Edge (18 page)

No people. The front window—what Mom would have called a “picture window”—was empty; the wall across the room pool-bottom blue. A car approached, headlights in my rearview mirror. The approaching car's sound system thumped, bass notes all the way through my body. I jacked the Honda into gear and cautioned myself to keep under the speed limit, twenty-five, maybe thirty miles an hour.

I passed the house again and began to wonder if they had all gone out to celebrate, leaving the lights blazing, fooling the would-be burglar. Once again I drove around the block.

This time I let the Honda kiss the side of the curb, stopping, holding my breath. The curtains swayed and began to close in little jerks. The curtains stuck. A figure edged into the narrow space between the curtains, an arm reaching up to adjust one of the hooks that attached the drapery, the person standing on tiptoe, muttering with the effort. I knew how he felt, having to fuss with such a mundane annoyance on a night like this.

A light flooded the garage, the door open only enough for me to see a shadow moving around on the concrete floor, a can of Budweiser glittering beside the pickup truck.

I drove, letting the car find its way.

Deena's Diner was crowded with cheerful, hungry people. The special was lettered on a white plastic squeak board, the kind Dr. Monrovia had used to illustrate my dad's injuries. Bea was handing out plates of Caesar salad, plates of vegetarian enchiladas, the two specials for tonight. She gave me a dazed, weary smile, and I could see how satisfied Bea was with her life. She loved this shuffling of orders, the hectic, blackjack dealer side to being a waitress. She liked all of it.

Maybe I had been hoping for some event to deflect my intentions, someone to say just the right thing, some random comment to stop me. But I wouldn't try to talk to her. I waggled my fingers and mouthed,
I can't stay
.

I stopped by a corner grocery on Piedmont Avenue and bought a carton of bean dip and a jumbo bag of Doritos. Just before I gave the cashier the money I hurried back and got a can of tuna off the shelf.

I ate standing up at home, over the kitchen sink, scooping up the bean dip and then eating the tuna out of the can with a fork.

I washed my hands, wiped my mouth and chin with a paper towel. I called Chief's number, and Harriet answered.

“Tell Chief I won't be in tomorrow,” I said.

“Bernie is so upset,” she said, a voice that sounded like a singing voice, a contralto, round voice, even though she was only chatting on a phone. She liked the sound of her voice and depended on it to keep her listener right where she wanted him. “We both are. We look around at the world we live in and just don't know.”

Bernie
.

I forgot to tell her how much I enjoyed her sandwiches. It wasn't quite true, but I wanted to say something polite. I hung up too soon.

The spade was in the shed with the dregs of the lawn nutrient, the nearly empty sack tangled up in the blade of the spade. I stuffed the large paper fertilizer bag back into the shed and then listened to the neighborhood, the televisions, the muted conversations, the background hush of far-away traffic.

The lime tree drops leaves all year round. Once a week or so it lets one fall, tinted with yellow. Mom called up a nursery and they told her this was how a citrus lets go of used-up leaves, little by little, not all at once like the birch or the ginkgo.

I dug into the ground with the spade, the steel chiming and grating against the tiny bits of gravel and concrete in the soil. I took care, not quite sure, digging with my fingers, wondering exactly where.

Deeper than I expected, I remarked to myself. Maybe not here at all.

I was thirsty, even a little queasy. Okay, it isn't here. Brilliant, another great moment in the History of the Mind. I felt giddy, an audience inside me, a theater with no applause, no laugh track, flat silence.

The plastic bag did not make the rustling sound I expected. One moment I was spading dirt. The next minute the steel met steel, a dark sound, too loud. I fell to my knees and worked with my fingers again, uncovering the weight.

T
HIRTY-THREE

I filled in the hole, pressed the dirt with my shoe, and put the spade back into the shed. I closed the shed door and slipped the latch over the loop where a padlock was supposed to fit if we had one.

Details were all that mattered. How I made my way across the lawn, careful not to step on any snails, how I wiped my shoes on a stepping stone, scraping off the dirt—each specific detail had an effect on what I was going to do.

