Dig Ten Graves (5 page)

     So, steeling himself, he put the gun under his sweat-slick jaw, and closed his eyes tightly.  His finger caressed the trigger, a mere fraction of pressure away from squeezing.  He clenched his teeth.  He pushed the barrel hard into the soft flesh, hard enough to force his head up, and he forced his head back down, hard against the barrel.

     He squeezed the trigger.

     The rest happened in the space of half a second. 

     As his finger tightened on the trigger, a window went up on the second floor.

      The barrel slipped against Henry’s sweaty skin and skidded along his jaw. 

     A heavy-set woman leaned out the window with a small throw rug in her plump hands. 

     The bullet exploded out of the gun, less than an inch from Henry’s ear.  He cried out, his ear drum nearly ruptured, and the bullet went wild.

     The woman had been about to shake the rug out when the bullet tore through the cheap weave.  The hot, twisted steel tore a small hole in her cheek, a bigger, messier hole in the other side of her head when it came out, and a cloud of dust formed like a halo above her head as the bullet lodged firmly into the brick and mortar above her window.

     Henry looked up just in time to see the woman stiffen, dropping the throw rug into the alley, and slowly, inevitably, tumble out of the window.

     Her body thudded firmly against the concrete, mere feet away from him, and she lay unmoving, blood and gray matter leaking around her head.

     Henry’s ear rang, and he was half-deaf, but he didn’t need to hear anything.  He stared at the body as blood snaked away from her in every direction, purple-red tendrils that found the throw rug and seeped into it eagerly. 

     “Sonofabitch!” he said, without hearing himself.  “Sonofabitch!”

     He ran.

     It took a couple of days for him to put things back in perspective.  The gun now rested at the bottom of a river, along with the decorative box and cleaning kit, so trying that method again was a no-go, even if he wanted to.  And he didn’t want to.

     There was no time to be sorry about the woman’s death.  There was only time to think about what went wrong, and what he could do to fix it.  His commitment to his mission was firmer than ever.

     The next day, he bought a car for three hundred dollars.  It was an old, beat-to-hell Chevy Malibu, circa 1973, shit brown and rusted to the core, with about 240,000 miles on it.  The brakes were bad, the steering stiff, and the transmission probably hours away from failing entirely.  The driver’s side door wobbled on rusty hinges, threatening to come off entirely.

     Henry didn’t care.  The Malibu suited his needs at present.

     He put twenty bucks in the tank, and the needle wavered a little bit toward the right.  He slammed the driver’s side door shut, managed to get it to stay shut, and drove.

     North of the city, the countryside was hilly, almost mountainous, with weaving and winding two-lane roads that wiggled past exposed cliff faces and stomach-churning drop-offs.  Every winter, you’d hear about another car skidding off the road and smashing into the rocks near the lake there.

     Henry drove fast, squealing around the hairpin turns, delighting in the heavy power of the Malibu’s engine, the assurance the car had, even though it was nearly as old as he was, and nearly as decrepit too. 

     He didn’t bother with a seatbelt.  That would be at what they call cross-purposes.

     He drove higher along the winding road, jerking the steering wheel right at the first sharp turn, then left a moment later, then right again.  The road snaked up the steep hillside and Henry couldn’t help it, he started laughing.  It was fun, this recklessness. 

     He came to the drop-off he’d been thinking of.  The road veered off to the left and climbed upward, but straight ahead the city loomed in the distance, beyond some scrubby pine trees and rocky turf.  The lake shimmered serenely between them.

     Henry pushed his foot down hard on the gas, gritting his teeth, gripping the steering wheel fiercely.

     The Malibu flew off the road at sixty miles an hour.

     Henry’s stomach stayed somewhere back on the road and he screamed in terrified ecstasy as the car sailed out over the tops of the trees, engine roaring, tires spinning against air.  The car shot what seemed like a hundred feet through space, held suspended, before starting to drop.

     The driver’s side door snapped off and spun away.  Gravity shoved Henry out after it.

     He tumbled what turned out to be mere feet to the sloping hillside below him, hit the scrubby ground with a thud that knocked the breath out of him, and went rolling down the hill.  He rolled and slid and thumped for what seemed like minutes, but was really more like four seconds, before sliding into a tree stump. 

