The Drowning Child

53

Seth Fuller stood in the doorway of The Crow Bar, waiting for his opportunity. He found it when Shannon bent down over Clyde Brimmer’s table to serve him a beer.

‘Aunt Shannon?’ said Seth. ‘I’m going into town – do you need anything?’

His heart was pounding. His T-shirt was shaking. He held his hand to his stomach to steady it.

Shannon was too far away to notice. She glanced at the clock. It was ten p.m. ‘What are you going into town for?’ she said.

‘I’m going to go to Bucky’s, maybe play a game of pool, see who’s there...’

‘Why can’t you play here?’ said Shannon.

‘With whom?’ he said.

‘I like that you say “whom”,’ said Shannon, ‘but I’d like it more if you didn’t go anywhere this late.’

‘Sometimes I think you forget I’m twenty-three years old.’

‘You’re right,’ said Shannon. ‘You’re my sister’s baby, and now you’re mine. You haven’t aged a day...’ She smiled. ‘Go on – be back by midnight, OK? Can you promise me that much?’

‘I most certainly can.’

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘before you go.’ She walked over to him, gave him a hug. She patted his back. ‘You’re on fire,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘It’s hot in here.’

She was about to pull her hand away when she felt something against his lower back. She patted it harder. Before he had a chance, she had turned him around and lifted up his T-shirt.

‘What the hell?’ said Shannon. She grabbed him by his skinny arm, and shoved him behind the bar. ‘You better start talking, mister. What the hell are you doing with a gun? Are you out of your mind?’

His cheeks were flaming red. Tears sprung into his eyes. ‘For protection,’ he said.

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ she said. ‘Who do you need protection from? Give me that right now.’

He pulled it out of his waistband and slapped it on to her open palm. She grabbed it and slid it to the back of a shelf.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Who do you think is after you?’

‘No one!’ said Seth. ‘No one. But I just—’

‘Just what?’ said Shannon. ‘Want to feel tough? And you know that would just be taken off of you and used against you. You don’t know how to fire a gun. I’ve never had guns in the house. I don’t even have one in the bar, and there’s a damn good reason for that: nothing good comes from guns, Seth. You see it every day on the news.’

‘I do know how to fire it,’ said Seth. ‘I’ve been practicing in the woods.’

‘Well, shooting at some tin cans is not the same as shooting a human being,’ said Shannon. ‘You’re twenty-three years old – do I really need to explain that to you? Do you have a death wish, Seth? A prison-sentence wish? Do you miss being in prison? What is wrong with you? Are you taking drugs again?’

‘No!’ he said. ‘No way! You know that. Never again.’

‘I believe you,’ said Shannon. ‘But tell me what’s going on – talk to me. Why is your internal switch set to self-destruct?’

He wiped away his tears. ‘It’s not,’ he said.

‘It is!’ said Shannon. ‘Misbehaving at school, damaging people’s property... you were so young, Seth, so reckless, and I gave you a break, because you lost your mama. You were acting out. But it didn’t get much better. And then drugs. Again, I figured, you’d had a hard time, you were a teenager by that stage, your daddy was gone at a time you really needed him... then prison... and now this! What is wrong, Seth? Something has to be.’

‘Nothing’s wrong!’ he shouted. ‘Nothing’s wrong. Just leave me alone. You’re suffocating me. I know you’ve lost everyone else, so I don’t know why you’re trying to push me away too.’

‘What? I’m not trying to push you away!’ said Shannon. ‘I love the bones of you, Seth Fuller—’

‘Stop!’ he said. ‘Just stop.’

‘Stop loving you?’ she said. She tried to smile. ‘That’s never going to happen.’

‘You don’t know me,’ he shouted. ‘You don’t really know me. I think you just love who I was when Mama was alive. Who I used to be.’

He brushed past her, strode for the door, and pushed through into the night.

Seth parked his truck a five-minute walk from Bucky’s, but he had no intention of going there. He looked around at the mix of houses along a street that was mainly residential, but had some doctors’ offices, lawyers’ offices, and other small businesses based out of them.

He got out of the truck and walked the length of the block, his breath white in the cold air. He stopped at the corner, at Longacres Funeral Home. He remembered standing there when he was eight years old, holding his Aunt Shannon’s hand, looking around at the other kids his age, and thinking that this was it – he had no parents, now. At just that moment, Shannon had squeezed his hand three times – I. Love. You. He had looked up at her, and she had looked down at him, and there was so much love in that small gesture, so much love in her eyes for him, in her smile, that he believed that everything was going to be all right. He was wrong.

Then they were back again for Aaron’s funeral.

Seth’s heart was racing, and he was amazed that it worked at all despite the slash of pain that felt like a hot blade, slicing down through it, carving out a trench that felt like it was widening with every breath.

How is my heart still pumping? How are my lungs functioning?

What am I doing here? What am I doing?

He turned back, walked toward his truck, hands in his pockets, head down. He heard heavy footsteps coming toward him. He looked up and saw Gil Wiley.

‘Hey, Wiley’

But Wiley, face was red and twisted, and he was closing the gap between them in huge strides. Before Seth had a chance to pull his hands from his pockets, a powerful right hook had sent him to the ground, with nothing to break his fall. As his head struck the concrete, through the ringing in his ears, he could hear Wiley shouting: ‘Are you fucking my wife, you piece of shit? Are you fucking my wife?’