13 Views of the Suicide Woods Page 8

  Sam drove in silence most of the way. His hearing cleared as the miles ticked by, the muddy muffled impact deafness resolving to a low, steady ringing. His head was beginning to ache. As they rounded another corner and Patrick said, “Slow down, Earnhardt.” Patrick jammed the handgun in Callie’s ribs, making her grunt from the pain.

  He looked at the speedometer and saw he was nearing sixty on the winding two-lane highway. Sam forced himself to breathe and ease his foot off the gas, but kept his mouth shut, certain nothing Patrick said was an invitation for a dialogue. Also, not engaging in repartee gave him more time to think. He wanted out of the car as quickly as he could manage it. The kid—Pete—bleeding out in the backseat was bad enough. But the presence of a dead body was far outweighed by the chance that hitting a frost heave in the road would jiggle Patrick’s trigger finger too forcefully.

  “How much farther?” Patrick asked.

  “There,” Callie said, pointing.

  They approached a striped flag hanging next to a sign that read, If you have any produce-related puns, lettuce know.

  “What the fuck is that?” Patrick asked.

  “Our place,” Sam said.

  Patrick, for a change, was speechless as Sam pulled onto the dirt ruts leading to their farmhouse. He drove a quarter mile up the driveway from the roadside barn, pulled around behind the house and parked. He turned off the engine and sat.

  “What are you waiting for?” Patrick asked.

  “Your lead. What do we do with . . . him?” Sam nodded at Pete, whose open, blank eyes stared at the seatbacks. Despite the wound dressing, Sam could smell the ruptured bowel over the odors of blood and piss. Pickett had been right about the kid’s chances. He’d just been on the hopeful side of how long they had.

  “Bring him. I don’t want him stinking up the car,” Patrick said.

  Callie said, “You seem pretty okay talking that way about someone who was a friend.”

  Patrick shoved the muzzle of the gun in her ribcage hard enough to make her gasp. “You don’t know a fuckin’ thing about me!”

  “Let’s just go inside and we can take all the time we need to sort things through,” Sam suggested.

  “You gonna make me some tea, hippie?”

  For the second time, Sam decided silence was a better answer than provoking the man with the gun. He opened his door and climbed out. Patrick scrambled out the passenger side door, rushing around the front of the car, desperate to keep his pistol trained on Sam. “You two get Pete and let’s go.”

  Callie and Mickey helped with the body while Patrick let himself into the house. He looked around in a manic state, checking shelves and drawers and small spaces all around. Sam and Callie’s home was cluttered, and things toppled over, falling off shelves, breaking or rolling away as he rifled through the place.

  “What are you looking for?” Callie asked as she and Sam eased the body onto the hardwood floor.

  When Patrick didn’t reply, Sam said, “He’s looking for something we’d use to defend ourselves.”

  “Smart man.”

  “There are no weapons here,” Callie said. “We’re farmers.”

  Patrick practically guffawed. “Bullshit! You got knives in the kitchen? A fuckin’ meat mallet? Yeah, you’re a real pair of hippie peaceniks.” Patrick kept searching. Mickey plopped on the sofa, holding his head in his hands. Sam offered to brew the cup of tea that had been joked about in the car.

  Patrick closed the distance between them and slammed his fist into Sam’s stomach before Sam realized what was happening. The lanky farmer dropped to his knees beside the dead boy. He tried to retrieve the breath that had been knocked out of him and gagged on the smell emanating from the corpse.

  “You think I’m stupid? Am I fuckin’ stupid?”

  “The opposite,” Sam choked.

  “Fuck, dude!” Mickey said.

  “What now?”

  “Look!” Mickey held the hinged lid of an ottoman open with one hand while raising a gallon bag of weed for Patrick to see. “The thing is filled with this shit!”

  Patrick glanced at his surviving partner, his eyes widening. He walked over and snatched the bag away from Mickey. Opening it, he inhaled deeply. “Farmers, huh?”

  “It’s a crop,” Callie said. “There’s a bong in there too if you want to mellow out some. Please. That’s our personal stash; you’re welcome to it.”

  “You got more?”

  “We’ve got a whole field of it outside,” she said. “Behind the corn. Leave us alone and you can take as much of it as you want.” She looked at her husband with her eyebrows raised. He nodded back at her.

