Galveston

by Nic Pizzolatto

  “You ever have any fosters?”

  “Uh, yeah,” he said. “Once, when I’s eight. They were all right. Then they had to move. Couldn’t take me. Something about his job.” He pointed to the windshield. “Here we are.”

  “I’m going to park on the other block. We’ll come up through the alley.”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  * * *

  We walked through the alley and stayed in its shadows. A Dumpster, windswept papers. No windows above us. He pointed out the clinic. “I don’t know,” I said. “Looks pretty open.”

  “It’s not, though, not around back. There’s another alley running along there. They got their own loading place in the back.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and let him walk ahead of me. I pulled out the heavy work gloves I’d stuffed in my back pocket, held my breath while I slipped them on. There were plenty ways I could have done it, but he was thin as a kitten and this would work. I was quiet.

  When he turned around he jumped back because I’d gotten real close, but it was too late. I caught him around the throat. His eyes filled with a terrible understanding and then they swelled like blood blisters, and I said, “Shhhh.” That face they always show me—Wait. Wait.

  He struggled, but I had a good eight inches of reach on him. His face went purple, capillaries swelled and burst under his skin, and he tried for that little knife but it clattered to the ground right when I pressed with my thumbs and felt his hyoid snap. His eyes flittered and rolled backward. The air rattled out his body with a last gurgle, and I smelled his bowels. His tongue slumped out like a fat, exhausted slug.

  Setting him down I had the urge to offer an explanation, to convince him it was only because of the girls. That wouldn’t have made it go any easier for him, though.

  I checked both ends of the alley, where the streetlight cut into the dark, and I pulled my truck up so that the door was flush with the alley. I threw him in the passenger side, propped his body against the heavy tinting of the window.

  I’d planned to get out on a feeder road where it was dark, wrap him up in the tarp and tuck it behind the cab, in the bed of the truck. But driving out of town, he seemed to look natural that way, against the door, as if only passed out, and though the cab smelled with his dying shit there was an intimacy persisting between us.

  I felt a mutual recognition. Like he knew something about the big empty fields, the one-room apartments, coffee made on a hot plate, the voice that calls lights out. And for my part I was the only one who understood the terror of where he found himself at the end of everything, in that alley with me.

  I drove him out of town like that, slumped against the door. My drunken friend. My last buddy. My weak and reckless younger self.

  La Porte was about thirty miles outside Galveston, and a marsh there fed into Galveston Bay. I had made a couple trips here before, working for Sam Gino. Long time ago. It was the same as I remembered. A backwater called Marais du Chien, a big, black, tangled mess of sinkholes and sloughs that ran in circles, and every part of it looked alike, a maze of cypress and pine and willow crawling with alligators and snakes, ancient garfish the size of canoes. An obsolete irrigation road led to an isolated bend and a patch of forest that dropped into marsh, and these things were still there, only more overgrown, the giant cane and snarled vines and high trees overlaid by a cover of kudzu that made it all seem like a single entity, a prehistoric creature whose leafy silhouette crested along the brighter hem of night.

  I kept my lights off on the irrigation road and parked between some pines near the bend. I tore a hole in one of the garbage bags and wore it like a barber’s apron, then dumped his body out the truck. I took his keys and wallet, stripped his shirt and pants, and then I cut the cooling flesh under his arms, where the blood was listless and thick.

  I was going to slip a few bags over him and use the rope to truss him up, but I heard things splashing and rippling the water, and looking out in the blackness I could almost see the gator push itself into the marsh with a swipe of its tail, heard it break the surface with a soft plop. Wings flapped somewhere.

  I hoisted him up the rise at the bend. He was light, even as deadweight. I dumped him over my shoulder and he splashed down into the dark. I listened, heard the low rustle and watery sound as things moved to investigate. Then I tossed his clothes into a garbage bag, tied it off, and slung it into the marsh. The water below started churning and splashing.

  On the way out of La Porte I dumped his wallet in the trash can outside a McDonald’s, and then I stopped at the first store and bought a pint of Jim Beam, which was horrible but all they had.

