Chapter 22
Running down Main Street headed for the cop car, the wrecked SUV, and for the cop, dead as dead gets at Millie’s hand, Connie wished he hadn’t chickened out.
He should’ve taken the hit, his brains, his viscera sprayed all over the road, the side of the road, a slop across the windshield and hood of Millie’s SUV. Ruled an accident it might ruin her life, but murder ruined it in deeper, darker ways.
She’d called him.
Abandoned by Sipe, standing in the brown house driveway, hearing the Forest Service employees continue to chatter, he’d been thinking about calling her, and his phone rang. He checked the caller I.D. before answering.
“Millie?”
“I’m almost there.”
“Where?”
“Little Creek.”
“Babe. Really?”
“He’s a dead man.”
“Wait. Who?”
“I’m not ---“ The line garbled.
“Whoa. Millie. I didn’t get that. The connection.”
“Nothing will stop me. Nothing will stop me from making sure I can hold on to you, Connor. Nothing. Not a gun. Not a shot to the head. I’d come back from the other side for you.”
Crying. Worked up enough, her face would go red and she’d blubber like a cartoon character.
“Mille? Listen. Ok, I am coming back to you, remember? There’s the one little thing to clear up, then I’m coming back.”
“No.”
“Yeah. No, I promise, ok? It’s just the stupid way they do some of this shit.”
“No.”
“It’s my dad’s fault. And Sipe-“
“No.”
“Listen! Admittedly, ok? He didn’t need to do what he did, but Millie, just-“
“Nonononononononononononono. No.”
“You hurt him? You make a mess, you don’t - - We definitely won’t be together. They’ll take you away.”
“I won’t stop. I don’t stop.”
“Millie.”
“I love you. I’ll have you again. I’ll have you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
She screamed that last iteration. Then hung up.
He’d called her back. Dialed her a dozen times. Nothing. Angry she acted on impulse. She might’ve chucked the phone out of the rig.
He wondered how close she was to town. If she’d hopped into the SUV like right after Sipe had escorted him out of the condo.
About the best he could hope for would be shooting out her tires. Great. Got a gun? Was there a gun in the big brown house? A car inside the garage? He tried the front door, the door into the garage. Bent down at the base of the sliding door and tried to lift. He investigated further, ran around the house, skitter stepped down this steep decline to a basement door. Locked. The windows locked. Windows on the west side of the house too high up to get to. Everything locked. Maybe there was a key, hidden somewhere outside?
He even ran his hand inside the tire swing. A goop of pine needles and the remnants of winter snow coated his hand.
He found the girl’s number in his call history. Tiffany. Called her. He called twice, imagining her looking at the caller I.D. and dismissing a wrong number.
Connie listened to the ringing, walked down the driveway and onto the dirt road, considering Main Street, where the highway swapped coats, knowing if nothing else he could stand over the dividing line and act barrier to Millie’s impulses. The Forest Service jabber-crew had dispersed. He didn’t have to worry about anyone overhearing him, potentially owning some info to share with law enforcement later on.
“Hello?”
“Tiff? Connie.”
“Hey!” From answering dour to lighting up.
“How’s it going?” Connie wanting to make it all sound light as a feather. Everything great.
“Oh. You know.”
“You still out there, at the gas station and all?”
“Yes and no. I’m at the Collars. Bug’s. She’s here. Hope’s here.”
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Say. Question. Sipe left me at some house in town. A big brown house right next to the Forest Service.”
“That’s Henry’s.”
“Ok. Henry isn’t home. Is there anyway to get in? Like a key hidden anywhere outside?”
“Mmmmmmmm, no. Henry has a key. Gwen has a key. I do, but there isn’t one outside unless there is but if there is no one’s ever told me. Why?”
“You know, it’s just a lot of sun. And at some point, you know, I might have to go to the bathroom again, you know.”
“Ohhhhhh, yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s Sipe?”
“Don’t know. He told me to get out and he drove off.”
“Ohhh.”
“There isn’t…There isn’t a car inside the place is there? Does Henry park a car inside the garage?”
“No. I mean…It’s his mom’s car. Henry’s like my age so he doesn’t drive very much. Or I mean I drive more than he does, but the car, Sipe’s car, the car Sipe was driving, that is Lori’s car. That’s Lori’s only car.”
“There’s no car here then is what you’re saying?”
