A Single Shot

By now I guess you know I’m gone. I couldn’t take it no more—not so much Daddy’s drinking and losing his temper and Ma pretending nothing was wrong as me bein fraid I’d end up like em which is dead inside. Like a pair of corpses. I wish I could have said goodbye but there weren’t no time and that you’d of got to know Waylon’s goodside (well, not too well!) He’s sweet and treats me better than all them grabass highschool boys (like Donnie LaTrec—the pig!) plus the way he loves me—for the first time I know what all the fuss is about (wow!)—and is smart but got in trouble from bad breaks. Talk about childhoods—you ought to hear bout his! Anyway, I don’t hold it gainst him he was in jail—he calls it his college education. And it weren’t for naught. He’d kill me if I told you—or even found out I was writing you as he made me throw out my address book—but soon as Waylon gets back tonight we’re heading somewhere starts with an H where there’s ocean, good weather, lays and coconuts (remember—wasn’t me who told you!) I can’t say no more, only that it’s like we always talked about—I can’t believe it’s been hardly a week since passing notes in geometry class! I’m not sure how it’s going to end up, Tools, and sometimes that scares me but it’s like Waylon says, better to go out like a Roman Candle than a wet log. All I know is for the first time ever I feel like I’m really living stead of—I got to stop for awhile, Tools—you won’t believe what just come hobbling in here with me, poor, dear thing, looks shot or something…

John refolds the letter, shoves it into his hip pocket, then, having decided what he must do—and quickly, before Waylon returns—glances down uneasily at the dead girl, half fearing she will open her eyes and say, “There’s the life you took from me and now you’re doing with me worse than you would a shot deer!”

Bending over, John grabs the girl under the arms and starts hauling her toward the near end of the bushes, the cadaver emitting noises like a couple of drunks eating beans around a campfire. John is so embarrassed for her that his cheeks burn and he thinks if the whole world could see itself dead there’d be no vanity left. Near the end of the bushes, one of her sneakers comes off. John stops and puts it back on, and her foot, in a baby-blue socklet, is so warm and alive he suddenly wishes he had known her when she was, a thought too disturbing to dwell on. He hurriedly picks up the corpse again and starts dragging it across the quarry floor, making a trail of blood, urine, and matted grass, toward the small pond and dug-out place on the far side, thinking, “The first thing is to get her hid somewhere, so I can think.”

He is halfway across the field when, from directly behind him, comes a loud hiss and a hollow thumping sound. With a startled yelp, he drops the cadaver and wheels around and there, over the dead buck, their huge wings flapping and red wattles trembling, hover the two turkey vultures. John runs at them, waving his arms and sibilating, and the birds, in their lumbering, unhurried way, fly off, one with deer meat dangling from its beak.

John walks back to the girl, bends to pick her up, and is shocked to find her staring straight at him. Her head banging against the ground must have caused her eyes to pop open. “It won’t do nobody,” John loudly blurts out, “you, your boyfriend, your family wherever they are, me, or my little one countin’ on me to feed ’im—one bit a good for me to go to jail which is jis’ what’id happen if the law found out ’bout this and even did accept it was an accident!” He reaches down, pushes her eyes shut again, then drags her the rest of the way across the quarry’s rock floor, through which grass and weeds sprout, past the water hole, to the opening in the wall, a dynamited cavern maybe four feet high and twice as deep, from which, years before, Old Man Hollenbach mined slate.

Breathing heavily, John lays the girl down on a bluestone slab in front of the opening, its floor marred by raccoon droppings, bat shit, and two or three cigarette stubs. John bends down, picks up a stub, sniffs it, and smells recently burned tobacco. “What the hell?” he thinks. He drops to his hands and knees in front of the cavern, carefully examines the entrance, and sees several crushed weeds, their broken stems oozing fresh fluid, and a large patch of imploded grass.