Armand, wearing his suit coat and the tie with tiny fish on it, sat across from her eating Swedish meatballs and noodles. The opening to the foyer and the stairway was directly behind him. Richie, to Armand’s left at the end of the table, would stare at her tank top chewing his food, sucking his teeth. He looked at her the way Ferris did; but Ferris was an actor, Richie was real. Ferris was nothing. Armand would glance at her as he looked up from his food to gaze at the row of windows behind her, rattling in the wind. She had been right when she told Wayne, a long, long time ago, Richie was scarier than Armand.
They’d had drinks now, Richie a Southern Comfort and 7-Up, one, Armand four whiskeys with a splash of water, and were talking to each other more than they did earlier.
Carmen listened to them, waiting for the phone to ring, Mom calling, Where are you? It’s almost one o’clock. They began talking about the shotgun, Wayne’s Remington, as if she wasn’t sitting at the table with them. It gave her a strange feeling, till she began to concentrate on the gun that was somewhere in the house.
Richie saying, “He might have it, but he’s not gonna walk in here with it.”
Armand saying, “Oh, you know that?”
Richie saying, “Why would he? He thinks his little wife’s in here fixing supper. Comes runing in, ‘Hi, honey, I’m home.’ “
Armand saying, “How do you know he won’t have the gun?”
Carmen thinking, Because he doesn’t. Because it’s here.
Armand saying, “What did she say to him on the telephone? Something funny is going on here and he told her to call the cops.”
Richie saying, “To tell them she’s home, that’s all.” Looking at her then and saying, “Isn’t that right?” Carmen nodded and he said, “I guess you figured out we was listening in upstairs.”
Carmen thinking that’s where it would have to be. But if it was there, why didn’t they see it? If Wayne took it upstairs he wouldn’t have hidden it.
She looked at the glasses and plates and food containers on the table—extra ones in the middle Armand would pick from, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, sweet potatoes with sliced apple and brown sugar—looked at the stains on the plastic tablecloth she had put on to protect the wood finish. It reminded her of looking in the refrigerator yesterday at 950 Hillglade, worrying about food spoiling when she was dying to get out of there. Instinctively the good little housewife. Now sitting in her underwear with two guys who were going to shoot her husband when he walked in the door and then shoot her or shoot them both at the same time. . . . She had never thought about dying or even getting old or what she had heard on television called the terrifying middle-age crisis. . . . They might use the shotguns leaning against the table next to where they sat. They might take them down to the cellar. She thought, Well, if we’re together. And thought, Bullshit.
Mad. The way she was on the porch the time Armand came and she fired twice. Mad because he was so goddamn sure of himself. Fired when he was close and fired again, when he was out by the chickenhouse. After that she went inside.
Now think.
She had laid the gun on the counter.
Wayne came home from the store where the girl had been shot and killed. Probably by the nickel-plated gun lying on the table to the right of Richie’s plate, the stubby barrel pointing at Armand. The police arrived. No, they got here before Wayne, because he was questioned at the store for about an hour, came home and a different bunch of cops started on him and they didn’t like his attitude. They never liked it. Wayne saying if they weren’t going to handle it, he would. Wayne furious, in his way, showing contempt, cold anger. Wayne reloading the shotgun in front of them. Carmen remembered it now, yes, and the police didn’t like it at all, Wayne’s Charles Bronson gesture. And the next night—or was it the night after that?—the front windows were shot out as they sat in the living room and threw themselves on the floor and the duck prints were blown off the wall, yes, and that night Wayne took the shotgun upstairs. He said, They could walk right in the goddamn house if they want. He said, We’ll clean that up in the morning. He took the shotgun upstairs with them saying, We’ll hear this step squeak if they try it. She remembered she didn’t say anything. He stood the gun against his night table but didn’t like it there. He said, I get up to go to the bathroom. . . . He knelt down—she could see him doing it—and put the gun under the bed.
That’s where it was.
