Growing Things and Other Stories, page 7
Mike says, “He’s not in here.” He says it like it’s the last line in a movie.
More Greg: “You left him there? You fucking left without him?”
Mike repeats himself. “He’s not in here.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I say bullshit to all that. “Henry? Henry, quit fucking around!” No answer. He’s still fucking around, right? Hiding in the back seat, the duffel bag on top of him. It’s something he’d do. He isn’t answering me, though.
“What did you do?”
I say, “I watched Henry throw the duffel bag in, and then he climbed into the trunk. I watched him. I swear to fucking god. He used the rope, pulled the tailgate shut behind him.”
Greg jams his head between the front seats and screams into my ear, the same one that got cuffed. The ear isn’t having a good time. “You didn’t see shit. He isn’t there.”
“Enough,” Mike says, and pulls Greg back and sticks him into his seat. “We need to think this through.”
Oh goody. I’d do anything for Mike, but he’s more of a brute squad kind of guy, more of a cuff-you-in-the-ear kind of guy, not the thinker. Thinking makes him more mad, more likely to start breaking shit.
“Turn around, Danny. We can’t just leave him behind,” says Greg.
Everything I got inside me drops into my shoes. Goddamn Henry. Him really not being in the car with us sinks in. Henry isn’t here and it’s my fault. But we can’t turn around. “Yeah, brilliant idea, right? We’ll swing by, pick him up on the corner, no problem.” Then I say to Mike, “No going back, but I’m pulling over.”
“Why?”
“I want to see what’s in the trunk.”
Greg says, “We can’t leave Henry, man.”
Mike is looking at me. Or the me in the rearview mirror. Maybe that me is different somehow. Mike says, “We’re not turning around. You’re not pulling over. We can’t stop, not yet. Keep driving.”
I nod. Maybe I’m wrong and Mike always was our thinker, not Henry. Mike’s right. About everything. But if Mike told me to turn around, I would. He’s known Henry as long as I have and we both owe him everything.
We pass hotels, the local arena, and the UMass medical center. Highway ramps all around us. I should probably take one, head out of Wormtown. I put on the interior lights instead. “Is the duffel bag there?”
Greg roots around in the trunk. “The shotgun and the duffel are here.” He lifts the bag up, and it sounds like a pocket full of change. “There’s a ton of blood. Oh man, what the fuck?”
“Did Henry get hit?” Never did hear the end of the pawnshop story, what happened after the old man went over the counter, and then the three gunshots.
Mike says, “The old man got off a shot, some semiautomatic piece of shit, but I didn’t think he hit Henry. I was right next to him and he didn’t say nothing about getting hit.”
I don’t ask about the other shots I heard. I see now what I didn’t see before. I say, “All right. How did the tailgate get shut, then?”
“Huh?” Mike has his ski mask off. He rubs his shaved bald head and the thick stubble around his goatee. His eyes closed, arms folded across his chest. Greg sits back down, holding his hands out. Showing off the wet paint. It’s red.
I say, “The tailgate. How’d it shut? While I was waiting for you guys, it was open. Like it was supposed to be. So I’m thinking I didn’t see what I thought I saw, right? Henry was hit, got in the trunk, but because of the blood loss he wasn’t strong enough to pull the tailgate closed behind him, and maybe I started moving before it was totally shut and he fell out onto the parking lot. But that doesn’t seem right. How’d the tailgate get shut? I mean, what, did Henry get up after he fell out and shut it for us, tap the back twice and wish us bon voyage?”
Greg says, “Oh fuck. Nah, that ain’t it. Henry ducked his ass out and he’s gonna turn us in, pin the robbery and shooting on us. That blood came off the duffel bag, man. He didn’t get hit. That bag was sitting in the old man’s blood after Henry took care of him, right, Mike?”
Mike says, “I don’t remember. I don’t know.”
Greg says, “That’s gotta be it. He dumped the duffel bag and his shotgun back there to pin the whole thing on us while he slinks away. That fucker.”
Mike turns to look at Greg, and looks at him like a kid staring at a real ugly bug about to get squished. “If he did, I don’t blame him. It all went to shit because of you.”
