Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

‘Are you certain?’

He looks up to see his boss’s face drain of color.

Into the phone Seymour says, ‘How could this happen?’

He puts his hand over his opened mouth.

‘You need to find him.’

He hangs up the phone and looks across the desk.

‘There was an accident.’

‘What kind of accident?’

‘Automobile.’

‘What happened?’

‘A sheriff’s deputy crashed into a Mack truck. He was transporting our witness.’

‘Is anyone hurt?’

‘The deputy’s dead from injuries and another man’s been shot.’

‘In a car accident?’

‘It’s confused right now.’

‘What about the boy?’

‘Fled the scene. And it looks like he took the deputy’s service revolver with him.’

3

Seymour closes his eyes and rubs his temples with the first two fingers on each hand. His head is throbbing. He can’t believe what a nightmare this has become. It might be time to end it. Without Theodore Stuart or the boy to testify they have very little to work with. They have the Bunker Hill murder and a weak connection to a comic book with a weak connection to James Manning. They have the skeleton of something, maybe, but the meat has been torn away from the bones and hauled off by hyenas.

And the threat against him has been eliminated.

He won’t be able to simply drop it. He made the grand-jury investigation a public matter, and the public will demand answers. His career will suffer, probably permanently, but if he cuts his losses now it won’t be over. He needs to think this through.

The telephone rings again.

He looks at it hatefully, considers picking it up and dropping it right back down into its cradle. He wants it silenced.

Instead he grabs it, puts it to his ear.

‘What now?’

‘Candice Richardson and her lawyer have arrived.’

Sandy hops out the back of a truck, swinging out over the side and dropping to the sidewalk, both feet slapping the ground. He wears a pair of khaki slacks and a T-shirt. The khaki shirt with the detention facility’s initials stenciled onto the back is now lying in a ditch several miles away. The revolver is tucked into his pants, pressed against his stomach. He lifts a hand to the driver and says thanks mister though he doesn’t know if the driver can hear him. The driver lifts a hand in return, then pulls his truck back out onto Olympic Boulevard. Sandy watches it shrink and disappear. Once it’s gone he turns in a slow circle, taking in his surroundings. He’s never felt more alone. The streets have never been wider, nor the sky emptier. He’s back in the city and has no idea what to do. He can’t go home but has nowhere else to be. He feels planted where he stands, rooted, and his brain won’t help him, frozen in indecision. His stomach growls. He’s hungry and should get something to eat. He likes that idea. It gives him a way to move forward. He begins walking. At first he drags his feet, but he doesn’t like the sound of that or the feel, so he begins taking big steps instead, begins stomping. That’s better. His feet like hammers falling. Cars roll by to his left. He wishes he had a cigarette. He would feel like a man if he had a cigarette. He’s smoked a couple before, on the back of Bunker Hill, sitting on a truck tire that had been tossed there, and it made him feel sick, but it also make him feel ten feet tall. He should feel like a man right now, not lonely or scared. He never has to go to school again. He never has to say yes sir or no sir or please. He never has to tell other people’s lies.

Not if he doesn’t want to.

He has a gun tucked into his pants. That means he can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter that he’s thirteen years old. It doesn’t matter that he’s small. Being meaner than everybody else makes you bigger than you really are, and having a gun makes you bigger still. He only wishes he’d learned that lesson sooner. He spent so much time being scared. Even now he feels afraid and hates it. He wishes he could banish the feeling from his heart. That’s why he killed his stepfather. Because he didn’t want to be afraid anymore, didn’t want to feel sick to his stomach every time he walked through his own front door. He tells himself there’s no place for fear. He’s not a lightning rod and he’s not a cup. He’s a vicious dog. He’s a wild horse. He’s anything he wants to be.

Up ahead on the right he sees a small shop. He decides he’s going to get his lunch there. He’s hungry and he’s going to get lunch and it doesn’t matter that he has no money. He doesn’t need money. He’ll take what he wants. That’s what men do. They take what they want and they don’t say please.

He steps into the store and walks up and down the aisles looking at the loaded shelves, at the jars of pickles and mayonnaise, at the tubes of toothpaste. He stops in front of the canned meats. Rows of corned-beef hash, Spam, tinned herring snacks in sour cream, oysters, sardines. He glances toward the man behind the counter. He’s looking directly at Sandy, watching him. When they make eye contact he nods. Sandy quickly turns back to the canned meats. He shouldn’t have looked. He doesn’t know why he did. Now the man behind the counter will know he’s up to something. But he has no choice. He’s very hungry.

He picks up a tin of sardines, reads the label as if considering the purchase. Boneless, skinless sardines in cottonseed oil. Lightly smoked. He nods to himself and steps away from the canned meats. Continues down the aisle toward the back of the store. He wants to find a place where the man behind the counter can’t see him. Then maybe he’ll be able to slip the sardines into his pocket. Then maybe he’ll-

‘I know what you’re up to.’

He turns around and looks at the man behind the counter. His face feels suddenly hot. The skin tingles. The man looks back, a heavy-set Greek guy with a bushy beard and a sweat-glistening forehead. He stands casually, one hand resting on the counter near a glass ashtray, a brown cigarette between his lips sending up a thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling. He has sleepy eyes. He blinks at Sandy. A small breeze blows in through the glass front door, disturbing the stream of smoke, breaking it apart, and causing a small plastic American flag jutting from a cigarette rack to wave briefly before once more going still.

‘What?’

He takes a drag from his cigarette, taps ash into the tray, blinks again.

‘I know what you’re up to.’ His tone is flat, unconcerned.

‘I’m not.’

‘You got any money? You gonna pay for those sardines?’

Sandy has a decision to make. After a moment’s thought he nods and walks toward the counter. He licks his lips.

Then grabs a packet of cigarettes from the rack on the counter, knocking the rack over in the process, cigarettes spilling across the counter and falling to the floor, and runs for the exit. The man behind the counter yells after him, get back here you little shit, but he doesn’t stop and he doesn’t look over his shoulder. He runs through the door, out into daylight. He runs down the sidewalk. His feet pound against the pavement. Thud, thud, thud like falling hammers.

Once he reaches the corner he stops running. He looks back. The man stands in the shop’s doorway, looking in his direction, but he doesn’t give chase. Sandy turns away and turns the corner, heading up a small street, looking for a place to eat his lunch.

He should’ve pulled out his gun. He should have waved it around. That would have let that fat Greek bastard know he meant business. Then he could have taken his time, took as many cans of sardines as he wanted and as many packets of cigarettes too. He could have emptied the register and had a nice lunch at a restaurant, like it was Easter or something. That’s what he should have done, but he didn’t think to. Still thinking like a little boy, he only wanted to get away. He needs to stop that, needs to stop thinking scared. Next time he goes into a store it’s with his gun drawn.