Burn Down The Night (16 page)

I don't know why I
think nobody is there. It just seems right to me. Maybe I'm a little too drunk to think clearly.
Goddamn, I guess I had been drinking some, I admit that.

I don't have any
burglar tools, just an old screwdriver with a broken handle, but that ought to be enough to get
me inside.

I get over the
stone wall easy. And just as easily into the house. They didn't even bother to lock the patio
doors. Only poor people lock their doors 'cause they know how loose their grip is on the things
they own. There's so many ways the few things they have can be ripped out of their hands. It's
different with rich peo­ple. It's too hard to steal from rich people. They hold on to their money
too tightly.

It's warm inside
the house and I like it. I go floating around inside, touching and feeling all the surfaces of
things. All the chairs feel like bales of soft cotton. Inside, the house is richly furnished,
like a fancy movie set about millionaires, and everything I see or touch says
wealth, comfort,
luxury.
Even the paintings on the walls drip money. The carpets are so thick they bury
anything dropped in them like quicksand. It's the kind of a house I'll never live in and it
drives me crazy. How could they have so much when I got so little?

I just kind of
wander through the rooms, a little drunk, a little bit awed, looking for something worth
stealing. The thing I really want to steal, the right to live like this, in a house like this, is
too big. It won't fit in my pocket.

I look for
something else. Something that the black dude who lives above the pool hall on Magnolia Street
will give me cash for. A radio, TV set, silverware, tape player, something like that. The
currency of the black market.

I'd like to have
some money in my pocket. Ten or twenty bucks is enough to get me where I'm going, wherever that
is. It don't take much money to go no­where.

I get lucky. I
find a small reel-to-reel tape recorder, an expensive one, on a fancy table in a little room that
must be some kind of den or something. Also a small movie projector. Also expensive. I could get
more than enough cash for these two things to feed myself for a couple of weeks.

The projector fits
into a little carrying case. Putting it in the case, I damn near break my arms. Feels like it
weighs five hundred pounds. The tape recorder is only maybe two hundred pounds light. I ought to
get that black dude to pay me by weight. Christ! I get them off the ground, one in each hand and
start back the way I came. I haven't made any noise and I haven't heard anybody stirring in the
house.

I get in the
center of one of the big rooms, making my way very carefully through the semi-darkness. This is
no time to knock something over in the dark and wake everybody up.

I don't know what
gives me away. Maybe nothing. Maybe just bad luck.

Suddenly the light
comes on and there's a scream, half frightened, half angry. I turn around quick and there's this
white-haired woman dressed like a witch with a gun in her hand.

The projector
falls from my hand and crashes against the floor with the sound of lenses smashing, parts
breaking.

I am going to drop
the tape recorder too, to get free for flight or surrender, but the old woman is too fast for me.
She holds the gun up in front of her face like she's never seen it before.

She screams
something at me I don't understand and pulls the trigger. No chance to think, no time to react.
Just terror as the bullet goes past my face like an angry bee.

I scream, try to
run, try to get away. Unthinkingly, my hand freezes around the handle grip of the tape recorder.
The gun crashes again and I stumble back against a chair, falling to my knees.

"Please don't!
Please don't! Don't shoot! I'm not armed! I give up!"
I scream at her but she doesn't hear or doesn't want to. The arm of the
chair I hold with one frantic hand splinters almost under my fingers, the bullet smacking into
the hard wood.

"Please!"

This is the way
I'm going to die.

I stagger up, like
a slaughterhouse cow the hammer just missed, trying to back away, trying to escape.

There's no way
out. I'm like a Jew backing away from the insanity of the Dachau oven. How could this happen to
me? What did I do to deserve it?

I move toward her,
down on my knees, crawling. "Please... please don't. Don't kill me. I... give up... please." The
tape recorder bumps against my knees. It's the price of my life. I'm going to die for
it.

My eyes don't find
any reprieve in her face, just a smile, savage, triumphant. The gun wavers unsteadily in her hand
and I realize she's pretty drunk. So drunk she almost drops the gun.

"Son of a bitch!"
she says and fires point-blank at my head. Her being drunk is the only thing that keeps the
bullet from pulping my face. The bullet tears through my long hair on one side like an angry
wind.

I am in my final
nightmare. I am trapped in a wrecked car with the blood of my father and mother all over
everything. The train that missed me then comes for me now. I already can feel the bullet
slamming into my face, feel the brains and blood exploding outward, splattering the
wall.

I'm not fifteen
years old I am seven years old again and I scream, like my father and mother screamed.

The woman staggers
in front of me, reeling drunkenly.

"Stand still, you
thieving little bastard!" she says, aiming the gun, holding it in my upturned face.

She has all the
cruelty of the world in her face.

I'm on my knees in
front of her like a human sacrifice, kneeling before an angry god. I fall against her legs, ready
for death.

Still have the
tape recorder in my hand and I swing it toward her, purely reflexive, as if trying to stop the
bullet with it. The heavy machine slams heavily against her legs, throwing her back

I am seven years
old, screaming, covered with blood, waiting for a mother who never comes.

The gun explodes
in the room like the end of the world and I writhe on the floor like a dark-bodied spider fallen
in fire. I feel the bullet driving through my back, pinning me to the floor in my own
blood.

I roll over on my
back, screaming, untouched by the bullet.

My eyes stare up
at her, hating her, hating this life, hating this world.

