“Yes, one could see it that way,” Phineas mused. “Or it’s incredibly sad. Which is still, in a perverse sort of way, exotic, isn’t it?”

  There were footsteps outside on the front steps then the door opened and closed and the steps continued on into the living room. Jack cocked his head, listening. Something was wrong but he couldn’t put his finger on what.

  “Shane?” he said. “That didn’t take long.”

  There was no reply but the footsteps crossed the living room and a figure blocked the light from the television.

  “That’s not Shane,” Phineas told him. He wasn’t laughing about it though, he sounded spitting mad. “Jack, that’s not Shane. That’s—”

  “Steve,” Jack finished.

  “Hey, Jack,” Steve said. “What gave me away?”

  It had been several things; the sound of his walking was wrong, his smell was wrong, he had arrived too soon after Shane left for it to be Shane. He did not say any of that aloud though. “You came through the front door,” Jack said.

  “So?” Steve said.

  “So, Shane would have come in the back,” Jack said. He didn’t get up and try to run—not yet—he didn’t even move. He remained perfectly still and tried to think of what to do. He was alone in the house, Shane had even taken the dog with him, and even at his best Jack hadn’t been much of a match for Steve.

  “Shit,” Steve said. “Well, fuck it. I guess you know why I’m here.”

  “I suppose I do, but why don’t you tell me anyway,” Jack said. “You’re dying to. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “You tried to fucking kill me, Jack,” Steve said. He walked around the coffee table toward him as he spoke and Jack shrank away from him. “You tried to fucking kill me! Who the hell do you think you are?! That is unacceptable!”

  “Jack, I believe you should run away now,” Phineas hissed in Jack’s ear. “He looks positively livid.”

  Jack still hadn’t thought of an escape route though and he was scared. It had him coming up blank at every turn. “I can’t—”

  “Who the fuck are you talking to?” Steve demanded.

  Jack held up his hands, warding him off. Steve was close, looming over him. “It was an accident, Steve,” he said. He heard the faintest trace of a whine in his own voice and hated it. “I didn’t mean to kill you, but you were choking me and I didn’t… I mean, I grabbed the first thing and I just… I wanted you to stop and you—”

  “God, you’re fucking pathetic, shut up,” Steve said.

  “I do believe he expected to enjoy this more than he is,” Phineas said. “Jack, get off your ass and run!”

  Jack jumped up then like Phineas had propelled him off the sofa. He knocked Steve back and ran through the living room, past the front door and down the hallway toward his room. Then he hit the closed door of his bedroom and fell down, all the wind knocked out of him, gasping for breath like a beached fish. He rolled over and started to crawl, thinking to use the wall to pull himself up, but Steve had been right behind him and before Jack could get very far, he grabbed a fistful of his hair and started dragging him by it back through the house.

  “You know, I knew you were going to do something like this, Jack,” Steve said. He was laughing at him as he spoke. “You never could do anything the easy way. You know how this ends, right? We both know how this ends.”

  Jack clawed at Steve’s arm, trying to free himself, but it was as though Steve didn’t feel it. Jack had Steve’s skin and blood under his fingernails and Steve didn’t even pause. His voice was eerily conversational.

  “You didn’t even run that far,” Steve said. “Louisiana, really? But then you left that piece of paper with the phone number on it in your pocket. I mean, that was some real genius there, Jack. But then, junkies ain’t known for their intellect, are they? Name me a fucking junkie intellectual, Jack, just one.”

  Jack grabbed the edge of the doorframe between the kitchen and the living room and held on. Steve yanked on his hair and kept trying to go, but Jack held on and screamed as pain in his scalp became burning and intense and he could feel it tearing. He thought of Indians taking scalps. He had seen a movie once a long time ago about mountain men where they had taken one from a man who wasn’t dead. That was what he was going to be; a scalped man. If selling himself as a blind hooker would be difficult, a blind, hairless hooker would be impossible; there was no market for that. Incredibly, he felt laughter bubbling up in his throat at that and he was in such a hysterical, frantic state that he didn’t even try to hold it back.

