The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (20 page)

“Come on, honey” she said. “Go for it.”

Like a star, a red dot appeared in the white of her left eye. The normal place and the other place were turning into the same place, quick but slow, the way a car accident is quick but slow. I stared. The blood spread raggedly across her eye. She shifted her eyes from my face to a spot somewhere outside the car and fixed them there. I fought the urge to turn and see what she was looking at. She shifted her eyes again. She looked me deep in the face.

“Well?” she said. “Are you going to do it or not?”

Words appeared in my head, like a sign reading
I DON'T WANT TO
.

She leaned forward and turned on the emergency flashers. “Get out of my car,” she said quietly. “You're wasting my time.”

 

As soon as I got out, she hit the gas and burned rubber. I walked into the field next to the road, without an idea of where I might go. I realized after she was gone that she might call the police, but I felt in my gut that she would not—in the other place there are no police, and she was from the other place.

Still, as I walked I took the bullets out of the gun and scattered them, kicking snow over them and stamping it down. I walked a long time, shivering horribly. I came across a drainage pipe and threw the empty gun into it. I thought,
I should've gut-shot her—that's what I should've done. And then got her to the abandoned house. I should've gut-shot the bitch.
But I knew why I hadn't. She'd been shot already, from the inside. If she had been somebody different I might actually have done it. But somehow the wig-haired woman had changed the channel and I don't even know if she'd meant to.

 

The fly bobbing on the brown, gentle water. The long grasses so green that they cast a fine, bright green on the brown water. The primitive fish mouth straining for water and finding it as my son releases it in the shallows. Its murky vanishing.

The blood bursting in her eye; poor woman, poor mother. My mother died of colon cancer just nine months ago. Shortly after that, it occurred to me that the woman had been wearing that awful wig because she was sick and undergoing chemo. Though of course I don't know.

 

The hurts of childhood that must be avenged: so small and so huge. Before I grew up and stopped thinking about her, I thought about that woman a lot. About what would've happened if I'd gotten her there, to the abandoned house. I don't remember anymore the details of these thoughts, only that they were distorted, swollen, blurred: broken face, broken voice, broken body left dying on the floor, watching me go with dimming, despairing eyes.

These pictures are faded now and far away. But they can still make me feel something.

The second time I put my hand on Doug's shoulder, he didn't move away inside; he was too busy tuning in to the line and the lure. Somewhere in him is the other place. It's quiet now, but I know it's there. I also know that he won't be alone with it. He won't know that I'm there with him, because we will never speak of it. But I will be there. He will not be alone with that.

FROM
The Greensboro Review

 

N
ICHOLLE, MY NEWLY MINTED
serious girlfriend, hails from southern Alabama. The first time I meet her family, her brother, Dub, takes me to his swimming hole. Just before we splash in the muddy river he slaps my back and says, “Watch fer moccasins and snappers.” Sure enough, we're neck-deep under the hazy summer sky when I spot a black snake enter the water. I have no idea what kind it is, and I quickly lose sight of it. Dub, this crazy bastard, is unaffected by my update. I don't want to be scared, but I've reached my breaking point and hurtle myself toward the bank. There's a ways to go and every water ripple grows a tail and fangs. Behind me I hear Dub laughing at my terror.

When it's all done and I sit at the dinner table with Nicholle, Dub, and her parents, I wonder if there's anything in my northern New Mexico upbringing that would scare Dub, and although I search hard, all I recall is a harmless bluegill fish attached to my pinkie when I'm eight. I look across the table at Nicholle's mother, a cheerful, plump lady who, if I unfocus my eyes enough, could be Nicholle in thirty years. Her father smiles approvingly at me, so at least I have that going. I'm nervous as hell, but I still feel for Nicholle's thin legs underneath the table. She swats me away.

Dub scares me a little. His hair is cut at varied lengths and there appears to be a knife scar across his cheek. After dinner, he asks me if I've ever been waterboarded. I tell him no, and he says he hasn't either.

“But,” he says, “I beat up a homeless guy. Dumbass didn't even fight back, just laid there.”

