Eating Memories (38 page)

On a swaybacked sofa three men sat two Neanderthalish whites and a brown man who might have been Hispanic.

“You come on in here,” Russell said, leading them from the brooding atmosphere of the living room into a kitchen at the back of the house.

Mrs. Maxie was an anemic-looking strawberry blond with milky Irish skin and a splatter of freckles. Suspicion burning in her eyes, she took a pot of beans from the stove and carried it through the opening into the other part of the house, apparently to safety. A few moments later Boyer could hear Russell laughing with the other adults. The children’s giggles chimed like bells.

Pensively Boyer rubbed the Passport implanted in his left wrist and then, on guilt-ridden impulse, drew a wafer of beef stew from his backpack and laid it on a warped counter. When he turned around he noticed Garbell had already taken out his steamer and had put a packet inside, chicken a la king, by the smell of it. The Controller had taken an AutoMemo from his backpack and was avidly recording their scores.

Boyer sat and ate. Garbell offered his pint of brandy around. When that pint was empty, Garbell dug in his backpack and took out another.

The day took on a happy glow despite the rain. A maudlin sense of camaraderie crept over Boyer; and he huddled next to the two executives as though their company were a cozy fire lit against a winter’s day.

“Mouse at two o’clock,” Woods whispered.

Quietly Garbell lifted his gun from the faded linoleum floor. Fuzzy-headed but curious, Boyer glanced to the side and noticed a small gray ball of fur cowering at the edge of the refrigerator.

Woods and Garbell fired simultaneously. There were two threads of green light, two blats of sound. The mouse leapt into the air with a terrified squeak.

“Wounded him!” Garbell cried, lurching his bulk to a standing position. The mouse was running in circles now, apparently searching for a way out, apparently blinded.

Blat. Blat.

The two execs fired in unison. The mouse convulsed and then lay still, its tiny mouth open to expose rice-grain teeth.

At a noise at the door, Boyer instinctively brought his gun to bear; and found that he was aiming right at Russell. Quickly he jerked the barrel down.

“You stupid fucks!” Russell screamed. “You fucks! You don’t go shooting them candy-ass guns in here! There’s kids in the house!”

“Russell, I—” Boyer began, searching for the glue with which to cement his shattered new friendship together.

Russell aimed the auburn laser of his eyes right at Boyer. “You’re fucking drunk on your butts, all three of you. Get out.”

Obediently, Garbell and Boyer started putting their food away. With begrudging slowness, Woods followed suit. They rose and ran the gauntlet of the men’s stares out to the manicured lawn.

Outside the rain had ended, leaving the streets sodden. Russell herded them into a nearby alley and told them to stay put. “Leave you here a minute. Gotta go back and make things straight with Maxie.”

Leave them? Boyer wondered with alarm. Russell was going to leave them? There were gangs about, he knew, although from the barrenness of the rain-drowned, wet-dog smelling streets, one would never guess.

He opened his mouth to protest his innocence, but it was too late. Russell trotted around the peeling wall of an apartment house and disappeared.

“You’d think we’d shot one of the brats,” Woods said.

All sense of inebriated camaraderie left Boyer. “Maybe Russell’s right. There were children in there. We shouldn’t have been fooling around with the guns.”

“The voltage is too low to hurt anything large,” Garbell said in a way that might have meant to be soothing. “They’d cause a little sting, that’s all. A minor burn.”

“Maybe this man Maxie didn’t want minor burns on his children,” Boyer said.

Garbell dropped his eyes in shame. Woods, well-fed proof of the survival of the fittest, glanced around the alley with contempt. “God. This is what the ads mean by ‘roughing it?’ It sucks,” he said with a shockingly hard sibilant, the sound a snake might make. “These people are dangerous. Let’s finish up and go back home. I need a shower.”

Woods’ scorn threw a chill pall over the day. One part of Boyer hated Woods; another part realized the man was right. Boyer was a rich, pale slug ripe for the plucking, surrounded by hardscrabble hands.

He caught Garbell’s gaze and was startled by the terror he saw there.

“I think we’d better—” Boyer whispered.

A scampering sound at the mouth of the alley freeze-dried the words in his throat. He whirled. At the comer of his eye he saw Garbell and Woods bring their rifles up—ineffectual, bug-killing rifles. A brownish-red form raced around the sooted bricks, stubby legs a blur of motion, pink tongue lolling from a sharp-toothed mouth. The dachshund, tail wagging furiously, lunged right at Garbell.

