People Live Still in Cashtown Corners

by Burgess, Tony

  I make a stern face in the mirror. The cop hat falls forward and I tip it back with two fingers. It’s the kind of thing you do before you call someone ma’am.

  “Well, ma’am, looks like the problem is people. They just make us nervous and then we kill them. And then we feel better until somebody makes us nervous again. And, well, ma’am, that’s the way it lays.”

  I’m a little amazed that I’ve managed to boil it down to something so simple. I don’t make a very convincing cop though. I don’t think there’s much of a plan to work out there. No. I think the simple version is right. Stay away from people. Can’t imagine going through life just killing anyone who made you feel nervous.

  I step out into the sunshine and pop the cop sunglasses on. I can’t find the gun right away, then fishing around, it’s there, under the seat. Jeremy is standing at the door watching me walk across the lot. He steps away from the glass as I hop up onto the island. I catch a glimpse of my reflection before I pull the door open.

  Jeremy has scurried around behind the cash register.

  “I thought you were a cop.”

  I take off the hat.

  “Ta-da! Just me.”

  I look at Jeremy to see what he thinks. He looks like he was going to try to play it off as funny but then his face falls a little bit. I keep forgetting that Jeremy is not me.

  “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

  Jeremy leans to the side and looks out at the cruiser.

  “What’s going on?”

  In a funny flash it occurs to me that Jeremy could easily have called the police so this must be just making him feel crazy right now.

  “Did you think you’d called the police or something?”

  Jeremy looks startled.

  “Okay. Well, I’m just going to tell you where we’re at and then let you do whatever you want.”

  Jeremy doesn’t look particularly relieved.

  “Oh, and the money is still yours too.”

  Jeremy has no expression.

  “So. Well. I’ve been killing people today. First I killed her. That one. You know. Then I killed Mrs. at the Foodland. Then I killed a policeman. That’s three people. What about that, huh?”

  Jeremy. Jeremy. Jeremy.

  “So I can tell you how each one happened but I don’t think that’s really gonna matter much in the end.”

  I pull out the gun. Not sure why but Jeremy just about faints.

  “So, it looks like I have a condition of some kind where I have to kill people in order to get myself back on track or something. So I’ve decided to just disappear.”

  Jeremy looks up from the gun.

  “What? Say it? I can see you wanna ask.”

  Jeremy looks like his mouth’s a little dry. But he manages a word.

  “What?”

  “Disappear. Stay away from people. Get out of all youses hairs for good.”

  Jeremy nods to this.

  “I can’t kill myself. So that’s that.” I put the gun back in the holster.

  “Bye, Jer.”

  He doesn’t say anything and it’s a bit awkward so I just adjust my hat and leave. I step out between pump two and pump three and stroll across the lot. I feel him looking and I stop. He’s watching me alright. Got his hand up shielding his eyes and his nose to the glass.

  “Bye, Jer,” I say but he can’t hear me. I do the little ma’am two-finger salute off the brim and turn away. Not walking quite yet though. I stand in the parking lot. I’m twenty-five feet or so away from the door. I have started to leave but I still don’t have anywhere to go. The gulls are up high in the air. The trailer obscures my view of the field so I don’t know if the tiller’s moving or not. I put my hands on my hips and sigh. I’m glad I have my own socks and underwear on still. The sun feels good on my shoulders.

  Ding. Ding.

  A car. A blue minivan has pulled up to two and three. I almost run but stop myself. Take a breath. There’s a cruiser right there and a cop right over here. All we are is something that he’s looking at from his minivan. I almost give him the two-finger but stop myself. Then I notice Jeremy. He’s walking up the shoulder of the highway. He’s halfway up the hill on his way to Avening. Where the hell is he going? I walk toward the minivan and the man rolls down his window.

  “Hello, officer.”

  I hook my hand on the top of the window but don’t take my eyes off Jeremy. “Well, sir. There he goes.” The man cranes around in his seat to look.

  “Who?”

  “That’d be the guy who’s supposed to pump your gas.”

  We watch Jeremy reach the top of the hill then step down the other side and out of sight. The man turns back to me.

  “There’s nobody pumping gas?”

  I smile and look back to the top of the hill. The man waits patiently while I stare at the road. In time I lean back down hooking both hands over the glass.

  “Doesn’t look that way. Doesn’t look that way at all.”

