***
I measure the weight of the Springfield XD5 in my palm. It doesn’t feel heavy enough for the death it can deliver. In small raised letters, the side of the barrel reads “Made in Croatia,” which I understand makes it more reliable. The packaging had said it “brings you a longer sight radius and decreased shot-to-shot recovery time,” but I don’t think I’ll be in an old west shootout. I just need to be able to protect myself. I check that the safety is switched on for the third time and slide the weapon into my jacket pocket.
I pace back into the kitchen from the living room. The moving boxes cover every counter, each stacked high full of pots and glassware and small appliances. This room looks as foreign to me as the rest of the house does, like I’m a visitor in someone else’s house. They’re just waiting to unpack their stuff, and it’ll be their home. It can’t be my home anymore, not while someone like that knows where I live. The last two days have been a waking nightmare, every little sound threatening to break my sanity and send me running down the street in a wild panic. I haven’t showered or slept, and I’ve hardly eaten, living almost exclusively on cold coffee and stale Ritz crackers. When I’m not packing, all I do is keep watch, sitting in my chair in the front room staring out at the street and looking for the white van with the rust stripe on it. Watching for him.
I go back to the living room again and sit in the chair. I repeat my routine of testing the gun cartridge and safety switch, my phone battery, and the locks on the front door. Every ounce of my being is focused on the crack in the blinds and the street beyond. My watch says it’s 8:45, and my neighbor’s front windows are losing the dull orange light they had caught during dusk. My left hand is gripping and releasing the front corner of the chair’s arm in rapid jerks. My stomach is rolling and twisting. My head is filled with a rhythmic thumping, my heartbeat replaying the sickening sound over and over.
When my visibility of the street vanishes entirely and the window becomes a mirror, I stand and head to the switch beside the door to turn on the flood lights. As soon as they’re on, I look through the spy hole, just checking to be sure I didn’t miss something from my chair. And there they are, the two white lights of my waking nightmare. Slowing down in front of my house. Pulling into my driveway.
The familiar rattling and screeching of the engine are briefly interrupted by the grating sound of the transmission as it’s shifted into park. Sitting idle in my driveway, then van is the loudest car I think I’ve ever heard before. It sounds like a terrible rock band trying to do the best they can with nothing but garbage cans and rakes for instruments. And then the cabin light flicks on. I wait for him to emerge, but he’s not getting out yet. He’s looking down at his seat and reaching for… the glove box.
Suddenly his head jerks toward the house. I can’t see his eyes in the black shadow of his hat, but I know he’s searching for me from the way his beard twitches back and forth. Did I make a sound? I don’t dare move from my position at the blinds, for fear of giving myself away. After a long moment, he’s looking down again, working on something.
I try to imagine what he would have seen that night. A tired driver working his one good headlight to make it down 41 in the fog. Maybe a jerk with his brights on without regard for the guy in front of him. Maybe a coward who slows down traffic at night because he’s worried what’ll happen to his car if he hits a deer. Maybe a man on the side of the road, in the middle of the night, spun out and sitting at the end of someone’s driveway. Did he see me searching in the night? I don’t think so, but then why did he come back?
The man reaches up and flips off the light of the cab. I watch him shift forward and put something in his back pocket. I test the weight of the gun in my right hand. With my left, I feel for the cartridge to be sure that it’s loaded. I flip it over onto my left hand and check to be sure the safety is still securely in place. This process, one I’ve done a hundred times since breakfast, helps me steel my nerves enough to keep watching. Whatever this man has in store for me, I’m ready for it. I can handle it.
The door to the van opens and shuts, and now he’s walking around the van toward the house. Without looking down, I feel for the safety and click it off.
The rock band engine is still scratching and banging away, but I can hear his heavy footfalls on the concrete even through my door. The steady thump, thump, thump of his steps matches the rhythm still echoing around in my head. He thumps his way up the short steps, the porch light revealing more of his grey and black beard but never quite touching his eyes.
The sound of the rapping of knuckles against wood almost unravels me entirely. I almost drop the gun in surprise and only barely recover. My knees feel stripped of muscle, and I know they won’t hold me up for long. To avoid the sound of falling, I ease myself down onto the floor beside the door, leaning back against the wall.
