“That’d be great,” I said, my voice completely flat. I looked down at his gun. The holster was snapped closed; no way to grab it quickly. Part of my mind puzzled over ways to get him to unsnap it, or even pull it out so I could grab for it. The other parts of me were all screaming about how ridiculous this all was. Mostly I was just numb, all except for my mind, which raced.
On the road, I saw the town fire truck coming toward us, its lights flashing. It was flying. “Must be a fire somewhere,” the Sheriff said. He sounded not the least surprised.
“Shouldn’t you—umm—maybe call them on the—,” I started.
“S’pose I should,” he said, and continued to drive.
“It’s your house, Mikey,” Kevin said from the back.
Without looking, the sheriff slammed his hand against the small mesh cage that separated the front seat from the back. The sound made me jump. The sheriff’s face didn’t move. A chill ran through me.
“You shut your hole, back ‘ere,” he said, the word coming out sounding like ‘air’. His hand went slowly back to the steering wheel.
“What did he mean by—?” I started. My stomach was already sinking. My mind was fighting against it, but somewhere inside I heard the truth in it.
“Nothing. That little faggot ain’t got enough sense to shut up when he’s in trouble, ‘s all,” he said, and looked into the mirror again, “I ain’t kiddin’, there, polly anna. Speak up one more time and find out what I’m fixin’ to do.”
The fire truck screamed past us so fast the wind rush moved the car a little.
“But, I mean, why would he say that it was my house if it wasn’t my house?” I asked. Then, silence. No one talked. Even the wind outside the car seemed to die down.
“Well, son, I s’pose that it might very well be your mama’s house,” he said. Just then, the doors locked. It’s amazing where your mind goes in situations like this; I remember thinking that there was no way a car this old had power locks. My body went almost limp. “I s’pose it just might be at that. I cain’t be for certain, mind. But considerin’ how much gasoline I poured on ‘er, that might just be your mama’s house.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Come on, now; you know very well why. You little lovebirds been just a’ chirpin’ away, ain’tcha? You know very well why. Shame, though. Damn shame,” he said, and in his voice there really was a note of sadness. “Shame about Ol’ Albert, havin’ to go that way.” he said. My head was filled with the white noise of panic.
“Your daddy, son—your daddy was the meanest man I ever met, god’s honest truth. That ol’ boy was tough as nails. Thing was I didn’t think he had it in him. I wan’t in town but two months ‘fore he came stormin’ into my office. I’d seen him around, y’know? Saw he’d gotten all grown up since I’d left.
He came up to me, all puffed up, and started accusing me a’things. Things I didn’t do. Your sister was a dime store hooker, son,” he said, and my eyes got wide, “now don’t go shootin’ the messenger, boy; I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’ you don’t already know yourself. When she walked out of this town, I tried oncet to bring ‘er on back. She kept on truckin’.” he said, and went quiet for a time. My mind was starting to come back to me, but the only thing I could hear was his voice. “Your daddy tried to accuse me of diddling his little girl oncet she took it on the run. Now, there’s a lot a’things I done, boy, that’s between me and the lord. But I’ll tell you right here and now, I ain’t never, and I mean never in my life, diddled no little girl. You can take that to the bank. I tell you what, though; that cocksucker was the only man in this town ever stood up to me, and I mean ever. I hated having to put him down like ‘at. Was a shame. Thing was, it wan’t just you that got to snoopin’. Your daddy got a might bit nosey, too.”
“He killed them, Mikey, he—,” Kevin said, his voice quivering.
The sheriff’s jaw bulged. He pulled the wheel to the side and the car started to slow. “What did I tell you, little girl? What did I tell you?” he started asking with a hiss in his voice.
“So it’s true.” My whole body sagged under the weight of it.
“What’s true?”
I looked back through the mesh at Kevin, who nodded. His eyes were blurry, and his chin quivered. The sheriff looked over at me out of the side of his eyes, then glanced lazily back at Kevin. He shook his head, and turned his eyes back to the road.
“Boy, when I took this here town over, it wan’t nothin’ but a truck stop, ‘cept for trains. People bringin’ drugs through, women whorin’—I put a stop to that,” he said, poking himself in the chest three times with his finger. “I did, not any of them pansies on the town council, y’hear?” He shook his head. “Y’know, don’t nobody say mean things when you’re gettin’ results, now, do they? No, sir. I come in here and start cleanin’ this little shithole of a town up, and it’s ‘Aiken saved us a’gin. But a man starts to try to get cozy and—,” he trailed off. “After a while, son, you’ll see what I mean. You try to do your job, but all the little red tape starts to mount up in your way. All the little pencil boys start to pile up on ya’ thinking they can get some dinner of’n ya. Well, sir, I wan’t gonna’ take it.” He was slowing the car down. I watched as the needle started moving from 45 down to 40. I knew that if it ever reached the big white ‘5’, I was going to die. I knew it in all of my bones.
“Boy, don’t you never watch none of them Discovery channel shows?” he asked, and I waited. “First thing a lion does when he takes a buncha fee-males is to kill off all the cubs. Don’t want to have to support another man’s issue,” he said, jutting his head forward a bit and screwing his eyes nearly closed. The look would have been comical, if it wasn’t for the situation. “Way I see it, I’m just doin’ what I’m s’posed to be doin’” he said. “I could try to fight ’em down all I wanted, but in the end, I knew I’d have to breed ’em down. Only gawd damned thing the Brits ever did right, son: you can’t just burn ’em out, you got to breed ’em out, too.”
He was pulling the car to the side of the road while he slowed down.
Then he reached down, and unsnapped his holster. He meant to kill Kevin. Once he killed Kevin, I knew he was going to kill me for having seen him do it. I knew I had to get the gun. Even then, though, my mind kept screaming at me to be still; that this would all pass soon if I was just a good boy and sat still.
I lunged for the gun. Or, better, I tried to. My muscles were rubbery and my breathing was wrong. The only thing I managed was to hit the sheriff in the stomach with my limp hand. I missed the gun completely. By happenstance, though, my arm was lodged up under his, and he couldn’t steer well. He looked down at my hand and then back up just in time to see the telephone pole we were about to careen into. He put both his hands on the wheel and tried to jerk it to the left. I’ve never been able to figure out if he did that to try to avoid the pole, or to make sure my side smashed into it instead of the front.
It didn’t matter, though. The front end hit.
The last thing I saw before I went out was the dashboard coming toward me in slow motion. The last thing I heard was someone on the CB radio trying to reach the sheriff about a fire at my parent’s address.
THIRTY-FOUR
I was standing in a clearing, surrounded by miles and miles of trees. It must have been fall, because the leaves were this explosion of color. Overhead, a huge airplane screamed by, barely above the tops of the trees. I followed it with my eyes. Just as it went out of sight above the trees, I saw someone’s hair blowing in the wind. The hair was black. I wondered why I couldn’t see more of them.