  The man looks over at the cruiser parked beside the trailer. He looks like he has a question he wants to ask.

  “Well, officer, I guess we’ll just head up the road and hope . . .” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He lets his hands explain it away by gesturing out toward the highway. I straighten up and slap the side of his minivan. He goes to put it in gear but I get an idea.

  “Hey, hang on a sec. You need gas?”

  The man doesn’t answer. He looks in the back of the van and I can make out two children sitting in booster seats.

  “Let me see what I can do.”

  I stroll around the back of the van. The cruiser sits there beside the trailer and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t look quite right. I’m aware I’m grafting this part of my story to another that isn’t obvious anymore.

  I flip open his gas door and drop the nozzle in. The minivan windows—all of them— come down.

  “Officer? Hello?”

  I see my sunglasses and hat reflected in the tinted glass.

  “You’ll have to turn your engine off, sir.”

  I hear a little girl’s voice.

  “I smell gas, Daddy. Can you put my window up?”

  I step back up onto the island and select his grade. The car engine stops and the windows go back up. The hose pulses to life against my knee. If nothing else I’ve bought some time to figure out what’s next. Take stock. I’m going to have to walk somewhere from here. Into the booth. Back to the cruiser. Into the trailer. But then where? I have to not be anymore. Thirty five litres. I feel the gas getting near the top. Do I die? The trigger releases. Not going to die. You can’t decide to die just because of pressure. Fifty-seven dollars and thirty-six cents. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. Release. Got to ease off a bit. Seventy. Eighty. Back off. Ninety. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. And fifty-eight dollars zero. I squeeze one last time at the six and ease off till the end. I come around the back of the van again. The driver’s window starts to come down. “There you go. Full up.” The man looks nervous. “Okay. Great. How much do I owe you?” I stretch and straighten up. “Oh. You don’t owe me anything. He’s . . . uh . . . the guy’s not here. So don’t worry about it.” “I’d like to pay, officer. Can I leave it with you? How much was it?” He turns back to read the pump. “Here, I’ll give ya sixty. Does that cover it? Don’t worry about the change.” I look at the three twenties. “No, sir. I can’t take that. Against regulations.” “Okay. Can you put it inside or I can . . .” “You have a nice trip. Drive safe. And watch the speed.” I rap the roof with my knuckles and step back. The man slumps a little and looks forward. He’s chewing his mouth up as he curls the bills into his shirt pocket. The van starts but sits for a moment. The man turns and looks at me, then over to the cruiser. Hand to the wheel and into gear. He gives me an abrupt accepting nod and rolls the van toward the road. I stay still for a moment. No waving. I realize that it makes me anxious to separate fully from them but it doesn’t seem right to make too much out of it. I turn and walk back toward the trailer. The van sits at
the edge of the road and I can’t tell if he’s watching me so I try to walk as if I’ve already forgotten about them and have moved on. I reach the back of the cruiser but I’ve already made up my mind that I’m going to leave it here. The van hasn’t moved so he may still be watching. I can’t step up into the trailer so I get into the cruiser. There’s blood on the window and the steering wheel is sticky. I don’t want to sit in here. The van is gone so I remove the hat and start unbuttoning the shirt. There is blood moving through this cruiser like spiders jumping.

  5

  I am standing at precisely the centre point of Cashtown Corners. Right at the point where two centre lines intersect. There are not many places on earth as simple and perfect as this. Every single square inch has the same influence on me and I am completely impartial. I am going to move from this spot and I think there has to be a reason. I could wait for a car and then step off the road and walk in the direction it came from. Or the direction it goes. I could close my eyes and turn in circles. Count to a number and stop. The number should matter. Fifty-seven. I could sing one of those children’s songs that determines who will be “it.” I face north. The road ascends high toward a Jeffrey Deere warehouse. Then a butcher’s. A greenhouse. Then Stayner. Stay. I turn and face south. The road climbs and then curves and rolls. Fields and farms and eventually Avening. The speed limit barely changes through Avening. Evening. I turn and face west. A level line past the worm-heavy birds. Creemore. The Mad and Noisy River. More. This is a stupid anthem or something. A car appears from Creemore and I go east. Sirens. I go southeast into a cornfield.

