“There ain’t no story,” Gaines said. “The way you heard it is the way it happened.”
Faherty gave him a sour look, disappointed.
“You still feeling out of kilter from it?” Miles said.
“I don’t know whether to check my ass or scratch my watch,” Gaines said.
“Don’t sweat it. You don’t have to talk. You just sit there. You earned it.”
Faherty ordered his beer. “I heard some boys went over and shot up the Home. Busted a bunch of windows and peppered the creepers with buckshot. About time, I say.”
“Boy howdy,” Miles agreed. “People from town, was it?”
“They was farmers, what I heard. Friends of Reggie Albod.”
Gaines set his empty on the counter. “Did they kill anybody?”
“I didn’t hear anything like that. Winged one or two, maybe.”
The men talked about it for a while like it was the Battle of Second Manassas. Gaines could tell they were envious. After a few more beers, they’d plan their own drive-by on the way home and then they’d have their own tale to tell.
He didn’t want this. He razzed the creepers and bossed them around, but he had a soft spot for them. They reminded him of himself in certain ways, which made him empathize with them some days and hate the sight of them on others. He’d only thought to throw a little buckshot at Enoch as a crazy way to get at Sally Albod. The way he regarded them always had far more to do with what he noticed in the mirror than what he saw in them.
Sally dead. Enoch likely facing the chair. The Home getting shot up. All because of him. And here he was, sitting in a bar a free man with good ol’ boys buying him beers and praising his name. All the respect he’d ever wanted, all because he gave in to the Devil’s voice in his head.
He’d sold his soul, and this was his reward. But the Devil always collected.
His shoulder and chest began to throb.
“I’ll take that beer now if you’re buying,” Gaines said.
The second bottle rang his brain like a bell. By the fifth, he was feeling no pain, floating on a haze. The bar had filled up. He bummed a Marlboro and smoked it while he told his story again to the small crowd of people that had accumulated. We was grappling, he heard himself saying. The jukebox played a loud Christian rock song. Some boys shouted the chorus from the pool tables: Pure heart! Pure blood! The cue ball cracked. Girls danced next to their tables, big hair and cut-off jeans and long, tanned legs. One kept touching him and staring wide-eyed at his swollen shoulder.
He splayed his good hand and said, “That’s when his claws got into me. That’s when they ripped me open like meat hooks.”
The girl stroked his hair. She was a blonde, just like Sally Albod.
He saw Sally lying on the ground pale and gasping and her dress hiked up over her thighs and her hands near the sides of her head like she was surprised and briars in her blond hair and her chest a bloody ruin and her eyes boring into his as if pleading, No, I know what you’re gonna do, don’t do it, don’t kill me.
“You know what?” Miles said. “We should go out there right now.”
“Out where?”
“To the Home. Bang it up a bit.”
“No, sir,” Gaines said. “I have to work there.”
“You any good fixing cars?” Faherty said.
“I can fix cars.”
“You call me tomorrow. Then you ain’t working there no more.”
He’d hacked her up with his knife to make it look like Enoch did it, crying the whole time and blood fountaining and the blade grating along bone and Sally’s eyes rolled up in her head and her mouth wide open in a soundless scream and her chest like a pile of road kill, and when Gaines turned, Archie was looking back, his boy had seen what he’d done, he’d seen the whole thing.
Daddy, his boy said. Daddy, why did you do that to Sally?
Gaines set his beer down. “I got to go.”
Another mistake, trying to drink himself out of remembering. You sold your soul to the Devil, and the Devil always collected. Drinking made you forget your troubles only to bring them back like a sucker punch.
“The hell you do,” Faherty said. “We’re talking here.”
The girl leaned close enough for him to smell her perfume. Her nose tickled his stubbled cheek. “You should stay. I been tested.”
“My boy’s waiting on me. I ain’t seen to him in days.”
“All right,” Faherty said. “But you call me about that job, partner.”
The girl wrote her phone number on the inside of his sling.
