Join the University of Arkansas at Monticello MFA this summer as we feature work from our recent graduates, current students, and alumni.
Our second feature is from recent UAM MFA graduate Paul Anderson. Paul He currently teaches composition for a number of colleges, which means he is living the adjunct's dream. His work has previously been featured in Cardinal Sins, The Absent Willow Review, Thunder Sandwich, and Temenos. He is also editor-in-chief for Livid Squid Literary Journal. Paul's short story collection, Model Citizens, will be published by One Wet Shoe in 2016.
AS FOR ME
It’s Boyd’s voice again: “Our eyes in blow.” Odessa laughs again and then Geoff hears the distinct screech of a credit card sliding across glass followed by an exaggerated sniff.
Geoff lets out a sigh, lifts the TV remote, and cranks the volume to ear-bleeding level.The Packers, on their best days, help Geoff to forget about Boyd’s previous two prison sentences—both for cocaine possession. And though Boyd now claims to be sober, his definition is misguided: “I’m sober four days a week,” he’d said recently, adding that he’s especially sober every Tuesday, because he has to attend an addiction support group every Tuesday night. Just recently Geoff saw Boyd flipping his “One Year Sober” chip into the air like a coin—while watching Odessa snort a line with this distant, happy look on his face.
Sometime in the third quarter, with the Pack leading Minnesota 23-7, Geoff hears stomping above him and the unmistakable sound of arguing, one voice reaching for a level of volume far above the other, and the other attempting to do the same in return. But before he can press the mute button on his TV remote to hear what Boyd and Odessa are arguing about, a terrible thumping sound startles him. He turns his head to the left to see Odessa’s topless body tumbling down the stairs, her momentum stopped by the wall at the bottom of the stairs. She hits the wall face first, her head bending awkwardly up and to the left, and rolls over onto her right side, unconscious. Geoff, seated on the sofa just a few feet away, glares wide-eyed at the sight of her bloodied face; Odessa’s nose is quite obviously broken, and blood runs from the corner ofher pink mouth, as well, collecting in a tiny crimson circle on the beige linoleum. But what really catches Geoff’s attention is Odessa’s blue eyes, those sparkling gems that drive him wild inside and fill him with jealousy. Her eyes are open and she isn’t moving.
“What the fuck?” Geoff says, getting to his feet.
Boyd, wearing nothing but boxer shorts, appears on the stairs about halfway down.There’s the faintest indication of white powder on his chest, caked into the sweat beads above his pectoral muscles. He’s staring at Odessa with a disinterested, somewhat expectant look on his face, as if he’s waiting for Geoff to mop the blood off the floor. Boyd is holding a black handgun, an old revolver from the looks of it, and for a moment Geoff thinks his friend is about to shoot him, but then Boyd says, “I pushed her. I just pushed the bitch.”
“What? Why?”
“I…. Geoff, I want to tell you I didn’t mean it, but I did. I fucking killed that bitch.”
Geoff just stares at Odessa’s chest, her large, dark nipples, and realizes that she isn’t breathing. Part of him is glad to receive such a gift as the sight of her exposed breasts, but the better part of him says, Jesus, man, this is no time for sexual thoughts.
“I’m not going back to prison,” Boyd says. “Can’t.” The revolver shakes in his right hand, but other than that nothing about Boyd’s body language indicates he’s nervous or upset.
“Jesus Christ, man. Jesus Christ.”
“Even if we said it was an accident they’d figure me out somehow. I could flush the coke or something, but my head’s in the clouds right now. Can’t hide it.”
Boyd has spent nearly eight of the last nine years serving time for cocaine possession.He’s already been in twice. Three strikes, you’re out: Sorry, kids, Boyd can’t come out to play today. He’s serving a life term for drug possession and manslaughter.
Geoff kneels down and touches his fingers to Odessa’s wrist, where his elementary teacher had taught him to look for a pulse some twenty years ago. Geoff has felt his own pulse hundreds of times over the years, fascinated by the rhythmic pressure against his fingers. This is the first time he’s been unable to feel anything. It occurs to him that Odessa is no longer a person. In a split second she has become an object.
“You’ve been together for a year,” Geoff says. “You’ve been out for a year, Boyd. Jesus,man. Your life’s getting on track.”
“She threw a handful of coke at me and I just saw red. Fuck me. Fuck me. I loved her,Geoff. I did, I really did.” Boyd inches down the steps slowly, the revolver dangling at his side.
“What’s the gun for?”
Boyd smiles a little then, like a little kid who just got caught saying a swear. “You’ll think I’m crazy. Please don’t think I’m crazy. But after I pushed her and I saw her rolling down the stairs like that I knew…that if she lived, I’d have to finish the job.” Boyd makes eye contact with Geoff, his brow furrowed, dark eyes serious. “I’m not going back. No way, Geoff. No fucking way.”
Geoff’s mind drifts to seventh grade. The pond. The jars. The pendulum motion of the mallet. The jelly-like soup atop the picnic table. Boyd’s smile. His laughter.
“What’s that, a warning?” Geoff says. “Screw you, Boyd. You aren’t even supposed to own a gun. Is that thing legal?”
“Is anything I do legal?” Boyd laughs.
Geoff shakes his head and runs his hands through his hair. He lets out a worried puff of air and thinks, I need a cigarette.
Boyd takes another step down and says, “We have to move it. The body.”
“Where? I mean…my God…this can’t be happening.”
“It’s almost dark. Let’s just wait a few minutes. I’ll get dressed and then we’ll load it into your trunk and drive it out to my mom’s place. We can drop it in the pond. Or bury it out there in the woods.”
Geoff forces Odessa’s eyes closed and stands up. He looks away, back to the football game. The Packers are ahead 30-7 now. Small victories.
“The pond’s frozen over by now,” Geoff says. “And the ground will be too hard to digup. And what if your mom sees us? Plus I’m not sure I’m comfortable driving three hours with a body in my trunk. It’s too risky.”
“She won’t see us. She won’t.”
Geoff turns around again. Boyd is starting to get antsy. He’s wavering on the steps a bit,glaring at Geoff with a frustrated expression. The gun, dull and black, is still aimed at the floor,but Boyd seems to have a tighter grip now. And his index finger is curled around the trigger.
Geoff says, “Okay. Okay. Fine. I’ll help you. Fuck me, Boyd, I’ll help you, but only because you’re making me nervous.”
“Nervous?”
“Who knows what goes on in that poisoned head of yours, Boyd. Does anything about this situation not make you nervous?” Boyd just shrugs and glances at Odessa again. “Go get dressed,” Geoff says.
“She’s got great tits, doesn’t she?”
“Go get dressed.”
*
Geoff has worked hard to put his life together. Since Boyd has spent so much time in prison, Geoff feels as if he missed out on his twenties, especially since he opted to spend his time apart from his best friend building a future. Geoff has sacrificed a personal life, instead spending his time saving money and moving up the ladder at Gary’s Furniture, which has recently expanded to include three other locations in Michigan. Geoff is now the area manager at the St. Ignace location, just north of the Mackinaw Bridge.
Instead of worrying about dating, which costs money and usually doesn’t pan out, or going to local pubs to sing karaoke and waste his savings on beer and shots, Geoff has focused on his career. He tries to keep in touch with his parents and his sister, who still live on the west side of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and he has a few coworkers he considers friends, butGeoff’s life is all about earning money in peace. He spends most of his free time working out,cooking, watching the Packers, and writing. Geoff knows he’s not a very good writer, but he enjoys putting stories together, the feeling he gets when he composes a particularly violent piece about a serial killer or a rapist. He wonders where such thoughts originate, since he isn’t a particularly violent man—he’s never hurt anyone before, or killed an animal with malicious intent—but the ideas that drive his writing are almost always controversial and disturbing, and bloody. This gives him a thrill and reminds him that there are untapped parts of his own consciousness, areas of his psyche that even he may never fully understand.
After Boyd’s first prison term expired seven years ago, Geoff was quick to take him into his apartment, which was located within reasonable driving distance of both Boyd’s mother and Geoff’s family, long before he earned his promotion and moved to St. Ignace. Boyd had only served a year, but the two of them were still only twenty-two, and there was a primal part of Geoff that wanted very badly to have a night life, to drink and smoke and get in a little bit of trouble, maybe a bar fight or two. And anyways, up until that point, Geoff hadn’t been apart from his buddy for more than a few weeks at a time, so a full year felt like ten times that long.Yes, Geoff visited Boyd in jail a few times, but it wasn’t the same; they simply couldn’t hangout, and it was weird and scary with all the eyes staring at them, from other convicts and prison guards alike. Everyone stared at Geoff suspiciously, as if he were going to try and break Boyd out, as if he were going to sneak in a cake with a file baked into it, like you’d see on a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
But Boyd hadn’t bothered with the addiction support group assigned to him then, or made any effort to get a job. He instantly fell back into his old ways and got arrested again within a couple of months, when he unintentionally overdosed in the bathroom of a local bar. Geoff stillthinks about seeing his friend in the hospital, the sunken look of his eyes and his pallid skin. He thinks about the helplessness, how he had tried to help Boyd get his life together and how he’d ultimately failed, how nothing he could have done would’ve made a real difference back then.But times are different now. Boyd is different. He’s made an effort—a small one, yes, but it’s a step in the right direction. He’s even held a girlfriend for a year and earned a job at the Hot Dog Hut. Not to mention the fact that he’s been attending his Tuesday night support groups.
And now this. A bad snap decision. People will call it murder if Boyd is caught. But Boyd is not a murderer. A junkie, yes. Maybe even a bad person. But he’s not a murderer. Geoff knows him. He knows his buddy better than he knows anyone, maybe even better than he knows himself. It’s for this reason that Geoff is willing to put his own well-being at risk, because—let’sf ace it—you’ll go to prison this time, too.