I had seen his father at the window, reaching up to hook the drapes so they would close. I made up a story, what they were doing now. Watching videos, Steven in the garage, drinking too much beer to be much of a mechanic, but loving it, back at home. The initial flush of freedom was probably already fading, little things starting to bother, Mom's sulks, Dad's stupid choice of television reruns. Mom keeping her mouth shut, her son barely escaping the law again, Dad more philosophical, figuring cops make mistakes.

I could picture Steven Ray McNorr's hands, fumbling for a Phillips screwdriver, prying open another beer, his fingerprints dark smudges on the King of Beers.

I cradled the gun in both hands, the barrel pointed toward the floor, away from my body. As I entered the kitchen, Rhonda Newport was being processed by the answering machine. “I bet your family has a civil suit,” she said. “Sue the shooter for gross bodily harm.” Her voice paused, trailing upward, questioningly.

If I was home, she was saying without coming out and asking, pick up the phone. “Zachary, believe me I know.” She didn't have to say what she knew. Rhonda knew her way around the buttes and gullies of life, even the ones she had made up herself. I let her talk a little more, enjoying the way she sounded, ice tinkling in one of her poodle highball glasses. She hung up.

The Vaseline was so thick the cross hatching of the walnut grip and SW trademark were obscured, the weapon ugly with petroleum jelly. I used sheets of paper towel, sitting in my bedroom, gently wiping the barrel, the trigger guard, afraid I would drop the thing or grab it the wrong way. I wiped my hands on the paper towels, using up what looked like half the roll.

No signs of rust. Still loaded, I prompted myself, as though working my way down a checklist. Scared at my own nerve, I gave the cylinder a turn. It clicked, clicked again, and stopped turning.

My nerves jittered at every murmur of the house—the fridge, the floorboards breathing tiny, subsonic sounds. The walls had a silence so solid it was a sound itself, a background presence, the hush of a canyon.

I put the gun on the breadboard. I thrust the Safeway bag into the trash under the sink with the wads of paper towel. I washed my hands. I couldn't get the water to run very hot, but I used plenty of dish soap at the sink. Even then some of the lubricant remained. I let the sink half fill, running soapy water through my hands, until they were clean at last, not a trace of Vaseline.

A car breathed by in the street. The kitchen faucet dripped, once. The gun looked so dark and outlandish here in the kitchen I could hardly bear to put my hand on it. When I placed it carefully in the middle of my bed it pressed down on the mattress. I hurried into the bathroom and peed. I checked the mirror, my normal look, maybe a little flushed. There was no way you could tell.

I put on a Gortex jacket, a bulky blue garment with several pockets, a jacket fit for a trek through a blizzard. Mom had bought it last Christmas, just before our visit to Squaw Valley, where Mom liked to talk shop on the ski lifts, interest rates and boardroom gossip at seven thousand feet.

The gun settled into the pouch in front, and the pocket's tab fastened shut, the miracle of Velcro. The jacket felt too warm. I zipped it up, zipped it back down. Its bulk almost offset the pull of the gun, and I was all the way to the car before I thought: speed limit. Traffic cop.
Step out of the car, please
.

I opened the trunk and folded the jacket over the spare tire. The gun clunked against the tire iron even through the fabric of the jacket, and I folded the garment gently into the corner.

I don't believe in reincarnation, but sometimes it is a theory that explains everything. I must have practiced all of this before, rehearsed it well, in another life. I took 580, the freeway light traffic all the way. The car was running fine, and I had two-thirds of a tank of gas. Then I made a miscue and took the Fruitvale Avenue off ramp, having to drive all the way down to Foothill Boulevard again.

That feeling of being in no hurry was gone. Keeping the speed limit was an effort of will. The ordinary act of driving, stop signs, clutch, gearshift, was slow, way too slow, the car rolling along with something wrong with it, the tires out-of-round, the parking brake stuck.

My hands slipped on the steering wheel, the porch lights and bedroom windows I drove past lurid, mockingly normal. I could still turn back. It was a gift I had saved up, and now presented myself. Good news—I could go straight back home and take a shower.

