The November Criminals: A Novel

by Sam Munson

  XI.

  THE NEXT TWO MINUTES I have no contiguous memory of. Just chopped-up isolated moments in series. Life had been replaced by still photos, or medieval tapestries or something. You know? The ones where the perspective is all wrong, or it’s not adult perspective, and everything is the same size, and everyone seems to be standing in the air, even if their feet are firmly planted on that tan, ruined ground, and they all have those expressions of empty piety on their faces. Never a smile, never a grimace. They’re content to live forever in their absurd poses. So: Image One: darkness of the yard. Image Two: Lorriner standing there with his dying dog lifted in both arms. Image Three: all of us in this awkward circle, nobody saying anything. Image Four: a procession. Lorriner first. Digger is frozen at the sill of the door. She’s stumbled without making any noise, but Lorriner hasn’t noticed. Image Five: warm pear-colored light of the indoors. These clean cuts with nothing connecting the images. Except their stark contrast.

  Time must have continued flowing by in its boring and inexorable way, though. We did end up in Lorriner’s house. And the laws of logic or whatever still obtained. He had to let us in. We were armed. I can’t believe I just wrote that: armed. I blinked and squinted to right my vision inside. Lorriner was carrying Murphy forklifted in two arms, as you would a dead child or a rolled heavy carpet, and there were broad swaths of blackish, viscous blood on the breast of his ugly jacket. Digger had recovered from her stumble, which I thought was awesome. I’d astonished myself by managing to not fuck any of this up, so far. We were on the right track, or whatever, to use one of Mr. Vanderleun’s expressions. Despite the jerkiness of my mental record, everything was going according to plan.

  The house we’d forced our way into was hilarious. I’ve already gone over the details of the outside part. Which might lead you to expect beer cans scattered everywhere inside, and carpets stinking of dog piss. Whatever rural squalor you want to imagine. But the place, first of all, was über-neat. Not a scrap of garbage, not a single disordered article. The living room was crammed with furniture, all carved stiffly from this heavy black wood. You know what I mean: knuckled spheres at all the joints, each piece weighing half a ton. Heavy crimson cushions. He must have bought it in a single go from some furniture barn. They have a lot, out in his area. No bookcase, no television, no rug, just a pseudo-royal two-ton sofa, two armchairs, and a coffee table. The blue light I’d seen outside came from an empty, totally clean aquarium. I remember one piece of decoration: a poster of a skier in mid-jump, launched by a ramp resembling a single sure ink stroke, vaulted high above the speckled crowd, arms rigid, legs rigid … There was a smell of chocolate. I swear to fucking God.

  And Lorriner was pale, paler than before. I could watch him at leisure now, shaking with the effort of holding up the dog. His face had this doughy, unfinished look. Or not unfinished. Unfinished is an overused descriptor for faces, anyway. But too cautious, too constrained, the work of someone second-rate. A type of handiwork I am familiar with. A look of petty alarm smeared across it. What some rabbit-gazed embezzler would wear at his arrest. Murphy’s sobs had quieted, and the start-stop gush of blood and fluid from the horse-size brisket (that’s the chest part of a dog) had stopped. Even though I have no clinical training, I knew the dog was dead. Lorriner seemed to know it too, because he started snuffling. Just two or three times, and then he mastered it. With a brief reddening of his throat from the effort. I was beginning to have my doubts. But Digger’s presence assuaged them. Or maybe it was just the gun. She was wagging it at him, now, telling him, “It’s okay to put the dog down. It’s okay. You can sit down now. We just want to ask you some questions.” She spoke with a perfect and unhurried cadence.

  “Her nayme’s Murphy,” Lorriner told us in his reedy, light-stepping voice. Knowing the dog’s gender nauseated me.

  “Yer that fuckin’ Jewboy?” he asked me, still supporting the corpse of his Labrador. “Man, yew fuckin’ people. Like what the fuck’s like the matter with yew fuckin’ people.”

  “I mean, like it has nothing to do with that,” I replied. What cutting intelligence! The bank-clerk’s alarm had fled Lorriner’s face. He was back on familiar ground or whatever. Jews are useful in that way. Providing a stable starting point for all kinds of rhetoric.

  “Can I like sit down?”

