Dead Silence

23

Over the hours, Will dozed, he reminisced, he raged and cried, and occasionally slept, but never for long because he was awakened by nightmares.

Sometimes, Will imagined that his box was moving. Or possibly it did move, although never very much. The boy couldn’t be sure because his dreams, his thoughts, his memories were all so tangled by the relentless darkness and the drug Ketamine that was still filtering through his veins.

Hours ago, Will had quit fighting his insistent bladder and decided to piss his jeans whenever he needed. For a time, pissing became his primary recreation, counting in his head to see how long he could keep the stream going. Now his jeans were sodden, but his body was empty of fluids.

Because he was thirsty, it was pleasurable-for a while anyway-to imagine himself diving into a glacial lake and drinking his fill of water that was crystalline blue like a Minnesota sky.

But Will had stopped doing that because it made him even thirstier, and also because it was so damn cold inside the box. Freezing, in fact. And Will began to suspect that Buffalo-head had carried out his threat.

How would you like to be buried in the cold, cold earth?

Now, mumbling through the tape on his mouth, Will barked a reply, “I wouldn’t like it worth a damn, you creep.”

My God, he was cold! No wind. No light. Maybe the bastards really had buried him!

As he pondered that, Will became aware of a red-tinted darkness blooming behind his eyes, but he stopped it, thinking, Don’t… Don’t, terrified of the insanity that threatened from just beyond the limits of his own anger.

It was safer to focus on how cold he was rather than the heat attempting to fire his temper, so Will moved his thoughts there.

Colder than a nun at a prison rodeo. Colder than a well-digger’s ass. Colder than Custer’s nuts! Colder than… Colder than… Well, it’s no colder than downtown Minneapolis in January, with snow falling.

One below-not counting windchill.

Bull Guttersen’s line. The man claimed to be seriously thinking of putting it on his tombstone-if no one had used it first, of course. He was a stickler about originality. Intellectual property, he called it, and he had confided to Will that the wrestling characters he’d invented, Outlaw Bull Gutter or Sheriff Bull Gutter, might one day make them all wealthy.

“Just you watch,” the man had said. “When Hollywood finally gets hold of its senses and stops making them candy-ass, cartoon-robot shoot-’em-ups, they’ll snoop around for a new hero until they sniff gold. Never been two finer intellectual properties created than Outlaw Bull and Sheriff Bull, so I expect we’ll cash in before I die.”

We’ll cash in, talking like Will was an actual member of the family instead of just temporary, although Bull had demanded a second-year extension to the Lutherans’ usual one-year guardianship.

It was weird for Will to think of himself dead and buried before the old man beat him to it. Especially considering how they’d met that first day when Guttersen had said something flippant about the garbage bag Will had been carrying, miffed that his suicide had been interrupted.

Guttersen’s revolver had been loaded with. 38 caliber Hydra-Shoks. Will could picture them in the cylinder now, as he retreated into a safer venue of thought. The bullets had looked as symmetrical as spider eggs when Guttersen lowered the gun from his own temple and pointed it at Will’s chest.

The bullets had ugly, puckered golden tips. They were called Man Stoppers at Minneapolis gun shows and marketed exactly for such an occasion: home alone, enjoying the comforts of a remodeled basement-a little bar and a flat-screen TV-only to be interrupted by a robber whose dark skin indicated that he probably was a crack addict and also unpredictable, unlike teenagers of Norwegian descent.

Instead, Will had heard click as the gun’s cylinder rotated and the hammer locked back, Guttersen making his smart-assed remark about him being disinclined to offer Will a beer while waiting for the ambulance.

What happened next, though, was the strangest part of what had already been a strange, strange day. Guttersen had flipped the revolver around and caught it by the barrel. The move had spooked Will so badly that he threw his hands up and closed his eyes, expecting to be shot. A second later, though, when he peeked, Will was surprised to see the man extending his arm, wanting Will to take the gun.

Guttersen had said to him, patiently, “You gotta pull the hammer back before you fire. It’s single-action. And don’t close your damn eyes! If you miss, I swear to God I’ll testify against you in court.”

Will had said, “Do what?,” even though he knew what the man wanted.

“Take the damn gun!”

