“I wish I’d had me a squirrel gun like this when I was a boy,” the clerk said as he got the rifle, two boxes of ammunition, and a small telescopic sight ready to go. “Nothin’ better than bein’ out in the woods doin’ a little shootin’.”
“That’s the truth. Got woods all around where we live, too. And plenty of squirrels, I’m tellin’ you.” Cory’s father, whose name was Lewis Peterson, began to write out a check for the amount. He had the work-roughened hands of a carpenter. “Yeah, I believe a ten-year-old fella can handle a rifle that size, don’t you?”
“Yessir, it’s a beauty.” The clerk copied down the necessary information and filed the form in a little metal box behind the counter. When the Buckaroo was slid into its rifle case and wrapped up, the gun was passed across the counter to Lewis Peterson. The clerk said, “There you go. Hope your boy has a happy birthday.”
Peterson put the package under his arm, the receipt in full view for the security guard up front to see, and he walked out of the K-Mart into the misting afternoon rain. Cory was going to be jumping up and down on Saturday, he knew. The boy had wanted a gun of his own for some time, and this little rifle was just the thing for him. A good starter rifle.
He got in his pickup truck, a shotgun in its rack across the back window. He started the engine and turned on the windshield wipers, and he drove home feeling proud and good, his son’s birthday present cradled on the seat beside him.
2
A Careful Shopper
THE BIG WOMAN IN the Burger King uniform pushed a cart along the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket. She was at the Mableton Shopping Center about a quarter mile from her apartment. On her blouse she wore a yellow Smiley Face button. Her hair, shiny with smoke and grease from the grills, hung loosely around her shoulders. Her face was composed and calm, without expression. She picked out cans of soup, corned beef hash, and vegetables. At the frozen food section she chose a few TV dinners and a box of Weight Watchers chocolate fudge bars. She moved methodically and carefully, as if powered by a tense inner spring. She had to stop for a moment and breathe the chill air where the meat was kept, because she had the sensation that the store’s air was too thick for her lungs. She smelled the blood of fresh slaughters.
Then Mary Terror went on, a careful shopper who checked prices and ingredients. Foods could be full of poisons. She avoided boxes with scraped sides or cans that had been dented. Every once in a while she paused to look over her shoulder and gauge who might be following her. The FBI bastards wore masks of human skin that they could peel on and off, and they could make themselves look young or old, fat or skinny, tall or short. They were lurking everywhere, like cockroaches in a filthy house.
But she didn’t think she was being followed today. Sometimes the back of her neck tingled and goose bumps rose on her arms, and it was then she knew that the pigs were near. Today, though, there were only housewives and a couple of farmer types buying groceries. She checked their shoes. The pigs always wore shined shoes. Her alarm system was silent. Still, you never knew, and that was why she had a Compact Off-Duty Police pistol in the bottom of her purse that weighed twenty-eight ounces and packed four .357 Magnum bullets. She stopped by the wine section and picked a cheap bottle of sangria. Then it was on to select a bag of pretzels and a box of Ritz crackers. The next stop was an aisle over, where the jars of baby food were.
Mary pushed her cart around the corner, and before her was a mother with her baby. The woman—a girl, really, maybe seventeen or eighteen—had her child strapped into a bassinet in her cart. She had red hair and freckles, and the baby had a little shock of pale red hair, too. The child, dressed in a lime-green jump suit, sucked on a pacifier and stared out at the world through large blue eyes, hands and feet at war with each other. The mother, who wore a pink sweater and bluejeans, was choosing some baby food from the Gerbers shelf. That was also Mary’s preferred brand.
Mary guided her cart in close and the young mother said, “Scuse me,” and backed her cart off a few feet. Mary pretended to be searching for a certain food, but she was watching the red-haired infant. The girl caught her looking, and Mary snapped on a smile. “What a pretty baby,” she said. She offered her hand into the cart, and the baby grasped her index finger.
“Thanks.” The girl returned the smile, but uncertainly.
“Babies are a joy, aren’t they?” Mary asked. She’d already checked the girl’s shoes: scuffed-up sneakers. The child’s fingers clenched and unclenched Mary’s finger.