Geoff drives his car west along US-2, navigating through Manistique and Escanaba before arriving in their old hometown of Iron Mountain, some three-and-a-half hours from Geoff’s very safe and peaceful life in Saint Ignace. Though it is December and some snows have fallen already, they’ve lucked out tonight: the winter storm that was supposed to pass through has, according to the weatherman on the radio, missed them to the north. The roads are in perfect driving condition. The only hiccup has been Boyd’s silent hysterics, the way his eyes keep darting around, the way he keeps talking about Odessa’s body in the trunk, the way he waves the gun around when he talks, and the fact that he refuses to wear a seatbelt. But, Geoff has to admit,Boyd has become very good at being high; he doesn’t bounce off the walls like some cocaine addicts, and he isn’t very talkative. The cocaine, it seems, calms him. And fills him with murderous rage, too.
As Geoff eases onto Boyd’s old street—the dirt road his mother still lives on—Boyd says, “Turn the lights off. She might see.”
Geoff says, “She won’t,” but flicks the lights off anyways, cringing as the old Impala’s struts squeak over the road’s washboard-like surface.
After a quarter-mile or so, Geoff takes a right into the first driveway—not the second one, which leads to the house, but the snowy, unplowed drive that leads to the back of the property, out by the rickety old barn and beyond that, the pond, both of which are a couple hundred yards or more from the house. Fortunately, Boyd’s old house is a good half-mile from the nearest neighbor’s, and there’s nothing across the road but dense, skeletal forest that creeps up almost to the shoulder. It’s unlikely they’ll be seen.
But someone’ll see the tire tracks tomorrow, Geoff thinks.
“Watch the brake lights,” Boyd says as the car crawls nearer to the barn.
The barn used to be one of Boyd and Geoff’s favorite hangouts. It had lain empty since Boyd’s father had died (he’d been killed in a car accident a few years before Geoff and Boydmet), but before that, according to Boyd, his father kept a combine parked inside. Boyd’s father had farmed the plot of land to the west of the house, the empty field that is now overgrown with weeds and bushes, further obscuring them from the neighbor’s house on the other side.
Boyd’s mother had sold the combine after her husband was killed, leaving the barn empty, except for the spiders, skunks, and other critters that would take refuge for a little while. Geoff and Boyd, in fifth grade, started coming here to smoke Boyd’s mother’s cigarettes, or to play hide-and-seek in the unused horse stables.
Geoff circles the car around so the brake lights face away from the house, and comes to a stop. He kills the engine, meets his friend’s gaze, and then steps out. The car’s engine parts clink softly as it cools down.
“Been a long time,” Boyd says, and it occurs to Geoff that Boyd probably hasn’t talked tohis mother in many years. She had all but disowned him after his second arrest, but Boyd has talked so little of her that Geoff had all but forgotten about their strained relationship.
The sight of the barn in the cool moonlight fills Geoff with a comfortable nostalgia. It doesn’t look much different from the last time he saw it, some eight years ago, but he’s willing to
bet that in the daylight it’s more brown than red these days. Snow has drifted up against the
barn’s flank, a reminder that northern Michigan’s winters are nothing to fuck with, but tonight the sky is clear and starry, the air calm and silent. It’s also incredibly cold—the Impala’s digital temperature indicator had dropped from eleven degrees Fahrenheit to just two degrees by the time they arrived.
“What now?” Geoff asks.
“My dad’s shovels might still be in the barn.”
The knob on the side door is loose and rattles, but with a bit of effort Boyd is able to force the door open. The interior of the barn smells of oil and hay, but even in the darkness Geoff can tell it’s quite empty in here.
Boyd flicks a switch and two dim bulbs, no more than 75 watts each, cast an orange glow atop the ground, which is just hardened sand. Up above, a third bulb shines in the hayloft, but it’sso distant it doesn’t help.
Old oil quarts line the shelves that are nailed to the east wall to their right. A Clorox bottle with its top cut off appears to be full of a blackish fluid, maybe used oil, maybe something else. A relatively new-looking Craftsman lawn tractor is parked beneath the shelves, along with a push mower that appears to have been bought in the 1970s and a gas powered weed whacker. A collection of rakes and shovels hang from the north wall. Other than these few items, the place is quite desolate.
“Doesn’t look like Mom uses this much.”
“Enough to change the light-bulbs.”
Geoff and Boyd each carry a shovel outside and jab them into the snow-covered ground near the Impala. It takes some effort to push them into the frozen ground.
“This is gonna be a bitch,” Boyd says.
Geoff is quite aware of the dead body in his car’s trunk, but he’s feeling rather calm at this point. The drive here had been stressful, but from this point on it’ll be smooth sailing—noway they’ll be caught now, no need to worry about getting pulled over by some bored cop, or Odessa miraculously waking up and somehow escaping the vehicle, or Boyd flipping his top and blowing both of their brains out.
There is a chance, of course, that someone—probably Boyd’s mother—will find the body someday, and when that happens, well, it’ll be over for both of them. Not to mention that Odessa will be reported missing very soon, with her last known whereabouts being Geoff’s house. Onthe ride over, Boyd had mentioned that because Odessa always walks from her apartment to Geoff’s place—a distance of a mile or so, not much more—it’s quite possible she could get kidnapped on her way home, and Geoff had agreed that that would be their story when the cops came knocking. Geoff also realizes that because Boyd already has a record, he will be the one implicated in Odessa’s disappearance, at least at first. Boyd may or may not be able to get them off his tail, but Geoff is confident that he (Geoff) can play dumb and avoid suspicion. After all, Geoff has never done anything to warrant suspicion.
For a moment Geoff considers trying to convince Boyd to take the body somewhere else—it seems quite stupid to bury your girlfriend’s body at your mom’s house—but this might be the nail in Boyd’s coffin, the very thing that eliminates Geoff as a suspect. The police might,of course, consider that Geoff had helped Boyd, and perhaps that he had even driven the transport vehicle (he has, after all), but they’d never be able to prove it, and Geoff is, in his own eyes, a good liar. Boyd may even fess up to the cops, tell them everything, including how Geoff had helped dig the grave, but it would be a “his word versus mine” kind of situation. Geoff realizes that he’s never had to create a lie as big as this one before, but he is confident in hisa bility to save his own ass.
“Let’s get to it then,” Geoff says and moves forward to open the trunk of the Impala. Ashe slides the key in, however, he stops, listening. There’s a muffled musical chiming coming from inside the car.
“What’s that?” Geoff asks. “Your phone?”
Boyd says, “Nope, not mine, I always keep it on silent.”
Then, with a heavy dread settling over him, Geoff realizes it must be Odessa’s cellphone.She’s topless, yes, but she is wearing shorts. Her phone must be in one of the pockets. Odessa isn’t dead, after all, but she is trapped in the trunk. She made a phone call. She called for help and now they’re calling back to check on her.
Though the air is bitterly cold, heat rises in Geoff’s cheeks and sweat breaks out on his forehead. He turns the key and the trunk opens with a hollow thunk. The musical chiming grows louder. Grimly, expecting to see Odessa’s terrified eyes staring at him, Geoff peers inside.
But she is dead. Of course. She is as unmoving and lifeless as the night wind.
Boyd suddenly plunges his hand into Odessa’s shorts pocket and withdraws her phone.“It’s her sister,” he says, looking at the touchscreen face.
“Let it go to voicemail,” Geoff says.
Boyd glances at him, smiles, and accepts the call. Geoff’s heart sinks and a sickness risesin him. For one horrific moment he is sure Boyd is about to confess, but then Boyd says, “Dallas,always the worrier, always gotta play the part of big sister. Odessa’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”
Geoff takes a relieved breath of air.
“No need,” Boyd says into the phone. “Asleep…. I would, but she’s asleep…. Yeah,dead tired.” Boyd winks at Geoff. “No, we’re fine, staying out of trouble. I’m watching Sportscenter with Geoff…. Come on, now, give me more credit than that!”
Though he doesn’t own a watch, Geoff taps his wrist, indicating to Boyd that they’re wasting time. Boyd puts a finger up: one minute.
“No, no, don’t come over…. Yeah, Geoff’s not feeling that great…. Flu, I think. The shit flu…. Odessa doesn’t need a ride…. Yeah, she can walk like always. She’ll be fine. It’s only likea mile…. I’m serious, Dallas, don’t come over…. Well, yeah, but it’s more than that. Geoff just doesn’t wanna see you…. Yes, Odessa’s fine. We’re all fine…. Sure thing, big sis…. Sure thing.Goodnight.”
As Boyd, smiling like a jackass, touches the cellphone’s screen to end the call, Geoff says, “You’re out of your goddamn mind. What were you thinking?”
“Ease up, man. I’m just having a little fun.”
“Fun? This is fun to you? Killing your girlfriend is your idea of a good time?”
Boyd’s smile fades and something sinister rises in his dark eyes. His face goes slack.Even in the moonlight, Geoff can sense a terrible change in his friend. He can sense Boyd’s instability, how his mood can change on a dime. Geoff realizes that, most likely, murdering Odessa has awakened something in Boyd, some kind of monster. He realizes, with a feeling
somewhere between dread and thrill, that this probably won’t be the last time Boyd kills. And just as this thought crosses Geoff’s mind, Boyd confirms it when he says, “Mom’s next.”
“What?”
“As soon as we’re done here. We’re going up to the house, we’re gonna knock on the door, she’ll wake up and invite us in I’m sure, and then I’m gonna slit her backstabbing throat.”There is an ominous tone of finality in his voice. Geoff, hovering over Odessa’s body, stares at him for a few seconds. Boyd’s face is serious, but then he lifts the corners of his mouth again, this time in an obviously fake smile.
“You’re with me, right Geoff?”
Geoff, aware now of how dangerous his friend really is, tries not to hesitate. It would be bad news to appear reluctant at this point. “I put a roof over your head, didn’t I?”
