Dead Silence (13 page)

Right flank, left wither, the animal’s skin fluttered beneath Will’s belly. Muscles flexed independently, mechanics of a complicated instrument that, if played expertly, produced pure kick-ass flow. Part dance, all power.

Will’s nose rested near Cazzio’s mane, close as he could get to home: horse sweat and leather, the ammoniac mix of manure and grain. Crying wasn’t an option, but it was right there if Will allowed himself.

Waiting. They both were. Ten minutes, at most, he had been in the barn, but it felt like hours.

He scratched Cazzio’s neck and Cazzio stretched his head forward, lips wide, teeth bared, as if laughing. He wasn’t laughing, of course, although people who treated horses as pets, as almost human, might believe it. Not Will. Horses were horses, a few better than most. The same with hands. It was just something some stallions did.

Blue Jacket, another example.

As Will lay on Cazzio, he told himself to relax, he needed to conserve his energy. Cazzio already had drunk his belly full from the water trough and found residue in the feed bin. Oats and sorghum plus a supplement powder, which smelled sweet but Will knew tasted awful. What farm kid hadn’t tried it? He’d squeezed the mash into a ball and swallowed it anyway. Will needed food. He didn’t want the crazy feeling to come back, which happened more often when he ran out of gas.

Will knew he did stupid things when he got mad. Not something to admit to that government shrink, the one who’d told the parole officer, “A grand mal seizure or anger-management problems.” A lesson for him, telling the truth instead of lying about how it felt, the chemical sensation when he got seriously pissed off.

This was after a couple of tests which he also should have lied about, although he had lied quite a bit, faking some of the answers, but not enough.

“The boy’s not abnormal, but he lacks certain normal qualities,” the shrink had told the parole officer and a social worker, talking as if Will wasn’t in the room. “He demonstrates behavior associated with emotional scarring, typical of abandoned children. Rage mixed with antisocial behavior. But he has highly developed survival skills. He’s an expert manipulator. Again, all typical, considering his background.”

William wasn’t abnormal, but that didn’t mean he was normal either, the woman shrink had added—which was lying flattery, something adults often tried. But then it got interesting:

“It’s the way the boy’s brain translates outside stimuli,” the woman had said, before asking, “William? Isn’t it true that certain things come into your mind as colors or smells? Numbers have colors, you said. Days of the week, too. Friday is yellow, you told me. Thursday is purple, the number ten is silver. Fear is bluish gray. Fear has an odor, a mix of copper and pears, you said.” The shrink was reading from notes, finally including him in the conversation.

Everyone wasn’t that way? That was a surprise to Will.

“Will has a condition—a gift perhaps—that’s been well documented. It’s called
synesthesia.
Synesthesia is not a paranormal power. It’s a heightened awareness. Just like some people have exceptional eyesight or hearing. Very rare.

“It’s been linked with unusual artistic abilities. Sexuality, too: It’s possible that synesthetes radiate pheromones that are abnormally potent—that’s anecdotal data but fascinating, isn’t it?” The shrink had smiled but avoided Will’s eyes, oddly uncomfortable. “Intense rage is also associated,” she’d said. “There’s a lot we don’t understand about synesthesia.

“I’ve contacted the psychology department at the university. We want to pay Will to participate in a research program designed just for him. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Will? We could work together, the two of us! And no more living in stinky barns, doing manual labor.”

Will had smiled but was thinking,
No way, José.

It wasn’t that easy getting out of it, though, because the shrink was determined. Didn’t matter that the cops had just nailed him for stealing Blue Jacket.

A week later, though, when the principal surprised the school librarian seducing Will in the stacks, it was farewell Oklahoma and hello Land of a Thousand Lakes. The timing hadn’t been easy because the principal seldom left his office and the librarian was fickle.

