T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

The Hit Man is back on the street in two months.

First Date

The girl’s name is Cynthia. The Hit Man pulls up in front of her apartment in his father’s hearse. (The Hit Man’s father, whom he loathes and abominates, is a mortician. At breakfast the Hit Man’s father had slapped the cornflakes from his son’s bowl. The son threatened to waste his father. He did not, restrained no doubt by considerations of filial loyalty and the deep-seated taboos against patricide that permeate the universal unconscious.)

Cynthia’s father has silver sideburns and plays tennis. He responds to the Hit Man’s knock, expresses surprise at the Hit Man’s appearance. The Hit Man takes Cynthia by the elbow, presses a twenty into her father’s palm, and disappears into the night.

Father’s Death

At breakfast the Hit Man slaps the cornflakes from his father’s bowl. Then wastes him.

Mother’s Death

The Hit Man is in his early twenties. He shoots pool, lifts weights and drinks milk from the carton. His mother is in the hospital, dying of cancer or heart disease. The priest wears black. So does the Hit Man.

First Job

Porfirio Buñoz, a Cuban financier, invites the Hit Man to lunch. I hear you’re looking for work, says Buñoz.

That’s right, says the Hit Man.

Peas

The Hit Man does not like peas. They are too difficult to balance on the fork.

Talk Show

The Hit Man waits in the wings, the white slash of a cigarette scarring the midnight black of his head and upper torso. The makeup girl has done his mouth and eyes, brushed the nap of his hood. He has been briefed. The guest who precedes him is a pediatrician. A planetary glow washes the stage where the host and the pediatrician, separated by a potted palm, cross their legs and discuss the little disturbances of infants and toddlers.

After the station break the Hit Man finds himself squeezed into a director’s chair, white lights in his eyes. The talk-show host is a baby-faced man in his early forties. He smiles like God and all His Angels. Well, he says. So you’re a hit man. Tell me — I’ve always wanted to know — what does it feel like to hit someone?

Death of Mateo María Buñoz

The body of Mateo María Buñoz, the cousin and business associate of a prominent financier, is discovered down by the docks on a hot summer morning. Mist rises from the water like steam, there is the smell of fish. A large black bird perches on the dead man’s forehead.

Marriage

Cynthia and the Hit Man stand at the altar, side by side. She is wearing a white satin gown and lace veil. The Hit Man has rented a tuxedo, extra-large, and a silk-lined black-velvet hood.

… Till death do you part, says the priest.

Moods

The Hit Man is moody, unpredictable. Once, in a luncheonette, the waitress brought him the meatloaf special but forgot to eliminate the peas. There was a spot of gravy on the Hit Man’s hood, about where his chin should be. He looked up at the waitress, his eyes like pins behind the triangular slots, and wasted her.

Another time he went to the track with $25, came back with $1,800. He stopped at a cigar shop. As he stepped out of the shop a wino tugged at his sleeve and solicited a quarter. The Hit Man reached into his pocket, extracted the $1,800 and handed it to the wino. Then wasted him.

First Child

A boy. The Hit Man is delighted. He leans over the edge of the playpen and molds the tiny fingers around the grip of a nickel-plated derringer. The gun is loaded with blanks — the Hit Man wants the boy to get used to the noise. By the time he is four the boy has mastered the rudiments of Tae Kwon Do, can stick a knife in the wall from a distance of ten feet and shoot a moving target with either hand. The Hit Man rests his broad palm on the boy’s head. You’re going to make the Big Leagues, Tiger, he says.

Work

He flies to Cincinnati. To L.A. To Boston. To London. The stewardesses get to know him.

Half an Acre and a Garage

The Hit Man is raking leaves, amassing great brittle piles of them. He is wearing a black T-shirt, cut off at the shoulders, and a cotton work hood, also black. Cynthia is edging the flower bed, his son playing in the grass. The Hit Man waves to his neighbors as they drive by. The neighbors wave back.

When he has scoured the lawn to his satisfaction, the Hit Man draws the smaller leaf-hummocks together in a single mound the size of a pickup truck. Then he bends to ignite it with his lighter. Immediately, flames leap back from the leaves, cut channels through the pile, engulf it in a ball of fire. The Hit Man stands back, hands folded beneath the great meaty biceps. At his side is the three-headed dog. He bends to pat each of the heads, smoke and sparks raging against the sky.

Stalking the Streets of the City

He is stalking the streets of the city, collar up, brim down. It is late at night. He stalks past department stores, small businesses, parks, and gas stations. Past apartments, picket fences, picture windows. Dogs growl in the shadows, then slink away. He could hit any of us.

Retirement

A group of businessman-types — sixtyish, seventyish, portly, diamond rings, cigars, liver spots — throws him a party. Porfirio Buñoz, now in his eighties, makes a speech and presents the Hit Man with a gilded scythe. The Hit Man thanks him, then retires to the lake, where he can be seen in his speedboat, skating out over the blue, hood rippling in the breeze.

Death

He is stricken, shrunken, half his former self. He lies propped against the pillows at Mercy Hospital, a bank of gentians drooping round the bed. Tubes run into the hood at the nostril openings, his eyes are clouded and red, sunk deep behind the triangular slots. The priest wears black. So does the Hit Man.

On the other side of town the Hit Man’s son is standing before the mirror of a shop that specializes in Hit Man attire. Trying on his first hood.

(1977)

Calvin Tompkins is just lifting the soda bottle to his lips when the German-made car brakes in front of the house and the woman with the mean little eyes and the big backside climbs out in a huff. “Where’d you get that?” she demands, shoving through the hinge-sprung gate on feet so small it’s astonishing they can support her. The old man doesn’t know what to say. He can tell you the dimensions of the biggest hot dog ever made or Herbert Hoover’s hat size, but sometimes, with the rush of things, it’s all he can do to hold up his end of a conversation. Now he finds himself entirely at a loss as the big woman sways up the rotted steps to the rot-gutted porch and snatches the bottle out of his hand.

“Patio soda!” The way she says it is an indictment, her voice pinched almost to a squeal and the tiny feet stamping in outrage. “I am the only one that sells it for ten miles around here, and I want to know where you got it. Well?”

Frail as an old rooster, Calvin just gapes up at her.

She stands there a moment, her lips working in rage, the big shoulders, bosom, and belly poised over the old man in the wheelchair like an avalanche waiting to happen, then flings the bottle down in disgust. “Mein Gott , you people!” she says, and suddenly her eyes are wet.

It is then that Ormand, shadowed by Lee Junior, throws back the screen door with a crash and lurches out onto the porch. He’s got a black bottle of German beer in his hand and he’s unsteady on his feet. “What the hell’s goin’ on here?” he bellows, momentarily losing his footing in the heap of rags, cans, and bottles drifted up against the doorframe like detritus. Never graceful, he catches himself against the near post and sets the whole porch trembling, then takes a savage swipe at a yellow Kmart oilcan and sends it rocketing out over the railing and up against the fender of the rusted, bumper-blasted Mustang that’s been sitting alongside the house as long as the old man can remember.