“Right. I mean, there’s a bicycle in the garage, but even that, I think, that was Alec’s bike, and the tires are probably still flat. I think. I don’t know for sure. Henry would know.”
Hope. Alec. Lori. Henry. He could give a fuck, all he knew was he was fat out of luck here.
“Is Sipe ok?” asked Tiffany.
“I don’t know. He’s got a phone on him, but I don’t know the number. It’s just some burner phone, some backup phone.”
Connie walked off gravel onto asphalt. Standing above the dividing line he looked down towards the town and then west where the highway slid and curled and cut through a hillside. The grey house on the other side of the road surrounded by junk, a filled to the brim blue plastic kiddie swimming pool. The sliding doors leading to the deck were open. Afternoon TV volume loud enough ghostly whispers reached Connie’s ear. The smell of hot asphalt permeated the air.
“You know, your car is still out here,” said Tiffany. “Or Sipe’s. Whoever’s. At the Zippy Mart. Do you need it?”
“I don’t know. No. It’s all right.”
“I could bring it to you.”
“I got the key.”
“Ohhhh. Shit.”
“Yeah. Look. I’m gonna run, ok?”
“Ok. If you need anything let me know. Let me know when Sipe gets ahold of you.”
“You know it.”
“Connie, is he going to be ok?”
“I don’t know. I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you.”
“I hope he’s ok.” She laughed. “That’s rude. You, too, ok? You be ok, too.”
“Thanks.”
“Ok. Later.”
“Yeah. Later.”
“Bah.”
No cars drove westward. And no one drove into town either. Late afternoon, everyone slowing down, taking it easy. Connie put a hand over his eyes, tried to shade them from the sun, working its way towards the horizon, hours of work left before the moon clocked in. His sunglasses in a bag in the trunk of the car out at the Zippy Mart.
Finally, the one rig headed west was a Forest Service truck. It must have already stopped at the Ranger Station and then gone into town for gas or snacks. Connie heard it before he saw it coming his way from town center. Connie stepped out of the middle of the main vein, back onto the gravel. The diesel engine sounding vehicle drove past, the passenger’s arm hanging out, a ponytail coiled over her shoulder, a dimpled smile, semblance of a wave, dirty hand poking out the cuff of the bright yellow sleeve.
Less than five minutes later, Millie arrived. For a beat Connie thought it was a hallucination, heat shimmer, stirred to life by a brain going to soup courtesy the sun. Coming up on him, Connie could tell it sl
owed a little. Millie thrown by sight of some idiot standing in the middle of the road. Then she sped up. He still had his arms up in the air, flapping them like Daffy Duck or something similarly desperate. She didn’t veer. She didn’t alter her course. Connie had to leap out of the way otherwise he would’ve become a bug splattered over the front of the rig.
Millie had told him when she was training, and it got close to a swim meet, she closed down the mechanism. No one, not even a soul mate, would exist to her, not until the job was done. After the meet, after victory, she slipped out of her shell, she’d be a girl again, she’d be a woman, she could talk to people, she could fuck like no one’s business. But set on course she was unreachable. A closed mechanism.
Connie had watched the tan SUV get smaller and smaller, rolling on into town. All this tech in his hand. He could reach out and touch anyone and it didn’t mean shit. That was the Old Man’s take on technology. Son of a bitch if he wasn’t right. Connie fretted, second-guessed his second-guesses, what to do, what not to do, and pretty much, his thumb was up his ass right there where the unpaved road dumped off onto the highway, Main Street, whatever you called it. All he needed, one of those hats and those too short jackets and the funny little pants, he might as well have fluttered a red blanket at Millie, let her pass on by like some angry bull.
He heard sirens. A siren. Then down towards the center of town Millie shot into view, hit a car, the cop car coming out right behind her then stopping, blocking the road, lights flashing. Connie started running. Thought he could see her, could hear the cop yelling. Thinking she was going to get shot. The next time he’d see Millie she’d have a bullet in her, or bullets, it would take more than one to drop his Amazon love, all her warped and wonderful brains in the vicinity but not necessarily inside her head.
He watched. Not running. Walking. Vaguely aware of people coming out of their houses, drawn by the noise. It happened fast. Too fast. Sipe backing up, tearing off, Millie standing. Something in hand. Then Millie sprinted down Main Street, towards the middle of town.