Minnesota was okay, mostly because of Old Man Guttersen. Guttersen got a kick out of Will’s stories, when he shut up long enough to listen. Will could tell the old man anything, including the truth. Selling weed, gambling, diddling teachers didn’t bother him a bit. Same with stealing: as long as it was in a different neighborhood and former U.S. military personnel weren’t targeted. Even if Will hadn’t been stealing for a good reason—saving to buy Blue Jacket—it would’ve been just fine with the old man.

“We’re both sneaky, lying, shitheel frauds,” Guttersen had confided, “and we’re screwed if the world finds out.”

Luckiest thing that had ever happened to Will, being assigned a foster granddad who understood.

“The word
unique,”
his English teacher, Mrs. Thinglestadt, had told him, “is commonly misused. It is incorrect to say ‘very unique’ or ‘extremely unique’ because unique is
unique
. One of a kind.”

She had corrected him as they were showering—Will had made the error while complimenting Mrs. Thinglestadt’s breasts—and after they’d celebrated the good news about winning the essay contest and his trip to New York.

Only Old Man Guttersen knew how he’d won. First time in Will’s life he didn’t have to pretend. Will Chaser could be himself when the two of them were together, listening to
Garage Logic
or sharing a beer while watching cowboy westerns.

Usually, Bull called him “Pony,” but sometimes “Rookie,” like the young guy on
Garage Logic
, depending on whatever fit the old man’s mood. Maybe Guttersen would call him “Crazy Horse Chaser” after this . . . if Will ever made it home to tell.

Unique.
The word for his relationship with the old man.

Especially now. Because a familiar sound stirred the darkness: the Chrysler pulling up so close to the barn that for a moment Will worried the Cubans would use the car to crash on through. But the car stopped, its headlights filtering through windows, under the double doors, filling the barn with dusty, diffused light.

Next to Will, on a hook meant for tack, he had hung the handle from a broken rake. Taped to the handle was a syringe with a four-inch needle—taped to the plunger actually—so it looked sort of like a spear point.

Will liked the Indian feel of that—unusual ’cause anyone who grows up on the Rez knows the whole Indian act is bullshit. Rubber arrows, drunken Skins wearing feathers and blankets dancing for tourists, the only thing real being a mesquite fire and the sad, hungover weariness of shuffling feet.

The feeling Will experienced, though, was real. A solitary sensation that was brave-hearted, aloof and alone. It was a soaring feeling, unafraid despite the inevitable.

Warrior
. For the first time in Will’s life, the word had substance, dense as granite yet weightless enough to whistle like a faraway wind in his ears.

A ceremony, that’s what the moment deserved. So Will took a scalpel, grabbed a handful of his own hair and lopped it off. He tied a length of hair to the spear, sort of like a scalp, then knotted the rest to Cazzio’s candy-ass braids.

Yeah, it did, the way their shadows combined on the stall’s gray wall. Shadow of the stallion’s body capped with Will’s. The spear angled vertically from his hip, its shadow silhouetted as black as a charcoal drawing. An image came into the boy’s brain: a painting sold at the souvenir shop on the Rez,
End of the Trail
.

Watching his own shadow, Will touched his chin to his chest, imitating what he remembered, and there it was, the painting’s ghost—
Ouch!
—Will’s broken rib stabbed his lungs and he lay forward again.

Then he heard another familiar sound: a crowbar prying wood . . . then barn doors sliding open on their tracks.

 

 

 

The doors were open wide now, and the Chrysler’s headlights projected giant shadows. Buffalo-head came first, hunched over as if ready to flee, moving carefully into the uncertain space of the barn.

A second shadow appeared: Metal-eyes, who stopped and leaned against the fender of the car.

Will put his mouth close to the horse’s ear. “It’s time.”

He nudged the blanket back enough to free his right arm.

Cazzio snorted, skin fluttering. He whinnied and tested his legs, steel shoes on the floor, an animal that was born for business. He sensed the Cubans approaching, a subtle change of air.

Will felt it, too: a color sensation, tan turning red.

In the medicine cooler, there had been a lot to choose from once Will saw there wasn’t a weapon worth a damn in it aside from veterinarian syringes and some scalpels. Also a pack of big-gauge needles and several vials of tranquilizers, a few with familiar names.

