Stories (2011) (108 page)

Anyway, I didn't believe about the dog bite, and now the
wound looked really bad. I knew the real cause of it, or at least the general
cause, and it made me sick to think of it. I doctored the wound again, gave her
some antibiotics that we had, wrapped it and went out. I didn't tell Carol what
she was already thinking.

I got my shotgun and went about the compound, looking. It was
a big compound, thirty-five acres with a high wall around it, but somehow,
someone must have breached the wall. I went to the back garden, the one with
trees and flowers where our little girl liked to play. I went there and looked
around, and found him sitting on one of the benches. He was just sitting. I
guess he hadn't been the way he was for very long. Just long enough to bite my
daughter. He was about her age, and I knew then, being so lonely, she had let
him in. Let him in through the bolted back door. I glanced over there and saw
she had bolted it back. I realized then that she had most likely been up on the
walk around the wall and had seen him down there, not long of turning, looking
up wistfully. He could probably still talk then, just like anyone else, maybe
even knew what he was doing, or maybe not. Perhaps he thought he was still who
he once was, and thought he should get away from the others, that he would be
safe inside.

It was amazing none of the others had forced their way in.
Then again, the longer they were what they were, the slower they became, until
finally they quit moving altogether. Problem with that was, it took years.

I looked back at him, sitting there, the one my daughter had
let in to be her playmate. He had come inside, and then he had done what he had
done, and now my daughter was sick with the disease, and the boy was just
sitting there on the bench, looking at me in the dying sunlight, his eyes black
as if he had been beat, his face gray, his lips purple.

He reminded me of my son. He wasn't my son, but he reminded
me of him. I had seen my son go down among them, some—what was it?—five years
before. Go down in a flash of kicking legs and thrashing arms and squirting
liquids. That was when we lived in town, before we found the compound and made
it better. There were others then, but they were gone now. Expeditions to find
others, they said. Whatever—they left, we never saw them again.

Sometimes at night I couldn't sleep for the memory of my
son, Gerald, and sometimes in my wife's arms, I thought of him, for had it not
been such a moment that had created him?

The boy rose from the bench, stumble-stepped toward me, and
I shot him. I shot him in the chest, knocking him down. Then I rushed to him
and shot him in the head, taking half of it away.

I knew my wife would have heard the shot, so I didn't bother
to bury him. I went back across the compound and to the upper apartments where
we lived. She saw me with the gun, opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing
came out.

"A dog," I said. "The one who bit her. I'll
get some things, dress him out and we'll eat him later."

"There was a dog," my wife said.

"Yes, a dog. He wasn't rabid. And he's pretty healthy.
We can eat him."

I could see her go weak with relief, and I felt both
satisfied and guilty at the same time. I said, "How is she?"

"Not much better. There was a dog, you say."

"That's what I said, dear."

"Oh, good. Good. A dog."

I looked at my watch. My daughter had been bitten earlier
that day, and it was almost night. I said, "Why don't you go get a knife,
some things for me to do the skinning, and I'll dress out the dog. Maybe she'll
feel better, she gets some meat in her."

"Sure," Carol said. "Just the thing. She
needs the protein. The iron."

"You bet," I said.

She went away then, down the stairs, across the yard to the
cooking shed. I went upstairs, still carrying the gun.

Inside my daughter's room, I saw from the doorway that she
was gray as cigarette ash. She turned her head toward me.

"Daddy," she said.

"Yes, dear," I said, and put the shotgun against
the wall by the door and went over to her.

"I feel bad."

"I know."

"I feel different."

"I know."

"Can anything be done? Do you have some medicine?"

"I do."

I sat down in the chair by the bed. "Do you want me to
read to you?"

"No," she said, and then she went silent. She lay
there not moving, her eyes closed.

"Baby," I said. She didn't answer.

I got up then and went to the open door and looked out.
Carol, my beautiful wife, was coming across the yard, carrying the things I'd
asked for. I picked up the shotgun and made sure it was loaded with my
daughter's medicine. I thought for a moment about how to do it. I put the
shotgun back against the wall. I listened as my wife came up the stairs.

