by Brian Hodge
The dog bit me.
I guess it was the noise.
I shot the dog too.
I didn’t want him to be lonely.
Who would care for him?
I pulled my father-in-law into his bed with his wife and pulled the covers to their chins. My wife is tucked in too, the covers over her head. I put our little dog, Constance, beside her.
How long ago was the good deed done?
I can’t tell.
I think, strangely, of my father-in-law. He always wore a hat. He thought it strange that men no longer wore hats. When he was growing up in the forties and fifties, men wore hats.
He told me that many times.
He wore hats. Men wore hats, and it was odd to him that they no longer did, and to him the men without hats were manless.
He looked at me then. Hatless. Looked me up and down. Not only was I hatless in his eyes, I was manless.
Manless?
Is that a word.
The wind howls and the night is bright and the shadows twist and the moon gives them light to dance by.
They are many and they are one, and I am almost one of them.
One day I could not sleep and sat up all day. I had taken to the couch at first, in the living room, but in time the stench from behind the taped doors seeped out and it was strong. I made a pallet in the kitchen and pulled all the curtains tight and slept the day away, rose at night and roamed and watched the shadows from the windows or out on the porch. The stench was less then, at night, and out on the porch I couldn’t smell it at all.
The phone has rang many times and there are messages from relatives. Asking about the storm. If we are okay.
I consider calling to tell them we are.
But I have no voice for anyone anymore. My vocal cords or hollow and my body is full of dark.
The storm has blown away and in a small matter of time people will come to find out how we are doing. It is daybreak and no car could possibly get up our long drive, not way out here in the country like we are. But the ice is starting to melt.
Can’t sleep.
Can’t eat.
Thirsty all the time.
Have masturbated till I hurt.
Strange, but by nightfall the ice started to slip away and all the whiteness was gone and the air, though chill, was not as cold, and the shadows gathered on the welcome mat, and now they have slipped inside, like envelopes pushed beneath the bottom of the door.
They join me.
They comfort me.
I oil my guns.
Late night, early morning, depends on how you look at it. But the guns are well oiled and there is no ice anywhere. The night is as clear as my mind is now.
I pull the trunk up stairs and drag it out on the porch toward the truck. It’s heavy, but I manage it into the back of the pickup. Then I remember there’s a dolly in the garage.
My father-in-law’s dolly.
“This damn dolly will move anything,” he used to say. “Anything.”
I get the dolly, load it up, stick in a few tools from the garage, start the truck and roll on out.
I flunked out of college.
Couldn’t pass the test.
I’m supposed to be smart.
My mother told me when I was young that I was a genius.
There had been tests.
But I couldn’t seem to finish anything.
Dropped out of high school. Took the G.E.D. eventually. Didn’t score high there either, but did pass. Barely.
What kind of genius is that?
Finally got into college, four years later than everyone else.
Couldn’t cut it. Just couldn’t hold anything in my head. Too stuffed up there, as if Kleenex had been packed inside.
My history teacher, he told me: “Son, perhaps you should consider a trade.”
I drive along campus. My mind is clear, like the night. The campus clock tower is very sharp against the darkness, lit up at the top and all around. A giant phallus punching up at the moon.
It is easy to drive right up to the tower and unload the gun trunk onto the dolly.
My father-in-law was right.
This dolly is amazing.
And my head, so clear. No Kleenex.
And the shadows, thick and plenty, are with me.
Rolling the dolly, a crowbar from the collection of tools stuffed in my belt, I proceed to the front of the tower. I’m wearing a jump suit. Gray. Workman’s uniform. For a while I worked for the janitorial department on campus. My attempt at a trade.
They fired me for reading in the janitor’s closet.
But I still have the jumpsuit.
The foyer is open, but the elevators are locked.
I pull the dolly upstairs.
It is a chore, a bump at a time, but the dolly straps hold the trunk and I can hear the guns rattling inside, like they want to get out.
By the time I reach the top I’m sweating, feeling weak. I have no idea how long it has taken, but some time I’m sure. The shadows have been with me, encouraging me.
Thank you, I tell them.
The door at the top of the clock tower is locked.
I take out my burglar’s key. The crowbar. Go to work.
It’s easy.
On the other side of the door I use the dolly itself to push up under the door handle, and it freezes the door. It’ll take some work to shake that loose.
There’s one more flight inside the tower.
I have to drag the trunk of guns.
Hard work. The rope handle on the crate snaps and the guns slide all the way back down.
I push them up.
I almost think I can’t make it. The trunk is so heavy. So many guns. And all that sweet ammunition.
Finally, to the top, shoving with my shoulder, bending my legs all the way.
The door up there is not locked, the one that leads outside to the runway around the clock tower.
I walk out, leaving the trunk. I walk all around the tower and look down at all the small things there.
Soon the light will come, and so will the people.
Turning, I look up at the huge clock hands. Four o’clock.
I hope time does not slip. I do not want to find myself at home by the window, looking out.