Will had curled his fingers around the gun’s weight, his thumb automatically finding the hammer, as Guttersen told him, “My coin collection’s in the pantry, what looks like a candy box. There’s a Mercury dime worth five hundred bucks, I shit thee not. And a hundred seven Liberty-head silver dollars-you can figure that one out for yourself.”

Will understood more about that than the old man realized. He liked coins and had kept a few from the pawnbroker. “The dime-must be the 1940-S, huh?” he offered.

“Mint condition,” Guttersen told him. “But pay attention, damn it, I’m trying to talk. My wife keeps her jewelry in the commercial freezer. One of those Tupperware-thingee containers. Most of it’s fake, but, Jesus Christ, don’t let word get back to her-especially the diamond necklace, which is zirconium. She’ll pretend it don’t bother her, but she’ll do it in a way that drives everybody nuts. Not that you won’t find plenty of other valuables,” the man had added quickly. “Don’t get me wrong.”

Guttersen began moving his wheelchair as he gave instructions, positioning himself near the bar where there was Mexican tile, not carpet: less mess, and a clear shot for Will.

The old man said, “My wife left for the hairdresser’s only ’bout half an hour ago, but sometimes she forgets stuff and comes back unannounced. And some of those-what do you call ’em?- technicians color roots faster than others, so you never know. Catch my meaning? We don’t have time to waste.”

The man had paused and looked at the boy for a moment before warning, “About my wife… don’t you lay a damn hand on her. Hear me? You touch my wife, I’ll come back from the grave and tear you a new asshole. Savvy?”

Jesus, talking like they were in a TV western, Will being the dumb Indian, but a fire spark glowed in the old man’s eyes so Will didn’t comment, even after the spark faded.

Guttersen had turned the chair so he was looking at photos that hung over the bar. He straightened his T-shirt, took a deep breath and cleared his throat. Then he said, “Okay. I’m ready. Go.”

Will had looked at the gun but didn’t answer.

“Hear me? I said, ‘Ready.’ ”

Will was still staring at the revolver, seeing the fake-pearl handle, the chrome flaking on the cylinder-a piece of junk.

“Jesus-frogs, you deaf, too?”

“I heard what you said: You’re ready.”

“Goddamn right I’m ready. I’m overdue ready!” Guttersen squared his shoulders and tilted his left temple toward Will. “All righty.. .” He took another deep, slow breath. “Here we go-and keep your damn eyes open! You owe me that. You’re about to come into some money.”

Standing in the basement of what the Lutheran Grandparents Program had assigned as his foster home, Will had then experienced an abrupt change of aspect, a camera-on-the-ceiling view that often occurred when something unusually shitty or dangerous happened in his life-a phenomenon he had experienced too many times.

Will stood there, a head taller than the big Norwegian in his wheelchair, seeing the room from above. A darkness tinted the space, a hopelessness that smelled of brittle paper and ironing.

Through the tinted air, he could see the old man, sitting with his head bowed, waiting to die, and the pool table, a SCHMIDT BEER neon sign over the bar, a jar of pickled eggs, bottles of booze in a row, a MINNESOTA TWINS pennant, photos on the wall of what looked like wrestlers, a JOE FOR EMPEROR sticker and two cowboy hats on a deer-horn rack-big, felt bullshit hats no wrangler would ever wear. One hat black, the other white.

Will had zoomed in and was examining himself, standing like a dope, holding the stainless-steel revolver, which was brighter, bigger than everything else in the room except for an old floor-model radio that Will’s ears had stopped hearing until that moment, possibly because a commercial break had just ended and the announcer now was on the subject of guns. He was saying, “… scientists have built a giant electromagnet in the Rocky Mountains. When they hit the switch, all the handguns in America will be sucked from holsters, bedrooms, locked closets-you name it. Guns’ll bust through walls, knock holes in roofs, that’s how strong the magnet is…”

Will’s eyes descended from the ceiling as he listened. After a minute or two, he was on the floor again, right back beside the wheelchair, when the old man said, “Jesus Christ, you waiting for me to die of old age? Pull the freakin’ trigger!”

Will said, “I was listening to the guy on the radio.”

“Well, stop listening and start shooting, goddamn it. I’m starting to lose the mood.”

“That thing about the giant magnet, is it bullshit?”

“Huh?”

“What the guy said about pulling guns through walls.”