  The corn swallows me whole and I move quite quickly between the rows. The ears of corn batter my head and, above, the siren screams in the sky like a wheeling bird. I slip along the limitless stalks with my hands pressed on either side of my nose. I run with my eyes shut, letting the weight of the ears centre me. I will run and run and run. The sirens are multiplying but they sound farther away. I run and run and run. I feel silk gathering on my hands and in my hair like a mask. It traps my breath so that hot puffs beat my face. The silk hairs are massing on my shoulders and back, slowing me. I start to stomp as I grow clumsy with the weight. I stop. I am under a cloak of dense white beards. Slipping my hands down without disturbing the cover I lower myself and sit cross-legged in the dirt. The sirens aren’t as tall anymore. They can still be heard cutting and falling, but far away. My own sound is louder. My breathing. My full nose. I have become a bull now, with a towering back and wet buried eyes and a loud heavy face. I will not move. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing.

  I don’t know exactly where I am. If I ran a mile or less. Or more. I don’t know if I am visible from anywhere. If I will be caught soon. I sit in this hot dark effigy, waiting. They could be here now. Surrounding this. Trying to understand what they have here before moving in on it. Guns drawn. A finger to a lip and hand gesturing “Move up, move up,” then: “Wait.” The hand turns. The sirens stop. The sirens have stopped. The sirens stop because they’ve all arrived. The sirens announce the coming and the silence marks the arrival. The lot at the gas bar must be full of cruisers. Officers jump out and, drawing weapons, split into two groups. One encircles the booth. The other forms flanks around the trailer. Do they move in on both at once? The booth is empty. The map might still be down, leaning against the wall under the safe. In the trailer they make the big discovery. The dead officer and a face-down Jane Doe. A deep spasm will go through the area. Everything and everyone will soon be deployed. I hear a scratching. Some small animal. What animals live in a cornfield? Mice? Groundhogs? The scratching stops. A wind moves at a distance; it seems to circle quickly, then brush over me. I think I have to accept that nothing might happen to me for a good long while. The heat is held in by the silk and long prickly lines are running down my back and arms. The daylight can’t get in so I don’t know if the sun is on me or if the corn shades me.

  I mark time by listening to myself. I have had a terrible series of shocks today. Yes, the things that happened were things that I did. And if I am ever caught and have to stand up in front of you, you’ll wonder what goes on in a person like me. That’s what I’m listening for now. I am aware that anything I might say I would have to invent. I would say what I think a person like me would say. But for now, I’m just listening. I want to know precisely what I am. And that is what I am right now. Listening silently to myself listening silently. And I agree, it sounds an awful lot like there is nothing to hear but that puts me beside you. We’re both very quiet now. We’re both just here. I accept this. God, it didn’t start this way though, did it?

  6

  I was wrong. The sunlight was reaching me. Now it is night. And black and still hot. The ground beneath has soaked up so much of my sweat that I sit in mud. Something came close and sniffed at me. A raccoon? A possum? It gave a warning snarl and then drifted off. I hear a crackling noise over me. Bats, I think. It may be time to crawl out from behind here. I am about to do this, to slip out from under this husk of me, when a new sound, a very big sound, batters down from above. It’s the heavy flapping noise of a helicopter. And then a brilliance seizes my face. It moves off, pulling darkness back, then rolls to my right and goes. The helicopter blades seem to change velocity a little, then roar back to full thunder. They are above me. Searching. The white punches against me again and the rattle shakes the dry paste in my ears. I wait to be kicked. To be shot. To be suspended in midair and examined. I wait for a long glowing appendage to pierce my face and pull me up in a single violent suck. There is no way to know. There is no way to know. And then it goes away.

  7

  The morning comes and I haven’t moved. I guess that it’s about noon when I hear a single siren. It’s hard to say where it comes from or where it goes to. It sounds like it comes from there and goes to about there. Nothing happens today. I almost throw up late in the afternoon and am not sure that I’m fully conscious for this. Just before dusk a flock of geese flies low overhead. Their honking is so horrible and raw that I shit through my pants into the ground. I think there must be a moon because I watch a short silver line move slowly down my shin throughout the night. No animals come to me. No helicopters shine on me.

  8

  It is difficult to turn my head. The silk and dust have turned to heavy clay and hardened to me. I am breaking out of a statue now. I push my jaw forward and feel the shell pull off of my ears. I hunch my shoulders and this separates the top section from the bottom. I brace for hard light but it’s not; the corn is still green and it cools and calms the air around me. It turns out that I am deep beneath a waving roof of plants. If I am to take any cues from these first moments then I still have something left to do. I am still moving. I leave the broken bust behind and begin to lope, slouching as much away as toward and decide that I will do massive, decisive things when I get there.

