The Outlaw Album: Stories

NIGHT STAND

Pelham came awake one night to find a naked man standing over his bed, growling. There was little light in the bedroom, but he could see one arm of the man from his shoulder to his wrist, a grim tattoo of something burning, a pale suggestion of bared teeth and taut lips. The growling was menacing and confused, with shrill rises, deep ferocity giving way to brief keening trills, a mangle of tones. Jill woke, too, looked at the man, then rolled from bed and fled screaming toward the next room. Pelham reached for the light on the nightstand but his fingers rattled a plate that shouldn’t have been there, and on the plate there lay a knife. The man stood still at the bottom of the bed, noisy and tall, a looming shadow inside the house that Pelham had to stand and fight, do what he could, stall for time and let Jill run, hide somewhere, since she must be what he’s after—why else would he be naked? But the man made no move to chase her, and didn’t lunge or leap onto Pelham like he could’ve, either, didn’t take control and clobber him senseless, but only stood there growling with his arms at his sides, hands held low, and Pelham quick got to him with the blade, planted steel in his chest. A popping sound came from inside the man’s ribs, and Pelham expected to be sliced in return now, maybe shot, but the man missed somehow, so close but he missed, and Pelham whipped in another stab and there came that plonk sound of striking a knothole hammering a nail, and the blade hung up in the ribs. The growls were weaker and calmer as Pelham twisted the blade, weaker and calmer, then the man’s arms collapsed onto Pelham, damp hands clasping Pelham’s shoulders as if to steady himself, hold himself upright, prevent himself from falling, and blood jumped from the chest wound, ran warm down Pelham’s belly. The ribs let the knife loose of a sudden and the overhead light flicked on as Pelham aimed the blade and he saw the man in a bright clear flash, a big handsome kid, shaved head, too many tats, his chest hole leaking breath and bubbling blood, but his hand didn’t halt. The kid’s neck burst open beneath his chin, Jill screamed again, hot flung blood in the eyes blinded Pelham as the kid’s arms squeezed about him, hugged him near, hugged him as they both fell to the floor and fell apart.

Blind yet, eyeballs rolling in the warm puddling, Pelham groped for a bedsheet. The kid’s bare feet were slapping the wood floor, slapping down hard like he was clambering to the crest of a hill that wasn’t there. Pelham blotted the blood from his eyes. Jill was weeping. The kid soon stilled, blue eyes open, footprints in red all around his body. The wind inside him escaped from ass and mouth. He never had said a word.

For weeks to come Pelham would wonder how that knife came to be on the nightstand. How did a knife that shouldn’t have been there happen to be there on this particular night? He tried to recall the preceding days backwards from the killing moment, to unravel the hours and find that knife. He didn’t eat before sleep anymore, acid reflux, so it wasn’t there to carve apples or slice cheese. They’d had guests a couple of nights ago, though, a few friends in for an evening of bourbon and smoked turkey, and he’d gone to bed pretty well lit—had he craved a snack to soak up the sour mash, fuck the reflux, and fallen asleep before fetching any? There was no sign of food on the empty plate. They’d gone after trout on the Spring River the day before that, fog in the bottoms and rainbows filling their creels—maybe he’d meant to fix something rent in the gear? Cut a tangle loose, trim a fly, fix a net, or perform some other mysterious household task he simply could not recall.

The house became crowded with cops. Pelham lived amidst woods and pastures, but the city limits had recently expanded to make him a West Table resident, so it was town cops in uniform and out clomping about, huddling to look down at the kid, studying the mess across the floor. Pelham sat on the bed with Jill beside him. He’d shook and shuddered for a while, waiting on the cops, trying not to look at the wounds, the open eyes and footprints, but having a surprise feeling sneak up on him, a creepy congratulatory glee, an animal gloat—Hey, I was attacked by a nameless intruder, fight to the finish, my foe now lays slain, a righteous kill. Sometimes a man will dream about a moment like this, an opportunity for sanctified violence, a time to open the cage and allow the sleeping thing inside out to eat its fill. A cop in a plaid shirt and Cardinals cap said, “Where’d his weapon fall to?”

“It was dark.”

“What’d he have?”

“Look under the bed, maybe.”

“You know, he shit on your leather chair downstairs.”

The leather recliner was Pelham’s inheritance, his father’s most cherished possession, and the shit was loose spatter and spread over the seat, one armrest. Two days later Pelham would give up trying to clean the leather, clean it enough to forget the spatter, and dragged the chair to the curb for the trash haulers to collect. Before nightfall he’d watched from the window as a man and two children pulled to the curb, checked the leather chair over, then excitedly jammed it into the trunk of their car and hurried away, grinning with the trunk lid bouncing. That was the first time Pelham caught himself speaking aloud to empty rooms, leaning against the window, watching his father’s chair disappear. “And fuck you for making me kill you.”

