Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

“You know, all I wanted to do was buy those shells. You figure it out.”

When they broke into the middle of a record with a bulletin, his hands tightened on the wheel and a pulse throbbed in his temple. It could only be that they knew about the license plates and there was just no way they could know. It wasn’t fair. They were home free now and it wasn’t fair.

Then he heard the bulletin and the tension left him. The two young thrill-killers had struck again, the announcer chirped. They had robbed a filling station near Van Horn, Texas, just minutes ago and had shot the owner to death and critically wounded one of his employees. Police and Texas Rangers had the area cordoned off with every road blocked, and an arrest was anticipated within the hour.

He glanced at her and laughed at the question in her eyes. “Don’t you remember that station? Me and my teen-age moll, we were down in Texas and held up that filling station and shot those two old boys. You mean to tell me it slipped your memory so soon?”

“What happened?”

“Just that we’re not the only two people ever shot anybody. Somebody hit that station and they figure it has to be us.” He thought for a moment. “Be nice if he got away clean. They’d keep looking down there forever. But I guess we’ll hear another version of the story pretty soon.”

And they did, but not as a bulletin this time. It was the lead item of the scheduled newscast. The robber had tried to run a roadblock and they gunned him down and killed him. He was a Mexican between thirty and thirty-five years of age driving a pickup truck, and he sure as hell wasn’t Jimmie John Hall.

A stop for gas and oil. The kid who filled the tank was trying to grow a mustache and kept touching his upper lip. He never even took a good look at either of them. Jimmie John paid him and they drove off.

Easy as pie now. Just keep going and they got safer with every hour that passed and every mile they covered.

Late in the afternoon he said, “What’s the worst thing you ever did?”

“Me?”

“No, the ring-tailed baboon in the rumble seat. Who else would I be talking to?”

“The worst thing I ever did?”

“The thing you’re ashamed of the most. From when you were just a little kid.”

“The worst thing. I guess — I don’t know.”

“What were you fixing to say?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. The worst thing? I can’t think of anything.”

“Comes of leading a pure life.”

“I mean—”

“You want to know the worst thing I ever did?”

“Okay.”

“I can tell you right off. You’re thinking it was something since we met. You’re wrong. It was, oh, I guess I was eleven or twelve years old at the time. Living with my Ma. We had this house not in the country and not in town. On the edge, you might say. I don’t guess you could properly call it a house. What it was, it was a trailer without wheels. She would call it a mobile home, and that’s right in there with your plastic glass and green blackboard, because you couldn’t pick anything less mobile than a trailer without wheels.

“There was these rats that would come over and eat the garbage. Big old rats. They’d tip the cans over and I’d have to put the garbage back in and hope there wasn’t a rat in there waiting to jump out at me. Anyway, I had this slingshot that you sent away for from an ad in the back of a comic book. A Wham-O slingshot. Never forget the name of it.

“Afternoons I would sit out in back of the house, the trailer that is, and I’d be there with my Wham-O slingshot and a pile of pebbles. I’d wait until a rat showed up and then I’d let fly with a pebble. Generally I’d hit one of the trash cans and you wouldn’t believe the noise. Never did hit a rat. A slingshot’ll have a whole lot of power, but hitting what you aim at is something else again.

“This one day, there wasn’t even any rats around, and I don’t know how long I was sitting out there in the sun. Anyway, this gray and white alleycat turned up. I used to see him all the time. I don’t know if he belonged to anybody. The old woman two doors down would put food out for him. Big tomcat all scarred up from fighting other tomcats.

“So what I did was I took a pebble and shot it at him.

“You know, I never told anybody about this. Course I never told anybody anything before I met you, so that’s not saying a whole lot.

“Well, I never expected to hit that cat. I swear I never did. All the times I missed those rats, and by this time I just about took it for granted I would never hit anything, but that pebble hit him just back of the neck and made a sound I’ll never get out of my head. I can hear it now just by thinking about it. Long as I live I’ll remember it.

“I guess it must of broke his back. He was stretched out there giving out this thin high-pitched whine and moving his front paws like crazy, but his hind paws didn’t move at all and I guess they must of been paralyzed. He was shitting and pissing like he had no control of what he was doing. And I knew I had to kill him or die myself of watching him suffer.

“Probably the thing to do was use the slingshot, but I just turned and threw that Wham-O slingshot as far as I could, and I never set eyes on it again. I got the biggest rock I could find and tried hitting him over the head with it. I guess I kept holding back at the last moment, because each time I would hit him and not even knock him out, let alone kill him. And all the while he’s making that noise, and I’m smelling his shit and his piss and some other smell I never smelled before and since and I don’t know what it was.

“I guess I hit him right after awhile because he died.

“I went out and dug a hole out back and buried him deep as I could.

“And you know what I kept wishing? All the time, over and over, and there’s still times when I’ll find myself wishing it. That I could find some way to back up the time to that moment when I shot that pebble at him, and this time not shoot him. I’ll tell you something. I would have dreams where it would happen that way, and I’d wake up and know it was a dream and that cat was dead and no dream would bring him back to life.”

“Jimmie John?”

He didn’t answer.

“Jimmie John, are you okay?”

“Why?”

“You look funny. You’re all sweaty and your face, you just look funny.”

He wiped at his forehead. “Just what I was talking about is all. Going back in my mind that way.”

“Do you want to stop the car?”

“No. My mind is going too many places at once, that’s all it is. I’m all right.”

“I’m afraid.”

“So am I,” he said. “No, I’m not, I just said that. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“I can’t help it.”

He heard the panic in her voice and it touched a nerve. He fought with himself, squeezed tighter on the wheel, bore down more urgently on the gas pedal. His teeth were so tightly clenched that his jaws ached.

“Now it’s all right,” he made himself say. “It’s all right, everything’s all right and—”

“What’s the matter? Jimmie John?”

“That was a cop car.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“I did. And that mother saw us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Stared right at us. Two of ’em and they stared right at us. Turn around, will you? I can’t see him in my mirror. You see him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he stopping?”

“I think so. Yes!”

“God damn it. He’s got to turn around. Cost him a little time there.” He had the gas pedal on the floor and the Chevy was shimmying slightly. He said, “Damn this piece of shit. Shoulda kept the Toronado. You see him now?”

“No.”

“Well lose him while he turns around. But right now he’s calling on ahead and they’ll have the road blocked. Oh, damn, do we need another car. Can’t stop one, time we stop one he’ll be on top of us. Look at this. If I slow down they catch us and if I drive flat out the engine’s set to shake itself right out of the car. Clean car and clean plates and no reason to look for us in this part of the country and they have to spot us and I’m damned if I know how.”