Skeleton Crew

You weren't supposed to have guns in your room, not even hunting rifles, but it hadn't been hard. He had signed it out of the university gun storage room the day before with a forged withdrawal slip. He put it in its waterproof leather scabbard, and left it in die woods behind the football field. Then, this morning around three A.M., he just went out and got it and brought it upstairs through the sleeping corridors.

He sat down on the bed with the gun across his knees and wept a little bit. The Thinker on the toilet seat was looking at him. Garrish put the gun on his bed, crossed the room, and slapped it off Piggy's table and onto the floor, where it shattered. There was a knock at the door.

Garrish put the rifle under his bed. "Come in." It was Bailey, standing there in his skivvies. There was a puff of lint in his bellybutton. There was no future for Bailey. Bailey would marry a stupid girl and they would have stupid kids. Later on he would die of cancer or maybe renal failure.

"How was the chem final, Curt?"

"All right."

"I just wondered if I could borrow your notes. I've got it tomorrow."

"I burned them with my trash this morning."

"Oh. Hey, Jesus! Did Piggy go and do that?" He pointed at the remains of the Thinker.

"I guess so."

"Why did he want to go and do that? I liked that thing. I was going to buy it off him." Bailey had sharp, ratty little features. His skivvies were thready and saggy-seated. Garrish could see exactly how he would look, dying of emphysema or something in an oxygen tent. How he would look yellow. I could help you, Garrish thought.

"You think he'd mind if I scoffed up those pinups?"

"I guess not."

"Okay." Bailey crossed the room, stepping his bare feet gingerly over the pottery shards, and untacked the Playmates. "That picture of Bogart is really sharp, too. No tits, but, hey! You know?" Bailey peered at Garrish to see if Garrish would smile. When Garrish did not, he said, "I don't suppose you planned on throwing it away, or anything?"

"No. I was just getting ready to take a shower."

"Okay. Have a good summer if I don't see you again, Curt."

"Thanks." Bailey went back to the door, the seat of his skivvies flapping. He paused at the door. "Another four-point this semester, Curt?"

"At least."

"Good deal. See you next year." He went out and closed the door. Garrish sat on the bed for a little while, then took the gun out, stripped it, and cleaned it. He put the muzzle up to his eye and looked at the tiny circle of light at the far end. The barrel was clean. He reintegrated the gun.

In the third drawer of his bureau were three heavy boxes of Winchester ammunition. He laid these on the windowsill. He locked the room's door and went back to the window. He pulled the blinds up.

The mall was bright and green, peppered with strolling students. Quinn and his idiot friend had gotten up a raggle-taggle softball game. They scurried back and forth like crippled ants escaping a broken burrow.

"Let me tell you something," Garrish told Bogie. "God got mad at Cain because Cain had an idea God was a vegetarian. His brother knew better. God made the world in His image, and if you don't eat the world, the world eats you. So Cain says to his brother, 'Why didn't you tell me?' And his brother says, 'Why didn't you listen?' And Cain says, 'Okay, I'm listening now.' So he waxes his brother and says, 'Hey God! You want meat?

Here it is! You want roast or ribs or Abelburgers or what?' And God told him to put on his boogie shoes. So ...

what do you think?" No reply from Bogie.

Garrish put the window up and rested his elbows on the ledge, not letting the barrel of the .352 project out into the sunlight. He looked into the sight.

He was centered on Carlton Memorial women's dormitory across the mall. Carlton was more popularly known as the dog kennels. He put the crosshairs on a big Ford wagon. A blond coed in jeans and a blue shell top was talking to her mother while her father, red-faced and balding, loaded suitcases into the back.

Someone knocked on the door.

Garrish waited.

The knock came again.

"Curt? I'll give you half a rock for the Bogart poster." Bailey.

Garrish said nothing. The girl and her mother were laughing at something, not knowing there were microbes in their intestines, feeding, dividing, multiplying. The girl's father joined them and they stood in the sunlight together, a family portrait in the crosshairs.

"Damn it all," Bailey said. His feet padded down the hall.

Garrish squeezed the trigger.

The gun kicked hard against his shoulder, the good, padded kick you get when you have seated the gun in exactly the right place. The smiling girl's blond head sheared itself away.

Her mother went on smiling for a moment, and then her hand went to her mouth. She screamed through her hand. Garrish shot through it. Hand and head disappeared in a red spray. The man who had been loading the suitcases broke into a lumbering run.