Growth

by Jeff Jacobson

  Sheriff Hoyt wasn’t finished. “Listen. You are not welcome here. Go write some parking tickets or show some Boy Scouts how to wipe their ass. If you aren’t gone in sixty seconds, I will cite you for obstruction.” He ducked back inside and let the screen slam behind him.

  Halfway to her car, she decided a quick check in the barn couldn’t hurt. If Ingrid was hiding out in there, Sandy thought it might be best if she was the one that found her, not those assholes in the house. There was also a chance that Ingrid would remain hiding from any men, but she might come out for Sandy.

  Sandy stepped into the stifling heat of the barn, stood still for a moment to let her eyes adjust. “Ingrid?” she called softly. The only response was a few weird insect noises in the shadows in the back, as if a couple of crickets were trying to woo a whole colony of sick cicadas. “Ingrid? This is Chief Chisel. I can help you. Ingrid?” She took another step inside.

  A few moths fluttered through the angled shafts of sunlight that speared through the roof. Something rustled in the dry straw to the left, near the livestock stalls. The uneven calls of the crickets or whatever they were got louder. Sandy looked up into the gloom. Some kind of insect was making a clicking, scratching sound up there, as if it was crawling over the rafters and along the galvanized steel roof.

  The skin on the back of Sandy’s neck started to itch and she took a step backward toward the sliding door. Now it sounded as if the barn was alive with movement. The insect calls grew even higher pitched, even more insistent. They sounded frantic, hungry.

  She had a sudden, overwhelming sense of being stalked and surrounded and let her fear pull her from the barn. Once out in the full sunlight, she tried to slow her breathing, slow her racing heart, and tell herself to stop being such a wuss. There was nothing dangerous in the barn. Maybe all the bullshit with Sheriff Hoyt was affecting her instincts.

  It didn’t work. She could feel the sweat coating her back, still chilly despite the sun. Could still hear those strange insects, that rustling in the straw, the skittering across the roof. She walked quickly to her cruiser and kept her eyes down. She didn’t want any of the sheriff’s men to see her nervous and unsettled. She opened the driver’s door and was about to get in when she noticed something else.

  In the barn, the insects had been loud and boisterous. Now, outside, she couldn’t hear anything but the wind. No insects at all. The farmhouse and the surrounding cornfields were unnaturally silent.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Like a fucking BOSS!” Elliot shouted into a cloudless sky.

  Elliot was a string bean who sported maybe five or six actual muscles and had a face that was perpetually sunburned year round. He was Kevin’s best friend. When Mrs. Kobritz visited her daughter in Green Bay, Kevin practically lived at Elliot’s house. It was hard to tell who was happier to have a best friend.

  Elliot was probably the smartest kid in town. His parents had sent him off to build robots in Bloomington for two weeks earlier that summer. Once he got back, he waited across the street for Kevin every day after summer school.

  Today, Kevin hadn’t said a word. He hit the street, pedaling hard, and blew right past Elliot. Instead of rolling toward his house where Mrs. Kobritz was waiting, he headed north, to Highway 100. Elliot struggled to keep up. He didn’t press his friend, content to wait until Kevin told him what was up.

  Elliot followed Kevin all the way to the town dump, way out on Route 59. There, they’d slipped under the chain that prohibited anyone from dumping anything unless it was a weekend, followed the dirt road as it twisted through the mountains of garbage and junk until they found a cul-de-sac, complete with an irresistible target. The old TV was sitting out all by itself, begging to be destroyed.

  Kevin squeezed his fingers around the checkered grips of the Smith & Wesson, fighting against the sweat that wanted the gun to slip. He couldn’t bring himself to place his index finger against the trigger. Not yet. He sucked in a shallow breath, fighting to let it out smoothly through his nose. He wasn’t worried about crying in front of Elliot. Crying wasn’t a big deal. They’d cried in front of each other plenty of times.

  Elliot knew all about Jerm and Morgan and Javier, of course. He was a target himself. Knew exactly what Kevin had endured. Of course, it was worse for Kevin, since his mom was the chief of police and all that. When Kevin had told him what he had been planning, Elliot had listened in awe.

  So when Kevin had pulled the Model 686 out of his backpack and aimed it at the TV, Elliot had yelled, “Like a fucking BOSS!”