The woman stands
above me, toppling backwards with her ugly mouth open in a forever kind of surprise; There's a
red stain under her chin, the beginning of a flood pouring from the gaping hole in her neck. The
bullet took her under the chin and came out where her right eye should have been.

It's almost slow
motion. Her knees bend and she goes over backwards. Dead before her body slams against the
floor.

The bullet meant
for me, deflected, the gun thrust up at her face as she fired.

I crawl toward
her. Feeling nothing. Not sorry. Not even surprised. Just feeling nothing. Who am I to feel
anything?

There's people in
other parts of the house shouting now, doors banging, the sounds of panic and
confusion.

I stagger to my
feet, standing over her body. The tape recorder rests between her outstretched legs. The gun
rests against my right foot. I kick it toward her.

She can keep it
for a souvenir.

The door opens and
a man rushes into the room. I turn and start to run, not thinking, just acting by reflexes. I
make it to the patio door before a heavy weight pulls me down from behind. Her husband climbs up
my back, fingers tearing at my face, gouging my eyes. Screaming insanely.

I throw him off,
try to roll out from under him, get out the door. There's no stopping him. He's got the strength
of a berserker. We roll across the floor like two reptiles mating. I don't want to hurt him, just
want to get away, just want this nightmare to end.

His hands go round
my neck, squeeze, cut off my air.

I hit him. Again
and again but I can't get him off me. My eyes feel like they are going to pop out. I roll over,
trying to twist out of his grasp. My chest rolls over something sharp and hard. The
broken-handled screw-driver that had been in my back pocket.

I am frantic,
beating at him, trying to get free. Our faces are together and his eyes bore into me as if
stealing my soul. In a rage, he screams at me, words I can't make out. I can't hold him off. He's
killing me.

My hand closes on
the handle of the screwdriver.

I can't breathe.
My head is exploding, eyes bulging in their sockets. He's killing me!

I swing the
screwdriver up and hit him in the head with the handle. His eyes widen but he doesn't let go. I
hit him again and again.

His hands loosen
from my throat and I tumble him off of me, his blood flowing out on my hands.

He flops off of
me, twisting away, ripping the screwdriver out of my hand.

I jump up, weak,
dizzy. I fall forward, half in and half out of the door. His eyes stare up at me, murderous,
hateful. "Get you... get you... get you, you bastard... Gonna...
gonna kill you!"
Foam
flecks his lips and he breathes in harsh gasps.

I get to my feet,
holding on to the door, pulling myself upright. There's other people running into the room.
Servants.

His arm reaches
for me, tries to catch my ankle, but I kick back at him and my foot strikes his face, pushing him
away from me, knocking him over on his back. He moans in pain, bleeding on the floor.

I stumble out, the
shouts of the servants chasing me across the yard. I get to the stone wall somehow and start up
it. I'm half dead, my strength gone.

Somehow I get up
the wall, exhausted, hanging halfway across, trying to breathe, trying to get my deadened body
into motion. Someone rushes out into the yard. A shotgun roars and birdshot slams into the wall.
Fierce hot stings bite my legs and back.

I lean over the wall, shoving myself
forward, and then drop head first. I try to somersault, land on my feet, but my body is like
a.puppet with cut strings. I land painfully on my back and side.

I hear police
sirens screaming in the night.

I stagger to my
feet. Anger comes back to me, and with it, new strength. Nobody's going to put me in a cage.
Nobody's going to kill me. The train misses me again.

I run.

Blindly, not
knowing where I'm going, I run.

Out into the angry
night, blood on my hands and murder in my heart.

This is the
strangest life I've ever known.

I run down street
after street legs and back stinging from the buckshot running scared. My sides ache, my lungs are
on fire.

I got no place to
go, no place to hide.

My shirt's torn,
jacket ripped. I got blood all over me. The way I look, the way I am, who's gonna adopt me
tonight? Who's gonna give me shelter from the storm? There won't be any home in any face I
see.

I'm on my own and
no direction leads to sanctuary.

There are squad
cars out looking for me, sirens screaming. I figure they probably know my name, know my face,
figure they'll find me too. Just a matter of time. I've already dodged a couple of patrol cars
al­ready. Can't do it forever. They are gonna catch me sure as hell. I've escaped from the
slaughterhouse but it's only temporary.

I hear loud music
coming out of this old warehouse-like building and I pound up the alley toward it. It's a place
I've been before, the local rock and roll club. Maybe a place to duck into, catch my
breath.

A siren screams
behind me. Oh, Jesus! A frigging cop car turning into the alley almost on top of me, coming right
up my backside. I run to the back of the building, just a dozen steps ahead of the cop car. I
smash into the building, grab the handle to a heavy metal door and pull.

If it doesn't open
I got nowhere else to go. They got me.

The door isn't
locked and I swing it open and crash on through. My back is exposed and I wince, almost feeling a
bullet in my back as I go through the door.

I hear the tires
squeal, the cop car skidding to a stop outside. No doubt about it. They saw me. They are right
behind me.

The backstage door
clangs shut behind me and I lean against it, dead tired. I gather myself up, looking around
frantically for some way to bar the door against them, but the padlock and bar that should be
there are gone. I hear the cop cars slam and the cops yelling at each other.

"He's
inside!"

That clinches
it.

It's dark where I
am and the noise from the rock and roll band onstage is thunder loud. I move away from the door,
in a panic to find someplace to hide.

I run down a dark
hallway, colliding with half-seen things as I go. At the end of the corridor there's a dimly lit
john, door hanging loosely by one hinge. I rush inside and try to close the door behind me. The
door won't move.