Frederick Busch - Girls

“Jack, you’re a little, like, enthusiastic , you know?”

“Sign of a craftsman, Everett. I take a tremendous amount of pride in my work.” I tightened on the finger a little and Franklin made noises. “See you,” I told Everett.

When I saw him make progress up the campus walk, I let go of Franklin’s finger and I told him, “Sit in the back of your car.” I worked the gun out of my left-hand pocket while he got in, shaking the hand I’d been working on. I got in, too, and I was pleased to note I made no sounds that could be mistaken for the lamentations of a man with broken ribs. He was looking at the gun.

“You’re fucking crazy,” he said.

“I figure one of these, two of these, and you bleed to death fast. Yes? Two, I think. I don’t want to go for the head shot on account of that means broken glass, blood and brains all over it, and they find you sooner. This way, you just go over and shake your legs a lot because of the pains in your intestines and your spongy little inner organs, and then you’re dead. I really would love to get rid of you.”

“Three guys beat the shit out of you—”

“Give yourself credit, William. Four. Don’t I remember a couple of field goals you kicked before you guys called it a night?”

“And you figure — what? You’re Superman?”

“You couldn’t begin to imagine what I’m figuring, son. It begins with you, though. Let’s see. You kicked me in the ribs as hard as you could. Why don’t I put two of these in the same place on you? You ready?”

His handsome white bullyboy’s face was sweaty. That was a good sign. He swallowed a lot, and that was a good sign. His feet were pointed toward me, not at the door to his right, and that was another good sign — he wasn’t about to push off and come at me. And I was pretty certain he believed me. I believed me, too. I was going to do it. That’s part of it, when you take someone on. You have to make yourself believe you’re ready to do it. So we were believers in there, in the smell of his cigarettes and lotion, the air freshener that hung from his rearview mirror stanchion next to his cross. Soon, I was going to smell his sweat, and then maybe the gas he’d begin to leak or even the filling of his pants.

I said, “Ready?”

“Tell me what to do, I’ll do it.”

“Go away.”

“I know how to do that.”

“What about your heavy friends?”

“I have to tell them you ran me.”

“And?”

“I gotta say it. Don’t — I’m just telling you what I think.”

“Speak your little heart, William.”

“I think they’ll try and take you down.”

“Except now you’re not so sure they can. You said try. ”

“I’m not so sure.”

“So tell them that.”

“Okay. Right. I will.”

“Don’t come here anymore.”

I cocked it. I let the barrel wander up in the direction of his ribs. I brought it down and tapped his knee. He jumped.

“I promise. I swear it.”

“Cross your heart, William.”

“Cross my heart.”

I was beginning to make myself sick. I backed out, and this time he heard me answer to my ribs. That seemed to impress him more. He shook his head as he crawled out and then got in front behind the wheel.

“You really must love this place,” he said. “All the shit you put up with for a bunch of fuckin’ preppies.”

“I’m supposed to take care of them,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, you did that, all right. I’m gone. You got it straight up and down. I’m gone.”

He backed up, made a K-turn in the little street, and rumbled toward the corner. I let the hammer down, put the safety on, and stuck the pistol in my pocket. When I looked up, across the street, a man with white hair and glasses was looking through his front window at me. When he saw me focus on him, he started, then stepped behind the curtain. I saw him peeking out when I turned the Jeep around and went back up the hill. He would talk to someone. I would probably lose my job.

But I can always find work in a nightmare, I thought of telling the dog. I didn’t. I was sick of gestures.

I was also scared. I had forgotten what the weight of the.32 made me remember — the kind of power a weapon concentrates at the end of your arm. You move it, and you’re Mrs. Tanner’s heroic Lord. You make decisions. Let this person’s chest be opened. Let there be bone fragments in the air. Let his chest breathe, sucking for air through the maroon spittle on his sternum. The fear on his face begins at the end of your arm with the gun’s dead heaviness, and you’re scared, too. I’d even liked the fear. I had enjoyed it more than I should have. His fear, my fear, the stink of our dry mouths in the back of his car, even the pain in my side and my heartbeat in my fingers, which brushed against the blue-black butt of the pistol. Where I’d gotten to was the cellar of the haunted house, and what was haunting it was me.

Rosalie Piri drove her little tan clunker onto campus too fast. We had a twenty-mile-an-hour limit, and the security people were supposed to enforce it. I didn’t think that writing her a citation would be useful to our further friendship, so I followed her up the steep, slithery, narrow college road, staring from the greater height of the truck down into her car. I thought she knew it was me, but I couldn’t find her eyes in the mirror. She began to slide in the melting, slushy ice and packed snow where the road bent around the administration building. She must have gunned it then, because her rear tires spun and the rear end of her car slid left. I dropped back to avoid her as she went into a backward-turning skid, but you can’t predict a skid, and I figured wrong. She had turned directly around, and she came down into the front of the Jeep. I let us go, not working the brakes, but getting into the clutch and downshifting, then working it into four-wheel drive. I hit the lights and pounded the horn to try to warn anyone behind me. When we slowed a little, I began my tap dance on the brakes, and I worked us into an angle against the softening snowbank, and we stopped. There was Rosalie, poised above me on the incline of the road, half of her left wing in snow, her car apparently pinned beneath the truck at the grillwork, and her eyes very large, her mouth in the wonderful dirty grin.

I walked over to her car a little slowly. The impact hadn’t been bad, but enough for the rib cage.

I said, when she leaned over to roll down the passenger-side window, “You’re in trouble with the law, little lady.”

“Are you going to take matters in hand, Officer?”

I said, “Professor, sweetheart, you go too fast for the surface conditions and the shittiness of your vehicle.”

“I called, but I couldn’t reach you anyplace,” she said. “I had a terrible idea. I mean, it’s terrible, but it’s also maybe right. It’s about a book.”

“A book?”

“And Janice Tanner. I think I could maybe guess who did it. Even though it sounds stupid.”

“That’s what I thought. About my idea.”

She said, “It’s time to debrief again. We’d better get into bed and talk.”

I stepped back, looked at traffic, and said, “If you put it in reverse and just barely touch the accelerator, I might be able to push you back up. Then you can park it at the ad building, and I’ll drive you up to class. If you would like me to.”

She said, “Jack, did anyone ever accuse you of standing around and watching them and looking a lot like you could drive them anyplace you wanted to?”

Two teachers drove past, honking and waving. One was my English professor. They came to a sloppy stop and waited.