Beau Lynn had a rotted gray snaggletooth that bugged me half-mad and that’s why I blew his Adam’s apple through the nape of his neck.
Beau Lynn was the town dentist, and it was a goddamned dead decayed-to-the-center fang jutting from his face, long as I knew him. Believe that?
But it wasn’t the tooth that got it started.
What got it started was me and Deb Lynn on the porch out back of her house, sticky with July sweat, working our way through a case of Iron City.
Beau, her husband, the man with the rotted tooth, was in Pittsburgh for two days. For me and Deb, that meant no need for sneaking around that night—no quick, hard pawing, mauling in my rusted Impala. No wasted money at the ABC Motel.
We could sit on the back porch, civilized, and take our time easing into the fun part.
That back porch.
See, that back porch—it was like a damned deer blind. A field of tall grass ran nearly two hundred yards from the house to the woods, which backed up to the Allegheny Forest.
If that back porch was mine, I’d rest my Savage 99 on the railing, Bucs game on the radio, pick off whitetail bucks, no need to check them, no limit, the house too far out for anyone to be nosy.
Sure, it was that rotted snaggletooth that brought me to murder, but it was the thought of that back porch that had me listening when Deb leaned across the patio table, a spark in her eyes I’d never seen before as she said, “It’s a foolproof plan, Jack,” and I was shaking my head, drinking my beer, saying, “The only type of person calls a plan foolproof is a fool.”
Deb leaned back, arm like a twig resting on the flower print seat cushion.
I told her, “I’m not sure if you watch too many movies or you don’t watch enough, but killing the husband of the lady you’re seeing, chasing after the insurance money? That tends to not go well.”
“But this is different,” Deb said, “because I took out the plan last month, and you won’t be doing the thing for half a year. Sure, you take out life insurance on your old man and he dies ugly two days later, yeah, people will be curious.”
I finished my beer and opened another, and that was enough for her to think I was half-interested.
She said, “You’ll do it while hunting, in December. Whitetail season.”
“What’s he even want to go hunting with me for anyway?”
“You went to war, he didn’t. He’s all tight about it, half the town going off, but him staying back.”
I drank, thinking, running my tongue over my teeth—feeling that sharp canine dagger.
Deb’s nails tapped the cloudy glass tabletop. “Beau’s got a fancy, loop-de-loop signature, but I spent time practicing, and I got it just right. Paperwork’s already on file with the insurance man. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Jack. Two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“And we split it?”
“If you want.”
“Why else?”
“Because after, it’ll just be you and me, together. And what’s it matter whose is what, then? Would you like that?”
“I might.”
She slipped her foot out of her sandal, ran it up my leg—kept going until she got to the parts that started a man thinking less than straight.
“I certainly might,” I said, and stood, telling her I had to piss.
Inside the man’s house, then. Passing a table—knickknacks, wedding photos. There was Beau, holding some dental award—a big, goofy bronze tooth. No, not bronze. Plastic, painted like bronze, I bet.
Beau was grinning, looking out at me.
I had left for the war when I was nineteen. Drinks at Bull’s Tavern the night before I shipped, and Beau was there and he shook my hand and said good luck and his smiling lips revealed, as always, that rotted snaggletooth.
After my tour, the mood at the welcome home drinks was very different, but the rotted snaggletooth was the same.
It was foul.
Inconsiderate.
I had gone and done and watched friends get exploded to nothing and this man—the goddamned town dentist!—wouldn’t remove that hideous thing from his fucking mouth.
So coming back out, I told Deb I’d think about it.
Deb shrugged, fine.
And I told her if I did decide, I wanted to do it up close. World falling apart, like my old man says. Men with hair like ladies. Ladies working jobs supposed to be for men. Tattoos. Athletes dancing in the end zone. So if I was going to do it—I’d do it real close, like a man ought to.
Deb shrugged, again, fine.
And that was it.
That one evening.
A short conversation—with a break to piss—on the back porch, and then we were inside, to the bed, tossing on Beau’s sheets, but the whole time we were tossing I could scarcely stay hard because I was imagining that rotted snaggletooth, and by the end I’d made up my mind on the thing, and there wasn’t nothing else to think about.
