Candles, six whole bundles in the kitchen cupboard—yeah, we can use these. “Let’s move in here,” Glen called out. “Hey, why don’t we move into the ranch house?”
Why on earth hadn’t he thought of it before? Shit. The place came with a fireplace, and the kitchen drawers and cupboards were well-stocked with cooking utensils—that left only sneaking off the ranch to fetch groceries. Plus, there was a living room to camp out in.
“Glen”—Doris’s voice came from deeper inside the house. She had wandered into a narrow room on the northern side. A makeshift indoor dog kennel accommodating chest-high cages made of steel wire. Glen remembered a trio of German shepherds had roamed the property once. The dogs had charged up to the car whenever he and Martha drove onto the yard. The TV producer had had to drag the animals indoors whenever visitors came by.
“Where’d you find that?” Glen asked.
Doris handed him the rifle. It had been hanging on a wall.
“Any ammo to go with it?”
“Just the gun,” she said.
Glen smiled, then held the rifle by the barrel and swung it like a bat.
“Suppose we use it this way.”
But use it for what?
Chapter 26
As part of the new sleeping arrangements, he and Doris now slept on the living room floor, covered by thick blankets. One long and one short couch, in addition to a plush armchair, enclosed the spot where they had laid out the bedding before the red brick fireplace. It was as if the proverbial covered wagons had circled them to provide protection. Doris’s arm lay draped across Glen's chest. For a few drowsy minutes he toyed with her limp, sleeping fingers.
Sunrise in his lover’s arms was a sweet delight but his mood nevertheless turned grim: luxuriating in one another's embrace day and night, and taking each tomorrow for granted wasn't being smart. Not to have left the ranch by now was crazy. They should have already packed up and gone. The day before, Glen had several times imagined hearing the crunch of gravel originating from the driveway and a patrol car big and blue slowly descending the slope. A visit from the police for real was only a matter of time.
They would eventually come check the ranch and pool house—and a grisly discovery awaited them on the swimming pool floor. Right after that, he and Doris could expect half the local RCMP to bomb onto the yard, sirens blaring. Too late to take flight then.
Forget it! No point going to pieces now. The odds still favored the police not knowing about Russell or Martha yet. He and Doris had a few more days of carefree impunity—likely did, probably did, but who the fuck really knew for sure? After all, Glen thought, what did he know about anything? He understood zilch about police procedure, or how fast an investigation moved along. A myriad of factors had to play a role.
Until now, Glen had just assumed that fugitives were safer out on the road, not making a stationary target. This might be mistaken, however; it would depend on the circumstances. To really know for sure, you had to have experienced the situation before.
After waking, Doris became tearful. And Glen dropped the car keys twice trying to put them in his coat pocket. The lack of dexterity betrayed his shaky nerves.
“Boy, am I ever a klutz today.”
Doris wasn’t talking. But the sobbing said plenty.
“We have to do this, so let’s not dilly-dally, okay?”
Still crying, Doris wrapped herself in bedding from off the floor. Moving to the window, she parted with one hand the curtains and gazed out. Glen had never before seen her brow so deeply furrowed. “We can’t leave here,” she said.
“Come on. Let's just get it over with.”
“We can’t leave the ranch.”
“What did we eat yesterday? We gotta eat.”
“I can’t be seen in public.”
“Public? It’s a remote little store.”
“What about the customers?”
“Why on earth think about them?”
“Because I am,” Doris replied angrily.
“We go straight there and back. In and out.”
Their mission: go buy food and supplies. Glen happened to know of a country store about thirty miles inland. If they followed quiet country roads surely the trip would go without a hitch. Why the hell shouldn’t it? But what if leaving the ranch broke the protective spell it cast? Glen half-believed that to be possible and guessed Doris did as well. Unforeseen hazards awaited them out on the road. Fate messing around with them, cursed bad luck.
“Anyway, you stay in the car the whole time,” he said.
“In the open—I always get spotted.”
All that gorgeous hair, Glen thought. “I’ll park out of the way.”
“Nothing helps. It never does.”
“Everything will work out fine. You've got me.”
“Out there, there are dangers.”
“It’s the last of the Ma and Pa corner stores. It’s perfect.”
“I haven't got the right clothes.”
“Doris, I think you're stalling.”
“People will notice and then …”
“Nobody’ll be looking for us or at us.”
“I need to go back to my place for something to wear.”
“You'll be in the car. Nobody'll see what you've got on.”
But as they walked out to the car, Glen fell prey to his own gnawing apprehension. Gripping the steering wheel, he pictured a police car barreling down the driveway the very moment he drove up. Christ! Always the same fucking patrol car of his imagination.
Also, police would be waiting to ambush them in the bushes and, beyond that, patrol cars would block both sides of the road. Uniformed men armed with rifles manned the barriers.
Glen pumped the gas and climbed the incline. Here was where it would happen: when he got out of the car to unlock the chain-link gate. Guns drawn, not taking any chances—the law.
But the road had never been quieter.
