Charlie Huston - Six Bad Things

I grab the drawer and yank. It’s locked. Well, of course it’s locked, you watched him lock it, asshole. There’s a crowbar mounted on the pegboard over the bench. I shove it into the crack between the drawer and the benchtop and heave. Grinding and a small snapping noise, but the drawer holds. Danny is banging on the door. I can see him framed there in the window. The siren sounds like it’s right up the street. I heave again, the drawer flies open, off its tracks and onto the floor. Danny presses his face against the glass, trying to see through the darkness inside.

– Open up, fucker. Fucking open up!

I grab the gun, flip the empty cylinder open, and squat painfully, digging through the mess that fell from the drawer, looking for ammo. Nothing.

Danny hits the window with a piece of firewood and it shatters.

I stand, and right there at eye level, on a shelf above the bench, is a black plastic box with MAGNUM written across the top in big red letters. I grab the box, pop the lid, and a handful of feathers flutters out.

Wade Hiller on the subject of pigeon feathers: “I save them in a little box.”

The siren screams close and stops right out front. For a moment a red and blue light pulses through the hole Danny shot in the garage door. Then he turns on the overheads and everything goes bright.

I flip the empty cylinder closed and turn. Danny squints at me and I squint back. He’s raising his gun. I bring up the .357 he has no idea I’m holding, and point it at his face. His eyes turn into Frisbees. He freezes, his gun hand wavering.

Before he can decide to shoot me, I do what Jimmy Cagney would do, and throw my empty gun at him.

AT SIXTEEN, my fastball was in the mid-eighties and frequently grazed ninety. I used to stand in the backyard and throw pitch after pitch from the mound Dad and I had made, through the tire he had hung from the limb of a tree exactly sixty feet and six inches away, Major League distance. Once, with a bunch of teammates watching and egging me on, I threw a hundred and four in a row, right through the center. All fastballs. My shoulder blew up like a pumpkin and Dad was pissed at me for risking my arm, but the kids talked about it for weeks, and it made me feel so cool.

A BASEBALL weighs about five ounces. The gun in my hand feels like it’s two or three pounds. Fortunately, Danny isn’t sixty and a half feet away. More like eight. The Anaconda clocks him in the forehead and he goes down.

I can hear voices outside yelling. I walk over to Danny. He’s out. I stuff the Anaconda in my jeans and grab his pistol. There’s blood all over his face from the mouth wound and a new cut I’ve opened on his forehead.

Over a black leather jacket, he’s wearing a blue-jean vest covered in patches: Insane Clown Posse, Slipknot, Godflesh, etc. The jacket has fallen open; underneath is a bloodstained concert T-shirt, the same one he had on the other day.

Except it’s not a concert shirt.

I tug his jacket open the rest of the way and expose the big America’s Most Wanted logo. I remember Robert Cramer mentioning my episode of that show in his book, and the expression on Danny’s face when I looked him in the eye after I beat him up, and the way he pointed at me.

Danny knows who I am.

Which means his friends know who I am.

Which means, just as soon as the cops get here, they’ll be telling them that I’m alive and in town.

Glass crunches under a shoe. The firefighter standing in the door is a woman around twenty-five, she’s carrying a big EMT kit. She sees me, sees the gun. Freezes.

Too late, Henry. Too late to do anything now but run.

I tilt my head toward the street.

– The sheriffs out there yet?

She licks her lips.

– Not yet.

– How long?

– Couple minutes maybe.

I point at my leg.

– I need you to wrap this up. Quick.

She doesn’t move.

– It’s OK, you’re gonna be OK, I just need you to do your job.

She nods, walks over, kneels, and opens her kit. I reach down, grab the edges of the hole in my pant leg, and rip so she can get to the wound. She tears open a sterile pack and starts wiping blood away. I whine a little and grit my teeth. She stops and looks up at me.

– It’s OK, just hurry.

She looks at the wound.

– It needs stitches.

– Just bandage it, for Christ sake.

She starts wrapping my leg, going over the wound, and around the pant leg.

– The guy outside, next to the garage?

She’s concentrating on her work.

– Yeah?

– He alive?

– I don’t know, my partner’s on him. One of the neighbors said someone in the garage might be hurt. I came in here.

The wrap is done.

– Got any penicillin in there?

– Yeah.

– Better give me a shot.

She pulls out an ampoule, rips it out of its pack, and stabs me in the leg. I can hear another siren. The sheriffs. Time to go.

– Thanks.

I point at Danny.

– Why don’t you work on him and we’ll skip all the lying-on-the-floor-and-counting-to-a-hundred crap.

– OK.

She turns to Danny and takes his pulse. I open the door to the house.

STACY WAS a year behind me and Wade. She was a real good girl; honor roll, student government, extracurricular this and that. She was also the hottest chick in school. Being a star jock at school, I crossed paths with her brainy-but-popular crowd. I remember flirting with her once, not really trying to get anywhere except in the way teenage boys are always trying to get somewhere. But I didn’t try that hard. I didn’t have to try hard with any of the other chicks, so why bother with one who wanted me to work for it? What I thought. Wade’s crew of burnouts wouldn’t have crossed paths with her clique, wouldn’t have even had classes together, let alone social interaction. But I remember being baked with him in PE and watching her run track with the girls and him saying that if he could nail any chick in school she’d be the one. Man, I’d love to hear the story of how they hooked up in the first place. But Wade can’t tell me, and I can’t ask Stacy because she’s too busy right now beating me with her son’s hockey stick.

I STEP inside, close the door, and get one upside the head. I take a couple more weak blows before I get a grip on the stick and rip it out of her hands, and she comes at my face with her fingernails. I get my forearm in front of my face and shove her off as I run toward the back of the house. She keeps after me, beating on my back. I duck into the kitchen. Down the hall I catch a glimpse of her kids; the boy I saw before, another a few years younger, and a tiny little girl who’s going to grow up to look like her mom.

Stacy shoves me hard and I stumble into the kitchen as she runs toward her children.

– Get upstairs! Get to your rooms!

And that’s the last I see of her, herding the kids upstairs, away from the scary man. I head for the patio door at the back of the kitchen. Stop. There’s a pile of mail on the kitchen table. I flip through until I find what I want, and cram it in my back pocket. I go out the back, close the door behind me, and pause for a moment, staring back into the house. The Christmas tree and decorations, the Nativity scene, the mess of kids’ toys. Then the sheriff’s car sirens up in front of the house.

THEY’RE UP. With all the noise, how could they not be up? I come over the fence into the backyard, see the lights on inside, walk to the side of the house, and dump the guns over the gate into a bush in the front yard. I won’t carry a gun into my mother’s house. When I open the back door and come in limping, Mom starts to cry.

– Henry. Henry.

– It’s OK, I’m OK.

She’s shaking her head.

– Something woke us up, a crash and then, then, then.