* * *
The whole of summer and fall, it was like climbing the rungs of the high-dive ladder.
Each day, another rung. And the higher I climbed, the harder it’d be to turn back—’cause that’s darned embarrassing, you got someone behind you, nine rungs down, and you both have to go back, rung by rung, everyone watching.
No, once you start climbing—no matter what you’re feeling—you need to just keep on.
And the pool. The jump. That thing you have to do. That was Beau. That was the dentist with the rotted snaggletooth and the wasted porch that’d make for a fine backyard deer blind.
There’s a sort of person, I guess, that once an idea gets in their head—it can’t be stopped or rerouted. Only thing that can stop it is the introduction of some new, better idea or some hard force coming the opposite way.
And unfortunately for Beau, I didn’t get any new, better ideas all summer and fall, and no hard force came the opposite way, either.
* * *
We went out on day four of rifle hunting season, December 9, coffee with a splash of whiskey not doing much to fight the cold sting in the air. Beau got me in his shiny red Chevy pickup and we were parked by five thirty, stepping into the woods before the first light of morning.
Beau brought a flashlight, and he flicked it on—but I threw my hand over it. “Dark’s nice. Enjoy it. Sun’ll be up soon. This hour, the quiet, it’s right.”
“I can’t see where I’m walking.”
“I know the way.”
We trekked across the Derry Ridge, thick with spruce and white pines, walking more than an hour—following the old logging path at first, then veering off, deep, where you get twisted and lost if you aren’t careful.
Beau wore a bright orange vest and his hunting gear was all fresh—got it at that new Ace Hardware. He had all variety of gadgets and devices dangling off him, clanging with each step.
We came to the blind, and the first thing he said was, “We should have brought stools.”
The blind was simple: a wide, overturned spruce, one gnarled branch making for a natural rifle rest. Sitting on stumps, we had a view of a stream fifty feet out and a wide clearing beyond it.
It was fine, but it was nothing like Beau’s back porch.
I smiled, knowing soon, I’d be shooting off that back porch.
We opened our first beers just after five thirty, the sun up but not fully at ’em, casting light through the trees in spotlight arrays—yellow-orange shafts, slicing down.
Beau wanted to clank beers, toasting to a good day, and I did it but I had to swallow a lot of words. I hate that, drinking with a guy who always wanted to hit your beer.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
Like you had to keep reminding each other you were having a decent enough time.
But I wanted the booze doing backstrokes through his bloodstream, wanted him loose and cocky and rubbery, so every time he raised, I clanked. And every time he slowed down on his drinking, I’d crack another, and that’d cause him to quickly finish his and fish for a new one.
“Safety off,” I said, tapping his rifle. “That ‘safety on, until you’re ready to shoot,’ stuff? That’s for kids and women. I discovered that overseas, first time it got hot.”
That was a lie, the stuff about learning that in battle, but I knew it’d pull at him right.
Beau reached out, click.
He drank and he talked about the Steelers, then about his dental practice, saying it’d be a life of free checkups for me if we bagged something more’n five years old.
Then there was a silence, and I could feel him wanting to say something, and I hated that sort of holding pattern quiet, so I out and said, “What?”
“I heard, over there—that some of our guys, they go around, slicing off people’s ears.”
He smiled timidly, like he was nervous he’d offended me. “Did you ever see that? Guys slicing off ears? Wearing them around their neck like trophies?”
“No.”
“Well, I guess that’s a good thing—we can’t have our boys in uniform cuttin’ off ears, wearing them around,” he said, and then he raised his beer, and we clanked to that.
You believe it?
We really did—we clanked to not cuttin’ off ears.
And he smiled as we clanked, and the dead snaggletooth showed itself again, and I decided damnit, I can’t stand to wait much longer.
So I finished the beer in my hand while I let the feeling build in me—an anticipation I hadn’t felt since the war. This sort of shaky hand, tooth-clenching exhilaration, knowing what was to come.
It’d been just under two hours when I stood and said, “It’s going right through me.”
“Drinking beer is like trout fishing.”
“How’s that?”
“Catch and release,” he said, and he laughed too loud, and then said something about how I’d barely even drank the amount he had and he hadn’t had to piss yet.
