Ask the Dark (18 page)

For a minute I fiddled with it, what I could see of’t in the dark, but it was no use.

I can’t do it, Jimmy! I said, yanking at it. I gotta go upstairs! There’s another door. I’ll just be a minute—

He yelled when I said all that, even louder than before.

I looked at Jimmy and said nothing. His face was so full of fear and he was shaking, and he stood by hisself a second and he took my hands and held’m, and was staring at me his face all scrambled and his mouth mumbling, and I heard him
praying
to me, you understand? And when I saw that I said, I ain’t going nowhere, Jimmy. I staying with you, you hear? Don’t you worry none, you hear?

He squeezed my hands tight, and I saw there a little bit of a smile come on his face, and he cried, standing there.

That made me feel good a second, but that didn’t matter. ’Cause right then we heard a rap outside, and more noises, and then the bolt on that door shot across, and it flew open, letting in the last of the sunlight outside.

What happened next went by so fast it’s hard to say just what it was. I was standing there with Jimmy beside me, and that back door came open, swinging at us, and Hodsworth was standing outside about two foot away. He shoved the door hard and it hit me, but I caught it with my hand. Then he came up fast and smacked me just about as hard as he could, and I whammed back against the wall, but I didn’t let go’f the door.

Jimmy just stood there. But when Hodsworth hit me he had to step forward, and when he did, Jimmy walked right past him, right outside into the backyard. Hodsworth was gonna hit me again, but when he saw Jimmy outside he backed up out the door to grab him. And taking him in one hand he turned toward me and fished in his pocket with the other, and pulled a gun and aimed it at my face.

Now the only reason I’m standing here talking is because right then Jimmy did something.

He pushed’m.

He pushed’m just as he shot, and that bullet missed me, and Hodsworth had to drop his hand from Jimmy and grab at the doorway to steady hisself. I never knew if Jimmy meant to save me. I mean, maybe he just wanted to walk farther outside. But he pushed, really sort’f fell on’m, and that’s what saved my life.

Because I had a second. And you gotta remember that even though the fucker smacked me good, I still was holding on to that open door.

So I slammed it. He was just outside the door’n I wanted to lock him out. Which was lucky for me. ’Cause I didn’t see where his hand was. It was in the doorjamb, holding on the steel slot for the lock, steel about an inch thick, solid. And when that door slammed it crushed that fucker’s hand flat between the bolt and the slot, and that fucker yelled like the end of the world, I mean howled like a motherfucker you ain’t never heard before.

I wanted to run, but the fucker was standing in the doorway and I was afraid to get near’m, ’specially as how he still had that gun in his hand and every move he made was like he was thrashing around, so I couldn’t get by. And the whole world seemed crazy, so who could think? Because like I said, I can’t really remember just what happened, I mean in the order it did. All I know is I was lying there on the cold concrete ’cause I’d fell down, and Hodsworth was there in the doorway with twilight all round him, and Jimmy Brest, he was in the backyard just wandering around naked as a jaybird and with so many cuts on’m it looked like somebody’d been at’m with a hacksaw.

Then the fucker hit me again. Somehow he got over the pain long enough to just jump at me, and kick me so hard I flew crost the floor. But it was worse for him. I don’t know if it was ’cause he just moved his hand or banged it, but that fucker yelled so loud after that it was to wake the dead, and then he just keeps up this roaring, roaring like I only heard animals do, and he comes to stomp me but he can’t ’cause just lifting his foot over my head makes him scream again, and if I weren’t screaming and crying then I’d bet I’d’f laughed in the fucker’s face, ’cause the way he moved was like a country boy two-step. And he’s trying to bash me but he’s holding his wrist to keep his hand still, he stuck the pistol in his pocket I guess, and that damn hand, you oughta’f seen it. It was swelled up like you wouldn’t believe, like some cartoon hand or just ’bout the size of a catcher’s mitt, and I ain’t lying. ’Cept it ain’t that tan color a catcher’s mitt has but all white and blue, and the gash in the middle went straight through, ’cause I forgot to tell you how it got stuck on the slot piece when I slammed it and he had to yank it free and I heard this sort’f
doink!
when he done that and then he screamed again, that gash all black and horrible and blood just squirting out like juice from a squishy orange.