The shadows.
They flutter.
They twist.
The runway is full of them, thick as all the world’s lost ones. Thick as all the world’s hopeless. Thick, thick, thick, and thicker yet to be. When I join them.
There is one fine spot at the corner of the tower runway. That is where I should begin.
I place a rifle there, the one I used to put my family and dog asleep.
I place rifles all around the tower.
I will probably run from one station to the other.
The shadows make suggestions.
All good, of course.
I put a revolver in my belt.
I put a shotgun near the entrance to the runway, hidden behind the edge of the tower, in a little outcrop of artful bricks. It tucks in there nicely.
There are huge flower pots stuffed with ferns all about the runway. I stick pistols in the pots.
When I finish, I look at the clock again.
An hour has passed.
Back home in my chair, looking out the window at the dying night. Back home in my chair, the smell of my family growing familiar, like a shirt worn too many days in a row.
Like the one I have on. Like the thick coat I wear.
I look out the window and it is not the window, but the little split in the runway barrier. There are splits all around the runway wall.
I turn to study the place I have chosen and find myself looking out my window at home, and as I stare, the window melts and so does the house.
The smell.
That does not go with the window and the house.
The smell stays with me.
The shadows are way too close. I am nearly smothered. I can hardly breathe.
I clutch my coat together, pull it tight. It is very cold. I can hardly feel my legs.
I get up and walk about the runway twice, checking on all my guns.
Well oiled. Fully loaded.
Full of hot lead announcements.
Telegram. You’re dead.
Back at my spot, the one from which I will begin, I can see movement. The day has started. I poke the rifle through the break in the barrier and bead down on a tall man walking across campus.
I could take him easy.
But I do not.
Wait, say the shadows. Wait until the little world below is full.
The hands on the clock are loud when they move, they sound like the machinery I can hear in my head. Creaking and clanking and moving along.
The air had turned surprisingly warm.
I feel so hot in my jacket.
I take it off.
I am sweating.
The day has come but the shadows stay with me.
True friends are like that. They don’t desert you.
It’s nice to have true friends.
It’s nice to have with me the ones who love me.
It’s nice to not be judged.
It’s nice to know I know what to do and the shadows know too, and we are all the better for it.
The campus is alive.
People swim across the concrete walks like minnows in the narrows.
Minnows everywhere in their new sharp clothes, ready to take their tests and do their papers and meet each other so they might screw. All of them, with futures.
But I am the future stealing machine.
I remember once, when I was a child, I went fishing with minnows. Stuck them on the hooks and dropped them in the wet. When the day was done, I had caught nothing. I violated the fisherman’s code. I did not pour the remaining minnows into the water to give them their freedom. I poured them on the ground.
And stomped them.
I was in control.
A young, beautiful girl, probably eighteen, tall like a model, walking like a dream, is moving across the campus. The light is on her hair and it looks very blonde, like my wife’s.
I draw a bead.
The shadows gather. They whisper. They touch. They show me their faces.
They have faces now.
Simple faces.
Like mine.
I trace my eye down the length of the barrel.
Without me really knowing it, the gun snaps sharp in the morning light.
The young woman falls amidst a burst of what looks like plum jelly.
The minnows flutter. The minnows flee.
But there are so many, and they are panicked. Like they have been poured on the ground to squirm and gasp in the dry.
I began to fire. Shot after shot after shot.
Each snap of the rifle a stomp of my foot.
Down they go.
Squashed.
I have no hat, father-in-law, and I am full of manliness.
The day goes up hot.
Who would have thunk?
I have moved from one end of the tower to the other.
I have dropped many of them.
The cops have come.
I have dropped many of them.
I hear noise in the tower.
I think they have shook the dolly loose.
The door to the runway bursts open.
A lady cop steps through. My first shot takes her in the throat. But she snaps one off at about the same time. A revolver shot. It hits next to me where I crouch low against the runway wall.
Another cop comes through the door. I fire and miss.
My first miss.
He fires. I feel something hot inside my shoulder.
I find that I am slipping down, my back against the runway wall. I can’t hold the rifle. I try to drag the pistol from my belt, but can’t. My arm is dead. The other one, well, it’s no good either. The shot has cut something apart inside of me. The strings to my limbs. My puppet won’t work.
Another cop has appeared. He has a shotgun. He leans over me. His teeth are gritted and his eyes are wet.
And just as he fires, the shadows say:
Now, you are one of us.
Deadman’s Road
The evening sun had rolled down and blown out in a bloody wad, and the white, full moon had rolled up like an enormous ball of tightly wrapped twine. As he rode, the Reverend Jebidiah Rains watched it glow above the tall pines. All about it stars were sprinkled white-hot in the dead-black heavens.
The trail he rode on was a thin one, and the trees on either side of it crept toward the path as if they might block the way, and close up behind him. The weary horse on which he was riding moved forward with its head down, and Jebidiah, too weak to fight it, let his mount droop and take its lead. Jebidiah was too tired to know much at that moment, but he knew one thing. He was a man of the Lord and he hated God, hated the sonofabitch with all his heart.