Boyd laughs. “That you did, my man. Out of everyone in my whole pathetic life, you’re the only person who never did me wrong.”
“You’re my friend.”
Boyd leans on his shovel and glances towards the pond. “A lot of memories here, huh?”
“Good memories,” Geoff says, and means it. Some part of him wishes he could drift back in time, not just to a few hours ago to prevent Odessa’s death—she was smoking hot, but Geoff didn’t much care about her—but to years ago, before Boyd ever lifted a rubber mallet. The stressof tonight has reached its boiling point, and Geoff longs for a feeling of peace again. He wants to veg out on his sofa watching a Packers game. He wants to pop his ear buds in and take a jog in
the local park. He wants to sit down, light a smoke, and begin writing a novel. He wants to go home, back to his quiet, reclusive life in St. Ignace, before Boyd moved in.
Before they begin the arduous task of lifting Odessa’s body out of the trunk (getting her in wasn’t so bad, but it’s true, Geoff thinks, what they say about dead weight being a bitch tolift), Boyd leans in and kisses her forehead. It would be a touching moment if Boyd hadn’t impulsively murdered her a few hours ago. Then he moves lower and kisses her breasts, andGeoff has to look away to avoid getting sick.
When Boyd stands up he looks at Geoff and says, “Wanna give her a kiss goodnight?”Geoff shakes his head quickly and Boyd says, “I wouldn’t mind, you know,” as if the reason Geoff won’t do it is because he’s afraid of offending Boyd.
“I know,” Geoff says. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Should we dig the hole first?”
Geoff shrugs. “I don’t think it matters,” he says, hiding the fact that he just wants the body of out his car.
They begin lifting Odessa out, Geoff handling her head and shoulders. Her head keeps lolling around, the neck having been broken in the fall. It’s like a bowling ball in a sock attached to a human body. With some effort, though she weighs no more than 130 pounds, they heave her out, Geoff losing his grip and dropping her upper body to the ground. Boyd just laughs and tosses the legs aside the way you’d toss dirty laundry.
“We can do better than that,” Boyd says, and moves to take hold of Odessa’s upper body.
Geoff gives him a wide berth, maneuvering around to the feet.
They lift her up and move towards the pine forest, just behind the tiny pond. The forest here isn’t too dense, so they’re not struggling to push branches aside or shield their faces. Geoffnotices that the air feels a bit warmer, and there is very little snow on the forest floor. It might be easier to dig in here, though the ground is surely almost as frozen as outside. At least they won’t have to worry about digging through the three or four inches of crunchy old snow that fell day sago.
They drop Odessa’s body atop a gathering of brown pine needles and it occurs to Geoff that he could end this madness. It hits him that he’s an accomplice in murder and doesn’t that, in some way, make him a murderer, too? He has Boyd’s trust. He could use that to gain the upper hand. He could take a shovel upside Boyd’s drug-poisoned head, call the cops, and claim Boyd had held him at gunpoint, forced him to drive here and help him dispose of the body. It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. If Geoff could manage to turn on some waterworks there’s noway he’d be implicated—no way anyone would know that he’d actually volunteered to assist Boyd. Doing this wouldn’t save Odessa’s life, of course, but it would save his own, as well as Boyd’s mother’s. Then Geoff could simply ease back into his old, quiet, perfectly insignificant life.
After they retrieve the shovels, Geoff and Boyd return to the forest and begin stabbing them into the solid ground. It takes a good amount of effort to penetrate the surface and neither of them are able to remove more than just a few inches of dirt at a time, but they are making progress. They agree not to go deeper than four feet or so, since that will take too long, and anyways why is it such a universal rule that graves are dug to a depth of six feet? What difference would that extra two feet make? And Geoff wonders just how deep they’ll get before the ground becomes too hard to dig into anymore, since they’re bound to hit frozen clay at anytime.
But before he can find out, a female voice startles him: “What’s going on out here?”
Geoff and Boyd spin around and though it is quite dark in the pine forest, Geoff can make out a medium-height, rather rotund figure a few feet away.
Boyd, surprise in his voice, says, “Mom?”
“Boyd? What the hell are you doing?”
There is a seconds-long moment of silence that seems to stretch out forever and Geoff thinks, This is it. The defining moment of our lives.
“So many distractions,” Boyd says, his voice barely audible, as if he’s speaking to himself. He’s also clearly agitated, which could be a sign that he’s about to lash out.
“Are you doing drugs? Are you two out here getting high? What are you doing here?”
Geoff answers quickly, before Boyd can react: “Yes, Mrs. Renfro. We buried it out here along time ago and we just came back to get it.” Boyd laughs a little, a sinister sound that seems to say, Good one, Geoff.
Mrs. Renfro’s voice drops. “Get the hell off my property.”
“Mom, it’s—”
“Get out of here before I call the police. I never want to see you again. Both of you.”
Geoff cringes, hurt. He knows he deserves her scorn, but he likes and respects her. She always seemed to have Jolly Ranchers and popsicles around, and she was always quick to share with Geoff. She was always nice, if a little quiet and strange at times. Sometimes she would sit unmoving and stare out the window for minutes on end, as if she were a robot and someone hadflicked her off switch. Geoff supposed it had a lot to do with Mr. Renfro’s death. Boyd had toldGeoff some time back that the car had burned up, cooking Mr. Renfro alive. Geoff knows he’d be messed up, too. He never blamed her, and anyways even though she was weird, she never said or did anything to frighten or anger Geoff.
“Fine,” Boyd says, his voice calm, eerie. “You’ve been kicking me out ever since Dad died. This one last time won’t bother me.”
“Get off my property,” she says again, and Geoff can see she’s raised a hand, pointing a finger in the direction of the car.
Boyd sighs and lowers his head. He moves forward, the shovel dangling at his right side. Geoff, uneasy, follows him, watching him closely. There’s an intense moment as Boyd shuffles past his mother, a split second when Geoff is sure Boyd will raise the shovel and bring it down on her head, caving it in like a melon. Geoff, both hands on his own shovel, tightens his grip, but then loosens it again and lets out a long, relieved wisp of breath as Boyd continues on quietly.Geoff, no longer tense, turns his attention to Mrs. Renfro and offers her a friendly smile and a nod of his head as he approaches her. She doesn’t respond, only stares at him with a sort of tired disappointment in her eyes, as if to say, I expected better of you.
But as he moves next to her, Geoff senses movement in front of him and looks up just in time to see Boyd charging, the shovel pulled back over his head like a sledgehammer.
Geoff, surprised, throws his hands up and waves his arms. “Wait! Stop, stop!”
Boyd halts in his tracks, a confused expression on his face. “What? Stop?” The shovel is still over his head and judging by his facial expression he seems, in some way, to be almos tasking Geoff for permission to continue, waiting for the go-ahead to bring the shovel’s metal head down on his mother’s skull.
Mrs. Renfro turns, sees Boyd, and moves away quickly, putting Geoff between her and her son. An expression of reserved terror and confusion sweeps across her age-lined face. “Whatare you doing? Boyd?”
“Just, everyone calm down,” Geoff says, his hands up, palms out like a traffic cop urginga vehicle to stop. “Take it easy, both of you. We can all just work this thing out.”
Boyd finally lowers the shovel, smiles, shrugs, and says, “There’s nothing to work out,Geoff. We both know how this ends.”
Mrs. Renfro, her voice trembling, says, “How what ends? Oh…God.”
Geoff looks at her and says, quite harshly, “Shhh. Just be quiet for a minute.”
Geoff cycles through the possible outcomes, tries to reason with himself that there’s away out of this that doesn’t end with more dead bodies. No matter how he tries to fathom a reasonable end to this situation, however, he can only see two outcomes: Either Mrs. Renfro ends up dead, or she calls the cops and Geoff and Boyd go on the run. And Geoff knows almost all man hunts end in the hunted being caught. Prison doesn’t sound too appealing.
But then, neither does murdering his best friend’s mother.
As if reading Geoff’s mind, Boyd says, “Listen, bro. If we let her go she’ll call the cops and we’ll both go to prison. I mean, if you wanna go that’s your problem, but I already told you I’m not going back. You don’t know how it is. You don’t have any clue, man. Like I said, get arrested, go ahead, go to jail for the rest of your life. I don’t care. As for me? No way I’m going back. No matter what.”
Mrs. Renfro says, “Why are you doing this? Why would you want to hurt me? I’m your mother for Christ’s sake!”
Geoff, annoyed, glares at her. “I said be quiet!” He points at her feet. “Sit down on the ground there.”
Boyd lets out a sarcastic laugh. “Bitch doesn’t know how to be quiet.”
“I know you,” Mrs. Renfro says, voice cracking. She sits and crosses her legs. “You’re my son and I know you. This isn’t you.”
Boyd smiles at her and slowly lifts a finger to his lips: Shhhhhhhh….
Geoff says, “There has to be a way out of this. We don’t have to hurt her.”
Boyd shakes his head. “I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time. She’s the reason I ended up this way.”
“That’s not true,” she says and buries her face in her hands. “I love you, son.”
“Everyone needs to let go of things,” Boyd says. “I’ve been letting go of things for a longtime. I let go of Dad, I let go of my freedom, I let go of Odessa, and now I’m letting go of you.”
“Odessa?”
“His girlfriend,” Geoff says and points to Odessa’s body which, in the darkness, resembles something like a heap of laundry.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Geoff tosses his shovel aside, out of anyone’s reach. He faces Mrs. Renfro, raises his hands in what he hopes is a friendly gesture, and tells her, “I’m not going to hurt you. But you need to stay calm and keep your mouth shut. You’re only making this worse.”
Boyd, surprise in his voice, says, “I thought you had my back, man.”
Geoff turns to him and offers the best friendly smile he can muster. “I’ll always have your back. This isn’t about me not having your back. But look at her. Look at your mom. She’s a person, Boyd.”