How could I act like I had done this before—this exact series of actions, parking the car a few houses down, making sure my headlights were off, opening the trunk to tug on the bulky jacket. I even knew to press the gun against my body, determining its position in the pocket, loosening the Velcro but not reaching in, leaving the actual walnut-and-steel untouched a little while longer.

The only physical sensation I paid any attention to was thirst. I ached to dash up one of these gravel-and-juniper front lawns and drink from a garden hose. A dog barked, one of those yammery little dogs no one pays any attention to. A woman opened a front door across the street, arguing cheerfully with someone inside, shutting the door again after pouring out what remained of a pitcher of water.

The garage door was still open just enough for an angle of light to spill out on either side. The car was parked in the driveway, beyond the light.

The beer can was gone, a new moon of condensation where it had been. The truck's hood was down. The door on the driver's side was open, a new beer can standing right about where someone would plant his foot climbing out of the cab. I could tell by the beads of moisture the can was three-quarters full.

Even then I was giving events a chance. It might be someone else in the vehicle, the dad or a friend, or even the mom, enjoying her hobby, replacing the alternator in the family truck.

I could not take another step. A human being nearby made a grunt, effort or muffled violence, sex. My insides shrank, my hand reaching for the outline of the gun. The sounds came from the pickup.

Someone was inside the truck, the soles of his feet jerking and straightening as he worked under the dash. An oblong of light searched the interior. I slipped into the shadow beside the garage and put one hand on the sharp stucco edge of the building.

He half fell out of the pickup, knocking over the beer. He didn't notice the spreading pool of fizz, the yeasty fragrance. He peered at a glittering object the size of a cigarette butt in his fingers. He held the flashlight, examining a fuse from under the dash.

The light from the flashlight exaggerated his features, his eyebrows lurid black, stage makeup. But I knew that square build, that square head.

The Velcro did not release at first, clinging, a harsh, sandpaper rasp. I tugged a little harder, peeling the flap just as he looked down at his feet. The flashlight illuminated the dishwater mess of spilled beer.

T
HIRTY-FOUR

I stepped on the accelerator so hard the car shimmied in place, no forward momentum, tires squealing.

Red lights didn't stop me. Stop signs meant nothing. I was in fourth gear over eighty miles an hour on Foothill Boulevard before I was aware of any other traffic. A yellow Cadillac Seville with a row of holes in it where the chrome strip had come off swerved over to me, two grinning guys saying without words if I wanted a contest I was in the right place.

I cut across the four lanes of city street and into a neighborhood, switching back and forth for several blocks, and the three hundred horsepower Cadillac attempted to follow in a half-joking, half-menacing way, blundering behind me until I careened around the back of a strip mall, Dumpsters and bales of flattened cardboard.

I wasn't sure where I was, parked cars crammed along the curb, broken glass on the pavement. A Doberman on a chain ran along with the car until his leash yanked him. I slowed way down, feathering the brake. Two police cars were in conference, back to front, the drivers nearly touching elbows.

I kept driving, past the Oakland/Alameda County Coliseum, a street sweeper gliding along in the distance, its headlight illuminating the empty parking spaces.

The Oakland Airport is at the end of a plain of dry grass and ditches, reeds and sleeping mallards. I ran the car off the road, over the shoulder, broken glass and trash crackling. I wrenched open the door, and ran up an embankment. The rumble of a jet receded into the sky as the night air hit me.

I took a step back, swept the gun behind me, and threw it. I didn't just toss it or skim it across the water. I sent it with all the strength in my body. I could see the light from the runway glinting, spinning.

I didn't hear the splash.

I got on the freeway heading north and rolled down the window. I was sweating, wet with it, breathing hard. I wrestled out of the heavy jacket and shucked it over the back where it made noises as I drove, collapsing its empty arms and body further down into the dark.

A restaurant commanded the freeway with its sign,
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY
, a place Chief and I had passed but never visited. I found the off ramp, parked at the edge of the lot, and found myself outside the coffee shop. Newspaper machines sold
USA Today
, the Sacramento
Bee
. The night air was unfamiliar, heat and farm smells, manure, and something else, irrigation, water among orchards.