The Recruiter stood. “Now look here, son—”
Blackburn pulled the Colt Python from his coat. “So you sent him to boot camp last year, in the summer. In Texas. He died. He died running. He couldn’t breathe.”
The Recruiter backed away from the desk. He held up his granite hands. “Now look, son,” he said, his voice soothing. “Every recruit is given a physical. If that had shown anything serious, he wouldn’t have been let in.”
“The physical must have missed it,” Blackburn said. “But you didn’t. Ernie told you. His letter said so. And you don’t remember.”
The Recruiter licked his lips. His stomach rumbled. “Sure I do, son. I told him that the doctors would check it out and make the decision. It wasn’t mine to make. You can’t kill me for that.”
“What color was his hair?” Blackburn asked.
“Excuse me?”
Blackburn stood and pointed the pistol at the Recruiter’s abdomen. “You say I can’t kill you for not keeping him out of the Army because of his asthma. So I won’t. I’ll kill you for lying. You say the Army never loses anything. That must include memory. So what color was his hair? It was wavy on top. Very distinctive. What color was it?”
The Recruiter was sweating. He farted. “Look, son, I talk to hundreds of young men a year. I can’t possibly remember everything about every one of them.”
Blackburn cocked the pistol. “But this wasn’t just anyone, Sergeant,” he said. “You signed him eighteen months ago. His name was Ernest T. Tompkins the Third. He told you that he had asthma. He died at boot camp. It was reported on all three TV stations and in the Wichita Eagle. When I called my mother, she told me that she has the clipping, and that it includes a quote from you. ‘It is always a tragedy when a young man dies,’ you said.”
“Oh,” the Recruiter said. His gut moaned.
“What color was his hair?”
“Dark brown. Almost black.”
Blackburn lowered the pistol. He looked at the floor. He wished he still knew how to cry. “Ernie had asthma. He died at boot camp.”
The Recruiter stepped forward. “I’m sorry, son,” he said. “These things happen. All we can do is grieve, and go on.” He held out a hand. “Give me the gun.”
Blackburn looked up. “Red,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“His hair was red.” Blackburn raised the Python and shot the Recruiter in the belly. The Recruiter stumbled backward, then lurched forward, yelling. Red ooze bubbled from the olive cloth. Blackburn shot him again. There was a hissing noise and a smell of shit. The Recruiter dropped to his knees and rested his cheek on the desktop. His fist smashed the tank. His eyes glared at Blackburn. They didn’t blink.
Blackburn put the gun away. “Ernie had asthma,” he said. “Ernie died at boot camp. Ernie’s hair was bright red.” He reached down and pushed the model cannon across the desk. “Ernie was my friend.”
He stopped the cannon a quarter of an inch from the Recruiter’s nose.
“Boom,” he said. Then he turned and went out to the sharp wind of the Kansas autumn.
THREE
BLACKBURN AND THE CHICKEN-KILLER
Jimmy had been in town to see Ernie that Wednesday, so he didn’t know that his mother and Jasmine had left until he got home. He figured out that he had been reading comic books in Ernie’s room when Dad had smacked Mom for the fifth time that week. Mom had taken the old Chrysler station wagon, leaving the GMC pickup. Jimmy was sure that she would have taken him along too, if he had been home. She would at least have given him a choice.
Summer vacation didn’t end for three more weeks, and Dad would be home a lot since he had been laid off. Jimmy didn’t like the prospect. Not that he liked the prospect of school either. He had been dreading eighth grade. At the end of seventh grade, he had noticed that some of the girls were growing breasts, and some of the boys were getting hair on their faces. These were not good omens. Still, he would have preferred school over staying home alone with Dad. It wasn’t even that Dad was a bad guy. It was just that he didn’t know what else to do with his tough breaks but pass them along. With Mom and Jasmine gone, Jimmy would be in for more than his share.