  “You two knock that telepathic shit off! I’m not going to go looking for some secret pot field while you call the cops. Where did you really get this stuff?”

  “The field is a hundred yards through those doors,” Callie said. “Take what you want and go. We won’t call the police.”

  Mickey held open another bag, peering in as if he couldn’t decide whether to fill a bowl or stick his head in and motorboat like a teenager with his first thirty-six double Ds.

  “Right, you won’t. You don’t think I know Medical is legal up here?”

  Sam sighed. His guts had stopped cramping enough to allow him to sit back on his heels and put some distance between him and Pete. “We look like a dispensary to you? The law says they have to cultivate their own. Plus, there are plenty of people who want to smoke recreationally and don’t have a doctor willing to write them a scrip for ‘stress.’ We don’t want the police looking into our business any more than you do.”

  Callie chimed in. “We’d probably get more time for what’s in that ottoman than you would for . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say “killing Garrett.” Instead, she clapped a hand over her mouth. She appeared to be growing manic. To Sam she seemed to be almost vibrating with anxiety. If he wasn’t fighting nausea and stomach cramps, he’d feel the same way. But Patrick hit hard. A boxer, perhaps. It was all Sam could do to keep from vomiting on the rug—the one they joked really tied the room together but now was covered in a boy’s blood.

  “We’ll take you to the field. You cut as much as you can fit in your car. Take the rest out of the ottoman and leave us alone,” Sam said.

  Patrick looked ready to rush Sam again as he pushed himself up off the floor. Instead the gunman stayed by his partner, out of swinging range. A comfortable shooting distance away.

  “You can have the money from last weekend’s market too. It’s in the safe in the bedroom. Take it all and leave us alone.”

  “I look like a drug dealer to you? What am I going to do with a carload of weed?”

  “You look like a man who doesn’t want to walk away empty-handed,” Callie said. “You didn’t get what you want at Cutter’s place. But you can still win and no one else has to get hurt.”

  Mickey sidled up to Patrick, the freezer bag still open in his hands. “I know a guy in Pawtucket who’ll buy trunkfuls of this shit.”

  “We’ll show you,” Callie said. “Make up your mind when you see what we’ve got.”

  Patrick waved at the glass doors with his pistol. “After you.”

  Sam and Callie stepped over Pete’s body and opened the doors to the back porch. Patrick and Mickey followed behind. The couple led the way across a big back yard past a bunch of rusting farm equipment and a picnic table. Fifty yards from the house was a row of corn stalks. They pushed their way into the overgrown green mess. The stalks were thick and untended. Patrick kept his hand tight on Callie’s elbow in case she or her man decided to make a run for it.

  As Sam promised, another fifty yards away, the unmistakable odor of dank began to drift toward him. A combination of pine, sage, and skunk teased his sense of smell. He lifted his head a little to get a deeper whiff.

  Callie’s arm jerked out of his hand as she and her husband hopped ahead of their guides. Patrick took a quick step forward to catch her arm, but she side-stepped him, disappearing into the
green.

  Patrick took a lurching step after her. The metal clack sounded a half-second before the dull meaty thunk and almost two seconds before the field was filled with his screaming. His wails carried, but never echoed back in the dense vegetation. He dropped to the ground pawing at the bear trap clamped to his shin. Even through his jeans, anyone could see the leg was broken and half torn through. As if the hippies sharpened their traps.

  He looked around in a panic for his gun, but couldn’t find it. It might as well have vaporized as soon as the trap snapped. He couldn’t control anything his arms did for several seconds after it snapped and he figured he’d flung the gun into the stalks. Now he was beginning to shake with shock. His body was refusing to do anything he wanted it to. The dry earth was turning muddy with his life soaking into the earth.

  Mickey dropped to his knees next to the trap, looking at it like the device was a living thing that might bite him too. “Fucking shit, dude! What the Christ is that?” After a moment’s hesitation, he tried to pry open the jaws, but couldn’t. Patrick let out another long yowl as Mickey’s efforts to free him only resulted in the steel teeth grinding into his shattered leg, further tearing his flesh and sinew.