I left my rifle propped against the limb, then walked twenty feet through the brush, slipping behind a wide oak. The piss came in short, hard spurts that stung a bit, splashing the oak and the forest floor. A sour smell, pooling around my boots.
I zipped, shut my eyes, breathed in and out slow and long, then called out in a half-whisper—
“Beau. I got a view. Come on, it’s yours.”
I heard Beau stand, all his devices dangling and clanking, then him stomping through the grass, slowing, moving half-gentle as he crept up.
“Where are you?” Beau said, and I could imagine him now, eyes narrow, searching, anxious, probably imagining it like this was his war.
I pressed my back to the oak. Heard him trudging, eager.
So eager, he’d be running his tongue over that tooth.
I watched the ground, seeing Beau’s shadow fall, hearing the footsteps like kindling popping, one final step, and then my breath was held.
“I don’t see it,” Beau said, and then he didn’t say anything again, ever, ’cause I was spinning out from around the oak, grabbing his .270 by the barrel, his eyes popping, a quick hiccup of a laugh, not believing for a moment, thinking something like, “well this is a strange joke”—and then I was jerking the gun down, bringing Beau with it, my finger finding the trigger and pulling as I continued yanking down, safety off, firing, the blast muffled just slightly because the barrel was so tight against the flesh of the man’s chin, and his whole jaw blew open like he’d been chomping on an M-80. The base of his skull blew out the back of his head, a whirling, spinning plate of flesh and bone and greasy hair.
The butt of the rifle hit the dirt, pushing up into Beau’s mouth, so he flopped onto his back.
His jaw, his throat, the ground—just dripping, sopping red flesh, everywhere. His breath was coming only in small, spitty bits—like trying to drink pop through a straw with a split in it.
Beau’s eyes found me. His upper lip—his only lip, now pulled back, and I saw the rotted gray snaggletooth.
And his tongue running over it.
It felt like he watched me a long time—longer than he should have. His tongue running over the tooth for minutes.
Die.
Go on.
His tongue licking that tooth twice more, and then, for a final moment, his eyes focused on me—and I only then realized I hadn’t breathed, not once the whole time.
I breathed then, and at the same instant, Beau finally stopped licking.
He was dead.
I ran my handkerchief along the end of the barrel, where I had grabbed it.
I walked back to the blind, drank two thirds of a beer. I checked my watch. It was a quarter past eight.
It should have been done.
But that rotted snaggletooth.
That hooked, nasty thing—protruding, everyone having to look at it. That tooth that chewed meat, chomped cod each Sunday at the Methodist fish fry—he left it there, for everyone to see.
Suddenly, Beau’s voice: “You ever see that? Guys slicing off ears? Wearing them around their neck like trophies?”
I admit, my heart jumped, thinking it came from the man. But it was just my brain making noises.
Go on, Jack, I said. You’re on the final rung, just pull yourself up and over and march to the end of the high dive.
But I didn’t.
Beau’s hunting pack was in the blind. I removed a curved, freshly sharpened blade and walked to the body.
His tongue was hanging out and his face was pale.
Would anyone know?
No.
His lower jaw was blown apart, everything pulpy and wet.
So I crouched down and pulled back his upper lip. I dug the knife in to the gum, gentle, rocking it back and forth, loosening that rotted snaggletooth.
And his eyes stared up, still open, watching me.
Beau’s voice, again, in my head: “You ever see that? Guys slicing off ears? Wearing them around their neck like trophies?”
“Yes,” I answered, and I twisted the blade until the tooth popped into my hand.
I walked to the water, held the tooth in, let the blood stream off it. The rotted snaggletooth—still wet—went into my watch pocket.
Then I pulled the truck keys from Beau’s coat, took a final glance at his body, and began jogging back through the woods.
* * *
It was nearly nine thirty that morning when I got to the Chevy, and that’s when the first thing went wrong. Beau’s CB was busted. Beau was a volunteer fireman, and his CB was shot—and even though it was a wrench in the plan, it made me feel less bad about the whole thing. Not that I felt bad to start with, but if you’re a volunteer fireman your CB had to work, and if it don’t, you’re asking for it.
So I sped toward town, tires screeching as I hauled past the Five & Dime, feeling folks’ eyes on me, but knowing that was fine—that was part of it.