Garbell’s rifle went off with a soft blat. Woods’ shot went wild, eliciting a puff of steam from the damp asphalt.

Just before the dog reached his ankle, Garbell shot again. The dog whimpered with what seemed to be injured curiosity. Its tail paused its frantic, metronomic motion. And then Boyer noticed that Woods’ gun was the wrong way around.

The butt rose into the air and slammed down, right on the dome of the dachshund’s head. Blood and brain tissue splattered onto Garbell’s fatigues.

“I got him.” Woods gave the small body an experimental kick. “Remember that when you record the scores, Chaz.”

Garbell stared down at his bloodied pants in horror and upchucked his chicken a la king.

When Russell found them a few minutes later, Garbell was leaning against the wall of the building, his hand a small comfort over his huge stomach. Woods had kicked the corpse to the side with his thick-soled boots, and was still basking in the glow of success.

Boyer looked up at Russell sheepishly. It was a while before Russell said anything. “That Buster,” he told them at last. “That Maxie’s dog.”

Woods’ challenging gaze met Russell’s troubled one. “He attacked Chaz. Ran right up. I saw him.”

Russell’s sad, fox-colored eyes rose to Boyer’s as though in a disillusioned search for motives. “Buster always was a friendly pooch.”

“Could have had rabies for all we knew,” Woods said.

A form blocked the spill of dirty, late-afternoon light into the alley. Maxie stood there, his glove-leather face ashen, staring quizzically at the remains of his dog.

And Russell gulped. From where Boyer stood he could see the gulp. It was a huge, portentous swallow, one in which Russell’s prominent adam’s apple elevatored up and then plummeted down. “Maxie—” he began.

Boyer was astonished to see, in Maxie’s hard eyes, tears brim and then overflow, wetting the chamois-soft cheeks. “That Buster!” Maxie thundered.

Possibly stricken with an attack of good sense, Woods stepped away from the corpse. “It attacked us,” he said.

Maxie’s chest swelled until it seemed it would burst the seams of his tee-shirt. He exploded, a volcano of fury and grief. “He was just a WEENIE dog! A dumb, sweet, little WEENIE dog!”

The man’s voice was so loud that Boyer imagined that people in downtown Dallas might hear the shouts right through all the protective plastic and the steel. A part of him wished they would hear it, and that somebody, somewhere might call the police.

Suddenly Maxie’s voice became disquietingly soft. “Let’s have us a real hunt,” he said. Tendons were standing out in his neck; and his dark eyes had taken on a predatorial gleam. “Give you a ten second head start.”

In a gesture of unbelievable stupidity, Woods raised his gun and sighted at Maxie’s midriff.

“One,” Maxie said.

Garbell was waving frantically at Woods. “Let’s just get out of here, okay? Let’s just—”

“Two.”

There was a blat and a flash of green light. Woods had shot Maxie, but the reaction of the man was a mere fleeting wince. There was a smoking, pinhead-sized hole in the front of Maxie’s T-shirt.

“Three,” he said in a voice as soft as the uneasy shifting of the wind.

“Jesus, Woods!” Boyer cried. “Are you crazy? Put the gun down! Listen, Russell, Mr. Maxie, God, I’m so sorry. What an overreaction on our part.” Our part, his mind echoed. Cordial to the end, he’d accepted part of the blame.

Russell turned around to Boyer, his face so drained of blood that his color was a sickly brown-gray. “Go on,” he hissed. “Get!”

“Four,” came the implacable voice.

Russell whipped his arm through the air, shooing them away. Without further encouragement, Boyer took to his heels, Garbell and Woods after him. Their hard-soled boots made frantic tapping noises on the pavement.

“Where’s the bridge?” Garbell was shouting. “Where’s the goddamned bridge?”

Boyer ran headlong down the street towards where he thought, where he hoped, the bridge might be. After a block he flung off his backpack. A block later he considered the expense, wondered if insurance would cover the loss, and tossed his rifle.

Glancing to the side, Boyer could see doom in Garbell’s tomato-red cheeks. The fat man slacked his pace, slowed to a whooping, strangled walk, and then stopped.

Boyer stopped beside him. “Come on, Chaz. Just a little farther,” he told him, although there was no telling how far away the bridge was, or even if they were heading toward it.