Greg doesn’t fire back. He’s scared of Mike. So am I. I drive into a residential neighborhood and early-morning commuters are starting to fill the roads. Maybe that’s good. We can lose ourselves in the everyday traffic.
Greg says, “So what do we do now, boys? Where we gonna go?”
We’re supposed to drive across Wormtown, into Auburn, to Henry’s old girlfriend’s farmhouse. Seemed like a good plan at the time. Now I can see all the gaping cartoon-mouse holes in everything. Maybe my brother Joe was right. I don’t think ahead.
Mike says, “We’re not going to her house. We’re gonna play it like Henry is ratting us out.”
“What if he isn’t?” I say. I mean it, too. Because it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like Henry. Even with Greg blowing it all up like he did, Henry wouldn’t play us. Henry has always taken care of us. He’s fifteen years older than me and he worked at the Mobil a few blocks from where I grew up. Him and his early gray hair. He looked like someone’s dad. He saved us a couple of times when me and Mike were walking home from school and got jumped by some kids. The second time they jumped us, he busted their heads open with a bike chain. So Henry kept us safe, took us for rides around Worcester, would sit and watch as we bent car antennas and broke windows near the Holy Cross and Clark campuses. Henry would sell us weed, and eventually, we helped him sell to our friends. By we I mean me and Mike. My brother Joe didn’t like or trust Henry, wouldn’t come out with us ever. I tried telling him that Henry was a good guy, that he was fun, that he was one of us, but Joe didn’t care, wouldn’t listen to me. He never listened to me. Stubborn ass would pull the oldest-in-the-family bullshit about knowing what was best. So I went out with Mike and Henry, and Joe, he stayed home with Grandma and painted his goddamn pictures while she watched TV.
Mike says, “Even if he isn’t, we still can’t show up at that farmhouse without him.”
Greg starts swearing and crying into his hands. Like that’ll help. Then he gets back into his old tune. “Fuck. What if we left him? We can’t just leave him. Maybe he’s hiding in a Dumpster or something, back near the pawnshop, waiting for us to come back. Someone call him. Mike, you call him.”
“We can’t. No calls.”
Mike is right again. Especially if we left a bloody Henry in the parking lot. Cops and/or ambulance would definitely have him by now. We can’t be on any phone records today.
Then it hits me, suddenly. Where we can go. Good a place as any for a half-assed getaway, or some kind of last stand.
I say, “I know where we can go, boys.”
The trip is going to be longer than it has to be. Need to avoid the Mass Pike and its tollbooths and cameras. So we go north on 190, then we’ll hit Route 2 West, then 91 North, then over the river and through the woods to my grandma’s old lake house in Hinsdale, Vermont, a one-cow town outside of Brattleboro. It’s not her place anymore, but it’s no one’s place anymore, either. My great-grandmother had the tiny two-bedroom bungalow built next to a private lake. I don’t even remember the lake’s name. Something long and with a lot of consonants.
It’s not Grandma’s place anymore because her family never really owned the land. They got the place on a ninety-year lease. Grandma died two years ago, and so did the lease. The state took the land back, wouldn’t offer a new lease, and talked about using the house and lake for some electric company outpost or some shit like that. I didn’t take that estate meeting well and left Joe to the room and the lawyers. Two years ago is the last time I was up there with Joe. The two of us and a Dumpster. Didn’t save anything.
Far as I know, nothing has been done with the run-down place, and I can’t imagine anyone would use it, completely out in the boonies with only a five-mile-long, one-lane dirt road as access to the property. I guess we’ll find out.
We’ve been on 190 for almost half an hour. Finally turning onto Route 2. We’ve left our cell phones on in case Henry decides to call or text us. Nothing. Same kind of nothing on the radio, too.
I pull my cell out of my pocket and stare at the screen. I kinda want Joe to call, too. Not that I could answer his call or anything. Not that we’ve talked to each other in a month or so. Not after the last time I called him, and he bitched me out for having no real job and still hanging around Henry.
Greg can’t be quiet for too long, so he starts in on another of his cute little rants. Mike’s gonna pop Greg’s head off like he’s a dandelion if he keeps it up. Greg says, “This is a big mistake. Going to a place we don’t even know we can go to. Great fucking plan.”
