Thing was, Woodson kept running, kept plunging his feet in and out of the water, making those sucking sounds, M-15 hugged to his chest, for a good eight or ten steps. Kid was dead, he’s still running. Kid had no reason to hold on, but he don’t know it, he keeps running.
What spark of memory, hope, or dream had kept him going?
You had to wonder.
In Elgin’s dream that night, a platoon of ice-gray Vietcong rose in a straight line from the center of Cooper’s Lake while Elgin was inside the cabin with Shelley and Jewel. He penetrated them both somehow, their separate torsos branching out from the same pair of hips, their four legs clamping at the small of his back, this Shelley-Jewel creature crying out for more, more, more.
And Elgin could see the VC platoon drifting in formation toward the shore, their guns pointed, their faces hidden behind thin wisps of green fog.
The Shelley-Jewel creature arched her backs on the bed below him, and Woodson and Blue stood in the corner of the room watching as their dogs padded across the floor, letting out low growls and drooling.
Shelley dissolved into Jewel as the VC platoon reached the porch steps and released their safeties all at once, the sound like the ratcheting of a thousand shotguns. Sweat exploded in Elgin’s hair, poured down his body like warm rain, and the VC fired in concert, the bullets shearing the walls of the cabin, lifting the roof off into the night. Elgin looked above him at the naked night sky, the stars zipping by like tracers, the yellow moon full and mean, the shivering branches of birch trees. Jewel rose and straddled him, bit his lip, and dug her nails into his back, and the bullets danced through his hair, and then Jewel was gone, her writhing flesh having dissolved into his own.
Elgin sat naked on the bed, his arms stretched wide, waiting for the bullets to find his back, to shear his head from his body the way they’d sheared the roof from the cabin, and the yellow moon burned above him as the dogs howled and Blue and Woodson held each other in the corner of the room and wept like children as the bullets drilled holes in their faces.
Big Bobby came by the trailer late the next morning, a Sunday, and said, “Blue’s a bit put out about losing his job.”
“What?” Elgin sat on the edge of his bed, pulled on his socks. “You picked now — now, Bobby — to fire him?”
“It’s in his eyes,” Big Bobby said. “Like you said. You can see it.” Elgin had seen Big Bobby scared before, plenty of times, but now the man was trembling.
Elgin said, “Where is he?”
Blue’s front door was open, hanging half down the steps from a busted hinge. Elgin said, “Blue.”
“Kitchen.”
He sat in his Jockeys at the table, cleaning his rifle, each shiny black piece spread in front of him on the table. Elgin’s eyes watered a bit because there was a stench coming from the back of the house that he felt might strip his nostrils bare. He realized then that he’d never asked Big Bobby or Blue what they’d done with all those dead dogs.
Blue said, “Have a seat, bud. Beer in the fridge if you’re thirsty.”
Elgin wasn’t looking in that fridge. “Lost your job, huh?”
Blue wiped the bolt with a shammy cloth. “Happens.” He looked at Elgin. “Where you been lately?”
“I called you last night.”
“I mean in general.”
“Working.”
“No, I mean at night.”
“Blue, you been” — he almost said “playing house with Jewel Lut” but caught himself — “up in a fucking tree, how do you know where I been at night?”
“I don’t,” Blue said. “Why I’m asking.”
Elgin said, “I’ve been at my trailer or down at Doubles, same as usual.”
“With Shelley Briggs, right?”
Slowly, Elgin said, “Yeah.”
“I’m just asking, buddy. I mean, when we all going to go out? You, me, your new girl.”
The pits that covered Blue’s face like a layer of bad meal had faded some from all those nights in the tree.
Elgin said, “Anytime you want.”
Blue put down the bolt. “How ’bout right now?” He stood and walked into the bedroom just off the kitchen. “Let me just throw on some duds.”
“She’s working now, Blue.”
“At Perkin Lut’s? Hell, it’s almost noon. I’ll talk to Perkin about that Dodge he sold me last year, and when she’s ready we’ll take her out someplace nice.” He came back into the kitchen wearing a soiled brown T-shirt and jeans.
“Hell,” Elgin said, “I don’t want the girl thinking I’ve got some serious love for her or something. We come by for lunch, next thing she’ll expect me to drop her off in the mornings, pick her up at night.”
Blue was reassembling the rifle, snapping all those shiny pieces together so fast, Elgin figured he could do it blind. He said, “Elgin, you got to show them some affection sometimes. I mean, Jesus.” He pulled a thin brass bullet from his T-shirt pocket and slipped it in the breech, followed it with four more, then slid the bolt home.
“Yeah, but you know what I’m saying, bud?” Elgin watched Blue nestle the stock in the space between his left hip and ribs, let the barrel point out into the kitchen.
“I know what you’re saying,” Blue said. “I know. But I got to talk to Perkin about my Dodge.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s wrong with it?” Blue turned to look at him, and the barrel swung level with Elgin’s belt buckle. “What’s wrong with it, it’s a piece of shit, what’s wrong with it, Elgin. Hell, you know that. Perkin sold me a lemon. This is the situation.” He blinked. “Beer for the ride?”
Elgin had a pistol in his glove compartment. A .32. He considered it.
“Elgin?”
“Yeah?”
“Why you looking at me funny?”
“You got a rifle pointed at me, Blue. You realize that?”
Blue looked at the rifle, and its presence seemed to surprise him. He dipped it toward the floor. “Shit, man, I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking. It feels like my arm sometimes. I forget. Man, I am sorry.” He held his arms out wide, the rifle rising with them.
“Lotta things deserve to die, don’t they?”
Blue smiled. “Well, I wasn’t quite thinking along those lines, but now you bring it up...”
Elgin said, “Who deserves to die, buddy?”
Blue laughed. “You got something on your mind, don’t you?” He hoisted himself up on the table, cradled the rifle in his lap. “Hell, boy, who you got? Let’s start with people who take two parking spaces.”
“Okay.” Elgin moved the chair by the table to a position slightly behind Blue, sat in it. “Let’s.”
“Then there’s DJs talk through the first minute of a song. Fucking Guatos coming down here these days to pick tobacco, showing no respect. Women wearing all those tight clothes, look at you like you’re a pervert when you stare at what they’re advertising.” He wiped his forehead with his arm. “Shit.”
“Who else?” Elgin said quietly.
“Okay. Okay. You got people like the ones let their dogs run wild into the highway, get themselves killed. And you got dishonest people, people who lie and sell insurance and cars and bad food. You got a lot of things. Jane Fonda.”
“Sure.” Elgin nodded.
Blue’s face was drawn, gray. He crossed his legs over each other like he used to down at the drainage ditch. “It’s all out there.” He nodded and his eyelids drooped.
“Perkin Lut?” Elgin said. “He deserve to die?”
“Not just Perkin,” Blue said. “Not just. Lots of people. I mean, how many you kill over in the war?”