by Anna Bruno
When I look up, the kid in the Adidas hat is gone. The girls are gone too, huddled under umbrellas arm in arm, heels slipping on wet pavement as they make their way to the heart of town.
Only the regulars remain: Cal and Summer, Fancy Pete, Short Pete, Yag, and Jimmy. I’m still here. Alone but not alone.
* * *
MY ATTENTION SHIFTS. YAG puts his cue down, yells out to Amelia for a round of shots. “Hey, Jimmy, when’s the last time you saw Lucas?” he asks.
Jimmy shrugs. “Two, three days ago, maybe? He had a tree down in the backyard. I helped him clear it out.”
“Could’ve called me,” Yag says.
“It was a two-man job,” Jimmy says, focusing on his shot. He’s not picking up on Yag’s agitation, even though it’s evident in the volume of his voice and the way he paces around the pool table. Jimmy thinks they’re just shooting the shit.
I think about how Jimmy used to leave the bar with Lucas and me, follow us all the way home, and call a cab from there. If I had a bike, he’d walk it for me. Lucas never asked why he didn’t just call a cab from the bar. We always assumed he wanted to keep the party going. I know now that he just didn’t want to be alone.
“We used to be like Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. I’m McCoy, of course. You’re Spock,” Yag says. “Or like the Beastie Boys.”
Jimmy doesn’t ask Yag to expound on how their personalities correlate to Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock. He stares at the balls on the pool table, unwilling to engage, as if to say, The old days are behind us; too much has happened.
“Dude, ya know who was hot in high school?” Yag is yelling now. Amelia perks up, as if she knows what he’s going to say before the words escape his lips. She holds off on making the shots. “Your fucking sister.”
Jimmy doesn’t say anything at first. He continues to shoot the balls on the table, even after he misses. “Don’t talk about my sister.”
Everyone knows the saying The straw that broke the camel’s back, which implies there is a significant amount of other straw that the camel carries and is aware of. The cliché is overly generous in regard to what she bears knowingly. The truth is that she carries around all this straw but it is weightless and invisible, and if it does have weight, which it might, she denies its existence. So when the final straw lands, the camel must instantaneously bear the burden of that straw and every single other straw that had gone unattended for so long. Essentially, the saying is misleading because the last straw is not incremental. It isn’t just one more straw. It is the straw that reveals and magnifies all the straws. It is the moment when attention is drawn to everything that’s been carried—every wrong, every hurt, every loss. And the camel breaks.
This is bad—worse than the Wrestler, and worse than the wallet. If only the sparrow could find its way in now, at this late hour. It would be a welcome distraction.
“She looked so good in those sundresses,” Yag says.
Jimmy props the cue against the table and approaches Yag. “Don’t talk about my sister.”
“I’m just saying she was hot. It’s a compliment. You can take a compliment, right?”
“Shut up.” They are face-to-face.
Amelia is watching like a hawk from behind the bar. She yells out, “It’s time to go home, boys. Time to get out.”
Yag ignores her, grabs his crotch. “Dude, especially after she lost all that weight.” He starts laughing. It’s an ugly screech.
Jimmy puts his left arm around Yag’s neck and pushes his face in front of his right fist. Before Jimmy punches, Yag says, “She must have lost sixty pounds.”
The sparrow: a premonition. Disaster is imminent.
Jimmy starts in. He is enormous and strong but he’s pulling his punches a little bit. He’s a teddy bear, not a fighter.
Cal tells them to settle down. He says, “Jimmy, forget about it. You’re gonna wake up tomorrow and take a shit and it’ll be a whole new day. You’ll just wish the shit was before the shower.”
Short Pete laughs at this. They’re not seeing what I’m seeing. Jimmy wants to kill Yag. And Yag is a wily little fucker.
Yag wiggles out of the headlock. He’s holding a Budweiser bottle in his right hand. He rotates his shoulder, throwing his arm out in a haymaker motion. He strikes Jimmy across the face with the bottle, following through with every bit of upper-body strength he can muster. The bottle shatters on Jimmy’s face. Blood rolls down into his eye before Amelia can say, “Get out now, Yag, or I’m calling the cops.”