“Yes’m, I reckon they are. ’Course, when you got a kid, that’s it, ain’t it?”
“What’s it?” Mary lifted her eyebrows.
“You know. A kid takes up an awful lot of time.”
This was a child with a child, Mary thought. She could see the dark hollows under the young mother’s eyes. You don’t deserve to have a baby, Mary thought. You haven’t paid your dues. Her face kept its smile. “What’s his name?”
“Her name. She’s a she. Amanda.” The girl selected a few jars of assorted food and put them into the cart, and Mary worked her finger loose from the child’s grip. “Nice talkin’ to you.”
“My baby likes the strained pears,” Mary said, and took two jars of it off the shelf. She could feel her cheek muscles aching. “I’ve got a fine, healthy boy!”
The girl was already moving away, pushing the cart before her. Mary heard the soft wet noise of the baby sucking on her pacifier, and then the cart reached the end of the aisle and the girl turned to the right. Mary felt an urge to go after the girl, grab her by the shoulders, and make her listen. Tell her that the world was dark and full of evil, and it chewed up little red-haired baby girls. Tell her that the agents of Moloch Amerika lurked in every corner, and they could suck your soul out through your eyeballs. Tell her that you could walk through the most beautiful garden and hear the scream of the butterfly.
Careful, Mary thought. Be careful. She knew secrets that she should not share. No one at the Burger King knew about her baby, and that was for the best. She got control of herself, like the clamping down of a lid, and she chose a few more jars of various flavors, put them into the cart, and went on. Her index finger still had the heat of the infant’s touch in it.
She paused at the magazine rack. The new Rolling Stone was in. On the cover was the picture of a band of young women. The Bangles. She didn’t know their music. Rolling Stone wasn’t the same magazine it used to be, when it folded over in the middle and had articles by Hunter Thompson and drawings by that weird Steadman dude who always showed people puking up their angry guts. She could relate to those drawings of rage and bile. Now Rolling Stone was full of glossy ads, and their politics sucked the bourgeois cock. She’d seen Eric Clapton doing those beer commercials; if she had a bottle of it, she’d break it and cut his throat with the shards.
She put the Rolling Stone into her cart anyway. It was something to read, though she didn’t know the new music or the new bands. Used to be she consumed the Stone from cover to cover, when it was a rag and the heroes were still alive. They had all burned out young, and that was why they were called stars. All young and dead, and she was still alive and older. She felt cheated sometimes. She felt as if she’d missed a train that would not come again, and she was still haunting the station with an un-punched ticket.
Through the checkout line. New cashier. Acne on her cheeks. Get out the checkbook, the checks in the name of Ginger Coles. Careful, keep the gun down in the bottom of the purse. Write out the amount. Damn, buying groceries fucks up a budget! Sign it. Ginger Coles. “There you go,” she told the girl as she pushed the check and her driver’s license forward. The license showed her smiling picture, her hair combed back and cut a little shorter than it was now. She had a strong face with a straight, narrow nose and a high forehead. Depending on the light and the clothes she wore, the color of her eyes shifted from pale green to frosty gray. She watched the cashier write down her license number on the back of the check. “Place of employment?” the
girl asked, and Mary said, “United Parcel—” She stopped herself. A whirl of identities was spinning through her mind, like a little universe. No, not United Parcel Service. She’d worked there under another name from 1984 to 1986, at the shipping warehouse in Tampa. “Sorry,” she said as the cashier stared blankly at her. “That’s my old job. I’m the assistant day manager at a Burger King.”
“Oh, yeah?” The girl’s eyes showed a little interest. “Which one?”
A cold spear went through Mary’s heart. She felt her smile slip a notch. “In Norcross,” she said, which was a lie. She worked at the location on Blessingham Road, about six miles away.
“I just got this job,” the cashier said, “but the pay ain’t nothin’. You do the hirin’ and all?”
“No.” The acne might be makeup, Mary thought. The girl might not be as young or as dumb as she looked. “The manager does that.” Her hand slid partway into her purse, and she could feel the chill of the pistol’s metal with her fingertips.