Gaines mumbled something and staggered out the door and into the night. Rain had fallen sometime during the day. The street glistened under the pole lights. The air was sticky and wet on his skin. His ears rang from honky-tonk played at high volume. Otherwise, aside from a passing car and a dog barking, the town was quiet. He still had no idea what time it was or even what day of the week.
Alone again with his thoughts and memories.
A distant flash outlined rooftops and telephone poles. Thunder growled in the ether. A rumble charged the air, then stillness. He tottered down the street and saw the old diner all lit up. A flurry of moths in neon glow. He went inside and shuffled to one of the booths.
The waitress came over and asked what he wanted.
“Coffee,” he said.
She wrote it on her pad while she chewed gum. “What happened to you, anyway?”
“Machine accident.”
“Poor thing. Just coffee? We got catfish on special.”
He hadn’t eaten all day. “That’d be fine.” He remembered Doc Odom’s instructions. “And a glass of water, if you don’t mind.”
She smirked. “I don’t mind at all.”
The door jingled. He heard heavy footsteps behind him. The sheriff appeared. “Man of the hour.”
Gaines winced. “Hey, Sheriff.”
“Mind if I sit down and join you?”
“Go right ahead.”
The big man set his Stetson on the table and sat opposite Gaines. “What’d you order?”
“The catfish. It’s on special.”
“Good choice.”
The waitress set a mug on the table and poured coffee. “Hey, Sheriff. What can I get you? We got catfish on special.”
“So I hear. I’ll have some of that coffee, Loretta. And a slice of your pecan pie.”
She smirked again. “Coffee and pie, coming right up.”
Burton tilted his head to watch her leave. “I dropped by the clinic yesterday to check on you. Doc Odom told me you was still laid up. I pop into Belle’s for a cup of joe, and here you are.”
Gaines sipped his coffee. “Here I am. Darlene used to work here. I would come every day. I courted her one cup of coffee at a time.”
“Those were better days.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We never did get your full statement about what happened out there in the woods,” the sheriff said. “I’m hoping you’ll come down to the office tomorrow and help fill in the cracks. Sikes will handle it.”
“I can do that.”
Gaines’s food arrived. It smelled amazing. Suddenly ravenous, he dug into his fried catfish.
“Thank ye, honey,” Burton said as his coffee and pecan pie were laid out before him. “I’m itching to ask you a few questions myself, Dave. A few things are sticking in my craw.”
Gaines stopped chewing. “Like what?”
“Like how four pellets of double-oh buckshot got into Sally Albod’s chest, for instance.”
Gaines picked up his glass of water and gulped it. The sheriff forked some pie into his jowls and chewed.
“Mm-mm,” Burton said. “Best pie in the state. You all right, Dave? You look like you ate a bug.”
“My shoulder hurts.”
“That boy tore you up something awful.”
“Archie was the one who fired at him,” Gaines said. “Maybe some pellets hit the poor girl on the ground. I don’t know.”
The sheriff gave him a hard stare. “Uh-huh.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Just checking if your eyes are brown. Your boy was firing birdshot.”
“What happened out there happened. I got nothing more to say about it without a lawyer.”
“That really how you want to play it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I wonder what Archie would tell me if I brought him in again.”
“You leave my boy alone. Enoch killed Ray is what I hear. He killed Sally, too, which I know. I was there, you wasn’t.”
“All right,” the sheriff said. “Now listen here, Dave. Sally’s dead and there ain’t nothing can change that now. We can’t go back. Sometimes, a man makes a mistake in the heat of passion. He messes things up, he’s scared, then he messes up even worse. He doesn’t always have a chance to make things right. He wishes he could turn the clock back but can’t, and he has to live with everything he done the rest of his days. I am speaking from personal experience on this. But sometimes a man gets the chance. In one case that comes to mind, a man knows if he don’t take it, an innocent boy is gonna go to the electric chair and lose his life. Some vigilante is gonna shoot somebody taking his trash out some night. More plague kids are gonna get shot. Like ripples in a pond after somebody drops a stone. Instead of that one man owning up to his screwup and suffering a little to make it right, others will suffer and go on suffering. This happens far more than anyone cares to know. So the question is, what kind of man are you?”
