The Best Part: Short Story (3 page)

“Chet,” Danny says. “You probably better let her go.”

Chet laughs, a dry heaving sound, which makes him cough. “Don’t worry, Danny. I’ll share.”

“No, nobody is going to share.”

The dry laugh again, this time more like a cackle, and Danny remembers the first time he heard that laugh. Chet had been up on the bridge, his hands above his head, the wind blowing back his hair. “You people think I’m crazy. Maybe that’s right, but at least I’m doing what the fuck I want to do.” Then he went into the laugh, and it was a high, keening sound in the night, a signal to fly.

Which he did.

Danny breathes deep, filling his lungs with air, attuned to his chest expanding, trying to find a level of calm he does not yet feel, but he knows is there somewhere.

“Chet,” he says. “You ever been to prison?”

“Juvie, but that doesn’t count.” He’s running the blade over the lady’s cheek, almost cutting the flesh, but not quite.

“I’ve been,” Danny says.

“Did they fuck you in the ass?”

“Yeah, they did it all. But after a while, you learn how to avoid that kind of stuff. You look in people’s eyes, you know? You see the ones who are capable and the ones who aren’t.” Where is he going with this?

Chet nods. “Oh, I know. I see shit all the time in people’s eyes. Mostly fear.” He glances at the woman, as if to punctuate his point. “But I wonder, Danny-Boy. What do you see? What do you see when you look right here in these peepers?” He tilts his head and opens his eyes even wider, until they look like they might pop right out of his head. “Ever see anything like this in goddamn prison? Go on and tell me the truth.”

Danny hesitates. What can he say? He takes a step closer, his hands extended, as if he means to touch Chet, but why would he do that? He stops short, holding his hands in front of him, trying to steady Chet without touching him, trying to make the world stop quavering without actually grabbing it. “The truth is,” he begins, “your eyes aren’t like anybody else’s. You might be afraid of something, but I don’t know what it is. When I see your eyes, it’s like looking in a mirror. All I can see is myself.” Danny stops suddenly, realizing he has gone too far.

Chet leans forward, the box cutter still pressed against the woman’s face. “Go on. When you see yourself, what do you look like?”

“Scared. Confused. I think those two are the same sometimes. How do you jump from the bridge like you do?”

The woman whimpers, but Danny has almost forgotten her. Chet is stroking her hair with one hand, holding the box cutter tight to her neck with the other. “The bridge? Shit, I could ask you the same kind of question. How do you go to a fucking job? How do you let somebody tell you what to do? The bridge is as easy as moving my feet. And then I fly. You ever tried it?”

“No,” Danny says. “Never.”

“It’s fucking beautiful. That time in the air is the only time I don’t feel like nothing can touch me. It’s the very fucking best part of my life, man. And then I hit and just want to do it all over again.” He shakes his head, remembering. “What’s prison like?”

“It’s regular. You know what’s coming. Boring.”

“I couldn’t take that shit.”

Danny says nothing. He thinks the situation over. Chet hasn’t cut her yet. He hasn’t raped her. They’re talking, just having a conversation. If he can say the right thing, he might be able to convince Chet to let her go, to put the box cutter down. Then the woman goes for her mace. Her purse is still around her shoulder, and she reaches with one hand into the purse.

Chet reacts more quickly than Danny would have. He slides the razor across her face, cutting through her cheek, exposing tender white flesh that quickly disappears under the free flowing blood. With his other hand, he knocks the mace away. It rolls across the hardwoods into the foyer. He shoves her to the floor. She’s screaming now. But it’s actually good, he’s let go of her, and she’s going to live. Maybe it’s over. Then Danny realizes what Chet means to do.

He doesn’t even have to unbuckle his pants. He just shimmies his hips and they slide down to his knees. Danny looks away but hears the box cutter clatter against the far wall as Chet tosses it away. He tries to ignore the sounds of Chet working himself up—the grunting, the rubbing, the deep moan as he spills his seed all over the floor, but these things are impossible to ignore.

“This,” Chet groans, “is what I think of you and this fucking house, bitch.”

Danny turns back around. Chet has his pants around his knees, one hand still absentmindedly working his softening penis, the other hand useless at his side. His head is down, and the eyes, the same ones that seemed so foreign and unreadable just a few seconds ago, now look wounded, and amazingly, Danny sees a glimpse, just a flash really, of the scared little boy Chet used to be.

And strangest of all, that flash of insight breaks Danny’s heart.

Chet looks up suddenly, catching Danny watching him. “Don’t you fucking dare feel sorry for me.”

Danny lifts his hands, a gesture of surrender.

But it’s too late. Somehow, Chet sees him. In one instant, Chet has taken Danny’s measure and he knows. Or maybe he always knew, maybe everybody knows. Maybe it’s written all over Danny like a tattoo.