These two would have been standing by the bed or sitting on it listening as she talked to Wayne and then her mother, seven-thirty this morning. They didn’t notice it because the phone was on the night table on her side of the bed and the gun was under Wayne’s side. She wondered if he might have brought it downstairs later. But she didn’t remember seeing it downstairs before they left and if he did they would have found it.
No, the shotgun was still under the bed, loaded.
Richie said, “What’s wrong with our little bunny?”
Armand didn’t say anything.
Richie said, “Hey, what’s wrong with you? You scared or what?”
Carmen raised her eyes from the table. “Of course, I’m scared.”
Richie acted surprised. “There’s no reason to be. Old Wayne gets home, all we’re gonna do is have a talk with him. Isn’t that right, Bird?”
Armand, hunched over his plate, looked up at her with dull eyes, indifferent. He said, “That’s right.”
Carmen didn’t speak. There was nothing to say that would mean anything. Richie seemed dumb enough to think she might believe him and Armand was telling her he didn’t care if she believed it or not or care what Richie said. Richie could do whatever he wanted. Armand would watch. What she had to do, soon, was think of a way to get around the table past them, run upstairs to the bedroom, lock the door and pray to God the shotgun was under the bed and she’d have time to pick it up before they came busting in.
* * *
When the phone rang Richie said, “That must be old Mom, huh? Let’s tell her you can’t make it today, you’re sick.” He took Carmen by the arm into the kitchen, giving her instructions on the way. If it was Wayne, tell him to hurry. If it was anybody else, tell them she couldn’t talk now, she had to get to her mom’s. She reached for the phone and he said, “Wait now,” and felt her jump as he slipped cold metal into the rear end of her panties, nosing the barrel of the nickelplate down to rest against her tailbone. He said, “Don’t be dumb now and get your bummie shot off. I want it in one piece for after. Okay, make it quick.”
Richie moved in close to listen and smell her hair. Heard the mom say, “Well, where are you?” Tough old broad. Carmen told her she was sorry but she couldn’t make it. Richie poked her with the nickelplate. She said, “I’m sick.” Her mom asked what was wrong. Carmen said she didn’t know, she just didn’t feel good. The mom said it must’ve been something she ate on the road and that’s why she didn’t travel, the food being terrible out there. The mom said, “Well, you don’t sound too bad.” The mom wanted her to come anyway on account of she was in awful pain and had called the doctor three times and he still hadn’t called back, he let her sit by the phone for hours while he was busy making money. Richie agreed with her. Doctors he had known in the joint all had a superior attitude. He got a surprise then when Carmen said all of a sudden, “Can’t you stop thinking of yourself for one minute and listen?” Uh-oh. “I’m sick. Do you understand that? You’ve had your turn, now it’s mine.” Her mom didn’t like that one bit. She said, “Well, thank you very much—after all I’ve done for you,” and hung up.
Taking her back to the table Richie said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking to your mom like that.”
Armand had the container of lasagna in front of him now eating from it, taking his time; it was pretty good, still warm. Richie had gone to the toilet and Carmen in that undershirt was looking at Richie’s Model 27 Smith & Wesson lying on the table. He said to her, “You ever shot one of those?”
It caught her by surprise. She looke
d at him a moment before shaking her head.
“Good,” Armand said. Their eyes held for another moment and he was sorry he had spoken to her.
Richie came in from the hall zipping up his pants, a magazine under his arm. He said, “Jesus Christ, Bird, you still eating?” The punk chewing his gum. “Man, I already showed you what you’re gonna look like.”
Armand stopped eating, pushed the lasagna away from him and leaned on the table, his arms flat along the edge, one hand hanging, feeling his belly through his tie. He watched Richie, seated now, the magazine open, showing Carmen the picture of the twelve-hundred-pound man lying in bed, his little head peeking out from that tremendous body.
“Bird,” Richie said, never shutting up, “listen to what the guy eats. For breakfast, two pounds of bacon, a dozen eggs and some rolls. Lunch, four Big Macs, four double cheeseburgers, eight boxes of fries, six little pies and six quarts of soda. Am I making you hungry?”