Chapter 27
From where he lay beneath the bedding, Glen looked out through the living room's drape-enshrined windows. The pool house and swimming pool, and the rest of the flat grass yard, were just visible in the rising dawn. In the fireplace, the embers had gone unfed too long but he wasn’t about to tend to them now—thank God for the pallet of firewood left behind outside the back door. Stoking the fire could wait until after eating breakfast.
Doris wasn't in bed with him. That was a first.
Glen got up out of bed and entered the kitchen. The bolt-action rifle lay across the width of the kitchen table. And next to its barrel a surprise awaited him: a box of .22 LR shells, the caliber written in bold red lettering. Doris had seated herself there and was in the middle of spreading blackberry jam on a slice of bread. She didn’t brighten at the sight of him. Didn’t greet him warmly like she always did. What are you thinking, Doris, that I'm not thinking yet?
The morning light hadn’t yet reached far enough through the windows to illuminate Doris's face; in the near-dark, she quietly harbored emotions and thoughts both unknown and possibly unwelcome. Glen took a chair opposite her and picked up the plastic butter knife.
“It’s pretty cold in here. I’ll start the fire in a minute, okay?” But when Doris didn't respond, Glen knew something was brewing. “Hey, did you sleep all right?”
Doris wasn't talking, which was how she communicated sometimes—but were they thinking the same thing? Had to be, judging from the gravity of the mood now.
The existence of a gun with bullets. It gave them a means to protect themselves but at a cost: more bloodshed—the blood of whoever showed up to stand in their way. To Glen, the idea of shooting some stranger seemed at the same time faraway and improbable, as well as terribly frightening and repugnant, in spite of what had happened before coming out to the ranch and everything they had done—murdering Russell and Martha. Glen would not believe he and Doris had sunk to the level of casual killers. No way.
His imagination began to run wild—aiming the rifle out a shattered window a
nd firing at a policeman in the yard. That could happen one of these days, when the police came to check the ranch as an inevitable part of their investigation. The necessity of shooting at someone might arise tomorrow or even today. But Glen honestly couldn't see himself pulling the trigger, not under any circumstances. Not even out of desperation, in order to safeguard their freedom.
For Doris, though, it would be different. No arrest, no prison ever—Glen acknowledged that, given her past, she was right to see things that way. How could she ever go back to being locked up again? After thinking she had left that nightmare behind her for good.
“Where did you find the bullets?”
Doris nodded towards the kitchen counter. One of the drawers there remained partially open. “Of course, hidden in plain sight. In the most likely place,” Glen said.
“We're not hurting anyone.”
Glen nodded. “Okay. That's a relief.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“I agree with you.”
But the ranch wasn’t safe. Once the police put two and two together, it would become the most obvious place to start searching for them. Had Doris given that any consideration?
“If that’s our decision, it's even more important we leave now,” Glen said. “In order to avoid a confrontation with police, we have to stay on the move.”
Doris didn’t speak. That suggested discord.
“Don't you think so?”
“Glen, I can’t leave.”
“There's no other choice.”
“No, I choose here.”
“Think about it, okay? Even in the best case scenario, and the police somehow overlook the ranch, we’ll have to leave it sooner or later. Whether we go right now or three weeks down the road—or after three months.”
“I can’t go anywhere else.”
“You and I can't afford to be unreasonable right now.”
“But I have my reasons.”
“Okay, I know you do. Look, if we leave now, there’s a chance we’ll find somewhere else we like. Where we can stay out of sight a lot longer without worrying.”
“It’s all the same out there.”
“Come on, be positive. We have enough money to go somewhere far away, even across the border. There is bound to be other places.”
“There’s nothing.”
Glen decided to backtrack and be extra clear. “If we stay, I foresee situations where we might have to shoot someone in order not to get caught—that is, first arrested, then separated and put in prison for a very long time. Running is the only chance we have, something we'll have to do sooner or later, anyway. Can't you see that?”
“We’ll throw the bullets away.”
“You just want to wait for the police to arrive?”
“I’ve got to stay.”
“Getting caught or running,” Glen said. “That's what we're really deciding between.” He took Doris's hand in his, hoping she would look up.
“No,” she replied, without the eye contact. “Here's where it ends.”
Finally, Glen understood. “You’re not being sensible,” he said—making that decision solely for herself. Fuck! “And what about me, Doris? Don't I have a say?”
“I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”
“We’re not talking about anybody’s fault.”
“Glen, I don’t—”
“Do you know what you’re asking?” Glen grew bitter—Doris was selfish, morbid, she wasn't thinking that it was the two of them. “Do you know what you’re asking?” he repeated.
“Here. Better here.”
“Am I understanding you?”
“I’ll do it myself,” she replied.
“All by yourself”—this is fucking unbelievable.
“I’ve planned to all along.”
“You never said anything.”
“I couldn't, Glen. We've been happy.”
Glen glared at the top of Doris's head. She refused to address him face to face. “I guess all this time I've been—I've been spending my time with a dead woman. Somebody already dead.”
Doris lay her head on her arm. Glen kept her hand.
