Easy Street (Chapter 8 & 9)[Adult Language] - Writers Forum

fisherking · 02-05-2008, 04:20 PM

Chapter 8

D.J. came inside a few minutes after I heard Linda drive off, but I was on the couch pretending to sleep. He mumbled something about a big day tomorrow and headed off to bed, but if he felt anything like I did he wasn’t gonna get much sleep. A man can’t possibly sleep when his thoughts are flying in so many different directions. Every time it seemed like I had control of my thoughts something new would pop in my head. I was having trouble breathing and then my breath would get to coming so fast I’d have to hold it in for a few seconds and in those seconds I could hear my heart slamming against my chest bone. We were really gonna do it.

I started getting a big case of the what-ifs then. What if a county sheriff’s deputy or a state trooper was to stop by the police station while I was inside? No, surely D.J. would know right where they were gonna be, or at least he could warn me if one was to show up. What if the bank is full of customers? There had to be some folks who wouldn’t go to the funeral. What if everyone cashed their checks before the funeral? What if Linda’s truck breaks down? What if Edith has a heart attack when I bust through them doors? Will I be to blame? Is that murder? What if I get the electric chair? Do they still use the electric chair? I think I heard somewhere that you shit yourself when they electrocute you. That would be fucking embarrassing.

I tried to think of a way out a few times, but couldn’t think of a solid reason. It was like things had already gone too far to turn it all around. Thinking back now I can see that things hadn’t gone that far at all by that point, but at the time I felt trapped. Linda would think I was a coward if I turned back, and that was something I couldn’t risk. The years we’d had together had been the happiest of my life. At least the beginning was. It was like I could turn back time by going through with the whole thing, turn it back to when me and Linda were just starting out and couldn’t get enough of each other. Going back in time, just reliving a single moment, is something that I’ve lived for years wishing I had the power to do.

It was almost Christmas when I killed my daddy. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I killed him just the same. I was fourteen at the time. In one instant I went from having a living daddy to a dead one. There are a lot of people shot during deer season in Oklahoma, but my daddy always had me practice gun safety. I never climbed into my stand with a loaded weapon and made sure what it was I was shooting at before I squeezed the trigger. That morning we got out into the woods a half hour before sunup. We knew better than to shoot at anything in the dark, but it’s always better to get set up in your stand before it’s light out. We crept into the woods dressed in warm coveralls and orange vests, both excited at the prospect of landing a big old buck. Daddy watched me until I was sitting safely in my tree stand, then headed off to his own stand several hundred yards deeper into the woods. I don’t remember much about the next few minutes, only that I jerked upright after almost falling sideways out of my tree. I guess I’d dozed off a few minutes, because the gray of dawn had settled into the woods. I could see black trees everywhere, and all of a sudden I heard something moving through the brush.

If you’re not a deer hunter, it’s hard to describe the way you feel when you’re about to make a kill. Your heart starts beating faster and your stomach gets to churning. It’s sorta like going up to bat in little league, only ten times worse. That’s the way I was feeling. The sound was coming from the direction of the road, opposite of my daddy’s tree stand. Whatever was making the sound was behind a brush pile, moving around toward my side. I set my 30.06 up on one knee and aimed toward the rustling of dead leaves. Then it’s all like in slow motion. It all happened quickly, but I remember it real slow. Like when the Six Million Dollar Man runs real fast. I clearly saw antlers. Even now, after all these years, you can’t understand how clearly I saw antlers. So I squeezed off a shot. The recoil nearly kicked me out the tree, and the boom echoed through the woods. It seemed to echo for hours. I’ve sat up in bed hundreds of times over the years, jolted from sleep by those old echoes.

I waited for several minutes after I shot, listening for Daddy to come walking toward my stand, listening for him to call out to me, asking what I’d killed. But he never came. I just sat there perfectly still for what seemed like hours waiting for him. As the gray of dawn cleared I realized that the antlers were still there, but saw that they weren’t antlers at all, just an old dead limb poking up from the top of a brush pile. Beyond the limb I saw a bright orange cap lying upside down on the ground. Then I heard a low moaning sound and I knew right away what happened. Yep, I shot Daddy alright.