  Rocky still wasn’t at the motel, and the lights in the sisters’ room were off. I let myself into Killer Tray’s room. He didn’t have much, but I took what clothes were there and his books and dumped them all in a garbage bag, made sure the coast was clear, and hauled them out to a Dumpster the next block over.

  Then I went to my room and showered, tossed my clothes, and sat in the dark facing the window. I sipped from a new, better bottle of whiskey, and smoked cigarettes, watching outside with my knees bouncing and fists clenching.

  Sometime around one a long, dark-colored Cadillac floated into the lot, its squared front cutting the blackness with its lights. Not the kind of vehicle you’d expect to wash up here. The windows were tinted and the engine was soft, though you could hear its quiet power humming.

  Rocky stepped out the passenger side. She wobbled a little on high heels, and it looked like a new dress she was wearing, something like the hide of a zebra, and it hugged her tightly. She shut the door and kind of staggered backward, as if drunk, and as the car pulled away it caught her squinting in the headlights, and I saw her pause and draw a hand flat against her mouth when she noticed my truck.

  When I first opened the door her face wore this smug, dazed expression, but as I marched closer it faded and she became scared, managed to say “Roy” in a high, crackling voice.

  I didn’t break stride but clamped her wrist and pulled her along back to my room.

  I threw her inside. She fell on her knees and hit the mattress with her head, a bit dramatically, and I kicked the door shut. Pulled the curtain.

  “Roy, wait.” She inched back on the ground. “Wait.” The dress hiked up her legs and one of its straps fell from her shoulder, and I could see a mottling of gray bruise around her upper thigh.

  “You shouldn’t wear mascara,” I said. “You don’t know how. You look ridiculous.”

  She tried to say something as I pulled off my belt, but when she met my glare her voice left her, and her eyes widened on the belt buckle. She had thought it would go one way, that she’d be able to talk and call me names and squirm out of it. “I thought you were gone!” she said.

  I tugged her up by her hair and held her so she had to stand on her toes to keep her scalp, and tears spilled down the steep slopes of her cheeks.

  I just stared at her that way. Her nose was swollen red and her shocked eyes blinked behind a wet glaze, the whites ruptured with red. Probably still high. Her chest heaved.

  I slapped her face with my palm and she fell across the bed.

  She yelped, “That guy, Tray, he told me you knew. He showed me that newspaper!”

  “My life,” I said. “That little girl’s life. You told him about us?”

  “What—no—”

  I folded the belt and snapped it between my hands.

  “Roy, Roy.” She fumbled her words, weeping, holding her hands up. “That Tray guy’d been asking about you. He asked me about you first time I met him, that morning we were all out there. I told him you were a tough dude, our uncle, and, like, dangerous. That’s it. I thought you left. He bought me some beer. All I told him. He showed me the, the—newspaper—”

  “All that talk about being straight. It don’t occur to you to tell me you’re a murderer?”

  She just shook her head, stared at the floor. “You don’t. He—he—”

  “You
made me an accessory. That little girl.”

  She shook her head.

  “And you start whoring the minute I step out.”

  “Step out? I thought you were gone. You didn’t say anything. Just ran off. Then that Tray guy offered me a beer, told me you took your bags. I had to get some money, man. What’d you expect me to do? What do you care?” She seemed too stunned to stand, and her head lolled on her neck, her words slurred.

  “Where’d you get the bruises?”

  She pulled her skirt down and shrugged, curled her legs up.

  “Same place you got the dress?”

  She moaned a long, stuttering sound, like she couldn’t catch a breath, mashed her face against her knees, breathing in spasms.

  “My God, I’m a stupid son of a bitch.” I crouched next to her and let the heavy buckle sway in front her eyes. “It wouldn’t matter except you got that little girl with you. You took her out her house and now you got her in this. And me. Happens you get busted selling your little ass? What about that? I mean, shit, you realize that’s illegal, right? Let’s forget the whole issue of dignity and safety and shit—but what the fuck are you doing?”