“Fine, fine,” he said. “How many should we keep?”
He extracted three cartridges from the box and stood them in a row on the tabletop. At the back door, he hurled the rest of the bullets out into the woods: one, two, three fistfuls pelting the leaves and branches, sounding like so many tiny pebbles. A couple of bullets had fallen out of his hand; he picked them up off the rotting doormat and flung them far into the trees as well.
Bringing the weapon with him, Glen took a seat in the armchair beside the fireplace. He slid back the bolt and thumbed the three bullets into the clip. The next time he drew the bolt, the gun would be ready to fire. He would have to keep the gun close from this moment onward.
And her too: never let her out of his sight.
Never let Doris out of the gunsights.
“Glen, I’d never ask—”
“But that’s what you’re doing.”
Chapter 28
Tufted clouds braided the sky above the steel-wool peaks. Roadside barnyards and fields checkered the middle distance. In the dream—Glen relieved to be home, in his snug bedroom, gazing out the window. The incident in town lingered behind him, at the other end of a long, umbilical country road. But what he had witnessed made him want to stay out of sight.
The little blonde girl had stood out on the small town sidewalk, conspicuously abandoned like a stray kitten wandering the street. Glen had pushed gainst the mingling pedestrians and followed her, always two or three parked cars away. He saw how she cringed when jostled by passers-by—once, twice nearly teetering off balance—and he noticed that every half-block or so she paused to look around. But even so, the man caught her off guard.
The man cut through the crowd, hand outstretched, and for a moment relief displaced the distress of seeing a lost child. He took the girl’s hand. Sunlight brightened the scene. All was well, it seemed. Only then Glen noticed the black hat and skinny tie, the clean-shaven chin when all around them were stubbled, weather-beaten farmers: simple, honest folk. Something was awry, some evil had come—Christ! Run while you can! No one on the sidewalk noticed the crime taking place. An abduction occurring right under their noses.
There was a flutter of motion—the man trying to snatch the girl's wrists, the girl twisting her hands free—until a sharp jolt propelled her face first onto the cement. Then Glen was back home, at the farm house window. As if in response to a distant bugle call, his eyes journeyed down the dirt road towards town. But there wasn't any sign of the man in a black hat. Just a long row of telephone poles, fences, yards, and house fronts.
Glen awoke from the dream, got to his feet. He pulled on his pants, buttoned his shirt. Immediately, Doris also woke up. She stood before him.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Just for a short walk. Stay here.”
“It’s still dark though.”
“It’s early morning.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll be right outside.”
He needed time to himself. Right now, he needed to be on his own. He yearned to jump in the car and just peel off. Leave this woman to fend for herself. What right did she have to drag him down into the abyss too? He wanted to think only about himself.
“I’m coming,” Doris said.
“I’m not going far. Around here, that’s all.”
“Wait till I get dressed.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“No, I’m going with you.”
Glen cursed under his breath, at the same time regretting the anger he now felt—and how much was Doris picking up on? A lot and that was a shame.
He watched as his lover scanned the floor for her sweater, the room just bright enough to reveal the creased folds of her paunch. Doris struck him as obscene. Overweight, disappointing. It occurred to him that the only bone visible in her entire body w
as the ridge of her nose.
“I’m not waiting,” he said.
“No, here I am.”
“It’ll be cold.”
“Aren’t you taking the gun?”
“Yes, yes,” he snapped. Police waiting in the bushes. Police then breaking into the open. What am I suppose to do then? Jesus! The thought!
Once outside, he strode ahead—no holding hands for now. To his relief, Doris didn’t insist on walking abreast; she settled into a pace that opened a gap between them. But if police suddenly stepped out of the woods Glen would still be able to hit her with a quick shot. Spinning around and pulling the trigger, gunsights fixed on her heart. She made an easy target—the broad side of a barn. But shoot her? He wouldn’t! Never!
Never lose sight of her. Keep her in view. Christ! Doris was expecting a lot besides what she'd already driven him do—do with his own two hands, actions condemning him forever. And all that had just been for starters, it turned out. This woman cared only about herself—was that love? No, it was one person manipulating someone else. The perennial sucker, him.
Doris’s naked body materialized in Glen’s mind. She was laid out on a polished steel autopsy bed, a voluptuous, pasty-skinned cadaver. Her breasts two handbags of doughy flab. That was what she wanted more than anything? God! That was tantamount to walking out on him for good. It was the same thing as someone jilting their lover and walking out the door for good. Where did it leave him? But she didn’t give a damn.
As they skirted the woods, the pastureland came into view—the soggy ground, a chilly breeze slithering over the uneven terrain. Glen felt the rain now, a sort of heavy drizzle. So many rain coats and ponchos back in the house, yet he had come out without so much as a hat to cover his head. His lover, instead, had layers on; she resembled a snow man. But then, Doris knew how to take care of herself. In any situation, anywhere. She did whatever the hell she thought necessary and was even capable of—Christ! she was the real danger, not the police. Flick that switch inside her head and that was it, you were done. A dead man.