The Death of Wendell Mackey (17 page)

“Your own mother?”

“Just wish I had the chance.”

“Do you actually think she’s gone?”

Wendell blinked and saw his mother behind his eyelids. “She’s gone,” he said. He pulled the pistol’s hammer back with his thumb.

Their plastic smiles remained.

“Come back with us, Mr. Mackey,” said Scotia. “Let us help you.”

“There’s nowhere else to go,” said Thane.

And he was right, Wendell knew that. There was no possibility for a new life. No one would rent to a monster. Or hire one. Or befriend one. It could never be different. He couldn’t escape what they had done to him, and as that realization set in, the gun’s barrel turned from Scotia to Wendell’s right temple.

“Then this is the only way,” Wendell said.

“Now,” said Scotia, his smile gone, “that would be tragic.”

But so easy
, Wendell thought.
Just a few pounds of pressure
. And then a silent world.

Scotia raised a hand, trying to calm Wendell. “Mr. Mackey, that wouldn’t be wise. After all we’ve done for you, as our investment you’re risking—”

The gun’s barrel went back to Scotia. Wendell was surprised at how easy the trigger pulled, and how loud it was. A cloud of dust puffed from the hole in the wall made by the bullet, but there were no doctors, nobody at all.

He was alone, his ears ringing.

The refrigerator was back, as was the sink, the floorboards, walls, front door. Wendell dropped the gun on the top of the refrigerator and looked down at his hands. Creature hands. Then he dropped to his knees before the kitchen table, unsure of what to do next.

“This is stupid, stupid stupid
stupid
. It won’t work. It
can’t
.” Wendell folded his hands together on the table, and looked up at the ceiling—trying to think
through
the ceiling to the sky above. His mind was empty. No words came. “Just like as a kid,” he said, “just like riding a bike…it’ll come back, it’ll come back.” But what would come back? At what point in his past did he remember praying? It wasn’t a practice modeled by his parents, but more something picked up from watching people on TV shows do it. He looked back down at his folded hands and closed his eyes.

You’ll try to think of God
, he thought,
but only she will come to mind
.

“Oh Lord… Dear God…” It sounded ridiculous, like it was all a failed attempt at acting. He couldn’t even pretend correctly. It wasn’t that Wendell doubted God’s existence; it was just all of those things like salvation and repentance, those things preached by the grinning televangelists on Sunday mornings. They pertained to people, to
humans
. Wendell couldn’t pretend to be in that category anymore. So whatever God offered everyone else bypassed him.

Still, he closed his eyes again and tried mumbling the words that he remembered from those childhood trips to church healing services with his mother, spoken by those gesticulating preachers from their plywood stages. It was all that came to mind. Maybe God would hear something. Maybe something would stick. Wendell shook his head as he spoke.

One bullet, in the head. All over.

He shook his head more, and continued to mumble someone else’s words: “The Lord is my shepherd, I…I… I don’t want to go out this way. He maketh me lie down in… in some place better than this.” He wanted to say more, but what came out were butt ends of sentences and words and phrases his head had collected throughout the years: Jesus, bread of life, something about being born of woman and spirit, of baptism and new life.

“New life,” he intoned, “new life…new…” He strained to find sense in it, as what he was seeing in his own body was new life, but one far different than what those preachers meant. His new life was ugly and deformed. And dangerous.

One more bullet.

“No.” Wendell stopped, opened his eyes and stood up. He tried to recall better days, thinking of his father, but now only seeing his father’s casket, sitting in the funeral home surrounded by flowers. He let his mind focus on the casket, hoping that he would see the lid pop open and his father sit up, grinning and gleeful at the prank he had pulled. “I got you guys,” he would yell, “I got you
all!
”

If only. So perhaps he
should
end it all, Wendell thought, and use one last bullet. It was more than tempting, but he couldn’t do it. Not yet at least. So he stared at the wall, at the bullet hole, which seemed to grow in his eyes.

The knock on the door brought Wendell back to reality.

“Wendell?” It was Agatha. “Wendell, open the door.”

She wasn’t going to leave him alone. Wendell wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Three fierce knocks. “Wendell?” She must have heard the shot.

Wendell put the pistol back on the refrigerator, and turned back to the bullet hole in the wall.

“Then I’ll have to go and call the police,” she said.

He stepped towards the door.

“I’m okay,” he said through it. “I was just moving some boxes, and I dropped some. So…”

“Open the door Wendell.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“You’re not okay. Open the door.” Now her voice had an edge to it.

Tenacious
, he thought. He didn’t expect that in such a small, old package. Relenting, Wendell opened the door.

“You think I’m stupid,” she said, her eyes firm. “Boxes? That’s the best you’ve got? I’ve fired plenty of guns, and I know one when I hear one.”

“Listen, I know you were friendly with my mom, but I’m okay.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“So what? I’m not your problem.”

“Just don’t lie. Tell me the truth and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Fine. It’s nothing. Accidents happen, and…”

“Accidents? So you do think I’m stupid.”

Wendell sighed. “Because not much is accidental, right?”

“So you were listening.”

“Look, what do you want from me?”

“Tell me the truth.”

“You do this a lot, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Actually, yes.”

