Seven Deadly Pleasures (29 page)

"Come, Lucy, come," I said, suddenly hating myself for having let my pet roam for her entire life as a wild child. She was never the type to sit or to heel. She had not been taught to obey like my inferior and now it was going to kill her.

"No, Lucy," Kyle said. "Come to me, little honey-bunny, come to me."

His eyes darted back and forth between me and my dog. Lucy cocked her head and eyed us both in turn. She had moved off from Kyle, but had not yet committed to me. Her tail was wagging. She thought it was a game.

For a moment the three of us held our positions at the rim of the abyss, Kyle at due west, myself claiming south, and Lucy at dead east.

Kyle jumped for me. I ran to meet him head-on. I ducked under the raised bucket of the Bobcat and it cost me a second. Kyle was coming hard. I passed under the steel tub and put on a burst of speed. He matched it, and we both closed in with such determination Lucy became a temporary afterthought.

We rammed each other chest to chest, and while his momentum was a bit stronger, backing me up two steps on impact, my grip around his shoulders was firm. I bear-hugged him and tried to throw my feet, to bring us to the ground. I would have been stronger there. He reared back and kept us standing. I clapped his ears hard and pushed off. Our hands slapped out and gripped at the shoulders of the other. Heads buried in the crooks of necks as we grunted and pushed and tried to gain superior holds. The footing was bad. We were atop a small spread of rocks and the sound of heels raking across stone seemed to fill up the world.

He was strong. His biceps were iron.

I was desperate, my limbs slippery and quick.

He tried to shoot his arm under to clamp onto my shoulder blade. I countered by flapping down my elbow like a chicken wing and pinning his hand in my armpit. Our heads were mashed ear to ear and locked there by pressing fingers. I was holding my own.

He yanked loose the hand that was trapped and got a palm flat to my collar bone. He dug in and pushed, shifting me a quarter turn and a full step backward. I tried to plant my sneaker flat and it slid farther back along the rocks. Then suddenly it was not the whole sneaker on the ground. It had become just an arch and a toe. I was at the very edge of the pit and Kyle had almost succeeded in pushing me over. Loose pebbles cascaded down into the void.

I suckered him.

I pushed as hard as I could, gained back two inches, then released all my pressure. He came in to me hard. I nimbly leapt to the side, a half-inch to spare from the drop, put my hand on the back of his neck in passing, and helped him right into the motion he initiated with a hard shove. He took a header into the hole. I heard him swear and hit the dirt we had thrown in there. It hadn't been a long fall. We had filled it up almost all the way, and he would be back out of there almost as fast as he went in.

I turned to make a run for Lucy. I did not know exactly where she was, but I was pretty sure she would still be at the hole somewhere. The fight had only gone on for a few seconds and I didn't think she would have wandered yet to go on a sniffing tour. I saw her up by the edge of the rooted path, and when I ran to get her I stepped on the business end of a square-mouthed shovel. The thick wooden handle snapped up and I saw it snapping up, just not fast enough to avoid it altogether. I jerked my head to the side and it whacked me just below the hollow of my throat on an angle. I didn't want it to stop to me, I
willed
it not to slow me up, but it put me down to a knee. I saw red and black stars dance in front of my eyes, and a wave of dizziness threatened to drop me the rest of the way. I shook my head hard. It cleared. I turned.

Ten feet back, Kyle's fingers came over the lip. Then a dirty face, a palm placed flat, an elbow and an arm propped to make a perpendicular angle, a foot sideways and ankle down, and a knee pushing into the dirt. I grabbed the shovel and ran at him. I was holding the thing like a soldier going through a swamp, flat across a bit above chest level, one set of knuckles out, one set in, but I was not moving slowly like a soldier pushing his knees through the muck. I was charging as if chasing the American flag down a hill in a blitz.

It happened fast.

