The men cheered as Frank watched the fine dust sift over his boots.
“I got fifty-six seconds here,” Sturm said. Everybody else chimed in their times, but nobody had over a minute.
DAY TWENTY-FOUR
The next morning, the heat was somehow worse in town, as if all the pavement, bricks, cinderblocks, and concrete, having absorbed so much for so long, were now more like hot coals, radiating a much deeper and stronger heat back out into the sunshine.
Frank kicked himself for forgetting his sunglasses back at the vet hospital. The last few days, in the full sunlight, he would have to shake his head once in a while, because his eyes would lose focus, and eventually everything in his vision would shatter in a blinding white light, and when the world refocused, the light was reversed, as if he was looking at a photo negative. The colors shimmered and melted into switching, like getting stuck between channels on the hotel televisions. So he’d shake his head until the picture snapped back into full color, keeping the lights and darks in the right places.
* * * * *
Theo rolled Sturm’s pickup out of an alley running parallel to Main Street, behind the Holiday Market and it’s empty parking lot. He went painfully slow, just threw it in drive and didn’t touch the gas. He turned into the street, moving slower than most people walk. Of course, the street was empty. Except for the engine, and Chuck’s unrelenting conversation, the town was silent.
Chuck said, “I’m at this truck stop down in Reno, empty as all hell, sitting at the bar, chatting with the waitress. She was interested, I know she was, ’cause she got me a chicken fried steak and eggs for half the price. And I’m eating, and getting’ cozy with her, when this guy walks in and sits down right next to me. Place is empty, but he has to fucking sit next to me.”
Frank and Chuck rode back on the tailgate. Chuck’s legs swung aimlessly back and forth under the truck. Frank’s long legs would have been dragged along, so he was kind of walking along with the truck, taking long strides backwards. He took a long drink, then passed Chuck his flask.
Chuck took it, saying, “And I swear to God, I can see him in the mirror right? So in the mirror, he looks kinda’ sick, but that’s all, and when I turn to look at him, half his head is gone, from the nose on over, just gone.” He slapped his palms together to suggest skipping a rock over water. “And I look back to the mirror, and he looks…well, not fine, no, but at least his head is all there.”
A horse lead line was attached to the bumper. Fifteen feet down, at the other end of the line, was a ewe, dreadlocks of dry mud underneath, legs caked in gray mud, shuffling along, like a wobbly toy being pulled by a string.
Theo rolled across the crosswalk and into the Main Street intersection.
Chuck talked over the diesel engine. “And he turned to look at me, with that one eye left, and he said, ‘Don. Don.’ Then he got up and left.”
“Why?” Frank was bored shitless, wondering when the hell Chuck would get to the point and take a drink. Then maybe he’d give the flask back.
“Why? Fuck, you listening to me? The ghost, man. What are we drinking here? What the hell’s in this?” He shook the flask, spilling some of the whiskey. “You think I can get another injection of that shit? Haven’t felt that good in…ever.”
“I would. I mean, I’d like to. I would. But I can’t afford it.”
Chuck laughed. “Well. How much does this stuff cost?”
“I’m not sure. But I can find out.”
“You got more back at the office, right? You know, any tiny bit. Hell, it don’t take much. I can afford it. Hell yes—I can pay you! Jesus, don’t worry about that. I got paid. So I got it.” Chuck pulled a lump from his jeans and gave Frank a flash of his money, a good thick, tight roll of bills over three inches thick.
They rolled across Main Street. Frank was too busy looking at the pavement, pretending to remember how much he should charge, seeing that fat roll of cash in his mind, wondering when in the hell Sturm had seen fit to pay some employees and not others and barely trying to not listen to the voice raising the possibility of simply killing Chuck and that cash would be his.
So he didn’t notice the school bus, farther down. Sturm, Theo, Girdler, one of the Glouck boys, and The Assholes stood in front of the bus, lined up along the crosswalk.
Everyone had a rifle.
* * * * *
Frank said, “Five hundred dollars. That’ll buy you a damn good buzz tonight.”
“You got it.” Chuck peeled off five bills and slapped them into Frank’s hand, as the pickup finally rolled through the opposite crosswalk.
As the sheep crossed the center traffic line, the crack of a single rifle knocked Frank’s eyes into the swirling photo negative mode again.
The sheep was yanked off its feet and to the side, as if a giant invisible hook came out of the sky and caught it just behind the shoulder blades, catching on the bones and slamming it at the ground.
A cheer went up. Sturm raised his rifle.
Frank was so shocked he stood up, eyes locked on the dead sheep, nearly black in his eyes, now being pulled along by the lead line. The pickup rolled out from underneath him, unfelt and unheard. He suddenly looked up, and seeing the hunters aligned along the crosswalk, connections were made. He figured out that someone, probably Sturm, had shot the ewe. He went to sit back on the tailgate and fell on his ass.
The hunters roared.
Theo hit the gas, and tried to drag the corpse into Frank.
Frank jumped up and hopped over the sheep as it slid underneath him, painting the street like a sponge soaked in blood. Frank dusted himself off, and waved back at the hunters. Theo turned in a big circle, dragging the ewe around Frank, pounding on the roof, honking the horn, and generally having himself a good time. Chuck clutched at his belly, laughing all the while, his head swiveling around like a half deflated balloon of casing atop a sausage as he squinted through tears at Frank. “Sorry man, but that…that was fucking funny shit right there.”
Theo turned around and stopped. Chuck jumped off, shaking his head and giggling. He unbuckled the dog collar and joined Frank back on the tailgate. Theo took off, leaving the dead ewe in the middle of the side street.
Riding the tailgate back, Frank’s smile was more or less in place. After a while, he thought that if it hadn’t been him, it would have been pretty funny. And it wasn’t too long before he thought the whole thing was pretty funny, until they turned back into the alley.
He’d forgotten about the rest of the sheep. Twenty-five or thirty of them clung together like wet oatmeal, in the shade behind the supermarket. The fence was simply a roll of chicken wire stretched from the back wall out and around two dumpsters, forming a square.
Theo kept the pickup moving until Chuck was level with the corner of the fence. He jumped off, went up to the wall, and unhooked one end of the chicken wire. He grabbed a sheep, another ewe, by one ear, and threw the collar over her neck. He let go of the ear and grabbed the other end of the collar before the ewe could back away. He cinched it tight, buckled it, and dragged it out of the pen.
* * * * *
And that’s how it went. Theo would drive slowly out across Main Street, towing a sheep, and somebody down by the bus would be shooting like hell. Sometimes the shots would kill the sheep instantly, blasting it sideways two or three feet. By early afternoon, there was a thick trail of clotted gore the color of crushed pomegranates, covered in flies. Blood sizzled on the pavement, scarred with hundreds, maybe thousands of bullet strikes. The air smelled of blood and gunpowder.
For three hours, in the worst of the early afternoon, even the flies wouldn’t go out into the sun. They would cluster in curious stripes along thin strips of shadow that marked each tree limb, eating, shitting, fucking, and marching forward through the gore with the relentless snail’s pace of the sun.