  “She like already said you could,” I answered. He lowered himself, with labor, onto the throne-size sofa, and arranged Murphy’s body on the coffee table. One of her legs was vibrating. To make up for my earlier failure, I added: “You fuckneck, I mean, you fucking redneck piece of shit.” This sounded fake. This look of mortification pinched Lorriner’s face. I expected him to get pissed. Kind of insulting that he did not, I guess. Some people just can’t deliver insults with any authority. Even Digger, in my peripheral vision, was somehow expressing embarrassment and disapproval.

  “Do yawl like want munny? Cuz I have munny.” Lorriner smiled now. Which threw me. I mean, how does a guy with a gun pointed at his head smile? A guilty guy, no less. “I have like three-four thousand right here. In cash.” He panted the last word. “I have like other stuff, too. Like good shit, mayn.” I knew he meant drugs of some kind. Pot probably, also—given the rural location—meth, which is a going concern in Maryland. Another of the many reasons why it is the worst state. He directed all these offers to Digger. I wanted to tell him what a mistake this was. In case you haven’t already figured this out, she’s unbribable. I mean if the rest of her personality, flaws and all, is anything to go on. So she did not hesitate. Not even a fractional pause. The two of them hovered, eyeing each other. Lorriner, even seated, projected injured dignity. Fucking incomprehensible to me. Digger had this clinical scrutiny in her eyes. I might as well have been one of Lorriner’s eighty-pound ottomans, gauged by my involvement in this situation.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked.

  “Mayn, I like did it because you fuckin’ people thank you like own the damn world!” This was uttered with whistling smugness, a complacent body jerk, a tweak of his dull hair. You’re thinking I was angry. Angry at Lorriner and angry at being ignored. I was not. I couldn’t stop clenching and fluttering my hands, because they were itching for a weapon, not to use but to hold. I couldn’t ask Digger for hers. She was sitting down, now, lowering her insubstantial ass (white girl ass, the argot goes) into Lorriner’s heavy armchair. Her movement made me feel even more awkward. I would have launched into some diatribe. But Digger spoke again. She telepathically knew, apparently, that I was about to break into stupid speech.

  “I don’t mean throwing the brick through the window.” She sounded calm and tired, nothing more. “I mean Kevin Broadus. Why did you kill him? Was it because he insulted you at that party? Because you like got in a fistfight? Is that really a good reason to kill somebody?”

  “Mayn, I don’t—” Lorriner began. Digger cut him off. Which she never does knowingly. She always waits for the other person to finish.

  “If you lie I’ll kill you. I’ll shoot you. I don’t care, Mike.” Calling him by his first name—amazing, right?

  “Yeah, she like means it, man,” I informed him. I sat down now, too, with vicarious ease. Lorriner’s round mouth hung open, his silent, stupid, ragged mouth. He tried a new tactic. You have to admire his adaptability.

  “Look, mayn, do you all know how like duuuumb you all are being? They have like rill cops here, not like those duuuumb niggers you git down in the city.” He had his old tone back: master of the domain. “I mean, like if they ketch yawl it’s gawna be like rill bad. I mean like if you leave now, I won’t call ’em, I swayer. They’re not like those dumb niggers down in the city. You unnerstand?” Yes, he had that tone. But he was flutter-blinking now. Sweat emerged in pearls from the wide pores of his forehead.

  “Don’t use that word, please,” Digger instructed him.

  “No, look, mayn, like if yawl leave now I won’t like do anything, awl right? Is that awl right?”

  Digger sighed
and steadied her grip.

  “Please tell us why.” She’d closed her eyes halfway to draw a better bead on his skull.

  “Yeah, keep your like bullshit to yourself, man,” I echoed.

  “Addison,” said Digger. Not without kindness. I shut up. Lorriner hawked back what must have been a colossal gob of mucus, to judge from the sound. Then there was this huge melodic clatter, and everyone screamed at one another in surprise.