Boyd purses his lips and looks at her. Geoff can see the working gears in his head reflected in his face. But then he says, “A person? A person? Not to me.”
“She has air in her lungs and blood in her veins. She has a heart and she feels things, and a brain where she thinks about you, I’m sure. She’s all full of feelings, Boyd, and if you think about that, isn’t it just amazing what makes up a person?”
Boyd just stares at her with an empty expression on his face.
Geoff says, “Remember when we were kids and she taught us how to fish with nothing but a piece of yarn and a wad of chewed up gum? There were no fish in the pond, but wasn’t that fun anyways? And then that weekend she took us to the lake to fish off the dock and we caught something like fifty bluegills?”
Boyd shifts his eyes lazily to Geoff. “So? What’s your point?”
“Well, I guess I mean that things weren’t always so bad for you. You guys used to have fun together. So I know that somewhere inside you, you still feel something for her besides this rage.”
Boyd says, “But…she’ll call the cops.”
“No—” Mrs. Renfro begins, but Geoff raises a hand to shush her.
“Maybe she will,” Geoff says. “Maybe not. Maybe she loves you enough not to. I’d be willing to bet she just wants you to get help.”
Boyd shakes his head. “Nope. No way. I already have a record. If I get arrested again it’s all over for me. There’s no way to help me except to let me do this.”
Geoff thinks about the years he’s spent building his life, the lumps he took as a new employee at Gary’s before making his way up the totem pole. He remembers getting offered the management position, how he couldn’t stop grinning like a teenager getting lucky on prom night.He remembers that feeling of vindication, the confirmation that he’d made the right choice and that all the hard, long hours he’d put in lifting and maneuvering Williams-Sonoma sofas and La-Z-Boy recliners were really worth it because now he was somebody. And then the house in St.Ignace, how when he’d walked in the front door he’d known it was his, just a cheap place a few miles from the bridge, two stories on top of a crawlspace, a thousand square feet total, but damnit was worth it. It was all worth it because this was his life, this was who he was, all he had ever asked for, and people out there wish for a million dollars or to be President, but Geoff just
wanted this quiet little life, had prayed for it, worked for it, and it was his, and it was a dream come true. Can he really let go of it now, just like that? Can he really turn his back on his dreamin order to save his buddy, a guy he loves, sure, but someone who will clearly never amount to anything?
Geoff’s heart sinks, but he smiles anyways because he’s already made his choice, and realizing you’ve made a tough decision can be so freeing. Geoff had made his decision the first time he’d let Boyd back into his life seven years ago.
“Okay, I get it,” Geoff says, “but if she calls the police we’ll just make a run for it. We’ll take off together and just start a new life somewhere, somehow.”
“Easier just to end the bitch.”
“Yeah but if we do that—think about it—we’ll eventually have to go on the run anyways.Your mom and girlfriend going missing wouldn’t be some big coincidence, Boyd. And with your record—well, they’d easily suspect you. Finding the bodies on the property would be pretty damning evidence. Right? See what I mean?”
Boyd shrugs and takes a deep breath. “I’ve always done what I want.”
Geoff reaches out, palms up. “Hand me the shovel. Give it to me. It’s okay. There’s no reason to hurt her. I don’t want to. Let’s just leave her here. We can take off right now. We’ll go wherever you want. Come on. What’s the one place you’ve always thought of going? Vegas?Cabo? Fucking Zimbabwe? I don’t care what it is, Boyd. Let’s just go.”
Boyd laughs a little. “Yeah, Zimbabwe it is.”
Geoff laughs, too, and then says, “Give me the shovel, Boyd.”
“Okay,” Boyd says and, with both hands, offers the shovel to Geoff. Geoff takes hold, but then Boyd gives it a small yank, holding tightly for a moment longer. Geoff looks into Boyd’s eyes, eyes that, even in this darkness, appear to twinkle happily, though they also seem sinister and pathetically lost. Then Boyd says, “But I’m driving,” and winks. He lets go of the shovel and Geoff tosses it aside, near the other one, which is well out of both Boyd’s and Mrs. Renfro’s reach.
“I won’t call anyone,” Mrs. Renfro says. “I won’t.”
Geoff says, “Come on, get up. Get out of here.”
Mrs. Renfro, wasting no time, pushes through the trees, avoiding Boyd’s general vicinity.Geoff watches her disappear through the thicket, out into the clearing again before reaching into his jeans pocket and withdrawing the car keys. He dangles them in front of Boyd and smiles ashis friend snatches them.
“What about Odessa?” Geoff asks.
“We can put her in the trunk, find another place to bury her. There’ll be a lot of forest and open road where we’re going.”
“Where’s that? You weren’t serious about Zimbabwe…?”
Boyd smiles. “I was thinking Idaho or Wyoming. Someplace like that. Somewhere where there aren’t a whole lot of people around. Figured you’d like that.”
Geoff smiles. “That’s pretty much what I had in mind, too.” Then, for some unfathomable reason, Geoff leans over and vomits a chunky, milky white slop onto the forest floor. Boyd laughs uproariously and pats Geoff on the back.
“Take it easy,” he says. “Catch your breath. We’ll pick up a bottled water on the way.”
Geoff’s stomach feels hot and tight, and the thought of ingesting anything—even water--nearly causes him to begin retching again. He burps a couple times and touches the back of his hand to his mouth. In a few moments, when he can speak again, he says, “I’ll be fine,” but when he looks up Boyd is gone.
Geoff pulls himself to his feet, cradling his churning stomach. He looks around, but therei s no sign of his friend. He peers towards Odessa’s body, but Boyd isn’t there, either, and just as Geoff begins to truly wonder where his buddy has gone, he hears it. It’s as if someone has dropped a hardcover book onto a wooden floor, a loud crack, and for one curious moment Geofftries to reason that maybe it was the sound of a car door slamming, that maybe he’d left the driver’s side door open earlier and Boyd only just now closed it. But then he hears the crack again and reality crashes against him like a giant boulder, and Geoff nearly loses his balance a she realizes what’s really going on.
“No,” he says to himself, denying what he already knows to be true, and rushes forward,back towards the clearing.
By the time Geoff pushes his way out of the pines, Boyd is leaning against the barn gazing downward, the revolver dangling from his right hand. The gun, Geoff thinks. Jesus, I forgot all about the gun.
As Geoff slows to a walk and approaches Boyd, his friend looks up at him and shrugs.
“Sorry, bro,” he says. “I’m so sorry for you.”
“What did you do?” Geoff asks, but then sees Mrs. Renfro lying still in the snow beside the Impala. A pool of blood, black in the moonlight, collects in the snow around her head like an evil halo.
“You’ve got a good heart, Geoff. I look up to you, you know.”
“What did you…. Why?”
Boyd shrugs again. “You were born with that heart. As for me? I was born with a stinger.
Like a bee? I know it will doom me, but I have to use it.”
“But…you said you wouldn’t….”
Boyd smiles. “I never said that. Did I? All I know is you were right. You called it. We’llbe running either way. Right? We’d have to get the fuck outta dodge even if we didn’t kill Mom.At least this way I…like…feel better. If that makes sense to you.”
Geoff shakes his head, disbelief surging in him, his heart sinking. What have I done? he wonders. Who is this person I let into my world?
Boyd moves away from the barn and tosses Geoff a phone. Odessa’s cellphone, all pink and glammed out with fake press-on diamonds. Even without bringing it to his nose he can smell her on it, the lovely aroma of her perfume. It’s the odor of a person, a real person, who will never take another breath. Ever.
“Call Dallas,” Boyd says. “Tell her we need a ride.”
“A ride? What?”
“It’s like this, man. You call Dallas and I’ll put these bitches in the trunk. Got me?
You’re with me, right?”
Geoff, confused, shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
Boyd jabs a thumb to his right and says, “Mom and the gee-eff are going for a little swim in the pond.”
Geoff looks at the pond, which is frozen over, and wonders if the ice can support the weight of the car. Then it occurs to him that, well, it doesn’t really matter. Does anything matter anymore?
“If it’s gonna be a new life,” Boyd says, “we’ll have to get rid of your car. And Dallas.And then Dallas’s car.” He smiles, big bright white teeth, then walks nonchalantly towards the woods, presumably to retrieve Odessa’s body.
For a moment Geoff wonders if Boyd will need help lifting the bodies and almost calls out, but then he halts himself, the sound of his shout catching in his throat like a cork. He sighs,leans his back against the barn, and slides down into a seated position atop the cold snow. He watches Boyd disappear into the darkness like some wandering demonic spirit.
Geoff opens Odessa’s contacts, scrolls to Dallas, and stares at her name, wondering if he should—or even if he can—press the call button. After a minute or so, he glances over at Mrs.Renfro’s body and realizes with some wonder that, even in the dim moonlight, her diamond ring is sparkling like a tiny lighthouse as if to signal to the lost that hope is here, look to the horizon,set your course for the long, lonely journey ahead, everything’s going to be all right.
Geoff thinks, She still wears it—after all these years, she still wears it, and then an unexpected moist heat rises in his face, pulling downward at the muscles in his cheeks. He has to close his eyes and slap himself to suppress a sob.
Geoff looks through watery eyes back towards the road, at the tire tracks which are, in the late-night darkness, quite faint. But they’re there, oh yes, they are there, and Geoff wants very badly to attribute some kind of symbolic meaning to them, but the only thing he can muster now is a profound sadness, a sort of blank feeling through his core, like some weird blind spot, and--well—nothing makes sense.
He closes Odessa’s contacts, opens the keypad, and tries to convince himself to dial nine-one-one. His thumb hovers over the 9 for a moment, but then, somehow, as if of its own volition,keys in his parents’ home number.
A female voice answers on the third ring and Geoff, struggling to keep his voice from breaking, says, “Mom? Mom, is that you?”
