by Jake Hinkson
Stan's usually quick retort seemed stunted this time. He glared at me. "What?"
"Something I used to use in my sermons." I waved it away. "My father said it once."
Stan's face had flushed. His smile and his causal, playful manner were gone. For just a moment, he didn't even seem dangerous. "I like the way your father thinks."
DB groaned, "C'mon Stan, not this Jesus shit again."
Stan ignored him and asked me, "What did your father say about your suicide attempt?"
I shook my head. "He's dead. Died a few years ago."
"So he never knew about your suicide."
"No."
"Unless, of course, he's in heaven watching over you."
"I guess."
"And do you think he is?"
"In heaven watching over me?"
"Yeah."
"If there's a heaven."
Stan smiled. "But is there a heaven?"
DB sat up in the recliner. "Is this what we're here to talk about?"
"Shut up," Stan snapped at him. Then to me, "Is there?"
DB jumped to his feet and darted toward the doorway to the dining room. "This is a waste of time! We need to—"
"We're waiting on Fuller," Stan told him.
"You should call Fuller back. Try to do it on the phone."
"That's an idiotic idea."
"Well, I think you should get aggressive with him. Tell him you want the cash and the truck pronto. He's gonna want it. There's no reason to wait for a face-to-face."
Quiet Tom appeared in the doorway. He signed something to his brother.
"Good idea," DB said. "Maybe I should call Fuller myself."
"Do you have his number?"
"No, but you could give it to me."
"And why would I do that?" Stan asked.
"Why not?"
Stan drew his gun and placed it on the cushion beside him. In a calm voice he said, "Because I'm in charge. Because you're an imbecile. Because neither you nor your imbecilic brother could have pulled off a heist of this size and complexity without me. But mostly, DB, just because. Just because I said so."
DB swayed a bit, his eyes on the gun.
Blood beat in my ears.
Tom pulled at his brother's arm. DB backed up, still keeping an eye on the gun.
They retreated through the dining room and into the kitchen.
Stan watched them leave. Then he turned to me. His sharp face was pale again, but his smile was gone. "Well?" he said. "Is there a heaven?"
"I—I don't ... I don't know, Stan."
Felicia let out the breath she'd been holding. "Are they going to be ..."
Stan waved that away. He asked me, "So you're saying your father might not be in heaven?"
"I suppose that's what I'm saying."
"Then what happened to your father when he died?"
"I don't know. Nothing, I guess."
"And that's that," Stan said.
"I suppose so."
I thought I could hear the brothers signing to each other in the next room—though perhaps I just imagined it because it seemed impossible that they weren't in there furiously discussing what had just happened.
Stan picked up his gun and tapped it against his knee as absently as a pair of glasses. "Given how I was brought up, I ain't known that many self-proclaimed atheists in my life. A couple, but not many. Believe it or not even in the, ah, criminal underworld most folks tend to believe in God."
Felicia told him, "It's weird that you always want to talk about this stuff. Do you know that it's weird?"
"How come?"
"You talk like a Jesus freak, but then you turn around and act like you."
Stan put down the gun. He crossed his arms and extended his long legs. "Jesus suffered for our sins," he explained. "I've sinned a lot, so I guess Jesus suffered a lot for my sins. I like to think that when he was out there bleeding to death in the brutal desert sun, he was thinking of me." He tilted his head in genuine bemusement. "I'm surprised everyone don't feel the same."
I leaned up. "Doesn't she have a point though?"
"About what?"
The gun beside him on the cushion stared at me like a third eye.
"Nothing," I said.
"No. Come on. I'm used to scraping together conversation with those degenerates in the next room. When a man takes these things seriously, he lives to find another man who takes them seriously, too. Ask me what you want to ask me."
"Okay. Well, isn't there a disparity between the way you live and your interest in religion?"
"You saying I'm a hypocrite?" he asked flatly.
Rubbing my slick palms together I said, "No. No. I just—"
"No, it's okay," he said. "But that's what you're both getting at, right?"
