The Best American Noir of the Century

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  But now he moved in concert, like an athlete or a jungle cat.

  That’s what you do to men, Jewel: you give them a confidence so total it finds their limbs.

  “Perkin,” Blue said, and rolled his eyes at Jewel and they both laughed.

  She not as hard as he did, though.

  Elgin could see the root of doubt in her eyes, could feel her loneliness in the way she fiddled with the menu, touched her cheekbone, spoke too loudly, as if she wasn’t just telling Elgin and Blue how Perkin had mistreated her, but the whole IHOP as well, so people could get it straight that she wasn’t the villain, and if after she returned to Perkin she had to leave him again, they’d know why.

  Of course she was going back to Perkin.

  Elgin could tell by the glances she gave Blue — unsure, slightly embarrassed, maybe a bit repulsed. What had begun as a nighttime ride into the unknown had turned cold and stale during the hard yellow lurch into morning.

  Blue wiped his mouth, said, “Be right back,” and walked to the bathroom with surer strides than Elgin had ever seen on the man.

  Elgin looked at Jewel.

  She gripped the handle of her coffee cup between the tips of her thumb and index finger and turned the cup in slow revolutions around the saucer, made a soft scraping noise that climbed up Elgin’s spine like a termite trapped under the skin.

  “You ain’t sleeping with him, are you?” Elgin said quietly.

  Jewel’s head jerked up and she looked over her shoulder, then back at Elgin. “What? God, no. We’re just.. . He’s my pal. That’s all. Like when we were kids.”

  “We ain’t kids.”

  “I know. Don’t you know I know?” She fingered the coffee cup again. “I miss you,” she said softly. “I miss you. When you coming back?”

  Elgin kept his voice low. “Me and Shelley, we’re getting pretty serious.”

  She gave him a small smile that he instantly hated. It seemed to know him; it seemed like everything he was and everything he wasn’t was caught in the curl of her lips. “You miss the lake, Elgin. Don’t lie.”

  He shrugged.

  “You ain’t ever going to marry Shelley Briggs, have babies, be an upstanding citizen.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Because you got too many demons in you, boy. And they need me. They need the lake. They need to cry out every now and then.”

  Elgin looked down at his own coffee cup. “You going back to Perkin?”

  She shook her head hard. “No way. Uh-uh. No way.”

  Elgin nodded, even though he knew she was lying. If Elgin’s demons needed the lake, needed to be unbridled, Jewel’s needed Perkin. They needed security. They needed to know the money’d never run out, that she’d never go two full days without a solid meal, like she had so many times as a child in the trailer park.

  Perkin was what she saw when she looked down at her empty coffee cup, when she touched her cheek. Perkin was at their nice home with his feet up, watching a game, petting the dog, and she was in the IHOP in the middle of a Sunday when the food was at its oldest and coldest, with one guy who loved her and one who fucked her, wondering how she got there.

  Blue came back to the table, moving with that new sure stride, a broad smile in the wide swing of his arms.

  “How we doing?” Blue said. “Huh? How we doing?” And his lips burst into a grin so huge Elgin expected it to keep going right off the sides of his face.

  ~ * ~

  Jewel left Blue’s place two days later, walked into Perkin Lut’s Auto Emporium and into Perkins office, and by the time anyone went to check, they’d left through the back door, gone home for the day.

  Elgin tried to get a hold of Blue for three days — called constantly, went by his shack and knocked on the door, even staked out the tree house along I-95 where he fired on the dogs.

  He’d decided to break into Blue’s place, was fixing to do just that, when he tried one last call from his trailer that third night and Blue answered with a strangled “Hello.”

  “It’s me. How you doing?”

  “Can’t talk now.”

  “Come on, Blue. It’s me. You OK?”

  “All alone,” Blue said.

  “I know. I’ll come by.”

  “You do, I’ll leave.”

  “Blue.”

  “Leave me alone for a spell, Elgin. OK?”

  ~ * ~

  That night Elgin sat alone in his trailer, smoking cigarettes, staring at the walls.

  Blue’d never had much of anything his whole life— not a job he enjoyed, not a woman he could consider his — and then between the dogs and Jewel Lut he’d probably thought he’d got it all at once. Hit pay dirt.

  Elgin remembered the dirty little kid sitting down by the drainage ditch, hugging himself. Six, maybe seven years old, waiting to die.

  You had to wonder sometimes why some people were even born. You had to wonder what kind of creature threw bodies into the world, expected them to get along when they’d been given no tools, no capacity to get any either.

  In Vietnam, this fat boy, name of Woodson from South Dakota, had been the least popular guy in the platoon. He wasn’t smart, he wasn’t athletic, he wasn’t funny, he wasn’t even personable. He just was. Elgin had been running beside him one day through a sea of rice paddies, their boots making sucking sounds every step they took, and someone fired a hell of a round from the other side of the paddies, ripped Woodson’s head in half so completely all Elgin saw running beside him for a few seconds was the lower half of Woodson’s face. No hair, no forehead, no eyes. Just half the nose, a mouth, a chin.