The police chief’s name was Tharp, and he was at his desk when I came in, me waving past the deputy, saying it was an emergency. I was proud of myself, the way I did it, panting a bit, adding just a little struggle to my voice as I said, “Chief, there’s been an accident. Beau Lynn shot hisself. He’s dead, I’m certain, and hell—ah hell, just shit—I saw the whole thing, the way he fell and—shit, Chief, it’s an awful mess.”
* * *
Fire ants had begun to eat at Beau’s body, parading down his exploded throat, funneling in and out of his nostrils, picking at his open eyes—a few drowned in the red pool where he lay.
Tharp looked at the body for a long moment, then lit one of his long cigarettes. “Tell me again, how you saw it?”
“I was right here. I saw a buck, but I didn’t have my rifle—I was taking a leak—so I whispered to Beau. He walked out, and then I see his foot catch the root, and he starts to fall. It happens sort of slow, the way he goes down, and I open my mouth to heckle him a little, but then I hear the shot. He smacks the ground or the gun or both, I guess, but then he sort of trampolined back up, only when he came back up the blood was like a fountain.”
And as I said it to Tharp, I was thinking, that is what it looked like.
“Did you try to revive him?”
“Revive? He didn’t have a throat.”
“You check for a pulse on the wrist?”
“He didn’t have a throat, Tharp.”
Chief Tharp glanced at me. “You got blood on you,” he said, stating it, but also saying it like a question.
I looked at my finger, where I’d pried the rotted snaggletooth free. Blood on the tips, under the nail, dried.
“Right, well, sure. I had to fish the keys from his coat. I didn’t say I didn’t touch the body, just that I didn’t check for any pulse ’cause the man’s face had been blown to nothing. Also, some got on me when he fell, I’m sure, I wasn’t but five feet away.”
Quiet for a bit, Tharp looking the body over.
“See, he had the keys ’cause he drove us out,” I went on, smiling inside as I said it, because I had the answers. “Insisted on driving, with the new Chevy. Wanted to show off the leather.”
Tharp nodded slowly. “That does sound like Beau.”
Tharp said a bunch more, about an incident report, about calling Fish & Game, about Deb, about me sitting for a taped conversation, about what a shame it was. He didn’t want to leave the body, but wouldn’t anyone be able to find us here. Reluctant, he decided we’d both walk back, and he’d lead the state troopers back in. He lifted Beau’s rifle, said he’d bring it out. Last, he took my rifle, said he had to check it, and I said of course, sure, I understood.
Back out through the trees, one state trooper waiting there, leaning against his cruiser, along with an ambulance and two paramedics.
I packed a lip and stepped away, letting them talk, no point in listening.
There was this feeling like the tooth was squirming in my pocket—yet when I stuck my finger inside and felt that rotted snaggletooth, it was perfectly still. I was rubbing it when I heard Tharp calling, like he’d been calling for a long while.
“Jack! You hearing me?”
“Sure,” I said, quickly slipping my finger out, turning. “Little shaken. Just didn’t realize at first, I suppose.”
“You can head back to town.”
“You want me to tell Debbie?” I asked.
“Ah, shit. Needs to come from my office. Soon, before the poor woman hears. I’ll radio the station, have Leonard head over.”
And so I pulled out, in Beau’s Chevy. As I left, I saw Tharp and the troopers and the paramedics heading in.
I split off before town, pulling into Ruthie’s Roadside. I ordered the open-faced meatloaf sandwich but I skipped the potatoes, got the coleslaw. Soon, I saw Deputy Leonard’s car speed past, toward Deb and Beau’s house, off to deliver the news of Beau’s accidental passing.
It was just past two o’clock when Leonard came back up the road. I paid, stopped at Bull’s Tavern, picked up a case of Rolling Rock, and got back into the dead man’s truck.
* * *
“So you really did it,” Deb said.
We were on the back porch, same place where the idea got started six months earlier.
The sun was low—that depressed winter sunset, always coming before you’re ready for it. As it went down, a strange fog rose up.
Living in the valley, sometimes the morning fog—you could barely see your hand in front of your face. But this was night fog, and as the moon rose—a silver dollar spotlight being lifted in the sky—a green haze built.
