Night Work

by Steve Hamilton

  “That’s not true. That’s not how it happened.”

  “Be quiet,” Maurice said. He pointed the rifle at me.

  “Don’t try to lie to me now,” Mrs. Gayle said. “I know how it works. You’re the one who tells the judge what sentence to pass down.”

  “I make a recommendation,” I said, “but the judge has the final say. I wanted him to go to the hospital, Mrs. Gayle. I wanted him to get help. I didn’t want to see Brian go away to a regular prison.”

  “Do not say his name,” she yelled, “God damn you!”

  I turned sideways and crouched into a ball, waiting for the shot. It didn’t come.

  “When Brian took his own life in that place,” she said, “I lost my son, the only son I will ever have. You, on the other hand, you were free to walk around like an innocent man, to go on with your life, to do whatever you wanted to do. I was filled with so much hatred for you, Mr. Trumbull … I thought I would have to kill myself, too. I really did. Thank God for Maurice. Because he came up with the most beautiful idea to make me feel better … He said if there was a way to make you suffer as much as I was suffering …”

  “No,” I said, pushing myself back to my feet. “For the love of God—”

  “He would come home every day, and he would tell me about how much pain you were in, after the thing that happened to you …”

  “It didn’t happen to me,” I said. I wanted to throw myself at both of them now. Let him shoot me. I didn’t care anymore. “It happened to a woman who had nothing to do with this.”

  “It was a miracle, Mr. Trumbull. It really was. Because every ounce of pain you felt was like one ounce that was taken away from me. So I was really feeling a lot better about everything. Until the day Maurice came home and told me that you were going to start dating again. Brian never had a girlfriend in his whole life, by the way. Did I mention that?”

  This is impossible, I thought. How can she be so deranged and still function in the world? Get up, get dressed, answer the door, and talk to you like she’s just another lonely widow? How can you not see the insanity, from the very first moment you meet her?

  “So I was thinking to myself, what will we do about this? And that’s when it occurred to me, Mr. Trumbull … You know, I went to see Brian three times in that place, before he couldn’t take it anymore. I know how bad it is to be in prison. He told me all the stories. All the things that can happen to you in there. The last time I saw him, he told me it was worse than being dead. Much worse. I thought he was just saying that, But … Well, I guess he wasn’t. I keep thinking about that, how he must have been serious. So when Maurice told me you were getting ready to start seeing women again …”

  He’s just as crazy as she is, I thought. Which is even more incredible. He leaves the house every day, comes down to the gym and trains. For two years he does this. How is it possible? Can they really be feeding off each other this much? Enabling each other?

  “This way would be even better,” she said. “You go to prison yourself, the very place you sent Brian. You’d experience all the bad things he experienced in there. Worse than being dead, like he said. With you there, every day for the rest of your life, then I would finally have some peace, because everything would be in perfect balance.”

  “You have to listen to me,” I said. But I didn’t know what else I could actually say to them. All the words had left me. Every thought, every argument, every ounce of reason and common sense.

  “But now you’re here,” she said. “The whole thing is ruined.”

  “Just let me finish this,” Maurice said.

  “It’s ruined, Maurice. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”

  “He got to hear it from you, face to face. This is just as good.”

  “It’s not just as good. It’s not nearly as good.”

  “You should go inside now.”

  “I’m not going inside.”

  “Agnes, please. Go inside the house.” He raised the rifle to his shoulder and pointed the muzzle at me.

  This is it, I thought. A cold wave of nausea washed over me. I looked around the shed, at the doorway. Maybe the gun’s not loaded. Or maybe he won’t be able to really shoot me. As if a man who strangles four women won’t be able to shoot me. Or if he does, maybe I can dive and he’ll miss and then I’ll get a chance to get away …

  “Just hold on a minute,” she said. “Don’t do it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Don’t shoot him.”

  “What are you talking about? We agreed, this is the way we finish it. We have no choice.”