  Thing was, Woodson kept running, kept plunging his feet in and out of the water, making those sucking sounds, M-15 hugged to his chest, for a good eight or ten steps. Kid was dead, he’s still running. Kid had no reason to hold on, but he don’t know it, he keeps running.

  What spark of memory, hope, or dream had kept him going?

  You had to wonder.

  ~ * ~

  In Elgin’s dream that night, a platoon of ice-gray Vietcong rose in a straight line from the center of Coopers Lake while Elgin was inside the cabin with Shelley and Jewel. He penetrated them both somehow, their separate torsos branching out from the same pair of hips, their four legs clamping at the small of his back, this Shelley-Jewel creature crying out for more, more, more.

  And Elgin could see the VC platoon drifting in formation toward the shore, their guns pointed, their faces hidden behind thin wisps of green fog.

  The Shelley-Jewel creature arched her backs on the bed below him, and Woodson and Blue stood in the corner of the room watching as their dogs padded across the floor, letting out low growls and drooling.

  Shelley dissolved into Jewel as the VC platoon reached the porch steps and released their safeties all at once, the sound like the ratcheting of a thousand shotguns. Sweat exploded in Elgin’s hair, poured down his body like warm rain, and the VC fired in concert, the bullets shearing the walls of the cabin, lifting the roof off into the night. Elgin looked above him at the naked night sky, the stars zipping by like tracers, the yellow moon full and mean, the shivering branches of birch trees. Jewel rose and straddled him, bit his lip, and dug her nails into his back, and the bullets danced through his hair, and then Jewel was gone, her writhing flesh having dissolved into his own.

  Elgin sat naked on the bed, his arms stretched wide, waiting for the bullets to find his back, to shear his head from his body the way they’d sheared the roof from the cabin, and the yellow moon burned above him as the dogs howled and Blue and Woodson held each other in the corner of the room and wept like children as the bullets drilled holes in their faces.

  ~ * ~

  Big Bobby came by the trailer late the next morning, a Sunday, and said, “Blue’s a bit put out about losing his job.”

  “What?” Elgin sat on the edge of his bed, pulled on his socks. “You picked now —now, Bobby —to fire him?”

  “It’s in his eyes,” Big Bobby said. “L
ike you said. You can see it.”

  Elgin had seen Big Bobby scared before, plenty of times, but now the man was trembling.

  Elgin said, “Where is he?”

  ~ * ~

  Blue’s front door was open, hanging half down the steps from a busted hinge. Elgin said, “Blue.”

  “Kitchen.”

  He sat in his Jockeys at the table, cleaning his rifle, each shiny black piece spread in front of him on the table. Elgin’s eyes watered a bit because there was a stench coming from the back of the house that he felt might strip his nostrils bare. He realized then that he’d never asked Big Bobby or Blue what they’d done with all those dead dogs.

  Blue said, “Have a seat, bud. Beer in the fridge if you’re thirsty.”

  Elgin wasn’t looking in that fridge. “Lost your job, huh?”

  Blue wiped the bolt with a shammy cloth. “Happens.” He looked at Elgin. “Where you been lately?”

  “I called you last night.”

  “I mean in general.”

  “Working.”

  “No, I mean at night.”

  “Blue, you been” — he almost said “playing house with Jewel Lut” but caught himself— “up in a fucking tree, how do you know where I been at night?”

  “I don’t,” Blue said. “Why I’m asking.”

  Elgin said, “I’ve been at my trailer or down at Doubles, same as usual.”

  “With Shelley Briggs, right?”

  Slowly, Elgin said, “Yeah.”

  “I’m just asking, buddy. I mean, when we all going to go out? You, me, your new girl.”

  The pits that covered Blue’s face like a layer of bad meat had faded some from all those nights in the tree.

  Elgin said, “Anytime you want.”

  Blue put down the bolt. “How ‘bout right now?” He stood and walked into the bedroom just off the kitchen. “Let me just throw on some duds.”

  “She’s working now, Blue.”

  “At Perkin Lut’s? Hell, it’s almost noon. I’ll talk to Perkin about that Dodge he sold me last year, and when she’s ready we’ll take her out someplace nice.” He came back into the kitchen wearing a soiled brown T-shirt and jeans.

  “Hell,” Elgin said, “I don’t want the girl thinking I’ve got some serious love for her or something. We come by for lunch, next thing she’ll expect me to drop her off in the mornings, pick her up at night.”

  Blue was reassembling the rifle, snapping all those shiny pieces together so fast, Elgin figured he could do it blind. He said, “Elgin, you got to show them some affection sometimes. I mean, Jesus.” He pulled a thin brass bullet from his T-shirt pocket and slipped it in the breech, followed it with four more, then slid the bolt home.

  “Yeah, but you know what I’m saying, bud?” Elgin watched Blue nestle the stock in the space between his left hip and ribs, let the barrel point out into the kitchen.