“You want to go back to prison, don’t you?” Chet’s grinning savagely now, as he walks over to retrieve the box cutter.

The woman has scooched across the floor, almost to the front door now. Danny nods her on. Hurry, he wants to say, get off your ass and get out of here.

Sirens whine in the distance. Probably out on the highway, heading this way. She really did call the police.

“Here,” Chet says and Danny turns to see the box cutter flying at him.

He catches it and looks at the blood already congealing on the orange casing.

“Police are on the way. You want to go back, Danny-boy? Well, then do some damage.”

The sirens are closer.

Danny looks at the woman. She’s so afraid. He doesn’t blame her. There’s no end to it out here, the fear, the confusion, the wild ass world that keeps coming at you no matter how much you might need a break.

Danny’s afraid too. He takes a deep breath and imagines a canvas, unblemished and clean. He’s sitting in front of it, his pencils laid out neatly, ready to make something that matters. Then he picks one up and he presses down.

It breaks.

Outside, the police car pulls up to the front of the house. The fat fuck—apparently, he does come home for lunch sometimes—is standing in his yard, trying to look tough, like
look at me, I’ll help out, bust some heads or something
.

A policeman gets out of the car and begins walking toward the house.

Fat fuck calls out to him. Policeman turns around. Fat fuck is pointing at the van, shaking his head, and moving his fat fuck mouth.

“Go on,” Chet says. “Cut somebody. It’s like flying, the best part.”

Two days later, Danny and Truck are throwing horseshoes in the early evening. The light still lingers but the air is cooled. The yard is shady and crickets buzz from the hidden places.

“Nice one,” Truck says.

Danny says nothing and goes to retrieve the horseshoes.

He comes back and hands them to Truck.

Truck takes them, makes like he is going to throw one and then stops, putting them down on the grass.

“They got Chet.”

Danny nods, wishing Truck wouldn’t talk. Why ruin the silence?

“Pulled his ass out of bed. I heard from his sister that he went apeshit. Took like five cops to hold him down. I heard they beat the absolute fuck out of him. Heard he took a night stick to the eye that near about blinded him.”

Danny picks up a horseshoe, weighs it, lets it fly. Wide right.

“What happened in there?”

Danny doesn’t know where to begin, so he shrugs.

“Lady must have described him pretty well.”

“Must have.”

“You ain’t worried she’ll make you too?”

Danny shrugs again. He can’t decide what would be worse, going back to prison or living out here where he is always falling, speeding toward the next crash. He has decided one thing since leaving out the back window with Chet still telling him it wasn’t too late to find out about the best parts of life. He’s going to leave this place. If he’s going to fuck up, it won’t be here anymore. He hasn’t told Mom yet, but he plans on leaving tonight after she gets off work. She’ll ask him where he’s going and he’ll tell her he doesn’t know, which will be the truth.

“I thought he was going to kill her,” he says. “Rape her.”

Truck shrugged. “You can’t never tell with Chet.”

Just then, a car turns off the highway and onto the dirt road about a half-mile away.

Danny ignores it. Tosses another horseshoe.

Wide right again. Shit.

One more. He picks this one up, feeling it perfect and solid in his hand. He can make it count. One more chance. If he concentrates, throws it just right, it’ll be dead on. Surefire? No, not surefire. But a good chance. That’s all he’s ever asked for.

Truck whistles low and soft. “You see what’s coming down the road there? Shit. I’m gone. You got any sense, you’ll head for the woods too.”

But Danny isn’t listening. Instead, he’s focused on the little pole in front of him, his arm already in motion.

He lets it go.

John Mantooth is an award-winning author whose short stories have been recognized in numerous year’s best anthologies. His short fiction has been published in
Fantasy Magazine
,
Crime Factory
,
Thuglit
, and the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology,
Haunted Legends
(Tor, 2010), among others.

Danny Evarts is an illustrator, editor and graphic designer, and currently holds down the role of Art Director and Technical Editor for Shroud Publishing. He has been attempting to perfect his obsession with layout and design since the mid-1980s. Danny abandoned a career in journalistic and fiction writing in the early ’90s as he came to realize that his visions were better suited to illustration, first for underground magazines and mini-comics. He soon fell in love with relief printmaking, and after a brief stint as a designer in the music industry, his works—most often original prints made through carving into wood or linoleum—now pepper the pages of books and magazines. He is also the illustrator of the Unchildren’s Book
It's Okay to be a Zombie
, and is fomenting further adventures in this series alongside many other projects. Danny lives with his partner in the Maine woods, where they spend most of their time working on their property and fleeing from irate wildlife.