  “I want to think about this.”

  “We can’t change things now,” he said. He kept looking down the barrel at me. One squeeze of his finger and I’d be long gone.

  “I might have a better idea,” she said. “I’d like to discuss it with you.”

  He didn’t move. Seconds passed.

  “You’re serious,” he finally said.

  “Yes. I think I have something better.”

  “Something better than shooting him.”

  “Yes.”

  The rifle barrel came down. The sky behind him was getting darker.

  “She’s got something better for you,” he said to me as he came to the door. “This should be interesting.”

  Then he closed the door with a bang.

  EIGHTEEN

  When the light came again, I was out of ideas. In what I had guessed was the dead middle of the night, when the heat had gone down as much as it was going to and when I figured Maurice and Mrs. Gayle were asleep, I had pounded on the door for as long as I could, hoping that I could knock it loose. I had thrown my body into it, trying to avoid hitting it with my sore right shoulder. It had felt as solid on the last hit as it did on the first.

  When I was done with that, I sat back down and cursed myself for not saving one last swallow of water.

  “Come on, Howie,” I said to the darkness. “You don’t have much time left. You’ve got to find me right now.”

  I tried to imagine him getting in his car and driving all the way up to Woodstock, coming up the mountain, then turning into the Gayles’ driveway. I imagined every detail, hoping that I could somehow make it reality. That fantasy, pitiful and delusional as it may have been, was all I had left.

  The hours passed until the light came in around the door’s edges and I saw the writing scratched into the walls again, the obscenities and the drawings. I could not bear the thought of another day in this thing.

  This is how Brian felt right before he hung himself, I thought. This is what it feels like to not want to live anymore. Hell, maybe this is what Albert Ayler felt, back on the day I was born in 1970. Maybe he really did throw himself into the East River. Maybe he was living inside his own cage.

  I thought I heard voices. I put my ear to the metal, listening. There were no voices now, but I did hear an engine starting, and then the crunch of gravel as the tires went down the driveway. The sound got fainter as the car made it to the road and drove away. Maurice, I thought, heading to the gym for another day of masquerading as a normal human being. What day is it today, anyway? I’ve totally lost track.

  The light in the shed seemed a little brighter. Maybe there were no clouds today. Meaning more sunlight. More heat.

  I must have drifted off to sleep for a while. A sound woke me. A car coming up the driveway. I put my ear to the door. Is that Maurice coming back already? Or is it a different car? Does it sound different?

  I waited. The sound got closer and closer. I heard a door open and shut.

  “HEY!” I yelled. My dry throat ached, but I didn’t care. This felt like it might be my last chance. If it wasn’t Maurice out there, then I had to get his attention, whoever it might be. “HELLO! CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

  I banged on the door as hard as I could, using every ounce of energy I had left.

  “HEY! YOU OUT THERE! CAN YOU HEAR ME? I’M IN THE SHED OVER HERE! HEY!”

  I banged s
ome more and then listened for the sound of someone coming closer. I heard nothing but the sound of my own breathing.

  “Come on,” I said. “Come on. There has to be somebody out there.”

  I was just about to start banging again when the little side door was suddenly pushed open. Maurice’s face appeared in the light.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he said.

  My throat felt like it was closing down. I couldn’t have answered him if I wanted to.

  “That’s real cute,” he said. “You wanna know what happens now?” He lifted a cooler into the little doorway. Before I could even move toward him, he turned it over and dumped it out.

  “No,” I tried to say. It came out as a moan.

  He poured the water out. It dribbled down the inside of the wall and mixed with the dirt on the floor. When the water was gone, he took the empty cooler away from the door and showed me a paper bag.

  “Here’s your breakfast,” he said. He smashed the bag into pulp and dropped it just outside the door.

  “Every time you make a noise, Joe. Every time. That’s what happens. Do you understand me?”