Then the fucker does the weirdest thing. Instead of going after me he just slams the door, bashes it shut, and the last I seen of the outside was that Jimmy Brest had found the gate and looked to be walking into the purple of the alley. So it was dark except for the light I’d left in the storage room, and by that light Hodsworth was bashing at boxes I’d pushed away from the door, trying to open’m with his hand but when that hurt too much he bends down to rip the flaps open with his teeth, and after he does he thrashes his good hand through, and comes up with pill vials. He can’t open’m so he busts’m under his foot and then he starts taking these damn pills, down on his knees, whole fuckin’ handfuls of’m. And then he finds hisself some bag of powder, and I figure it’s either heroin or cocaine, ’cause what he does is rip the plastic with his teeth, and still jerking around ’cause he can’t stand the pain, I mean moving like some weird robot man, he starts to pour the stuff over ’s hand, so it clouds the air and I smell it a little too. And if you’re wondering why I ain’t doing much it’s ’cause I got hurt when he kicked me, but now with me thinking he might get the pain to go away I get to my feet and go toward the stairs.

He was aiming to shoot me again, raising up his hand to level the gun at me. But any little move he made hurt like hell ’cause it made him move that busted hand, and even bump it, which really made’m holler. So he’d move and then scream and jerk and then move again and scream louder, and the gun went off and the shot hit the wall. I was stumbling away, to where I didn’t know, and he was lurching and jerking behind me. And all the time sucking them pills out the vial to kill the pain.

And that’s when the fucker shot me, back of my right leg, right there high on the big muscle.

God damn.

I fell down just as the flash cracked like lightning and so loud in that little room, and the powder smell black and bad, and my head hit the floor hard ’cause I fell backwards and I didn’t move.

And when I looked up, there the fucker was, right over me, gun aimed down at my head.

And that was it.

’Cept one thing.

When I looked up, I could barely just see his face, a feeling came over me I don’t even want to talk about.

But I guess I got to.

But I don’t know if I can.

It was like,
I hate you more’n you hate me.
And,
I’d kill the world to kill you, fucker.
And it was,
Fucker, burn in hell.

And thinkin’ that way I scare myself now, ’cause I never had it in me to kill nobody, never wanted it or thought I could go that far. But for what he’d done to them boys this fucker was the devil himself. He deserved to die, and I was damn well glad to be the one try’n to do it. ’Cause sorry to say, right then I was maybe more’f a monster’n he was.

So I managed to lift a foot and boot the fucker’s fucked-up hand.

Boy did he yell.

But it didn’t matter much. He still shot me in the belly. Went straight through.

He wandered off screaming, I didn’t see where. I just lay on the floor.

I was done. I knew it. I didn’t think but just waited, my mind so full of pain I couldn’t think. And he was coming to me, he fell down and was crawling over the floor dragging hisself with the good hand, the other held up high, and I closed my eyes to die.

And now you gonna think I’m crazy.

’Cause I looked over and right there my mother was standing in the basement, three/four yards away. And I didn’t understand because she couldn’t be there. She was dead, for one thing, so why did I see her ghost? But she was there and looking at me, dressed in that old flower dress I remember, her hair done up with pins. And seeing her made me so happy I swear I forgot about the pain because I just wanted to tell her, tell her what we was doing since she’d gone and the house and me trying to make the money, and Daddy wanting his fruit stand, and Leezie and her baby. But even more I wanted to say to her all the things I wished I’d ever said but never did, ’cause I was too proud to say’m, even to her. And I did say’m, right then on the floor, said’m all without talking, because I didn’t have to talk. But I knew she heard me just the same, standing there looking down at me.

But she didn’t seem to care. She just looked at me, her face sort’f dark, and she said, Billy, get up.

But I was too excited for that and I said, Mommy, can’t you hear? And I said the things again, all about the fruit stand and Leezie and the house, and how I loved her and felt sad she was gone but had been too afraid to ever tell.

She said, Get up, Billy.

I felt bad. She didn’t answer me. She didn’t care. I wanted to ask her if she loved me too and about what I was doing now and Leezie and the fruit stand and if those things was good to do, and I wanted to tell her I weren’t bad no more like she’d begged me to be, but I couldn’t ask no more ’cause I was crying.

And she said, Get up, Billy.