     Then he was staring straight up at the sky, shaken but unhurt. 

     As his breath started to come back to him, he saw the Malibu off to his left, still soaring but on an inevitable arc downward. 

     On his back, he turned his head to look in the direction the Malibu was heading.

     In a little clearing, right next to the sparkling lake, a family was enjoying an old-fashioned picnic.

     “Ah, crap,” Henry wheezed.

     Mom and Pop.  Little Junior, about eleven or twelve years old.  And Sissy, eight or so.  Laughing and smiling as Pop handed out sandwiches.

     Until a shadow fell over them and they all looked up at the same time to see the old crappy Malibu coming out of the sky, right at them.

     The next morning, Henry went to the diner just up the road from his house.  He stopped in the doorway, glanced around, and saw the man he was looking for in a booth at the far corner.  The man waved and smiled when he saw Henry.

     Henry made his way over, slid into the seat opposite.  The man said, “Hey, dude.  You must be Black, right?  Zat like a whatchacallit, code name or something?”

     “It’s my real name.”

     “Cool.  Hey, have some coffee.”

     The guy didn’t look like what Henry had imagined.  He had long, shaggy hair and fuzz on his chin.  He wore a Def Leppard tee-shirt.  He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five or so, and Henry smelled weed wafting off him.

     The guy said, “So, dude, good to meet you, right?  I’m Danny, and I’ll be your professional hit man today.”  He guffawed and drummed his fingers on the table in time to whatever song was playing in his head.

     Henry said, “I, uh, I heard about you from Larry, and he said you might be the fella to talk to about—“

     “Whoa, dude.”  Danny held up his hand and said, “Don’t say nothing like that too loud, cool?  Don’t wanna advertise.”

     Henry had been speaking quietly, but he nodded. “Right.  But… you are a professional, yeah?”

     “Damn straight, dude.  I can do the job for you.  Just tell me who needs to go bye-bye, and I’m on it. Who you want me to whack?”

     Henry said, “Me.  I need you to kill me.”

     Danny nodded and said, “Cool, cool, I can do that, no sweat.  Thousand bucks.  I’d say half now, half later, but since you won’t be around later…”  He laughed and shrugged.

     Henry reached into his pocket for the bills there, slid them across the table.  Danny snatched them up and pocketed them. 

     “But here’s the thing,” Henry said.  “It has to be soon.  My ex-wife is getting married day after tomorrow and if you don’t kill me before then, I’m gonna have to go to the goddamn wedding.  Okay?”

     “Right.  Day after tomorrow.  Hey, that sucks about your old lady, dude.”  He shook his mangy head and sipped his coffee.  He said, “Chicks, huh?”

     “Yeah.  Chicks.”

     “So, uh… how you want me to do it?”

     Henry frowned and looked at his coffee.  He said, “Surprise me.”

     Two days later, and Danny had proven completely useless.

     Henry had spent all his time after coffee with the amateur hit man making himself an easy target—wandering aimlessly around the shopping mall, hanging out at the Dew Drop Inn, leaving his front door unlocked.  But Danny was a complete no-show.  Henry decided that, if he saw him on the street, he was going to beat the shit out of him and get his thousand bucks back.

     And now here Henry was, at Rachel’s wedding.  Sonofabitch.

     He walked into the church, mulling it all over, thinking on it, and he knew it wasn’t really Danny he was angry with, or even Rachel.  It was God.  God was doing this on purpose, he’d become convinced.  Up there on his Pearly Throne or whatever, laughing his omnipotent ass off.

     All Henry wanted was oblivion.  But the road from here to oblivion was goddamn long.

     He sat in the first pew on the side meant to seat Rachel’s friends and family.  It was difficult to see the podium, since Rachel had decided to seat him right behind a supporting column.  In a few minutes, the whole ugly charade would start, and people filed in with all the solemnity of a funeral or a will-reading.  Henry knew some of them—a few he’d counted as friends before the divorce.  None of them looked at him, which suited Henry just fine.

     It was a Baptist church that looked more like a meeting hall than anything else, unadorned with much except a few not-very-good paintings of waterfalls and Jesus hanging out with some street kids on a basketball court.  Fluorescent light made everything pale blue and unhealthy looking.