Cal is standing next to Summer with his hands on her shoulders. If she weren’t his foremost concern, he’d be on top of Yag right now. Short Pete is standing, mouth agape, but he stays out of it. Fancy Pete is nowhere in sight, in the bathroom, maybe.
A thick vein protrudes from the middle of Yag’s forehead. He lets out a low, guttural noise, which sounds more animal than human: a badger whining.
“Why do I have to leave and Jimmy gets to stay? He started it.”
“You’re not worth the air in this place,” Cal says.
“But he started it!” Yag jabs his pointer finger toward Jimmy’s chest and rotates his forearm like a screwdriver. He’s desperate for someone to take his side, which is not the same as forgiveness. Deep down, he knows we all chose Jimmy a long time ago.
I conceptualize Forgiveness: how it feels, soreness trailing a hard workout—microfractures in the muscle cells; how it looks, a serene face, wrinkled but not without luster—crow’s feet, evidence of a million bygone smiles; how it wears, like an old, cozy sweater—the reason winter is a welcome intrusion. If Memory and Nostalgia are sisters, Forgiveness is their godmother. She is old; she is wise; she carries neither the judgment nor the worry of motherhood. She operates stealthily, by example. She is easily ignored—a wallflower at a party passed over for a flashier woman, or rowdier repartee.
Amelia picks up the phone.
In a single, fluid motion, like a dance, Yag twists his body away from the pool table and toward the bar. He pulls a hunting knife out of his pocket and opens it. He waves it toward Amelia. “Put the phone down.”
She complies. Never comply with demands. Always fight back. That’s what the experts say. I took a self-defense class once.
Yag grabs me, nearly pulling me off my stool. His arm is wrapped around me like a hug, his left hand holding me down by the breastbone while his right pushes the knife toward my cheek.
“You,” he says, “are a total fucking bitch. Five minutes ago, you acted like you actually cared. Now you have nothing to say? You pile on with all these assholes. You want me gone. Just like when you told Lucas he couldn’t be friends with me. You know how long I’ve known Lucas? Twenty goddamn years. Since we were sixteen. And then you came along and told me I wasn’t welcome in his house. Well, fuuuck you. It was his house before you and it’s his house after you.”
Music plays on the jukebox. I recognize the song but not the singer, some young pop princess. Her voice drives me crazy. I look at Amelia, wondering if she’ll cut the sound. She doesn’t. The queue of songs is long. We haven’t gotten to mine yet.
Cal says, “Put the knife down, Martin. Come on. You don’t want to be doing this now.” He gestures toward Summer, who is frozen. “My little girl is here, Yag. We’re all friends here.” Everyone knows Cal is packing a gun. His right hand is under his maroon blazer. The gun is still in the holster as far as I can tell.
Yag pushes the knife closer to my eye. Everything slows down.
* * *
MY BODY IS HERE, in The Final Final, a limp target, but my mind is in the Adirondack Mountains. Lucas and I are on a white-water rafting trip, a last hurrah of sorts. I am three months pregnant with Lionel. I don’t tell anyone official I’m pregnant, because pregnant women are not supposed to do anything fun.
The river has a good mix of class-three and class-four rapids. Easy enough for novices but challenging enough for a moderate thrill. We are given life jackets and placed into one of two rafts leaving at the same time.
Each raft has a guide. Lucas and I share a raft with two other couples and a guide who introduces himself as Monty. His full name is Mario Montenegro. Monty is bearded and buff, an obvious outdoorsman. He knows the river—every rock and every current—like he has a map imprinted on his subconscious.
A guide called Kilo leads the other raft. He doesn’t explain the origin of the nickname, but we joke it is related to selling drugs. He speaks slowly with an affectation that isn’t quite a stutter.
Monty tells us the river is at her finest—the rapids fierce and fast. It will be a good day. He yells, “Out,” and we jump into the cold water to acclimate, learning how to pull one another back in. Grab the vest with two hands. Find leverage. Push down, pull up and in.