Our second feature is from recent UAM MFA graduate Paul Anderson. Paul He currently teaches composition for a number of colleges, which means he is living the adjunct's dream. His work has previously been featured in Cardinal Sins, The Absent Willow Review, Thunder Sandwich, and Temenos. He is also editor-in-chief for Livid Squid Literary Journal. Paul's short story collection, Model Citizens, will be published by One Wet Shoe in 2016.
AS FOR ME
It’s Boyd’s voice again: “Our eyes in blow.” Odessa laughs again and then Geoff hears the distinct screech of a credit card sliding across glass followed by an exaggerated sniff.
Geoff lets out a sigh, lifts the TV remote, and cranks the volume to ear-bleeding level.The Packers, on their best days, help Geoff to forget about Boyd’s previous two prison sentences—both for cocaine possession. And though Boyd now claims to be sober, his definition is misguided: “I’m sober four days a week,” he’d said recently, adding that he’s especially sober every Tuesday, because he has to attend an addiction support group every Tuesday night. Just recently Geoff saw Boyd flipping his “One Year Sober” chip into the air like a coin—while watching Odessa snort a line with this distant, happy look on his face.
Sometime in the third quarter, with the Pack leading Minnesota 23-7, Geoff hears stomping above him and the unmistakable sound of arguing, one voice reaching for a level of volume far above the other, and the other attempting to do the same in return. But before he can press the mute button on his TV remote to hear what Boyd and Odessa are arguing about, a terrible thumping sound startles him. He turns his head to the left to see Odessa’s topless body tumbling down the stairs, her momentum stopped by the wall at the bottom of the stairs. She hits the wall face first, her head bending awkwardly up and to the left, and rolls over onto her right side, unconscious. Geoff, seated on the sofa just a few feet away, glares wide-eyed at the sight of her bloodied face; Odessa’s nose is quite obviously broken, and blood runs from the corner ofher pink mouth, as well, collecting in a tiny crimson circle on the beige linoleum. But what really catches Geoff’s attention is Odessa’s blue eyes, those sparkling gems that drive him wild inside and fill him with jealousy. Her eyes are open and she isn’t moving.
“What the fuck?” Geoff says, getting to his feet.
Boyd, wearing nothing but boxer shorts, appears on the stairs about halfway down.There’s the faintest indication of white powder on his chest, caked into the sweat beads above his pectoral muscles. He’s staring at Odessa with a disinterested, somewhat expectant look on his face, as if he’s waiting for Geoff to mop the blood off the floor. Boyd is holding a black handgun, an old revolver from the looks of it, and for a moment Geoff thinks his friend is about to shoot him, but then Boyd says, “I pushed her. I just pushed the bitch.”
“What? Why?”
“I…. Geoff, I want to tell you I didn’t mean it, but I did. I fucking killed that bitch.”
Geoff just stares at Odessa’s chest, her large, dark nipples, and realizes that she isn’t breathing. Part of him is glad to receive such a gift as the sight of her exposed breasts, but the better part of him says, Jesus, man, this is no time for sexual thoughts.
“I’m not going back to prison,” Boyd says. “Can’t.” The revolver shakes in his right hand, but other than that nothing about Boyd’s body language indicates he’s nervous or upset.
“Jesus Christ, man. Jesus Christ.”
“Even if we said it was an accident they’d figure me out somehow. I could flush the coke or something, but my head’s in the clouds right now. Can’t hide it.”
Boyd has spent nearly eight of the last nine years serving time for cocaine possession.He’s already been in twice. Three strikes, you’re out: Sorry, kids, Boyd can’t come out to play today. He’s serving a life term for drug possession and manslaughter.
Geoff kneels down and touches his fingers to Odessa’s wrist, where his elementary teacher had taught him to look for a pulse some twenty years ago. Geoff has felt his own pulse hundreds of times over the years, fascinated by the rhythmic pressure against his fingers. This is the first time he’s been unable to feel anything. It occurs to him that Odessa is no longer a person. In a split second she has become an object.
“You’ve been together for a year,” Geoff says. “You’ve been out for a year, Boyd. Jesus,man. Your life’s getting on track.”
“She threw a handful of coke at me and I just saw red. Fuck me. Fuck me. I loved her,Geoff. I did, I really did.” Boyd inches down the steps slowly, the revolver dangling at his side.
“What’s the gun for?”
Boyd smiles a little then, like a little kid who just got caught saying a swear. “You’ll think I’m crazy. Please don’t think I’m crazy. But after I pushed her and I saw her rolling down the stairs like that I knew…that if she lived, I’d have to finish the job.” Boyd makes eye contact with Geoff, his brow furrowed, dark eyes serious. “I’m not going back. No way, Geoff. No fucking way.”
Geoff’s mind drifts to seventh grade. The pond. The jars. The pendulum motion of the mallet. The jelly-like soup atop the picnic table. Boyd’s smile. His laughter.
“What’s that, a warning?” Geoff says. “Screw you, Boyd. You aren’t even supposed to own a gun. Is that thing legal?”
“Is anything I do legal?” Boyd laughs.
Geoff shakes his head and runs his hands through his hair. He lets out a worried puff of air and thinks, I need a cigarette.
Boyd takes another step down and says, “We have to move it. The body.”
“Where? I mean…my God…this can’t be happening.”
“It’s almost dark. Let’s just wait a few minutes. I’ll get dressed and then we’ll load it into your trunk and drive it out to my mom’s place. We can drop it in the pond. Or bury it out there in the woods.”
Geoff forces Odessa’s eyes closed and stands up. He looks away, back to the football game. The Packers are ahead 30-7 now. Small victories.
“The pond’s frozen over by now,” Geoff says. “And the ground will be too hard to digup. And what if your mom sees us? Plus I’m not sure I’m comfortable driving three hours with a body in my trunk. It’s too risky.”
“She won’t see us. She won’t.”
Geoff turns around again. Boyd is starting to get antsy. He’s wavering on the steps a bit,glaring at Geoff with a frustrated expression. The gun, dull and black, is still aimed at the floor,but Boyd seems to have a tighter grip now. And his index finger is curled around the trigger.
Geoff says, “Okay. Okay. Fine. I’ll help you. Fuck me, Boyd, I’ll help you, but only because you’re making me nervous.”
“Nervous?”
“Who knows what goes on in that poisoned head of yours, Boyd. Does anything about this situation not make you nervous?” Boyd just shrugs and glances at Odessa again. “Go get dressed,” Geoff says.
“She’s got great tits, doesn’t she?”
“Go get dressed.”
*
Geoff has worked hard to put his life together. Since Boyd has spent so much time in prison, Geoff feels as if he missed out on his twenties, especially since he opted to spend his time apart from his best friend building a future. Geoff has sacrificed a personal life, instead spending his time saving money and moving up the ladder at Gary’s Furniture, which has recently expanded to include three other locations in Michigan. Geoff is now the area manager at the St. Ignace location, just north of the Mackinaw Bridge.
Instead of worrying about dating, which costs money and usually doesn’t pan out, or going to local pubs to sing karaoke and waste his savings on beer and shots, Geoff has focused on his career. He tries to keep in touch with his parents and his sister, who still live on the west side of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and he has a few coworkers he considers friends, butGeoff’s life is all about earning money in peace. He spends most of his free time working out,cooking, watching the Packers, and writing. Geoff knows he’s not a very good writer, but he enjoys putting stories together, the feeling he gets when he composes a particularly violent piece about a serial killer or a rapist. He wonders where such thoughts originate, since he isn’t a particularly violent man—he’s never hurt anyone before, or killed an animal with malicious intent—but the ideas that drive his writing are almost always controversial and disturbing, and bloody. This gives him a thrill and reminds him that there are untapped parts of his own consciousness, areas of his psyche that even he may never fully understand.
After Boyd’s first prison term expired seven years ago, Geoff was quick to take him into his apartment, which was located within reasonable driving distance of both Boyd’s mother and Geoff’s family, long before he earned his promotion and moved to St. Ignace. Boyd had only served a year, but the two of them were still only twenty-two, and there was a primal part of Geoff that wanted very badly to have a night life, to drink and smoke and get in a little bit of trouble, maybe a bar fight or two. And anyways, up until that point, Geoff hadn’t been apart from his buddy for more than a few weeks at a time, so a full year felt like ten times that long.Yes, Geoff visited Boyd in jail a few times, but it wasn’t the same; they simply couldn’t hangout, and it was weird and scary with all the eyes staring at them, from other convicts and prison guards alike. Everyone stared at Geoff suspiciously, as if he were going to try and break Boyd out, as if he were going to sneak in a cake with a file baked into it, like you’d see on a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
But Boyd hadn’t bothered with the addiction support group assigned to him then, or made any effort to get a job. He instantly fell back into his old ways and got arrested again within a couple of months, when he unintentionally overdosed in the bathroom of a local bar. Geoff stillthinks about seeing his friend in the hospital, the sunken look of his eyes and his pallid skin. He thinks about the helplessness, how he had tried to help Boyd get his life together and how he’d ultimately failed, how nothing he could have done would’ve made a real difference back then.But times are different now. Boyd is different. He’s made an effort—a small one, yes, but it’s a step in the right direction. He’s even held a girlfriend for a year and earned a job at the Hot Dog Hut. Not to mention the fact that he’s been attending his Tuesday night support groups.
And now this. A bad snap decision. People will call it murder if Boyd is caught. But Boyd is not a murderer. A junkie, yes. Maybe even a bad person. But he’s not a murderer. Geoff knows him. He knows his buddy better than he knows anyone, maybe even better than he knows himself. It’s for this reason that Geoff is willing to put his own well-being at risk, because—let’sf ace it—you’ll go to prison this time, too.