“Thanks for that, Dub.”

“I've seen some shit,” he says. He's out of high school, probably eighteen or so, but has an enthusiasm and weakness of intellect that makes eighteen hard to swallow. “Nicholle don't know this, but I can count cards. I act broke, but there's ten thou in my room. Swear.”

“Okay,” I say while fingering my chin, “cool.”

I have no idea why I say “cool,” can't think of anything else, and even Dub looks at me curiously.

“You count cards?” he asks.

Actually, I do, but I'm not interested in where the conversation will go or what I'll be invited to do. “You mean like gambling?” I say.

“Jesus,” he says, laughing. He shakes his head. “Gambling.”

What Dub doesn't know, and what I never plan on telling Ni­cholle, is that I do gamble. It's not bad: local games with friends. I bring what I can lose and that's it.

I do have the bad type of secrets. At the top of the list is a night in Los Alamos, New Mexico, just after dusk. I was late to a no-limit game across town, and I decided to cut through the Woodmen Pointe subdivision. I was up to 40 miles per hour on the straightaway near the end of a row of tan stucco homes. I never saw the girl scatter from the shadows, never heard her over the radio. I only felt the bump of her body, like running over a small dog. And before I could think about anything, the Jeep stopped, my fingers strangled the wheel. I closed my eyes. For a weightless moment only sound: Tom Petty, the idling four-cylinder, a slight breeze whistling the aspen. When I opened my eyes, no one was outside to scream and rush forward and finger me. No cars approached the other way. There was just a motionless girl in my rearview mirror, basking in the filtered red brake light. She wore torn pink sweatpants, and the soles of her tiny shoes were brand-new white. I saw my arm reach out and turn off the radio, then put the Jeep into first. My eyes swung back to the rearview mirror just in time to see her legs jolt once, then calm. Was she dead or just now dying? I drove away. I could still see her through the suffocating air, now quiet as a napping child.

Later that night I huddled in my shower, replaying images of the jolting pink legs. I tried to convince myself that she'd live, that a doctor would find her, that she'd suffer a little—a lifelong limp, perhaps—and there would be a recovery, but her death was on the news and in the paper the next morning. It was a hot story in Los Alamos for two weeks, until the wildfires took over. Even the big station in Albuquerque carried it. On the telecast the anchors reported the event and begged people to call in with any information on the assailant. They showed her family huddled on their front yard in front of microphones, their faces falling apart.

I don't know where my belief in a just universe comes from, but it's there, and one day, be it snake or other ailment, I know my time will come. I can't get it out of my head. The worst part is that it's a waiting game, and so I wait and feel the possibility of justice hovering over me, pausing until the time is right.

 

The night I call Nicholle's father to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage he cries. Gravel dances in his throat. “I couldn't be happier,” he says. “I'll let you talk to Karen.” There's silence while he passes the phone, but his voice comes through again. “Two things, son.” It's the first time he's called me son. “One. I'll only loan you money if Nicholle asks. Two. If you don't have a gun, get one.” A pause. I smile. “Three. You're a Tide fan when you visit. Four. I'll give you a nickname which you probably won't like. Just smile. Five. We've loved you for a while now. Good luck.”

After I ask Nicholle to marry me under a flowering dogwood, she makes me call Dub.

“Know where I been?” Dub says after telling me good job on the proposal. I tell him no, I don't know where he's been. “Riverboats, man. Rivers are international waters. No rules, buddy. State, government, can't touch 'em.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Should get married on a riverboat. There's one called the
Gypsy.
”

“We'll consider it, Dub.”

“Love you, man,” he says, like he means it.

I pass the phone to Nicholle, who's all smiles. “The
Gypsy
?” she says while I shake my head next to her. She gives me a look. It means that Dub is off-limits.

