Doot's tropical fish still swam around in the bowl on the desk. The water had cleared a bit, but was still tinged grey. The fish, pink and shiny, stroked back and forth. When she brought her face down and looked straight at it, she thought she could see a thin white line on its side, where the cut had healed.
Maybe
… She shook her head as she straightened up. She didn't know what to think about it.
Carefully, trying not to slop the water over the rim, she picked up the bowl and set it on the little table by her bed. She went back to the desk and sat down, pulling a stack of books toward her. They were all college-level texts, physiology and anatomy, with yellow USED stickers on the spine. She found her marker in the top one and spread the book open, leaning her face in her hands as she read.
She could hear the splashing of the fish in the bowl. Once, after a couple of minutes, she glanced over her shoulder and watched it swimming back and forth. Then she turned back to the textbook.
The fish swam, slicing through the tinged water. A trail of blood followed after it, like a red thread that widened, became faint, and dissolved.
***
The 'Vette needed gas. Mike glanced at the gauge and saw that it read nearly empty. Lindy, that stupid twat, must have come barreling out from the city without even stopping. The way she kept her head fogged up, it was a wonder that she hadn't rolled to a halt, the engine sputtering dead, somewhere along the highway.
He wouldn't have any choice: the next gas station he saw would have to be it. And it had better fucking be open-the digital clock on the dash had already gone past seven. These fucking hicks out here turned in early.
A sign showed up ahead, a square of back-lit yellow plastic against the reddening sky.
He pulled the 'Vette in by the pumps. Some off-brand of gas, with an Indian's profile in ancient, flaking paint. The store had neon beer signs in the windows.
The screen door banged shut behind him. A teenage boy sat behind the cash register, reading a copy of
Thrasher
.
"I need a fill-up out there." Mike pointed with his thumb.
The kid nodded, not taking his eyes off the magazine.
"Like now," he snapped. "Okay?"
The kid's head jerked up. He took one open-mouthed look at Mike, then scooted out from behind the register. The magazine slid off the stool and onto the floor. Mike could hear the kid fumbling with the pump nozzle and the 'Vette's gas cap.
There was a Coke machine by the door. He fed in a couple of quarters and a can rattled down. As he took a long pull from it, he heard laughter and voices behind him. He rubbed the cold can against his face, then glanced over his shoulder.
At the far end of the store was a glass-doored cooler stacked with six-packs of beer. And a counter with red linoleum, worn through in patches to the black beneath by years of elbows rubbing on it. There were two men there now, the heels of their dusty work boots hooked in the spotted chrome rungs of the stools. They tipped sweating brown bottles up to their faces, then slammed them down and laughed at whatever the woman on the other side of the counter said. She had blond hair and black eyebrows, and a crepe paper neck. She laughed, too, her breasts shaking, the freckled skin shining with sweat.
Mike lowered the Coke from his own face, turning and looking at the two men. They didn't see him; they were having too good a time.
He'd seen them before. It took him a few seconds to remember where and when.
A voice spoke inside his head, the words wavering and fading, louder and then softer.
…
get rid of him
…
haul him back out to where you found him
…
Now he knew. He remembered the one face, that of the guy with the louder braying laugh; he remembered that one real well. He watched the two men knocking back their beers and horsing around with the woman.
The screen door opened and slapped shut behind him. The teenage boy stood a couple of feet away from him.
"That's, uh, fourteen-fifty…"
Mike kept his eye on the two men as he dug a couple of bills, a ten and a five, out of his pocket and handed them to the teenager. "Keep the change." He drained the last of the Coke, then crumpled the can in his fist and tossed it into the box at the side of the machine.
Outside, the sky's red had started to turn black. He leaned his hands against the still-warm hood of the 'Vette and gazed down the road.
***
Harley fumbled at his shirt pocket.
"Fuck-forgot my smokes."
He and his buddy had just-opened bottles of Bud in front of them. Harley winked at the woman on the other side of the counter and pushed his bottle toward her.
"You just keep an eye on that for me, okay? Don't let this ol' boozehound get his slobbery lips all over it." His buddy laughed around his own upraised beer. "I'll be right back."
He slid off the stool and walked, a little unsteady, toward the screen door.
The pickup truck was out back of the store. He didn't like to leave it near the road, since the license tags had expired a couple of years ago. Didn't want some cop running a check on it. His boots scuffed in the gravelly dirt as he headed for the truck.
He pulled open the driver's-side door and climbed up on the running board. Leaning across the seat, he rummaged around in the glove compartment. He knew he had at least a couple of packs in there. He'd stocked up, buying an armload of cartons, the last time they'd left the pit mine they were stripping and had gone into town.
"Hey-"
The quiet voice came from behind him. He raised his head and looked over his shoulder. Some asshole was standing there outside the truck.
"Yeah?" His voice slopped with drunken belligerence. "What the fuck do you want?"
The man had a little smile. "You recognize me?"
Harley pushed himself upright on the truck's seat, staring at the guy in puzzlement. Somewhere…
Then his eyes widened. "Yeah…" he said in amazement. "I remember you…"
The man's smile grew bigger and more unpleasant. "Good," he said, his voice still soft. "I was hoping you did."
He stepped closer to the truck, hand reaching up to the door.
***
The sound of a horn blaring came into the store. The guy working his way through the Bud had been telling the woman behind the counter about what his second wife had gotten arrested for, right off the stage of a roadhouse near Spokane; something to do with a carton of raw eggs.
"What the fuck-" He let the story hang halfway through and looked around toward the door. The horn was still wailing away outside. It sounded like the one on Harley's pickup.
