Boys of Life (40 page)

down backward on top ot it.

Which hurt a lot, and suddenly that made me completely turious. "Fuck! Goddamn it!" I veiled out. Carlos on his knees there was Laugh' ing. Maybe he knew how pathetic all this was, or maybe he knew exactlv what was going to happen next and he was laughing because he was so relieved, he was laughing because he was happy. He was walking right toward the hullets and he wasn't afraid anymore. He was singing.

I rememher I pulled myself up to my feet lust as he reached me and wrapped his arms around my calves. Then I guess I must*ve reached down and grahhed the tence picket where I'd hroken it, and just wrenched the whole thing right out o\ the wire that attached it to the re^t ot the tence. I don't really rememher any ot that, and I don't see how 1 could've had the strength to pull that picket off the wire—hut I guess I did, hecause there it was m my hand. Before I knew anything else I was slamming it into the side of Carlos'fl head—holding it like a hat, and swinging, and the whole time he kept dinging to my legs like some nightmare that wouldn't go away. I hit him probably ten times in the side ot the head, each time connecting with this loud thuack!— and he'd groan, the wav you groan when somehodv pushes their dick

in you and it hoth hurts and feels fantastic, like death, some people would say.

Then the picket splintered in r

Carlos seemed stunned. Ho wasn't bleeding, .is tar U I could fell. He wasn't doing anything—just holding onto my lens, and sort ot swaying hack and forth like he needed me to hold him up. I rememher what I telt was this insane annoyance, like all I wanted was tor this jut

□ PAUL RUSSELL

go away from me. I pushed at Carlos, but he wouldn't budge, and I couldn't untangle myself from him. The more I tried, the more furious I got—not with Carlos, but just the whole situation. I took the half of the splintered picket I was still holding and I poked at him with it. I guess I poked him pretty hard, because the sharp splintered-orT end of it slid right into the side of his neck. I was horrified, and suddenly there was blood everywhere. Plus he started making this gurgling sound, and when I tried to pull the picket out, it was stuck. I kept feeling like this bleeding was something Carlos kept doing to annoy me, and it made me angrier and angrier. I gave the picket a tug, and this time it came out—and because he still wouldn't let go of me I poked him again and again, as hard as I could, and 1 could feel it going into him each time I poked him. He'd let go of me by this point, and was in this weird position on his knees with his back bent way back, so his whole chest was exposed to me, and I guess what happened was, I hit his heart. Suddenly there was this explosion of blood all over both of us: Carlos gave this groan from deep in his throat and blood was spurting out his mouth, and that groan went deeper and deeper in his throat till it trailed away. After that he didn't move anymore.

Where he'd tried to blow me, my dick was still sticking out of m\ pants, and though I don't remember this, and I wish more than anything in the world it wasn't true, I must've come about the tune 1 stabbed Carlos in the heart. Because the police investigator found nn semen mixed in with the blood all over Carious hair and hia tace.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

years later, he used to tug Ted out from under the bed whenever he'd come home angry at our mom.

I've never been sure whether any of that with the night and the sky really happened, or whether it was just something I dreamed, maybe my first dream ever. My mom wasn't out there on the lawn with us— at least I don't remember her. It was just the three of us. Whenever I'd ask her about it, years later after my dad left us, she'd tell me nothing like that ever happened—I must've dreamed it. But I sometimes think maybe when we were little she used to go away and leave us with our dad, and then who knows what happened with just him and us? Ted of course was too young to remember anything, and anyway it was something I never asked him.

Carlos was the one who finally told me about the aurora borealis— how winds from outer space are pouring over the world all the time, how they scatter down these weird lights that sometimes on winter nights shower from the North Pole even as far south as Kentucky, maybe once every twenty years. How I was lucky to have seen that; most people go through their lives and they never see anything like that. He told me about the Eskimos, too, who live in the tar north-how they believe those lights come from some other world, where the spirits o( the dead go on living. How those lights can come snaking down to the ground and carry you away it you get caught out in them, ghost lights that can dazzle von and you'll never come back.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

He stepped back a couple of steps and said, "Oh my God." Then he pulled his pistol out of his holster and pointed it at me, which I guess is what they teach you to do. But then I guess he felt a little silly since I wasn't doing anything. I was just standing there with blood all over me, and he'd probably seen worse. So he just held the pistol without pointing it at me.

"I don't believe this," he said.

"It's for real," I told him. "It's definitely reality."

We walked over to his car, and he radioed for some other officers, and then we waited by the car till they got there. He offered me a cigarette, but I don't smoke. I guess what I felt mainly was just relief— I hadn't known what was going to happen, and now I did. Carlos wasn't going to touch me anymore.

It's been a year since all that. The trial was a foregone conclusion, though I understand there were people out there—Earl's definitely one of them—who thought I should've gotten off on the grounds Carlos Reichart was the sort that needed killing. I don't happen to think they're right, but that's not here nor there. What is here is all the thinking I've been able to do, and what I want to say may sound Strange for somebody's murderer to say, but I know now that I did to Carlo* exactly what he wanted me to. I may have thought it was what 1 wanted to do, and maybe it was—but it was definitely what he wanted.

I don't know why he decided it was tune, or why he wanted to gO OUt the way he did. 1 don't know whether it W8I because ot all the Mutt with Ted, or whether Ted was just p.irt of it too, part of Ins ua\ oi

g out. But I'm positive that suine da\ came w hen he made this decision, and once he decided that, he looked around tor the most loyal penon he could think ot to help hun.

Or maybe he onl) recognized It wai already decided the minute Ik- t.icc-d it happening In me the waj he knew Seth would alwayi manage '<• gel it on film when something red was going on, ind 1 wai

just being his de< iMon fol lum.

hut then I wai Here I Mill am. He's goi me in his hands from

ml m the- Nu \V.i\ I lundromat thai A.w ten years m:^

in the- tain, he's still got RIC I 0 'Ik \c\\ nul

,1 \\ noticed hem I have fins habil >

is the \ -MMoa/i m\ faVOritC BV

; made aIth him. rythinfl teemed clcai and <>k.is hack then I In- ocean, wu

B O Y S O F L I F E D

and a little boat out on the waves. Some seagulls flying in this gray morning light. Then you hear the character played by me—it's nor my voice, of course, it's somebody else's voice dubbed—saying, "1 decided to go with them, a ship running guns or contraband. 1 never knew

exactly what. But I heard tor the hrsr rune the names oi Silifke . . . Mersin . . . On the docks at Antakya a young Jew introduced himself and told me that in the year ..."

Then in the middle of the sentence that voice just Stops talking,

there's no more ocean, no more boat or flying seagulls—the screens just blank.

It's the way I've always left.