We were five beers into the case of Rolling Rock.
“How’d the deputy tell it to you?” I asked.
“Plain. Straightforward.”
“You do a lot of fake crying n’at?”
“Some crying came for real.”
“Sure, sure,” I said, and then after a moment, “He mention me?”
Deb shook her head. “Only to say you were there. Not like anyone was suspecting or suspicious.”
Inside, the radio was on—music at first, but they had cut in with news. Something happening in Pittsburgh, at a hospital. Something else at a cemetery.
“You shouldn’t be here tonight,” Deb said. “But Christ, Jack, I need you to be.”
She got up, sliding into my lap. Her hands along my skin, nails scratching in that good way.
She was reaching for the button on my jeans, face close to mine, and I saw she had these green earrings, dangling. I heard Beau: “You ever see that? Guys slicing off ears? Wearing them around their neck like trophies?”
I ignored it—mind playing tricks—and let Deb make me feel good.
Her hand ran up my chest, brushing against the dog tags that I still wore. And as she flicked the metal, I heard Beau again, barking, “You ever see that? Guys slicing off ears? Wearing them around their neck like trophies?”
I pushed her off, saying I need the bathroom. Soon as the screen banged, my finger was stabbing into the watch pocket, clawing, bringing the snaggletooth out, nearly dropping it.
I held it in my palm, the dead thing.
Again, Beau’s voice in my head—and that sound, bouncing around, got me stomping through the house.
Beau had a tiny office in the basement, where he did his billing, balanced the checkbook. An old dental chair in the corner, and a few supplies.
It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for: a small drill. Not the dental kind, but the bit was thin, and it would do.
I gripped the snaggletooth between my fingers—saw Beau’s blood, and I began to drill through the side.
It started slow, and then a rush as the bit pushed through, and I nearly dropped my trophy.
But I didn’t.
I unclasped my dog-tag chain, held it out.
I fiddled with the tooth, struggling to pull the chain through, and it began to feel like I couldn’t breathe, and then the chain finally slipped through, and I drew it, and the feeling in my chest was relief.
Back upstairs. Another beer from the fridge. Each step was more solid now, confident—the tooth bouncing against my chest.
Chief Tharp was outside.
Stepping out, I saw him on the porch, his back to the field and the tree line. The air was raw and his breath was thick in the moonlight.
Deb glanced at me, and I saw her mouth was drawn tight. I smiled, cool—as cool as the metal and the rotted snaggletooth against my skin.
“Jack,” he said, with that policeman-like nod. I wondered if he practiced a nod like that.
“Jack was returning Beau’s truck,” Deb said, as a way of explaining my being here. But there was no need to explain, the whole day was a triumph, done perfect, and I greeted Chief Tharp with a wide grin. “I get you a beer, Chief?”
Tharp shook his head. “Deb, you mind if I take a seat?”
Deb said ’course not, and Chief Tharp tugged at his big coat and settled in. “I’ll just out and say it. Beau’s body—it’s not there anymore.”
Deb, after a moment: “What do you mean?”
“Not there,” he said, then looked up to me. “I took the others in after you left, Jack. When we got to the site, Beau’s body was gone. Simply not there.”
I felt the tooth against my skin and I said, “Black bear, maybe?”
Tharp half nodded, half shrugged. “There was a path of blood leading away, but it didn’t appear as if the body had been dragged. Some bits of skin. Deb, you don’t need to hear any of this if—”
Deb said, “It’s fine.”
“We lost the trail at the stream—”
Tharp kept talking but I didn’t hear the words anymore.
Inside, I started laughing.
More than that—I was screaming hysterically, overcome with this pure, childlike, new-day joy.
Could it be any better?
Like winning the lottery twice in the same day. Kill the man, police chief confirms it, sees how it happened, then the body up and disappears. Nothing to investigate.
Chief Tharp and Deb talked, but I only heard bits and pieces: the state police might find more, Tharp said, or maybe someone else was out hunting and found him, Deb said.
I was looking out from the porch—my blind—and began wondering if and why I even needed Deb. She was fun, but her voice was the slightest bit shrill and her hair was always dry, sort of like straw.
