John Brandon - Citrus County

“There will be no chatter once we leave this locker room. Not one word. No smiling. No looking at boyfriends. I’m going to sit on the bench silently with one leg crossed over the other. You are a silent avalanche.”

Mr. Hibma paced, letting his words get heavy and sink to the floor and settle. His players had frenzy in their hearts. They were trembling.

And they triumphed. Mr. Hibma had never seen a team so thoroughly psyched out as Dade. After the final seconds ticked off the clock, all the voice Mr. Hibma’s players had held inside exploded into the gym. The fans wailed. Even the other coach, it seemed to Mr. Hibma, understood that the good guys had won.

Mr. Hibma guided his car along the roads that led to his villa. He stopped at the grocery store and picked up wine, hummus, pickles, salami. He ran his car through a car wash then pulled around to get gas. Mr. Hibma was leaning on his car, the trigger of the nozzle locked in place and pumping steadily, when an SUV pulled up across from him and the most curvaceous woman Mr. Hibma had ever seen stepped down from it. She was wearing a purposely tattered T-shirt, overmatched shorts, and canvas shoes. She was not from the area. Her ankles and knees and waist were delicate and in between those points was bursting, fecund flesh. Her face was an arranged jumble of plump cheeks and full lips and dark eyebrows.

When Mr. Hibma’s tank was full, he replaced the nozzle on the pump and screwed on his gas cap. He fondled his keys in his pocket. He stepped around the pump and emerged next to the woman’s SUV. She was facing away from Mr. Hibma, kicking some hosing out of her way, fixing up a place to stand. Her calves were flexing preposterously.

“Miss,” Mr. Hibma said.

The woman turned, caught off-guard. It was night and she was at a service station in a redneck county.

“When a man sees the sexiest woman he’ll ever see, he knows he has received a gift that will enrich him and curse him. You have broadened my notion of feminine allure. Because of you, this gas station will be one of the places in the world most dear to my heart.”

The woman giggled breathily. She gave Mr. Hibma a look that meant he ought to know better.

The woman’s nozzle clicked, her tank full, and Mr. Hibma did not miss his chance for a well-timed exit. He backed out of the woman’s sight, slid into his car, and pulled away from the gas station. The whole way home, he kept looking at himself in the rearview, wondering about himself, doubting very little that the person he saw in the mirror was a cold-blooded killer, doubting very little that he could pull off a grand act that would transform him. It wasn’t that complicated. Your mind told your body to do things and your body obeyed. If he needed to coach, he could coach. If he needed to charm a sexy woman, he could charm a sexy woman. If he needed to kill Mrs. Conner, he could kill Mrs. Conner. He could sit long hours in his storage unit and let his soul curdle. Mr. Hibma wasn’t stuck in his life. He was cocked and loaded, ready to blow his life apart.

On the way into his villa he checked the mail and, he should’ve known, there was a letter from Dale waiting for him. The address of his PO Box in Clermont was written in Dale’s hand, and beneath that a yellow sticker had been affixed which directed the envelope to Citrus County.

Mr. H,

Write me once more, to let me know where to be and when to be there. I’m game, as you’ve gathered. At the very least, as game as you are.

After school, Toby and Shelby walked past a trailer park where only old people were allowed to live. They went into the woods and passed a hill of tires and kept going until they reached the old warehouse, the one with all the statues leaning against it. Toby had walked past it a bunch of times but had never tried to venture inside. The door didn’t have a knob. Shelby lifted the thin rod out of its setting and Toby gave a shove and they were looking at the dim immensity of the place. Boxes were everywhere, none of them closed. Bibles and shoes. Heavy, glossy leather bibles and plain black shoes. And that’s what the place smelled like, brand-new rubber and old, old words. Shelby started kissing Toby and he was ready. He could enjoy kissing her now. He wanted to do nothing but kiss her. In two days he was going to put everything right and his mind would be empty and ready for brand-new inventory. He wasn’t using his faulty instincts anymore. He was thinking. He was thinking of the new day that would dawn, when everyone would wake up where they were supposed to. Shelby wouldn’t come to Toby’s house and he wouldn’t come to hers but the rest of the county would be their stomping grounds, their kissing grounds.

Shelby backed into the shadows and reclined herself on some boxes. Toby wondered if she was on shoes or bibles. She undid the buttons of her shirt and calmly drew one arm out of its sleeve and then the other. She was wearing nothing underneath. Toby’s mouth was dry from nerves and it was dry from the lack of Shelby’s mouth. He’d been watching her body for months and now here it was. Shelby was so pale and somehow her breasts were an even lighter shade. They were of a shape and character that Toby could not have imagined. He reached and placed his hand on one of them and a husky squeak escaped Shelby. Toby didn’t want to be scared again. He didn’t want to feel like a sucker. He wanted to feel what you were supposed to feel.

Shelby wanted this to go further, but she wasn’t going to lead Toby anymore. She wanted him to do something. He reached with his free hand for her shorts, no idea what was going to happen. She was right in front of him, but it seemed like he had to reach a long way. He fumbled with the button for a moment, his fingers stupid, and then Shelby was reaching for him, clutching at him.

Toby stepped back into a stack of boxes and they teetered and almost fell.

“I don’t want you to touch me this time,” he said.

“Why not?”

Toby didn’t know what to say. He wanted to be able to keep his nerve, to touch Shelby because that’s what she wanted. He reclaimed the space between them, and then both of them were holding still and listening. They heard a car. The noise got steadily louder until it was right outside the warehouse. The car didn’t have a muffler or something. The doors opened and then slammed. Toby handed Shelby her shirt and she accepted it and began buttoning it up. The two of them crept over to the wall and found a warped spot where they could see out. There were two men, both with flattop haircuts and one with an enormous class ring. They were talking about which statues to take, which would sell for the most, their voices raised because of the grumbling engine. Toby and Shelby could see the men but not their vehicle. They kept carrying statue after statue. It must’ve been a big pickup truck. They must’ve been piling the saints and knights one on top of the other in the bed like a bunch of dead bodies. The men may have owned the statues or they may have been stealing them.

That evening, Shelby asked her father to drive her to the library. She’d done enough walking in the woods for one day. They cruised along the edges of some cow pastures, slowed at a recent sinkhole that had collapsed half of a diabetes clinic. They pulled onto the dusty road, passed the power substation.

Lately, Shelby’s father’s breakfasts had gotten more elaborate — honey-pecan sausage, omelets, pineapple juice. He made himself read the paper each morning, grinding through the major stories of each section no matter how little they interested him. He gave Shelby gifts, the latest a book in which a bunch of poets wrote about their favorite pop songs. Shelby’s father had learned how to force his mood, to keep himself in the middle ground, neither manic nor hopeless. He seemed a bit lighter in spirit, perhaps because he had less of it. He would find peace, even if it were some compromised brand. Shelby could feel it; he would survive.