Small Mercies

He curls into a ball and she gives him a minute in case he might puke, then she comes behind him and pulls him tight to her, straddling him, her legs hooked over his. She tosses aside the .38 — she emptied it out there — and reaches in her bag for Frank’s .45. She pulls it out, flicks the safety off, places the extra clip on the dirt floor beside her. There’s no way out for her, but there’s only one way in. They have to stick their heads through that doorway if they want to get to her. She keeps Brian in front and points the .45 at the doorway.

“You just fucking killed him,” Brian Shea says eventually, as if he can’t comprehend the tragedy of Tombstone Frank Toomey’s death. As if he’s just been stripped of all the illusions he’s held of a gentler world.

“Sure did.”

“And you blew my fucking hip off.”

“Well, if you make it out of here, Brian, you’ll have a bad limp and a good story.”

Outside, she can hear more scuffing sounds. Judging by the distance, she suspects they’re over by the car.

“You just fucking killed him.”

“Why are you shocked by this? You kill people all the time.”

“We,” he says. “Not you.”

Beyond the doorway, someone opens the trunk of the car.

She snakes her arm around Brian’s abdomen and puts the muzzle of the big .45 against his crotch.

“The fuck you doing?”

“Were you there when my daughter was killed?” she whispers in his ear.

“I wasn’t there,” he says wearily. “I was called after.”

She hears a thump on the ground outside, followed by the clack of metal against metal. To look, she’d have to move Brian off her and stick her head into the doorway, risk getting it blown right the fuck off, so she’ll let them do whatever they’re doing out there, thank you very much. But she admits to being curious.

“Who was there when my daughter was killed?” she asks Brian.

“Frank. Marty was in another room.”

“So what happened?”

“I heard her and Frankie got in a fight, she kept coming at him, he whipped out a knife and, ya know.”

“‘Ya know,’” she says bitterly.

“Yeah.”

She removes the gun from his crotch.

Outside, more scuffing, more metal sliding against metal, and then Marty’s voice. “Grab the tripod.”

The tripod?

Brian exhales heavily through his nostrils. She suspects it’s his attempt at managing his pain.

“’Member in sophomore year,” he starts, “when we—”

“Here we go. Memory lane.”

He chuckles. “No, no, it was funny. We rigged all those toilets in the teachers’ bathroom with—”

“Firecrackers,” she says. “Yeah, I remember.”

“We had a lot of laughs back then.”

“We sure did,” she says. “You think it’ll save me?”

He says nothing.

She nods. “So why the fuck should it save you?”

His face grows flat again. “Marty can’t let you live now. He loved Frank like a brother.”

“Like a brother?” she says.

“Yeah. What else?”

“The way he screamed when I killed Frank? You tell me.”

He gives it some thought, and his face grows panic-stricken. “You’re sick.” He spits on the wall across from him. “Fucking depraved.”

She laughs. “You flood our community with heroin. Rent women out to fuck strangers for money. You molest children. Turn other children into worse versions of you. You rob. And you kill. But I’m sick. I’m depraved. Oh, okay, Brian.”

From somewhere off in the dark, Marty calls: “Mary Pat, dear.”

“Marty, dear!” she calls back.

His chuckle carries on the light breeze. “Let my friend Brian go and we’ll let you walk out of here.”

“No, you won’t.”

For a moment the only sound is the night.

“No, I suppose we won’t.” Another chuckle. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“That was a lot of money I gave you.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just take it and go away?”

“And do what?”

“Make a better life for yourself?”

“I had my better life. Frank destroyed it.”

“But I didn’t,” he says, all guileless innocence. “Yet you came at my whole organization.”

“Oh, Marty,” she says. “Oh, Marty.”

“What’s that, Mary Pat?”

“This is all you. All this sick fucking ugliness. You drive it and it drives you.”

“I’ve lost you — what drives me, dear?”

“Fear,” she says.

“Fear?” He hoots. “What could I be afraid of, Mary Pat?”

“Shit, Marty, that’s between you and God, but I’m pretty sure it’s a long, sad list.”

Silence follows for quite some time. She can hear the distant water lapping softly against the shore.

Marty asks, “Do you know what I did in the war, hon?”

Whatever’s coming, Mary Pat knows it’s coming soon.

“I don’t, Marty, no.”

“I was a rifleman,” he calls.

“Uh-huh...”

“More to the point,” he says, “I was a sniper.”

She hears the report of the rifle only after the bullet has punched its way through the bone and tissue of her right armpit. She pivots in an instant, a survival instinct as old as her body itself, and the next round turns Brian Shea’s face to cherry pie.

He doesn’t make a sound. He probably never realized he died.

She scrambles back into the corner of the room, and now the handguns go off, and she watches two more rounds hit Brian Shea’s body — one through the chest, the other exploding his right kneecap.

“Cease fire,” Marty calls.