I stared at the door, wondering if I’d imagined it, but my eyes picked out the details in the gloom. Two of the barbs of the driftwood were poking through the fish’s white belly. There didn’t seem to be much blood. In the next stutter-flash of lightning, I made out two dark, dried trails running down from the puncture wounds like tear-driven mascara. The thunder rolled, louder and closer. Okay. There’s a fish on my door.
I kept my head back as I inserted the key, turned it, and pushed open the door.
I flicked on the lights. The room was empty. The only place where there was room for anyone to hide was under the double bed. I knelt quickly, lifted up the bedspread. Dust and dark. I shut the door slowly, so as not to dislodge the fish. I wasn’t sure I wanted it on my door, but I knew I didn’t want it lying on my stoop like some banana peel primed for Dagwood’s return home. I sat down on the bed, pulled the duffel bag toward me, and rustled through my clothing, pulling out bike chains and locks and piling them next to me on the bed. When I came across the oil rag at the bottom of the bag, I set it on my lap. Unwrapped it like a baby. The gleaming gun, a box of ammunition.
I opened the ammunition box. The bullets looked shiny and new, but who knew how old they were: ten years, twenty? I couldn’t remember Dad firing this thing. Maybe the gunpowder was unstable. Maybe the gun would explode the first time it fired.
At first I couldn’t eject the clip, but then my thumb found a latch at the top of the grip and the magazine pulled free. It was empty. I picked a bullet from the ammo box, lined it up with the mouth of the magazine, and pressed it down into the spring-loaded chamber. I fed another bullet into the slot, and another. There was a possibility that no one had mentioned. Maybe only I could let the demon out. Maybe it needed me to open the gate. And if my brain shut down before it opened, then maybe it couldn’t get back into the world. Maybe it would end with me. That would be some kind of accomplishment, wouldn’t it? The first guy to erase a demon from the world. I pushed the eighth bullet down into the spring-loaded magazine, then slipped the magazine back into the gun with a solid clack. The Hellion jumped at the sound, and I shut my eyes until it settled down. Rain began to clatter against the roof, sounding like applause. I slid my hand around the grip, lifted the gun, and touched the mouth of the barrel to my lips. The barrel was shaking, and I had to steady it with my free hand. I opened my mouth slightly, my upper lip sliding over the nub of the gun sight, then opened wider, let the metal slide between my teeth. I wanted my teeth out of the way, even though that couldn’t make much of a difference. I sat there, breathing in the smell of oil, tasting iron.
A simple thing. A little pressure on the trigger. I thought about Lew. He’d be so pissed. He’d have to call Mom, try to explain. I couldn’t think about Mom.
I pulled out the gun, wiped my lips, then my eyes. My eyes were flooded. I moved the gun to the side of my head and pressed the muzzle to my temple. Breathe in. Breathe out. Squeeze.
Ah, who the fuck was I kidding? I dropped my hand to my lap, still holding the gun. I couldn’t walk up to that cliff, couldn’t throw myself off. I was paralyzed. Too infatuated with my addiction to breathing, unable to extinguish my irrational belief that there was another way out.
Hope wasn’t a thing with feathers, it was a hundred-pound ball and chain. All you had to do was drag that sucker to the edge and throw it over first.
A hard knock on the door. I jerked at the sound. Jesus Fucking Christ, I could have fired the thing accidentally. I looked down at the
.45, and embarrassment swept over me, as if I’d been caught masturbating. I had to hide the gun. I stood up, quickly wrapped the pistol and ammo back in the oil rag, and stuffed the bundle deep into the duffel. The knock sounded again. What the hell does it take for a guy to get a couple minutes alone these days?
I smeared the tears from my eyes and lurched toward the door, then realized the chains and locks were still piled on the bed like a nest of snakes. Fuck it. Lew knew about the chains. I yanked open the door.
O’Connell stood there, the hood of her silver jacket pulled over her head, the rain ricocheting from her shoulders and head, forming a nimbus. The fish was still in place, one eye watching us.
“Yeah?” I said stupidly.
“I have a question, Mr. Pierce,” O’Connell said. “How did your mother lose her eye?”
SMOKE STACK JOHNNY
SAND CREEK, KANSAS, 1983
He came walking out of the middle of nowhere, ambling down the snowlined tracks with a pipe in his teeth, huffing clouds like a steam train. Despite the terrible cold, no jacket or gloves, just overalls and a blue flannel shirt and a blue-striped cap.
The conductor of the train saw him first. He stood in the cab, looking out the frosted window as he talked on the radio with the dispatcher, explaining why the train wasn’t moving. Even with the heaters on and the train stopped, it was only forty degrees in the cab. The toilet in the nose was frozen over.
“I think we’ve got a bigger problem,” the conductor said, and signed off. The pipe-smoking stranger waved jauntily up at the windows, then walked right up under the nose of the diesel, out of sight. The conductor went to one of the side windows, then the other, but couldn’t see anyone. He quickly pulled on his gloves, opened the cab door, and leaned out, squinting into the icy wind. The freight train stretched back in a straight line over the blank white plain, a hundred and sixty cars—twice too long for such
cold weather, but the Rock Island was going into its third bankruptcy and the company was running everything they could. The stranger and the two other members of the crew—the train ran with just a conductor, engineer, and one brakeman—were nowhere to be seen. The conductor hopped down and hustled around the front of the train to the other side. It was twenty below, but he’d already started to sweat. About ten cars down, the engineer and brakeman crouched beside a boxcar, waving a flashlight at its underbelly. The stranger was halfway to them, striding through the snow beside the tracks.
“What’s the problem, boys?” the stranger called out heartily. “Outta air?”
The engineer looked up, surprised, then stood up. “Who the hell are you?” he said, his voice carrying easily in the cold air. The conductor frantically waved his arms as he ran, trying to get the engineer to shut up. The stranger didn’t seem to take offense. “Why, I’m the king of the rails, that’s who! I’ve got coal in my teeth and steam in my lungs! There’s never been an engine I couldn’t fix or a locomotive I couldn’t drive. No grade too steep, no snow too deep. I’m Smokestack Johnny, and I ride the high iron!”
A moment of stunned silence, and then the brakeman said, “Who?”
The engineer said nothing. He’d been a railroad man for fifteen years, but the brakeman was a kid only a month into the job. The conductor finally caught up to them. He was breathing hard and he felt sick to his stomach, but he forced a shaky smile onto his face. “What can we do for you, Johnny?”
The stranger whipped around. “Hey there!” he said, beaming. “You must be the conductor.” He was a handsome man, his jaw as square and clean shaven as a Burma-Shave ad, his hair as black as axle grease. “Say, we rode together once, didn’t we?”