Mike says, “It’ll work out.”
Greg rubs his head and face. “I feel like shit and you two idiots are making it worse.” He’s lathering himself up, breathing heavy, blinking like his eyelids are hummingbirds, in total freak-out mode. He says, “How about we pull over at a rest stop, dump the shotgun and bag, instead of carrying the shit around with us? Might as well be driving with ‘we did it’ painted on the windows.”
We should think about dumping that stuff. Mike won’t have any of it, would never admit that Greg was right about anything.
Mike says, “We ain’t stopping. We’ll dump the stuff when we get up there.”
Greg closes his eyes, holds a hand to his mouth almost like he’s going to puke. “Dump it at the lake house? That’s fucking retarded!”
I say, “Easy, Greg.”
“Even if we get there, which we won’t, and find the place empty, which we fucking won’t, we’re gonna do what? Set up a happy house and then dump the shit in the lake? At the same lake we’re staying at? Nice. They’d never find that shit, right?” Greg’s voice goes higher and louder, getting shrill, his face turning red.
I turn around because I want to actually see Mike punch him instead of watching it in the rearview mirror. And then Greg’s voice cuts out, midrant. He looks at us, mouth open, eyes wide, and his face crumbles, slides away, like something broke, and I turn back around fast, because that look on his face, I can’t watch that, can’t, and whatever happens next will be better seen from the safety of my rearview mirror.
So now I’m looking in that glass and I’ve lost Greg. Can’t find him. Then he’s there again, and he flickers. In and out of the mirror. He’s not moving. He flickers like a goddamn lightbulb.
I turn back around. Greg’s throat is gone. It’s all just red pulp. Blood leaks out of Greg’s eyes, nose, and ears, and his mouth is open and keeps opening, a silent scream, and how does his mouth keep going like that? and his eyes opening too, the whites gone all red, then worse than a scream, this horrible whisper from his ruined throat, a hiss, a leaking of air, and he winks out. No more flickering light. Blood mists the rear passenger window and Greg’s seat, but he’s not sitting in the back seat. He’s not there. He’s gone.
Mike screams Greg’s name and kicks and punches the back of my seat, the door, the ceiling. I turn back around and I’m doing ninety, didn’t realize it, and am about to plow into the back of a tractor trailer. I brake and swerve onto the shoulder, rumble strip, then grass and dirt, and manage to stop the SUV. Mike is still screaming. I look at the dash, the speedometer reading zero, the road, but don’t really see anything other than Greg’s face, before, before he what?
I yell to Mike: “Before he what? Before he what?”
“I don’t know, Danny. Just go. Just keep driving.”
“What?”
“Keep fucking driving. Just keep driving, keep driving . . .” Mike repeats himself and keeps on repeating himself.
I want to dive out of the car and run away and keep running. But I don’t. I listen to Mike. I drive. Pull off the shoulder and onto the highway. I keep driving and try not to look into the rearview.
Overcast. The clouds are low and getting lower. North on I-91 and Mike sits in the middle of the back seat, filling my rearview. He watches himself. Making sure he’s still there, maybe. I’m watching him, too, him holding Henry’s sawed-off shotgun. Every few minutes his hands get to shaking. The gunmetal vibrates in his hands.
I’ve tried slowing down, pulling off the road or onto seemingly empty rest areas, but Mike won’t have it. He threatens to shoot me in the head if I stop. Says that I have to keep driving. Keep going. I keep going, more because I’m scared and don’t know what else to do. I know Mike won’t shoot me, would never shoot me. Still.
“Hey, Mike.”
“Still here.”
“Need to think about this. Back at the pawnshop. Did that old guy shoot Henry?”
“It happened so fast. He jumped up with that gun pointed at us and . . . I can’t remember, Danny.”
“Did he shoot Greg, too?”
Mike shakes his head, and it turns into a shrug of the shoulders, and that turns into his hands shaking all over again.
I don’t ask Mike if he thinks what happened to Greg happened to Henry. I don’t ask Mike about the three gunshots I heard. I don’t ask Mike if he thinks what happened to Greg will happen to him. I know Mike’s answer to the questions. And I know mine.