He could follow her, try to stop her from doing any more damage. Or he could try and salvage what her rage had accomplished.
Approaching the cop car, walking through the intersection, Connie caught sight of some kid on his left, walking down a steep side street. Trailing behind the kid, a tall woman in a skirt, talking on her phone. Witnesses. People that could put Millie away forever and ever. Start killing witnesses, pretty soon, the whole town would be a lake of blood.
It could’ve been a trick of the light, but the rotating red and blue on the cop car roof seemed to flash on the boy’s spectacles like he was a robot, a local sentry bearing witness to the violence the outside world wrought on this idle village.
The cop’s hat was still on. The brim crumpled under the back of his head. His face bloody. Kneeling down beside the guy, Connie’s hand trembled. He touched the guy’s chest and he was pretty sure the cop was still breathing, but it was hard to be sure. Connie’s quivering might be providing the movement, the argument that everything might still have some semblance of ok.
Connie knew he was talking to the guy, but he wasn’t saying anything with much nutritional content. One of the Old Man’s sisters had born a retarded boy. They used to bring him around. Connie and his other cousins playing, and Orion would be over off on his own, in a suit, sitting with Lock Blocks, talking to them, petting them, putting them in his mouth, providing a narrative to their daily routine. Connie about as effective here, his Lock Block this big fleshy deputy, Lueck according to the badge on the breast pocket.
Tires screeched. A Jeep stopping just on the other side of Millie’s steaming SUV.
“Sir! Sir, can I have you step away from the Deputy, sir! Yes, sir. Just stand back. Thank you, sir.”
A big guy. Bald head, wraparound sunglasses, tank top displaying ample pecs and biceps. In the right hand some sort of metal case, white with a red cross painted or printed on it.
The big guy walked around Millie’s SUV and looked down at Deputy Lueck.
“Holy shit. Is he breathing?”
“Yeah.”
“Is this your vehicle?”
“No.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“Some sort of accident.”
“Were you in the rig here?”
“No.”
“Right, right. Was he hit by the SUV?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.”
The EMT-guy glanced at the asphalt. Dragged his toe through shattered glass, molded plastic. He set his case down beside the Deputy.
“We’re gonna get you through this, Dougie. You hear? Dispatch sent an ambulance. But until they get here I got you. Guaranteed, now, you hear?” The EMT-not-an-EMT knelt at the Deputy Lueck’s right side, looked towards Deputy Lueck’s cop car. He threw up a hand, palm out.
“Stay back, son. Stay over there.”
Connie looked back. The kid he’d seen on the side street. Hair clipped close to the side of his head, glasses, kind of fat lips, a pretty mouth almost. Millie had told Connie he had a pretty mouth. The kid talking on a cell phone. The EMT knelt down, his weight crunched front bumper detritus, SUV bits drizzled all over the pavement.
Shouts sounded from the center of town. Pop noise. One firecracker. Another firecracker.
“Jesus, please us.” The EMT rising, meerkating, looking towards the park, role in the community hierarchy aside, like anyone, gauging for danger, hoping to witness something exciting. Blood. An explosion. Sun exposure had seared the EMT’s shoulders an angry pink. The ponytail running out the back of his head sweat-mooshed onto the shoulder muscles like a swab of shed hair stuck to a pink eraser. A half-dozen knickknacks threaded through the twisted knot, their combined weight snapping the hair away from the flesh.
The crowd up near the park scattered. In the running shapes, Connie tried to see Millie. Pick her out, but he couldn’t.
“What is going on here?” The EMT put a hand on his shaved skull. “It’s World War 3.”
Deputy Lueck coughed. Connie looked down and the cop was looking right at him. Another cough, blood leaked out the guy’s mouth. The eyelids shut. The eyeballs both blood colored.
“Shit. Hey. Guy. Fella.” Connie reaching out, almost touching the EMT, fuck, almost pinching the horrible ponytail and tugging it like it was the rope on a bell.
The EMT turned, looked at Connie, Connie’s outstretched hand and the snarl forming on his face like he might pull an Orion, grab and hold and bite, but Lueck gurgled and the EMT snapped back into professional mode.
“Right. Duty. Duty calls. It’s me, Dougie. Your boy, Clay Boyle. It’s Hell on earth. But I got ya. I got ya and you’re safe. Tell me where it hurts, ok? Ok.”
“Henry!”