There was Dormo, which was fast but didn’t last, and Rompon
—
a horse on Rompon could remain tart enough to kick. He also found a vial of Ace, a mixture of stuff that would have been Will’s choice if it was for Cazzio but it wasn’t.

He had chosen Ketamine. Ket caused quick paralysis but didn’t deaden what a horse could feel. One-third syringe would drop a horse, but Will had emptied a whole vial and part of another filling a syringe. He didn’t bother plunging out any air bubbles either before lashing the syringe to the pole.

The pole was now a spear. No, a lance, the way Will held it: the end locked beneath his arm, the point extending beyond the horse’s muzzle.

“Check the stalls! The man just called from his car, he’s only a few kilometers away,” Metal-eyes was yelling at Buffalo-head, who was now peering into Cazzio’s stall.

The man—someone the Cubans were counting on to do . . . what?

It worried Will, this unknown person. He wanted to be gone by the time the stranger arrived, so he was thinking,
Don’t stop, keep coming
. . .

Buffalo-head did just that but slowly, slowly. The large Cuban appeared unsteady as he drew close enough to see into Cazzio’s stall. Sounded nervous, too, as he reported to Metal-eyes, “Nothing in here but a very big horse.”

“Keep looking!”

Hump didn’t want to keep looking. “You have never seen such a large animal. I should have the gun. Horses bite, I have been told.”

“You can’t have the gun.”

“Then come with me. On my grave, this horse is a giant, I swear.”

“Idiot! Would you rather be in an American jail?”

Will could feel Cazzio’s body heat as he wrapped his left hand in the horse’s mane, watching from beneath the blanket, as the big Cuban cracked the door and looked into the stall. Because of the headlights, Will could see the man’s shape: the sloped shoulders, the nub of horn that curved like a stem out of his pumpkin-sized head.

Cazzio nickered, sniffing the Cuban’s odor, and tested his steel shoes on the floor, as Will patted the horse’s neck and thought,
Ready?

A second later, Buffalo-head called to Metal-eyes, “If the man’s only a few miles away, why not wait? It would be better if there are three of us.”

Will heard the older Cuban snap, “You’re afraid of a child? We’re not waiting!”

Buffalo-head pulled the door wider, as he turned toward the headlights, saying, “Want to know what I think?”

“No! Stop wasting time. The man is already convinced we are incompetent fools.”

“Then I won’t tell you that I believe the boy is cursed. Or possessed by demons—I have heard that it happens to teenagers.”

Will was thinking,
Wait and see!,
his shoulders tense, still hiding beneath the blanket. He knew he had to time it right. Move too soon, the Cubans would trap him inside the barn. So he kept his eyes focused on the angle of light, watching the door open wider . . . wider . . . until only the huge man was standing in the doorway, blocking their escape.

When Buffalo-head looked away to complain to Metal-eyes, “But the Devil Child is insane. A monster!,” Will used his boots to signal the stallion and yelled, “Now!”

The stallion was already lunging out the door.

B
ern Heller’s body had washed ashore. There was a story about it in the regional newspaper, the
News-Press.
That’s why Tomlinson expected the police to show up with a search warrant.

Sections of paper were scattered beneath the man’s beach chair, where he was still stretched out sunning himself. The front page of the local section was folded open.

When I saw the headlines, I felt a constricting anxiety and thought,
I’ve got to get out of here.

It explained Tomlinson’s fears about a search warrant. A lot of people had reason to hate the man, yet my pal sounded convinced that I was the killer.

He had placed a book on the newspaper because of a breeze freshening off the bay. Wind roiled the water, whitecaps flashing near the oyster bar where pelicans and cormorants perched, leeward side, heavy in the rubbery mangroves.

I removed the book—
Shadow Country
by Peter Matthiessen—and placed it on the deck before grabbing the newspaper. The front section was still in the plastic baggie untouched.