Whatever the sheriff was playing at, it was working. Gaines wanted to confess. He wanted to be understood. He imagined himself saying, Sally was gonna die anyway. He caught himself before the words left his mouth.
What was done was done. Sally Albod’s life had ended. No need for his life to end, too. His son’s, who’d be orphaned when his daddy went off to jail. Ripples in a pond, right. Better it was Enoch be the ripple instead of Archie.
Gaines pushed the remains of his catfish aside. He yanked a handful of napkins from the dispenser and wiped his face. “I can’t talk anymore. I don’t feel so good. Go play cat and mouse with somebody else. I’m done.”
The sheriff finished his coffee, dropped a few dollar bills on the table, and set his Stetson on his grizzled skull. “Then I’ll leave you be. Go home and get some sleep. Come down to the office tomorrow, and we’ll try this again.”
Burton plodded back toward the door. He paused to tip his hat to Loretta, who giggled. Gaines glanced at the men’s room door and thought about whether he wanted to throw up here or at home. He felt downright sick to his stomach. Sheriff Burton was after him. Had him cornered like a rat.
“Hey, Sheriff,” he called.
The man turned. “Yeah. What now?”
“I don’t know where my truck is. I think it might still be at Reggie’s.”
“We had it drove out to your place. That’s how we got Archie home.”
“I got no way home tonight. Can you give me a ride?”
Burton sighed. “All right. Come on. I’ll drive you.”
Thirty-One
Goof waited for Officer Baby to show up and escort him to another day’s work as a government spook. He had plenty to keep him busy in the meantime. His room was no longer just a bed and a bathroom with white walls. He had Atari, color TV, VHS movies, comic books, music.
Shackleton catered to his every whim. Goof once threw out an offhand complaint he was sick of looking at blank walls. Said the lack of something to look at interfered with his spy powers. He plodded back from work to find his room’s walls plastered with posters. Madonna, Michael Jackson, Duran Duran. When he said the posters didn’t mean anything because he had no idea who these people were, he returned to find a boom box and collection of cassette tapes.
Another time, he said he didn’t want to work because he had a stomachache. An hour later, a team of doctors invaded his room. They took his temperature, drew his blood, made him cough. They asked him to poop so they could study it for parasites. At the end of it all, they gave him Pepto-Bismol.
Despite all the toys and fuss, he was bored as hell.
Goof liked being around people. He missed his friends something fierce. Dog and his sunny nature, good ol’ Brain and his hopeless revolution, Wallee and his childlike laugh, even silly silent Mary.
The only company Special Facility offered was a surly bureaucrat and a big bald cop. The cop never talked. Shackleton never laughed. So easy to annoy them, it sucked all the fun out of it to try. The only real human contact he’d had in this sterile place was the knowing smile he’d shared with Zack, but that had been only the one time, and he hadn’t seen the scientist since.
He picked up a comic book and leafed through it. The Amazing Spider-Man #252. Spider-Man returns from the Secret Wars planet and gets a new outfit. Goof loved the stories about people the normals considered superheroes and their amazing abilities. He knew plenty of kids with amazing abilities back at the Home. Kids ugly as sin and wearing secondhand overalls with patches over the knees. It made him wonder: If Superman had horns like Tiny, would he still be Superman?
No sense in overthinking a comic book. Just a book of wishes. In the real world, superheroes got shipped to secret facilities to work for the government, and they wore pajamas and rubber slippers.
He cocked his ear at the thud of footsteps in the corridor. Officer Baby stomping the earth.
Goof tossed the comic book on a small hill of fedoras stacked in the corner. He stood and stretched, ready to go serve his country. He bounced on his heels. Some days, he grew so lonesome he looked forward to his sessions with Shackleton. Maybe that was the idea. I’m the only friend you got, the Bureau man liked to tell him. As if he enjoyed Goof having no friends.
