A Single Shot (7 page)

Then he goes downcellar, pulls from the big freezer what’s left of the rattlesnake, half a dozen venison steaks, and a bag of ice, and takes them all out to his truck, where he tosses everything into the portable cooler. Standing in the driveway afterwards, still three-quarters drunk, he decides that offering mere meat to his family is not enough. A much bigger gesture is needed. He runs up to the woodshed, crawls beneath it, pulls out the pillowcase, withdraws several packets of money, then reattaches the pillowcase to the foundation beam.

Sitting at the kitchen table, he counts the money. Five thousand six hundred dollars. A lot. Much more, certainly, than he’s ever seen at one time. Yet only a tiny percentage of the whole. He wonders, though, if it’s too much. If word got out that he was giving away sums that big, what then? Still, the gesture must be big. A big—great big—not tiny, cash wad is the point. Like John’s cataclysmic orgasms, the gift is meant to speak volumes; to say more than he is able to say in words about his love and concern for his family. He eats two bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, washes them down with a quart of raw milk. He thinks himself nearly
sober. He looks around at the kitchen walls streaked with soot. The whole trailer smells like burning charcoal. He decides to give Moira all the money but a thousand dollars. Before he leaves, he rolls up the latter amount and stuffs it into the sugar jar above the sink.

He drives the eight miles to town in a blindered, half-drunk state, foreseeing from his mission only positive results—a grateful Moira, an impressed Moira, a contrite Moira, begging for him to take her back. He parks in front of a liquor store at one end of the street, then, carrying in a paper bag the deer and snake meat and the cash, he walks the two hundred yards to where she lives on the top floor of a three-story, white, flaking clapboard building, half obscured by spruce trees. Her car is out front.

Looking up at the third-floor windows, dark except for a single flickering light, John is suddenly not so sure he’s doing the right thing. It’s later than he thought. Nearly ten o’clock. What if Moira is in bed? Worse yet, what if there’s someone up there with her? The street behind him is so quiet he can hear the buzz of the streetlights. An occasional car passes. John walks back up the street to the liquor store, goes inside, buys a pint of schnapps, then walks back to Moira’s, and, drinking the schnapps, leans against her car, staring at the flickering light, imagining it to be about anything. A firefly lights several times in front of his face. John tries unsuccessfully to catch it in his hand. He wonders what it would feel like to fly, to bypass walking altogether.

A vehicle comes fast down the street, slows up, then turns into the dirt driveway next to the house. It’s a small compact
car. Rap music pours from its open windows. While the engine’s still running, the driver’s door opens. A long-haired kid holding a square, flat box steps out. He glances at John, then quickly walks to the outside stairs on the side of the house and starts up them, two at a time. A dog starts barking somewhere in the building. A voice tells it to shut up. John watches the kid climb past the second floor and head for the third. He drops the empty schnapps bottle onto the grass. A horrible image of Moira naked beneath another man flashes into his head. “She don’t even like pizza,” he thinks. “I’ve never seen her eat even a single goddamn slice.”

He starts on a half trot toward the stairs.

He reaches the bottom of the first platform just as the kid, guffawing to himself, steps onto it from above. “Unfucking real, man,” he says, shaking his head. “Some dudes got all the luck!” More to steady himself than anything else, John puts his hand not holding the paper bag on the kid’s chest. The kid stops laughing. “What’s the deal, man?”

The world spins around John. He asks the kid, “Who ordered it?”

“Huh?”

“Who ordered the fucking pizza?”

The kid nods up the stairs. “She did, man. The chick.”

John pushes past the kid. Holding on to both rails for support, he lurches up the wooden stairs to the third-floor platform. He leans against the entrance-way door, hearing inside, above soft music, piggish grunts, moans, one-and two-syllable verbal barks. Through the door he sees past the kitchen into the living room, where the light flickers. He thinks, “How can the world end in a single day?” He is past
reason, several drinks beyond thought. He puts his hand on the door handle and turns. The door is locked. He smashes the paper bag into the lowest section of glass, reaches through the hole, unlocks the door, yanks it open, and runs through the kitchen into the living room, where a naked woman holding a pizza slice sits cross-legged on the floor before a television set. John starts to speak, then hears behind him a click and a man’s voice. “Drop the goddamn bag.”

