The Next(47)

Blood spurt sharply from his punctured pants.

I picked up Marzoli's gun.

Mrs. Layworth pounced on Marzoli and raised her knife to plunge into a more effective area of his body.

The metal of the gun melted into my palm. Instantly the training my  Grandfather had provided me as a kid jolted back into my muscle memory.  I'd no time to open the window.

Click  –  safety off.

Swish  –  slicing the gun through the air with a precise aim.

Crack  –  the bullet smashed through the window.

Mrs. Layworth turned her head toward the sound of the firing.

The Princess below screamed.

The window shattered and fell through the fire escape grate, glass  tinkling through metal steps below. I also saw that the Layworths'  window had shattered as well, but the bullet went nowhere and had not  hit its target. Fuck it. I now had a clean shot. Without even thinking, I  automatically re-cocked the gun, aimed directly for Mrs. Layworth's  heart, dehumanized her by not looking into her eyes, and pulled the  trigger.

The bullet hit her dead on through her breast. Her body fell to the floor.

The crack echoed eerily through the courtyard. My head started whirlpooling …

Paul put the barrel of the rifle against the skull.

Mr. Layworth's face was splattered with his wife's blood, and he released his grip.

Marzoli slumped down to the floor unconscious.

Paul! No! Put it down!

I stared intently into the Layworth's apartment. Marzoli was on the  floor, but still breathing. Mrs. Layworth's white trench coat was  painted with thick Pollock stripes and spots of red.

Put it down, Paul!

The bullet shot through the trailer's darkness with a loud sharp crack.

I felt eyes staring at me. Still holding the gun, I looked around the courtyard.

The Princess stood in front of her white four-posted bed, facing me.

The Broadway Dancer held his laptop at his side, facing me.

The Beached Whale stood in front of her futon, facing me.

Schlongzilla stood naked on his three limbs, facing me.

The Couch Potato held a plate of mac and cheese, facing me.

All of us froze, suspended in disbelief.

The Little Old Man was the only one present whose deep creviced face did not turn toward me …

From the deep in the blackness in the far corner of the trailer's living  room, the lighter flicked, lighting the cigar, and we saw the deep  wrinkles of his face …

I turned cold as I saw Mr. Layworth standing at his bedroom window with white-hot fury in his eyes, facing me.

Our eyes made contact.

Shit!

Graves puffed on the cigar, illuminating his face with red. His eyes met  mine. His smile was broad, his teeth gleaming in the cigar's red glow.  Every hair on my body bristled and a tingly wave of fear swept from head  to toe.

How the hell did he get in?

I thought I'd drifted to sleep for only two seconds, but it must have  been longer. I looked over to Paul. He was fast asleep again. I shook  him. Paul opened his eyes.

"Grandfather!" he screamed.

But Grandfather was not present. For the first time since we'd arrived, Grandfather had gone out for the night.

I remembered why …

After a long afternoon of shooting, we'd trampled through the brush back  to the trailer. Our hunting was no longer limited to rifles.  Grandfather had incorporated handguns into our regimen as well. It  seemed the locked closet contained an unending assortment of firearms.

It'd taken only a couple rounds from the handguns to understand why  Grandfather had saved them for after the rifles. We had to be  conditioned first. Handguns were harder to handle, far more easily  abused accidentally and purposefully. They implied an emotional context  much more heart stopping. Rifles were for animals; handguns were for  humans.

As the ducklings once again marched past Palmer's trailer, Mama Duck  paused for the first time ever. Palmer looked up from his potted zinnias  to tip his hat.

And then Grandfather spoke for the first time since we'd known him.

"Poker at Hangman's tonight. You in?"

"Yep," Palmer responded, concealing his surprise.

That was all that was said, and we continued into our trailer.

Paul and I were stunned that we'd heard Grandfather's voice at all, let  alone knowing we'd be free from his scrutiny and discipline that  evening. His voice was not gentle in any way. It was gruff, raspy, and  tight. Words tortured him. Communication tortured him.

After hot dogs and beans that night, with the guns safely in the closet,  the lights turned off, and all but one curtain closed, Grandfather  closed the front door. The gravel crunched as he made his way to the  car. We heard the car door bang shut, the engine ignite, the car crunch  its way to the street, and then he was gone.         

     



 

We were alone for the evening. We were free!