Connie turned and the kid was past the Deputy’s car, walking right at Connie, pointing his phone at Connie. His scalp went all tingles, his brain for a beat seeing ‘gun’ not ‘phone’. The tall woman on the far side of the cop car looked pissed off. She looked brittle though. Not capable of mayhem like Millie.
“Are you Connie?” asked the kid.
“Yeah.”
The boy waggled the phone.
“It’s Tiffany. She told me to. It’s ok. I’m Henry.”
Even before Connie had the phone in hand Henry’s eyes were bulging, taking in Clay Boyle probing the bloodied cop for ouchies and booboos.
“This is Connie.”
“What’s going on? Is Henry ok? Are you ok?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Oh my god. What about Sipe?”
“Don’t know.”
“What about Millicent?”
“I don’t know.” Connie whispering. He couldn’t really move east or west, either way, anything he might say about Millie would be overheard either by the EMT or by the tall
broad perfecting looking pissed at Henry.
“I can hear a siren,” said Tiffany. “I can’t really see it from here, but I can hear it.”
“Where are you?”
“Still out here. At Bug’s. Hold on.” Tiffany talking to someone. “Sorry. We’re trying to keep Hope from going out to watch the ambulance go by. Or cops. Or both.”
Connie nodding. More cops on the way. Duh. He hadn’t thought about that. Of course more cops would be on the way.
“Tiff, hey, look, sorry to cut and run, but I’m gonna go, ok? I’m gonna go look for her.”
“Ok. If you see Sipe-“
“Yeah. I know. I know. All right.”
He’d be a piss poor relay race runner, nearly dropping the phone when he handed it back to Henry. The kid not saying anything to him, more interested in talking to Tiffany.
It’d been a long time since Connie had run. His metabolism still kicked ass, he could consume all manner of shit and never gain a pound. But when it came to physical exertion he got his ass kicked, time after time.
Connie coated in sweat by the time he reached the intersection, Auntie’s on his right, the automotive place across the street. In the aftermath of the excitement, shots fired, the crowd had reformed. Connie looking for someone to ask, the right person, finally he gave up, just asked aloud, hoping someone would take the bait.
“Where’s the lady go? The one that was shooting?”
Some old boy in a Yankees ball cap pointed down the paved road going to the railcars.
“She went that way. You can see her, see? I wouldn’t go nowhere near her, son. She’s got that gun. She did look a might pee-ohed, that I can say for sure.”
Two voices popped up.
“She dropped it.”
“She did! Guy’s over there, look, he’s got it. Jesus.”
The old boy shrugged. Corrected. Whatever.
So many phones. They all had phones. Whatever Millie had done was now part of the permanent record. Connie could try and buy their phones, Connie could get Sipe’s gun, shoot as many of these hicks as he needed, it didn’t matter. Millie’s mayhem already well on the way to going viral.
About parallel to the southern rim of the city park Connie shed his suit jacket. Just flung it to the ground. Millie was past the railcars. Across the bridge. Running up the middle of the road towards the forest. If she got in the trees, he wouldn’t catch up to her for sure. She wouldn’t last forever. She wasn’t Rambo. Helicopters, hounds, a cop with Iraq or Afghanistan on his resume, she’d be caught, easy, and the next time he’d see her she’d be standing beside a lawyer in a courtroom. That shit about running and getting a pain in the side?, fuck that, Connie got a pain in both sides. At the same time he had saliva in his mouth his mouth and throat were barren of moisture. But go forward was the command imperative. He probably looked like a rubber man, some out of balance piece of shit bereft of an inner ear, or Orion, his cousin, told to run home right now or else his mom was going to get raped by a black man, no shit, that’s what they’d told him once, even though his mom was at some fund raiser over in Bellevue, Chad or Saul or Remmie, one of them, just fucking with the retarded kid because it was fun. Watch the moon faced boy run and cry at the same time, Connie laughing with them. And here it was. The payback. Some girl in a bikini stood at a railing at the back of a house on his right, watching him flail. Connie wheezing, crying, his heart a pulp, too far back, Millie veering off the road, into the thick, the dark, the trees, not hearing her love shouting her name, or hearing it, but dismissing it against the louder sound of police sirens, then garbled cop directive telling Connie to get the fuck out of the way, the unit blasting past Connie, and accelerating up the road, around the bend, the flashing red and blue lights pulsating in between tree trunks before vanishing from sight.