  That had been the first time Kevin had smiled all day. Maybe all week.

  He focused on the TV. To pull the trigger meant that all of this was real. It meant that he had actually stolen the gun from his mother, which seemed worse in so many ways than planning on murdering the school bullies. If he torched off a round, then he had crossed a boundary. If he didn’t fire the gun, and replaced it without ever firing a shot, then it never happened.

  Kevin couldn’t do that, though. He had decided that shooting Jerm and the other two assholes wasn’t worth it, but he couldn’t bring himself to simply put the gun back. He had to fire it, to make it all significant. All of it, all of the panic, all of the dread, would continue as if nothing had changed, if he couldn’t pull the trigger.

  He had no idea what would happen if he fired a bullet through the TV.

  He knew that he would probably put a big damn hole in the TV, of course, but he didn’t know what would happen to him inside. Would anything change? Would he still suffer silently from the bullying until he cracked? Or would he find strength and know that he could endure anything? He hoped it was the latter, but he wasn’t sure.

  And he wouldn’t know until he squeezed the trigger and let the hammer fall on a primer, sparking that special contained explosion that blasted a cone-shaped hunk of lead into the cathode ray tube.

  So he steadied himself, planted both feet shoulder-width apart, grasped the wooden grips with both hands, and filled the notch in the back sights with the white dot on the foresight, and slowly, ever so slowly, settled his forefinger on the smooth trigger.

  “Holy fucking shit,” came a voice over one of the hills of garbage.

  Kevin flinched and almost jerked the trigger. He and Elliot spun to find Jerm and the other two clambering down a pile of old cement pylons and tangled rebar. Morgan and Javier approached cautiously, like they were sneaking up on a yard where a mean dog might be home. Jerm, though, he never hesitated, never took his eyes from the gun. He ambled forward with all the confidence of a drunk climbing behind the wheel and insisting that, hell yes, he could drive.

  “Don’t fucking tell me you had this at school,” he said. “You did, didn’t you?”

  Kevin couldn’t move, couldn’t blink. He felt encased in ice. Jerm was on top of him before he realized what was happening. Jerm got close enough that Kevin could see how tight the Miami Heat jersey clung to Jerm’s pudgy frame. Saw how acne had destroyed the round face, decimated by fresh craters like the surface of the moon. Noticed how a fresh galaxy of ripe pimples had spread across the low forehead and the double chins.

  Elliot froze as well, like a possum hoping nobody would notice was still there.

  Jerm grinned. “Wow. I mean, holy fucking shit.” He whistled at the beauty of the handgun. “Your mom’s?”

  “Yeah,” Kevin croaked.

  “And what exactly did you have a gun at school for, huh?” He squinted in mock confusion. “For us? Shit. For us, right? Gonna teach us a lesson, huh? Damn. Didn’t think you had the balls. Guess you showed me, huh?”

  Kevin swallowed helplessly. He’d forgotten all about what the revolver could do, what damage it could inflict. He might as well have been holding onto a hunk of cast iron he’d picked up in the dump.

  “Good thing you didn’t shoot us, right? Woulda caused a hell of a mess.” Jerm eyeballed the TV. “Easier to shoot that, I guess. Hey, tell you what. You let me shoot that TV a couple times, then we’re outta
here, leave you guys alone. We’ll let it go this time. You say no . . . man, we’re gonna hafta go tell Harrison.” Mr. Harrison was the vice principal. “Then your mom’ll know what you did.” Jerm crossed his arms, looked down at Kevin. “Just let me shoot the TV once. It’s the least you can do, you know? Then I’ll give it back and we all go on our way like nothing happened. Promise.”

  And there it was. An opening. A way out of this awful mess. Kevin looked to Elliot for help, some kind of guidance, but Elliot kept his eyes on his shoes.

  “Just one shot,” Kevin said, hoping his voice wouldn’t crack. He took the handgun in his left hand, grasping it by the barrel, then held it out to Jerm. “Just one. I gotta get it back.”

  “Sure, sure. I hear ya,” Jerm said and took the handgun. He hefted it and whistled again. When he looked back at Kevin, those dull brown eyes had gone cold, as if tiny pinpricks of light were all that was allowed to reflect despite the summer sun in the cloudless sky. “I cannot believe how fucking dumb you are.”