And he knew God knew and didn’t care, because he knew Jebidiah was his messenger. Not one of the New Testament, but one of the Old Testament, harsh and mean and certain, vengeful and without compromise; a man who would have shot a leg out from under Moses and spat in the face of the Holy Ghost and scalped him, tossing his celestial hair to the wild four winds.
It was not a legacy Jebidiah would have preferred, being the bad man messenger of God, but it was his, and he had earned it through sin, and no matter how hard he tried to lay it down and leave it be, he could not. He knew that to give in and abandon his God-given curse, was to burn in hell forever, and to continue was to do as the Lord prescribed, no matter what his feelings toward his mean master might be. His Lord was not a forgiving Lord, nor was he one who cared for your love. All he cared for was obedience, servitude and humiliation. It was why God had invented the human race. Amusement.
As he thought on these matters, the trail turned and widened, and off to one side, amongst tree stumps, was a fairly large clearing, and in its center was a small log house, and out to the side a somewhat larger log barn. In the curtained window of the cabin was a light that burned orange behind the flour-sack curtains. Jebidiah, feeling tired and hungry and thirsty and weary of soul, made for it.
Stopping a short distance from the cabin, Jebidiah leaned forward on his horse and called out, “Hello, the cabin.”
He waited for a time, called again, and was halfway through calling when the door opened, and a man about five-foot two with a large droopy hat, holding a rifle, stuck himself part of the way out of the cabin, said, “Who is it calling? You got a voice like a bullfrog.”
“Reverend Jebidiah Rains.”
“You ain’t come to preach none, have you?”
“No, sir. I find it does no good. I’m here to beg for a place in your barn, a night under its roof. Something for my horse, something for myself if it’s available. Most anything, as long as water is involved.”
“Well,” said the man, “this seems to be the gathering place tonight. Done got two others, and we just sat asses down to eat. I got enough you want it, some hot beans and some old bread.”
“I would be most obliged, sir,” Jebidiah said.
“Oblige all you want. In the meantime, climb down from that nag, put it in the barn and come in and chow. They call me Old Timer, but I ain’t that old. It’s cause most of my teeth are gone and I’m crippled in a foot a horse stepped on. There’s a lantern just inside the barn door. Light that up, and put it out when you finish, come on back to the house.”
When Jebidiah finished grooming and feeding his horse with grain in the barn, watering him, he came into the cabin, made a show of pushing his long, black coat back so that it revealed his ivory-handled, .44 cartridge-converted revolvers. They were set so that they leaned forward in their holsters, strapped close to the hips, not draped low like punks wore them. Jebidiah liked to wear them clos
e to the natural swing of his hands. When he pulled them it was a movement quick as the flick of a hummingbird’s wings, the hammers clicking from the cock of his thumb, the guns barking, spewing lead with amazing accuracy. He had practiced enough to drive a cork into a bottle at about a hundred paces, and he could do it in bad light. He chose to reveal his guns that way to show he was ready for any attempted ambush. He reached up and pushed his wide-brimmed black hat back on his head, showing black hair gone gray-tipped. He thought having his hat tipped made him look casual. It did not. His eyes always seemed aflame in an angry face.
Inside, the cabin was bright with kerosene lamp light, and the kerosene smelled, and there were curls of black smoke twisting about, mixing with gray smoke from the pipe of Old Timer, and the cigarette of a young man with a badge pinned to his shirt. Beside him, sitting on a chopping log by the fireplace, which was too hot for the time of year, but was being used to heat up a pot of beans, was a middle-aged man with a slight paunch and a face that looked like it attracted thrown objects. He had his hat pushed up a bit, and a shock of wheat-colored, sweaty hair hung on his forehead. There was a cigarette in his mouth, half of it ash. He twisted on the chopping log, and Jebidiah saw that his hands were manacled together.
“I heard you say you was a preacher,” said the manacled man, as he tossed the last of his smoke into the fireplace. “This here sure ain’t God’s country.”
“Worse thing is,” said Jebidiah, “it’s exactly God’s country.”
The manacled man gave out with a snort, and grinned.
“Preacher,” said the younger man, “my name is Jim Taylor. I’m a deputy for Sheriff Spradley, out of Nacogdoches. I’m taking this man there for a trial, and most likely a hanging. He killed a fella for a rifle and a horse. I see you tote guns, old style guns, but good ones. Way you tote them, I’m suspecting you know how to use them.”
“I’ve been known to hit what I aim at,” Jebidiah said, and sat in a rickety chair at an equally rickety table. Old Timer put some tin plates on the table, scratched his ass with a long wooden spoon, then grabbed a rag and used it as a pot holder, lifted the hot bean pot to the table. He popped the lid of the pot, used the ass-scratching spoon to scoop a heap of beans onto plates. He brought over some wooden cups and poured them full from a pitcher of water.
