The First Cut (8 page)

Mark, supporting a staggering Trudy whose good arm was draped across his shoulder, came up to us. “Jesus, Randy. We gotta get you guys out of here,” he said.

I wiped Randy’s blood off on the wilted grass and stood.

“Why didn’t you guys tell us you were cops?" I looked down at Randy. "On the phone; you could have said something. You could have ended this. No one had to get hurt.”

Mark, fumbled in his pocket for a cell phone. He pulled it out, keyed 911, then put it to his ear. “Randy didn’t want to blow the bust,” he said while waiting for the call to connect. “We don’t want these guys. We need to go higher up the chain.” He swung Trudy’s arm over his head with his other hand and led her to me, then knelt at Randy’s side as he talked in low tones to the dispatcher.

How could I not have seen it? I wondered. Looking back, things never did add up. Randy never going to class. Mark showing up so often. Hell, a hippie speed dealer? I looked down at Randy, his face still twisted in pain. I realized that I wanted him to hurt. That he could never hurt enough.

Demon, Him

Who knew that the crazy homeless guy was right all along? Sitting at his kitchen table, fashioning a hat liner from aluminum foil, Jack thought back to his days in the late ’90s as a newspaper reporter. It was a small satellite office for a larger newspaper, housed in a converted convenience store. The homeless guys in the neighborhood had been so used to returning the college kids’ beer cans for change that the alteration didn’t deter them. Instead of seeking money, they came in to see validation of their crazy theories.

Or so Jack thought. One in particular had amused him. “There are subliminal messages in textbooks!” he’d shout. “The sheriff is trying to control my mind, so I put foil on my windows!” he’d wail. The staff of four reporters had an unwritten agreement that they’d take these nutjobs on a rotating basis. Unless you were on deadline, the next one up would take the crazy guy – and they were all guys – into the conference room. Jack always seemed to draw the one they dubbed Subliminal Man. There was a 20-minute limit; if it went that long, another reporter would come in to alert the rantee of an urgent phone call. The homeless guys seemed to understand this process and respected it, dutifully leaving when it was time.

Jack folded the foil into a cone, then rolled the point down to create a skullcap of sorts. The sides were then rolled up to hold it all together. He fitted it inside a baseball cap and stuck it on his head before leaving his apartment. It was an unseasonably cold New Year’s Day, a brisk 48 degrees according to the Minneapolis Tribune app on his iShades, so he had decided a walk was a nice way to enjoy the day off. The problem was that an idle stroll led to idle thoughts, and Jack didn’t want to spoil the walk by having to worry about either avoiding the sensors or keeping a rein on his mind. Thus, the foil cap. Subliminal Man had something there; the sensors were high-tech, but they were, well, foiled by foil.

It was a tricky dance, dealing with the sensors. Jack had purchased his house from a friend who had had lined half of the rooms with foil and then covered it with plaster and paint to avoid detection. He had left the other rooms unshielded because a house that didn’t show up on the grid would draw immediate suspicion. If Jack wanted to think about sports or reality TV or read the preapproved publications on his tablet, he would sit in his living room. If he wanted to discuss politics or read a novel or look at underground pamphlets, he would sit in his study or guest bedroom. The bathroom was most difficult. Like a walk, a shower is where the mind wanders. But the sensors know how much time people spend there, so shielding it wasn’t an option.

As Jack walked near the sensor closest to his home, he decided to test the hat with a relatively innocuous notion. “I wonder if the president fully thought through the repercussions of selling the Upper Peninsula water rights to Mexico,” he thought. He carefully chose his words, knowing it would be categorized as “tepid doubt” if picked up, and thus earn only a mild tasering from one of the roving monitors. He even lingered under the sensor so he would be easier to find, but nothing happened.

Mollified, he started walking again. It was the 10th anniversary of the coup and the resultant issuance of martial law, but that was nothing to celebrate. Patriot Act II had instituted things like ThoughtControl and the TreasonCams that certainly hadn’t made his life any better. And when the media was nationalized, he lost his job and had been forced to work at a flag pin assembly plant. Subliminal Man’s conspiracy theories had seemed laughable at the time; they were quaint now. There was no conspiracy necessary; everything was out in the open.