I was too afraid to reply to that.
Stan said, "It goes back a-ways with me. When I was a kid, this old man used to take me to church. My parents had both run off and this old man took me in. He worked me like a slave, but he fed me and took me to church. And I mean this church was waaay back in the Ozarks, back where they preach that real washed-in-the-blood country shit.
"The preacher was fat and sweaty and a real screamer. He'd get all worked up and sweat and scream and everyone would go down to the altar and pray and holler and roll around. Me, I never did. The preacher would yell at me, cast Satan out of me in the name of Jesus, beg the Holy Ghost to fill me up so I could speak in tongues and get saved. But it never happened; I never got a in-filling of the Holy Ghost. They all worried about me, but I knew why it didn't happen. I didn't want it to. Not yet.
"I'd done my scripture reading, and I'd seen where Apostle Paul said he was the chief among the sinners." He paused. "You know that verse?"
"Yes."
"What is it, chapter and verse?"
"It's ... First Timothy."
"Yes ..."
"One-fifteen, I think."
"Well done! Exactly right, First Timothy 1:15. I'd read that verse and I'd pondered it. If Apostle Paul was bragging that he was the chief sinner, well then what he was really saying was that Jesus had died the most for him. Right? If Jesus died for our sins and Apostle Paul was the chief sinner, then hell, he had the most glorious salvation. And me, what had I done? Nothin', that's what. All my sinning was the sinning of a little boy. Telling white lies and thinking bad thoughts. Why make Jesus Christ hang on the cross for that? For the thoughts of a child?
"When I figured that out, I knew what I had to do. I knew then I wasn't gonna go down there and roll around with that bunch of screamin' hillbillies until I'd done some serious fucking transgressing first. Apostle Paul earned his glorious salvation by being the chief sinner. I figure to outdo him.
"First I run off and joined the Marines. I suspected I could do some real sinning there, and I was correct. They sent me to the desert to kill some sand-niggers. I went and killed some, but then after a while they said I was too intense and they kicked me out." He sat up and draped one skinny knee over the other. "So like that," he snapped his fingers, "my military career was over. They shipped me back to the states, California of all places. There was nobody out there worth talking to, so I come back to Arkansas."
Stan turned his head toward the doorway.
He picked up the gun.
"When I got back to Arkansas," he said, "I started on my path. Since there wasn't no way to achieve a true breakthrough on the right side of the law, I started my criminal career. I never told no one about my plan, of course. They just figured I was another cracker-ass hillbilly gangster. But I been chipping away at it day after day for years now, accruing all the sinning I can.
"That revelation I had reading scripture, that was a message from God. He wanted me to see the nothing at the bottom of everything and the everything at the bottom of nothing. The greater the sin, the greater the salvation."
"But how long?" I asked. "How long do you have to go until you're ready?"
Stan grimaced. "That is a damn fine question. I figure s
ince Jesus got baptized at thirty-two, I'll do it then."
Felicia shook her head. "You are truly fucking crazy, Stan."
"You're a sinner because you're too lazy and stupid to be anything else," Stan snapped. "You shouldn't assume the same thing is true of me. I could be pure as milk if that's what God had in mind. But he set me on a different course."
He leaned back. He placed the gun in his lap. "What about you, Elliot? What do you think of my story?"
"I understand it."
"Is that a fact?" he said.
"I killed myself. I think I know about the nothing at the bottom of everything."
Stan searched my face like he was taking a good look in a mirror.
In the kitchen, the brothers were moving around again. Felicia craned her neck to look through the doorway, but Stan was waiting for me to continue.
I said, "You're saying that it's a choice between God or nothing at all."
"Yes," he said.
"And to embrace the one you have to embrace the other. Because without sin, there can be no salvation."
"The darkness that gives meaning to the light," he said.
Felicia looked me and opened her mouth, but she didn't say anything.