When she was in the room, I said, "Give me the knife
and things."

"She okay?"

"Yes, she's gone to sleep. Or she's almost asleep. Take
a look at her."

She gave me the knife and things and I laid them in a chair
as she went across the room and to the bed.

I picked up the shotgun, and as quietly as I could, stepped
forward and pointed it to the back of my wife's head and pulled the trigger. It
was over instantly. She fell across the bed on our dead child, her blood
coating the sheets and the wall.

She wouldn't have survived the death of a second child, and
she sure wouldn't have survived what was about to happen to our daughter.

I went over and looked at Ellen. I could wait, until she
opened her eyes, till she came out of the bed, trying for me, but I couldn't
stomach that. I didn't want to see that. I took the shotgun and put it to her
forehead and pulled the trigger. The room boomed with the sound of shotgun fire
again, and the bed and the room turned an even brighter red.

I went outside with the shotgun and walked along the
landing, walked all the way around, came to where the big gun was mounted. I
sat behind it, on the swivel stool, leaned the shotgun against the protecting
wall. I sat there and looked out at the hundreds of them, just standing there,
looking up, waiting for something.

I began to rotate and fire the gun. Many of them went down.
I fired until there was no more ammunition. Reloaded, fired again, my eyes wet
with tears. I did this for some time, until the next rounds of ammunition were
played out. It was like swatting at a hive of bees. There always seemed to be
more.

I sat there and tried not to think about anything. I watched
them. Their shapes stretched for miles around, went off into the distance in
shadowy bulks, like a horde of rats waiting to board a cargo ship.

They were eating the ones I had dropped with the big gun.

After awhile the darkness was total and there were just the
shapes out there. I watched them for a long time. I looked at the shotgun
propped against the retaining wall. I looked at it and picked it up and put it
under my chin, and then I put it back again.

I knew, in time, I would have the courage.

Six o’clock in the morning, Richard was crossing by ferry
from the Hotel on the Quay to Christiansted with a few other early-bird
tourists, when he turned, looked toward shore, and saw a large ray leap from
the water, its blue-gray hide glistening in the morning sunlight like gunmetal,
its devil-tail flicking to one side as if to slash.

The ray floated there in defiance of gravity, hung in the
sky between the boat and the shore, back grounded by the storefronts and dock
as if it were part of a painting, then splashed almost silently into the purple
Caribbean, leaving in its wake a sun-kissed ripple.

Richard turned to see if the other passengers had noticed. He
could tell from their faces they had not. The ray’s leap had been a private
showing, just for him, and he relished it. Later, he would think that perhaps
it had been some kind of omen.

Ashore, he walked along the dock past the storefronts, and
in front of the Anchor Inn Restaurant, the charter fishing boat was waiting.

A man and a woman were on board already. The man was
probably fifty, perhaps a little older, but certainly in good shape. He had an
aura of invincibility about him, as if the normal laws of mortality and time
did not apply to him.

He was about five-ten with broad shoulders and, though he
was a little thick in the middle, it was a hard thickness. It was evident, even
beneath the black, loose, square-cut shirt he was wearing, he was a muscular
man, perhaps first by birth, and second by exercise. His skin was as dark and
leathery as an old bull’s hide, his hair like frost on scorched grass. He was
wearing khaki shorts and his dark legs were corded with muscle and his shins
had a yellow shine to them that brought to mind weathered ivory.

He stood by the fighting chair bolted to the center of the
deck, and looked at Richard standing on the dock with his little paper bag
containing lunch and suntan lotion. The man’s crow-colored eyes studied Richard
as if he were a pile of dung that might contain some kernel of rare and
undigested corn a crow might want.

The man’s demeanor bothered Richard immediately. There was
about him a cockiness. A way of looking at you and sizing you up and letting
you know he wasn’t seeing much.

