Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Not that things were perfect. Even though Anelle had transferred back to public school, she still wasn’t in any of my classes. And I couldn’t hang out at the gas station anymore, because Pete had been fired.

I didn’t feel good about that, because it was my fault. Just two weeks before the crash, Pete had serviced Mr. Carney’s Pontiac. The brake fluid had been changed — Mrs. Carney had a receipt which showed that clearly. Pete was low man on the totem pole, and the owner was tired of him using so much time to work on his junkers, so Pete took the heat.

So I had a tough time keeping up with Anelle. She didn’t show at any of the usual places. Her life was changing fast, and I knew that I had to do something dramatic unless I wanted to be remembered only as part of a bad experience. I remembered what she’d said about “cutting ties,” and I started to get the crazy notion that she’d been talking about me. I thought about her lips and the time that I’d kissed her, and I knew that I’d made too much of it. That kiss had been more like a handshake than a kiss that passes between lovers.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing her. I’d picture her closing her eyes, opening her mouth to mine as I pulled her close… I knew I had to make it happen, and soon.

So I spent more and more time at the library, waiting. It seemed pretty futile, because lately Anelle wasn’t reading romances at her usual clip. I kept thinking about that line in the old Beach Boys tune: See she forgot all about the library like she told her old man now…

One night I got involved in an exciting Western written by a guy named Ray Slater. I wasn’t really expecting Anelle to show up anymore, so I paid more attention to the book than usual, and I finished it just as the librarian started flicking the lights to signal closing time.

I shelved the Western and headed outside, walking on pins and needles because my left foot had gone to sleep while I was reading. As I shuffled through the doorway, I looked up the street and saw a girl walking toward the library. The dull glow of a streetlight shone on her long chestnut hair.

The girl looked a lot like Anelle.

She passed into the shadows that lay between the streetlights, which were set at each corner. Her stride was slow and unhurried, and even in the shadows I could tell that the girl was Anelle. I’d seen that walk of hers in enough dreams to have it memorized.

A car turned the corner and paced her, lagging a few feet behind, its bright lights turning Anelle into a silhouette. I couldn’t tell for sure what make it was — it looked kind of like a Chrysler — only that it had a bad muffler that coughed smoke.

I started down the stairs, my eyes on the car, and I tripped.

My sleepy foot went out from under me. I hit the stairs, hard.

I was up in a second, but the car was gone.

So was Anelle.

All of a sudden I was thinking about the projectionist and the threats he’d screamed at Anelle. I imagined a prison break, a guy dressed in orange con clothes hot-wiring an old Chrysler. Crazy with fear, not feeling the pain of the ankle I’d twisted on the stairs, I half ran, half hopped to my Dodge and peeled rubber, certain that I could catch the other car.

Three blocks later, looking up and down the main drag, I knew I’d lost it. My forehead was damp with sweat. I tried to calm down. I drove straight to Anelle’s house, hoping to put my fears to rest, praying that I’d see her waving to a friend as she opened the front door. But the house was quiet and dark. Even Anelle’s bedroom window was black; her frilly white shades were wide open.

I knew that she wasn’t there, that her room was empty.

I palmed the wheel and came to a stop at the mouth of the court, thinking that I should call the cops.

Something red flashed in the cemetery across the street.

Taillights.

I rolled down the window and smelled heavy exhaust. Burned oil. It was a long shot, but I didn’t have much else. Killing the headlights, I pulled to the curb.

I took a tire iron from under the seat.

I’d guessed correctly. The car was a Chrysler. There were two people in the front seat, chest to chest. They leaned back as one, against the passenger door.

Anelle and Pete Hatcher.

If I would have given it a chance, it might have seemed funny.

All Anelle’s not-so-subtle visits to the gas station, filling a gas tank that was three-quarters full, chatting up Pete the same way I chatted her up at the movies.

All those romance novels that were going unread in the presence of the real thing.

All that free labor I did for good buddy Pete, my unknown rival.

All those kisses he was getting in the front seat of his latest junker.

All those kisses I was missing.

I don’t remember opening the car door, but I remember what I did with the tire iron, and I remember the way Pete whimpered.

And I remember catching up to Anelle on her front lawn after Pete was dead. I grabbed her and held her close on the same spot where the “FOR SALE” sign had stood, thinking about all those things I wanted to tell her and the way I wanted to kiss her and the way I’d seen her kiss Pete.

My fingers locked around her biceps. Panic swam in her green eyes. Her lips trembled.

I said, “There’s something that I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.”

Those were the last words I ever said.

Anelle’s lips parted.

Her teeth gleamed in the glow of the porch light. Toothpaste advertiser’s wet dreams, every one.

She started to scream then, and I jammed my mouth against hers because I knew this would be my last chance for that special kind of kiss that only lovers share.

I did kiss her, and it was a lover’s kiss.

I held her tight, my mouth to hers, not letting her breathe.

When it was over, I fainted.

They tell me that Anelle passed out at the same time, just a few seconds after she’d swallowed my tongue.

BLACKBIRDS

On an August morning in the summer of 1960, a man dressed in black shattered the kitchen window at the Peterson home.

The house was empty. Major Peterson was at the base, writing a report on the importance of preparedness in the peacetime army. Mrs. Peterson was shopping for groceries. Their daughter Tracy was doing volunteer work at the local hospital.

Billy Peterson was the youngest member of the family. He was ten years old. Like the rest of his family, Billy was not at home when the man in black shattered the kitchen window.

Billy was pedaling his bicycle down Old MacMurray Road.

Billy was pedaling very fast.

Billy’s Daisy BB gun was slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing a small army surplus backpack.

There were only a few things in the backpack.

For one, there was a blackbird’s nest. In the nest were three eggs.

And there were two more things. Two items that, just like the backpack, had once been the official property of the United States Army.

One was a canteen, which Billy had filled with gasoline siphoned from his father’s lawnmower.

The other was a hand grenade.

The man in black had a pet of sorts. A blackbird which perched on his shoulder.

A blackbird with a BB hole in its chest.

But the bird did not seem inordinately bothered by the injury. No doubt it was well-trained. It did not make a single sound. Its head mirrored the movements of its master’s, searching here and there as the man in black explored the empty house.

But in the view of the man in black, the house was not empty.

In his view, he was surrounded by the Peterson family.

In his view, they were all around him.