Geoff drives his car west along US-2, navigating through Manistique and Escanaba before arriving in their old hometown of Iron Mountain, some three-and-a-half hours from Geoff’s very safe and peaceful life in Saint Ignace. Though it is December and some snows have fallen already, they’ve lucked out tonight: the winter storm that was supposed to pass through has, according to the weatherman on the radio, missed them to the north. The roads are in perfect driving condition. The only hiccup has been Boyd’s silent hysterics, the way his eyes keep darting around, the way he keeps talking about Odessa’s body in the trunk, the way he waves the gun around when he talks, and the fact that he refuses to wear a seatbelt. But, Geoff has to admit,Boyd has become very good at being high; he doesn’t bounce off the walls like some cocaine addicts, and he isn’t very talkative. The cocaine, it seems, calms him. And fills him with murderous rage, too.
As Geoff eases onto Boyd’s old street—the dirt road his mother still lives on—Boyd says, “Turn the lights off. She might see.”
Geoff says, “She won’t,” but flicks the lights off anyways, cringing as the old Impala’s struts squeak over the road’s washboard-like surface.
After a quarter-mile or so, Geoff takes a right into the first driveway—not the second one, which leads to the house, but the snowy, unplowed drive that leads to the back of the property, out by the rickety old barn and beyond that, the pond, both of which are a couple hundred yards or more from the house. Fortunately, Boyd’s old house is a good half-mile from the nearest neighbor’s, and there’s nothing across the road but dense, skeletal forest that creeps up almost to the shoulder. It’s unlikely they’ll be seen.
But someone’ll see the tire tracks tomorrow, Geoff thinks.
“Watch the brake lights,” Boyd says as the car crawls nearer to the barn.
The barn used to be one of Boyd and Geoff’s favorite hangouts. It had lain empty since Boyd’s father had died (he’d been killed in a car accident a few years before Geoff and Boydmet), but before that, according to Boyd, his father kept a combine parked inside. Boyd’s father had farmed the plot of land to the west of the house, the empty field that is now overgrown with weeds and bushes, further obscuring them from the neighbor’s house on the other side.
Boyd’s mother had sold the combine after her husband was killed, leaving the barn empty, except for the spiders, skunks, and other critters that would take refuge for a little while. Geoff and Boyd, in fifth grade, started coming here to smoke Boyd’s mother’s cigarettes, or to play hide-and-seek in the unused horse stables.
Geoff circles the car around so the brake lights face away from the house, and comes to a stop. He kills the engine, meets his friend’s gaze, and then steps out. The car’s engine parts clink softly as it cools down.
“Been a long time,” Boyd says, and it occurs to Geoff that Boyd probably hasn’t talked tohis mother in many years. She had all but disowned him after his second arrest, but Boyd has talked so little of her that Geoff had all but forgotten about their strained relationship.
The sight of the barn in the cool moonlight fills Geoff with a comfortable nostalgia. It doesn’t look much different from the last time he saw it, some eight years ago, but he’s willing to
bet that in the daylight it’s more brown than red these days. Snow has drifted up against the
barn’s flank, a reminder that northern Michigan’s winters are nothing to fuck with, but tonight the sky is clear and starry, the air calm and silent. It’s also incredibly cold—the Impala’s digital temperature indicator had dropped from eleven degrees Fahrenheit to just two degrees by the time they arrived.
“What now?” Geoff asks.
“My dad’s shovels might still be in the barn.”
The knob on the side door is loose and rattles, but with a bit of effort Boyd is able to force the door open. The interior of the barn smells of oil and hay, but even in the darkness Geoff can tell it’s quite empty in here.
Boyd flicks a switch and two dim bulbs, no more than 75 watts each, cast an orange glow atop the ground, which is just hardened sand. Up above, a third bulb shines in the hayloft, but it’sso distant it doesn’t help.
Old oil quarts line the shelves that are nailed to the east wall to their right. A Clorox bottle with its top cut off appears to be full of a blackish fluid, maybe used oil, maybe something else. A relatively new-looking Craftsman lawn tractor is parked beneath the shelves, along with a push mower that appears to have been bought in the 1970s and a gas powered weed whacker. A collection of rakes and shovels hang from the north wall. Other than these few items, the place is quite desolate.
“Doesn’t look like Mom uses this much.”
“Enough to change the light-bulbs.”
Geoff and Boyd each carry a shovel outside and jab them into the snow-covered ground near the Impala. It takes some effort to push them into the frozen ground.
“This is gonna be a bitch,” Boyd says.
Geoff is quite aware of the dead body in his car’s trunk, but he’s feeling rather calm at this point. The drive here had been stressful, but from this point on it’ll be smooth sailing—noway they’ll be caught now, no need to worry about getting pulled over by some bored cop, or Odessa miraculously waking up and somehow escaping the vehicle, or Boyd flipping his top and blowing both of their brains out.
There is a chance, of course, that someone—probably Boyd’s mother—will find the body someday, and when that happens, well, it’ll be over for both of them. Not to mention that Odessa will be reported missing very soon, with her last known whereabouts being Geoff’s house. Onthe ride over, Boyd had mentioned that because Odessa always walks from her apartment to Geoff’s place—a distance of a mile or so, not much more—it’s quite possible she could get kidnapped on her way home, and Geoff had agreed that that would be their story when the cops came knocking. Geoff also realizes that because Boyd already has a record, he will be the one implicated in Odessa’s disappearance, at least at first. Boyd may or may not be able to get them off his tail, but Geoff is confident that he (Geoff) can play dumb and avoid suspicion. After all, Geoff has never done anything to warrant suspicion.
For a moment Geoff considers trying to convince Boyd to take the body somewhere else—it seems quite stupid to bury your girlfriend’s body at your mom’s house—but this might be the nail in Boyd’s coffin, the very thing that eliminates Geoff as a suspect. The police might,of course, consider that Geoff had helped Boyd, and perhaps that he had even driven the transport vehicle (he has, after all), but they’d never be able to prove it, and Geoff is, in his own eyes, a good liar. Boyd may even fess up to the cops, tell them everything, including how Geoff had helped dig the grave, but it would be a “his word versus mine” kind of situation. Geoff realizes that he’s never had to create a lie as big as this one before, but he is confident in hisa bility to save his own ass.
“Let’s get to it then,” Geoff says and moves forward to open the trunk of the Impala. Ashe slides the key in, however, he stops, listening. There’s a muffled musical chiming coming from inside the car.
“What’s that?” Geoff asks. “Your phone?”
Boyd says, “Nope, not mine, I always keep it on silent.”
Then, with a heavy dread settling over him, Geoff realizes it must be Odessa’s cellphone.She’s topless, yes, but she is wearing shorts. Her phone must be in one of the pockets. Odessa isn’t dead, after all, but she is trapped in the trunk. She made a phone call. She called for help and now they’re calling back to check on her.
Though the air is bitterly cold, heat rises in Geoff’s cheeks and sweat breaks out on his forehead. He turns the key and the trunk opens with a hollow thunk. The musical chiming grows louder. Grimly, expecting to see Odessa’s terrified eyes staring at him, Geoff peers inside.
But she is dead. Of course. She is as unmoving and lifeless as the night wind.
Boyd suddenly plunges his hand into Odessa’s shorts pocket and withdraws her phone.“It’s her sister,” he says, looking at the touchscreen face.
“Let it go to voicemail,” Geoff says.
Boyd glances at him, smiles, and accepts the call. Geoff’s heart sinks and a sickness risesin him. For one horrific moment he is sure Boyd is about to confess, but then Boyd says, “Dallas,always the worrier, always gotta play the part of big sister. Odessa’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”
Geoff takes a relieved breath of air.
“No need,” Boyd says into the phone. “Asleep…. I would, but she’s asleep…. Yeah,dead tired.” Boyd winks at Geoff. “No, we’re fine, staying out of trouble. I’m watching Sportscenter with Geoff…. Come on, now, give me more credit than that!”
Though he doesn’t own a watch, Geoff taps his wrist, indicating to Boyd that they’re wasting time. Boyd puts a finger up: one minute.
“No, no, don’t come over…. Yeah, Geoff’s not feeling that great…. Flu, I think. The shit flu…. Odessa doesn’t need a ride…. Yeah, she can walk like always. She’ll be fine. It’s only likea mile…. I’m serious, Dallas, don’t come over…. Well, yeah, but it’s more than that. Geoff just doesn’t wanna see you…. Yes, Odessa’s fine. We’re all fine…. Sure thing, big sis…. Sure thing.Goodnight.”
As Boyd, smiling like a jackass, touches the cellphone’s screen to end the call, Geoff says, “You’re out of your goddamn mind. What were you thinking?”
“Ease up, man. I’m just having a little fun.”
“Fun? This is fun to you? Killing your girlfriend is your idea of a good time?”
Boyd’s smile fades and something sinister rises in his dark eyes. His face goes slack.Even in the moonlight, Geoff can sense a terrible change in his friend. He can sense Boyd’s instability, how his mood can change on a dime. Geoff realizes that, most likely, murdering Odessa has awakened something in Boyd, some kind of monster. He realizes, with a feeling
somewhere between dread and thrill, that this probably won’t be the last time Boyd kills. And just as this thought crosses Geoff’s mind, Boyd confirms it when he says, “Mom’s next.”
“What?”
“As soon as we’re done here. We’re going up to the house, we’re gonna knock on the door, she’ll wake up and invite us in I’m sure, and then I’m gonna slit her backstabbing throat.”There is an ominous tone of finality in his voice. Geoff, hovering over Odessa’s body, stares at him for a few seconds. Boyd’s face is serious, but then he lifts the corners of his mouth again, this time in an obviously fake smile.
“You’re with me, right Geoff?”
Geoff, aware now of how dangerous his friend really is, tries not to hesitate. It would be bad news to appear reluctant at this point. “I put a roof over your head, didn’t I?”