As he turned a corner to head toward the riverwalk, the artificial daylight gave way to Situational Darkness. He looked up to determine the cause and realized he was at the center of the blackout. A high-power LED on the nearest sensor tower shot a beam at his head and an automated voice declared, “Jack Simmons, you are being detained for treason! Your thoughts have been recorded and have been found to be in violation of Patriot Act II’s Treason Deterrence Protocols. Remain in position until an officer can apprehend you.”

He knew it was futile to run. The sensors could track him anywhere. He must have messed up the foil hat, and the police, growing craftier by the day, likely figured out that he was testing the system earlier and waited for an infraction worth prosecuting.

As he contemplated his fate, he saw people gathering in the shadows of the Situational Darkness. At first just a handful, but the crowd soon grew. They advanced, weapons in hand, to exact their own justice. Mob punishment was not only legal, but encouraged because it saved money. Because the TreasonCams were infallible, there were no trials or appeals. Scooping a bludgeoned suspect’s remains from the sidewalk was cheaper than apprehending and housing him, so any police response would surely be a long time coming.

The citizens gathered around him in a circle, chanting as they had been taught on television, “Kill the traitor! Punish the treason! Protect the country!” The first blow drove Jack to his knees, the next brought him to all fours. With each strike, Jack couldn’t help but think of the zombies of old outlawed movies, mindless beasts bent on destruction in the name of self-preservation. As the last of his blood leaked onto the sidewalk, weapons were sheathed and neighbors started to discuss the coming football game and reality TV results as they walked back to their homes.

Countdown

10...

We were so close that her heart and my heart were touching, as if fused together. She looked up at me, her eyes clouded with confusion.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I have a confession,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s going to tear us apart, but I can’t keep on like this.”

“Oh, God. I should have known,” she said. “Too good to be true. What, you’re married?”

“No. Remember when you said it was the worst thing and the best thing to ever happen to you? Well, please keep both possibilities in mind.”

9...

It was the first time we had made love with the lights on. It wasn’t teen-aged apprehension or the shame of flabby thirty-somethings gone to seed. There were simply things she didn’t want me to see. I knew they were there. They didn’t affect me. At least not the way she thought. She was worried about the surface, how she looked. But I was in love, and appearances didn’t matter. She was beautiful, and the flaws did nothing to take away from that. She was baring herself to me. I felt like it was time to reciprocate.

8...

“I really don’t mind the scars.”

She stood looking at herself in a full-length mirror affixed to the back of the bedroom door. She turned this way and that, twisting to find the right angle to take in another part of her body. In bra and panties, the scars were clearly visible. They snaked up her forearms, made red splotches on her lower legs and angry welts along her neckline.

“You don’t mind them, do you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Now come to bed, and this time let’s leave the light on.”

7...

"I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without you,” she said.

She sat next to me on the couch in my apartment, her legs up under her, her head on my chest. I didn’t respond, simply ran my fingers through her hair. It had grown out into a bob that made her seem younger.

“I kind of feel like I’m falling for you,” she said.

“That’s not a surprise,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her upright. “I’ve been taking care of you.”

“No,” she said. “It’s something more.”

6...

Mr. Jennings paced back and forth across the back room. I caught a glimpse of collegiate flesh through the door to the front of the tanning salon.

“Is this going to be a problem for us?” he said.

“No, sir. It’s under control. It’s strictly professional.”

“It had better be,” he said, stopping directly in front of me. “There’s no room for guilt in this business, David.”

I nodded. “It was my mistake. I’m just trying to make it right.”

“Just don’t make it any worse.”

5...

“You’re doing what?”

Chris had just gotten back from picking up payments. We were sitting in the back of the salon.

“It’s only until she gets on her feet. I’m responsible, so I thought I’d help her out.”