  I didn’t answer him. I just looked at the small puddle of mud beneath the door.

  He waited another beat, then he slammed the door shut.

  When he was gone, I crawled over and put my fingers in the mud. I tried tasting it, tried to get some small amount of moisture on my tongue. The foulness in my mouth tasted like death and decay. I slumped forward and lay half-collapsed in the dirt.

  More time passed.

  I tried to pray, but it felt like God must have been a million light-years away from me. So I tried talking to Laurel instead. If you’re there, I said to her, inside my head. It hurt so much to talk to you for such a long time. But now it makes me feel better. I was so afraid to remember how it was, back when I had a real life. Back when you and I were together and I thought it would always be that way. If I had to pick one moment out of all of them … One moment I could live in forever …

  The day you came up to Kingston to break up with me. You remember that? It wasn’t right, you said. You were engaged. You had your whole life planned out, the whole deal. I was just this thing that happened to you. This thing, you said. It was wrong and it had to end and you thought I deserved to hear it from you face to face. I said, that’s not why you came up here. You got angry with me and I thought you might even take a swing at me, slap me right across the face. I grabbed the back of your hair and I kissed you, and you said I had one last chance to stop this. And I said, the way I saw it, I had one last chance to start it.

  Are you there, Laurel? Can you hear me? If you’re there, maybe I’ll be seeing you soon. Like today. If you’re not … Well, then nothing makes sense and I can understand why Brian Gayle spent all this time carving these words in the walls.

  But no, it’s okay. Either I see you again or I don’t. Either way, this is all going to end soon. No more of this.

  No more.

  The minutes passed. I sat and waited for whatever was going to happen to me.

  Hours. I waited.

  At some point, I fell over onto my back. More time passed. Then the light came. The whole world was suddenly bright, then just as suddenly it was cold. It was shockingly cold, but it felt so good after all the heat. Ice cold and then wet. It was water. It was water!

  I opened my mouth, felt the cold water on my tongue. I kept my eyes closed and my mouth open. I kept tasting the cold, cold water until it started to overpower me. I was drowning in it.

  I opened my eyes. The main door to the shed was open, and Maurice was standing there with a hose in one hand, the rifle in the other. The cold water from the hose was hitting me in the face.

  “Drink all you want,” he said, “but don’t get up until I tell you.”

  He flipped the hose toward me. I picked it up and drank as much water as I could, as much water as my body could hold at one time. Then I poured the water over my head, so cold it almost made me pass out.

  “Okay, now you’re going to get up slow,” he said. He was wearing jeans and a white undershirt today. Solid muscle and the two tattoos. “You’re not going to try anything stupid, right? If you do I will shoot you right through the head. You got that?”

  “Yes,” I said. I had a voice again.

  “Don’t think for a second that I won’t do it. I will not hesitate to kill you on the spot.”

  “I got it.”

  “All right. Just so we’re clear on that. Now get on your feet.”

  I dropped the hose and pushed myself up. Maurice backed up and motioned me outside. I’m actually going to get out of this shed, I thought. I wonder for how long? And what will be waiting for me out there?

  “This way,” he said, waving me to my right.

  “Where are we going?” I shielded my eyes as I stepped out into the sunlight. I was standing on grass, and as I breathed in the fresh air I vowed to appreciate every lungful for as long as I lived. Even if it was just another few minutes.

  “You’ll see.”

  He kept a few feet away from me as he led me to the house. I wasn’t sure why he was being so careful. He had already proven he could beat me hand to hand. After so much time in that hot shed, I wasn’t even operating at quarter strength.

  “Turn off that hose,” he said as we passed the faucet. “We don’t want to empty the well.”

  I bent down and turned the handle.

  “Okay, keep going,” he said. “Around back.”

  “What’s going on, Maurice?”

  “Just move.”