 

During our engagement, Nicholle and I pick up books about marriage. We open our favorite one,
The Questions You Should Ask Before “I Do,”
whenever we Sunday-drive from Knoxville, where we both work. I learn that Nicholle would never adopt, thinks sex three times a week is enough, hates cats, wants to visit Mongolia (“Just to say I've been”), doesn't mind if I have to travel for work, dreams of performing on Broadway if she could sing, is scared of getting her mother's cheeks, and doesn't like it when I say, “Ya know what I'm saying?” when trying to prove a point.

She learns a lot about me as well, at least the stuff I want her to know, but her face goes to stone when I tell her my number-one pet peeve is when people praise God only for the good things in life. “If God is so great,” I say, “what the hell is up with cancer and dropped touchdown passes? No one points to the sky when a pass slips through their fingers.” We go at it pretty good when I think,
If you're smart, you'll never say these things again,
but I know I will. All this learning about each other is fine, but the great stuff comes out when we sit in a tan stucco courtyard on our honeymoon in Savannah. We are waiting for our food, sipping on red wine, when Ni­cholle asks me the worst thing I've ever considered doing to someone else, even if it was just for a split second. I consider taking my hit-and-run and forming a hypothetical, just to see the reaction, but all that comes to me are the girl's spotless white shoes. I feel my stomach clench and push the image away. I search my mental catalogue for relief, and it doesn't take me long to sift through the feeble mock threats and momentary revenge wishes to a wooded mountainside near my childhood town.

I was twelve, cutting down dead white pine with my father in the backcountry. I'd taken a break, leaning against the old red Dodge truck, and in a bizarre mental pulse I thought of taking the chainsaw and hacking my father. I imagined the roaring saw, the blood and limbs mixing with the sawdust, the dumbfounded look in his eyes before the spinning hot teeth bit. Even in that moment I remember being ashamed and frightened of my own psychological capacity.

Now in the Italian restaurant courtyard, I hold the saltshaker in my hand and avoid Nicholle's brown eyes. I don't know if the words have come out right. Can those words come out right? “It's crazy,” I say. I feel heavy and place my hands in my lap. “I don't know what I'm saying. Ya know what I'm saying?” I steal a glance. She's wearing my favorite sundress, a white number with small red and yellow flowers. She's tan and has her hair pulled back. There's a large party in the courtyard clinking wineglasses and talking over one another. We're all visitors.

“Stealing a baby,” Nicholle says. “I don't know where it comes from. But there it is. I'd planned names, escape routes from the hospital, everything. I didn't care if it looked like me. I even thought it might be easier to take a year-old, not a newborn. They'd be eating solids.”

The food arrives. I cut the veal with my knife. I take another bite and watch Nicholle move her bare arms as she negotiates her utensils into her pasta, then grabs for her wineglass and gulps. We should laugh. I think of laughing.

“So,” I say. “I'm glad we're the normal ones.”

 

We move into a nice rolling subdivision in Knoxville called Hawks Landing. Lo and behold, about a month into our stay, two hawks make their nest in a giant ponderosa in our front yard. The place is spacious and we have privacy on almost an acre. The neighbors are fine, but there's a guy around the corner who lets his dog shit in our yard. One Sunday morning, as I trim the flowering bushes in the front, he comes around with the dog and waves friendly to me before the dog scampers ten feet onto the grass and does his business. I don't have the balls to say anything. I'm out-of-shape thin and believe there's a hovering fistfight in every confrontation. He's a big guy, brick shoulders, looks like he wouldn't mind a fight, win or lose. Sometimes I see both him and the dog rolling around on his front yard when I come home from work. I stay clear. Besides that, life is great. Nicholle and I join a coed softball league, help clean up the local park, and make church about a third of the time. I like the routine. We break it up just enough to keep everything interesting. Nicholle steals $400 worth of tile from a local hardware store. Just walks out. It's in our bathroom on a diagonal. I lie to my boss most days about where I am, the hours I put in, but I work hard enough that he never questions me. I'm a Tennessee fan now, but Nicholle is Alabama all the way, so we have one of those stupid house-divided license plates, half orange, half crimson. We have lots of friends and a few enemies, but it's a healthy proportion.

Dub calls one night and talks to Nicholle for an hour. This is not normal.