Monty is a practical jokester. When the river is calm, the rafts duel. Monty pops out the bridge that holds in two fake front teeth and smiles. “This is what happens when you take an oar in the mouth. Keep ’em suckers in the water at all times!” He pulls a water balloon out of his bag and aims for the guide on the other raft. He misses and hits a scrawny, nerdy-looking guy on the side of his head, right in the ear. Everyone cheers.
The guides pull out water guns. They pump water into them from the river and start a war. Everyone stands up in the rafts. Lucas and I grin at each other. We are in love. I pick up a balloon and chuck it at the other raft. It clips Kilo and bursts on the floor of the raft.
The two rafts drift closer to each other and the battle escalates. Kilo jumps onto our raft, grabs Monty, and throws him off. “You fuckin’ idiot—” Monty yells, but not soon enough. Kilo grabs my shoulders and throws me off too just before Monty finishes, “—rapids!” My body is in the water heading for a class four. My life jacket keeps me buoyant. My hands hold on to my pregnant belly.
Why did I come on this trip? What was I thinking?
Kilo is now in the wrong raft, leaving his own raft guideless. The rafts surge forward, approaching the rapids. I am pulled forward as well, but the rafts are already some distance away. There is no chance I will be pulled in. I watch Monty swim toward the shore. He climbs up the wooded edge and runs to a rock perched over the rapids.
How could I put my baby at risk?
Lucas is still in our raft, which is wedged in some rocks—stuck. Kilo calls out orders, attempting to lead the raft through the rapids. Lucas scans the water, looking for me. I can see him but he can’t see me.
I feel hands on my life jacket, pulling me up and in. I find myself in a boat of strangers, two girls in bikinis, one lean tan guy, no life jackets except the one I’m wearing.
We navigate the rapids and drift awhile before stopping in a cove below. I am shaking, expressing gratitude. I tell my new friends I’m pregnant. I tell them I made a mistake. Reckless. Selfish. Dumb. The guy who pulled me in says he’s going back upriver to make sure everyone else is all right. We watch him run up on shore. He swims the rapids again, freestyle.
I look back to the shore and see Lucas and Kilo running toward us.
“Hey!” I yell. “I’m here!”
When Lucas sees me, his stance relaxes. He drops the oar from his hand.
Kilo puts his arm around his shoulder. “Hey, man, I’m glad she’s okay. Everyone is okay.” Lucas twists away.
Monty, now back in our original boat, guides both rafts toward the cove. The tan guy who saved me is in the other raft. He takes the hand of one of the bikini babes and climbs toward me, into his boat. He and Monty help me back into my raft.
As my new friends float away, I turn back to Lucas and Kilo, standing onshore. Lucas is holding the oar again, now threatening to take a swing. Kilo’s hands are up, protecting his face. I’ve never seen Lucas threaten a man before. I’ve never even heard him raise his voice. He always walks away, jaw clenched. Now, he looks like he could kill Kilo.
“Lucas, stop!”
We exist in this state: capable of violence, suppressing our urges, which are instinctual and maybe justified. While we fight quietly with our minds and hearts, quibbling with words and drinking away pain, rage continues to burn.
* * *
MY HEAD IS BACK where it belongs. Martin Yagla is talking to me. “You think you’re better than us. Always in the city or on a plane to some place that’s not here. You want to know the funny part? Whenever you left town, Lucas invited me over. We played poker and drank beer and smoked cigarettes on the porch. That’s right, Mrs. Murphy, we smoked tons of cigarettes on your porch. What’s it to you, anyway? You weren’t there. Lucas did what he wanted. Sometimes he made us wait to smoke until the kid was asleep. Point is, I was there—”
A new song comes on the jukebox, an Eminem song. I don’t know if Yag added it to the queue earlier or if he just likes it, but whatever it is, he lets go; he releases me. He is transfixed. He pushes backward off me and dances along the narrow corridor of the bar. He pretends his hunting knife is a microphone. He may actually think the blade is a mic. His mind might be telling him he is onstage.
A sharp, high-pitched scream escapes Summer’s mouth.
Cal points his handgun at Martin. He must have pulled it when Yag released me. Without turning his head, Cal’s eyes dart toward Summer. He says, “Belle, you know what to do.”