“Well, she is hot. Saw her picture in the paper,” he said. “What did the fire do to her?”

“She has scars, but the doctor said they’ll fade with time.”

“Guess she won’t be coming in here any time soon,” Chris said with a laugh. “These piece-of-shit beds would finish the job.”

4...

“Did you get that from me?”

We were on my couch, watching TV. She had pulled aside the collar of my button-down to reveal a small, red scar in the shape of a heart.

“I guess. It’s just like yours,” I said, pointing to her neck. “Your necklace must have heated up in the fire and branded both of us when I carried you out.”

“I still don’t know how to thank you.”

“There’s no need,” I said. “Right place, right time. I was lucky.”

“No,” she said. “I’m the lucky one.”

3...

I wheeled her to the hospital door and then helped her up and led her to my car.

“You’re sure you want to do this? I’ll be getting in your way.”

“Nonsense. I have plenty of room.”

“OK,” she said. “I guess I should expect no less. You didn’t miss a day the whole time.”

“Figured you could use the company. Now I figure you can use the help.”

“My guardian angel,” she said, rising onto her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek.

“Something like that.”

2...

I rushed in, pulling my jacket over my head to repel the flames already licking along the walls. The screams were coming from a bedroom in the back. I kicked in the door and found her trying to open a window that had been painted shut. I grabbed a blanket and picked her up in my arms. Holding her tight against me, I rushed back through the blaze and toward the sanctuary of the front yard.

1...

I packed the explosives next to the natural gas line that fed the furnace. It needed to burn so hot that no one could determine a cause. Mr. Jennings’ had made that clear. I wasn’t sure if it was an insurance thing or something more. He assured me the house would be vacant.

I stepped out to my car parked halfway down the block, and whispered a countdown under my breath. I fingered the trigger, heard a muted blast, and then everything was aflame.

Then I heard the scream.

The Bluffs

The tall limestone bluffs that give Bluffton its name tower more than 150 feet above the Upper Iowa River like an extensive rock barricade that snakes along the edge of the water for miles in either direction. The other bank of the river, in contrast, is flat land, a two-foot high wall of soil that breaks at the last moment in a wash of rock and sand that edges forward to the water lapping to meet it. The river itself is a trickle at this point -- the depth of a well-drawn bath in its shallowest spots, no more than chest-deep most everywhere else -- perfect for a leisurely float by canoe.

Sitting at a campsite on that lower bank, Paul gazed up at the cliffs. He leaned back in his canvas camp chair, his feet up on the seat of a picnic table pulled close for that purpose, and took it in. He chose this site specifically. He'd last been here nine years earlier, canoeing with a handful of high school buddies when they all were a few years out of college. They had been trying desperately to cling to the past at the same time they were torn from it by new jobs, women and that dandelion seed-like drift spurred by the winds of ambition and promise.

His life had continued to change; radically, he thought. The bluffs, in contrast, looked the same. The campground was really a large field that backed up to the river, its spaces strung along the bank between a few tall trees. While this was the back side of the campground -- everything else was arrayed away from here toward the road about 200 yards off -- it seemed like the front of something, the tents and campers and lawn chairs all facing the river as if toward a stage, that ruffled curtain of rock hiding the stage hands while the campfire footlights flickered against the bluffs.

It was exactly what he remembered, exactly what they needed. He wasn’t sure how things had reached this point, but it felt like a last chance. When he called home from the hotel to propose the trip, it seemed as if he had caught Joyce off guard. He guessed she expected him to ask if he could come back home. Instead he simply wanted to get things on his turf. He was surprised and relieved that she agreed. While he'd bristled at Joyce's plan to come up later with the boys rather than all ride together, he was glad for it now. He had a chance to set up camp, crack a beer, and settle in a bit before they came. Eric and Charlie would be like puppies on a short leash when they got here, running around touching and bumping things, tongues wagging, getting in the way. It had taken half an hour to get the tent set up by himself; it would have taken longer with the boys here.