Stan said, "Nobody's ever gotten that before."
"What do you suppose it means that I'm the first?" I asked.
"I don't know yet."
"Could be worth thinking about," I said.
"It is worth thinking about," Stan said. Then he grimaced. "Isn't it, boys?"
I turned as the brothers walked into the room.
DB leveled his gun at Stan. "I don't care what it means," he said. "I'm here for the goddamn money."
-CHAPTER TEN-
Dirty Work
Stan's eyes darted back and forth between the brothers. Quiet Tom, clutching a butcher knife, strode to the left to cover Felicia and me. DB positioned himself almost at the center of the room in a shooter's stance, legs apart, left arm bent in support of the gun hand. His head was tilted to the side in order to line up the site of his gun with Stan's forehead.
Stan said, "I take it you're not pleased with my leadership." I couldn't see his gun, and I wasn't sure where he'd moved it.
"You just keep your hands on your knees," DB said. "I'm going to give you my handcuffs, and you're going to cuff yourself. Then you'll call Fuller and we'll negotiate the money and a new truck. I didn't get involved in this mess so you could waste time debating religion and then turn around and call me stupid."
"Fuller doesn't do bidness over the phone," Stan said. "What will calling him accomplish?" His face looked nearly bored.
"Plenty."
"Like what?" Stan asked.
DB blinked away a bead of sweat. "Just—"
Stan shot him three times in the chest. The shots were small, metallic claps, and the bullets poked three red holes in DB's T-shirt. He got off one booming shot that shattered the window above Stan's head, and then his hands dropped to his sides. His gun hit the floor with a thud. He dropped to his knees like he was going to pray and fell forward and slammed his face into the carpet. His knees were still bent. Except for the bloody triangle between his shoulder blades, he looked like he was doing yoga.
Stan raised his gun to Quiet Tom. Shock spread over the twin's face. No one made a sound until he opened his mouth, but it took a second or two for something to come out.
It was an awful high-pitched moan.
"The knife," Stan said.
Tom dropped the knife.
"Floor's getting cluttered," Stan said.
Tom cried out again, his skin stretched tight against his skull.
Stan watched him like he watched everything else, like poor Tom was part of an experiment he was conducting with the human race. He didn't flinch when Tom began to cry, his hold on things disintegrating by the millisecond.
"Du-ane!" Tom groaned.
Stan shot him once in the chest.
Felicia yelped when the stocky little man staggered forward. He tripped on his brother's arm and stumbled to the floor.
But he wasn't dead. Somehow he managed to climb to a knee. His chest wasn't bleeding yet, but his face was already white. Stan lifted the gun and shot him in the forehead. This time the twin dropped, his legs intertwined with his brother's arm in a pool of blood, and he hit the floor. His bloody back rose as the last breath left his body.
I slunk to the carpet. Felicia scrambled onto the sofa as if water were rising in the room.
Stan stood up. Blood flecked his face and his dirty white suit, but he had killed the brothers without leaving his chair.
He stared at them a moment. Then he said, "Tom didn't die very stoically, did he?"
I blinked up at him a few times.
Stan said, "Then again, I guess it's hard to be stoic when you're dying for nothing." The gun hung at his side as he looked at Felicia. "It's over now. You going to be able to compose yourself?"
She nodded.
"What about you?" he asked me.
I blinked and looked at the brothers. "They're dead," I said.
He regarded the dead men. "Yeah," he said. "They weren't much help to begin with, but DB's connection with the department was useful." He frowned. "Necessary, even. I didn't particularly want to do that, but they didn't give me much choice."
"They're dead," Felicia said.
Stan looked at her, then at me. "You two are in shock." His mouth twisted to one side. "Which I understand. Still, you need to pull yourselves together so we can get rid of the brothers grim here." He walked over to Felicia and put his hand under her chin. "You listening?"
Felicia had been around enough death that she quickly started recouping her senses. She pulled away from him and said, "Okay, Stan. Jesus. Just be calm." She ran her hands through her hair. "Just be calm."
