all life was gone. And then he kept going.
I watched in horror. The scene was a nightmare in parts I couldn’t connect. I watched the man die, for which I felt disgust but little remorse. I watched the woman die, which filled me with absolute revulsion. But I also witnessed another death. I stood there, stunned, as all the life ebbed from the room, but it was only when Joseph stood up from delivering his last blow and turned to me that I fully realized what that meant. As his face met mine, for the most fleeting of instants, I had the strangest feeling that he was as dead as the others. He was standing, he was heaving from the exertion, but I had the overwhelming sensation of looking at a man whose life had just been voided and cancelled out.
And I’m not sure if it was then that I first noticed it, but I became aware that he was wearing overalls. The shirt beneath them had been white before it had been soaked in this bath of blood. And the way he held the rifle at his side – it was almost like a stick, its barrel on the floor in a pool of his mother’s blood, as if piercing the water of a clear and tranquil pond.
In that instant, I saw the boy. But I didn’t see him saved. I saw him die, there in that room. The innocent boy I had known and loved from my bench. The boy in the park. The boy whose life had now forever been taken away.
63
Friday Morning
When the sun starts to come up and I look across at the driver’s seat, Joseph’s hands still clutched firmly at the wheel and his eyes attentively on the road, I see him differently than I’ve ever seen him before. Poets often write that dawn brings new revelations along with each new day, and this morning those words make an immediate, indisputable sense. Something new has been revealed.
I’m not certain how much of my memory of what we did in California is accurate, how much of it is influenced by the adrenalin that was coursing through me like a drug, or the shock that lingered afterwards. I know that all those things can modify vision and recollection, and I don’t feel I’m in any position to trust myself resolutely. But when I look at Joseph now, he seems a different person. He is present to me in a way he hadn’t been before. And I no longer wonder where that little boy I was seeking has gone.
I don’t know precisely how he’s connected to the man in the car with me. Obviously they’re not the same person. That can’t possibly be true. The boy is young and Joseph is older. The boy is innocent. Joseph has just done such terrible things. And yet the connection seems tangible to me, even if inexplicable. Maybe there are more things that are possible in this life than I am given to understand. For the moment, I’m willing to let that be.
The end result of this awareness is that I view Joseph a little more tenderly. I’d been so frustrated with him in the hours before, so annoyed that he wouldn’t talk, that he wouldn’t accept and respond to what we’d done. But I feel satisfied now just to be quiet with him. To be connected to him. And I don’t know why.
The human mind is a strange thing. We link together stories that aren’t really connected. We piece together little bits of data from here and there, stringing them together like popcorn on the thread of a Christmas garland, so that they make a nice stream – whether or not the pieces actually have anything to do with one another. So whether or not it’s true, whether or not it’s accurate, Joseph is bound together with this boy for me, now and forever. He’s bound together with the pain I saw in that boy’s body, with the agony I felt when I saw him on the hill. He’s bound together with the justice we had to deliver, even as he’s bound together with the tragedy that actually unfolded.
And I’m sorrowful. I’m sorrowful that Joseph is now connected up in my mind with all these things. But I’m comfortable with the sorrow. That’s the other odd thing about the human mind. Once we think we can explain something, it loses the fierceness with which we looked at it before, and the grief that it formerly threw at us. That’s how I feel with Joseph now. I’m saddened, but I accept the man before me. I don’t feel any need to press for more information, for details about his family or his reflections on how the manhunt will go. I’m content to be with him, the two of us together, as we drive off into whatever lies ahead.
Soon enough we’ll be in Nashville, the place he wanted to go. And whatever comes will come. That’s the way of life – at least of our lives – and for one moment, at least, I’m content to let it be.
NASHVILLE
64
Friday Evening
We’ve arrived in Nashville at long last. The drive has been interminable, almost impossibly lengthy, but we’ve finally got here. And I have to admit, even with all we’ve been through, I’m thrilled at the sight.
My love for all things country and western is something I’m generally ashamed to admit in polite company. It seems like the sort of thing that people of a certain breeding aren’t meant to enjoy; that the qualifications for finding it inspiring or even enjoyable are a degree of poverty, at least a few months spent living in a trailer park or a shack, and a general disillusionment with anything other than ‘the old-fashioned American way’. I can’t say that I fit under any of those headings. But I can say, and I do, that I’ve always loved the music. Finally we’ve arrived in a place where I can admit it freely; where not to do so would put me in the minority of the unusual and the out of place.