  He turned to his buddies. “I mean, holy shit. Can you believe this? How fucking stupid can you get?”

  Elliot’s eyes had gotten impossibly huge and flicked back and forth from Jerm to Kevin. He looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole, pull dirt and garbage over his head, and hide for a few weeks.

  The full realization of what he had just done hadn’t yet hit Kevin. At first, he merely felt the familiar shame of being mocked by Jerm, a reflex action that happened automatically, but when the scope of what had just happened finally sank in, he felt it with an almost physical blow, as if Jerm had kicked him in the solar plexus. He thought he might throw up again.

  His first coherent thought was of his mother. What would he tell her?

  Then he had more immediate concerns, because Jerm had gotten over his own initial shock over being handed a loaded gun and was now aiming it at Kevin’s face.

  “Motherfucker.” Spit flew through the gaps in Jerm’s teeth. Then, just for emphasis in case everybody hadn’t heard him, “Motherfucker!”

  He stepped closer and jammed the barrel against Kevin’s forehead. “Gonna bring a gun to school and shoot me, motherfucker? Really? I mean, fuckin’ really? I oughta blow your fucking brains out. You should’ve shot me when you had the chance. How’s it feel now, huh, being on the wrong end? Your mommy ain’t around to help you. How do you think that’ll sound to her? That you went and got your brains blown out by her own fucking gun. Fucking hilarious.”

  He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Think that’s what I’m gonna do. Blow your fucking brains out and kill your little faggy friend too. Let your mommy find you all the way out here, dead in a fucking dump.” His breath smelled of hard-boiled eggs and onions.

  Morgan and Javier took a page from Elliot’s playbook and froze as well. They’d been around Jerm enough to know that he was needlessly cruel and unpredictable. It was beyond just possible he might shoot Kevin. In fact, they thought there might be a damn good chance he might just snap and shoot the kid in the head. Neither of them wanted to admit it, but they were scared. Terrified down to their bones. They thought Kevin was a sniveling little shit, and had no problem fucking with him day in and day out, but this, this was something altogether different. This was something they could never take back.

  Javier was the only one who could say anything. “Jerm, man. I think you made your point, you know?”

  Jerm didn’t look like he’d heard. He kept moving the end of the barrel, still strangely cool in the heat and dust, in tight circles against Kevin’s forehead. “Yeah. I’d laugh my fucking ass off, waiting for that cunt to find you here, head all gone. And if they did find me, shit, I could just claim self-defense, with it being your gun and all.” His face went slack, and his eyes bored a hole somewhere above Kevin’s hairline, lost in his own fantasy world.

  Kevin didn’t dare to breathe. The barrel drifted over his forehead in looping figure eights, like a nearsighted cobra deciding whether or not to strike. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut tight, and pray that he would never hear the gunshot, but he was still frozen, and couldn’t tear his eyes away from Jerm’s slack, masklike face.

  For a full minute, no one moved in the dump. The only sound was the dry, snapping sound of the wind flipping a few pages of an open discarded encyclopedia near Elliot.

  Jerm’s eyes found Kevin’s. Kevin saw something spark, saw the blackhead-riddled eyebrows rise. Jerm let his jaw fall open and tilted his head, as if awe had overtaken him and he was about to witness something divine. He pushed the barrel firmly into the center of Kevin’s forehead.

  Kevin tried to say, “Please,” but it came out as a breath, soundless.

  Jerm didn’t so much as move his arm as pivot his entire upper body, sliding the barrel off Kevin’s forehead. His gaze settled on the TV beyond Kevin, and he squeezed the trigger.

  The blast ruptured Kevin’s left eardrum. The pain was sudden and excruciating.

  The TV screen exploded.

  “Fucking that’s right!” Jerm hollered in delight. He turned back to his buddies, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “You see that?”

  Kevin slapped his left hand to his ear and was dimly aware of blood pooling around his palm and trickling down his wrist. He might have cried out but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t think he could hear anything. He tripped and fell over Elliot’s bike.

  Jerm squeezed off two more shots without warning, blowing the shit out of the TV. He wandered down to the fatally wounded television, surveyed the destruction for a moment, then, as if he hadn’t caused enough damage, kicked the shattered remains of the screen.