That man, this building, this room.
This might be the rest of his life.
The jangle of keys. The door opened on well-oiled hinges.
Goof stormed past him. “Come on, Jenkins. Commissioner Gordon is waiting.”
The guard backed up, arms at his sides, and plodded after him. Goof marched along in T-shirt, boxer shorts, and powder-blue terrycloth bathrobe that flapped behind him like a cape.
“The Joker has me in a tight spot,” he growled. “The villain had a heart monitor surgically implanted. If it’s still working at midnight, a bomb will go off in Gotham and kill ten people. You see where this is going, don’t you?”
The guard said nothing, as always. Just stared off into space. Goof turned and waited for him to catch up.
“You’re right, Jenkins. To save those people, including a girl I kind of like but only when I’m Bruce Wayne, I must kill the Joker. My God, don’t you see?”
The guard breathed through his mouth as he walked past.
“Right again, Jenkins,” Goof exploded as he fell in beside the giant. “To be a hero, I must become a monster. Must become that which I fight. Which is just what he’s after. It’s all part of his diabolical plan. Holy conundrum.”
The guard stopped at Room Two and ushered him in with the usual mocking sweep of his thick arm. Shackleton sat at the table smoking. Aside from the agent’s ashtray, the table stood bare and gleaming in the fluorescent light.
“No work today, Jeff,” he said as Goof sat.
“Aw, come on, boss. Give me something.”
“Sorry, we’re closed today.”
“Let me hang out with Zack, then.”
Shackleton snorted, his version of laughing. “I don’t think you’d like that. He’ll put you into one of his team’s experiments. Experiments I’ve been protecting you from.”
“I thought we had a lot of work to do.”
“We did. Then I got a call from the sheriff who lives in that shithole I pulled you out of. A Home kid stands accused of murder. The locals are terrorizing the other Home kids. The sheriff wants the BTA to come down and get involved.”
Goof recognized the acronym. BTA, Bureau of Teratological Affairs. “So
you’re leaving?”
“Hell, no. It’s his problem. But it’s now—”
“Officially a hassle—”
“And I’ve got a—”
“Meeting with the director—”
“And tons of—”
“Phone calls to—”
“Stop—”
“That,” Goof finished. “You want to use me as a spy. So let me spy.”
“I got something—”
“Better. What?”
Shackleton sighed. “Can I please finish?”
“What. I ain’t saying a word.”
“I was going to say I got a treat for you. You earned it.”
Goof sat up straight. “What is it?”
“Jenkins will take you to it. Now scram. I’ve got a meeting to prepare.”
He paused at the door on his way out. “Hey. Who was accused?”
“Accused of what?”
“Murder. Back at the Home.”
“Enoch Bryant,” Shackleton said. “Friend of yours?”
“Nope,” Goof lied. “I don’t know that kid.”
Officer Baby led him down a corridor into a part of Special Facility Goof had never seen. Just more white walls, fluorescent lights, and mysterious doors labeled with numbers. He bounded along like a puppy.
He knew where he was going, or thought he did. If he was right, he had a new ability Shackleton didn’t know about, an ability that made finishing people’s sentences seem paltry in comparison. It made him laugh out loud.
The guard turned his massive bullet head to squint at him. At last, a reaction.
“My God, Jenkins, you’re a genius.” Goof pounded his fist against his palm. “All I need to do is design a special Bat Heart Monitor Neutralizer. It will disable the heart monitor while allowing the Joker to go on with his wretched existence. Then I can save the day without sacrificing my iron virtue.”
The guard shook his head.
“Ha,” Goof said. “But how to find the hostages? Didn’t think about that, did you?”
Officer Baby stopped in front of a steel door and unlocked it. Inside, a boy and girl sat at a table eating hot fudge sundaes. The guard ushered him in and slammed the door shut. Goof smiled at the kids while the giant plodded away.
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