I said, Mommy, I can’t.

I was crying.

Get up, she said.

Mommy, I’m hurt, I told’r.

She said, You can, Billy. Get up, Billy. Get up and run.

Mommy, I can’t, I said.

So she said, Listen, Billy. Listen.

And then I knew my eyes was closed all along, ’cause I opened them, and she weren’t there no more.

But I listened. And I heard what she wanted me to.

So I sat up.

Because I knew now I had a chance. I didn’t see a way out yet, or even know if there was one, ’cause the door was shut and Hodsworth lay between me and it, crawling my way. But I knew why I had to get up and run like she said. Because I heard the one thing that could save me.

Then something busted inside when I moved and blood came out my mouth and down my chin.

I knew I was gonna die. There weren’t gonna be nothing. And I knowed I’d never get my daddy a fruit stand and never see Leezie’s baby. I’d never see any of it ’cause I knew I’d die.

But then I stopped.

My mind stopped.

Because I weren’t talking to Mommy no more.

I was talking to God.

And I said, I know you hate me. I know I’m going to hell like them nuns at school say.

So okay, I said.

I’ll go.

Just let me deserve it.

You just let me kill this motherfucker, I said. Let me get up and kill the motherfucker. Just gimme five minutes. And show me the way. Then I’ll deserve it. It’s worth it then and you can go ’head and put me there.

And I felt I could ask’m, ’cause what I heard.

A dog bark and a boy’s voice, Simon Hooper, yelling,
At it, Bear,
and
Down!

So I got up.

I don’t know how. ’Cause I weren’t thinking but remembering, remembering now ’cause the Lord put it there. And Richie, he’d said he’d shored up the walls and floors with concrete and everything against the floods Miss Gurpy was worried ’bout, but he ain’t done one window, ’cause all his stuff got stole, Hodsworth stole it, and Miss Gurpy let Richie go without getting it done.

So I knew dryers had them exhaust shafts of wire and foil, and this one was sticking right to a four-frame window that maybe was painted glass and not hardboard. ’Cause Richie had told me hisself he never changed it, sealed it, finished it, and this asshole motherfucker crawling at me screaming with a gun in his hand sure as hell never done it hisself.

So I climbed onto the dryer and not even thinking put my face right through that wall that smashed open ’cause it was glass not board and I clawed hard, feeling glass cutting my arms straight to the bone, and feeling that motherfucker now standing, grabbing my legs, and I kicked back and must’f hit that big hand ’cause he screamed crazy, and I pulled hard and squirmed fast and I was out.

It was still daytime sort’f, still purple-dark, and I was in a yard standing on grass. I heard him inside coming out smashing everything in his way. So I went forward. Didn’t walk. Hobbled and looked, and there in the fence was that tree trunk, fence built around it, and the old wood blocks nailed on, for boys to climb to the tree fort in the boughs. So I climbed up and slumped on the fence top.

And right then the fucker come up and shot me in the back.

I don’t remember falling. Just hitting the ground woke me and I lay where I hit. I saw the motherfucker jump down and there he was in front of me ’cause he’d climbed after me. And them pain pills was working ’cause his big hand hung low and he was aiming the gun at my face.

I didn’t say, but falling I hit my head and my eyes went dizzy. I was seeing three/four things when really there just was one. And in my ears was a sound like thunder, like rain, and I couldn’t hear no other sounds. Everything was moving slow and three/four times over, and my face in a pile of acorn mulch sort’f steaming, and dead leaves, just the last things I wanted to smell.

And I saw Hodsworth standing there, four/five guns in his four/five arms.

But he weren’t looking at me.

He was looking at Simon Hooper and his dog.

I looked too.

Bear was sort’f pitched forward, with Hooper right beside him, holding’m by the scruff of the neck. And Hooper looked at me and then he looked at Hodsworth, and his face didn’t so much change as go dark. Then he raised his hand and pointed at Hodsworth and drew his hand, whipped it, crost his own throat, ’cept I saw three/four hands doing it, and he said something sharp, yelled it, but I couldn’t hear ’cause’f the roaring in my ears.

Hodsworth didn’t move. He couldn’t. All he did was jerk his eyes because that dog jumped and toppled him down like somebody’d throwed a big dirty rug all crost him.