  When I turned the corner, I saw a large backyard ringed by hedges and rosebushes. There was a covered in-ground swimming pool with a cabana, deck chairs, a gas grill—everything you needed for a nice summer party. But there was nobody around except me and Maurice.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Over there.” He waved me to a table set up on the far side of the pool, by the cabana. “Go sit down.”

  As I got closer to the table, I saw the food laid out there. Sandwiches on a large plate, hot dogs, some bean salad in a plastic bowl, potato chips, even a few bottles of beer cooling in an ice bucket.

  “It’s a little picnic,” he said. “Go ahead. Help yourself.”

  “You’re going to make me eat at gunpoint?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You’re starving.”

  I hesitated for about two seconds. I didn’t want to cooperate with him, but I had never been so hungry in my life. This food will give me strength, I thought. It will give me energy and a clear head. That’s the rationalization I made to myself as I dove in.

  There were no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches this time, but there were cold cuts and cheese and tuna fish. I started in on the cold cuts, and by the third mouthful I was making myself slow down so I wouldn’t choke.

  “Have a beer,” he said. He kept standing a few feet away, the rifle barrel trained at my chest. “Doesn’t that sound good?”

  “I think a beer would wipe me out right now.”

  “Suit yourself, but I’m sure you’re still thirsty.”

  “That’s all right, thanks.”

  He grabbed one from the ice bucket and opened it. “What, are you afraid I poisoned it or something? Here, watch.” He took a long swallow and then put the open bottle right in front of me. “See? No problem. Just an ice cold beer on a hot summer day.”

  I looked up at him. He was standing with his back to the sun, so I had to squint to make out his face. The rifle was pointing to the ground now.

  “I’m not drinking with you,” I said. “I’ll eat rather than starve, but I will not drink with you.”

  He lifted the rifle slowly, until it was aimed at my face. “This is Mr. Gayle’s gun. I watched him take down a twelve-point buck with one shot. Do you have any idea what it would do to your head if I were to pull the trigger?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “I’ve never shot a man, Joe. In my whole damned life, all
the bad things I’ve done, I’ve never shot a man. But on the count of three, that’s all gonna change unless you drink that beer for me.”

  I didn’t move. He won’t do it, I thought. If he was going to shoot me, he would have done it already.

  “One.”

  On the other hand, this would be a completely insane reason to die.

  “Two.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll drink the beer.” I picked it up and took a swallow. It was cold, and after three days in a broiling-hot metal box, it tasted just as good as I knew it would.

  “All of it. Drink it down. Hits the spot, doesn’t it?”

  I kept drinking. In my weakened state, I could feel my head buzzing already. It was hitting my bloodstream like straight tequila.

  “What’s the game?” I said. “Why are you feeding me and trying to get me drunk?”

  “Maybe I’m trying to apologize, Joe. You ever think of that? What I did to you this morning … You know, dumping out your water, taking your food away … That was uncalled for. I let my temper get the best of me.”

  “As opposed to everything else you’ve done to me,” I said. “Which was perfectly acceptable.”

  “I told you before. It’s just business.”

  “Yeah, so you said. What does that mean? You still haven’t told me.”

  “Look … This was the first family I ever stuck to, okay? After running away when I was fifteen years old, making my way downstate, doing whatever I had to do to survive. For years I was doing that. Until I ended up here in Woodstock, running my usual scam, which was to find a big house, tell the people I’d cut their lawn, do whatever they needed, just long enough to see what kind of score I could line up before taking off to the next town. But this place … Hell, I showed up right when everything was falling apart. Brian was just starting to get into big trouble, his father was doing all sorts of evil shit to him, and I was thinking, man, this looks just like what I ran away from. But then Agnes … This woman, out of nowhere, doesn’t even know me, she wants me to live in the extra house they got out back, she wants to talk to me all the time. At first, I was thinking, I don’t need this. But then I realized, this is the first person who ever really cared about me. My whole life, this is the first person who wants to give me everything. Not just food, not just a place to sleep. Everything.”