He was sure of that right after Mom left. Dad tried to cook hamburgers for supper, and started a grease fire. He picked up the skillet and ran outside, burning his hands. When he came back in, he cussed Jimmy for not helping. Jimmy said that he hadn’t known what to do, and Dad smacked him and told him to get to his room. Jimmy went into the hot little room and shut the door. He read the Spider-Man comic book that Ernie had given him. After a while he had to pee, but Dad hadn’t said he could come out. He waited until he heard Dad’s snore, then crept out through the kitchen and down the hall to the bathroom. He peed sitting down so he wouldn’t have to turn on the light, and aimed so that the stream hit under the rim instead of in the water. He didn’t flush.
In the morning he stayed in bed until Dad yelled for him to get up and do his chores. He got up and put on a T-shirt, cutoffs, and sneakers, then went out to feed the chickens.
The chickens mobbed him. Jimmy hated them. They were loud, smelled bad, and crapped all over the place. Dad had brought them home as chicks in March. There had been fifty of them. They had been cute, fuzzy little things. Some of them had even seemed smart and had taken to following Jimmy or Jasmine around. Then half of them had died, and the rest had grown up fast and gotten stupider. By the time they’d reached their growth, they had become brainless. Now they were eating and shitting machines. They laid eggs too, but broke a lot of them and covered the rest with chickenshit. Jimmy dumped a pile of feed on the ground for them to swarm over, then stepped away to drop a handful for the rooster.
All of the chicks had grown up into hens, so Dad had brought home a rooster in June. It was hideous. None of the pictures Jimmy had ever seen of roosters had looked anything like it. The pictures were of strutting, broad-chested birds with bright red combs and gold and green feathers. But this rooster waddled like a duck, had a dull pink comb that was torn, and feathers the color of old cornbread. It dragged its tail in the dirt. The hens often ganged up and pecked the hell out of it. It had lost a lot of feathers in the past two months, and the bare patches were scabby. It waddled over and gobbled a few mouthfuls of the feed Jimmy dropped for it, and then three of the hens ran it off.
Jimmy went into the plywood coop and gathered the eggs. There were ten that weren’t broken. That was better than usual. He cleaned up the rest as best he could and took the ten to the well pump to wash them.
Ten. Farm eggs sold for thirty cents a dozen in Tuttle County, when people bothered to stop and buy them. Most folks just spent the extra dime to get them at the store with the rest of their groceries. Where Dad had gotten the idea that chickens would make money, Jimmy didn’t know. Someone had lied to him. Or maybe things had been different when Dad was a kid, and he hadn’t been able to figure out that the world had changed. The chicken feed alone cost more than the eggs brought in, never mind the trouble of dealing with the chickens themselves. Jimmy wondered what was wrong with Dad’s brain.
He took the eggs into the house. Dad was eating toast in the kitchen.
“How many?” Dad asked.
“Ten.”
Dad shook his head. “Don’t know what’s the matter with them.” He eyed Jimmy. “You been chasing them?”
“No, sir,” Jimmy said. He put the eggs into the bowl in the refrigerator.
“You been breaking any?”
“No, sir.”
Dad put more bread into the toaster. “Want breakfast?”
“Sure.” Dad gave him a look. “I mean, yes, sir.”
The toast popped up. Dad rubbed each slice with a stick of oleo and handed one to Jimmy. Jimmy said thank you and sat at the table to eat.
“I’m going into Wichita,” Dad said.
“Can I come?” Jimmy asked. Once in a while Dad would take him along to the hardware or auto parts stores. Jimmy liked the men who wo
rked there. They were the kind of men who would say hi to a guy even if he couldn’t drive yet.
“No,” Dad said. “And don’t go into Wantoda either. I want you here when your mother gets home. You tell her I’m checking on a machine shop job. I’ll be home for supper.”
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy said. “Would it be okay if Ernie came out?”
“Long as he doesn’t eat anything,” Dad said. “I work hard enough to feed my own kids.” He left the kitchen. The front screen door opened and banged shut. The pickup started and drove off.
Jimmy finished his toast, then put a pan of water on the stove. When it was boiling, he took an egg from the refrigerator and dropped it in. It hit the bottom of the pan and cracked, sending white streamers through the bubbling water. Jimmy let it boil until the water was almost gone. Then he shut off the stove and took the pan to the sink. He ran water over the egg and tried to peel it. It was still hot, and it stung his fingers. A lot of the white came off with the shell. He ate what was left. The yolk crumbled hot and dry in his mouth. The August day was heating up outside.