“I don’t like just standin’ around. I like to be movin’. You need any help over there?”
“No. We’ve got all the help we need.”
The girl shrugged. “Well, maybe I’ll come in and fill out an application anyway. You get free burgers there, don’t you?”
Mary sensed it. Someone coming up behind her. She heard a soft noise, like a gun coming out of an oiled leather holster, and her breath snagged.
She whirled around, her hand on the pistol’s grip down in her purse, and she was a second away from drawing it when the red-haired young mother stopped her cart with the baby in it. The infant was still sucking wetly on the pacifier, eyes roaming back and forth.
“You okay?” the cashier asked. “Lady?”
The smile had left Mary Terror’s face. For a small space of time the young mother caught a glimpse of something that made her pull the cart back and instinctively put her hand on her infant’s chest in a protective gesture. What was standing before her she couldn’t exactly say, because the sight was gone too soon, but she was left with the memory of the big woman’s teeth clenched together and a pair of slitted eyes as green as a cat’s. For those few stretching seconds the woman seemed to tower over her, and something cold came out of the big woman’s skin like winter’s mist.
Then it was over, as fast as a fingersnap. The clenched teeth and the slitted eyes were gone, and Mary Terror’s face was bland and soft.
“Lady?” the cashier said.
“Such a pretty baby,” Mary told the young mother, who didn’t yet recognize what she was feeling as fear. Mary’s gaze quickly scanned the area around the checkouts. She had to get out of there, and quickly. “I’m fine,” she said to the cashier. “Am I ready?”
“Yeah. One sec and I’ll get you sacked.” The groceries went into two sacks. This was the dangerous time, Mary was thinking. If they were going to come after her, it would be when she had the groceries in her arms. She put away her license and hooked her purse over her shoulder. She left it unzipped, so she could get at the pistol in a hurry.
“My name’s Toni,” the cashier said. “Maybe I’ll come in and fill out an application.”
If she ever saw this girl again, Mary thought, she would kill her. From now on she would go to the Food Giant across the highway. She took the sacks in her arms and headed for the exit. A man in a camouflage jacket, the kind deer hunters wore, was walking across the parking lot in the nasty rain. Mary watched him carefully as she hurried to her pickup truck, but he didn’t even glance at her. She put the groceries on the floorboard on the passenger side, next to the package from Art & Larry’s Toys. Underneath the dashboard was a sawed-off shotgun secured by metal clips. She got behind the wheel, locked both doors, started the engine, and drove to her apartment by a circuitous route. All the time her hands were gripped hard on the steering wheel, her eyes ticking back and forth from the rearview mirror, and she hissed between gritted teeth: “Shit! Shit! Screwed up! Goddamn screwed up!” A light sheen of sweat was on her face. She took long, deep breaths. “Hold on. Take it easy, take it easy. Nobody knows you. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody knows you.” She repeated it like a mantra, all the way to the red brick apartment building that had a trailer park on one side and a machine shop where truck engines were repaired on the other.
As Mary guided her pickup into her parking space, she saw a grizzled face peering out a window. It was the old man in the apartment next to hers. Shecklett was in his late sixties, and he rarely came out except to gather up the aluminum cans from the highway. He coughed a lot at night, too. She’d checked through the trash he’d brought out to the dumpster one night, and found an empty bottle of J. W. Dant bourbon, TV dinner trays, a Cavalier magazine with some of the ads clipped out, and pieces of a letter she’d taped together under a strong light. It was from a woman named Paula, and Mary remembered some of it: I really would like to come visit. Would that be okay? Bill says it ’s fine with him. We were talking, and we can’t understand why you don’t come out and be with us. Ought to be ashamed, living the way you do with all that money you’ve saved from the store. Don’t pretend you didn’t. I know, Mom told me, so there. Anyway, Kevin asks about his grandpap every single day.
