A Single Shot

“Decent as my own daddy.”

“Gon’ turn off the set, Johnno.”

“Don’t!”

Simon abruptly reaches down and switches off the television. The room goes black. John hears a rapid movement. He tries to follow the sound with his gun. Simon chuckles. John says, “I know where you are!”

A dull light comes on behind him. “Boo!” says Simon.

John wheels around. Simon’s standing before the couch, aiming a shotgun at him. “Shit, Johnno, din’ you learn nothin’ ’bout what I taught you?”

John lowers the .45. He feels physically and cognitively depleted. “Ain’t like you,” he says.

“Huh?”

“Don’t shoot folks been good to me. Nor slit their throats neither.”

“Ira was s’posed to be to a fireman’s dance that night, ’cordin’ the Hen.” Simon points the shotgun at his own toes. He sits down on the couch. John’s not sure if he’s through covering him with the shotgun or is just taking a rest. “Him and Molly both. I run into Obadiah all growed-up over the Pink Lily in Raburn, this was maybe three, four years after Ira’d shit-canned ’im for skewerin’ that cow and a coupla weeks after he’d done the same to me for not showin’ up two mornings in a row, then wouldn’t pay me no back wages. Hen says he’d been holdin’ Ira’s safe combination all these years—all we’d have to do is walk in and open it.”

At a level deeper than conscious comprehension, John is thinking that the apparent palpability of words, acts, the whole process of human interchange, is a sham. He is mindful, though, only of his physical distress. His trembling extremities. His palpitating heart. “What I notice ’bout myself, Johnno, is the drunker I get, the more reasonable the most un-fucking-reasonable things seem.”

“Guess I’ll sit down,” John tells him, “ ’less’n you’ll shoot me for it.”

“Christ, John.”

“All right?”

Simon scowls.

John shoves the .45 into his belt. He takes a seat on the edge of the recliner, facing Simon. Simon sighs and says, “Them first coupla years after I got back I weren’t hardly never sober ’cept when I worked for your daddy, who wouldn’t tolerate it, but seems like the longer I’d go ’long his way, worse it’d be when I did let loose, and pretty soon a lost weekend ’id turn into a lost week or two or a whole damn month.” He flicks the barrel of the shotgun at one of the chickens that’s strayed too close to his foot. The chicken squawks and runs off. “Some mess, ain’t it, John?”

John’s not sure if he means his own or the cabin’s. Anyway, he doesn’t answer. It seems to him that Simon’s voice has lost its uniqueness. It sounds like a million other voices.

“Hen drives out Route 9” it says, “and parks in the Conservancy so nobody’d see us comin’ up the hollow, then we hike the woods trail over to Ira’s, getting drunker as we go—I mean, I’m not even carryin’ a gun, Johnno, because to me it’s a sumbitchin’ lark. I figure there’s a safe at all, most’ll be in it is the couple weeks’ wages Ira owes me. We walk up the house whistling, through the front door, turn on a light, and go through the living room to Ira’s office, where the Hen gets to his knees and yanks up a piece a’ rug above where the safe is. He tries openin’ it with some goddamn numbers he’s got writ down but nothin’ happens so he curses and tries ’em a few more times with no more luck and me giving ’im the raspberry ’cause I don’t really give a shit and the Hen finally says fuck it he’ll go upstairs and take some a’ Molly’s jewels and then we’ll leave and though I’m not happy ’bout him ransackin’ the place I go in the kitchen and drink a beer while I wait and maybe he’s up there fifteen, twenty minutes tops and all I e’er heard, Johnno, was a little bangin’ round and once or twice the Hen curse.”

Simon stops talking and runs a hand back through his hair. He’s wearing the same clothes he was two days ago. John wonders if he’s slept in a bed or been less than half-drunk since then. “Look at this shit, Johnno.” He waves the shotgun around the room. “Here’s love makin’ a damn monster out a’ man. You think my homeowner’s ’ll cover what he done?”

John doesn’t say. He’s wondering who the monster is and how far wrong John had read Simon, what exactly his friend is capable of. Could it have been he who had shot Mutt and left the dead girl’s body in the trailer? Was it possible that he had been involved with the Hen in threatening John’s family? The belief that he might have been has on John’s already tortured mind the excruciating pain-followed-by-numbness effect of frigid water.