* * *
He phoned Ernie, and Ernie asked his mother for permission to ride his bike out. Jimmy heard Ernie’s mom say that she guessed it was all right. Ernie’s mom had a quavering voice and always sounded as if she were about to cry, so Jimmy could never tell how she felt about what she said. His own mother’s feelings were always clear. She laughed when things were good, and she bawled when things were bad. She bawled too much.
Jimmy took his BB gun outside and shot at sparrows to kill time until Ernie showed up. There was a hot wind, and his shots curved wide. Sometimes he could see the BBs swerving as they flew, going into orbit like tiny golden satellites. Some of the chickens came running, expecting more feed, and he shot one of them in the rump. They took off squawking. Dad would switch him to within an inch of his life for an offense like that, but Jimmy sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him about it. The stupid chicken wasn’t hurt, anyway. Jimmy would have liked to put one through its head, in one eye and out the other.
Between shots, he looked down the Potwin road toward Wantoda. Finally he saw Ernie. Ernie was coming slow despite having the wind at his back. Jimmy took his BB gun to the porch and rode his bike out to meet his friend. He put his head down and stood to pump against the wind. The pavement was oily, cooking in the sun. His bike rattled.
When he came within fifty yards of Ernie, he charged him as if to collide head-on. Ernie yelled and stopped where he was. Jimmy whizzed past, then turned and coasted back, letting the wind push him.
“Hey, pussy,” he said, coming alongside.
Ernie’s wavy red hair was damp, and his face was flushed. He was wearing a blue nylon backpack that made his narrow shoulders look even narrower. He was wheezing. “Pussy yourself,” he said. He was hoarse.
“What’s the matter?”
“Dust or something. Can’t hardly breathe.”
“Come on and get a drink.” Jimmy pumped ahead and waited in the driveway until Ernie arrived. They went into the house together and made Kool-Aid lemonade, then drank it with ice and ate the bologna sandwiches and Cheez Curls that Ernie had brought. They discussed the Spider-Man comic book that Ernie had given Jimmy and agreed that the Green Goblin was not a worthy adversary. He acted like a queer.
When the food was gone, they went outside and took turns shooting at the sparrows. They had trouble hitting within a foot of their targets.
“Too much wind,” Jimmy said.
“You should do it at night, anyway,” Ernie said. “You put a flashlight on them. They get hypnotized and can’t move. We can try it tonight, if you want.”
“Maybe. My Dad’ll be home.”
“So?”
“So I don’t know if he’ll want us to.”
Ernie took a shot and hit a tree branch a few inches from a sparrow. The bird took off. So did every other bird in the tree. The boys waited for them to come back.
“Your mom and sister at the store?” Ernie asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Jimmy stared up into the tree. “I mean I don’t know. They took off yesterday while I was at your place. They aren’t back yet.”
“Oh.” Ernie handed Jimmy the BB gun, then picked up his lemonade and took a drink. “Family troubles, huh?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I think they just went to see my grandma in Oklahoma.”
“Where in Oklahoma?”
“Tulsa.”
The birds were starting to come back, so Jimmy and Ernie lowered their voices.
“That’s where Oral Roberts University is,” Ernie said. “That’s where my mom wants me to go to college. They have a great basketball team.”
“I wouldn’t go to a college named after a goddamn preacher,” Jimmy said.
Ernie made a face, as if the lemonade were sour. “I didn’t say I was going to go. I said my mom wants me to. She’s big on that prayer tower they have with the eternal flame. You can call in with prayers, and guys’ll go up in the tower and pray them for you.”
“For how long?”
“I dunno. Until the prayers get answered or the guys have to poop.”
They both laughed, and the returning birds spooked.
“Hell,” Jimmy said, “there they go again.”
“Wait until night and put a light on them,” Ernie said. He took another drink of lemonade. “You believe in God?”
Jimmy shrugged. “I guess. But I don’t think preachers know any more about God than anyone else. Churches are a racket.”
“Yeah,” Ernie said. “You should see the money they rake in at the United Methodist. I wouldn’t go, except my folks make me. But I think prayers work, sometimes.”