As Mary pulled the handbrake up she saw Shecklett move away from the window, deeper into the darkness of his apartment. He watched her come and go as he watched the black woman upstairs and the young redneck couple on the other side of Mary’s apartment. She would have wondered about the shine on his shoes if he hadn’t been in the building long before Mary had moved in. Still, she didn’t like being watched, being inspected and judged. When she decided it was time to leave, she might do something about Grandpap Shecklett.
Mary picked up the two sacks of groceries and took them inside. The apartment still smelled of burned plastic. The front room, paneled with pinewood, was neat and orderly; she never used it. A lava lamp cast a blue glow, the matter inside slowly coagulating and breaking apart. It made her think of semen searching for an egg. She laid the two sacks on the kitchen’s countertop and flicked a dead roach off the scarred Formica. Then she went back out to get her new baby.
She heard the pickup’s passenger door being opened before she reached the apartment’s threshold. The door’s hinges had a high, distinctive squeak. Her heart gave a violent kick, and she felt the blood swell in her face. Shecklett! He was rummaging in the truck! My baby! she thought, and she raced out the door with long, powerful strides.
Someone was leaning into the truck’s passenger side. Mary grasped the door, slammed it against the offending body, and heard a wail of pain.
“Ow! Jesus Christ!” He came out of the truck, his eyes hazed with hurt, and his hand pressed against his side. “You tryin’ to bust my fuckin’ ribs?”
It was not Shecklett, though she was sure Shecklett was watching the drama from his window. It was Gordie Powers, who was twenty-five years old and had light brown hair that hung around his shoulders. He was as thin as a wish, his face long and gaunt, a stubble of beard on his cheeks and chin. He wore faded jeans and a flannel shirt under a battered black leather jacket decorated with metal studs. “Man!” he said. “You ’bout knocked the piss outta me!”
“I gave you a warning tap,” she said. “What’re you trying to steal?”
“Nothin’! I just drove up and saw you gettin’ your groceries out! I thought I’d bring in the other sack for you!” He stepped away from the truck with a thin-lipped sneer. “That’s what I get for bein’ a Good Samaritan, huh?”
Mary glanced to the left and saw Gordie’s silver Mazda sports car parked a few spaces away. She said, “Thanks anyway, but I’ll get it.” She picked up the package from the floorboard, and he saw the imprint ART & LARRY’S TOYS across the sack.
“What’cha gonna do?” Gordie asked. “Play games?”
Mary slammed the door and went into her apartment. Gordie followed, as she knew he would. He’d come to see her, after all. She’d placed an order last night, before Robby had been
so bad. “Smells funny in here,” Gordie commented as he closed the door and turned the latch. “You burn somethin’?”
“Yes. My dinner.” Mary took the package into her bedroom and put it into the closet. Then, out of habit, she switched on the television set and turned it to the Cable News Network. Lynne Russell was on. Mary liked Lynne Russell because she looked like a big woman. The scene changed to a view of pig cars with their blue lights flashing, and a talking head saying something about somebody getting murdered. There was blood on a stretcher-sheet and the shape of a body. The images were hypnotic, a brutal pulse of life. Sometimes Mary watched CNN for hours on end, unable and unwilling to do anything but lie in bed like a parasite feeding off the torment of other human beings. When she was flying high on LSD, the scenes became three-dimensional and pushed into the room, and that could really be a heavy trip.
She heard the rustle of a sack. Then his voice: “Hey, Ginger! How come you got all this baby food?”
An answer had come to her by the time she walked back into the kitchen. “A cat comes around sometimes. I’ve been feeding it.”
“A cat? Likes baby food? Man, I hate cats. Gimme the creeps.” Gordie’s beady brown eyes were always moving, invading private spaces. They found the crust of melted plastic on one of the oven’s burners, registered the fact, and moved on. “Got roaches,” he noticed. He walked around the kitchen as Mary put the groceries away. Gordie stopped before one of the framed magazine pictures of a smiling infant. “You got a thing about babies, huh?”
“Yes,” Mary said.
“How come you don’t have a kid, then?”
Keep the secret, Mary thought. Gordie was a mouse nibbling at a crumb between a tiger’s fangs. “Just never did.”