  Patrick tried to say “bear trap” but couldn’t unclench his jaw. He forced out a grunt that sounded like, “Find gun!” but Mickey shook his head, brow furrowed with confusion.

  A black shape backlit by the blinding afternoon sun appeared behind Mickey. Patrick’s warning was drowned out by the howl Callie let out as she reared back and swung. A whump followed her voice and he caught a glimpse of the edge of a short handled military shovel embedded in his brother’s neck before she wrenched it free and a hot wet spray splashed Patrick’s face like a full glass of hot water. Callie grunted once with effort and began to bellow rage. In his red blindness, Patrick was sprayed and splattered and doused as the dull metal clanging sounded again and again, growing duller, softer with repetition. The dank smell of the cannabis field was overwhelmed by the thick salt and iron taste in his mouth; a fullness in his nostrils made it hard to breathe. He spat and blew crimson snot on his chest, rubbing at his eyes until he could see again.

  Callie stood before him holding the red, dripping e-tool shovel. She threw it on the ground next to Mickey’s pulped face and squeezed blood from an errant dreadlock. She spat on the body lying at her feet. “Fuck! You know how long it takes these things to dry?”

  Patrick retched, vomiting up the blood he’d swallowed. She kicked him in the face with a boot heel, smashing his nose and knocking him onto his back. She screamed unintelligibly at him. Her primal rage penetrating his skull, threatening to burst it like her shovel had done to Mickey’s head.

  Sam pushed his way out of the stalks and lightly placed a hand on the small of her back. She slumped into him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He kicked at the metal jaws holding the gunman in place. Patrick’s eyes fluttered as he struggled to remain conscious. “We don’t get many visitors all the way up at the house,” he said. “People around here respect our privacy.”

  “We woulda let you go,” Patrick sputtered.

  “You believe that, honey?”

  Callie turned and sneered, catching her breath. “Not after what he did to poor Garrett.” Her voice was edged by palpable hatred.

  Sam’s face darkened at the mention of their friend. He kissed the top of his wife’s head, inadvertently smearing blood on his cheek. “Sorry it took me so long.”

  “S’okay,” she said stepping back, giving him room to pull the gun from a holster nestled in the small of his back.

  Unlike Patrick’s lost junk gun, Sam’s piece was a well-tended Smith and Wesson Governor. It was black and clean and looked like forged death. Sam didn’t know shit about cars, but he knew personal firearms. “The writer, Cutter, he shot your boy with a fifty cal Desert Eagle. We talked about our favorite heaters the last time Cutter came around the ‘farm stand.’ He bragged about the monster he kept in his desk drawer. I’m surprised your kid had any guts at all when you brought him in.”

  Patrick’s face paled.

  “What?” Sam flipped his head back whipping his tangled hair away from his eyes. “You see a Bible verse on a burger wrapper and think those people are in it to save souls? It’s a brand, man. Would you rather buy your weed from a couple of nice bohemian farmers or some scar-faced biker? Some people—people like you, shitheads from away—see us and think they can sneak into the fields at night to help themselves. Those people never leave the field.”

  “Blood makes the grass grow,” Callie said.

  “This isn’t how it was supposed to go.” Patrick said. “This isn’t right.”

  “This is Maine. This is the way life should be.”

  SOME OTHER TIME

  The percussive blasts coming from the stage stole Miriam’s breath as the sound waves broke against her like surf battering a rock at shore. She stood frozen in place on the dance floor, staring through a gap in the crowd at her boyfriend. He was standing at the far end of the club, chatting up some too-young emo girl cinched up in a cheap-looking corset. Miriam’s best friend, Sara, had inveigled her to come out to get her mind off of the lab. “You can count cells tomorrow. You’re working too hard,” she’d said pumping her thumb in a gesture that suggested she needed to put the pipette down for a night and have some fun. It hadn’t been hard to convince Erik to get dressed and take her to the club. And she had been having fun. Until now. Erik has always been a flirt, she rationalized. When he leaned over and placed a lingering, open-mouthed kiss on the girl’s neck, Miriam realized that things had suddenly changed. It was an exact mirror image of how she’d come to be with him. Except, this time, she was viewing the scene from the distance of the jilted lover. Her mind was definitely off her enzyme immunoassay results now.