The woman was quite another story. She was very much the
bathing beauty type, aged beyond competition, but still beautiful, with a body
by Nautilus. She was at least ten years younger than the man. She wore
shoulder-length blond hair bleached by sun and chemicals. She had a
heart-shaped face and a perfect nose and full lips. There was a slight cleft in
her chin and her eyes were a faded blue. She was willowy and big breasted and
wore a loose, white tee shirt over her black bathing suit, one of the kind you
see women wear in movies, but not often on the beach. She had the body for it.
A thong, or string, Richard thought the suits were called. Sort of thing where
the strap in the back slid between the buttocks and covered them not at all. The
top of the suit made a dark outline beneath her white tee shirt. She moved her
body easily, as if she were accustomed to and not bothered by scrutiny, but
there was something about her eyes that disturbed Richard.

Once, driving at night, a cat ran out in front of his car
and he hit it, and when he stopped to see if there was hope, he found the cat
mashed and dying, the eyes glowing hot and savage and terrified in the beam of
his flashlight. The woman’s eyes were like that.

She glanced at him quickly, then looked away. Richard
climbed on board.

Richard extended his hand to the older man. The man smiled
and took his hand and shook it. Richard cursed himself as the man squeezed
hard. He should have expected that. "HugoPeak," the older man said,
then moved his head to indicate the woman behind him. "My wife,
Margo."

Margo nodded at Richard and almost smiled. Richard was about
to give his name, when the captain, Bill Jones, came out of the cabin grinning.
He was a lean, weathered fellow with a face that was all nose and eyes the
color of watered meat gravy. He was carrying a couple cups of coffee. He gave
one to Margo, the other to Hugo. He said, "Richard, how are you, my
man."

"Wishing I’d stayed in bed," Richard said. "I
can’t believe I let you talk me into this, Jones."

"Hey, fishing’s not so bad," said the captain.

"Off the bank at home in Texas it might be all right.
But all this water. I hate it."

This was true. Richard hated the water. He could swim, had
even earned lifeguard credentials as a Boy Scout, some twenty-five years ago,
back when he was thirteen, but he had never learned to like the water.
Especially deep water. The ocean.

He realized he had let Jones talk him into this simply
because he wanted to convince himself he wasn’t phobic. So, okay, he wasn’t
phobic, but he still didn’t like the water. The thought of soon being
surrounded by it, and it being deep, and above them there being nothing but hot
blue sky, was not appealing.

"I’ll get you some coffee and we’ll shove off,"
Jones said.

"I thought it took five for a charter?" Richard
said.

Jones looked faintly embarrassed. "Well, Mr. Peak paid
the slack. He wanted to keep it down to three. More time in the chair that way,
we hit something."

Richard turned to Peak. "I suppose I should split the
difference with you."

"Not at all," Peak said. "It was my
idea."

"That’s kind of you, Hugo," Richard said.

"Not at all. And if it doesn’t sound too presumptuous,
I don’t much prefer to be called by my first name, unless it’s by my wife. If
I’m not fucking the person, I want them to call me Mr. Peak. Or Peak. That all
right with you?"

Richard saw Margo turn her face toward the sea, pretend to
be watching the gulls in the distance. "Sure," Richard said.

"I’ll get the coffee," Jones said, and disappeared
into the cabin. Peak yelled after him. "Let’s shove off."

The sea was calm until they reached the Atlantic. The water
there was blue-green, and the rich purple color of the Caribbean stood in stark
contrast against it, reaching out with long purple claws into the great ocean,
as if it might tug the Atlantic to it. But the Atlantic was too mighty, and it
would not come.

The little fishing boat chugged out of the Caribbean and
onto the choppier waters of the Atlantic, on out and over the great depths, and
above them the sky was blue, with clouds as white as the undergarments of the
Sacred Virgin.

The boat rode up and the boat rode down, between wet valleys
of ocean and up their sides and down again. The cool spray of the ocean
splattered on the deck and the diesel engine chugged and blew its exhaust
across it and onto Richard, where he sat on the supply box. The movement of the
water and the stench of the diesel made him queasy.