The cop said, “We found it outside, around the corner of the house, beside that big shrub. An ol’ single-action pistol. His clothes were there, piled nice, really, and the pistol was underneath. A pocketknife, too. His wallet’s got military ID in it, says his name is Randall Davies—know him?”

“I went to school with a guy named that.”

“Well, this one was a junior.”

The first time Pelham heard himself threatened was early that evening, in a convenience store when he and Jill went to buy more cleaning supplies. The bedroom floor was hardwood and the biggest puddle left an outline of blood that had settled into the grain like a birthmark and wouldn’t come off easily. There was only one other customer, a man in a green shirt with his name sewn above the heart pocket, and he was whispering with the clerk. Pelham and Jill came to stand behind him, holding scouring powder and Murphy soap and scrub pads. They heard the words “killed, stabbed like a hog in autumn” and knew they were under discussion. They remained silent, didn’t say a word, waited for the man to leave. As he left, the man spoke more loudly, “I been friends with that boy all his life, and if the law don’t do right to the son of a bitch, I know who will.” Jill started crying again on the way home, and when he pulled into the driveway she said, “Maybe that last stab could’ve been skipped, hon. The neck one.”

He was called to the police station the next morning. The sky was rumbling, stuffed with dark clouds, but only a thin sheen fell, raising oil slicks on the streets, shining the grass. The cops were named Olmstead and Johnson and led him to a private office. The room was painted a neutral sort of white, like the room could hold no opinions about anything one way or the other, and there was a tape recorder on the table. Olmstead said, “You’re certain sure you never did know him?”

“I could’ve seen him somewhere, but I don’t recall it.”

“His daddy knows who you are.”

“From school days.”

“And Jill, now, it couldn’t be she’d got acquainted with such a handsome young fella somewhere, could it?”

“He was kinda young, man, but thanks a shitload for putting that thought in my head.”

“So she might’ve?”

“Fuck you.”

Pelham had killed before. He’d been on Okinawa waiting to turn eighteen, a lance corporal, and the day after his birthday made him eligible for combat he was herded into a fat airplane and taken to Saigon. He didn’t know what was going on when he landed in Vietnam and didn’t when he left, either. Jarheads hanging around a gedunk, waiting for assignment, and a corporal told them they were lucky men; they were going to someplace in the south where there wasn’t much action to worry about. Everybody relaxed, tried to eat noodle soup with odd spoons they couldn’t make work, and wrote postcards home expressing relief or disappointment. The radio started crackling about noon, and more and more senior men gathered to listen as the next hour passed. Suddenly the corporal said they weren’t going where he’d thought, get on your feet. First chopper ride, a little airsick, flying north to a place under attack, a place with a name Pelham never did hear straight. They took fire coming in and two marines were hit and spread on the bulkhead. Pelham had blood on his face before he’d even landed at this place with a name he didn’t know. A harried captain acknowledged the fresh arrivals with an irritated wave, and a sergeant sent the Fucking New Guys downhill to the foxholes nearest the wire. Rainwater deepened in the holes; drizzle never stopped. The hills were steep and richly green; fog was alive and lowering until dark. There was a sniper everybody kept yelling about. Pelham did not know where he’d been sent or who he was with. The only name he’d caught was of a marine who’d died on the way in, Lazzaro from Texas. He did not have a clear idea about the shape or size of the base. He was mightily afraid he might shoot the wrong target in the dark, but he didn’t want to be hesitant. He didn’t know which way to run if it came to that or whose name to scream seeking help. Enemy troops breached the wire twice that night. Mortar rounds made the mud fly. Pelham shot and shot and shot every shadow that came near or seemed like it might. When he next understood where he was, he lay in a white bed on a hospital ship with a humming in his head that didn’t fade until he was home again. Sometime during his recovery he received the Purple Heart as a parting gift.

He’d served in Vietnam less than twenty-four hours and felt uncomfortable even mentioning that he’d been there, since other veterans always asked, Remember Mama something-or-other’s joint on the road to Marble Mountain? Di di mau? Beans-and-motherfuckers? The way the gals in black pajamas’d yank one leg up high and pee out the side? No no no no. You’re a bullshitter, then, ’cause if you were there, Jody, you’d know them things. A year after his return Pelham ceased to mention Vietnam to new acquaintances, dropped it from the biography of himself he’d give if asked. Only those who knew him before he went were certain that he’d gone. Jill was a second wife, fifteen years his junior, a lovely, patient blonde, and remembered Vietnam as a tiresome old television show that’d finally been cancelled about the time she left third grade. She touched Pelham’s scars but didn’t ask for details.

