The Next (33 page)

The bullet hit her dead on through her breast. Her body fell to the floor.

The crack echoed eerily through the courtyard. My head started whirlpooling…

Paul put the barrel of the rifle against the skull.

Mr. Layworth’s face was splattered with his wife’s blood, and he released his grip.

Marzoli slumped down to the floor unconscious.

Paul! No! Put it down!

I stared intently into the Layworth’s apartment. Marzoli was on the floor, but still breathing. Mrs. Layworth’s white trench coat was painted with thick Pollock stripes and spots of red.

Put it down, Paul!

The bullet shot through the trailer’s darkness with a loud sharp crack.

I felt eyes staring at me. Still holding the gun, I looked around the courtyard.

The Princess stood in front of her white four-posted bed, facing me.

The Broadway Dancer held his laptop at his side, facing me.

The Beached Whale stood in front of her futon, facing me.

Schlongzilla stood naked on his three limbs, facing me.

The Couch Potato held a plate of mac and cheese, facing me.

All of us froze, suspended in disbelief.

The Little Old Man was the only one present whose deep creviced face did not turn toward me…

From the deep in the blackness in the far corner of the trailer’s living room, the lighter flicked, lighting the cigar, and we saw the deep wrinkles of his face…

I turned cold as I saw Mr. Layworth standing at his bedroom window with white-hot fury in his eyes, facing me.

Our eyes made contact.

Shit!

Graves puffed on the cigar, illuminating his face with red. His eyes met mine. His smile was broad, his teeth gleaming in the cigar’s red glow. Every hair on my body bristled and a tingly wave of fear swept from head to toe.

How the hell did he get in?

I thought I’d drifted to sleep for only two seconds, but it must have been longer. I looked over to Paul. He was fast asleep again. I shook him. Paul opened his eyes.

“Grandfather!” he screamed.

But Grandfather was not present. For the first time since we’d arrived, Grandfather had gone out for the night.

I remembered why…

After a long afternoon of shooting, we’d trampled through the brush back to the trailer. Our hunting was no longer limited to rifles. Grandfather had incorporated handguns into our regimen as well. It seemed the locked closet contained an unending assortment of firearms.

It’d taken only a couple rounds from the handguns to understand why Grandfather had saved them for after the rifles. We had to be conditioned first. Handguns were harder to handle, far more easily abused accidentally and purposefully. They implied an emotional context much more heart stopping. Rifles were for animals; handguns were for humans.

As the ducklings once again marched past Palmer’s trailer, Mama Duck paused for the first time ever. Palmer looked up from his potted zinnias to tip his hat.

And then Grandfather spoke for the first time since we’d known him.

“Poker at Hangman’s tonight. You in?”

“Yep,” Palmer responded, concealing his surprise.

That was all that was said, and we continued into our trailer.

Paul and I were stunned that we’d heard Grandfather’s voice at all, let alone knowing we’d be free from his scrutiny and discipline that evening. His voice was not gentle in any way. It was gruff, raspy, and tight. Words tortured him. Communication tortured him.

After hot dogs and beans that night, with the guns safely in the closet, the lights turned off, and all but one curtain closed, Grandfather closed the front door. The gravel crunched as he made his way to the car. We heard the car door bang shut, the engine ignite, the car crunch its way to the street, and then he was gone.

We were alone for the evening. We were free!

We both knew what our first order of business would be. We each grabbed knives from the kitchen and escaped the trailer. Even though we knew Palmer and Grandfather were not home to hear us, fear was so pervasively engrained in our instincts that we went out through the window in the bathroom in order to avoid crunching the gravel outside the front door.

Through the darkness of the woods we trampled back to the deer whose head we’d shot holes through that afternoon with handguns. We dragged the carcass back off the path to an isolated glen in the woods. Careful not to stain our clothes with even a droplet of blood, we skinned a portion of its neck and cut out a thickness of flesh the length of bacon strips. It was far from a professional job, but it could have been worse considering it was our first carving. In the beginning of that summer, the act of carving the flesh of a dead animal would have been unthinkable. But we’d been changed, and we were hungry.

Crunch.

We froze.

By now our ears were trained to recognize even the fluttering of a hummingbird in our woods. Paul and I had distinctly heard the crunching of leaves by a human in the darkness behind us. We turned and peered into the blackness.

We saw nobody.

We waited.

The minutes passed until we figured that whoever was watching us in the darkness obviously did not want to be seen. Paul finally nudged my ribs to get the hell out of there.

We dragged the deer back to the part of the woods where we’d killed it and carefully rested it such that the carved side was hidden. Then we dashed as swiftly as possible back to the trailer, hopping through the bathroom window and locking it closed behind us.

Within minutes, the smell of the sizzling meat filled the trailer, so we opened all the windows. After a summer of nothing but beans and hot dogs, the first forkful of meat was like a chocolate sundae. We let the fat of the deer slide across our lips, swallowing slowly at first, savoring the lingering mouthwatering bloody aftertaste, then devouring it with the ravenousness of wolves.

Five minutes later we’d consumed everything. We began the meticulous process of erasing our illicit activities: the pan, plates, and forks scrubbed, the counter Windexed until the Formica reflected spotlessly like a mirror, the windows shut, all but the one curtain closed, our shoes thoroughly scraped of all mud, and all the windows closed and locked. Grandfather’s training us to pay attention to detail could work against him as easily as it could for him.

We were exhausted by the time we pulled out the bed from the couch and slid under the sheet. The curtain to Graves’ trailer was left open as usual, but Graves’ light was not on. Perhaps he had joined Grandfather and Palmer for poker downtown.

