Bridge of Clay(14)

Henry: driving, one-handed, smiling.

Rory: feet up on the dash.

Tommy: half asleep against the quick-panting Rosy.

Clay: unknowing this was it.

Eventually, Rory couldn’t take it any longer—the calmness.

“Shit, Tommy, does that dog have to pant so bloody loud?”

Three of them laughed, short and stout.

Clay looked out the window.

Maybe it would have been fitting for Henry to drive the car ramshackle, to rampage onto the driveway, but it wasn’t like that at all.

The blinker on at Mrs. Chilman’s, next door.

A tranquil turn at our place—as clean as his car could be.

Headlights off.

Doors opened.

The only thing betraying total peace was the closing of the car. With four quick shots, the doors were fired at the house, and all went straight for the kitchen.

    Together, they crossed the lawn.

“Any of you bastards know what’s for dinner?”

“Leftovers.”

“That’d be right.”

Their feet all plowed the porch.



* * *



—

“Here they come,” I said, “so you might as well get ready to leave.”

“I understand.”

“You understand nothing.”

Right then I was trying to work out why I’d let him stay. Just a few minutes earlier, when he’d told me why he’d come, my voice had ricocheted off the dishes and gone right for the Murderer’s throat: “You want what?”

Maybe it was the belief that this was already in motion; it was going to happen anyway, and if the moment was now, so be it. Also, despite the Murderer’s pitiful state, I could also sense something else. There was resolve there as well, and sure, throwing him out would have been such a pleasure—oh, grabbing his arm. Standing him up. Pushing him out the door. Jesus H. Christ, it would have been bloody beautiful! But it would also leave us open. The Murderer could strike again when I wasn’t around.

No. Better like this.

The best way of controlling it was to have all five of us together in a show of strength.

Okay, stop.

Make that four of us, and one betrayer.



* * *



—

This time, it was instant.

Henry and Rory might have failed to sense the danger earlier, but now the house was rich with it. There was argument in the air, and the smell of burnt cigarette.

“Shh.” Henry slung an arm back and whispered. “Careful.”

They walked the hallway. “Matthew?”

“Here.” Pensive and deep, my voice confirmed everything.

    For a few moments, the four of them looked at each other, alert, confused, all rifling through some internal catalogue, for their next official move.

Henry again: “You all right, Matthew?”

“I’m brilliant, just get in ’ere.”

They shrugged, they open-palmed.

There was no reason now not to go in, and one by one, they stepped toward the kitchen, where the light was like a river mouth. It changed from yellow to white.

Inside, I was standing at the sink, arms folded. Behind me were the dishes; clean and gleaming, like a rare, exotic museum piece.

To their left, at the table, was him.



* * *



—

God, can you hear it?

The hearts of them?

The kitchen was its own small continent now, and the four boys, they stood in no-man’s-land, before a kind of group migration. When they made it to the sink, we stayed close in together, and Rosy somewhere between us. It’s funny that way, how boys are; we don’t mind touching—shoulders, elbows, knuckles, arms—and all of us looked at our killer, who was sitting, alone, at the table. A total nervous wreck.

What was there to think?

Five boys and scrambled thoughts, and a show of teeth from Rosy.

Yes, the dog knew instinctively to despise him as well, and it was she who broke the silence; she snarled and edged toward him.

I pointed, calm and mean. “Rosy.”

She stopped.

The Murderer’s mouth soon opened.

But nothing at all came out.

The light was aspirin-white.



* * *



—

The kitchen began to open then, or at least it did for Clay. The rest of the house broke off, and the backyard dropped, into nothingness. The city and suburbs and all the forgotten fields were razed and chopped away, in one apocalyptic sweep—black. For Clay there was only here, the kitchen, which in one evening had grown from climate to continent, and now this:

    A world with table-and-toaster.

Of brothers and sweat by the sink.

The oppressive weather remained; its atmosphere hot and grainy, like the air before a hurricane.

As if pondering that, the Murderer’s face seemed far away, but soon he hauled it in. Now, he thought, you have to do it now, and he did, he made a colossal effort. He stood, and there was something terrifying about his sadness. He’d imagined this moment countless times, but he’d arrived here hollowed out. A shell of all he was. He might as well have tumbled from the wardrobe, or appeared from under the bed: A meek and mixed-up monster.