It’s a good thing she didn’t have a rotted snaggletooth, I thought, or I’d have blown her away right there. And that made me really laugh, out loud, and Tharp and Deb both sort of gawked at me, but I just laughed again.
Maybe I’d arrange something for Deb. And then the blind, with that damn majestic view of the high-grown grass running straight up to the forest—I’d make it mine.
And then I stopped daydreaming, and I started falling apart.
There was movement along the tree line, where the oaks thinned out.
Something coming out of the woods.
A whitetail?
No.
It was two hundred yards from the porch to the trees, and even squinting, it was hard to see much. Then the clouds shifted and that swirling, swamp gas sky shone green light on the field and I saw it was a man.
The man exited the trees, moving through the field in a staggered gait—like a buck, shot through but not killed, feet stabbing for balance.
Only I saw it. Chief Tharp was across the patio table, facing the house, and Deb beside him—only me with a view of the field.
I didn’t know what I saw, didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
But my heart, it was picking up speed, sliding into second and then third, gears grinding as my breath became ragged.
“Jack?” Tharp was watching me. “Jack, I said, it’s too dark now, but first thing tomorrow, I’ll get together a search party. You should join.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You joining, helping, that’d go a long way to soothing any suspicions.”
“Suspicions?” I asked, but I didn’t hear the response. The clouds moved through the sky, and the yellow moon made my view clear, for a moment.
One hundred and fifty yards from the house, and I saw that neon orange vest. Couldn’t make out features, but I could see those damned toys—fresh from the Ace Hardware—bouncing off the man’s chest, reflecting in the moonlight.
It was Beau.
And I sucked in air, and I glanced from Tharp to Deb, waiting for I don’t know what—waiting to discover I was a victim of some elaborate, maddening scheme.
But they only kept on talking.
My mind, my sanity—it was suddenly a rock, skipping along a lake—Beau had flung it, one moment my rationality all there, the next it was slicing away.
But I was not mad. I knew that, for sure—but then—goddamnit, answers!—if I was not mad how was the man I had killed now lumbering through the field toward me?
Had I been wrong? Had I not killed him?
No! No! Chief Tharp had seen Beau, too, the body bled out.
I had stood over Beau and I had dug that blade into his gums and sliced out that damned snaggletooth, hadn’t I?
I ran my finger around my collar, feeling the dog-chain, tugging it slightly, causing the tooth to tap against my chest.
The snaggletooth was there, so it had all happened—not some lunatic’s dream.
But still, Beau drew closer.
I wanted to leave. I wanted to get up, go to the dead man’s truck, get in it—and drive. I’d drive until I hit the Ohio, and I’d cross, and I’d keep going—no need to ever know what in hell had happened.
Or Tharp. Could he leave. Get out. What was he still doing here?
But the chief and Deb talked more—only their voices sounded so far away. I opened my mouth again, hoping to say something that might bring the night to a quick close, but I couldn’t speak, words stuck in my throat.
Leave, Tharp, damn it. Leave. Get in your fucking car.
The night was quiet—miles from town, no houses nearby—and in the moments when Tharp and Deb would just shut up for one fucking second I could hear Beau moving through the overgrown grass.
Did they not hear his footsteps? If they could just turn, they’d see the man.
But they did not.
And he kept on coming.
Sixty yards.
Less.
I could see his mouth. Open. And there was no glimmer of that rotted snaggletooth.
A slap on my arm, bringing me back. It was Tharp. “I said, Jack, you always pick up beer when you’re visiting a widow?”
“Uh?” I said. “No. These were Deb’s. From the fridge.”
Tharp’s head, back and forth. “No. I stopped by Bull’s Tavern. Mike said you were in earlier, picking up a case.”
“Right. Sorry, my mind’s a little not right.”
Tharp’s eyes narrowed, watching, then hitting me again, “Hey, when Nancy passes, you just get me scotch, all right?” and he laughed—loud and short.
On the radio, the voices drifting out—I could only make out a bit, but one word kept popping up: Dead. Dead. Dead.
And I heard those words, and I saw the man, and my sanity was an avalanche, tumbling down, going to nothing.
But still no I was not mad, this was goddamned real!
Beau.