Keep talking, Armand thought, watching Richie blow a bubble and pop it.
“For supper he’ll have three ham steaks, six sweet potatoes, six or seven regular potatoes and stuffing. Bird, can you imagine this guy taking a dump? Jesus Christ.” Richie shook his head, studying the picture in the magazine. When he looked up he was starting to smile. “You know who could cook for this guy? Old Donna. Be like cooking for a whole fucking cellblock.”
Armand watched Richie turn to Carmen.
“Donna Mulry’s the Bird’s sweetheart.”
And was surprised when Carmen looked at him and said, “Why does he call you the Bird?”
Armand liked her asking him that. It reminded him of who he was. Or who he had been. He said, “I’m called the Blackbird,” and almost smiled at her.
“Him and Donna are going to Memphis,” Richie said, cracking his gum, “so they can visit Graceland, hold hands looking at all that Elvis Presley shit. Isn’t that right, Bird?”
Look at the punk chewing away. “I think so,” Armand said.
“Donna’s this dried-up old broad use to be a corrections officer,” Richie said to Carmen. “Man, did she love corrections. I can tell you why, too, if you want to know.” Richie paused, he had plenty of time, and got a bubble going. A big one.
Armand’s right hand came out of his coat holding the Browning auto. Richie wasn’t looking. Armand racked the slide to put one in the chamber. Now he was looking, his eyes big peeking over that bubble. Armand the Blackbird said, “You get one, Richie, like everybody else,” extended the Browning and shot him in the center of that pink bubble. The sound of it so loud—as Richie’s head snapped back and came forward to hit the magazine lying on the table—always louder than Armand expected.
* * *
Carmen heard him say, “There,” and heard him blow out his breath even as she felt her head ringing, the room filled with the sound. She was holding herself rigid, but didn’t realize it until the sound faded to silence and she watched Armand get up and move to the end of the table, watched him lay his gun next to Richie’s, lift Wayne’s jacket from the back of Richie’s chair and use it to cover Richie’s head and shoulders. Carmen thought of stopping him. Don’t, that’s my husband’s. But kept quiet, trying to feel Wayne close by, the way she had felt him before and used him to get mad and hold on. If he was with her now, he wasn’t saying a word. She stared at his jacket, at IRONWORKERS BUILD AMERICA, blue on silver, and beyond it a splash of color on the wall, deep red.
“You know what he did?” Armand said.
Carmen looked up. He was going toward the kitchen.
“He called me Bird for the last time, that’s what he did.” Armand walked into the kitchen and Carmen waited. She looked at the dull-metal automatic and the nickel-plated revolver on the table next to the covered shape. Armand came out of the kitchen with his bottle of whiskey saying, “I’m no bird. All I know about that stuff was from my grandmother. It was so long ago I don’t even remember most of it.”
Carmen watched him sit down at his place and pour whiskey into his glass. He raised the glass to her and took a sip.
“I’ll tell you something else. I never saw her get seagulls to shit on a car. Oh, they said she could do it, but I never saw it. She was gonna turn me into an owl one time. I said, ‘I don’t want to be no owl, I want to be a blackbird.’ She said okay. So I went in the sweat lodge, I was in there hours. I come out naked holding a blanket around me. She beats on this little drum she’s got and chants in Ojibway awhile. She stops, she tells me to throw off the blanket and fly away. I throw it off, raise my arms up. Nothing happened. I feel my body, I said to her, ‘I’m no blackbird, I’m still me.’ She says, ‘When was the last time you bathed?’ I said, ‘You mean washed myself? I took a bath yesterday.’ She says, ‘Oh, you not suppose to bathe for a month.’ So I didn’t become a blackbird.” He raised his glass to her, said, “That’s my life story, whether you understand it or not,” and took a drink.
Carmen said, “Who wants to be a blackbird?”
He seemed to like that and came close to smiling. “If you could be any kind of bird there is, what kind would you be?”
Carmen thought of birds and saw the bird prints covering the walls of her mother’s house. She said, “I wouldn’t be a bird. I’d be something else.”