  There is the sudden end of corn stalks. I step out of them like a ghost from a cage and instantly feel the weight of my shadow fall in the short grass beside me. The grass gets sparer up ahead, the bare bright earth then a yard. I blink at the house to try to make it appear clearer. Orange brick. A small white porch with thick wooden posts. Two-storey. Something tugs the back of my pants down and in pulling them up I find that I still have the policeman’s gun. Guns seem to know when you might use them and they will draw down a little heavier in anticipation. So I point the gun at the house.

  I don’t bother knocking and enter the house through a side door. This leads directly into an office. A heavy wooden desk. Cabinets. Book shelves. There are degrees on the wall. Business degrees. Accounting. The floor snaps when I stop moving so I keep walking out into a larger room. A washing machine and an unfinished basement full of cardboard boxes. A plywood reindeer. Diffuse sunlight hangs out from a sunken window. From high above there is movement. Quick steps down stairs. Someone saw me. Someone knows I’m here and they’re running to the phone. The footsteps come from directly above me. Calmer now. They stop. A kettle is whistling. I
hadn’t noticed that. The whistle whines low and stops. There are stairs leading up to this floor. What must be the kitchen. I take them. Not fast and not slow, but deliberately enough and through the door. It is a kitchen. A woman in a bathrobe leans against a counter, looking out the window and eating toast. A cup of steeping tea steams on a table. She turns and I catch a flash of the satin red beneath the robe and fire. She flops forward, bouncing her head up and off the table before slipping to the ground. She dies. The toast turns in her mouth, then rides in blood across the floor. I fire again at the wall. Twice. I don’t know why. In the quiet that follows I hear other feet move overhead.

  The third floor is clearly a separate apartment because I open the door on a second, smaller kitchen. This woman is older. She is giant. The mother of the other woman. She holds an empty plate waiting for toast to pop. She turns to me. Her voice is completely unexpected.

  “Who are you?”

  She drops the plate and tries to run past me but I push her by the neck to the wall and shoot a hole in her just above the left eye. She drops straight down and I shoot again. I empty the gun into the wall. The toast pops and makes me jump. I throw the gun into the sink. This woman was so large that her knees have snapped under her weight. Without muscle and the will to support herself, her meagre pillars broke. I take a towel from a hamper sitting under the table and curl it on the floor around her head. I’m not cleaning up, can’t see the point, but I’m keeping surfaces safe for me to run over.

  In the downstairs kitchen the younger woman has bled a shiny dark pool across the floor and under the stove. I decide I’m going to keep people together. Put them somewhere. I don’t question myself about this. I just assume keeping any order right now is better than the alternative. I hold her ankles and drag her, looking aside when the red satin falls above her thighs. Through a short hall and into an expansive sitting room. Too big for a sitting room. Almost a ballroom with high ornate windows and columns and a single pink settee with thick scrolled arms. I lay her in the middle of the floor and return to the kitchen. I realize I am walking along a red road that tracks about forty feet through the house from her head in the ballroom to the broken tea cup in the kitchen. I scoop three kitchen towels from the oven door and walk the blood path back to her body. I consider cleaning the floor but that would only be moving blood out farther and farther through the house. I drop the towels on her face. I walk back out into the hall looking for a room I have not seen yet. The master bedroom. The bed is crisply made and the drapes are drawn. The effect here is of a time capsule. A place left for future generations to discover. A framed picture of the astronauts from Apollo 13 hangs above a bureau. Nineteen sixty-eight, at least. But it feels more like the fifties. I pull the sheets out from the corner of the bed and wipe blood from my hands. I have to turn and twist the fabric to drag thickening red strands from under my nails. I release the sheets and they stick out from the bed’s perfect surface like fingers ripping at the back edge of a sea. There is a door leading off from the back of this room. A bathroom with a shower. I look at myself quickly. My face is still patched with yellow wafers and fibres. Fine blood speckles cover my eyelids and forehead. I turn the shower on and adjust it to near scalding. My clothes come off me and stand like sticks. I lift them and drop them in the toilet where water quickly wicks up and pulls the fabric down.