John doesn’t recognize the voice or the woman. He’s not sure he recognizes the house. People are fucking on the television. He says, “Is this 1201 Belmont?”

The woman giggles.

The voice says, “I’m not shitting you, man.”

John drops the bag.

“Now, who the fuck are you and what do you want?”

“I think I got the wrong house,” says John.

“Most fucking likely.”

“No,” says the woman. She tosses the half-eaten pizza slice into the box next to her. She looks sweat-soaked or greased. Her nipples are red flares. She’s bald between her legs. “No, he don’t.”

“How do you know?” says the voice.

“That’s John.”

“John?”

“The husband.”

John hears a baby cry in back. “What’s going on here?”

Frowning sheepishly, the woman pulls a blanket from the couch, wraps it around herself from the neck down. “I’m Moira’s friend, Carla. From Puffy’s?”

John’s thoughts can’t find anywhere to land. He looks
more closely at the woman and thinks maybe he’s seen her around. He recognizes the blanket covering her as the one Moira’s mother made them for a wedding present. That’s their television set playing. Their couch. “What are you doing in Moira’s house?”

“Babysitting.”

“Babysitting?”

“For Nolan.” The woman stands up. “Moira’s out.”

“Out where?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Christ,” says John. “You’re watching porno movies.”

“We got a constitutional right,” says the voice.

“You got a fucking gun on me?”

“I put it away.”

John doesn’t turn around. “And fucking in front of my kid!”

“He was asleep,” says the woman.

“Till you woke him, John.”

“Fuck you,” says John. He glances at the television screen, on which three men in wolves’ masks are screwing Little Red Riding-Hood. “Both of you!”

“I’ll get him,” says the woman, starting for the back bedroom.

“No, you don’t,” says John. “You don’t go in there with my kid!” He looks around at the room filled with empty beer cans, a half-full vodka bottle, ashtrays with butts of something smoked in them. “You better have your clothes on when I come back,” he barks over his shoulder at the man. “I don’t want to see your sorry ass naked in my wife’s house! Christ, what’s the matter with Moira?” He reaches
down, switches off the television set. In the ensuing hush, the kid’s wail becomes more pronounced. John starts toward it.

“Better let me,” says the woman.

“What?”

“He ain’t used to seeing you.”

“Ain’t what?”

“You’re apt to scare him.”

“I’d punch you in the mouth,” says John, pushing past her, toward the sound. “ ’Cept I been taught better!”

“Okay,” says John. “Okay. Easy now.” His arms and legs pedaling madly, the kid lies on his back, squawking like a bird begging for a worm. John’s words have no effect on him. He’s like a lump of wood standing there. “Daddy’s here.”

Above the crib hangs a mobile of small animals. Pushing one with his finger, John makes them spin. The kid wails louder. John grabs the animals to stop them. The mobile pulls free from its mooring and lands in the crib. The kid screams like he’s dying. John tosses the mobile onto the vanity. A Vaseline jar is knocked to the floor. The kid hollers, “Mommy!”

John didn’t know he could talk. Part of him is elated. He leans into the crib and gushes, “I’m Daddy. Can you say Daddy?”

The kid looks mortified.

He hates me, thinks John. Already he’s decided. Probably thinks I abandoned him. Or he knows I’m evil inside. Can see right into my soul. Christ, he tells himself, he ain’t a year old. How can he know anything? Why won’t he stop crying,
though. What would Moira do? Pick him up, maybe? He reaches down, puts his arms beneath Nolan’s back. He lifts him. The boy goes completely still. A moment later, he lets out such a scream John nearly drops him. “What’s the matter?” he asks, in a panicked voice that petrifies both of them. “Did I hurt you? Did someone else? For Christ sake. Show me where!”

