Robert Stone - Bay of Souls

Ahearn rarely shopped for groceries. He took his meals at a Greek diner called, for some reason, the New York Restaurant. Occasionally, out of some old homing habit he would find himself walking the aisles of the local Albertson's supermarket. The place was a state of mind, its light peculiar. People picked their way along in some engineered commercial condition, watchful, grim, passing each other with secret glances. Some of its charge was erotic, and he was aware that men who knew how it was done could pick up women there.

One day, prowling Albertson's, Ahearn saw Kristin and Norman Cevic shopping together. Norman pushed the cart and Kristin scanned the racks, ready to strike, seeking out specials, twofers, coupons. Ahearn moved closer to the wall, hiding. He put his glasses on to watch Kristin's diligent gathering. It seemed to him he knew her every motion from the inside out. It was impossible for him to believe he would not go home with her.

They were very affectionate together. Cevic, Ahearn thought, looked younger. His bearishness was subdued. Kristin looked at peace. Shopping. On their way to the register, Cevic put his hand across the seat of Kristen's jeans. As Michael knew she would, without saying anything, without turning to him, she moved his hand away. Michael foresaw her reaction as precisely as he knew the feel of that warm denim. Before taking hold of his hand with hers she pressed it against her behind for a moment, for the fraction of a second. So it appeared to Michael.

He watched them at the cashier's line, joking about the tabloid headlines, both of them with wallets out. Cevic managed to keep his hands on her. It occurred to Michael that he himself had nothing to lose. He was driven and it might be petro, he thought, the loa that drove him. He could easily be on them before they got to her car. He would kill them both with his bare hands.

The next day he went to the doctor and asked for sleeping pills and tranquilizers.

"What do you want them for?" asked the impolite young doctor.

"Social self-discipline," Michael said.

The doctor gave him a long look but he got his tablets.

Deer season opened. The bare trees of Fort Salines were hung with carcasses. Men and women in DayGlo were everywhere. On impulse, he called Alvin Mahoney. He had seen Mahoney only twice since the beginning of term. Both times Alvin had been in a hurry to take himself elsewhere. He had actually acted offended over something, although that was quite impossible. It was only awkwardness and shyness. The maladroit Mahoney.

"Alvin! Mike!"

"Oh jeez," said Mahoney.

"What do you mean, oh jeez, Alvin?"

Alvin tried to laugh politely.

"Thought we might have a shot at the critters," Ahearn said to him. "What do you think?"

"Oh jeez." Then silence. And then he said, "You know my back is seizing up something fierce. I ain't… you know."

"Ain't you, Alvin?" He had no idea why he had called the poor man. Perversity. "Well, I promised my boy I'd take him this time."

"Paul?"

"Paul," Ahearn said. "My son."

"Oh. Sure."

Truly the man was a trial.

"Alvin, do you mind if I borrow a couple of your pieces for tomorrow? The twelve-gauges, maybe."

"Well, I only got two. You wanna borrow both of them?"

"Yes, I would. If I may. If that's all right."

Alvin could hardly refuse, although it was close.

Hardly anyone glanced at him twice as he walked the shotguns in and out of the Student Union, the barrels poking through a crushed cardboard box. That evening he called Kristin. It was Monday evening of the second week of the season.

"Look, you didn't say a word about this," she told him. "He isn't prepared to go. He hasn't the junior permit. You must be joking."

"I'll tell you what," Ahearn said. "I'll come by in the morning and ask him if he wants to go."

"Have you lost your mind, Michael? I mean, really! No fucking way is he going hunting with you. You should—" she began, then stopped herself.

"Right," he said. "I should have taken him last year."

He started drinking, straight Scotch, about two in the morning, watching a seventies movie with the sound off. The film made him think about how ugly and stupid the seventies had been. Bad luck to have spent his youth in them. After a couple of hours he took some gear and his shotgun and drove out to what had been his house. He left the guns in the car.

It was still dark when he arrived. He rang the front doorbell and knocked on the door. Stepping back, he saw upstairs lights go on. Fucking outrage, he thought. His house.

Inside, Kristin and Norman Cevic were screaming at each other. The light went out, the front door swung open. In the light from the door he could see Norman crouched on the stairs.

"Get the fuck out of here, Michael. You get the fuck out of here. I called the police. I have a gun and so has Kristin." He did seem to have one, across the knees of his pajama bottoms. What Michael could see of him was fearsome: he was bare-chested, hairy, altogether enraged.

"Great Scott," said Michael. "Kristin too? What about Paul?"

Kristin and Cevic tried to shout each other down again. "You crazy fuck!" Cevic shouted at Michael. "You stupid drunken asshole. I'm gonna kill you if you don't piss off."

"Well," Michael said, "that would just be murder, buddy, because I don't have a gun. I mean, I have a shotgun in the car but I'm not out here waving a gun around."

"Dad?"

Paul was standing at the corner of the house, visible in the porch light. He was wearing a Vikings jacket over pajamas. Both Cevic and his mother were shouting his name.

"Hey, Paul," Michael said. "I thought you might want to go hunting. I mean, it's kind of improvised, the time and so on. You remember I mentioned it."

"Yeah," Paul said. "But I don't really want to. I might another time."

"Right," Michael said. "You remember last year? We were talking about… What was it? The religious aspects of hunting. The ethical dimension."

"Right," Paul said. "Dominion and stuff."

Kristin came to the front door and looked at him. He stared at her for a moment and turned to his son.

"Say, Paul," he said. "Come and kiss me."

Paul looked to his mother and then came forward and kissed Michael deliberately on the cheek. The boy he had taught that there was a right way of doing everything, and he was trying to be careful not to do it wrong.

"My blessing isn't worth anything," Michael said to him, "but you have it." He spoke to Kristin in the front doorway.

"I don't suppose you want to kiss me?"

"No," she said. "The cops are coming."

"That's a good reason," Michael said. "How about your boyfriend. Hey Norman," he called softly. "Want to kiss me?"

"He doesn't want to kiss you," she said. A little runic Gioconda smile there. "Go home and go to bed."

Christ, she's smiling, Michael thought. What a hardass. But when he looked again he saw her eyes were full of tears. Maybe a moment's forgiveness, a new love maybe stoking the ashes of the old. He thought of Erzule's power. Anything was possible.

Let's go upstairs to bed, kid. He thought he should say that to her. But he did not say it. Officer Vandervliet had arrived. The young cop climbed out and stood in the welter of light spun by his own blue and red patrol beams. He bore himself with the caution appropriate to domestic dispute calls.

"Hey, Professor Ahearn! Hey, Miz Ahearn!" Michael saw that Kristin was still in the doorway. "Hey, Professor Ahearn, put your gun down on the road."

"I don't have a gun," Michael said. "It's in my car."

"Nobody got a gun here?"

They let him see for himself. Michael thought with some satisfaction of Cevic crouched in the darkness like a sniper, trying to move his shotgun out of the shadows.