     An old lady came out from behind the podium at the front of the church, settled in at the organ, and started to play something religious.  Henry peered around the thick column, just in time to see the preacher appear. 

     The groom and best man followed, trailed by two other guys who looked like they’d partied a bit too much the night before.  Henry had met the groom once.  His name was Steve something-or-other.

     Four women dressed in pink chiffon shuffled out and took their places at the podium opposite the guys.  They were all situated right in Henry’s blind spot now.

     The organist launched into “Here Comes the Bride” and everyone stood up.  Rachel came strolling up the aisle with her Pop.  She looked good, Henry thought, for her age.  Thirty-seven years old, and the years had taken a toll, just like they did to everyone, but over all she looked all right.  Her hair was done up in some crazy elaborate web of lacing and the dress—white!—showed off her cleavage, which was still ample.

     She glanced at him and smiled as she walked slowly past.  It didn’t seem like a mean smile, and without any warning at all Henry found himself softening toward her.

     She and her Pop made it up to the podium just as the organist put the finishing flourish on the tune.  From Henry’s lousy vantage point, it looked like Steve was ready to burst into tears.  His best man was staring at Rachel’s cleavage.  The preacher said, “Who gives this woman into marriage?” and Pop choked, cleared his throat, and said, “I do.”

     He handed off his daughter for the second time and scurried to sit down in the front pew, a few feet away from Henry.

     Henry glanced around and saw that everyone was smiling and something weird happened in his gut.  Something icy broke and sank away and was replaced with a steady, pulsing warmth.  He craned his neck to look around the column at Rachel and he suddenly remembered some of the good times they’d had together.  He remembered dancing with her.  He remembered laughing and carrying on and all that romantic happy-crappy. 

     And he felt happy for her, damned if he didn’t.  He felt happy to be there.  Yes, everyone was smiling, and Henry Black was smiling too.

     He sat back down and now he couldn’t see Rachel past the stupid column, but Steve was smiling dreamily.  They clasped hands, and the preacher was about to say the final vows, when the church doors crashed open and Danny came rushing in.

     Everyone stopped dead and stared at the high-on hit man, and Henry’s heart sank.  Oh, he thought.  Oh, you stupid, useless blockhead.

     Danny’s eyes were crazy, flashing, and he held something in his hand that looked like a large, green egg.

     He took three steps down the aisle, said, “Sayonara, bitches!” and tossed the egg.

     The egg bounced once, twice, and came to rest against the podium.

     Someone screamed and the egg exploded with a thunderous roar.

     The newspaper the next day had the whole story.

     Sixteen people were killed in the explosion.  The entire wedding party, the preacher, the organist, and almost everyone in the front row, including Pop. 

     The lunatic who’d thrown the grenade was also killed, and police speculated he may have been one of Rachel’s jilted lovers who’d snapped and gone homicidal.

     Henry Black was shielded from the explosion by the heavy supporting column, and emerged from the church completely unscathed.

     They took him to the hospital anyway, for evaluation they said, and didn’t release him until the next morning.  Reporters waited outside the hospital to talk to him, and Henry stumbled through them in a sort of daze.      

     He took a taxi home and was relieved to find no one there.  He’d been afraid the reporters might find out where he lived.  His front door was open, just as he’d left it for that dumb-ass Danny.  He shut the door behind him, trudged wearily up the stairs.  In his meager little living room, he paused and looked around. 

     Ragged easy chair.  Beat-up lamp.  Lumpy mattress. 

     That was it.  That was all he owned, all that he could say was his.  No possessions, nothing tying him to this big, cruel world.  He’d been alive and breathing for thirty-nine years, and everything he owned could be thrown into the back of a pick-up truck in about five minutes.

     That meant freedom, didn’t it?  No possessions meant he owed nothing to anybody, he could do whatever he wanted.  And his life, so far, wasn’t so bad, was it?  He’d had good times.  He’d made people happy and had been made happy by other people and did his share of laughing.

     He’d felt it at the wedding, right before the carnage and all, he’d felt just a glimmer of it.  But now the full weight of it pressed up against his heart, and it felt pretty damn good.