“Anybody home?” the man asks.
My breath is shallow and stale, like the oxygen in the room has been suddenly used up. I can imagine him trying to steal a glance through the spy hole from his side. Or possibly leaning over my shoulder to look through the blinds. The shuffling of his feet give him away.
“Listen, I thought I saw the lights come on right when I pulled up. I won’t bother you for long. I just wanted to give you something.”
If I say anything, even just to let him know I’m hearing him, I’ll never see the end of this. I’ll be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, or for the rest of his. Worse, he might go to the police to tell them about the dead kid and show them my car. I didn’t see anything that night, but maybe there’s a dent on my bumper, or a scratch of paint from the construction sign, or a bit of hair, or –
There’s more knocking, and this time it’s louder and more insistent. It highlights the thumping, reminding me of the sound of wood cracking against bone. Only this isn’t an unexpected sound, and this time the wood isn’t doing the hitting. This is the strong, willful banging of a knotted fist against shaking timber. There is intent behind the knocking.
I place my phone on the floor and dial 9-1-1, not bothering to pick it up but knowing they’ll record everything. I want to be sure the call to the police comes from me and not him. I slowly get to my feet and shift my weight until I’m standing back a pace from the door. I grip the Springfield XD5 tightly in both hands and press the killing end of the barrel against the center of the door. I read somewhere that the Tennessee Make My Day law says you just need to think someone might hurt you to shoot someone at your house. Which I most certainly do. Who knows what this guy might do if I open the door? I don’t want to find out what the inside of that van looks like.
I lean closer to the spy hole to see him. He’s twisted slightly, one hand reaching back behind him for something. I can’t see that far down, but the vision of him putting something in his back pocket is now crystal clear. He was arming himself, and now he’s getting impatient. Not knowing if I’m home or not, his next move will be to enter the house. He’ll jam one of his thumping boot heals into the lock above the handle and rush in to look for me. This door was originally made to be an interior door, made to be light and mobile, so I know it won’t hold up to even a single kick. He’ll be inside the house after the first try.
I feel a dread certainty that it’s going to be either him or me. And before he can even lift his foot to attempt the break-in, I’ve leaned back and pulled the trigger. I pull it nine more times in rapid succession, each time angling the nozzle slightly more downward. The bullets rip through the door as if it were made of paper, each flash widening the black ring on the white interior. I roll myself action hero-like to the side of the door, click open the deadbolt, and swing open the door to face him.
The door and the porch are splattered with blood, and the man in the khaki hat is lying on his back at my feet. His head is cocked backward over the top step, and his hat is pushed upward, revealing a broad forehead and startled eyes. There are three dark holes in his chest and stomach, like large red buttons on
a doll. His blood is filling a pool below him, flowing slowly down the porch steps toward the sidewalk in a dripping red waterfall. The engine of the van is still rattling and scratching. Only now it’s just the sound of an old, beat up van that probably won’t be driven again.
I breathe a deep, ragged and exhausted sigh of relief. The night air seems crisp and comforting now, and the thumping sound is already fading from memory.
I look down again at my attacker, thinking I should probably check his wallet to find out his name. Laying still on my porch, he no longer looks like a threat. I remember to kick away the weapon to be safe, when I see that it was not a weapon at all. Splattered with blood in his hand is a folded piece of paper. I stare at it for a long time, confused. This must be what he put in his pocket while he was in the van.
I reach down to grab it, and it slips easily from his hand. It’s a scrap of notebook paper, likely ripped from a notebook in his van. The words are written in thick, black ink.
I saw your car and recognized it from the other night. I came by the other day, too, but must have missed you. I know the lady’s house you got turned around at, and I figured out why you stopped. I know the kid and his mom, as it turns out. Anyway, he’s fine and nobody blames you for the accident. He shouldn’t have been out so late.
If you want to check in on him, Kathy (his mom) wouldn’t mind. Oh, and his name is Gunner. They’re in Room 223 at the United Medical Center (the one over on 55).
~ Joe
I finish reading the note as the sound of police sirens cut through the night. I stare at the paper, at the spots soaked through with Joe’s blood, and at the shaking hand I’m holding it with. The thumb of my other hand flips the safety back into place.
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