  Now, I know you’ve been waiting for our massive fuckup this whole time. Since the gun appeared. This isn’t it, though it could have been. We were all über–freaked out by the sound, coming just when it did. Lorriner made a lunge, balked by the corpse-bearing coffee table, and I grabbed the iron-hard arms of my chair. It was the type of explosion that results in someone getting shot, in these situations. A flurry of chaotic motion, aggressive noise. But Digger did not fire. She’s that cool-handed. The noise—it became apparent after our initial burst of terror—came from a dim corner, where a cuckoo clock was exploding into action, sending out a bluish knight through high wooden doors to chase a reddish dragon around a heavy, cheap-looking battlement. It played an infuriating song, and then chimed eleven times. Was it that late already? The burst of terror the noise inspired in me died out. Lorriner’s breath came short and high and the pearled sweat on his face had spread to an even sheen. Digger kept the gun steady. Murphy’s right rear leg kicked and kicked in the contractions of arriving rigor, scritching against the wood. We represented a whole microcosm of vibrant activity. I didn’t blame Lorriner for taking so long to consider his answer. I mean, even murderers possess reason, right? Then the unique stench of human feces flowed up into our faces. I thought I’d shit myself, and shouted some inchoate noise of fear and regret.

  I realized it was coming from Lorriner, who had also started weeping. He’d shit himself out of shock at the garish melody of the chimes. Writing it down, it sounds sensible and maybe even unavoidable. But still: he shit himself and started weeping. Weeping, ladies and gentlemen. A man voids his bowels and weeps. That’s what all human purpose comes to. Fuck! You could still detect the under-aroma of chocolate that had greeted us, which made the whole situation impossible.

  “Are you like a clock enthusiast?” I crowed in my utter perplexity.

  “Addison,” Digger repeated, in an exasperated tone.

  “Look, like I ain’t never, I mean, like it’s just like I don’t know, mayn, where yawl like heard—” Lorriner stopped for breath. “Just please don’t, mayn, I like never even knew that boy.” He was hyperventilating. “Did like Noel tell yawl that? Noel Bradley? Yawl like work for him?” I realized he was, at most, a year older than we were. How the fuck did he have this absurd house? And why? Where were his parents? “No, mayn, like no no no no no,” Lorriner keened.

  “Mike,” Digger said, in that same sweet, low voice. “Shut up about Noel. Just don’t lie, okay?”

  “Why’d yawl like kill my dawg, mayn? How can I like believe what yawl like say now?” His hands were up, as though he could swat away the bullet when Digger decided to shoot. You think I was afraid, too. But I wasn’t. Just interested. Fucked-up, right?

  “No, man, no no like please, mayn, like please.” Have you ever heard anyone begging for their life? It wasn’t even clear to me that Lorriner was in real danger. The astonishment provoked by all of that night’s anarchy kind of dominated every other emotion. We were holding someone at gunpoint. Have you ever tried that? It banishes other considerations. The idea of victory? Gone. Plans for vengeance? Double gone. I became a helpless retard, confronted with all this. “Like please, mayn,” Lorriner was babbling, “I swayer I didn’t. I swayer I didn’t. Like please. Mayn, like do you work for Noel? Cuz I can pay you whatever he’s paying you, I swear. I didn’t dew it. I swayer. I didn’t.” He sounded … resigned. I guess this is how interrogations work. There’s a point at which our fear of death vanishes, and beyond that point is the truth. Either that or permanent silence. Lorriner was not the silent type. “Pleeeease,” he throbbed out. He steepled his hands. He was mouthing a prayer. Holy fuck.

  “Mike, it’s okay,” Digger chanted in consolation, the gun steady. And—limber and warm with sudden rage—I started shouting at Lorriner. Just because he had the audacity to shit himself and cry, after dragging us all the way out here. He had no right! This white-trash asshole! That’s how my inner monologue ran. I roared something unclear and rushed, with wild variations in pitch, about his being a racist and a murderer, about us not letting his actions stand, about justice. Justice! Oh, God, even as I was talking I knew he was innocent. No murderer shits himself. “And you think you can just do whatever you want, because you’re fucking ignorant! You think you can just like go as you please and do like whatever!” I was shaking my index finger at Lorriner, who hadn’t stopped weeping the whole time. If Digger were less moderate and sensible, she might have pointed the gun at me to shut me up, or maybe just coldcocked me with the butt. That would have done the job. But she continued to aim, enrobed in calm, and we all three sat there in the stink of shit, as Lorriner clucked and sobbed to himself. “Just don’t like fuck with us anymore, okay?” I sputtered. As though this admonition were necessary. I said it because I had to go on, because momentum was pushing me on, I went on making the noises that the human animal makes, the noises of injured dignity and pious anger, the noises of falsehood.