Garbell shook his lowered head. “Winded,” he wheezed. A rock flew from the shadows of a nearby alley and clattered to the concrete by Boyer’s foot. He shied back in amazement, for a moment wondering how the piece of concrete had managed to move by itself. Then he caught a glimpse of men perilously near. One man raised his arm and threw. Another stone, large as a fist, whizzed by inches from Woods.

“Run!” Woods screamed.

Electrified into action, Garbell limped and panted his way up the street. “Lose the backpack!” Boyer shouted encouragingly. “That’s what’s slowing you down!”

Without pausing his elephantine gallop, Garbell jerked the straps from his shoulders. Rocks were falling all around them now: huge serious-minded things. When they hit the pavement they made an incredible racket, like the thudding of mortar rounds.

Hot red pain flared in Boyer’s wrist; a heartbeat later his whole arm went numb. He didn’t slack his pace. He didn’t bother to turn around to check on the others or to see how close their assailants were. In fact, he didn’t even cast a curious glance over his shoulder when he heard the whoof of Garbell’s fall. He ran, leaving the Controller behind.

“Here! Here!” Woods shouted, darting off into a side street. Without pause for debate, Boyer followed. The road was narrow, a rutted lane bordered by overgrown shrubs; and as they sped down it, the thunderstorm of rocks became a sprinkle, and then it finally stopped.

Boyer darted a queasy look at his numb wrist. Where the rock had hit, the skin was flayed open. The spot the Passport should have been was now a bleeding, gaping hole.

“Through here,” Woods ordered and darted into a backyard, taking the lead as though management of anything, even flights of retreat, were his birthright.

They bolted between two burned out homes and came to a panting halt before a chain link fence. Woods looked puzzled, as though trying to comprehend that even sound management and good planning can fail.

At a sound, Boyer swiveled. Behind them, in the overgrown jungle of wisteria and persimmon, man-shaped shadows were moving. Flinging himself onto the fence, Boyer pulled himself up it one-handed. The chain link made a crazed tambourine jingle. Woods, shorter and obviously not much of a climber, was clawing at Boyer’s shirt.

“Get off me!” Boyer screamed, but Woods’ small, fingers clutched at him, nearly throwing him backwards off the fence. Boyer brought his foot up high and then slammed it down hard into Woods’ nose. There was a sharp, broken-pencil snap. Woods hung on with drowning-man desperation.

Kicking downward frantically again and again, Boyer saw blood flood from Woods’ broken nose, heard the crunch of small bones shattering. Woods’ upturned face lost its rigidity and, even through the thick soles of the boots, took on a pulpy feel.

Woods fell away. Boyer clambered higher and then he was over, over the fence and tumbling, the blouse of his fatigues catching in the tarnished steel points and tearing a new sleeve hole.

He hit the ground at an angle, shoulder first. The fall knocked the breath out of him. The hail storm of rocks had stopped, and in the stunning and ominous silence, Woods lay against the fence like a forgotten pile of laundry.

Boyer clambered to his feet and ran.

The sun was setting over the warehouse roofs when Boyer found shelter in an abandoned apartment building. He climbed a flight of precipitously-inclined stairs and emerged on a second floor balcony. Through the haze of dusk he could see the bombed ruins of the four other bridges and, a mere five blocks down, the pale arm of the Jefferson Street Viaduct where it spanned the Trinity.

He sat down on the soiled concrete and grimly dug into his wound, searching, without success, for his Passport. Surely it would be there. It had to be there, shoved somewhere under the bone and raw tissue.

He didn’t find the Passport, but he found the pain where it had been lurking in the numbed trauma of his mutilated wrist. By the time he’d given up the search he was crying quietly, too afraid to draw attention to himself to scream.

Dark fell. Boyer watched lights come on in Dallas and marveled how the environmental globes lit up like festive lanterns as though the city were a party to which he had not been invited. Above, wheeling free in the bruised and purple sky, airplanes circled, forming bright new constellations. He sat and watched them sink towards the Northwest to disappear below the fifty foot wall of the airport.

Night deepened. The moon rose. Finally, because there was nowhere else to go, he got up and trudged back to the burned houses and the fence.

Woods still lay in an abandoned, sad heap by the chain link. Boyer located the gate and, cradling his arm, walked into the silence of the backyard. By the light of the full moon he could see that Woods’ snide lips had been battered into loose unfamiliarity by the force of Boyer’s shoes.