  “Shut up, Jack,” Steve said angrily. Jack’s laughter agitated him and made him nervous. “Shut the fuck up! Shut up right now! Shut the fuck up you asshole! Shut up! I’ll fucking kill you! Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up!”

  Then suddenly there was a knife at Jack’s throat and it was sharp. So sharp that it nicked his skin when Steve pressed it to the base of his throat. Jack’s laughter didn’t cut off immediately, it faded like the humor was draining out of him a little at a time. “Let me go, Steve,” he said when he had stopped laughing.

  “I don’t fucking think so,” Steve said. He grabbed one of Jack’s arms and yanked him away from the doorframe. “I didn’t track your ass down here for nothing. I didn’t get fucking attacked by that faggot drug dealer pal of yours and his monster dogs just so I could let you go now, Jack. How dumb do you think I am?”

  “Don’t answer that right now,” Phineas advised Jack. “Not in the state you’re in at the moment. You know, I don’t think I approve of this turn of events, Jack. Not one bit.”

  “What do you care if I live or die?” Jack asked.

  “Oh, I care, Jack. After you bashed me in the head and left me for dead, I woke up on the floor the next day and I was sick. I was sick for a long time. I don’t get sick and you don’t get away with doing that to me. When was the last time you think I let anyone do that shit to me and walk away, huh?”

  “I care a great deal, boy-o,” Phineas said. “After all, if you’re dead, I can’t torment you and it is one of my favorite pastimes.”

  “Too bad you’re not real then,” Jack said.

  Steve let go of him by throwing him down and Jack’s back hit the coffee table hard enough that he yelped in pain. “Oh, I’m not real, huh? Yeah, that would be really fucking convenient for you, wouldn’t it? What am I then? A figment of your Swiss cheese brain? Your imaginary friend? That’s it, I’m your imaginary friend, right Jack? Like that Tyler Durden dude. Except I remember him kicking the holy fuck out of that guy. So sure, I’ll bite. I’m your imaginary friend. And I’m about to kill you.”

  “What are you going to do, Steve?” Jack asked. He didn’t care; either way he would be dead. But he wasn’t one of Steve’s girls. He mattered to Steve in ways they did not. If he could get him talking and keep him talking, maybe Shane would come back.

  If he didn’t, Shane was going to come home and find Jack dead. Perhaps Steve would even still be there waiting for him.

  “You going to strangle me like you do the girls?” Jack asked.

  Steve laughed. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said. He dropped into a crouch on his heels before Jack and lowered his voice intimately. “Like one of my girls. Oh yeah, you’d like that. You think I don’t know you got yourself a big old gay-ass crush on me, Jack? You think I didn’t always know that? I bet you’d love that.”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “Sure you would,” Steve said. He was taunting him, but his voice was low and almost lewd. “I’d make it good for you, too, Jack. Wrap my hands around that soft white throat of yours and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze…”

  Jack pushed himself up using the sofa to hold onto and Steve grabbed him and started to shove him back down. Jack kicked out and got him hard in the shin. Steve cursed and threw him down on the sofa.

  “I ain’t into faggoty little pieces of shit like you, Jack,” Steve said, growling it through his teeth. “You don’t want to believe that, that’s fine. No, I’m not going to choke you. I’m going to cut you open like a fish. Like an animal. I got this knife here and it’s real sharp. I think I’ll leave you right here on this table for your big brother to find when he gets back from where the fuck ever he stomped off to.”

  He grabbed the front of Jack’s shirt, twisted a fistful of the material in his hand and jerked him to his feet. Jack pulled at his fingers uselessly, trying to free himself, but he could feel Steve’s breath inches from his face. The image in his mind as he struggled with him was of his body lying like a messy autopsy on the table for Shane to find. Shane was stable now, more or less; he had his shit together in a way Jack could not claim to and he would be okay, they would figure things out together and Shane would be fine, but if he came back and found Jack like that, he wouldn’t be. He would never be the same. His mind would splinter like fine china.