Kyle gained his feet and I was on him. He was surprised. He threw up his hands and grabbed the shovel right before it blasted him in the face. His feet had no choice but to mimic mine and I ran him backward. A bicycle built for two, our feet in perfect synchronization with Kyle facing the wrong way. The Bobcat and its bucket filled with crushed stone came up behind us and when Kyle struck into it there were three distinct sounds that matched up with three graphic visuals. There was a rip, and Kyle's eye's jerked open to the point where you could see the nests of bright red veins along the watery rims. There was a light crunch as the bar of the shovel came in contact with his already flattened nose, and a piece of the bridge tore through the skin between his red, watery eyes. And finally, there was that sound that really has no fitting name, the flat and final sound known mostly to butchers, that occurs when something sharp at the edge runs through living matter. The front of Kyle's throat bulged, the foreign shape pushing out the skin like a book shoved into the bottom of a trash bag. The last digging tooth on the right side of the bucket had impaled him straight through from the back of the neck. Everything stopped. Just like that.

I was amazed that I did not feel even the slightest bit sorry. I dropped the shovel.

He froze there like a doll. His mouth was a forced grin baring teeth in an eerily similar copy of the shape the tine made against the outer surface of his neck. I looked into his eyes for a moment. Blind as stones. I marveled for just a moment more about how something round like an eyeball could look so flat. Then I moved around behind him, put my palm against the back of his sweaty head, and pushed.

He went over in a rumpling cascade of elbows, knees, and head lolling around like a balloon on a stick. His blood streaked along the tine, marbled, and beaded up. I had the vague impression that these claws would have been too blunt for this kind of event, and most of them actually were. This one, however, must have hit a big stone or two in prior journeys, because it was turned up to a sharp little edge in the middle and nicked worse in a divot on the outer corner that curled to a point like the end of a knife.

I was numb now. I was thinking in a far-off way, but not so far-off, that if the police felt their find was a layer deep there would be no reason to dig into the same hole twice. Could I actually explain away Kyle? Maybe. He tried to kill my dog, that fucker. And the woman? Never in a million years. I picked up the shovel and whacked the chain holding up the bucket. Dust and dried dirt gusted back in a small cloud and there was a "ping" when the broken link popped free. The taut lengths on both sides snapped and the dozer's bucket came down. It dumped the load of rocks over Kyle in a flat roar.

It didn't get all of him. An ear, two fingers, and the cuff on one of the legs of his jeans protruded. I jumped down into the hole. It had to look like I panicked and tried to hide the body. There had to be something to
find.
I kicked rocks over him and smoothed the surface over one last time with my toe.

"Bye, Kyle," I said.

I climbed out and looked for Lucy. She was gone. I had nothing left now but Mother, my "story," and dumb purpose. I trudged up the rooted path to the jobsite to retrieve our bikes, because that is what Jimmy Raybeck would do if he killed his best friend for trying to kill his dog and he wanted to cover it up.

The last lap was a tough walk, but I did it. Sometimes I wheeled Kyle's bike and simply let my old Huffy crash down the embankments like a wild marionette. At other times I couldn't help but toss Kyle's Schwinn, but I tried to baby it when I could. He had a sissy bar that I didn't care about and extended forks that I cared very much about. They were fragile, and I didn't want to lose the front wheel. Dragging the bike up the steep parts would be a lot harder that rolling it.

It was cold at the edge of my lawn even though it was hot and I was sweating. With the jobsite behind and my fate out in front it felt cold in the space between nightmares. I let Kyle's bike drop into the thick grove of weeds and pushed forward.

The sun was finally on its last legs, deep into the clouds above the horizon and the back yard was vacant. Garden in a rough square to the right of the patio. Moldy birdbath with the stone dish set unevenly to the left. Empty leash. A harsh light from the kitchen window.

I let the Huffy fall to the grass. I walked forward and thought that in another life Mother would have scolded her boy for not putting what was his into the garage.

I opened the screen door to the kitchen.

Bulb light washed over me in an angry glare. The house smelt of burnt broccoli. The door clapped shut behind me and for the moment, Mother's back remained turned. She was reaching up for something in the cabinet over the utensil drawer and struggling with the weight it put on her wrist. Yellow Pages. She hugged it in and then said to the wall,

"Young man, you had better have a damned good explanation for—"

She turned at the neck and her voice died off. She looked at me over her shoulder and her eyes went wide.

