There There(69)
Calvin Johnson
CALVIN IS STANDING, head bent to his phone, but his eyes keep looking up from it. His hat is pulled low, and he’s standing behind where Blue and Edwin are sitting so they won’t see him. He looks over to Tony, who’s bouncing a little—he’s light on his feet like he’s ready to dance. Tony’s supposed to do the actual robbing. The rest of them are there in case anything goes wrong. Octavio never explained why he wants Tony in regalia, and why he should be the one to take the money. Calvin assumes it’s because someone in regalia would be harder to identify, and ultimately harder to investigate.
Octavio, Charles, and Carlos are near the table looking antsy. Calvin gets a group text from Octavio that just says We all good Tony? Calvin can’t help but start walking toward the table when he sees Tony doing it too. But Tony stops. Octavio, Charles, and Carlos watch him stop, watch him stand there, bouncing a little. Calvin’s gut spins. Tony backs off, still facing them, then he turns around and walks the other way.
It doesn’t take Octavio long to make the next move. Calvin’s never held a gun before this. There’s a gravity to it. A weight pulling him closer to Octavio, who’s now pointing his gun at Edwin and Blue. He’s pointing at the safe with the gun. He’s calm about it. Calvin has his hand on his gun through his shirt. Edwin crouches down to open the safe.
Octavio looks to his right then left, bag of gift cards in his hand, when stupid-ass Carlos turns his gun on Octavio. Calvin sees it before Octavio does. Charles points his gun at Octavio too. Charles is yelling for Octavio to put down his gun and give him the bag. Carlos is yelling the same thing behind him. Fucking Charlos.
Octavio throws the bag of gift cards at Charles, and as he does he fires a few shots at him. Charles stumbles back and starts firing. Octavio gets hit and fires a few more back at Charles. Calvin sees a kid in regalia go down ten or so feet behind Charles. This is fucked up, but Calvin doesn’t have time to think of it that way because Carlos puts three or four into Octavio’s back. He might’ve fired more, but Daniel’s drone plane comes crashing down on his head and Carlos goes down. Calvin has his gun pointed at no one, finger on the trigger, ready, when he feels the first bullet hit him in his hip, the bone. Down on one knee, Calvin gets another one in the gut, and he feels a sick weight there like he’d swallowed too much water at once. How could a hole make him feel more full? As he goes down, Calvin sees Carlos get hit with bullets coming from Tony’s direction.
From the ground Calvin sees his brother firing bullets at Tony. He feels each tiny blade point of grass pushing into his face. It’s all he can feel, those blades of grass. And then he doesn’t hear any more firing. He doesn’t hear anything.
Thomas Frank
HE DOESN’T THINK of the shots being fired as shots being fired. He waits for it to be anything else. But then he sees people run and stumble and drop and scream and generally lose their shit because soon, very soon, after what he at first thought must have been something else and not gunfire became in his mind and before his eyes definite gunfire. Thomas ducks incomprehensibly. Squats down and watches dumbly. He can’t find the shooter, or shooters. So stupid is he that he stands up to see better what’s happening. He hears a sharp whiz nearby, and as soon as he realizes that it’s the sound of bullets missing him, one hits him in the throat. He should have been keeping as low as possible, he should have dropped to the ground, played dead, but he didn’t and now he’s on the ground anyway, holding his neck where the bullet went in. He can’t figure out where the bullet came from, and it doesn’t matter because he’s bleeding badly into the hand that holds his burst neck.
All he knows is that the bullets are still flying and people are screaming and someone is behind him, his head is in their lap but he can’t open his eyes and it burns like hell where he knows or feels he knows the bullet exited. The person whose lap he is in is maybe wrapping something around his neck and tightening it, maybe it’s a shirt or a shawl, they are trying to stop the bleeding. He doesn’t know if his eyes are closed or if all of this has suddenly blinded him. He knows he can’t see anything and that sleep feels like the best idea he’s ever had, like no matter what that sleep could mean, even if it means only sleep, dreamless sleep from here on out. But a hand is slapping his face and his eyes open and he’s never believed in God until this moment, he feels God is in the feeling of his face being slapped. Someone or something is trying to make him stay. Thomas tries to lift his whole body up, but he can’t. Sleep floats beneath him somewhere, seeps into his skin, and he’s losing the rhythm in his breath, breathing fewer breaths, his heart, it’d been beating for him all this time, his whole life, without even trying, but now he can’t, he just can’t do anything but wait for the next breath to come—hope that it will. He’s never in his life felt as heavy as he feels now, and it burns, the back of his neck, like no burn he’s ever felt. Thomas’s childhood fear of eternity in hell comes back to him and it’s right there in the burn and the cool of the hole in his neck. But just as that fear comes it goes, and he arrives. In the State. It doesn’t matter how he got here. Or why he’s here. And it doesn’t matter how long he stays. The State is perfect and is all he could ever ask for, for a second or a minute or a moment, to belong like this is to die and live forever. So he’s not reaching up, and he’s not sinking down, and he’s not worried about what’s coming. He’s here, and he’s dying, and it’s okay.