  Jack screamed in Steve’s face and brought his hands up, turned his fingers into claws and went for his eyes. He felt when his fingers popped through the sockets and Steve’s scream was loud and high; the indignant shriek of a kettle. Steve still had the knife in his hand and he blindly lashed out with it and cut Jack, but the blade skittered away as he flailed. Jack felt the knife slice open his arm, but he didn’t let go. Still, Steve was bigger than him and Jack had caught him by surprise and he was regaining his balance and control.

  He punched Jack and Jack fell. His hands hit beer bottles and the ashtray on the coffee table, his body knocked everything on the floor as he landed on it. Then Steve was on him. He hooked an arm around Jack’s neck and straddled him. Panting, cursing and gasping, Steve tightened his arm around his throat and in the curve of his elbow, Jack began to choke.

  Somewhere a screen door slammed. Then Steve was gone and Jack fell forward onto the table, gulping air and shivering. Steve screamed and cursed, but what he said was drowned out by the savage snarls of a dog: Hank.

  “Shane!” Jack screamed. “Shane! Help me!”

  Hank yelped and Jack climbed off the table and started to run just as Steve came at him again. He didn’t play with him anymore, now he meant business. He buried the blade of his knife an inch into the top of the coffee table.

  “Come back here, you little fucker!” Steve shouted.

  Jack ran. He was blind in more ways than just his sight now though. He didn’t know where he was going or which direction he was going. He was disoriented and felt with his hands out before him to avoid slamming into the walls. Then he hit something and cried out in surprise. It was solid and warm and it grabbed him and Jack started to scream for help again.

  “Jack!” Shane shouted in his face.

  Jack froze, relief so powerful that it nearly took him to the floor washing over him. “Oh, God, Shane. It’s Steve. Hank—He got Hank. Hank got him. You have to—”

  Shane turned him and pushed him down into a chair. Jack felt of it and realized where he was: it was the antique wingback chair at the end of the hallway.

  “Stay here,” Shane said.

  “But Shane—”

  “No, you fucking stay, Jack,” Shane snapped.

  Then he was gone and Jack stayed. He listened to Hank snarl and growl and yelp and he stayed. He listened to Steve curse and something go crashing and he stayed. He listened to the heavy thumping impact of meat hitting meat, of punches and grunting and he stayed. Then Shane cried out and Jack couldn’t stay anymore. He got up and pictured the path down the hallway, through the kitchen, the entryway into the living room in his mind and felt along the walls as he went.

  Another crash and glass breaking and Jack paused to listen. There was silence and Jack felt along the wall and stopped in the doorway. “Shane?” he called softly.

  He didn’t know what he was going to do if it was not Shane who answered. Shane didn’t answer, but neither did Steve. Jack could hear his own breath like the wheezing of a bellows in his ears and little else. Maybe they had killed each other, he thought, and wondered if that was possible.

  “Shane?” he called again, a little louder. There was no answer, but Hank whined and came to him, nuzzled his outstretched hand. He brought the strong blood scent of sweaty pennies with him. “Oh, God. Oh, God,” Jack whispered. “Shane? Answer me, Shane, damn you. Don’t you be fucking dead. Don’t you dare be dead. Shane?”

  “Jack,” Shane said. He touched Jack’s arm and Jack flinched. “Sorry, it’s me.”

  Jack took his hand and Shane was shaking. It was a vibrating sort of tremble that came from an abundance of adrenaline as much as because of what had happened. He smelled like blood too, but before Jack could say anything about it or touch him to check for wounds, Shane took his hand back and stalked away from him. Something crashed as he kicked it out of his way.

  “That motherfucker,” Shane muttered. Then he screamed, “Motherfucker!”

  Jack jumped. Shane was a quiet man and Jack was used to his silences and his quiet way of being. He knew that Shane had rage in him, but he had never seen it. Shane paced a little, cursing, but Jack listened and he didn’t hear anyone else. He didn’t hear Steve. Steve would not lay silent while someone hurled abuse at him and called him a motherfucker.

  “Shane, what happened?” Jack asked.

  “That fucking asshole tried to kill you!” Shane shouted. He was angry and confused by the question, which only seemed to make him angrier.

  Jack nodded. “I mean… where is he?”

