Now They Call Me Gunner

  * * *

  I settled down on the mossy forest floor beside Randal.

  We were sitting in the bush, positioned so that we could see both the house and the garage. A screen of brush hid us from anyone coming down the driveway. It was a good strategy but I hated being here. The Road Snakes were going to show up eventually and I didn’t know what Randal was going to do. He had to be planning something; we weren’t here for nothing.

  Our encounter with Monk had been tense enough. Even if we avoided an all out brawl, facing off against an entire gang of motorcycle outlaws would be more than my young heart could stand.

  I don’t know if the dogs ever stopped barking. They had been barking when we rode away and they were barking when I followed Randal on foot back up the dirt driveway.

  The dogs knew that we were here and they wanted to warn everyone within hearing distance about us. They weren’t satisfied with barking; they were in a frenzy, jumping frantically against the chain link fence, making it rattle and jangle.

  I hoped that they would tire of that before long.

  “Think the dogs will stop barking soon?”

  Randal frowned at me. “Don’t talk.”

  It was just after four. Monk had said to meet the Snakes in the evening. They weren’t due to arrive for hours, yet.

  A mosquito whined around my ear. I slapped at it.

  Randal slapped my knee. “Be still.”

  “Mosquito,” I said.

  “Ignore it.”

  “I’ll get bit.”

  “You’re going to get bit a lot. That comes with the job. Be quiet. Be still. Ignore everything but the target.”

  I watched Randal for a few minutes. His only movements were blinking and breathing.

  I couldn’t stay statue still. I had to scratch when I itched. I had to brush bugs away. I had to wipe sweat off my face. I had to check my watch. I tried to do those things slowly so they wouldn’t attract attention but Randal noticed. He noticed everything. His whole body was a giant antenna, watching, listening, processing signals constantly.

  I didn’t know if he knew that he was in upstate New York or if his head was back in ‘Nam again. I suspected ‘Nam because he was sweating large drops, the same as when he freaked out in his truck on the road that night.

  It didn’t matter as long as he was silent and motionless. It only mattered if he took it into his head to kill some Viet Cong.

  After an hour, I was bored out of my mind. I had to summon every iota of self-control to keep from asking Randal questions. What was going to happen next? What had he done in Vietnam? What is the meaning of the universe? It didn’t matter. I wanted to ask him about something just to break the silence. Even if it were only to hear him tell me to shut up.

  I didn’t because I didn’t want him to think that I was a wuss. And because, if he had wigged out and thought that he was back in ‘Nam and that Charley was out there, looking for us, I didn’t want him to slit my throat with his bamboo-handled blade to shut me up.

  I was eighteen. Thousands of guys my age were doing this for real in the jungle in ‘Nam. Guys like me were getting shot through the head because they slapped a mosquito when Charlie was hiding a few feet away and not slapping at the mosquitoes that were biting him.

  This was real, but it wasn’t as real as ‘Nam. At least, I hoped not.

  The dogs kept barking.

  After two hours, my stomach was growling loudly enough almost to drown out the dogs. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was suppertime.

  Even a drink of water would help but I was empty-handed. I could hear the rush of the stream behind the barking of the dogs. All the water I could want was a couple of hundred yards away, flowing down to the ocean, and I was dying of thirst and I didn’t dare walk over and take drink. Not because the Road Snakes were around yet but because Randal would think I was a wuss.

  The sun was low in the sky. I couldn’t see it through the trees. All the light was coming from the slowly darkening sky above.

  I was feeling chill. A denim jacket isn’t much good for keeping a guy warm in the bush.

  Cold and hungry and scared. Boy, it was fun hanging around with Randal on my day off.

  He hadn’t moved in two hours. He sat and watched the buildings like they were the most interesting things in the world. Maybe he was sleeping with his eyes open. His breathing was deep and regular the way breathing gets when someone is lost to the waking world.

  I thought about Billy Paul. I was here because Billy Paul had been murdered and I had never met the man. Knew nothing about him except that he had been married to Gwen back when I was in first or second grade, that he had fathered a couple of children with her, and then he had split. And that he had come back at the beginning of the summer and been trying to move back in with her. And I knew that Randal had good reason to kill him.

