A Single Shot

By the time he reaches the boulder’s crest, he feels feverish. He’s not sure if the flush he is experiencing is from infection or the afternoon heat. His head spins. Maybe he is delirious. In his mind the bloated image of Ingrid Banes presents his severed digit to him like a conciliatory gift. It strikes John that she views his mutilation as partial recompense for her death. Then he thinks maybe he does, too. In a body-sized indenture in the rock, he lies flat on his stomach, giving himself, through the tops of two trees, a narrow view of the trailer deck. He pulls the rifle into his right shoulder, then quickly realizes that the pain and swelling in that hand, now half again the size of its mate, have rendered the four remaining digits useless as trigger fingers. He tries reaching back with his left hand to manipulate the trigger, while steadying the gun with his right, but it is too cumbersome and impedes his aim. “Talk to me, John!” yells Waylon.

The shout to John seems inflected this time with hysteria. He envisions a new paranoid monster, more dangerous even than the old cocksure one. He switches the rifle’s stock to his opposite shoulder, so that now his left eye peers through the scope and his good hand falls naturally on the trigger. “I’ve got the money!” he hollers.

The view through his off eye is skewed. Or the world is. Objects look as if they have inclined slightly toward the valley. This affects his depth perception, negatively or positively. He’s not sure which, only that his take on things is slightly altered.

“Don’t fuck with me, woodchuck! Your voice ain’t moved none!”

“I’m luggin’ it back the truck!”

Through the magnified glass, it takes him several seconds to locate the deck and its occupants. He no sooner zeros in on them than they disappear again. Twice more, he finds, then loses, them as, beneath his mummified hand, the rifle’s stock bounces precariously. Sweat drips into his eyes. He envisions pulling the trigger and seeing his awry shot slam into the skull of Abbie, who is being held like a shield in front of Waylon’s body.

“I don’t hear an engine start in sixty seconds, John, I’m cutting off everything sticks out from her knees up!”

John lays down the rifle. He hastily eyes the top of the boulder for a makeshift stand. To his right, he finds a fallen Y-shaped branch. He snaps off the stem of the branch, leaving about six inches, then quickly inserts the stem into a small crack at the front of the indenture. He picks up the rifle again, lies back down in the crevice, places the gun’s butt against his left shoulder, its stock onto his injured hand and its barrel into the Y, then peers through the scope.

This time he quickly locates the deck. With an unwavering base supporting the gun, he is able to focus on the two figures. He is shocked at how close to him they seem, how physically intertwined they are, and how, in less than ten minutes, their appearances have so drastically altered. Waylon is visible behind Abbie only from the shoulders up and midcalves down. His godless eyes dart left and right, as if expecting at any moment to see John come rushing out of the bushes. His tongue squirts repetitively back and forth like a small fish across his lips. His knife is pressed against Abbie’s throat. A thin line of blood is visible there. John thinks he looks about ready to crack. Like he is on the verge of mania.

The white skin of Abbie’s legs is made to seem even more so by her shockingly black tangle of pubic bush. Her jeans and underwear lie around her ankles. John’s thoughts of the second are quadrangular—rage at him who has exposed her; guilt for John’s own part in contributing to her predicament; fear that he will not be able to save her; and, like the abrupt onset of a scratchless itch, blood-quickening arousal that shames him. Even looking at her, he feels he is violating her. Suddenly one of her feet jerks backward, as if she is kicking at Waylon. Then the other. John sees Waylon’s knife blade flick upward like a silver tongue and Abbie’s shirt and bra fall away, exposing her taut belly and pink-tipped burgeoning breasts. The kicking stops. John instantly shifts his gaze back to Abbie’s face. Now he sees that the blindfold dangles from her left ear, though her eyes are shut tight, and the mouth gag pulsates as she breathes. He moves the crosshairs slightly above the top of her head, locking them in on the furrowed brow of Waylon.