  Shane kicked something and it made a thick thump as his boot collided with it. “Right here. Fucker’s dead. Hank got his teeth in him and I got his knife away from him and I… Oh, Jesus, I fucking killed him, Jack. What the fuck are we going to do?”

  “Come here,” Jack said.

  He held out a hand in the direction of Shane’s voice, but Shane didn’t come to him. “Motherfucker stabbed my dog!” Shane kicked Steve’s body again.

  “Shane!” Jack shouted to be heard over Shane’s own voice and his rage. “Is Hank okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine,” Shane said. “Licking his wounds.”

  Hank had wandered away from Jack after nuzzling his hand and at Shane’s angry declaration, he had worried that the dog had gone off to die. He was glad that wasn’t the case.

  “Shane, come here,” he said. Again he held out his hand, but again Shane didn’t listen. Jack moved away from the doorway himself, careful not to trip over anything broken or thrown down in his path. When he reached him, Shane tensed and started to jerk away from him, only to relax. Jack had to calm him down or he was going to keep kicking Steve’s corpse or start putting holes in the wall. “Do you know whales migrate to Canada every year to mate and wave their giant penises around in the air?” he asked.

  “What?” Shane asked distractedly.

  “Oh, yeah. Imagine it; five hundred giant whale penises flopping around in the ocean at the same time. Like some kind of giant, horny tentacle monster.” That didn’t get much reaction out of Shane and Jack could feel him getting restless again. “Did I ever tell you about sexy housebreaking Jesus?”

  That got Shane’s attention. “About what?”

  Jack lightly ran his hands up Shane’s arms, trying to soothe the tension out of him. “Yeah, you remember that painting Mama had over the bed? Every place we lived, she hung that fucking painting over the bed.”

  Shane sounded amused as he said, “Yeah, I remember.” He sighed. “Jack, what the fuck are we going to do about the body?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Jack said. He took Shane’s hand and led him out of the living room. “First, let me tell you. You’ll like the story. It’s funny.”

  Shane allowed himself to be led through the house and down the hallway to his bedroom. And Jack told him about sexy housebreaking Jesus and they laughed. There were bad memories mixed in there, too, but even though they were aware of them, they skirted around them and they forgot about Steve for a while.

  Chapter 16

  Early in the morning before the sun came up, they took Steve’s body out to a swamp about a mile and a half from the house and put it in the water. Shane wrapped it in an old bed sheet, tied it up with rope and weighed it down with a couple cinderblocks, then pushed it out into the swamp. Jack waited for him in the truck with Hank.

  Phineas had told him where they should dump the body. No one would ever find it there, he said. The animals would get to it first, he said. Besides, no one was looking for Steve Walker and no one would care that he was gone.

  Shane got back in the truck and just sat there for a few minutes without starting it. Finally he asked, “How did you even know this place was out here?”

  Jack tried to think of a lie that Shane would believe, but in the end, he went with the truth. “I didn’t. Phineas told me about it and Phineas doesn’t lie.” They sat there for a little while longer and Jack asked, “How did you know to come back? Were you already coming back or did you hear me or…?”

  “Hank. He must have heard and went running home and I went after him,” Shane said. “Guess he heard you and it’s a good thing, too.”

  “He heard me is what he heard,” Phineas whispered in Jack’s ear. “Now don’t ever say I never did anything for you.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said.

  Shane assumed he was speaking to him and said, a little ironically, “Sure, Jack. Any time.”

  “Shane, I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I thought he was dead. I really did. I didn’t mean to bring him here and—”

  Shane reached out and touched Jack’s head, let his fingers lightly comb through his hair. “It’s okay, Jack. Some dogs, there ain’t anything you can do but put them down. I figure there’s some people like that, too.”

  “Like Steve,” Jack said.

  “Yeah.” Shane started the truck and twisted around to look out the back window as he backed it back onto the dirt road. “Got a hell of a fucking mess back at the house to clean up. I’m thinking we leave it for tomorrow.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Jack said. “Except for the blood. Blood dries, it won’t ever come out.”

  “We’ll throw a rug over it if it’s a problem then,” Shane said. The truck jolted as they returned to the main road. Shane put it in drive and they went home.

 

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