Ebone started screaming. She ran out of the room as fast as her heels could carry her. Denby scooped the gun up and pointed it at the bleeding men lying on his floor. The two who were still alive.
“Where the hell did you get a fucking machete from?” I yelled. I didn’t mean to yell. It just seemed like the only way anyone could talk at a time like this.
“I dressed as Rambo this past Halloween,” he said.
I got my cell phone out and called the police. My asthma was back.
In minutes there were enough cops at the house to have a parade. They took Greg and Walt to get bandaged up so they wouldn’t stain the backseats of their squad cars. We told our stories so many times it felt as if it were one of the movies in Reggie’s DVD collection. The officers radioed someone to check if the body of a girl or a dog could be found down by the docks. In an hour they got a negative on both accounts but found a lot of blood in the location we’d described. They found all the stuff we’d left behind on the docks as well. They only mentioned the beer. To be cute. They guessed the body of the girl would be found in the river.
The cops gave Reggie some trouble about the machete but relented some when they saw he owned every Rambo on DVD and had a life-sized poster hanging in the upstairs hallway. In any event, they took the machete with them. The entire time the police were in the house, Denby was constantly talking and moving around. It wasn’t surprising at first, since that was Denby’s way. Then suddenly it seemed like something more.
“Does Derb seem nervous to you, Regg?” I whispered discreetly to him.
“Could have something to do with all the tree we got in the fridge,” Reggie said under his breath.
I lit a cigarette and began massaging my scalp furiously.
They raided the neighbors’ house and didn’t find anything too peculiar, for an Oregon Hill residence, until they went into the basement. There they found three more dogs in cages, all different breeds, each about as eager to get its jaws on someone’s throat as the one we’d run over. They searched the truck the neighbors owned and found the body of the dog underneath a tarp. Of course, they wouldn’t leave their beloved pet behind. It was identified as a Chow but of considerably greater size than normal. So far the police had everything except the body of the girl. That would turn up. All we could do was wonder who she was.
When asked about the big black guy lying on the living room floor, we just said he was a newly made acquaintance we didn’t know all too well, which was kind of true. That didn’t sit well with them but there wasn’t much they could do about it right then. They found identification on him, took him out of the house, and told us to skip any foreseeable trips.
No one said a word about Ebone. Denby was doing most if not all of the talking by then, which Reggie and I were happy to let him do. I didn’t know why Ebone didn’t come up, but neither did I care very much to add anything else that would keep the police around any longer. I wanted them out almost as bad as the brothers did.
The sun was well upon its ascent by the time they all left. I sat on the leather sofa, leaning forward on my two crutches. My foot hurt, my shoulders hurt, my eyes hurt. But I couldn’t keep my good foot from tapping and my palms from sweating.
“So... why didn’t we mention Ebone? Besides the irritation it would cause?”
“She did me a favor,” Denby answered.
“How?”
“Before she left she must’ve took the kush out of the fridge. If the cops had found it, I’d be sitting between those redneck fucks for distribution.”
“Wow. Ebone comes through in the clutch. By scamming you. Again.” I leaned back, letting myself sink into the sofa as I closed my eyes.
“That bitch,” Denby grunted.
“Who do you think she was?” Reggie asked.
“Who?”
“The girl. That got killed.”
“Who were any of them? They probably all bought it. All the ones we’ve seen. All the same way. We’ve been living next to these guys for almost two months now. I’m getting sick thinking about it. What are we doing living here?” Denby said, smoking a Newport rapidly.
“The rent’s cheap,” I replied. The Baker brothers didn’t say anything. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t go to sleep. I just kept my eyes closed. I was picturing myself walking out of the house and into my car and driving out of Oregon Hill. It was early so it wouldn’t be too hot outside yet.
The Heart Is a Strange Muscle
by Laura Browder
Church Hill
Rachel’s beeper went off just as her back began growing numb, jammed against the pieces of broken and discarded furniture in the storage room. A second later, Bobby’s went off too. She unwrapped her legs from around his sweaty back, pulled herself up to a sitting position, and groped through the jumble of clothing and guns.
Six squads, Church Hill, multiple gunshots.
“They’re at it again, huh?” Bobby was already shoving his wilting erection into frayed boxers, reaching for his trousers. “No respect for a man’s lunch hour.”
Part of her training, Rachel could get into full battle rattle in two minutes flat. She slipped out the door while Bobby was still strapping on his holster, past the hedge of boxwoods that Vaughn loved for their evocative fragrance. To her they just smelled of cat piss.
She had moved to Richmond with Vaughn four years ago, his dream more than hers. He loved the Civil War, the relics, the history. They had spent hours together wandering the pretty streets up in Church Hill, the whole area looking like a nineteenth-century theme park with its gas lamps, wrought iron, and carefully restored brick houses. It was lovely, but for her money they could have stayed in Rochester.
She could say this for him: Vaughn always knew how to make anything sound good. Even when she was in the same place with him, sharing the same moment, he could make her see it differently. Strolling with him through Chimborazo Park, through the alleys where small crape myrtles wilted and the bright claws of someone’s abandoned steamed-crab lunch reeked in the August heat, Rachel could let herself relax into his descriptions of how things had been a hundred-plus years ago: thousands of wounded soldiers stretched out on the lawn under tents, surviving horrible injuries in the world’s largest hospital. Now, thinking it over, Rachel couldn’t imagine why he found the idea of all those festering wounds so romantic. But back then, she probably did too.
Romantic now meant late-night drives down by the river with Bobby. The kind of guy, actually, she’d had the good sense not to hook up with that whole year at Al Asad, though not for lack of opportunities. He was a big guy, knew how to carry himself, brown eyes, tight ass. Not super talkative, good guy to have around when things got rough, not given to whining, flirtatious.
Now she was actually sleeping with her partner, what Vaughn would have called fouling her own nest and Bobby would have called shitting where she lived. Except that he wouldn’t: they both felt right now that they were exceptions to this excellent general rule.
Riding down Broad Street with him, their sirens wailing, Coke turning warm and slushy in her crumpling paper cup, she asked, “Where we headed, anyway? Gilpin Court?”
He cut her a look sideways, slowing down just a little for the light on 25th before blasting on through. “Nah, it’s Libby Terrace.”