The man looked up, irritated. “It’s a radio show, for chrissake! What’s a matter? You afraid that magnet’s gonna rip your damn arm off when that gun flies out the window?”

When Will asked, “Could it?,” the man snorted, getting mad now, and saying, “How stupid are they making kids these days? Damn half-breed, you must have the IQ of a Twinkie.”

Will said, “Hey!,” and pulled the hammer back. “Don’t talk to me that way. I’ve got a damn gun in my hand.”

The old man snapped, “Well, you sure could’ve fooled the hell out of me. Maybe you’d do better with a bow and arrow.”

“Knock it off. I mean it.”

“Let’s hope you do. My wife’s probably under the dryer by now.”

The old man had looked at Will, seeing the revolver, hammer back, and thought for a moment. He muttered something, then he squared his shoulders again, turned his temple toward Will and focused on the old photos of wrestlers on the wall.

“Do it!” he said. “Or I’m calling the cops.” Then tried to piss off Will, adding, “You being Ethiopian, maybe we should melt the freakin’ gun down and make a freakin’ spear out of it. A weapon not so complicated.”

Will ignored the comment because he knew what the man was doing. He looked at the radio instead. Now the radio guy was saying, “… So here’s how we use this giant magnet. We send fancy metal belts to every sportswriter who thinks Bert should not be in the Hall of Fame. Engraved belts, like presents, get it? When scientists hit the magnet’s switch- Whammo! -a hundred sportswriters are suddenly airborne, flying toward Denver without a plane.”

Will had noticed the old man’s chest moving like he was laughing. The joke was kinda funny. But then Will realized the man was crying again. Geezus, it was embarrassing. A grown man crying, Will had never seen it before. Well… that wasn’t true. On the Rez, some of the older Skins occasionally bawled when they got drunk, but it was mad-crying because they were walled in by their lives, dead broke, with snot-nosed kids who would never amount to nothing.

That wasn’t the sound Will was hearing now, this hopeless weeping without bottom, a despair that had the scent of crumbling paper.

Uncocking the gun, Will went to the radio and turned the volume louder. He wasn’t going to shoot the guy, so the only thing he could think of to say was, “Who the hell is Bert? Why don’t sportswriters like him?”

The old man pretended to cough into his hand. On the bar was a towel. He took his time getting the towel, then coughed a few more times and blew his nose, keeping his back to the boy.

“You ever get tired of asking questions? Jesus Christ, you oughta be stealing encyclopedias instead of hard-earned jewelry and stuff.”

Will repeated the question, feeling the air in the room changing, the invisible gray tint clearing, and he thought, Good.

The old man said, “Bert Blyleven. Bert pitched for the Twins when they won the World Series.” Then he held up an index finger, as if there was something too important to miss, but it was really to give himself more time to stop bawling as he listened to the radio guy saying:

“… Blyleven’s got almost four thousand strikeouts, plus two World Series rings. As if that’s not enough to earn the Dutchman a place in Cooperstown, Bert had nearly three hundred career wins, too, despite playing for underpaid teams.” Being funny, the radio announcer added, “Take it easy, Twinkie lovers, I don’t want you to choke on your Grain Belts-I am not referring to our Twins, of course.”

It was another minute before Will said, “I never heard of the guy.”

The man who only later would introduce himself as Otto Guttersen spun his wheelchair, oblivious to the tinted air flowing through Will’s brain. Like smoke, it drifted upward, the space changing from gray-blue to pearl, as Guttersen said, “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

Will said, “ ’ Bout what?”

“You never heard of Bert Blyleven? He’s only one of the greatest pitchers of all time, which most sportswriters know. But there’re still a few dingleberries out there who won’t vote him into the Hall of Fame. Didn’t you just hear what Joe said?”

Joe, Will would also soon learn, was Joe Soucheray, the host of Garage Logic, a local guy who even Will had to admit was pretty funny for being an old Casper from Minnesota.

Will began to relax a little when Guttersen said, “You don’t follow baseball? Maybe Indian chiefs don’t allow TV on the reservation. Or is it because of the Great White Father?”

Usually, Rez jokes didn’t bother Will. The Skins said a lot worse than that, but they were Skins, not some racist old cripple from the Land of a Thousand Lakes.

Will told the old man, “Screw you, I ride rodeo,” and knew it was okay because the man didn’t say anything as he placed the gun on the counter.

