A Single Shot

“Lots of folks are wondering where you are, John.” The lawyer’s voice sounds hollow and faraway—almost sad—though partly that could be John’s perception and that Pitt is on a speaker phone. “Sounds as if your world’s turned into an awful mess.”

“It’s why I’m callin’.”

“The police found one of your fingers.”

“Ain’t doin’ so good without it.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late to sew it back on, John. I’m awfully sorry.”

“You still my lawyer, lawyer?”

“I wasn’t clear that you hadn’t fired me, John.”

“Was confused ’bout things—my family, the Hen. I weren’t gon’ shoot ya.”

“I hoped not, John. Still, it shakes a man up.” Pitt delicately clears his throat. John imagines the lawyer’s tiny Adam’s apple bobbing as his apparently constant pain exits through his eyes. “Did you know, John, that poor little Obadiah was raised by about eight different people because his parents didn’t want a thing to do with him, and one of them—an aunt, I believe—used an electric cattle prod on him and, when she caught him eating in bed, made him sleep in a cage with live rats?”

“I know he sliced up Molly and Ira Hollenbach.”

“… He was ten—cutest little fella you ever saw—when the court first assigned me to represent him.”

“You drunk again, Pitt?”

“Just tired, John.” The lawyer sounds like he’s about to cry. John thinks he’s made a mistake calling him. “I’m not a very good lawyer, John. All my clients lie to me. I allow them to play on my good graces.”

“How’s Abbie?”

“Recovering well, I’m told. And wondering about you.”

“I made a mistake ’bout a week ago, Pitt. Don’t seem to be any end to it.”

“… And did you know our good friend Simon Breedlove is also gone?”

“Was how he wanted it,” says John.

“A few years ago—five, to be precise, right after… well, you know—he had me draw up a will. He’s left everything he owned to some Vietnamese immigrant family in San Francisco.”

“I din’ know him so good,” says John.

Pitt clears his throat again. “There’s lots of dead bodies, John, and you’re still alive. My guess is, the police aren’t sure what to think.”

“How many, ’xactly?”

“How many what?”

“Bodies.”

“Well, John—they count three. If you include Simon and Obadiah.”

“They ain’t lookin’ for no others?”

“Bodies?”

“Whatevers.”

John hears a slurping sound on the other end of the line and guesses Pitt’s emboldening himself. He glances over at the dead girl, touching her toes, and thinks if lives could back up, the world would soon be out of room. “Maybe you ought to call a real lawyer, John. One of those ex-football types. I know you’ve got the money to pay for it.”

“That’s good as buried.”

“Are you sure you want to do that, John? Even gullible old Daggard Pitt requires a substantial retainer for a mess like yours.”

“How much?”

“Ten to start, I’d think.”

“Thousand?”

“I’d guess, yes.”

“Would it keep me out a’ jail?”

“Well, John, I’d feel more comfortable about that if the arithmetic didn’t keep changing.”

“Whadda ya mean?”

“I’m afraid one more body would push credulity beyond its limits.”

John thanks him for the advice, then hangs up the phone.

He walks down the hallway into his bedroom, yanks open the top drawer of his bureau, and reaches beneath his underwear. He pulls out the envelope there, then goes back to the kitchen and from cold tap water makes a thick cup of instant coffee. He sits down with it at the table and pictures a southward winding road that never ends, just gets narrower and narrower. Outside the window, darting swallows filch flies from the air. Perspiration drops from John’s brow onto the tabletop. His scent is gamy. As they thaw, the dead girl’s bones creak and groan. “Must be you figured Waylon as your best chance for somethin’,” he tells her, “even if he weren’t much a’ one. That it?”

She doesn’t answer.

From the envelope John takes the Polaroids he snapped of her and aimlessly shuffles through them. He envisions the world as a populous plain interwoven by a network of tiny creases in which man’s evil little secrets hide. He imagines the worst retribution as a self-inflicted paralysis. He thinks of the physical aspects of being incarcerated—prodding hands and clubs, restraining iron bars, the close smell of so many people, even sunlight rationed like a scarce commodity. He finds himself shivering. Tears mix with the sweat exiting his body.

Falteringly he stands up, walks over to the dead girl, and runs a hand through her hair, which is cold, with an oily texture. He bends forward and hugs her frozen, soulful torso. His field of vision starts to blur. He feels like he’s looking down through a haze of smoke at the imagined life of Ingrid Banes. What if it were possible to alter history—even emotions—with only words? To manipulate talk into facts and verbalize facts into dreams? Even for those—like John and the dead girl—born on the wrong end of it, this would be a world worth living in. “You’re gon’ make it Hawaii, Ingrid,” he says, kissing her on the cheek. “Ya lucky girl, ya.”