He figured he'd better check it out. With a drunk's grace, he held up one finger. "I'll be right back. Don't," he said, "go away."
The horn sounded louder when he stepped outside the store. He rounded the corner and saw the pickup in the distance, the door open and somebody-Harley, he guessed-sitting behind the wheel. And closer than that, somebody walking back toward the store, as though he'd just finished having a talk with Harley out by the truck.
The guy walked right by him, not even glancing in his direction. He turned his head, watching the guy climb into the Corvette that was parked in front of the gas pumps.
He'd seen the man before, and he remembered where. When he'd seen him, the guy had been slumped in the cab of a diesel truck, looking like he'd had the shit pretty well knocked out of him. Looking like he was about ready to die in a couple of hours.
The 'Vette's engine started up, a bass rumble underneath the wail of the pickup's horn. The guy had looked okay now, except for one thing. That was one more reason why his mouth had dropped open when he'd spotted the guy's face.
A red line, still wet and glistening, ran down one cheek, as though the man had shed a single bloody tear.
The 'Vette peeled out from in front of the store, scattering gravel as it swerved onto the road. A wordless fear squeezed his heart, and he turned and ran toward the pickup.
"Hey! What the hell's going on-"
Harley was slumped over the steering wheel, his face resting right in the center of it, his hands on either side; that was what kept the horn blaring. He stopped a few feet away, staring at Harley. There was something wrong… Harley's face was too far down, as though somehow he'd managed to shove the steering wheel's hub into his mouth. And the back of his head-the hair was all dark and shiny wet, and something poked through it. Something-he saw it now-something that was red and pulpy and soft, studded with hard, jagged-edged pieces, curved like a broken bowl.
As he looked at Harley, a last pulse of blood surged, and the bits that had been inside the skull fell away, sliding in wet red tracks down the side of the face and neck. A rough triangle of bone, with hair on one surface, rattled onto the truck's running board.
Where the back of Harley's head had been, the steering wheel's hub poked through, the chrome and plastic emblem at the center mired in a sticky web.
"Fuck!" The sight, on top of all the beer, knocked his legs out from under him. He sat down hard on the dirt, looking at what was left of Harley and hearing-a million miles in the distance-the horn still singing away.
***
The wind chilled the wetness on his cheek, and Mike rubbed it with one hand. Red was smeared across his fingertips when he looked at them.
That made him smile, as he tightened his grip on the 'Vette's wheel and aimed it down the road. The anger that had welled up in him, when he'd seen the asshole and had remembered who he was, had ebbed back down into its nest around his heart. But the thrill, the memory of the strength that had come bursting into his arms-that remained.
It'd been easy-like spiking a melon on a fence post. He hadn't even had to think about it, just do it. The fucker, the stupid sonuvabitch, had had time for just one gargling cry before his nose and mouth had been caved in.
That was the way to deal with stupid motherfuckers like that. Mike straightened his arms, working the muscles in his shoulders. That was the way he was going to deal with
all
the stupid motherfuckers.
He pressed the accelerator down flat, and the 'Vette leapt forward, eating up the highway to the city.
***
It had gotten dark enough outside that she'd had to turn on the lamp over her desk. Anne leaned her chin on one hand, the knuckle of her little finger at the corner of her mouth. She'd managed to plow through twenty pages of the anatomy text; if she kept pushing, she might make it to the neurology section by midnight.
She could hear her mother rounding up the little kids, trying to get them all to the dinette table in the trailer's kitchen.
"Annie"-her mother knocked on the bedroom door-"you want some supper?"
"No," she shouted, not taking her eyes off the textbook. "Not right now." There was an apple and a carton of yogurt on the corner of the desk. That, plus a couple forays to go make some instant coffee, would get her through.
Quiet again, or as quiet as it ever got inside the trailer-the floor shook sometimes, when all the kids were running around. She heard the splash of water behind her.
She looked over her shoulder. The circle from the desk lamp didn't reach all the way over to the bed table. All she could see was the small, dark shape of Doot's tropical fish, swimming back and forth in the bowl. In the unlit corner of the room, the water was nearly as dark.
Maybe it was hungry. She wondered what to do about that. Maybe in a little while, she could go out to the kitchen and scrounge up some bread crumbs, drop them into the bowl. Or were tropical fish supposed to eat dead flies, and stuff like that?
She folded her arms on the desk, leaning over the anatomy text. It was Doot's stupid fish, after all; if it missed a meal before she could give it back to him, it wasn't her fault. She didn't even hear the next quick splash of water from the corner of the room.
In the dark bowl, the fish moved back and forth, its mouth brushing against the glass, then its tail as it flicked itself around.
The water turned darker as blood streamed from the fish's gills, making ribbons that turned to black, dissolving lace behind it.
TWENTY
The freeway's river of lights cut through the darkness. It was well past midnight by the time Mike reached the city's outskirts. He had had to slow the 'Vette down once he'd gotten onto the Interstate to keep from picking up a speed cop on his tail. Right now, he didn't feel like hassling with police; he had too much to take care of. It had taken a real effort of will, though, to keep from punching the 'Vette up to its limit.
He started switching lanes, moving over to the right. The freeway had curved into the city proper. He pulled the 'Vette out of gear and let it coast down the off-ramp, easing it to a halt at the stoplight at the bottom.
When the light changed, he drove one-handed, using the fingers of the other to comb his hair back down. He flexed the hand into a fist, then released it, feeling the muscles up into his arm, all working perfectly now. He smiled, squeezing the fist tighter.
Some people were going to be surprised to see him. The thought lifted one corner of his smile.
Really
surprised-he couldn't wait to see the look on their faces.