This is something I’ve learned, during the drive, that Joseph and I share. A fact that came out in one of our pleasantries-but-nothing-serious conversations. It turns out he’s been wanting to come to Nashville for years. Our circumstances have provided
him with the opportunity to fulfil a dream, of sorts, and they haven’t dampened his spirits towards making the most of it.
For me visiting Nashville has never been so much a deliberate desire as an ‘Oh, I suppose that would be fun if it ever happened’ sort of thought in the back of my head now and then. The same way I think it might also be fun to one day walk the Great Wall of China. But Tennessee is closer than China, and now that we’re here and I see the city lights and the home of this whole culture that sits at the fringe of normalcy, I’m delighted we’ve come. I’m delighted he’s wanted to visit here, too. That this may be the scene of new beginnings.
Our arrival early this morning spurred a few facts to the forefront of our attention. We’d got by just about as long as two human males could without showers and in clothes that had only been river-washed. My shirt felt stiff enough to serve as body armour, and the grunge of the rest of my attire didn’t bear mentioning. There was more to it than just the filth, too. What had been washed away in the river was horrific, but what lingered in the threads and creases of our clothes was of the same substance. It continued to connect us to that same, horrible reality. When your clothes have been soaked in another person’s blood, it’s not the sort of thing you just wash out and make like it never happened. Those are the clothes you throw away.
Once we were in the city, then, it was definitely time for some new attire and we prioritized a shopping trip to K-Mart and some discount clothing without any horror attached. It was also a chance to pick up something suitable to a city environment, since the place in which we’d found ourselves was hardly a country backwater, despite the images that the very name ‘Nashville’ conjures up. Perhaps that was my first real surprise with this city. I’d suspected the Capital of Country to be all blue jeans and cowboy boots, maybe even with a few dusty roads. In reality, it’s a city of fashion and glamour like any other, with hybrid cars and boutique espresso houses, indistinguishable in most ways from any major metropolis. Except that there is a recurring Western theme to the neon and polished main street signage, and one can wear a ten-gallon hat over a business suit without it being taken as satirical.
That shopping trip took precedence during the morning. Next came finding a place to stay, which we did without any significant problems. We’re holed up for the time being at the Rock Fork Inn, a little motel off the Murfreesboro Pike. They rent rooms by the week and we’ve opted for two weeks, paid up front. I don’t know how long Joseph plans for us to stay in Nashville, overall, but the hotel’s rate is ridiculously cheap. It’s not the kind of place that advertises on the internet, and I’m half convinced that the ‘Cash Highly Preferred’ sign at the reception desk indicates a degree of under-the-table operation I’m quite content not to know anything more about. But it’s suitable enough, and with our plans up in the air two weeks seems a good starting point. Maybe we’ll be here longer. I don’t think the clerk at reception is going to be upset with another fistful of cash passed his way if that becomes the case – and there’s plenty of money in my checking account to withdraw as needed. If we choose to leave sooner, it’s not as if we’ll be out of a fortune.
‘I get the shower first,’ Joseph said when we got into our room. Two sagging double beds and a vomit-coloured floor, a faux-wood dresser opposite them on which is perched an old television. Nothing flat-screened or plasma here. This is the kind of television that takes a good thirty seconds to ‘warm up’ after you switch it on, which has a remote with large, plastic manual buttons, a knob on the front of the set that offers adjustment for ‘vertical hold’ and a plaque that reads ‘Colour television’ as if this were an altogether surprising and unusual feature. Like something out of my youth. There are probably collectors out there who would consider this vintage and pay a small fortune for it.
I nodded and Joseph went off to the shower. I waited my turn patiently, not attempting to navigate the ancient television but instead simply staring from the corner of my bed to the rug-like curtains that hung from bent aluminium poles over the window. I don’t think I had any particular thoughts with me, then. Not at first. I was eager to get beneath warm water with soap and a good washcloth. I had more to wash off me than just the remnants of dirt. I was hoping the memories that were buried inside might be water-soluble as well.
Then, as if in a great lunge of emotion, I felt the overwhelming, immediate desire to be out of my old clothes. The new were still in the K-Mart bag at the bedside and I wasn’t prepared to put them on before I’d cleaned myself properly, but I felt I couldn’t stay bound up in my old things a minute more. Not a single second. They pulled at me like they weighed a thousand pounds, and I had to be rid of them. I rose from the bed, tore off my shirt with more energy than I can ever remember employing in undressing, and wriggled my way out of my trousers. A few seconds later and I’d kicked off my socks, my shoes already on their sides on the floor, only leaving covered the portion of my body that shyness wasn’t willing to expose, even in my desire to be rid of everything associated with that place. I kicked the other garments away, banishing them, and as much as I could of the past, into the far corner of the room. And I was done with them.