We both knew what our first order of business would be. We each grabbed  knives from the kitchen and escaped the trailer. Even though we knew  Palmer and Grandfather were not home to hear us, fear was so pervasively  engrained in our instincts that we went out through the window in the  bathroom in order to avoid crunching the gravel outside the front door.

Through the darkness of the woods we trampled back to the deer whose  head we'd shot holes through that afternoon with handguns. We dragged  the carcass back off the path to an isolated glen in the woods. Careful  not to stain our clothes with even a droplet of blood, we skinned a  portion of its neck and cut out a thickness of flesh the length of bacon  strips. It was far from a professional job, but it could have been  worse considering it was our first carving. In the beginning of that  summer, the act of carving the flesh of a dead animal would have been  unthinkable. But we'd been changed, and we were hungry.

Crunch.

We froze.

By now our ears were trained to recognize even the fluttering of a  hummingbird in our woods. Paul and I had distinctly heard the crunching  of leaves by a human in the darkness behind us. We turned and peered  into the blackness.

We saw nobody.

We waited.

The minutes passed until we figured that whoever was watching us in the  darkness obviously did not want to be seen. Paul finally nudged my ribs  to get the hell out of there.

We dragged the deer back to the part of the woods where we'd killed it  and carefully rested it such that the carved side was hidden. Then we  dashed as swiftly as possible back to the trailer, hopping through the  bathroom window and locking it closed behind us.

Within minutes, the smell of the sizzling meat filled the trailer, so we  opened all the windows. After a summer of nothing but beans and hot  dogs, the first forkful of meat was like a chocolate sundae. We let the  fat of the deer slide across our lips, swallowing slowly at first,  savoring the lingering mouthwatering bloody aftertaste, then devouring  it with the ravenousness of wolves.

Five minutes later we'd consumed everything. We began the meticulous  process of erasing our illicit activities: the pan, plates, and forks  scrubbed, the counter Windexed until the Formica reflected spotlessly  like a mirror, the windows shut, all but the one curtain closed, our  shoes thoroughly scraped of all mud, and all the windows closed and  locked. Grandfather's training us to pay attention to detail could work  against him as easily as it could for him.

We were exhausted by the time we pulled out the bed from the couch and  slid under the sheet. The curtain to Graves' trailer was left open as  usual, but Graves' light was not on. Perhaps he had joined Grandfather  and Palmer for poker downtown.

We closed our eyes.

Several hours later I awoke with a start. I dreamt Paul had shaken me  awake to point out our front door was open a sliver. I dreamt the sliver  turned into a full inch-wide crack over the course of fifteen long  minutes. I dreamt a horrible eye peered into the crack.

Was it a dream?

I looked over at the door. It was completely shut.

I looked over at Paul. He was fast asleep.

The heat in the room was stifling, and the sheet had long since been  kicked to the floor, leaving our almost naked bodies exposed to the  room's blackness, stillness, and soundlessness. It had to have been a  dream. I took a deep breath, turned over, and buried my head deeper into  the pillow.

But if there was nothing to be alarmed about, why had I awoken?

Then I heard it.

From the darkest corner of the kitchen, the metallic click of a lighter.

Tingles ice-stormed from my scalp down to my toenails. The cigar  protruded from his hardened lips, and his face glowed red, blackened  with the tread marks of a life driven hard and ferociously. He leaned  against the kitchen counter and smiled as he turned to face me, the  gleam of his teeth flashing. I shook Paul.

Paul sprang away, crouching against the back of the couch.

He screamed, "Grandfather!"

The lighter flicked out. We were plunged in hot pitch-blackness again.

I heard an inhalation from the kitchen, and the end of the cigar glowed  red, hovering in the darkness. The red glow slowly moved around the  counter in the darkness and toward the wall. The curtain seemed to close  on its own.

"Go away!" I screamed aloud as I sat up.

The red glow extinguished.

Paul and I held our breaths, not knowing which direction to escape. The  front door? He'd rush us easily by the time we located the doorknob, the  lock, and the screen door latch all in the dark. The hallway to the  bathroom window? Yes. We could lock the bathroom door which would give  us enough time to heft ourselves through the window. But how do we get  past Graves in order to get to the bathroom? I could feel Paul looking  at me for guidance, waiting for me to cue our next move as I had in the  tree, as I had at the fire, as I had for so many escapes from impending  drunken paternal attacks.