TEN
On the second day after Robert’s release from San Quentin, the late-afternoon skies above the city were pregnant with orange clouds. A lackluster sun palsied over San Bruno Mountain. The television transmission tower on Twin Peaks was shrouded in a wreath of pearl-gray fog. White houses in neat little rows dotted the Alemany Gap. Below them was the Cow Palace, the hall where the Republican National Convention was held in 1964.
The melancholic strains of Clifford Brown on “Delilah” eddied from the AM radio as Robert maneuvered the Hillman into the weeds behind the Geneva Avenue housing projects. A mockingbird screeched at him from a rusty chain-link fence. Starlings zipped through waist-high ferns. Two ravens squatted in a swathe of cattails and cawed at the top of their lungs. A thirsty, heat-addled deer hobbled out of a thicket into a clearing. Berries, brambles, bits of wastepaper, and strands of moss dangled from its antlers.
This was the moment Robert had been waiting for. Poking the Winchester through the driver’s window, he steadied the rifle against the side view mirror. He worked the bolt-action, held his breath, and fired once. A coin of gray smoke puffed from the gun’s barrel. A bevy of sea gulls shrieked in protest. The deer took the bullet right between the eyes and fell dead into a trash heap.
Twilight shadowed Market Street with ruby and violet rays. The Fox Plaza tower and the Bank of America building were smothered in a copper red haze. The windows of the abandoned marijuana emporium at 1440 Market were black and dull. The McDonald’s at Eleventh and Market overflowed with customers. Cars, tourist busses, and delivery trucks snaked up the boulevard to Van Ness Avenue.
Robert stopped the Hillman in front of the Trinity Plaza Apartments and got out. He did a couple of deep-knee bends to get the crick out of his back. The deer was tied with bungee cords to the car’s roof. Untying them, he yanked the buck toward him. The beast’s antlers harpooned the antenna and snapped it in half. The carcass slid over the windshield to the hood, leaving blood on the paint.
With the deliberation of a scientist, Robert wrestled the deer to the ground. Then he pulled a knife from his belt, slit the creature’s belly, and reached in for its liver. Slicing off a chunk of it, he cut the gall bladder and dabbed a piece of the organ meat with the bladder’s juice. Thrusting the confection in his mouth, he chewed vigorously. The flesh was tart. The gall was tastier than mayonnaise. What a condiment.
Done with his snack, he sawed the deer open from ass to mouth. Robert put a hand in the incision, tore out the heart, intestines, kidneys, and gall bladder, and threw the guts on the gravel. Removing the hide, he laid it on the sedan’s front bumper. The brown and white deerskin was flecked with weeds, shoots of grass, and the petals of wild flowers.
His wife and daughter bustled downstairs to gawk at the deer. Proud of himself, Robert hailed his womenfolk. “Pretty nifty, huh? The meat ought to last us a while once I get the shit in the fridge. We’ll have venison steaks for weeks.”
Harriet wanted no part of it. “Robert?”
Wiping the gory knife on his jeans, he grinned. “Yeah, babe?”
“Are you nuts?”
“I don’t know.” He was neutral. “Why?”
“You can’t kill a deer like that.”
Robert’s shaved scalp was aglow under the fading sun. “Well, golly, I just did.”
“The cops are gonna get you.”
“Not this time.”
“Because you’re lucky.”
“Gimme a break, will you? Daddy knows what he’s doing.”
Robert’s eyes were as resolute as copper pennies. He didn’t appreciate Harriet’s lip. She’d matured while he was in the joint. She used to be timid and shit—too busy with the kid to give him any guff. Now she was self-assertive. It was hellish.
“You’re not even supposed to have any guns,” she said.
“Yeah, me and half this fucking country.”
Severing the legs and the haunches, Robert filleted the meat, dirtying his shirt. “I’ve got to get this stuff indoors before the bugs devour it. When I’m done with that, I’m going to stretch the hide and tan it. It’ll make a real fine rug for Christmas.”
The deer’s ghost rose from its body. It was a white light no more substantial than a stain of Crisco oil. It spiraled over Market Street, the Trinity Plaza Apartments, and the tenements in the Tenderloin, ascending into the indigo blue sky. Diana watched the light, how it flickered milky and then frost white, until it was nothing.