  Seriously, where the fuck do you go from here? Yes, Lorriner was innocent. But, I mean, in a technical sense, the evening counted as a success. Right? We may have had the wrong man. But our plan had gone off error-free. From conception to execution. A to B to C. Rushed and floaty as a dream. Shooting a dog doesn’t count as a fuckup. I hate dogs. Digger does not like dogs. I’d say that anyone who does not hate them you should be suspicious of. (Do you know who has a picture of his dog Aurelius on his desk? Mr. Vanderleun!) Is killing a dog even murder? Who the fuck knows? Nothing bad had happened to us. And Lorriner deserved it. Right? Deserved fifteen minutes of abject terror and having his dog killed. Even though he wasn’t guilty. Somehow, though, despite our success all our energy had vanished. Which is not supposed to happen. Success is supposed to lead you on to more success. Our whole society is constructed around this principle.

  Lorriner was also robbed of whatever force had prompted his clumsy proud strut as he threatened us with flashlight and badminton racket. He looked even more childish than before. His whole slump had this weakness to it, this weird curvature. You know the way adversity affects little kids. It outrages their innate sense of fairness, it hurts them, even if it’s nonphysical. It still hurts them. “Where are your like parents, man?” I found myself asking.

  “Addison,” Digger whooshed out. She sounded aghast.

  “Whut,” asked Lorriner, “whut the fuck is rawng with yew people?” And you could hear the tears breaking in again. “My parents?” he blubbered. “My parents? Yew goddamn kike pieces of shit.” His voice was in tatters. Digger flicked a glance of severe disappointment at me.

  “I’m sorry about Murphy,” she said. All that was missing was her offering Lorriner a handshake. Digger and I were both standing. It was time to leave. Lorriner hid his face.

  “No, mayn, like it’s like fahn,” he said through his cradling hands. And from his tone it was unmistakable: he was forgiving us.

  The night air smelled of cold. You know? That high, clean, bitter smell? Digger walked ahead of me, the gun dangling in her hand for a few paces, before she slid it back into her coat pocket. The clouds obscuring the moon had gone, and its dark light silvered everything as we kicked our way through the rattling leaves, back down to the turnoff. “Hey, man,” I called to Digger. Who didn’t answer. She just kept striding ahead through the leaves. The lights in the house by the road were still on, and she passed through them and into the further darkness, looking rigidly ahead. She didn’t answer me, though I kept speaking. I thought she was furious. But she smiled—you could tell, even in the dark—when I got to my car, a
nd gave a small sigh as we got under way and crooked a cigarette between her lips. She didn’t even seem perturbed at all. We passed the truck that had honked at us before in appreciation of our singing, now stalled on the shoulder, its cabin lit and holding two leaden faces. I noticed the logo on its side for the first time, which made me slow a bit with surprise: our headlights revealed that it belonged to Rex Rentals. The maroon dog, the Rex emblem, stared out, mournful and docile, from its white panel into the third dimension. And then we were among the grass fields again, Maryland exhaling its dumb watchfulness.

  If I were writing a novel, all this would precede a scene of obvious reconciliation. Quiet and subtle: The road spread out ahead of them. Digger, without looking, let her hand brush Addison’s knee. Or with pyrotechnics, disgusting and overstated. Maybe we end up fucking in my frigid car, or in a shady roadside motel, or whatever. After all, we’re just children, and that’s how things work in books, right? Nothing genuine is ever at stake. And youth is resilient if nothing else. But what happened is this. We drove. Digger half slept. There was no need for navigation. There’s one road, as I said, in places like that. It’s a question of mere direction. Before two, we’d gotten back to Digger’s house. I hadn’t felt the cold of the night until then, as my blood crept back into my hands. We parked, and Digger clambered out of her doze. We’d been silent for the final hour of the drive. I found this long quiet provoking. So I started, as we sat in my car, explaining everything again. The whole stupid story. What you’ve been reading here, but the one-minute version. To myself as much as her. This time, without Short Mike. Inventing some other anonymous and powerful killer. (I almost preferred it that way.) She nodded in slow time when I finished, and bit her lower lip in concentration. I read this as a sign of encouragement. (Wrong!)