She crouches under a table, half hiding, half trusting Cal, her eyes glued to him. Short Pete kneels down next to her, his arm around her shoulder.
The gun is aimed at the center of Martin Yagla’s chest. Because of my proximity and the fact that Cal is on the other side of him—the three of us in a scalene triangle formation—I can see down the barrel of the gun.
Most people do their best to avoid looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, so I should be clear. In actual fact, I can’t see down it. I see it. I see a black hole that a bullet is designed to emerge from. There’s no looking down into the hole. It’s just black. But it’s right there, pointed at Yag’s chest. And it’s scary as hell.
The barrel of the gun, the blackness, alters time. I see the future. I see a world inhabited by all of us, but Martin isn’t breathing. Martin’s dead. I see a hole in his chest and blood all over the floor. The cops come. An ambulance arrives. The body is taken away in a bag on a stretcher. Amelia takes a mop to the vinyl and soaks up all that blood, squeezing it out in a bucket. Everyone claims that none of us are to blame, that circumstances were out of our control. But no one believes that entirely, and each of us, in separate and isolated mental chambers, bears responsibility. We are each individually aware of this reality—we are responsible—but unwilling or incapable of acknowledging it to one another for fear that a reckoning would be the end of us. So we don’t. For a while, it works. We return to the bar. We shoot the shit until we can’t anymore, and then, one by one, we stop coming. Soon, we are strangers.
I guess that’s what people mean when they talk about looking down the barrel of a gun. There’s a lot to see there.
Yag either doesn’t notice the gun or doesn’t care, because he keeps rapping into his blade.
The music stops. Silence falls over the bar. Yag looks at the gun, then at me, then at Jimmy: one, two, three. His knife hand falls to his side.
“I was there that day too,” he says. “Yeah, you know, that day.” He transfers the blade to his left hand and lifts his right up and motions downward.
Lucas didn’t tell me this. Yag was with them. Martin Yagla: banned from setting foot in our house. He smiled at my baby with his grotesque, falsely white teeth. He touched my baby with his soft, little hands, the same hands that grope girls from the U., children of a different kind. He spoke to my baby with his vulgar tongue, the same tongue that insults decency. My instinct is to attack, to gouge out his eyes with my fingernails, to sink my teeth into his flesh, to thrust my knee into his balls, again and again and again. I want to leave him on the floor, bleeding and impotent. I’m not a human being anymore; I’m an animal.
I lunge forward. I don’t get more than six inches away from my stool. Jimmy holds me back, arms wrapped around my waist.
> “Bet Lucas never told ya that, huh? I was there.” At first I think he’s bragging but then I realize he’s sobbing. He bears responsibility.
He lifts the blade to his own throat.
The gun goes off. A single shot. Louder than anything I’ve ever heard. And then: dead silence. No one so much as gasps.
Blood soaks through Yag’s T-shirt, his left deltoid a deep, bright red. He grips it with his right hand, dumbstruck, and the blood oozes out of the cracks between his fingers, rolling down his arm.
“You fucking shot me!”
The spell is broken. We need to figure out what to do; Yag’s next move is impossible to predict.
Yag looks at Jimmy, then at me. Whatever pain he’s experiencing forces an ugly grimace, so that’s what everyone sees: pain. I look harder because I want to know what’s under all that pain—not what his body feels but what his mind feels. It’s pain too, of course, all mucked up with synapses on neurons sending signals through the spinal cord to the brain, but it’s also more than that. It’s deeper. It is profound loneliness, the kind that only exists when a person is out of options, when there is nowhere to run and no one to turn to, and all you have is yourself, your own mind, which is the greatest punisher of all. I see this because Martin Yagla and I aren’t so different, because it’s the way I’ve felt for a long time.
“That asshole shot me,” Yag says, as if he wants us to act on this information, restrain Cal, take the gun away. No one moves. No one answers his call.
Cal holsters his gun and says, “Give me some towels, Amelia. It’s a through and through. Nicked his shoulder.” More like it tore through the middle of his shoulder, but no one corrects Cal’s interpretation.
Martin turns to run out the back door. He yells, “This bar sucks!”