Shambling forward, body jerking like it had when he died. Only thirty yards now. His clothing was darker. Damp, I realized, from the stream.
I glanced to Tharp and then to Deb. They were still talking, discussing the details of what would happen next, the search, if she’d be right to make the funeral arrangements now or wait.
Looking at the pair, my brain shrieking, There! There! I murdered him! Tharp, turn and look!
A sound.
I heard Beau moan for the first time, then.
Arms were raised, out, stiff. Like he was coming for something.
The rotted snaggletooth?
Did he want it back?
Was that it?
Maybe he did, because it seemed to burn against my chest. And it all built, spinning inside me:
This awful husk staggering closer.
The radio, dead, dead, dead.
Tharp, on and on, ass glued, not leaving.
And that goddamned gray, putrefied, hideous snaggletooth against my skin.
I watched Beau, watched what was left of his mouth open up, and he moaned and I couldn’t hold it anymore, I shrieked, curdling blood, a scream from somewhere deep.
Erupting then, chair tumbling back, beer spilling, my hands clawing at my chest, cursing, goddamning it all, ripping the dog tags off, smacking them down onto the table like a bad beat at the card table.
The chain just sat there.
The tooth.
“You ever see that!” I barked at Tharp, hearing my voice sounding a bit like Beau’s. “Guys cutting out rotted teeth? Wearing them around their neck like a trophy?”
Silence.
Tharp’s eyes tight, Deb’s mouth a small O.
And then them both realizing—seeing that discolored thing on the table—Tharp putting up a hand to calm me while his other hand reached for his revolver.
But it was too late for that, I was snatching up the spilled bottle and swinging it, cracking it against Tharp’s face, rolling his head, and then smacking again, the bottle smashing this time, knocking him from the chair, and then jamming the bottle into his throat.
Deb screaming.
Me, diving, pawing at Tharp’s holster, pulling the revolver, then stepping to the edge of the porch.
A huge smile stretching across my face then, knowing I’d finally get that moment—hunting from that back porch blind. A grin so wide, like it was carved from my lips with a bowie knife, sawed ear to ear.
Hunt to kill a man I’d already killed once that day. This lurching, possessed thing, just twenty yards from the house.
The gun bucked in my hand as I fired, the bullet punching Beau’s chest.
He staggered but continued.
I fired twice more, but he kept coming, and my brain was on fire then, erupting, volcanic, nightmarish thoughts sluicing through my skull. I stomped out, down the steps, across the grass, to meet the man, to see how he could still live.
Or not live.
Flies buzzed about him. He moved like a drunk struggling to make it home. His face and skin all melting plastic.
Dead.
Dead as he was when I left him.
He had no throat. The fire ants had taken much of his skin, and they were there still, picking at the flesh of his face, covering it, so I saw more crawling red than anything else.
Beau moaned and his lip pulled back and I saw the purple-red hole, where I had ripped out the snaggletooth.
I raised the revolver and trained it on his chest and I fired, blowing open a dangling compass, putting a fist-sized hole through his heart, but he only moaned louder and shuffled closer.
Footsteps on the patio, Deb running. A car door opening, her escaping, I guessed.
I put the final two rounds into his chest, but he kept on, and his hands were on me, cold and clammy and waxy, and I saw his remaining teeth bearing down on me.
I hit the grass, Beau on top of me, saliva and blood dripping onto my face. Clawing. This inhuman, unholy thing trying to gnaw into me.
And then, suddenly, a reverberating boom and his face shattering, skull exploding.
Shrieking, sobbing, I pushed the thing off. I rolled and gasped and got to my feet.
Head still spinning, wondering, sincerely, if this was a dream and I’d soon be slapped awake.
Turning, I saw Deb there, on the porch, Tharp’s cruiser beyond, door open. Deb holding Beau’s rifle, the barrel and stock still gore-splattered from the morning’s hunt.
And I started to say thank god, started to ask what madness had overcome us, when the gun leapt in Deb’s hand and a shot ripped through me and I was knocked back, falling beside Beau’s diseased husk.
Deb coming down the steps, striding through the grass, then standing over us both. Her sort of smirking, curious, like she was catching some insanity herself, asking out loud, “Christ almighty, I wonder just what in hell will the insurance man have to say about this?”