“Screw me?” The man snorted and sniffed. “Screw you, kid.”

“Screw you!”

“Screw you.”

Then Will had to listen to him say, “Every kid in the world should know something about baseball. Hell, stealing bases would come natural to someone with your experience.”

Looking around for the garbage bag, Will gave the man a look: Screw YOU!

“Kid, you wanna talk about a real sport? Here, I’ll show you.” The old guy had wheeled toward the bar, where there were wrestling photos on the wall, then stopped suddenly.

“Whoa… Holy Christ,” he whispered, “I just remembered something: My wife told me we’re getting a juvenile-delinquent kid tomorrow. Said he was gonna be living with us for a month, because she signed up for this stupid program down at church. Some foster-grandparent bullshit.” He had poked his big nose toward Will, the old man’s face now become a face with features. “You have anything to say on that subject?”

Will had used his sullen Why should I care? expression and looked at the floor.

“Are you the delinquent? Seriously, I’m asking.”

As the man moved the chair closer, Will knelt for the garbage bag, changing his expression to read That’s so crazy it’s funny.

Guttersen had pale, piggish blue eyes that lit up when he thought he’d done something smart. “I’ll be go-to-hell,” he said, “it is you! Christ! When she said an Indian kid, I thought she meant from freakin’ India. Like with a turban and a dot-you know, a tea drinker who might get pretty good grades in math.”

Will was looking around the room, thinking, I’ve gotta get out of here, as the man pressed on. “Her Tinkerbell friends wouldn’t have said Indian unless it was India. They woulda said Native American or Indigenous- something. But that’s what my wife meant-a juvenile-delinquent Indian.” The old man was grinning for some reason. “By God, you’re just as advertised. I can’t argue with what’s staring me in the kisser!”

Will had started up the stairs.

“Hey, where you going? I wouldn’t mind hearing about what it’s like robbing houses.”

Will kept walking.

Guttersen raised his voice when he didn’t get an instant response, a habit that would irritate the hell out of Will in the future. “I’m bored, for chrissake! That’s not obvious? Come back and have a seat. We still got half an hour of the radio show.”

Will had turned to look at the man. “You don’t want me here, mister. You’re afraid I’ll tell the church people I caught you trying to blow your brains out. If they hear that, they’ll strap you in a straitjacket and take you to the loony farm.”

“I suppose they might try,” Guttersen replied. “You gonna tell?”

“Not if you don’t tell the cops what I do for extra money.”

“I expect you’ve laid up quite a pile, working with a pawnshop. What do you do with all that money, buy drugs? Saving for college?”

In that instant, Will had realized something surprising: He could answer any way he wanted, even tell the old man the truth, an opportunity that would end when he walked out the door.

“I buy marijuana seeds sometimes,” Will had said, talking slow so he could feel what it was like not lying. “I grow it, then make a bunch more money selling tacote to rich kids. You know, weed.”

“ Weed, you call it. I thought the word you drug dealers used was grass. Or… maryann.”

“ Grass, sometimes. Smoke or tacote, they called it on the Rez-the reservation, I mean.”

Guttersen said, “I’ll be go-to-hell,” interested, but not as interested as he was pretending to be. Then the man ruined it with flattery. “I was impressed, you knowing about the Mercury dime. Most people, they’d drop a 1940-S in a Coke machine, not a second thought. You’re a go-getter for an orphan delinquent, I shit thee not.”

Will had almost told Guttersen something else true that he’d never told anyone: He was saving to buy Blue Jacket from the snooty Texans with their fancy ranch. Instead, Will had flashed his Whatever expression, then started up the stairs, telling the old man, “No need to shovel it so high. I’ll tell the church people I ain’t living here but won’t mention the gun.”

“Good. None of their damn business anyway.” The man had pushed his wheelchair to the stairwell, waiting until Will was almost at the top, to offer, “We still got thirty minutes of Garage Logic. Wouldn’t hurt to stay until the wife gets back from the hair parlor.”

“I got better things to do, mister.”

Guttersen didn’t argue-a surprise. Just sort of shrugged as he spun the chair, then settled in by the radio, his indifference saying Leave if you want, I’m not begging.

Will had stood on the stairs, thinking about it. He didn’t like the man-who would? But there was something comfortable about being with an adult you could tell to go screw himself and he’d say it right back, no hard feelings.