Stan held out his hand for her to see its steadiness. "I'm as peaceful as early morning, darlin'. You might want to look to your boyfriend, though."
Felicia stood up slowly and her legs wobbled, but she got to me and put her hand under my chin. "Are you okay?"
I couldn't say anything yet. I just looked at the dead men's blood seeping into the carpet. There was a stillness in the twins more frightening than any movement could ever be. They meant nothing to me, and during the short time I'd known them, they'd only inspired fear in me, but just a few minutes before, they had been unmistakably alive. Now they were unmistakably not.
Felicia lifted my face to hers. Her hands were cold and her left eye was bloody up close. But both of her eyes had the same message: Pull yourself together or we are going to die on this floor.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." I patted her arm.
"Good," Stan said. "Now both of you get up."
Felicia took my arm and guided me to my feet. She clutched my arm as if she were drowning—and her voice trembled when she asked Stan, "What now?"—but she was the only thing holding me up.
Stan slipped his gun beneath his coat. He clapped his hands.
"We need to get rid of these boys. First, Felicia, you go to the bathroom and take down the shower curtain and the liner. Fold them together. Then go get the curtain and the liner from the bathroom at the other end of the house. Bring all of it in here."
"There are two bathrooms?" she asked.
"Yes." He pointed down a short hallway to the left. "DB's room is that way. Used to be his parents' master bed and bath." To the right: "Guest room and Tom's room. Guest bath. Remember curtain and liner from both."
She patted my arm. "Okay?"
I nodded, still blinking.
She let go of my arm, but before she took a step, Stan stopped her. His face nearly touched hers when he told her, "The twins are dead. You deal with enough death you should be able to hold yourself together and think clearly."
She nodded. "I am thinking clearly."
"Good. You keep yourself together and the three of us will make some serious mo
ney. On the other side of it, though, this just turned into a murder rap."
"I understand," she said. Her voice was steady.
Stan looked at me. "What about you, Elliot?"
I nodded. "I understand."
Stan jerked his head toward the door. "Get moving, Felicia."
She patted my arm again and left. Stan didn't stop looking at me. I glanced down at the twins. There was a hole in the back of Tom's head, and I saw bloody fragments of his brain on his shoulder. I put my hand to my mouth, though I didn't feel any kind of nausea. Too stunned for horror, I simply stared at him, taken aback at the sight of the inside on the outside.
"First time with this kind of thing?" Stan asked.
From the bathroom, I could hear Felicia climb into the tub to take down the shower curtain.
"Ever seen a dead body?" he asked.
IdropthephoneandrunOutmyofficedownthehalldownthestepsMycarparkedinmyusualspaceRightwhereIleftit
"I've seen my share," I said.
"Not piled up on the floor, though," Stan said.
"No," I said. I dropped my hand from my mouth. "Not piled up on the floor."
He nodded and regarded the twins with something close to sadness. "What a world." He sucked in his bottom lip.
Felicia crossed the hall with plastic in her hands. "No curtain down there, just a liner. I'll check in this one."
"May I go to the door to get some air?" I asked.
"Sure," he said. "Just don't go outside."
I walked to the sliding back door, pulled it open and stuck my head out. The humid air, thick with the smell of sap and damp leaves, wasn't exactly refreshing, but it was something. A few weak stars glimmered in the canopy of darkness spread over the house, and from the trees night life rustled and chirped and croaked. The world seemed alive.
As I pulled my head back in, Felicia walked into the room with the plastic shower liners folded under her arm. The room still smelled of Stan's gunpowder.
"Are you okay?" she asked me.
"Yes," I said. "Air."
Stan took the liners from Felicia and gestured for her to stand by me. She was shaking. I didn't realize why until she asked Stan, "Are you going to kill us?"
Stan's brow furrowed as if she'd insulted him. "Why would I kill you?"
"I don't know," she said.