That weather, that look, a forest in fog, a faint drizzle and no sky, always took him back to his foxhole in a place he couldn’t name. Such weather often lay over the mountain rivers where he and Jill went fishing, and the next time they went the sky spread low and gray over the bottoms and he could smell foreign mud and old fear. Jill stood knee-deep in the flow, facing upstream from Pelham all morning, silent and tense, then finally turned downstream and said, “No. No, I never did.”

For two days they received threats by telephone, and Pelham would listen to the harsh plans for his body parts and sorry soul and quietly say, “You might be right, man, come on over.” A car drove by a couple of times with young voices screaming something unintelligible but loud and angry. Then a long follow-up article in the town paper made the facts of the case obvious and nobody much blamed Pelham anymore. A day later there was an obituary of Randall Davies Jr.—a lifelong member of the Front Street Church of Christ, avid quail hunter, top rebounder on the West Table High basketball team, best buddy to his sisters Chrystal and Joy, a proud member of the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, where he attained the rank of corporal, beloved of many. Jill taped the obit to the refrigerator door so they might slowly come to understand something crucial from regularly looking into the kid’s face.

If they snacked at the small kitchen table, the face would be above and between them. It was his boot camp photograph, him wearing dress blues, the white hat and brass insignia, a blank, regimented expression. They’d watch the face as they sliced their food and chewed. Studying that face forced the conversation into certain directions. Pelham might ask yet again, “Why ever’d he leave his weapons outside?”

“And why come in here naked?”

“Why shit on Daddy’s chair? Why do that?”

“Contempt, hon. I think that means contempt.”

“He never even threw a punch.”

When Pelham cursed aloud in empty rooms, he knew he was talking to the marine he’d killed. He thought of him as Junior, and interrogated him in his mind, sometimes shook or slapped him. How’d you happen to pick my door? This road is not the route to anywhere special, Junior, ain’t no popular taverns, or skating rinks, or Lovers’ Lanes, or anything out this way—you’ve got to want to get here to get here. Junior never answered, and Jill was unnerved when she came upon Pelham standing in the living room addressing a closet door, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

“Hon? Hon?”

“I’m after answers, that’s what.”

In the night Pelham would rise from bed and patrol the perimeter. He’d sneak through his house in his underwear, carrying an ax handle he’d brought in from the garage. He’d check doors, listen for sounds that might not be benign, creep to a window and peer between the blinds, stand at the empty spot where his father’s chair belonged, with the ax handle drawn back to swing. He’d repeat his patrol several times in succession before relaxing a bit, and at some point Jill usually joined him in the darkness.

“All clear?”

“Maybe.”

On a bright morning outside Kenny’s Walleye Restaurant, Pelham finally bumped into Randall Davies Sr. He stood in the parking lot and felt great relief. Randall and his wife stared a moment, then Randall said, “I thought you’d come by before now.”

The men started to shake hands, then stalled, averted their glances, let their hands fall to their sides. Mrs. Davies stepped forward, a tall and very thin woman who’d been several grades behind the men in school, and said, “I know you had the right—but I just can’t look at your face. I just can’t do it.” She walked to Kenny’s and went inside, and Randall raised his hand again, and this time they shook. He said, “She can’t stand knowin’ how wrong things got to be with him. How lost to us.”

“I didn’t know your son.”

“Me, neither, much. I guess that’s the awful part that’s got so clear now.”

“I’m sorry what happened happened.”

“You’n me need to talk. I’ll give you a call.”

The summer they’d been buddies fell between grades six and seven. They’d roamed the fields and deep woods, taunted bulls in green pastures, mocked girls on the town square, dawdled in the alleyways where interesting refuse might be found. The Davieses were new arrivals, moved down from Rolla, and Pelham’s mother told him to be nice to the freckled boy in thick glasses. Randall was not so hot at sports, but he was willing, and they joined other kids at the park for long, long games of corkball, Indian ball, 500, or, if their numbers swelled, double-headers of baseball with complete teams. They swam in Howl Creek, played slapjack on the screened porch when it rained, drank cream soda, and pegged rocks at pigeons in the empty railroad station. It was their last barefoot summer. Seventh grade brought many complications and new social concerns. Randall was of no help buttering up girls at the drive-in, or during a ritual scrap behind the school, more of a burden, really, a chronic liability, and before long, somehow, they didn’t hang around together anymore. Nothing angry happened, just a slow dwindling, and soon their friendship had shrunk to a glancing, rote exchange of greetings when passing: “How you doin’?”

“Not bad—you?”

“Can’t kick.”

Perfect weather pushed up from Arkansas, and all windows were open to the screen. Jill seemed buoyant and wore only a sheer light-blue nightie. The house breathed that night in the cadence of cicadas, drawing in the smells of honeysuckle and plowed dirt, dogwood and cattle in the distance. Pelham watched the final innings from St. Louis on the bedroom television, a tumbler of bourbon in his hand. Jill lay across the bed, face over the edge, book on the floor, the nightie smoothed to her skin. She snapped the book closed and sat up. “That one’s over.”