Boyd laughs. “That you did, my man. Out of everyone in my whole pathetic life, you’re the only person who never did me wrong.”
“You’re my friend.”
Boyd leans on his shovel and glances towards the pond. “A lot of memories here, huh?”
“Good memories,” Geoff says, and means it. Some part of him wishes he could drift back in time, not just to a few hours ago to prevent Odessa’s death—she was smoking hot, but Geoff didn’t much care about her—but to years ago, before Boyd ever lifted a rubber mallet. The stressof tonight has reached its boiling point, and Geoff longs for a feeling of peace again. He wants to veg out on his sofa watching a Packers game. He wants to pop his ear buds in and take a jog in
the local park. He wants to sit down, light a smoke, and begin writing a novel. He wants to go home, back to his quiet, reclusive life in St. Ignace, before Boyd moved in.
Before they begin the arduous task of lifting Odessa’s body out of the trunk (getting her in wasn’t so bad, but it’s true, Geoff thinks, what they say about dead weight being a bitch tolift), Boyd leans in and kisses her forehead. It would be a touching moment if Boyd hadn’t impulsively murdered her a few hours ago. Then he moves lower and kisses her breasts, andGeoff has to look away to avoid getting sick.
When Boyd stands up he looks at Geoff and says, “Wanna give her a kiss goodnight?”Geoff shakes his head quickly and Boyd says, “I wouldn’t mind, you know,” as if the reason Geoff won’t do it is because he’s afraid of offending Boyd.
“I know,” Geoff says. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Should we dig the hole first?”
Geoff shrugs. “I don’t think it matters,” he says, hiding the fact that he just wants the body of out his car.
They begin lifting Odessa out, Geoff handling her head and shoulders. Her head keeps lolling around, the neck having been broken in the fall. It’s like a bowling ball in a sock attached to a human body. With some effort, though she weighs no more than 130 pounds, they heave her out, Geoff losing his grip and dropping her upper body to the ground. Boyd just laughs and tosses the legs aside the way you’d toss dirty laundry.
“We can do better than that,” Boyd says, and moves to take hold of Odessa’s upper body.
Geoff gives him a wide berth, maneuvering around to the feet.
They lift her up and move towards the pine forest, just behind the tiny pond. The forest here isn’t too dense, so they’re not struggling to push branches aside or shield their faces. Geoffnotices that the air feels a bit warmer, and there is very little snow on the forest floor. It might be easier to dig in here, though the ground is surely almost as frozen as outside. At least they won’t have to worry about digging through the three or four inches of crunchy old snow that fell day sago.
They drop Odessa’s body atop a gathering of brown pine needles and it occurs to Geoff that he could end this madness. It hits him that he’s an accomplice in murder and doesn’t that, in some way, make him a murderer, too? He has Boyd’s trust. He could use that to gain the upper hand. He could take a shovel upside Boyd’s drug-poisoned head, call the cops, and claim Boyd had held him at gunpoint, forced him to drive here and help him dispose of the body. It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. If Geoff could manage to turn on some waterworks there’s noway he’d be implicated—no way anyone would know that he’d actually volunteered to assist Boyd. Doing this wouldn’t save Odessa’s life, of course, but it would save his own, as well as Boyd’s mother’s. Then Geoff could simply ease back into his old, quiet, perfectly insignificant life.
After they retrieve the shovels, Geoff and Boyd return to the forest and begin stabbing them into the solid ground. It takes a good amount of effort to penetrate the surface and neither of them are able to remove more than just a few inches of dirt at a time, but they are making progress. They agree not to go deeper than four feet or so, since that will take too long, and anyways why is it such a universal rule that graves are dug to a depth of six feet? What difference would that extra two feet make? And Geoff wonders just how deep they’ll get before the ground becomes too hard to dig into anymore, since they’re bound to hit frozen clay at anytime.
But before he can find out, a female voice startles him: “What’s going on out here?”
Geoff and Boyd spin around and though it is quite dark in the pine forest, Geoff can make out a medium-height, rather rotund figure a few feet away.
Boyd, surprise in his voice, says, “Mom?”
“Boyd? What the hell are you doing?”
There is a seconds-long moment of silence that seems to stretch out forever and Geoff thinks, This is it. The defining moment of our lives.
“So many distractions,” Boyd says, his voice barely audible, as if he’s speaking to himself. He’s also clearly agitated, which could be a sign that he’s about to lash out.
“Are you doing drugs? Are you two out here getting high? What are you doing here?”
Geoff answers quickly, before Boyd can react: “Yes, Mrs. Renfro. We buried it out here along time ago and we just came back to get it.” Boyd laughs a little, a sinister sound that seems to say, Good one, Geoff.
Mrs. Renfro’s voice drops. “Get the hell off my property.”
“Mom, it’s—”
“Get out of here before I call the police. I never want to see you again. Both of you.”
Geoff cringes, hurt. He knows he deserves her scorn, but he likes and respects her. She always seemed to have Jolly Ranchers and popsicles around, and she was always quick to share with Geoff. She was always nice, if a little quiet and strange at times. Sometimes she would sit unmoving and stare out the window for minutes on end, as if she were a robot and someone hadflicked her off switch. Geoff supposed it had a lot to do with Mr. Renfro’s death. Boyd had toldGeoff some time back that the car had burned up, cooking Mr. Renfro alive. Geoff knows he’d be messed up, too. He never blamed her, and anyways even though she was weird, she never said or did anything to frighten or anger Geoff.
“Fine,” Boyd says, his voice calm, eerie. “You’ve been kicking me out ever since Dad died. This one last time won’t bother me.”
“Get off my property,” she says again, and Geoff can see she’s raised a hand, pointing a finger in the direction of the car.
Boyd sighs and lowers his head. He moves forward, the shovel dangling at his right side. Geoff, uneasy, follows him, watching him closely. There’s an intense moment as Boyd shuffles past his mother, a split second when Geoff is sure Boyd will raise the shovel and bring it down on her head, caving it in like a melon. Geoff, both hands on his own shovel, tightens his grip, but then loosens it again and lets out a long, relieved wisp of breath as Boyd continues on quietly.Geoff, no longer tense, turns his attention to Mrs. Renfro and offers her a friendly smile and a nod of his head as he approaches her. She doesn’t respond, only stares at him with a sort of tired disappointment in her eyes, as if to say, I expected better of you.
But as he moves next to her, Geoff senses movement in front of him and looks up just in time to see Boyd charging, the shovel pulled back over his head like a sledgehammer.
Geoff, surprised, throws his hands up and waves his arms. “Wait! Stop, stop!”
Boyd halts in his tracks, a confused expression on his face. “What? Stop?” The shovel is still over his head and judging by his facial expression he seems, in some way, to be almos tasking Geoff for permission to continue, waiting for the go-ahead to bring the shovel’s metal head down on his mother’s skull.
Mrs. Renfro turns, sees Boyd, and moves away quickly, putting Geoff between her and her son. An expression of reserved terror and confusion sweeps across her age-lined face. “Whatare you doing? Boyd?”
“Just, everyone calm down,” Geoff says, his hands up, palms out like a traffic cop urginga vehicle to stop. “Take it easy, both of you. We can all just work this thing out.”
Boyd finally lowers the shovel, smiles, shrugs, and says, “There’s nothing to work out,Geoff. We both know how this ends.”
Mrs. Renfro, her voice trembling, says, “How what ends? Oh…God.”
Geoff looks at her and says, quite harshly, “Shhh. Just be quiet for a minute.”
Geoff cycles through the possible outcomes, tries to reason with himself that there’s away out of this that doesn’t end with more dead bodies. No matter how he tries to fathom a reasonable end to this situation, however, he can only see two outcomes: Either Mrs. Renfro ends up dead, or she calls the cops and Geoff and Boyd go on the run. And Geoff knows almost all man hunts end in the hunted being caught. Prison doesn’t sound too appealing.
But then, neither does murdering his best friend’s mother.
As if reading Geoff’s mind, Boyd says, “Listen, bro. If we let her go she’ll call the cops and we’ll both go to prison. I mean, if you wanna go that’s your problem, but I already told you I’m not going back. You don’t know how it is. You don’t have any clue, man. Like I said, get arrested, go ahead, go to jail for the rest of your life. I don’t care. As for me? No way I’m going back. No matter what.”
Mrs. Renfro says, “Why are you doing this? Why would you want to hurt me? I’m your mother for Christ’s sake!”
Geoff, annoyed, glares at her. “I said be quiet!” He points at her feet. “Sit down on the ground there.”
Boyd lets out a sarcastic laugh. “Bitch doesn’t know how to be quiet.”
“I know you,” Mrs. Renfro says, voice cracking. She sits and crosses her legs. “You’re my son and I know you. This isn’t you.”
Boyd smiles at her and slowly lifts a finger to his lips: Shhhhhhhh….
Geoff says, “There has to be a way out of this. We don’t have to hurt her.”
Boyd shakes his head. “I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time. She’s the reason I ended up this way.”
“That’s not true,” she says and buries her face in her hands. “I love you, son.”
“Everyone needs to let go of things,” Boyd says. “I’ve been letting go of things for a longtime. I let go of Dad, I let go of my freedom, I let go of Odessa, and now I’m letting go of you.”
“Odessa?”
“His girlfriend,” Geoff says and points to Odessa’s body which, in the darkness, resembles something like a heap of laundry.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Geoff tosses his shovel aside, out of anyone’s reach. He faces Mrs. Renfro, raises his hands in what he hopes is a friendly gesture, and tells her, “I’m not going to hurt you. But you need to stay calm and keep your mouth shut. You’re only making this worse.”
Boyd, surprise in his voice, says, “I thought you had my back, man.”
Geoff turns to him and offers the best friendly smile he can muster. “I’ll always have your back. This isn’t about me not having your back. But look at her. Look at your mom. She’s a person, Boyd.”