But the craziness with the gun was scary. And the wife sounded like most foster grandmothers, tight-cheeked do-gooders who worked so hard pretending to be sweet, they were a pain in the ass.

No thanks.

As Will reached the top of the stairs, though, he heard the old man call, “If you steal the jewelry, at least close the damn freezer door tight. Hear? But if you’re staying, there’s a can of beef jerky on the cupboard, and grab me a beer. Two beers, if you’re thirteen or older.”

It was a couple of months before Guttersen’s wife, Ruth, gave them permission to open the gun safe-Guttersen, of course, pretending he didn’t have an extra key-and drive to the shooting range. That’s where Will heard the pearl-handled revolver fired for the first time.

Loud, yeah, but as expected.

Back in Oklahoma, even shrinks and preachers packed guns. On the Rez, Christ, the Skins still had machine pistols hidden away from the days of the American Indian Movement. Will had grown up carrying a sidearm, provided by whatever ranch was paying him to ride fence. He could shoot.

Even so, he had to listen to Guttersen run his mouth, offering advice about the finer points of marksmanship, which Will had assumed was bullshit because competent shooters didn’t buy cheap weapons like a pearl-handled knockoff.

A misjudgment, he discovered.

“This shiny piece of junk’s got sentimental value,” Guttersen explained, shucking brass from the cylinder, then laying the gun aside. “It’s a fake peace-maker I used in my wrestling shows. Sheriff Bull Gutter and Outlaw Bull both. Good for close range, if you catch my meaning. But I woulda never used it in the field.”

When Will asked, “What field?,” the man didn’t answer, too busy locking the wheels on his chair, then producing a gun case from beneath his seat.

“This,” he said, “is what I used in the field. Not the sort of weapon I’d want some cop to snatch because they took it as evidence. Savvy?”

It was like that all the time, now, Geezus. Cowboy Bull and his Indian sidekick, Pony Chaser.

Inside the case was a pistol Will had read about but never seen, a custom. 45 caliber semiautomatic Kahr, polished stainless steel, with custom sights. A beautiful weapon, even though the gun had had some use.

“Where’d you carry it?” Will asked again, but Guttersen was loading rounds into a magazine, then turned his attention to a combat range. There were targets at twenty-five yards, fifty yards, and one target seventy-five yards away.

“If I had a rifle,” Will said, making conversation, “I’d take the far target and show you something.”

Guttersen shucked a round into the Kahr, and replied, “I’ll show you something right now,” then did.

Bull Guttersen could shoot.

It was another ten months before the man answered the question, “What field?,” confiding in Will something that even Guttersen’s wife was forbidden to mention: Bull’s wrestling career didn’t end in the ring, as he commonly told people.

Truth was, he had been crippled six years before in Afghanistan, at age fifty-one, after being recalled as a sergeant with his mortar unit in the Minneapolis National Guard.

Hearing that confirmed something else Will had begun to suspect. Guttersen wasn’t as old as he looked. He was old but not old. Something had happened to the man that aged him.

“I saw some action around Kabul, slept in a tent and put on a couple of wrestling shows for the USO. Didn’t even mind the scorpions too much, but then the Hummer I was in hit an IED outside Mazar-Sharif and it all went to hell.”

Guttersen didn’t tell Will that until days later, the two of them staying up late one night watching The Angel and the Badman, sitting in La-Z-Boy recliners, the fancy ones with beer holders built right into the armrests.

Guttersen had offered the information in a mild, damn-near intelligent voice Will had never heard the man use before… and might never hear again.

“Don’t ask for details, Pony Boy,” Bull had said, ending the conversation. “If you bring it up, or tell a soul, I’ll say it never happened, because, once folks find out the truth, they never stop asking me about it- What was it like? Musta been hell -as if they knew something about hell. People don’t know jackshit about hell, not the Real McCoy hell. Trust me on that one.”

In the same mild voice, Bull had explained, “Even if I don’t answer their damn questions, I still end up thinking about the answers. And I don’t want to recall how truly shitty it was. Just don’t got the energy for that no more.” Bull had added, being very serious, “Pony, you’d have to be a POW yourself to understand.”

Buried alive, Will wondered now, his eyes open in darkness of his coffin. Does that count?