  By all accounts, plenty of other people did, too. But who? Drug dealers seemed most likely to me. According to the news on television, they killed each other all the time. Maybe the Snakes would tell us who Billy did business with.

  Or maybe the Snakes would kill us. Maybe to stop us from snooping around – a warning to other would-be snoops – or maybe just for the hell of it.

  I wondered if they would bring guns or knives, or if they would swarm us and stomp us to death with their steel-toed motorcycle boots.

  Mom and Dad would hate to see boot prints on my mashed up face at my funeral. They’d have to find a good mortician to make me presentable.

  I couldn’t stop wondering if Randal had ever killed anyone with that knife. It looked oriental. Had he bought it in ‘Nam? Did other soldiers bring back knives like that? I wanted to ask him a question, just to see him do something besides sit and stare and breathe.

  I wondered if I would see Randal kill someone tonight.

  It was after seven when I heard the distant roar of motorcycle engines coming down the highway.

  It was still light. I could see flashes of chrome twinkling through the trees as the bikes bounced down the driveway, raising clouds of dust that slowly drifted our way.

  One by one, five bikes rolled into the open yard in front of the house.

  The dogs’ frenzy redoubled.

  I dared not breathe.

  A tall, slim man with a long blonde ponytail rode the lead bike. I guessed that he was Wasp, the leader of the Snakes.

  A woman with short dark hair was clinging to him. She wore cowboy boots, denim jeans that had been cut off into shorts ­– short shorts – and a leather halter top. Her leg were long, her stomach flat, and her breasts full. I already hated Wasp for having such a gorgeous creature on his bike.

  Second was a huge man. Not many men can make a Harley look small. His arms looked like oak beams and his legs like concrete pillars. His face was half hidden by long, frizzy red hair and an unkempt beard.

  The woman clinging to the back of his bike was round in all the right places and in some of the wrong places, too. She stretched her miniskirt to the limit and overflowed her leather jacket. She was laughing the kind of laugh that needed no reason, only a wide space.

  Third was a man who looked like an accountant. His hair was short. He wore round glasses. He made his denim jacket and jeans look like a business suit. His movements were tight and precise. Efficient.

  There was no woman on his bike.

  Fourth was another big man. Not as big as the man on the second bike, but bigger than most. He was cut. Every muscle in his arms was as well-defined as if it had been sculpted in bronze. His denim vest hung open to reveal six-pack abs and pecs like blocks of steel.

  The woman on the back of his bike was tiny, barely five feet tall, proportioned like a perfect little doll.

  I recognized Monk on the last bike.

  He had no woman with him.

  When they killed their engines and dismounted, the only sound that I could hear was the frantic barking of the three dogs.

  The dust that drifted on the lazy breeze to
our hiding place made me want to sneeze. I resisted and concentrated on the Snakes. Now was the time for me to impose on myself the same discipline that Randal had maintained all afternoon.

  Every one of the men was wearing his patch on the back of his jacket. A rattlesnake entwined around a motorcycle wheel with the slogan, Rattle and Roll. It was the same patch that Billy’s mother had been embroidering when we visited her.

  Wasp took a Tupperware container out of a saddlebag and walked over to the dog pen. I could hear him shouting over the barking. “Hey, Killer, Champ, Fang! Happy to see me?” He unlocked the gate.

  I was terrified that he was going to release the dogs. There was no question that they would ignore their master and charge into the bush to tear me apart. They’d been lusting for that all afternoon.

  Instead, Wasp pushed them aside and slipped into the pen. He gave a command and all three dogs fell silent, sat on their haunches, and waited until he put a chunk of raw meat into each mouth.

  While Wasp was treating his dogs, Monk unlocked the garage and raised the double door. The others wandered inside.

  It was too dark to make out any details, but I could see a mixed assortment of chairs and a refrigerator.

  The big man opened the fridge and began handing out beers.

  I felt a soft tap on my leg. Randal gestured for me to follow. He rose silently and began walking away from the house, parallel to the driveway.

  I tried to walk as quietly as him, but couldn’t avoid snapping the occasional twig and rustling through fallen leaves.

  We were far enough away that I don’t think the Snakes could hear me.

  But I could hear the dogs resume their barking.