We closed our eyes.

Several hours later I awoke with a start. I dreamt Paul had shaken me awake to point out our front door was open a sliver. I dreamt the sliver turned into a full inch-wide crack over the course of fifteen long minutes. I dreamt a horrible eye peered into the crack.

Was it a dream?

I looked over at the door. It was completely shut.

I looked over at Paul. He was fast asleep.

The heat in the room was stifling, and the sheet had long since been kicked to the floor, leaving our almost naked bodies exposed to the room’s blackness, stillness, and soundlessness. It had to have been a dream. I took a deep breath, turned over, and buried my head deeper into the pillow.

But if there was nothing to be alarmed about, why had I awoken?

Then I heard it.

From the darkest corner of the kitchen, the metallic click of a lighter.

Tingles ice-stormed from my scalp down to my toenails. The cigar protruded from his hardened lips, and his face glowed red, blackened with the tread marks of a life driven hard and ferociously. He leaned against the kitchen counter and smiled as he turned to face me, the gleam of his teeth flashing. I shook Paul.

Paul sprang away, crouching against the back of the couch.

He screamed, “Grandfather!”

The lighter flicked out. We were plunged in hot pitch-blackness again.

I heard an inhalation from the kitchen, and the end of the cigar glowed red, hovering in the darkness. The red glow slowly moved around the counter in the darkness and toward the wall. The curtain seemed to close on its own.

“Go away!”
I screamed aloud as I sat up.

The red glow extinguished.

Paul and I held our breaths, not knowing which direction to escape. The front door? He’d rush us easily by the time we located the doorknob, the lock, and the screen door latch all in the dark. The hallway to the bathroom window? Yes. We could lock the bathroom door which would give us enough time to heft ourselves through the window. But how do we get past Graves in order to get to the bathroom? I could feel Paul looking at me for guidance, waiting for me to cue our next move as I had in the tree, as I had at the fire, as I had for so many escapes from impending drunken paternal attacks.

Okay...Okay…

I turned around to dig my arm down between the back of the couch toward the floor where Paul had hidden our Swiss Army knives. My hand hit the carpet and padded left, then right…

They’re gone!

For the first time since we’d arrived, I’d wished Grandfather was home. Not out playing poker…poker…

I knew nothing about poker except for the games Kenny Rogers played in
The Gambler
, which I’d watched only by digging in the itchy pink insulation in the narrow attic crawl space and carving out a quarter inch hole in our parents’ bedroom ceiling to watch their television. Aside from this covert operation, television was almost completely restricted. I knew what it meant to bluff.

I took a breath, swallowed, and opened my mouth.

In as confident a voice as I could muster I said, “I’ve got a knife.”

The red cigar glow stopped ten feet away from our bed.

We held the blind faceoff for seconds.

“Bathroom,” I whispered into Paul’s ear as softly and as distinctly as possible.

Paul was crouched in fetal position against the back of the bed, frightened as a tiny cornered mouse, but as soon I grabbed his hand, his body rallied with blind bravery—no questions asked. Together, palm in palm, we rushed the cigar glow.

I approximated where his stomach would be and plowed through using my pointed elbow as a battery ram. I hit his body and felt the hard belly of a senior citizen in exceptional shape. It rebounded towards the counter, and I heard the thump of his back hit it. I tripped, hit the floor, regained my footing, and continued the dash down the hall. We entered the bathroom. I slammed the door closed, and…

There was no lock!

I’d locked the door only yesterday when I’d taken a dump. Now it was gone! But we didn’t have time to ascertain the reason. I opened the window and hefted my brother through.

Suddenly the bathroom door burst open. The light flicked on.

Paul stood outside looking in, watching Graves approach me.

“Run, Paul!” I screamed.

“No!”

“Run!” I ordered as firmly as I could before I felt a strong bony hand cuff my mouth and pull me backwards. The man somehow incapacitated my arms with his other hand and dragged me backwards back into the hall. I dug in my heels, dragging against the floor as hard as I could. Suddenly I was heaved like a rag doll into the darkness of the living room. I twisted in order to brace for whatever I would impact. The pullout bed hit my shin. I heard a snap and felt an excruciating sharp pain dart up like lightning into my skull as my shinbone splintered.

I could hardly register the pain before I was flipped over onto my back forcefully. I felt Graves mount me, pinning all four of my limbs, leaving me completely incapacitated. As much as I thrashed around, he held me tight against the thin mattress. I bucked my hips wildly until I felt my pelvis slap into his. Graves’ hardness was protruding through his pants.

“Stop,” he whispered, “Stop, or I’ll tear it off.”

Huh? Tear what off?

Then I felt his teeth surround my ear.

I froze.

I started crying.

His belly and pelvis movement softened from violent pistoning to a rolling undulation against me. I became aware of all the subtle things Graves was doing to me. His grip on my wrists was like handcuffs, but his thumbs were tenderly stroking my skin. His teeth rested threateningly on my ear, but his tongue softly probed into my ear hole. His nipples were erect, grazing across mine with the slightest friction. His breath was hot and moist and drifted from his mouth into my ear like a whisper. His lips puckered and slid to my lips. He pressed against them with a soft wet suction.

“How’s that feel?” he asked gutturally, a puff of cigar breath entering my nostrils. “Huh? Like how that feels?”

My stomach churned, just as it had when the blond boy did this to me. I became nauseous, with a knot of deer meat, hot dogs, and beans expanding upward like an inflating balloon. It occurred to me that I could escape from Graves’ pinning just as I had from the blond boy beneath the tree…

Suddenly the living room light flicked on.