He never even seemed to get mad about it. Mama and me waited on him day and night while he tried to recover from that dang bullet wound. Boy, I never felt so bad in my life as I did about shooting poor Daddy. He just smiled weakly every time he saw me. I decided to do something special for him.

Mama was at the store or something that day. I decided to make my Daddy a special treat for Christmas. I wanted to bake him a cake or something, but I didn’t know how to go about it. I knew there was no way in hell I was gonna be knitting him no sweater or any shit like that. So I figured I’d make him a salad. Daddy was always eating salads. He just loved ‘em. He used to tell me he’d rather have a big old salad than just about anything. It must have been cause gramma and grampa used to grow their own food when he was growing up. He must have been used to it. I was gonna make him a special Christmas salad, with special Christmas decorations. I took my time and decorated it up all nice and festive. Then I took it into the living room where he was kicked back in the recliner watching football. The Sooners were playing. That was in the lean years when they didn’t get to play in the big bowl games.

Daddy sure was excited about his salad. He even had a tear in his good eye. He just went on and on about how special it was and how he had the greatest son on earth. Even after I’d shot him he still loved me so much. He was just smiling at me and talking and he was so happy he just dug into that salad and started eating without even looking at it. Then he made a funny face. What’s the matter Daddy, I asked. Oh, the salad’s wonderful, he said. The cherries are delicious. The pine cones are, well, I can’t eat them, but they’re nice too. You know I love the ranch dressing, even if it is a little thick. But the greens are a little bitter, he said, forcing a smile and a sort of laugh. Oh, I said, the mistletoe? Mistletoe? Are you trying to kill me, boy? His hands were around my neck, and he was trying to cough. He lurched around a little bit, yelling about how first I’d tried to kill him by shooting him and now I’d poisoned him. I think he called me the devil, but I was screaming by then, flailing about, and trying to get loose from him, and then his hands grew weak. That’s when his heart gave out. I cried and cried. I couldn’t kill my daddy by shooting him, but I sure had when I fed him that fucking mistletoe. I swear I ain’t never been the same since.

All it takes is a second or two to make awful decisions. I knew that night lying there on D.J.’s couch that I was at one of those points where you have two options, and I knew that one was the right choice and one was the wrong. I find it hard to believe after all these years that I can still make such incredibly bad choices. I should have known from experience that there was no way to turn back time to when Linda still loved me, but experience has apparently taught me exactly jack shit.

Chapter 9

It was a little after eight in the morning when I woke up. My head was hurting a little, from the drinking I guess, and my mouth had that awful taste, you know. There leaning against the coffee table was D.J.’s shotgun, and a note he’d wrote was stuck between the gun and the table. The gun wasn’t loaded, and according to the note, D.J. had decided sometime during the night that I should leave it that way. Now this pissed me off a little. What did he think, that I’d never shot a gun before. Hell, we’d spent many a weekend as young ‘uns walking through the woods shooting at squirrels and rabbits and whatever else might happen across our paths. I figured he thought I’d be unreliable with a loaded firearm since I shot my daddy. The fact is, I hadn’t been shooting much since then, but I was pretty damn sure I had learned my lesson, and I didn’t intend to be making that mistake again. It was a damn insult. And even more insulting was the fact that he’d left the shells in the same spot he always does, in a little shoe box in the bottom of his closet. Did the son of a bitch think that I was just gonna do anything he told me to do, no questions asked? It’s not like this whole thing was his idea.

I grabbed the shells and looked around his room. Before he joined the force, as he liked to say, D.J. was just as messy with his housekeeping as I am, but ever since then he has taken to keeping everything in his bedroom neat as a marine. You’d think he was General Patton or something. I sat the shells on the end of his tidy little bed and pissed all over his pillows. Fuck D.J.

I’d barely zipped up when the phone started ringing. I knew it was D.J. the second I heard it. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I started into the living room.

“Mazzio’s,” was my clever greeting. I’m always doing shit like that.

“Oh,” D.J. stumbled, “I must’ve dialed the wrong number.”

“It’s me you dumbass.”

“Oh that was a good one,” he said without sounding like he meant it, “You finally got your ass out of bed I guess. I been up for about three hours.”

“Good for you. What do you want?”

“Just making sure you’re up. You better be getting your mind ready for today.”

“Don’t worry about me, just make sure you do your part. Just like I told you.”

“Whatever,” he said before hanging up.