Catch & Release (13 page)

“I'd take care of her, Polly. If they'd let me.”

 

Elkhorn the ghost town is less dead than I expected. There are trucks and four-wheelers parked around. Someone has hung out laundry. A thin track of smoke rises from the stovepipe on another cabin.

“See that?” says Odd, and he points to a grey, weathered building with a balcony staring out over the town. No Juliet is up there waiting for Romeo. No paranoid lawman with a gun has a rifle waiting for the bad guys. It's a ghost town. Romeo and Juliet are both dead. Lawman? Dead. Bad guys? Also dead.

“Right there, in that building, a guy shot another guy at a dance. They had a little disagreement about whether the band should play a polka or a waltz. That's what my Gramma Dot told me. But come on, I want to show you the coolest thing.”

Really? There is something cooler than laundry, four-wheelers, and Gramma Dot's tales of getting shot for waltzing?

 

The coolest thing is the graveyard. We are using Odd's definition of cool, which includes tombstones with little lambs kneeling on the top to make sure we know there are children buried in that dirt. One of the graves has a full-size tree growing right up through the middle of it. Some of them have fences around them. The dates on the ones I can read say 1889 mostly. Must have been an epidemic, or a school burned down, or some other screwed-up tragedy. Been there. Seen that, the latest version.

Odd is going from grave to grave like an optimistic dog that thinks there might still be a useful bone in one of them. Then he stops, unzips his fly and pees all over a grave.

“Odd! Stop that!” I yell, but it's too late. He just shrugs and zips up his pants.

“This would be an interesting place to die,” says Odd.

I look around at the dark trees creeping up on the cemetery and the old graves smothered with purple-flowering knapweed. There's not a cloud in the sky, but there is a jet trail. The wind has blown it into fragments that look like chromosomes. The wind will keep blowing and the trace of the jet will be nothing. The people on that plane are hundreds of miles away already, I figure. They are thinking about wherever the fuck they are going— Minneapolis or some military base, who knows? I look at the dirt again. At the graves and the sagebrush. This place isn't that interesting right now, and I'm alive. I can't imagine being dead would make it better. Odd and me, we disagree on the definition of interesting, too.

“We could be ghosts in a ghost town.”

Then Odd reaches into the messenger bag he has slung over his shoulder. I imagine he's thirsty or needs to medicate himself, but instead of the aluminum flask or the prescription baggie, he pulls out a gun. The barrel has a dull shine, like a black snake. I can smell the gun oil. The only sound is a squirrel bitching.

“What will it be, Polly? Polka or waltz.”

“I can polka.” I don't say that I doubt he can.

Odd says nothing. Then he lifts the gun and points. Not at me. Not this time. He points to my left and a little high. KRAAAK!

There isn't even much of an echo.

“Missed,” says Odd.

Missed what? I have no fucking idea what might have been worth obliterating. None at all.

 

Odd's crazy, and he has a gun.

Once a gun is in the game, everything changes.

He walks behind me down the trail, down the hill. I could run, probably, but I can't run faster than a bullet.

I can feel him at my back like a weight, like a mountain lion a deer never sees until it drops and reaches around to choke out the air and ride out the puny struggle. I can hear his steps, the little difference between the true foot and the fake one. I feel the pine needles and little rocks underfoot and I wish he would slip. I'm listening for that moment—the moment when he slides a little and he has to catch himself. That is the moment when I will run.

But we get to the car, and I'm still waiting for that moment. I open the door and get in. I stare straight ahead. I can hear Odd open the door. I hear the locks click shut. My hand is still on the handle, but I don't know if the automatic lock will keep it shut if I try to get out.

“Put your seat belt on,” says Odd. Then he turns the key.

 

We pull off the main road onto a track between the trees. Maybe somebody pulled some logs out of here with a skidder. Maybe somebody used this place for a kegger. Whatever. The Cadillac drags itself along, its elegant belly in the dirt, thumping on rocks or roots.

When Odd lets the car stop, we aren't far off the road, but we are invisible. Not that there is any traffic to see us in the first place.

“Here we go,” says Odd, “Perfect.”

Perfect for what?

Perfect for crazy.

 

You build the fire this time, Polly,” says Odd. Then he sits down on a deadfall log and takes off his leg. He looks tired. Tired and crazy.

I start scraping off a bare place to build a fire.

“There's no water here, Odd. What if the fire gets away from us?”

“It ain't gonna get away if you pay attention. Just do it right, Polly. The fire won't get away.”

I imagine my bones, some of my bones, left behind after the fire. I imagine somebody poking at my falling-apart ribs and finding the melted slug that ripped through my heart. I imagine the back of Odd's skull all blown out from where he put the gun in his mouth. And there in the imaginary ashes is the gun—and the robot leg. And that's all that's left.

“Ass in gear, Polly. We need that fire.”

The air around me is still and hot. The sun won't be gone for an hour. I start picking up branches that shattered off the deadfall.

It's just like T-ball. Everyone can play. Even I can play. Odd's head is the ball. The bat? The bat?

These pine branches are great firewood, tinder-dry and brittle, even the big ones. There is no strength left in them. They are that dead. They are no use to me.

The bat . . . is his robot leg. I don't need to hit a homer. Just try, Polly. Just hit the ball and run.

I move as fast as I can. It's not as heavy as I hoped but there's nothing else right now. Grip and swing. It's good enough. It's a good enough hit. I just let go and the robot leg flies off into the bushes. Be careful with the bat Polly, you might hit someone if you just let it go. I did. I did hit someone. That was the plan. Now run, Polly, run, run.

But I trip and fall hard on my stomach in the dirt.

No I didn't trip.

It's Odd. He's got my ankle, my leg; he's crawling up my body.

I hit him hard but not hard enough.

I scratch for something to fight with. Pine needles, dirt . . . nothing, nothing. I twist over so I can fight back. Now he has a hand over my mouth and both of my wrists tight in the other. So I pull my knee up hard. It doesn't put an end to anything, but his hand slips a little and I buck my forehead into his face.

Scrambling knees, hands, on my feet, by the car.

The door is locked. Back door locked. Other side locked. Locked.

Then I hear Odd. He's sitting with his leg and his stump splayed out in front of him toddler-fashion. He has the keys and he's shaking them over his head. He's laughing. It's not an evil laugh. It's just a gut-busting, funniest-thing-in-the-world laugh. He puts his hand up to his nose and wipes at the blood.

“Shit,” he says, “Shit. Suck me sideways, Pollywog.”

OK. So that happened.

I'm leaning against D'Elegance and I'm breathing ragged, but I can feel the adrenaline dropping . . . dropping. I rest my head on the car. I just don't have the energy to do anything else.

“So,” says Odd, “Let's heat up them beans and eat nachos.” He wings the keys at me.

I grope at space and I miss them. “Dumbass!” I yell, after I hear the keys land. Somewhere there, in the pine needles and the dust, are the keys. And until I find them we can't open the trunk and pull out the can of refrieds and the bag of chips.

Until I find the fucking keys, we go hungry.

“You are such a dick.”

“Bitch,” says Odd, in a cheerful sort of way, and he crawls back onto the log by the fire. “And get my leg out the brush when you got a chance.”