  Kevin tried not to cry out. He got up and staggered away, clamping his hand to his left ear. The pain blasted through his brain and ricocheted throughout his body, always ending back up in the side of his head. His entire universe had shrunken to the flames of agony burning brightly in his left ear. It was so bad he had forgotten completely about Elliot, about the gun, about Jerm and the assholes. He moved his jaw and almost screamed at the fresh, oozing anguish.

  When Jerm had finished kicking out all the glass in the TV set, he looked back at Kevin. “Fuck him, let’s go.” They climbed back up the hill to their bikes. Jerm still carried the Smith & Wesson revolver. He studied the gun for a moment, popped the cylinder out, and made a big deal out of plucking out the spent shells and counting the three live rounds left.

  He shouted down at Kevin and Elliot, “See you pussies at school.” It seemed more for Elliot’s benefit, since Kevin was hunched over, holding his head. Elliot’s eyes never left Jerm.

  Jerm felt a silly grin climb across his face and couldn’t wipe it off. He stuck the handgun in his shorts and they pedaled off through the heat and cornfields.

  The cursor blinked at Sandy. Halfway through her report, right when she’d gotten to the discharge of multiple weapons, her fingers froze over the keys and she glared at the screen as the flat slash of black pixels flashed like an accusatory wink. Sure, it seemed to signal, we all know what happened, and if you don’t want to say anything, it’s okay. I won’t say anything, either.

  Sandy pushed back from her desk and went looking for a cup of halfway warm coffee. The police station was quiet. There was a stack of new missing person reports, but they were all outside the town limits, out beyond the Einhorn place, and therefore in Sheriff Hoyt’s jurisdiction. Nobody was in any of the three cells. Hendricks was back out on Highway 67, watching for speeders and drunks. Liz was in the call center, doing her nails.

  Sandy gave the coffeepot an exploratory swirl, tentatively touching the glass. Room temperature at best. She poured it in the sink and pulled out the container of ground coffee to start a new pot.

  If she wrote down what she had heard, implying that the Manchester County deputies had shot and killed an unarmed man, Sheriff Hoyt and the union would make sure that she never worked again in law enforcement. She’d be lucky to find work as a security guard in some second-rate mall. Instead, if she gave his version of
events, essentially saying that the deputies had fired out of self-defense, then she didn’t know if she could live with herself.

  As the water hissed and bubbled, Sandy thought of Kevin. What would help him the most? She wanted to go out and ask Liz for advice.

  Liz had six kids and fourteen grandchildren. She’d married a cheerful empty-headed bartender who had blown an artery in his head in the middle of mixing a highball and dropped dead, right there behind the bar, six years ago. Liz might have been pushing sixty, with a bald patch on the crown of her head bigger than the mirrors in all the compact cases she kept in her desk, but she had the brightest, most outrageous fingernails in Manchester County. Today Liz was concentrating on gluing tiny little stars across her red, white, and blue nails, getting into the patriotic spirit for the big Fourth of July celebration. Each nail was at least two inches long.

  Sandy knew the answer even without asking the question out loud. Liz would say, “Honey, you want to know what I would do for my kids? You try to tell me what I wouldn’t do. Whatever you say, you’d be wrong.”

  CHAPTER 12

  They both thought it was a good idea to go to Elliot’s house first.

  For one thing, Elliot’s parents were both at work and the house was empty. Elliot was supposed to be at the town library. That’s where they were headed next, so they could claim that they’d been there all afternoon.

  The second thing, and maybe the most important, was that neither of Elliot’s parents were cops.

  Elliot led Kevin to the upstairs master bedroom. Kevin was impressed. He’d never been in that bedroom before. Elliot had made it clear it was off-limits. He was also intrigued with how neat and orderly everything was; the bed was made, no dirty clothes on the floor. It wasn’t like that at his house. Housekeeping wasn’t high on Sandy’s list of priorities.

  He followed Elliot into the bathroom. The light passing through the frosted glass window made everything blue and cold. Elliot found a bottle of ibuprofen and took a few minutes to read the label. “Six to eight hours. Okay.” He shook out eight pills, gave two to Kevin, and wrapped the other six in toilet paper. “For later,” he explained.