“Tony?” The voice was from behind, the teacher’s voice.
“Go back to the street,” said Tony. “This is just a mistake, that’s all.”
She pounded her fist on the door, and inside she could hear a grumbling, a thumping, and then the door handle was wiggling back and forth.
Got to be wrong. This is not the right place.
The door jerked open; the whole camper vibrated. Tony held her breath.
There was a man in his undershorts, his hand on the knob and the other hand clutching a beer. A Bud. Mam’s favorite kind of beer. He had thick black hair and a black beard. A thin man, he had a major gut that hung over the elastic of the shorts.
“What the hell do you want, little girl?” he growled.
“You know me?”
“Should I?”
Tony said, “Let me in. Don’t make this worse than it is.”
“What…?”
Tony pushed her way past the man and slammed the door.
The interior of the trailer wasn’t much better than the outside. There was some furniture, a refrigerator and stove, and a table that folded into the wall when it wasn’t being used. A bathroom stall door hung open. Tony could see the little shower and the clogged toilet from where she stood.
“Burton.”
“What? What do you want?” His eyebrows went up and down over his face, dark waves on a stormy countenance.
“I’m Angela.”
The man froze, then tilted his head. He put his beer down on the folding table. “No shit.”
“No shit.”
“Love your ranch. Dad.”
“My ranch? What are you talking about?”
Tony looked over the table. Hanging on a little wire rack were two guns, a rifle and a revolver. Burton might not have done much, but by damn, he’d replaced the gun he’d lost to Mam.
“Get the hell out of here, Angela,” said Burton. “I didn’t ask you to come here. I got my own troubles.”
“So I’m trouble?”
“Could be. They see me with a kid, they might kick me out. I’m signed up as a single.”
“What about your ranch?”
“What ranch?”
“You sent me a birthday card when I was thirteen. You wrote on it, ‘how you like my ranch?’ There was a photo of you on a fence with the ranch behind it!”
Burton sighed and dropped onto a single hard-backed chair by the stove. “Oh, God Angela. I wasn’t drinking then. I had a good job, at a ranch outside of here. The Triple-Bar. Worked there nearly six months. I just called it mine for fun. I liked it. Then I got fired.”
“Why?”
“Drinkin’.”
Tony’s chest hurt. She leaned over to pull in some air, but little came. “I can’t believe it. You. God, you lied to me.”
“You just misunderstood. Now go home, Angela.”
“It’s Tony!”
“Get out of here. Go home to your Mama.”
It was in her hand before she even knew she had jumped on top of the folding table and snatched it down off its rack. And oh, this one had bullets in it. She knew. She could feel them inside like she could feel the little snake-like babies inside her last year. Solid, expectant, anxious to come out. She aimed at Burton, and his eyes grew as round as big, brown longhorn cow piles.
She fired. She fired again. Burton, hit directly in the chest, fell back off his chair to the food-littered floor. He didn’t have time to complain about it like the deputy had.
Tony took Burton’s beer and poured it over his body. She turned on his gas stove and lit a rolled up magazine, then moved the torch about the place, touching things she knew would burn right away. The curtains on the window, filmy, cheap things like Mistie’s pink nightie. The bedspread on the little love seat. The rug by the sink. Burton’s thin-ass boxer shorts. Burton’s thick black hair, which puffed and lit and fell to the floor by the dead man’s head. A toupee.
Figured.
64
There was a gunshot from inside the camper. Kate cried out, and ran several steps forward, then stopped. Who had the gun? Who was shooting?
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Mistie began to cry.
A man who had been tinkering on his Harley-Davidson raced over, wiping his face with an oily towel. “That was a shot!” he said. “Who’s shootin’?”
Kate said nothing. She listened, but there were no more shots. “Stay there,” she ordered Mistie, and slowly approached the cinder block step.
“I wouldn’t do that, lady!” said the motorcycle man. “That Petinske fella can be mean as a badger when he’s drunk.”
Neighbors were gathering out on the circular drive, most in various stages of dress. “Somebody call 911!” said a woman. “That was a gunshot, I heard it!”
“I called already!” said a voice from the doorway of a Wilderness RV. “On their way. Ya’ll back up, what you got, a death wish?”
“Tony!” screamed Kate.
“Back up, woman, he can come out like a bull any minute!” said the motorcycle man. “We know how he can get!”
“Tony’s in there!”
The motorcycle man grabbed Kate by the arm and tried to pull her backward but she twisted free. “Let go! Tony’s in there!”
He threw up his hands in resignation. “Go get him, then, be my guest.”
The camper door opened, slowly. At first there were small tendrils of smoke curling out from inside, and then Tony was in the opening, stepping down onto the cinder block step, then down onto the ground, a revolver in her hand.
“Got him good,” Tony said simply. There was blood on her hands.
“Tony, what?” Kate took a step forward, and stopped as Tony began swinging the revolver back and forth. “Was it your father?”
Tony’s lip curled, a half-smile that chilled the back of Kate’s neck. “Oh, yeah, it was Burton Petinske. That’s who it was.” She looked past Kate to the gathering of neighbors, and waved the gun at them. “What the hell you lookin’ at? Fuck off! I’ve killed two today, and I’m just getting started!”
The neighbors flew away from each other like leaves on a winter wind. Some went back to their campers. Others moved behind cars, but continued to watch the spectacle.
“Tony, they’ve called the police,” said Kate. “It’s over.”
Tony looked at the barrel of the gun, smiled, and then pointed it at Kate. “Men and women,” she laughed sourly. “None of them are any good, are they? Mamas, Daddies, they’re all fucked up. You’re right that it ain’t a gender thing. But that don’t leave a whole hell of a lot, does it?”
“Not everyone’s like that,” said Kate. “Not everything” “You want it in the head or in the chest? I hear new niggers don’t want to fuck up their pretty faces when they die, so they would rather have it the chest.”
“God, Tony, don’t talk like this.”
“We’re all goin’ down, teacher. ‘Course, Baby Doll, she’s okay. Hey!” Tony turned to the neighbors behind their various cars. “Listen to me, whatever happens, don’t let this little kid go back to her Mama or Daddy. They’re messin’ her up real bad. You hear me? I’m giving a deposition here. It’s the truth. You promise me?”
None of the neighbors said a thing. Nobody moved.
Tony shook the gun at one car. “You promise me?”
A little old lady with loose dentures said, “I promise you.”
Tony nodded. Then she said, “Mistie, you’ll be okay.”
Kate looked beside her. Mistie was not there. “Mistie?” she said.
Tony whipped about, staring at the faces of the neighbors, and in the shadows of the scrub trees. “Mistie! Don’t you be hiding now!”
Mistie did not answer.
Then Kate noticed the camper door, wide open and the smoke billowing out, harder, faster.