We cross the border into Vermont. Things feel kind of funny in the car. The air all wrong. Too light. Or too heavy.
Mike says, “Remember that one summer your grandma let me come up to the lake house?”
“What? Yeah, of course I remember. Grandma never called to run it by your mom and you didn’t tell your mom you were going and by the time we got back the cops had put up posters on half the telephone poles in Wormtown.”
Mike breathes through his nose. Almost sounds like a laugh. He says, “That was the first time I’d ever been in Vermont. This is my second.” I watch Mike talking in the rearview mirror. Maybe if I focus hard enough on watching him he won’t disappear.
“You need to get out more often.”
“Henry or Greg ever go up?”
“Fuck no. Greg would’ve burnt the place down trying to make toast. Just you, man. And Grandma didn’t know about Henry.”
“She knew. She told me we shouldn’t be spending time with a stranger in the neighborhood that much older than us. She told me it wasn’t right.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“At the lake house. It was the only time she talked to me the whole week up there.” Mike laughs for real this time. “I loved it up there, Danny. I really did. But man, it was really weird, too. Your grandmother would cook us meals and make our beds, but I remember her not talking much at all and spending most of the week smoking her Lucky Strikes on the dock, going for walks by herself, leaving us alone.”
I say, “She did the same shit back home.” Grandma fed us but would kick me and Joe out of the apartment until it got dark out, and Joe would usually go off on his own, not let me come with him. If it was raining or something and we couldn’t go out, she’d stay in her room with a book or her little black-and-white TV. Away from us.
“I’m not feeling right, Danny.” Mike rubs a forearm across his forehead. Doesn’t let go of the gun. His voice sounds smaller, farther away, coming from another room.
“We’re almost there, Mike.” I say it without thinking. I don’t know what to do.
“I know your grandma ignored us all at your home. But it was different up there, all by ourselves, away from the city and everything. Up there, I really noticed it. I got up earlier than you and your brother a couple of mornings and spied on her. She’d stare into the mountains or into nowhere, really. It was like we weren’t even there, Danny. I’m getting fucking worried, maybe we were never there. Oh shit, Danny, I don’t feel right.”
“I’m pulling over, Mike. You relax. Keep talking to me.” We’re only ten miles from the exit, not that it matters. I slowly pull over onto the shoulder and I want to believe that if we just get out of the car, then we’ll be okay, he’ll be okay. But there were three shots.
Mike’s eyes are closed and he’s concentrating hard on something. Brow folding in on itself, upper lip shaking like an earthquake. He says, “Don’t know how she could ignore you and Joe fighting the way you did. You fought over everything. Made me feel really, I don’t know, uncomfortable. That probably sounds messed up coming from me. But I don’t know, man, it didn’t feel right. Wanted to kick both your heads in by the end of the vacation.”
“Wish you were here, send us a postcard, right? Mike, listen, the car is stopped. We’re going to get out. Walk around. Get some fresh air, all right?” I say, then I lie to him: “It’ll help.”
“What was the name of the card game you guys always played?”
“Cribbage. Joe always tried cheating me on the counts.”
“Nah, you were too dumb to count the points right and Joe would call you on it and—” Mike stops talking and slowly fades out.
I scream his name and he comes back. He looks like Greg did. Bleeding from everywhere. There’s a dime-sized hole in his forehead, and it’s growing. He opens his mouth but can’t speak.
I call his name, not that his name works anymore, right? I ask him if he’s still with me. I ask him to say something.
Mike whimpers like a goddamn dog that had his leg stepped on, and he slides across the back seat, out the door, and onto the shoulder of the highway, carrying the shotgun.
I get out, sprint around the front of the car, my own ears ringing, but not because of the cuff in the head he gave me forever ago. Mike stumbles, turns around aimlessly, his feet lost in a circle. His eyes are rolled back in his head. He puts the barrels of the sawed-off in his mouth. He pulls the trigger and disappears. He disappears and pulls the trigger. Which came first? Fuck if I know, but there’s nothing left of him but a fog of blood, and the shotgun drops to the pavement after hovering in the air for an impossible second.
