That Gunny had a silver tongue, Jeremy thought as he stared at the highway through the waves of shimmering heat. That Gunny made everything sound so possible. No…inevitable would be the right word.
To get where you want to go, Gunny continued, you have to earn your passage. It’s not enough that one of them is dead. Not nearly enough. Think of them as being target practice. But don’t fuck up again, Jeremy. Do you hear?
“I hear,” Jeremy answered. He had a question to ask, and now was the time: “How many do I need to kill?”
I’ll tell you when to stop. Did you know that your candy is melting?
Jeremy looked down. The Milky Way, which he’d unpeeled from its wrapper, was oozing in dark sticky strands along his hand. When he looked to the right, he knew that Gunny would no longer be there; Gunny, after all, was a prowler and couldn’t stay still very long.
Gunny had come to him on Saturday morning, after the failed suicide of Friday night. It had been a slow insertion, much as a sniper might creep in yard after yard under a ghillie suit that resembled nothing more than a bed of dry grass and dead leaves. At first Gunny had been a faint image in the bathroom mirror, next a pallid shape against a sand-colored wall, then a quickly-glimpsed human figure standing in a corner, and finally a revelation of the death angel’s art, sitting in the chair where it had masqueraded as Chris the night before.
Jeremy had stared at Gunny, at the handsome sharp features and slightly-twisted mouth ready to snap out a command, at the straight-backed posture and slim wiry musculature in the ever-pressed uniform. Jeremy was more fascinated than fearful, more awed than afraid. He stood his ground in the dim room, and he said calmly, “You’re not real.”
Gunny’s eyes had just fixed on him, the direct gaze of a man who is supremely confident of his own physical power. Seconds passed, yet the mouth did not speak.
“Not real,” Jeremy repeated.
And then Gunny had smiled in that way Jeremy remembered; it was almost startling, like seeing a block of ice suddenly crack. It didn’t hold very long, and Gunny’s face settled back into its blank rigidity. Pett, said Gunny in the exact same voice Jeremy knew, I’m as real as you need me to be. Now don’t you have some work to get done?
Gunny had lingered there for a short while, but in the space of a ragged breath or a slow eyeblink the figure was gone and Jeremy was left staring dumbly at an empty chair.
He knew what he wanted, and he knew what he needed to do. He wanted to live, and he needed to prove he was still worth something to someone…even if just to the shade of Gunny. The work to get done: packing some clothes in a bag, putting his rifle in its carrying case, taking the ammo and his automatic pistol and everything he needed out to the metal storage box in the back of his truck. Then going to the library, checking the Internet for The Five’s website and writing down their schedule. The Curtain Club in Dallas tonight. El Paso next Friday night.
What was life, without a purpose?
Sitting in the truck facing I-20 with the melted candy bar all over his hand, Jeremy thought of something Gunny had just said: And you still enjoy the hunt, don’t you?
For a sniper, the hunt was everything. It was what you had trained so hard for. What you lived, ate, and breathed for. What you dreamed about, when you slept. And when you had known what it was like to hunt a man, and had lived through it and been victorious as many times as Jeremy had, there was nothing better. Not even peace.
So, for sure…he still enjoyed the hunt.
He knew exactly why he was sitting with his truck facing I-20. He was watching for their van and their trailer. Wouldn’t be hard to spot. He expected they would be leaving Sweetwater today before eleven o’clock, which was the Lariat’s checkout time. They would be travelling east, back toward Austin, where their website said they were based. He would wait for them, and follow when they passed.
He did enjoy the hunt.
When he was in the swimming pool, there in the dark, the girl had crept up on him.
“Hi,” she’d said, and he’d known who it was from her voice. Instantly he’d stopped his slow stroke through the water and glided over to the far side, where he’d hooked his elbows up on the concrete and hung there, his face hidden from her.
But she came nearer still, and after a few more seconds she’d said, “Lots of stars up there.”
He hadn’t answered. Wouldn’t answer. He had nothing to speak to her that his rifle could not say better. But it was so close on his lips, so close, for him to say bitterly, You think you know the truth about Iraq, bitch? You have no fucking idea.
After a while, when he’d realized the girl had walked away, Jeremy had gotten out of the pool in his wet Fruit-Of-The-Looms and gone back to his room, where he’d expected—or hoped—to find Gunny waiting for him, but the room had been empty. So he’d channel-surfed across a TV-scape of movies and infomercials and reality shows until he’d gotten weary of looking, but he’d slept with the Made In China remote control in his hand and the TV soundlessly displaying a world in constant motion.
At the center of the pulse of purple light and throbbing noise that passes as music, Jeremy watches Miss Ponytail and the Hispanic dentist. A guy in a wife-beater T-shirt and chinos, a dark-colored ball cap on his head and chains around his neck, comes over to say something to Miss Ponytail, maybe wave a bill at her for a lapdance, but she gives him a tight catty look and says something back and he shrugs and moves away in apparent rejection, heading into the further darkness. The Hispanic dentist grins wider, glad to be her one-and-only. He peels off some more money for her, and again she grinds his front yard with an expert ass.
On that Sunday Jeremy sat in his pickup truck watching I-20, the van and the U-Haul never went past. He’d waited until almost sunset, and then he’d decided he should drive back to the Lariat. Their ride was gone. Where were they? I think I left my cellphone by the pool, Jeremy had told the woman at the front desk. I was talking to a girl out there last night, she said she was a musician with a band. Did she check out?
This mornin’, came the reply. No, nobody found a cellphone anywhere.
Jeremy had thanked her and walked back to the truck.
He didn’t have to ask for Gunny’s opinion. He already figured they’d gone on to El Paso. Forward, instead of backward. Their website had said they were playing on Friday night at a place called the Spinhouse. He was surprised, because he’d expected them to pack up and go home.
It’s not enough that one of them is dead, he’d thought as he’d started off westward again. Not nearly enough.
He’d found a cheap little motel on the eastern edge of El Paso, had spent most of Monday sleeping and watching TV and had called the Spinhouse that afternoon. His question had been: Is The Five still playing there on Friday?
Yeah, the guy had told him. The Soul Cages start up about eight-thirty, The Five ought to be up around ten. It’s ten bucks before Friday, twelve at the door. Gonna be a good time, come on by.
Jeremy had said he would look forward to it.
Now, something has changed in the little play he is observing. The Hispanic dentist is leaning in, watching Miss Ponytail write with a pen on the inside of what appears to be a book of matches. Giving him her phone number? Setting up something more than a lapdance? Then she gives him a quick kiss on the cheek, a see-you-later kind of thing, and he stands up and staggers his way between the tables to the door. As soon as he’s out, Miss Ponytail slides herself down beside a heavy-set gray-haired man in a UTEP T-shirt and puts her flirt on at full beam, but by then Jeremy is on his feet and heading across the room. He tries to make himself invisible, a slow-moving nobody in no hurry to go anywhere, but the truth is that he’s tense inside, his stomach is roiling, and he’s not just a little bit scared of what he has to do.