The wailing builds to a crescendo. John turns the boy over in his hands several times, looking for bruises or cuts, some sign of an injury. Then he thinks maybe it’s one of those scars you can’t see, some mental pain having to do with the fucking he must have overheard in the next room. He thinks about Moira leaving their son with these people. And he’d always believed she was a perfect mother. I’ll go for custody, he thinks. Raise the boy myself. “Stop now,” he begs. “Cut it out, Nolan. You’re scaring Daddy!” He puts the boy against one shoulder, starts patting his back. Then the woman, Carla, is there, her hands reaching out. “Easy now, John. Just give ’im over gentle.”

She’s wearing blue jeans and a pullover black jersey. Her wild, frizzy hair is still sweaty at the temples. John says, “What’s the matter with him? What did you people do to him!”

“He’s fine. Just a little scared’s all. And hungry. Poor little man.” John hands her the boy. She deftly cradles him in one arm. With her free hand, she places a bottle in his mouth. He stops crying, then starts making wet suckling noises. The woman softly rubs his back, rocks him to and fro, coos gibberish in his ear. John glares at her. He wants to say something but isn’t sure what. Reaching out a hand, he gingerly
touches one of his son’s socked feet. The whole foot is smaller than John’s finger. He touches the other foot. He counts five tiny toes through the cloth. There’s tears in his eyes. Incredible, he thinks. Absolutely unbelievable what Moira and I done. “He looks like you,” says the woman.

John grimaces at her.

“Yeah. You know, round the eyes.”

“I’m gonna tell Moira what I found here,” says John.

The woman shrugs.

John places a hand on the boy’s head, feels the heat there, the silk-soft hair. He thinks about taking him back, but is afraid his son will cry again.

“Got Moira’s long legs, though,” says the woman, “and gentle temperament.”

John walks past her into the living room.

His mouth drops open. Before the television set, holding the bag he brought for Moira, stands the lanky man with bulging eyes, veiny, tattooed arms, and collar-length, thin blond hair who earlier today John saw crossing the street with Waylon.

“You remember me, John?”

John doesn’t say. He looks for the gun and sees it protruding above the left side of the man’s belt.

“Way you looked at me, I thought maybe.”

“I seen you comin’ out a’ Puffy’s today.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“Maybe you was too busy watching somethin’ else.” John jerks his head toward the bedroom. Suddenly he is struck by the smallness of the world. He imagines himself the bull’s-eye at the center of a shrinking target.

“We got something in common there, don’t we, John?”

“I can’t guess what.”

“Oh, come on, John. We fish in the same pond!” The man laughs. He’s clothes-coordinated with Carla, except for his steel-toed boots. “Old Puffy, that chain-smoking lard-ass, got himself some hired help, I’d say.”

“Some reason you can’t fuck in your own place?”

“You know how it is, John. My dick’s a basset hound.” He shrugs. “I’m just the poor sumbitch holding its chain.”

“I can’t figure out why you’re still here.”

“Nobody lives here’s asked me to leave.”

“Most guys make assholes of themselves don’t wait to be.”

“Hell, John, that was nothing. You shoulda come few minutes earlier—got the show the pizza man did.” He smiles, then holds up the bag. John wonders if he’s looked inside. “You want me to put this in the fridge? It feels like maybe it needs it.”

John strides forward and snatches the bag. Fighting an impulse to check its contents, he shoves it beneath one arm and glares up at the man, who leans casually back against the doorframe. “You mad at me for some reason, John?”

“I don’t like guns being pulled on me.”

“A fucking madman breaks into the place, what would you do?”

“I don’t like ’em around my kid.”

“A lifelong hunter like you, John? I can’t believe that!” John thinks fleetingly of grabbing for the pistol, which is making him more and more nervous, then tells himself that alcohol and recent events are making him paranoid. “Truth is, John, I’m like you. A person who makes good use of what
he kills shouldn’t have to worry what time a’ year it is or whose fucking land he’s on. Christ, can you imagine if our ancestors who discovered this fine country could only hunt when the government told ’em to? Jesus, wouldn’t none of us be here!”