“Grow up.”
Ernie spit a lemonade-goober at the ground. “Not the prayer tower and church and stuff. Just telling God what you think.”
“I’ve tried it. It don’t work.”
“Maybe you tried to do it the way the preachers say you should. Maybe you never tried it your own way. Just saying what you want. Or what you think about things.”
Jimmy grunted. He didn’t like it when Ernie got weird like this.
One of the sparrows came back to the tree and perched on a high, bare twig. Jimmy raised the BB gun and sighted.
“Oh God,” he said, “please let me kill this fucking bird. In Your name I pray, Amen.” He squeezed the trigger. The BB gun popped. Jimmy didn’t see the BB fly.
The sparrow twitched, then flopped over. One of its feet held on to the twig for a few seconds before it fell. It bounced once when it hit the ground.
Jimmy and Ernie ran over to it. There was blood on a weed it had brushed against on the way down. It wasn’t moving.
“I’ll be damned,” Jimmy said. “God came through.”
Ernie cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke in a booming voice.
“Thou art welcome,” he said.
* * *
Ernie left at five o’clock. Jimmy rode alongside for the first mile, then said good-bye and turned back. He was within a quarter mile of home when Dad’s truck pulled up beside him.
“You were told to stay home!” Dad yelled. His face was greasy with sweat.
“I did,” Jimmy said. “Ernie came out and I just rode partway back with him.”
“You were told to stay home!” Dad yelled again. The pickup burned rubber and went past.
Dad was waiting beside the truck when Jimmy entered the driveway. He yanked Jimmy off the bike and dragged him into the garage.
“When I give an order,” Dad said, “I expect to be obeyed.” He took down the piece of fiberglass fishing rod from its nails. “Drop your pants.”
Jimmy forced down his fear. Not this time, he thought. He wouldn’t do it this time. But then Dad would beat him up even worse.
“Mom called,” Jimmy said. His voice quavered like Ern
ie’s mother’s. But at least he wasn’t crying.
The switch wasn’t cutting through the air the way it always did. It remained still in Dad’s hand.
“What did she say?”
Jimmy didn’t care what he told Dad then. He would say anything. He would say anything and keep on saying it as long as it kept the fiberglass rod still. He was thirteen. He was too old to be switched. He was too old to be treated like some goddamn baby.
“She said she was at Grandma’s. She said she wouldn’t be home tonight, but not to worry. She said to tell you she was sorry she got mad and she’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” The switch lowered.
Jimmy licked his lips. “She said she hopes tomorrow, but maybe the next day. She said Grandma was really glad to see her and she couldn’t just show up and then leave right away, so it might not be tomorrow but the next day. But not to worry because the car’s okay and she’s sorry she got mad. And she said to tell you there’s pot pies in the freezer.”
Dad closed his eyes for a second and rubbed his mouth with his free hand. “Anything else?”
Jimmy tried to think of something more. He couldn’t. Much more would sound like the lie it was, anyway. Mom wouldn’t have talked a long time on Grandma’s phone bill.
“No, sir. Except she said we shouldn’t call Grandma’s house because Grandma’s in a bad mood.” Dad would believe that.
Dad snorted. “Like I would,” he said. “Turn around and bend over. You still got a whipping coming. You got to start doing what you’re told.”
Jimmy turned around and bent over. Dad gave him five, but they weren’t hard. And he hadn’t had to drop his pants. He had won, so long as Dad didn’t find out that he’d lied. And it hadn’t been a total lie, anyway. Where else would Mom be but at Grandma’s?
He and Dad had turkey pot pies for supper. The crust was black on the edges, but it still tasted okay. Jimmy burned his tongue on the filling. He always did that.
Afterward, he and Dad watched a John Wayne cowboy movie on TV. There was a dab of ice milk left in the freezer, and they ate it.
When Jimmy went to bed, the burned patch on his tongue tingled, keeping him awake. He thought about the sparrow he had shot that afternoon. Mom had said more than once that God counted every sparrow that fell. Mom didn’t approve of him shooting them. He wondered what she would think if she knew that he had prayed to kill this one.
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