  I grabbed her by the chin, hard, and tilted her face up. Her nostrils flared and her gaze, paralyzed, had a rabid fervor to it that looked to me like actual madness, barely constrained.

  “That woman around the way? Pick up your head. Look at me. That woman around the way. She’s about to call the cops on you. About to call social services on Tiffany. Going to tell them a whore abandoned her daughter here. You know where that leaves Tiffany? You know what foster care’s like? Are you listening? Look at me. You don’t have time to cry for yourself, you goddamned trash.”

  She turned her face away again, shook her head. She said no over and over. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  “Cancel that. I don’t care. You’re going to blow everything for yourself, and you want to pretend you’re too dumb to know it.” I kept hateful eyes on her until she stopped heaving. I lifted her up by her arms.

  “Talk to me now. Tell me what you think you’re doing.”

  “I didn’t mean. I mean, I lost track of time.”

  “With Lance? What was that? What about what happened in New Orleans? What about your friend in the bedroom?”

  She hissed at me. “What am I— How was I gonna take care of her? Huh? We need money, Roy! You left!” She wiped her nose and straightened her dress. “You’re not staying around. I know that. So what was I gonna do? What do you even care? What was I gonna do?”

  “There’s a few hundred answers to that question before you get to whoring, I think. Who was that? In the Caddy?”

  “A man. Just. I met him the other night. He was in town a few days and wanted company. He paid good. I can buy up another week here, get food. Some more clothes.”

  “Look at yourself.”

  “You think I care?”

  “No. I don’t rightly know what you care about. I can’t imagine. Look at you. You’re all coked out.”

  “No. I-I didn’t—” But then she fell to that hard crying again and made like she was incapable of speech. She curled against the bed and put her head in her hands.

  “Dammit. It could have been fine, Rocky.”

  “Where’d you go? Where’d you go?”

  “Like this is my fault. I got no reason to stay around you, anymore. You understand?”

  “Whatever.”

  I wrapped the belt around my hand and stood over her. The single lamp drew the room’s shadows out long and spiny and fell over her face in ghoulish markings. Salt air and the remnants of her sex, musky, damp. The leather creaked around my knuckles. I didn’t want to, but it’s like beating a dog you love.

  It’s important to teach it; it’s just a shame this is how the stupid animal learns.

  But like a double-barreled impact one of those coughing fits struck me, and the weights slammed into my chest. I doubled and spat, savage hacking, flecked with blood.

  Stars burst in my eyes, my head swam. I couldn’t catch my breath and dropped to my knees. The pain was suffocating, each bark like getting struck in the chest by a sledgehammer. My ribs ached, bruised insides, flashes of light dancing in my vision, and I could picture old Mr. Death marching through my soft tissues, each cough a swat of his cane.

  “Roy?” She’d crept closer. “Roy? Come on, man. Are you—should I call?”

  I reached out to stop her. Grabbing her hand and squeezing it too hard, holding it like an anchor as I coughed—roars, scraping, parched sounds—but she didn’t let go. She held mine with both of hers and squeezed back until I’d stopped, and she kept holding it afterward.

  Once it passed I needed some time to gather myself, and when I did my face was wet with tears and snot. I looked at her and I could tell she saw the fear on me.

  I wiped my mouth, but there was no blood.

  “What’ll it take?” I wheezed. I sounded like an old man, someone who’d gargled Drano. “What’ll it take? What?”

  “Don’t. Just don’t leave us, man. I can’t—” She wiped at her face and clutched my hand harder, then let go.

  “Christ.”

  She stroked her palm with the fingers of the other hand, and watched me nervously. “Shouldn’t you see a doctor?”

  “You need a weatherman to tell you it’s raining?”

  “But you’re sick. Okay? I know you don’t want me reminding you. But you’re not doing anything about it. You’re just drinking. Smoking.”

  “The way I’m sick. It’s not something you get better from.”