Let her push you
, he thought,
let her push you a little more and that switch will be thrown again. Just like with Drake. You know it will. And then she’ll see
.

But he didn’t feel anything bubbling up. Maybe she would stay safe and he could stay hidden.

Give it time
, Wendell thought,
because it’ll come. Soon enough, it’ll come
.

“No,” he snapped, touching his forehead. “I mean,” and he looked at Agatha, “I mean no, no you don’t have to do that, get involved and—”

“You really don’t know what you mean, do you?”

They both stared at each other. Part of Wendell was waiting—hoping—for her to invite him into her apartment again.

“A few years back,” Agatha said, “on the floor below us, a lonely divorcé who just heard that he would never see his kids again blew his brains out all over his breakfast cereal. And for some reason, the cops thought it would be better if someone like me were nearby. Not for the neighbors, I thought, as much as for the cops themselves. You don’t forget something like that. Even cops who’d seen everything couldn’t un-see something like that. It wasn’t like on TV. I can remember hearing the shot from up here. A little pop. It didn’t seem like such a little pop could have caused all of what I saw.” She looked up at Wendell.

“I didn’t know it was loaded.”

So, then you’re just a jackass
, her face said. “That doesn’t have to happen to you, Wendell,” she said. “Whatever your situation is, your future hasn’t been written yet.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s not how it works. You’ve got free will.”

“Some things can’t be changed, Sister. Maybe shitty lives just end shitty, no matter what you want.”

“Let me in then,” she responded, gesturing into his apartment. “Let me in and tell me what can’t be changed.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“I’ll just stay for a few minutes, let you unload anything that needs to be unloaded. Maybe just the gun.” She stepped into the door, but Wendell blocked her with his body.

“No, really, I’m okay.”

“Wendell—”

“It’s fine.” He started to close the door. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

Agatha stopped the door with her forearm and stuck her head into the opening.

“So there’s going to be a tomorrow for you?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You can’t lie to a nun, you know.”

“I won’t try.”

Agatha relaxed her forearm and stepped back. “Loneliness is a killer. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“You’re not like most people, are you?” Wendell said.

“I’ll take that as a compliment. But you know I’m right.”

“I’m fine, really.” He leaned on the door. “And thanks for… I should go.” Agatha stepped back again. The door closed, and he quickly locked it and slipped the security chain onto the slide.

Open it back up,
he told himself.

“Okay, Wendell,” Agatha said, “but I’ll see you tomorrow. And…” But she left the thought hanging. Wendell heard her enter her apartment and close her door.

He turned towards the kitchen table, the sink and refrigerator. He could drop to his knees again, or go for the gun. He frowned, opted for a third choice, and headed for the bathroom.

Wendell sat in the bathtub, gripping the box of borax with both hands. The water, quickly browning, had even more sediment—more flecks of himself, more Wendell sediment—floating in it this time. His tongue worked the backs of a few teeth, still loose in his gums, and he stared down at his feet, at his toes, now black, as if they had been barbecued. His feet were purpled, with black lines still tracing the lines of bones going from his ankles down each foot. But at the ball of each foot the blackness started. He stared at them, and poured the borax into the cup of his hand and slapped it against his chest, rubbing it in. Then to his armpits, his groin, behind his ears. He scooped some borax into his mouth, then cupped in a handful of water, swished it all into a slurry and spat it out.

“This won’t clean,” he said. “It can’t be cleaned.”

Outside, car horns dueled with an ambulance siren. Then came a loud bang that residents would have tried to convince themselves was a car backfiring when he was a child, but clearly was not. No one needed convincing now, as gunfire was as commonplace as midnight church bells. Night started to fall, and the city’s underbelly began to show.

“There’s gonna be a tomorrow,” Wendell said, “and tomorrow will be…” He stopped.
My last day in this world, at best,
he thought. But he knew he wasn’t that lucky.
Ugly
, he thought,
tomorrow’s gonna be ugly
.
So scrub up, go to bed, and get ready for a lot of ugly.

“So I’ll leave, and for real this time. Up with the sun, and walk until…”
Until these feet stop working
, he thought. Which might not be long. “Least I can do is get out, and die under some tree in the country.”

And with that there was a sense—albeit brief—of relief, that things still could move in the right direction. That he could control something. That his fate wasn’t completely bound up in what those scientists had done to him. They couldn’t steal all of his free will. Maybe Agatha was right.

“A plan. I just need a plan.” A rare smile crossed his face.

Wendell arched his back against the ceramic tub, hearing it crack, feeling the already stretched and painful skin stretch even more. And he tried stretching his blackened toes towards himself, and then did the opposite, tightening the arches in his feet. His arches tightened, and not at all inexplicably—since they all looked dead already, and that’s what dead things
do
—the little toe on his right foot broke off and fell into the water. It floated in place, black and lonely, a calcified little worm.

Wendell stared at it, incredulous, thinking it a dream. One last bead of saliva and borax fell from his lip.

His first reaction should have been to cry, to scream out, put his fist through the wall and curse God.
Should
have. But it was all so ludicrous, this little digit still with its nail, like a tiny window on a burned-out boat, bobbing in the water, and a man bathing in his own detritus, watching himself confirm a scientific impossibility: his own transformation into a new species. Ridiculous. Foolish to even consider. Laughable.