The announcer was praising the relief pitching, and Jill went to the bookcase, removed an aged hardback, and started moaning, then sniffling. “What?” he asked, and she pointed at the bookshelf where blood had flown and hidden behind the books, streaking the white paint. “Shit.” Pelham fetched a bucket of water and cleaning rags, the stiff brush that worked best, and they cleared the books from the shelf, stacked them on the floor. They scrubbed and scrubbed until the paint flaked and that streaking of blood was gone from sight. Pelham dropped the brush into the bucket and said, “I’ll be going to the river with his dad.”

They stood on big gray rocks and cast into the current. Shallows began just below the men, and the river murmured passing over the small stones and limestone gravel. Shadows covered the riverbed and halfway up the slope beyond. The current tugged the fishing line like there was a bite and made the rods bend, but the only things on the line were the river and the bait. Randall spoke with his back to Pelham. “What’d Randy say to you?”

“Not a word. He never spoke.”

“How is it you had a knife ready when he showed?”

“He only growled.”

“I can’t feature that part. I don’t get that. I guess I just don’t know what kind of shit really goes on over there.”

“It’s the same shit as always, Randall.”

Pelham broke from the stream and stepped to the riverbank. He reached into his knapsack and retrieved a bottle of bourbon, then hopped back onto the gray rocks. He held the bottle toward Randall. “You ever start drinkin’ whiskey?”

“Only had to start once.”

They sat on the rocks, listening to the river, drinking bourbon from the bottle, letting trout swim past. They sat in silence for ten minutes, twenty, slowly sharing the whiskey. Two kids in yellow kayaks whipped down the channel, racing each other and laughing, easily skirting boulders and skimming the shallows. Their young laughter could yet be heard when they’d floated from sight, far downriver.

“He got different. He was always kind of lonely, you know, not so sure how he stood in the world, always lookin’ for somehow to measure himself, prove somethin’, figure what size of man he was. Could be he found out and it broke him.”

“Randall—why me?”

“You know, he was plenty spooky sometimes—that stare, the hours’n hours when he wouldn’t talk. I could see he was hurtin’ in some way I never had to know, and he drank vodka in bed of a mornin’ with his boots on and took other stuff, too, right there in the house. So, anyhow, one time I went in there while he stared at the ceiling with his boots on the sheets, and asked him, ‘Son, you want to talk about it?’ And he looks at me like he ain’t certain sure we’ve met before, but he says, ‘Will do, bro. Here’s all your main answers: Yes. I lost count. Like tossin’ a bucket of chili into a fan. Pick up all you can, shovel the rest.’”

“There it is.” That very phrase took Pelham back to a time of rain. He screwed the cap onto the bottle and stood. He stretched his legs and turned upstream. He didn’t want to tremble facing Randall. He jumped from the rocks and crouched at the water’s edge, dunked his head and the cold sluiced through him and soaked his neck, drained down his spine. “Whiskey came a little early for me today.”

“Me, too.”

“Let’s go.”

That night Pelham taped his own boot camp photo onto the refrigerator, side by side with Junior’s. Jill looked into the teenage face of her husband and asked, “Is that even you? You looked like that?”

His head was shaved, skin lightly reddened, hat set too squarely, a slight bruise puffed beneath his left eye, expression flat and unblinking.

“For a while, there, I looked exactly that way.”

“Huh. I thought everybody was against Vietnam back then. That’s all you ever hear about, anyhow. ‘Hell no, we won’t go,’ that sort of stuff.”

“That wasn’t our neighborhood.”

He studied the two faces and drank a beer, then another. Jill was mostly at the counter, chopping chicken parts to marinate for guests coming by tomorrow. Citrus and garlic smells were strong. He could see something happening to both faces, that relinquishing of who you’d been replaced by reflexive obedience, a new familiarity with exhaustion. They’d grill dinner and avoid this topic, probably, maybe drink too much just to hear the laughter. He wouldn’t want guests to notice the photos, so he pulled them from the refrigerator, careful not to tear the edges, and held both in his hands. He switched the photos from one hand to the other, then back again. Jill became curious and stepped near, smelling of tomorrow, and looked over his shoulder.

“Why did you join again?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer.

Pelham stepped outside, onto the wooden deck. A big moon cut shadows from everything and flung them around. He laid the photos on a lawn chair, then pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on top of them. Then he slipped from his shoes, dropped his jeans and skivvies, and stood naked near the rail. He leaned on the wood, tried an experimental little growl. The next growl was more sincere; the one after that was louder. Pelham stood upright and breathed deeply, spread his arms wide, growled and growled toward the perimeter, inviting shadows to cross his yard.

“Hon?”