Bradley Denton - Blackburn

The Recruiter looked at the signature. "Carrying on the family name, I see."

"You don't remember?"

The Recruiter raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"My name. 'Ernest T. Tompkins III.' You don't remember it?"

The Recruiter's stomach made a grinding noise. "No, son, I'm afraid I don't."

Blackburn reached into his coat, into the pocket he had cut into the lining. "Then you lied. The Army has lost."

"I'm not following you, Ernest."

"The Army has lost its memory. It doesn't remember Ernest T. Tompkins III."

The Recruiter pointed at Blackburn. "But you're right here."

Blackburn shook his head. "You shouldn't have forgotten that name. Not after what happened. He sent my mother a letter a year and a half ago after you went to Wantoda Unified and signed him up. He hoped I would call her sometime, and last month I finally did. She told me he'd joined the Army."

"Who?"

"Ernest T. Tompkins III. Who wanted to serve his country after its ignominious defeat. Who was interested in lasers. Who had asthma, and told you so. And you said come on ahead."

The Recruiter stood. "Now look here, son-"

Blackburn pulled the Colt Python from his coat. "So you sent him to boot camp last year, in the summer. In Texas. He died. He died running. He couldn't breathe."

The Recruiter backed away from the desk. He held up his granite hands. "Now look, son," he said, his voice soothing. "Every recruit is given a physical. If that had shown anything serious, he wouldn't have been let in."

"The physical must have missed it," Blackburn said. "But you didn't. Ernie told you. His letter said so. And you don't remember."

The Recruiter licked his lips. His stomach rumbled. "Sure I do, son. I told him that the doctors would check it out and make the decision. It wasn't mine to make. You can't kill me for that."

"What color was his hair?" Blackburn asked.

"Excuse me?"

Blackburn stood and pointed the pistol at the Recruiter's abdomen. "You say I can't kill you for not keeping him out of the Army because of his asthma. So I won't. I'll kill you for lying. You say the Army never loses anything. That must include memory. So what color was his hair? It was wavy on top. Very distinctive. What color was it?"

The Recruiter was sweating. He farted. "Look, son, I talk to hundreds of young men a year. I can't possibly remember everything about every one of them."

Blackburn cocked the pistol. "But this wasn't just anyone, Sergeant," he said. "You signed him eighteen months ago. His name was Ernest T. Tompkins the Third. He told you that he had asthma. He died at boot camp. It was reported on all three TV stations and in the Wichita Eagle. When I called my mother, she told me that she has the clipping, and that it includes a quote from you. 'It is always a tragedy when a young man dies,' you said."

"Oh," the Recruiter said. His gut moaned.

"What color was his hair?"

"Dark brown. Almost black."

Blackburn lowered the pistol. He looked at the floor. He wished he still knew how to cry. "Ernie had asthma. He died at boot camp."

The Recruiter stepped forward. "I'm sorry, son," he said. "These things happen. All we can do is grieve, and go on." He held out a hand. "Give me the gun."

Blackburn looked up. "Red," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"His hair was red." Blackburn raised the Python and shot the Recruiter in the belly. The Recruiter stumbled backward, then lurched forward, yelling. Red ooze bubbled from the olive cloth. Blackburn shot him again. There was a hissing noise and a smell of shit. The Recruiter dropped to his knees and rested his cheek on the desktop. His fist smashed the tank. His eyes glared at Blackburn. They didn't blink.

Blackburn put the gun away. "Ernie had asthma," he said. "Ernie died at boot camp. Ernie's hair was bright red." He reached down and pushed the model cannon across the desk. "Ernie was my friend."

He stopped the cannon a quarter of an inch from the Recruiter's nose.

"Boom," he said. Then he turned and went out to the sharp wind of the Kansas autumn.

Jimmy had been in town to see Ernie that Wednesday, so he didn't know that his mother and Jasmine had left until he got home. He figured out that he had been reading comic books in Ernie's room when Dad had smacked Mom for the fifth time that week. Mom had taken the old Chrysler station wagon, leaving the GMC pickup. Jimmy was sure that she would have taken him along too, if he had been home. She would at least have given him a choice.

Summer vacation didn't end for three more weeks, and Dad would be home a lot since he had been laid off. Jimmy didn't like the prospect. Not that he liked the prospect of school either. He had been dreading eighth grade. At the end of seventh grade, he had noticed that some of the girls were growing breasts, and some of the boys were getting hair on their faces. These were not good omens. Still, he would have preferred school over staying home alone with Dad. It wasn't even that Dad was a bad guy. It was just that he didn't know what else to do with his tough breaks but pass them along. With Mom and Jasmine gone, Jimmy would be in for more than his share.

He was sure of that right after Mom left. Dad tried to cook hamburgers for supper, and started a grease fire. He picked up the skillet and ran outside, burning his hands. When he came back in, he cussed Jimmy for not helping. Jimmy said that he hadn't known what to do, and Dad smacked him and told him to get to his room. Jimmy went into the hot little room and shut the door. He read the Spider-Man comic book that Ernie had given him. After a while he had to pee, but Dad hadn't said he could come out. He waited until he heard Dad's snore, then crept out through the kitchen and down the hall to the bathroom. He peed sitting down so he wouldn't have to turn on the light, and aimed so that the stream hit under the rim instead of in the water. He didn't flush.

In the morning he stayed in bed until Dad yelled for him to get up and do his chores. He got up and put on a T-shirt, cutoffs, and sneakers, then went out to feed the chickens.

The chickens mobbed him. Jimmy hated them. They were loud, smelled bad, and crapped all over the place. Dad had brought them home as chicks in March. There had been fifty of them. They had been cute, fuzzy little things. Some of them had even seemed smart and had taken to following Jimmy or Jasmine around. Then half of them had died, and the rest had grown up fast and gotten stupider. By the time they'd reached their growth, they had become brainless. Now they were eating and shitting machines. They laid eggs too, but broke a lot of them and covered the rest with chickenshit. Jimmy dumped a pile of feed on the ground for them to swarm over, then stepped away to drop a handful for the rooster.

All of the chicks had grown up into hens, so Dad had brought home a rooster in June. It was hideous. None of the pictures Jimmy had ever seen of roosters had looked anything like it. The pictures were of strutting, broad-chested birds with bright red combs and gold and green feathers. But this rooster waddled like a duck, had a dull pink comb that was torn, and feathers the color of old cornbread. It dragged its tail in the dirt. The hens often ganged up and pecked the hell out of it. It had lost a lot of feathers in the past two months, and the bare patches were scabby. It waddled over and gobbled a few mouthfuls of the feed Jimmy dropped for it, and then three of the hens ran it off.

Jimmy went into the plywood coop and gathered the eggs. There were ten that weren't broken. That was better than usual. He cleaned up the rest as best he could and took the ten to the well pump to wash them.

Ten. Farm eggs sold for thirty cents a dozen in Tuttle County, when people bothered to stop and buy them. Most folks just spent the extra dime to get them at the store with the rest of their groceries. Where Dad had gotten the idea that chickens would make money, Jimmy didn't know. Someone had lied to him. Or maybe things had been different when Dad was a kid, and he hadn't been able to figure out that the world had changed. The chicken feed alone cost more than the eggs brought in, never mind the trouble of dealing with the chickens themselves. Jimmy wondered what was wrong with Dad's brain.