  “Roy . . .” Her face twisted up, slowly, like a child who begins to realize the extent of some bad news. “Back in Orange. I, I-I—” Her stuttering got real bad then, and she brought both hands to her mouth.

  “Settle down. You’re okay. Nobody’s going to connect that with you. I got rid of the gun.”

  She looked at her lap and started crying, but a different, more sorrowful sort.

  “Hey. It’s over and done. It was done. This won’t come back to you. The only person you need to square it with is yourself.”

  “I’m so—” She shook her head. “You don’t. He used to say, to tell me, it was my fault—” Embarrassed grief shuddered over her face, and she seemed like a little girl again, and I could feel how deeply she hated herself.

  “I don’t doubt he deserved it. Understand? I have no doubt. If you told me why, I’d probably have done it myself. It doesn’t matter. It’s done. You got to forget it.”

  I stood and helped her up, and when I put my hand on her shoulder she set her head against my chest and cried there.

  “That’s how it is with these things. You don’t have to feel it. You can say what you feel and what you don’t. Hold back what you want. If something doesn’t work, let it go.”

  She clutched her arms around me, such nimble strength in them.

  “Do you believe in hell, Roy?”

  “No,” I said. “Or not anywhere but on Earth.”

  “I have to get Tiffany. Should—”

  “I’m going to square it with Nancy. The only reason nobody got called was they all love Tiff so much.”

  “I know. They do. That’s what I thought, Roy, when—I mean, I could see them ladies and see they wouldn’t let nothing bad happen to her, or—”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “No. I know.”

  Her knees wobbled and I sat her on the chair. She still needed talking down. I said, “So tell me about him.”

  “I don’t want to.” She shook her head.

  I thought a moment. “She’s not your sister, is she?”

  She shot a shocked look at me, then bowed her head again and started crying.

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s all right.”

  “And I left her. I left her behind.”

  I had no response, just let her sit and steady her breathing. I rubbed my chest and waited for her.

  When she spoke her voice was soft,
but directed with a new sobriety. “What happened was I got sick. She wasn’t around, Mom. Sometimes she left town to work a convention or something, just a couple days, like. But she wasn’t around. I’d gotten a flu or something from spending the night under this trestle bridge. That’s another story. But when I was home I got fevered and had to stay in bed. It was just me and Gary and so he moved the TV in my room for me, and I remember thinking that was nice of him. We didn’t have no medicine around, and he was drinking from a bottle. He said it was good for when you were sick. That his mom’d give him and his brothers a little whiskey to fight off a cold. And so he sat in there with me watching TV, and every now and then he’d offer me a shot in a little Dixie cup. I remember it was a Dixie cup. And after a while I was feeling better, like, happier, and I didn’t care that I was sick. And he was telling me jokes and we’d laugh at what was on the TV. The lights were real low, just a couple candles and the TV, and he was sitting beside me in bed, which I didn’t feel like minding because I was getting so happy. He was so fat, though, the bed sunk so it kind of rolled me toward him while I was drifting off like. Then, I don’t know, it was late—I like woke up, except I must have already been awake. I don’t really know how it happened. But I woke up and it was happening. He was on top of me.” She shook her head, confounded, as if it were somebody else’s story. “He was so fat. Like I couldn’t breathe. He had like pimples on his shoulders, big red clusters, and he smelled like crawfish, like mud.”

  I thought about things you can’t survive, even if they don’t kill you.

  She went on, “Anyway, when Mom gets back. I don’t know. I think he told her or something. Told her it was my fault or something. But she was different to me, toward me. I felt like screaming every time I saw him. I didn’t know what things were. I didn’t understand what was happening. I started getting big and Mom just left. Then Gary was saying how it would be a good thing. He could get benefits from the state.” She put her head in her hand. “I started getting big and I couldn’t get out the house. He only took me to the hospital at the end.”

  I leaned toward her. “Go to your room. Take a bath or something. Relax, put it out your mind, come down. Get your mind right. This, what you were doing, that’s over.”