  “I know what you’re saying,” Blue said. “I know. But I got to talk to Perkin about my Dodge.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Blue turned to look at him, and the barrel swung level with Elgin’s belt buckle. “What’s wrong with it, it’s a piece of shit, what’s wrong with it, Elgin. Hell, you know that. Perkin sold me a lemon. This is the situation.” He blinked. “Beer for the ride?”

  Elgin had a pistol in his glove compartment. A .32. He considered it.

  “Elgin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why you looking at me funny?”

  “You got a rifle pointed at me, Blue. You realize that?”

  Blue looked at the rifle, and its presence seemed to surprise him. He dipped it toward the floor. “Shit, man, I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking. It feels like my arm sometimes. I forget. Man, I am sorry.” He held his arms out wide, the rifle rising with them.

  “Lotta things deserve to die, don’t they?”

  Blue smiled. “Well, I wasn’t quite thinking along those lines, but now you bring it up ...”

  Elgin said, “Who deserves to die, buddy?”

  Blue laughed. “You got something on your mind, don’t you?” He hoisted himself up on the table, cradled the rifle in his lap. “Hell, boy, who you got? Let’s start with people who take two parking spaces.”

  “OK.” Elgin moved the chair by the table to a position slightly behind Blue, sat in it. “Let’s.”

  “Then there’s DJs talk through the first minute of a song. Fucking Guatos coming down here these days to pick tobacco, showing no respect. Women wearing all those tight clothes, look at you like you’re a pervert when you stare at what they’re advertising.” He wiped his forehead with his arm. “Shit.”

  “Who else?” Elgin said quietly.

  “OK. OK. You got people like the ones let their dogs run wild into the highway, get themselves killed. And you got dishonest people, people who lie and sell insurance and cars and bad food. You got a lot of things. Jane Fonda.”

  “Sure.” Elgin nodded.

  Blue’s face was drawn, gray. He crossed his legs over each other like he used to down at the drainage ditch. “It’s all out there.” He nodded and his eyelids drooped.

  “Perkin Lut?” Elgin said. “He deserve to die?”

  “Not just Perkin,” Blue said. “Not just. Lots of people. I mean, how many you kill over in the war?”

  Elgin shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “But some. Some. Right? Had to. I mean, that’s war — someone gets on your bad side, you kill them and all their friends till they stop bothering you.” His eyelids drooped again, and he yawned so deeply he shuddered when he finished.

  “Maybe you should get some sleep.”

  Blue looked over his shoulder at him. “You think? It’s been a while.”

  A breeze rattled the thin walls at the back of the house, pushed that thick dank smell into the kitchen again, a rotting stench that found the back of Elgin’s throat and stuck there. He said, “When’s the last time?”

  “I slept? Hell, a while. Days maybe.” Blue twisted his body so he was facing Elgin. “You ever feel like you spend your whole life waiting for it to get going?”

  Elgin nodded, not positive what Blue was saying, but knowing he should agree with him. “Sure.”

  “It’s hard,” Blue said. “Hard.” He leaned back on the table, stared at the brown water marks in his ceiling.

  Elgin took in a long stream of that stench through his nostrils. He kept his eyes open, felt that air entering his nostrils creep past into his corneas, tear at them. The urge to close his eyes and wish it all away was as strong an urge as he’d ever felt, but he knew now was that time he’d always known was coming.

  He leaned in toward Blue, reached across him, and pulled the rifle off his lap.

  Blue turned his head, looked at him.

  “Go to sleep,” Elgin said. “I’ll take care of this a while. We’ll go see Shelley tomorrow. Perkin Lut too.”

  Blue blinked. “What if I can’t sleep? Huh? I’ve been having that problem, you know. I put my head on the pillow and I try to sleep and it won’t come and soon I’m just bawling like a fucking child till I got to get up and do something.”

  Elgin looked at the tears that had just then sprung into Blue’s eyes, the red veins split across the whites, the desperate, savage need in his face that had always been there if anyone had looked close enough, and would never, Elgin knew, be satisfied.

  “I’ll stick right here, buddy. I’ll sit here in the kitchen and you go in and sleep.”

  Blue turned his head and stared up at the ceiling again. Then he slid off the table, peeled off his T-shirt, and tossed it on top of the fridge. “All right. All right. I’m gonna try.” He stopped at the bedroom doorway. “‘Member — there’s beer in the fridge. You be here when I wake up?”

  Elgin looked at him. He was still so small, probably so thin you could still wrap your hand around his biceps, meet the fingers on the other side. He was still ugly and stupid-looking, still dying right in front
of Elgin’s eyes.

  “I’ll be here, Blue. Don’t you worry.”

  “Good enough. Yes, sir.”

  Blue shut the door and Elgin heard the bedsprings grind, the rustle of pillows being arranged. He sat in the chair, with the smell of whatever decayed in the back of the house swirling around his head. The sun had hit the cheap tin roof now, heating the small house, and after a while he realized the buzzing he’d thought was in his head came from somewhere back in the house too.