"Jimmy?" A long strand of hair fell across her face and she ignored it. She finished her turn in slow motion.

"Mom," I said.

"Mom, I just killed a boy."

9.

I wanted to burst into tears but I was empty. I wanted my old life back, but it was gone. My mother and I stared at each other like strangers. Jimmy Raybeck didn't live here anymore.

I wanted something to snap, rip loose, or strike out, but that was not Mother's way. She reached out and set the phone book on the counter. I was wild inside with the sluggishness of it. The air was bright and hot. I looked away and took a dry swallow.

There were scuff marks on the floor by the kitchen table, black abrasions marred in by the legs of my chair as I had so often pushed back too fast after being excused.

My chair.

No longer mine.

I had a yellow report card displayed on the refrigerator. It was suspended by a magnet shaped like the democratic donkey and labeled with five A's and a C+ in math. In red pen my homeroom monitor (and first-period English teacher) Mrs. Fulviotti, had written, "Jimmy is verbal in class discussions and with more study, shows great promise."

But I was "Jimmy" no longer. I was the thing in the kitchen.

"Mom," I said.

"Who?" she said. "Tell me who."

"Kyle Skinner." My voice sounded feminine and false. Mom folded her arms as if chasing a chill.

"Where? Where did it happen?"

I shifted and tried to find a place for my hands. I had moved a step forward and Mom put her palm up like a stop sign.

"Where did it happen? Answer me."

"Through the back woods, at the Route 79 jobsite. By the overpass, but Mom, I—"

The stop sign flashed up again and she quickly whipped it back into the fold-pattern above her stomach.

"How did you do it?"

I wracked my brain in an effort to come up with the right little spell for her, the psychological reasons as to why I killed Kyle, of how on earth I possibly
could
have done it. Clearly my mother was past the point where lingering pauses were tolerated.

"How, Jimmy? It's a simple question. Tell me. Knife? Stick?"

"I pushed him. He banged his head against the metal tooth of a small bulldozer and it went through his neck. Then I was so scared I covered him up with rocks."

"You pushed him."

"Yes."

"You—"

"He was going to kill Lucy! I had to!" My hands were out in the begging posture, like Oliver asking for more. I snapped them back, but not before my mother had seen them. Her eyes snapped back to mine and for just a moment they locked there as if on a wire. Had she noticed the blisters? I could not be sure. I had not done an inspection lately, yet had a dim recollection of layers and splotches of dirt soiled and spotted all over my palms and fingers. There was another quick second then, during which she looked at me, all of me, not just with a gaze leveled at the eyes, but more, for lack of a better word,
comprehensively.

I could guess that a lot was decided in those two seconds, but I can't be sure
anything
was actually weighed or decided. As far as implications or accusations or suspicions you might have, I go on official record here stating that my mother, Judith Raybeck, said absolutely nothing in reference to further implications, accusations, or suspicions.

What she did was spring into action.

She had let down her hair and rolled it into a knotted lock between the shoulders. Battle guise. The place was sealed, doors latched, shades pulled, and Mother had not so much as let me twitch during the preparations. She had yanked open drawers to crash around the silverware in their plastic tubs and then rooted through the utility cabinet. By the time she found that old pair of dishwashing gloves her ears had gone an angry red. I tried not to wince when those scum-hardened Johnson & Johnsons imitated big yellow spiders with my mother's fingers wriggling inside. She snapped the rubbery ends down to her wrists. She bent again and reached under the sink, breathing the anger hard through her nose, never pausing until the Hefty bag made its way into the light.

Double ply. Mother only bought the best.

Close before me she let the bag unfold and cascade down to its full length. There was a slippery gnawing when she fingered for the opening, a loud
whack
when she whipped it down to fill it with air, and a look of divine wrath as she loomed above me like a great white shark in a red mommy wig.