Boyd purses his lips and looks at her. Geoff can see the working gears in his head reflected in his face. But then he says, “A person? A person? Not to me.”
“She has air in her lungs and blood in her veins. She has a heart and she feels things, and a brain where she thinks about you, I’m sure. She’s all full of feelings, Boyd, and if you think about that, isn’t it just amazing what makes up a person?”
Boyd just stares at her with an empty expression on his face.
Geoff says, “Remember when we were kids and she taught us how to fish with nothing but a piece of yarn and a wad of chewed up gum? There were no fish in the pond, but wasn’t that fun anyways? And then that weekend she took us to the lake to fish off the dock and we caught something like fifty bluegills?”
Boyd shifts his eyes lazily to Geoff. “So? What’s your point?”
“Well, I guess I mean that things weren’t always so bad for you. You guys used to have fun together. So I know that somewhere inside you, you still feel something for her besides this rage.”
Boyd says, “But…she’ll call the cops.”
“No—” Mrs. Renfro begins, but Geoff raises a hand to shush her.
“Maybe she will,” Geoff says. “Maybe not. Maybe she loves you enough not to. I’d be willing to bet she just wants you to get help.”
Boyd shakes his head. “Nope. No way. I already have a record. If I get arrested again it’s all over for me. There’s no way to help me except to let me do this.”
Geoff thinks about the years he’s spent building his life, the lumps he took as a new employee at Gary’s before making his way up the totem pole. He remembers getting offered the management position, how he couldn’t stop grinning like a teenager getting lucky on prom night.He remembers that feeling of vindication, the confirmation that he’d made the right choice and that all the hard, long hours he’d put in lifting and maneuvering Williams-Sonoma sofas and La-Z-Boy recliners were really worth it because now he was somebody. And then the house in St.Ignace, how when he’d walked in the front door he’d known it was his, just a cheap place a few miles from the bridge, two stories on top of a crawlspace, a thousand square feet total, but damnit was worth it. It was all worth it because this was his life, this was who he was, all he had ever asked for, and people out there wish for a million dollars or to be President, but Geoff just
wanted this quiet little life, had prayed for it, worked for it, and it was his, and it was a dream come true. Can he really let go of it now, just like that? Can he really turn his back on his dreamin order to save his buddy, a guy he loves, sure, but someone who will clearly never amount to anything?
Geoff’s heart sinks, but he smiles anyways because he’s already made his choice, and realizing you’ve made a tough decision can be so freeing. Geoff had made his decision the first time he’d let Boyd back into his life seven years ago.
“Okay, I get it,” Geoff says, “but if she calls the police we’ll just make a run for it. We’ll take off together and just start a new life somewhere, somehow.”
“Easier just to end the bitch.”
“Yeah but if we do that—think about it—we’ll eventually have to go on the run anyways.Your mom and girlfriend going missing wouldn’t be some big coincidence, Boyd. And with your record—well, they’d easily suspect you. Finding the bodies on the property would be pretty damning evidence. Right? See what I mean?”
Boyd shrugs and takes a deep breath. “I’ve always done what I want.”
Geoff reaches out, palms up. “Hand me the shovel. Give it to me. It’s okay. There’s no reason to hurt her. I don’t want to. Let’s just leave her here. We can take off right now. We’ll go wherever you want. Come on. What’s the one place you’ve always thought of going? Vegas?Cabo? Fucking Zimbabwe? I don’t care what it is, Boyd. Let’s just go.”
Boyd laughs a little. “Yeah, Zimbabwe it is.”
Geoff laughs, too, and then says, “Give me the shovel, Boyd.”
“Okay,” Boyd says and, with both hands, offers the shovel to Geoff. Geoff takes hold, but then Boyd gives it a small yank, holding tightly for a moment longer. Geoff looks into Boyd’s eyes, eyes that, even in this darkness, appear to twinkle happily, though they also seem sinister and pathetically lost. Then Boyd says, “But I’m driving,” and winks. He lets go of the shovel and Geoff tosses it aside, near the other one, which is well out of both Boyd’s and Mrs. Renfro’s reach.
“I won’t call anyone,” Mrs. Renfro says. “I won’t.”
Geoff says, “Come on, get up. Get out of here.”
Mrs. Renfro, wasting no time, pushes through the trees, avoiding Boyd’s general vicinity.Geoff watches her disappear through the thicket, out into the clearing again before reaching into his jeans pocket and withdrawing the car keys. He dangles them in front of Boyd and smiles ashis friend snatches them.
“What about Odessa?” Geoff asks.
“We can put her in the trunk, find another place to bury her. There’ll be a lot of forest and open road where we’re going.”
“Where’s that? You weren’t serious about Zimbabwe…?”
Boyd smiles. “I was thinking Idaho or Wyoming. Someplace like that. Somewhere where there aren’t a whole lot of people around. Figured you’d like that.”
Geoff smiles. “That’s pretty much what I had in mind, too.” Then, for some unfathomable reason, Geoff leans over and vomits a chunky, milky white slop onto the forest floor. Boyd laughs uproariously and pats Geoff on the back.
“Take it easy,” he says. “Catch your breath. We’ll pick up a bottled water on the way.”
Geoff’s stomach feels hot and tight, and the thought of ingesting anything—even water--nearly causes him to begin retching again. He burps a couple times and touches the back of his hand to his mouth. In a few moments, when he can speak again, he says, “I’ll be fine,” but when he looks up Boyd is gone.
Geoff pulls himself to his feet, cradling his churning stomach. He looks around, but therei s no sign of his friend. He peers towards Odessa’s body, but Boyd isn’t there, either, and just as Geoff begins to truly wonder where his buddy has gone, he hears it. It’s as if someone has dropped a hardcover book onto a wooden floor, a loud crack, and for one curious moment Geofftries to reason that maybe it was the sound of a car door slamming, that maybe he’d left the driver’s side door open earlier and Boyd only just now closed it. But then he hears the crack again and reality crashes against him like a giant boulder, and Geoff nearly loses his balance a she realizes what’s really going on.
“No,” he says to himself, denying what he already knows to be true, and rushes forward,back towards the clearing.
By the time Geoff pushes his way out of the pines, Boyd is leaning against the barn gazing downward, the revolver dangling from his right hand. The gun, Geoff thinks. Jesus, I forgot all about the gun.
As Geoff slows to a walk and approaches Boyd, his friend looks up at him and shrugs.
“Sorry, bro,” he says. “I’m so sorry for you.”
“What did you do?” Geoff asks, but then sees Mrs. Renfro lying still in the snow beside the Impala. A pool of blood, black in the moonlight, collects in the snow around her head like an evil halo.
“You’ve got a good heart, Geoff. I look up to you, you know.”
“What did you…. Why?”
Boyd shrugs again. “You were born with that heart. As for me? I was born with a stinger.
Like a bee? I know it will doom me, but I have to use it.”
“But…you said you wouldn’t….”
Boyd smiles. “I never said that. Did I? All I know is you were right. You called it. We’llbe running either way. Right? We’d have to get the fuck outta dodge even if we didn’t kill Mom.At least this way I…like…feel better. If that makes sense to you.”
Geoff shakes his head, disbelief surging in him, his heart sinking. What have I done? he wonders. Who is this person I let into my world?
Boyd moves away from the barn and tosses Geoff a phone. Odessa’s cellphone, all pink and glammed out with fake press-on diamonds. Even without bringing it to his nose he can smell her on it, the lovely aroma of her perfume. It’s the odor of a person, a real person, who will never take another breath. Ever.
“Call Dallas,” Boyd says. “Tell her we need a ride.”
“A ride? What?”
“It’s like this, man. You call Dallas and I’ll put these bitches in the trunk. Got me?
You’re with me, right?”
Geoff, confused, shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
Boyd jabs a thumb to his right and says, “Mom and the gee-eff are going for a little swim in the pond.”
Geoff looks at the pond, which is frozen over, and wonders if the ice can support the weight of the car. Then it occurs to him that, well, it doesn’t really matter. Does anything matter anymore?
“If it’s gonna be a new life,” Boyd says, “we’ll have to get rid of your car. And Dallas.And then Dallas’s car.” He smiles, big bright white teeth, then walks nonchalantly towards the woods, presumably to retrieve Odessa’s body.
For a moment Geoff wonders if Boyd will need help lifting the bodies and almost calls out, but then he halts himself, the sound of his shout catching in his throat like a cork. He sighs,leans his back against the barn, and slides down into a seated position atop the cold snow. He watches Boyd disappear into the darkness like some wandering demonic spirit.
Geoff opens Odessa’s contacts, scrolls to Dallas, and stares at her name, wondering if he should—or even if he can—press the call button. After a minute or so, he glances over at Mrs.Renfro’s body and realizes with some wonder that, even in the dim moonlight, her diamond ring is sparkling like a tiny lighthouse as if to signal to the lost that hope is here, look to the horizon,set your course for the long, lonely journey ahead, everything’s going to be all right.
Geoff thinks, She still wears it—after all these years, she still wears it, and then an unexpected moist heat rises in his face, pulling downward at the muscles in his cheeks. He has to close his eyes and slap himself to suppress a sob.
Geoff looks through watery eyes back towards the road, at the tire tracks which are, in the late-night darkness, quite faint. But they’re there, oh yes, they are there, and Geoff wants very badly to attribute some kind of symbolic meaning to them, but the only thing he can muster now is a profound sadness, a sort of blank feeling through his core, like some weird blind spot, and--well—nothing makes sense.
He closes Odessa’s contacts, opens the keypad, and tries to convince himself to dial nine-one-one. His thumb hovers over the 9 for a moment, but then, somehow, as if of its own volition,keys in his parents’ home number.
A female voice answers on the third ring and Geoff, struggling to keep his voice from breaking, says, “Mom? Mom, is that you?”