THIRTY-THREE

I filled in the hole, pressed the dirt with my shoe, and put the spade back into the shed. I closed the shed door and slipped the latch over the loop where a padlock was supposed to fit if we had one.

Details were all that mattered. How I made my way across the lawn, careful not to step on any snails, how I wiped my shoes on a stepping stone, scraping off the dirt—each specific detail had an effect on what I was going to do.

I had seen his father at the window, reaching up to hook the drapes so they would close. I made up a story, what they were doing now. Watching videos, Steven in the garage, drinking too much beer to be much of a mechanic, but loving it, back at home. The initial flush of freedom was probably already fading, little things starting to bother, Mom’s sulks, Dad’s stupid choice of television reruns. Mom keeping her mouth shut, her son barely escaping the law again, Dad more philosophical, figuring cops make mistakes.

I could picture Steven Ray McNorr’s hands, fumbling for a Phillips screwdriver, prying open another beer, his fingerprints dark smudges on the King of Beers.

I cradled the gun in both hands, the barrel pointed toward the floor, away from my body. As I entered the kitchen, Rhonda Newport was being processed by the answering machine. “I bet your family has a civil suit,” she said. “Sue the shooter for gross bodily harm.” Her voice paused, trailing upward, questioningly.

If I was home, she was saying without coming out and asking, pick up the phone. “Zachary, believe me I know.” She didn’t have to say what she knew. Rhonda knew her way around the buttes and gullies of life, even the ones she had made up herself. I let her talk a little more, enjoying the way she sounded, ice tinkling in one of her poodle highball glasses. She hung up.

The Vaseline was so thick the cross hatching of the walnut grip and SW trademark were obscured, the weapon ugly with petroleum jelly. I used sheets of paper towel, sitting in my bedroom, gently wiping the barrel, the trigger guard, afraid I would drop the thing or grab it the wrong way. I wiped my hands on the paper towels, using up what looked like half the roll.

No signs of rust. Still loaded, I prompted myself, as though working my way down a checklist. Scared at my own nerve, I gave the cylinder a turn. It clicked, clicked again, and stopped turning.

My nerves jittered at every murmur of the house—the fridge, the floorboards breathing tiny, subsonic sounds. The walls had a silence so solid it was a sound itself, a background presence, the hush of a canyon.

I put the gun on the breadboard. I thrust the Safeway bag into the trash under the sink with the wads of paper towel. I washed my hands. I couldn’t get the water to run very hot, but I used plenty of dish soap at the sink. Even then some of the lubricant remained. I let the sink half fill, running soapy water through my hands, until they were clean at last, not a trace of Vaseline.

A car breathed by in the street. The kitchen faucet dripped, once. The gun looked so dark and outlandish here in the kitchen I could hardly bear to put my hand on it. When I placed it carefully in the middle of my bed it pressed down on the mattress. I hurried into the bathroom and peed. I checked the mirror, my normal look, maybe a little flushed. There was no way you could tell.

I put on a Gortex jacket, a bulky blue garment with several pockets, a jacket fit for a trek through a blizzard. Mom had bought it last Christmas, just before our visit to Squaw Valley, where Mom liked to talk shop on the ski lifts, interest rates and boardroom gossip at seven thousand feet.

The gun settled into the pouch in front, and the pocket’s tab fastened shut, the miracle of Velcro. The jacket felt too warm. I zipped it up, zipped it back down. Its bulk almost offset the pull of the gun, and I was all the way to the car before I thought: speed limit. Traffic cop. Step out of the car, please.

I opened the trunk and folded the jacket over the spare tire. The gun clunked against the tire iron even through the fabric of the jacket, and I folded the garment gently into the corner.

I don’t believe in reincarnation, but sometimes it is a theory that explains everything. I must have practiced all of this before, rehearsed it well, in another life. I took 580, the freeway light traffic all the way. The car was running fine, and I had two-thirds of a tank of gas. Then I made a miscue and took the Fruitvale Avenue off ramp, having to drive all the way down to Foothill Boulevard again.

That feeling of being in no hurry was gone. Keeping the speed limit was an effort of will. The ordinary act of driving, stop signs, clutch, gearshift, was slow, way too slow, the car rolling along with something wrong with it, the tires out-of-round, the parking brake stuck.

My hands slipped on the steering wheel, the porch lights and bedroom windows I drove past lurid, mockingly normal. I could still turn back. It was a gift I had saved up, and now presented myself. Good news—I could go straight back home and take a shower.

How could I act like I had done this before—this exact series of actions, parking the car a few houses down, making sure my headlights were off, opening the trunk to tug on the bulky jacket. I even knew to press the gun against my body, determining its position in the pocket, loosening the Velcro but not reaching in, leaving the actual walnut-and-steel untouched a little while longer.

The only physical sensation I paid any attention to was thirst. I ached to dash up one of these gravel-and-juniper front lawns and drink from a garden hose. A dog barked, one of those yammery little dogs no one pays any attention to. A woman opened a front door across the street, arguing cheerfully with someone inside, shutting the door again after pouring out what remained of a pitcher of water.

The garage door was still open just enough for an angle of light to spill out on either side. The car was parked in the driveway, beyond the light.

The beer can was gone, a new moon of condensation where it had been. The truck’s hood was down. The door on the driver’s side was open, a new beer can standing right about where someone would plant his foot climbing out of the cab. I could tell by the beads of moisture the can was three-quarters full.

Even then I was giving events a chance. It might be someone else in the vehicle, the dad or a friend, or even the mom, enjoying her hobby, replacing the alternator in the family truck.

I could not take another step. A human being nearby made a grunt, effort or muffled violence, sex. My insides shrank, my hand reaching for the outline of the gun. The sounds came from the pickup.

Someone was inside the truck, the soles of his feet jerking and straightening as he worked under the dash. An oblong of light searched the interior. I slipped into the shadow beside the garage and put one hand on the sharp stucco edge of the building.

He half fell out of the pickup, knocking over the beer. He didn’t notice the spreading pool of fizz, the yeasty fragrance. He peered at a glittering object the size of a cigarette butt in his fingers. He held the flashlight, examining a fuse from under the dash.

The light from the flashlight exaggerated his features, his eyebrows lurid black, stage makeup. But I knew that square build, that square head.

The Velcro did not release at first, clinging, a harsh, sandpaper rasp. I tugged a little harder, peeling the flap just as he looked down at his feet. The flashlight illuminated the dishwater mess of spilled beer.