He seemed to like that, too. “All right, what would you be?”
Carmen took a moment, breathed in, hesitated and breathed out through her mouth. She said, “Maybe a deer.” She watched him nod, thinking about it. She said, “Although . . .” pulled the neck of the tank top away from her, lowered her head slightly and sniffed. “They smell awful.”
He said, “We all smell at times.”
She fanned the air in front of her. “Not this bad.” She said, “That buck lure really smells.” She said, “Could I get dressed?”
“If you want, sure. I’m not Richie, I’m not the same as him.”
Carmen watched him raise his glass to the shape at the end of the table and take a drink.
She said, “I’ll have to go upstairs.”
There was a silence.
He said, “Well . . .”
She waited, expecting him to say, Didn’t you bring clothes? Or, I’ll go up with you. She watched him pour whiskey into his glass.
He said, “Okay, I’ll give you one minute.”
She didn’t move.
“Go on.”
Now she got up, walked around the table past him. When she was in the hall she heard him say, “You don’t want to be a bird, think of what you would be.”
Carmen closed the bedroom door and locked it. She went to Wayne’s side of the bed, dropped to her hands and knees and saw the Remington, right there, brought it out feeling the weight of it and smelling the oil smell. She went into the bathroom, closed the door and pumped the gun. There would be a cartridge in the chamber now if the gun was loaded. She pumped it again and a three-inch magnum slug ejected. It was loaded. She picked up the slug from the floor and shoved it into the magazine. Now, go do it. And thought, I can’t. And told herself, Don’t think. But at the bedroom door, her hand on the old-fashioned key sticking out of the lock, she started thinking again, she couldn’t help it.
There was a George Jones song Armand had liked called “The Last Thing I gave Her Was the Bird,” until he got sick and tired of Richie and then he didn’t care for it anymore. That fucking Richie, he was like something stuck to the bottom of your shoe you couldn’t get rid of, like his chewing gum. That wasn’t a bad idea, though, take Donna down there to see Graceland. Why not? She was a stupid woman, but that was okay, he was tired of being alone in hotel rooms, bars, motels—take her on a trip, play some Yahtzee . . . One moment he felt relieved, a weight lifted off him, looking at the ironworker’s jacket covering the punk. The next moment he didn’t feel so good.
She could wait for him to come up. Get down behind the side of the bed with the gun aimed at the door. He walks in . . . But if he came upstairs he’d be ready, he’d have his gun in his hand he kil
led a man with, nothing to it, so easy for him, or he’d have a shotgun. Or he could wait, her nerves bad enough, and she wouldn’t know where he was. Or she could listen for the stairs to squeak . . . And heard Wayne say to her, For Christ sake, if you’re gonna do it, do it. Wayne took her that far, gave her the loaded gun. Now she had to hear herself say it, in her own words, and after that stop thinking.
You have to kill him.
There wasn’t a sound in the house.
You have to go downstairs and kill him.
Carmen turned the key to unlock the door.
He was sorry now he had started talking to her. It was the same with the old man in the hotel room, he was sorry after they had talked; though he didn’t feel sorry for the girl who ordered breakfast from room service and hardly touched it, wasting the old man’s money. He had never talked to a person he was going to kill before he talked to the old man and now he had talked to this woman Carmen. He was thinking he’d better not talk to her anymore . . . and heard the stairs creak and heard her steps coming down to the front hall. Looking at his watch Armand said, “You’re ten seconds late.” Talking to her again, saying that without thinking because she was easy to talk to. He took a drink, waiting to see her come in, and held the glass, listening. When no sound came to him he said to himself, Man, you’re getting old, you know it? He sat waiting. There was no way she could sneak up on him, but she was trying something. It got his mind working again. This woman had nerve. Putting the glass down he laid the palms of his hands flat on the table and turned his head enough to see his Browning close to Richie’s .38, where he had laid it when he covered the punk with the jacket. He could reach it if he leaned over and stretched—pick it up with his left hand.