I sat back down, the curtains once again before my gaze from the corner of the bed. I looked down at my hands. Quietly, without any particular focus, I curled my fingernails back towards myself. I’d cleaned them fairly well in the river the other day – well enough not to be a source of questioning looks at petrol stations or McDonald’s windows. But here in the light of the hotel room I saw them more closely. And beneath the nails blood was crusted, rust-coloured and crackling.
I picked at it, one fingernail burrowing under another to scrape away their contents. But the dried blood split apart rather than fell away, breaking into smaller and smaller particles that seemed only to burrow themselves more deeply into the crevasses of my nails. When I’d finished, they looked little different than they had when I’d begun.
My fingernails, still caked in blood.
For an instant, I had the strangest feeling I’d seen my hands like this before. But then – the oddest thing – I couldn’t remember when. Or in what context. Or if it had ever happened at all. Or even why I was here.
65
Sunday
Breakfast this morning was two eggs and bacon, with sides of sausage and a plate of waffles for Joseph. We’ve both ordered the same thing for the two mornings we’ve been here. Habits form quickly. Our cholesterol may never be the same, but our stomachs are happy. It’s amazing what a good breakfast will do to a day, no matter what else may be conspiring against it as the sun starts to rise.
It’s nearing lunchtime now, and we’ve been wandering the downtown side streets off Lower Broadway for a few hours. Yesterday we roamed the waterfront, which is particularly beautiful and feels more like a glamorous corner of Manhattan than a city in Tennessee. Today it’s Broadway and some of the more touristy sections of what is nevertheless billed as ‘Real Nashville’. Real. Another one of those routinely misleading words. I’ve always believed that anything that feels the need to identify itself as ‘real’ usually isn’t, just as most things marked ‘authentic’ are fakes and ‘original’ are copies. And the glass facades and boutique shops of Nashville’s Lower Broadway feel just about as ‘real’ as I would expect.
But Joseph and I aren’t unhappy strolling through the glass and plastic and fakery. We walk mostly in silence. We chit-chat here and there (‘Hey, do you like those kinds of boots?’ as we pass a shop window, or ‘I’ve never fancied hats that big’ as we walk by another), but nothing of substance. We’d exhausted whatever substance we have between us in the car. What’s left are moments of casual banter and a generally friendly sentiment that lingers on.
And perhaps what’s strangest: I don’t feel the pressing desire to talk I once had. I know something was weighing on me before. Something terrible and haunting and overwhelming. But it’s slipping into the past, and I’m happy to let it go. Sometimes I’m not even sure I reme
mber what it was.
Finally, though, Joseph stops me as we approach a corner onto 5th Street. He reaches a hand out to my upper arm and gently turns me to face him. There is a serious expression in his eyes.
‘What is it?’ I find myself asking automatically. It’s unlike Joseph to make physical contact – the one time I tried the hand-on-the-shoulder move with him he nearly took out my face with his fist. That memory hasn’t faded. But he’s got a firm clutch now and a pensive look.
‘I’ve been thinking. We probably need to do something about our identities.’
A peculiar statement, and I’m not sure what he means. ‘What about them?’
‘Maybe we should think about concealing them. Not let people know who we really are.’
Nerves start to electrify the skin on my back. Just the slightest hint of fear. Memories that an instant ago were gone, part of the vague cloud of forgetting that lines the human mind, return. I can hear the newsreader’s words, back from the television at the service station in Texas: ‘an expanding manhunt’. Joseph had told me he wasn’t worried, but now he’s suggesting we hide who we are, here, half a country away.
‘Do you think anyone from … from, back there, is going to get to us down here?’
‘We’ve come a long way,’ he answers, ‘but people are going to be looking.’ He says this as if it doesn’t conflict with his previous dismissal of anything that the police might do. ‘Might as well not make it easy for them to find us.’
I let my gaze fall to the pavement beneath our feet. Of course Joseph is right. He’s only suggesting what I probably would have proposed earlier, if he hadn’t so compellingly told me to forget about any potential search. I’d convinced myself he was right, that there was no way the police in California would connect either of us to the crime; and if we weren’t connected, what would it matter if anyone knew we were here?