  The pressure of the drum-and-bass thump resonated in Miriam’s chest. She fought for her breath, inhaling consciously, even though there was plenty of air in the club. The crowd moved back in to fill the space that had emptied long enough for her to watch her relationship die. She turned around to grab Sara, but she was gone also. Standing alone in the crowd, Miriam pretended to laugh, trying to appear in control of herself. Everything was flowing away, leaving her gasping for breath.

  The singer groaned and clawed at a wire cage in pained mimicry of a scene from a movie older than almost everyone in the club. A boy dancing next to her accidentally jabbed his elbow into her tit, and the world came rushing back into focus. He didn’t turn to apologize. He just danced, oblivious to her pain. She grabbed her aching breast, lifted her other hand to hide her face, and began the long walk off the dance floor. Bodies buffeted her. She pushed through. She emerged from the dance floor and headed straight for the bar. Sara would offer up her sofa, if only Miriam could find her to ask. But first, a drink. Something to settle her nerves.

  Jamming in between two towering men, she leaned over the brass rail running the length of the bar and tried to flag down the bartender. He ignored her, set down a glass of something red next to one of the men bookending her, took a twenty left on the bar, and stalked away to make change. Miriam carefully slid the drink away and took a sip through the thin cocktail straw. Something with vodka and Chambord. Thank God it’s not whiskey. Taking the glass, she slipped out from between the giants to go look for her friend. She despaired as she stared out into the mass of revelers. And then what? Whether or not Erik was done with her, she needed to know that she wasn’t alone. At that moment she just needed someone who was on her side.

  She took a step forward to start swimming through the crowd. An elegant . . . person . . . with slicked, short hair and aquiline features intercepted her. His body and style suggested masculinity, like Tilda Swinton dressed as Bowie’s Thin White Duke would—impossibly slender; whitish-blond hair; black, tightly fitted clothes; and a complexion like a China doll in a black and white photograph. But the stranger wore subtle makeup—slightest rouge, dark lips, red eyeliner. And how he . . . sh
e . . . moved, weightless and careful like a Japanese Bunraku puppet. Every gesture was so deliberate. The stranger’s fluid sensuality made everyone else look like fumbling pubescents having only just discovered second base. This androgyne knew just how to get under Miriam’s skin. But then, they’d never met. The stranger didn’t know anything about her. It’s just that this person was exactly who she pictured when she lay back in her lonely moments. An angel of darkness. A demon of light.

  Miriam stared up into a pair of infinitely deep, all-black eyes, and felt her stomach knot and face flush. What if they just kept moving past? What if the stranger wanted to ask her to dance? Anything breaking the trance of being frozen in exactly this moment was terrifying. “That is a lovely hat, dear.” His voice rumbled in her chest like the band’s drumbeat, making her guts twist and loins ache. She felt his compliment more than she heard it. Miriam reached up to touch the black vintage fascinator hat perched in front of a bun of her coiled-up hair. She blinked. Each time she opened her eyes it was like seeing someone different. A male gesture, a female posture, a man’s hairstyle, a woman’s jawline. He changed like fluid, filling the small spaces around her. He was suffocating water and she wasn’t struggling. “How have you attached it?” he asked, reaching out for her with long fingers tipped with silver-polished nails.

  “It’s . . . I have . . . there’s a pin,” she stammered.

  “May I?” Before Miriam could tell him that her hat and veil would fall off if he removed it, he ran his cool finger up the side of her neck, behind her ear, and slowly pulled the pin. She felt her hat and bun loosen, but didn’t care. Her hair unwound and fell down around her shoulders. Holding the long needle up in front of her face, he smiled with half his mouth. She imagined tasting his lipstick, his breath, his tongue. He ran the sharp point lightly down the length of her nose and let the tip rest for a moment on her lips before it disappeared into his vest. “Thank you,” he said.

  The stranger held out his other hand and summoned a young, black-haired girl with ginger roots. The dim-looking girl giggled as she wrapped her arms around his waist, and he laid a hand on the small of her back. “Perhaps some other time,” he said to Miriam before stalking off with the girl. She took an apneatic breath. Her drink slipped from her fingers and smashed on the floor. Someone behind her yelled, “Hey!” but she didn’t turn around. Miriam watched the beautiful, genderless creature lead the girl through the club toward the back.