Small Town

“Chelsea Piers,” the Carpenter was saying. “It’s this great project at the water’s edge, with restaurants and sports facilities, even a driving range. Can you imagine that? A driving range in Manhattan?” He shook his head, awed by the wonder of it all. “We’ll be there soon. And this little boat of ours will be a bomb, filled with combustible fumes, and I’ll run it into the pier, and that will be the last sacrifice.” He beamed at Buckram. “And you’ll be a part of it.”

Buckram couldn’t wait any longer. Once the lunatic started sloshing the gas around, the cabin would be a bomb, and a gunshot would set it off. He said, “I don’t think so,” and wrenched his right hand free of the cuff, grabbing up the gun, hurling his body to the side and firing the gun as he moved.

The recoil wasn’t that massive, not from a .22, but it was enough to dislodge the grip of Buckram’s weakened right hand. But the shot was right on target. It took the Carpenter squarely in the center of the chest. His jaw dropped and he stared and took a step back, but he didn’t clutch his chest and his knees didn’t buckle and he didn’t fall down, the way a person generally does when you shoot him in the heart.

Oh, Jesus. The fucking Kevlar vest. It saved a life, but not the one it was supposed to.

And the Carpenter had his own gun drawn now, Buckram’s .38, and he pulled the trigger, and the sound was much louder in the little cabin. The bullet missed, and Buckram groped for the .22, grabbed it finally with his left hand. He raised it, and the Carpenter, his hand trembling, fired a second shot, and this one didn’t miss. Pain seared Buckram’s belly, pain almost too much to bear, and he remembered something Susan had said, something about pain being nothing but a sensation you make wrong, and he dismissed the pain and brought the gun to bear and made the Carpenter wrong instead, made him wrong forever, squeezing the trigger three times and hitting him three times in the face and throat.

And watched him fall, and lie still.

When the first bullet struck, smack in the center of his chest, the Carpenter felt a rush of joy. He was going to die. His sacrifice was complete, he could let go now, and in a moment he would be with Carole.

But he hadn’t died, he wasn’t even hurt. He’d felt the impact of the bullet but it didn’t seem to have injured him. So he’d been right after all, he thought sadly. He had to kill this man, and then he had to complete the sacrifice.

He fired and missed, fired again and hit the man. Not in the chest, where he’d aimed, but much lower. But he’d hit him, and now the man would die, and then—

Then three shots, and in a mere instant the Carpenter was hovering above the scene, looking down, seeing two bodies on the cabin deck. One was Buckram, the man whom he’d shot and by whom he’d been shot in return. And the other, of course, was his own.

And, seeing himself lying there, the Carpenter felt a veil lift, and knew for the first time, knew with perfect certainty, that everything he’d done in the past months had been completely and overwhelmingly wrong. The realization was crushing, blinding, devastating.

And then, just as quickly, it ceased to matter. Because he was drawn into the vortex now, whirled into the long tunnel, and Carole would be waiting for him at the end of it.

He let go, and sailed away.

Oh, Jesus. A red-hot poker in your bowels, and you could tell yourself it was just a sensation, but it was more than that. It was bad news, because you’d been gutshot and you were going to die.

The cell phone. That was his only hope, and of course the fucking thing was on top of the chest of drawers and he was on the fucking floor, pardon me, the fucking deck, and what he needed was Medic Alert, because he’d fallen and he couldn’t get up.

Had to.

Couldn’t.

Fuck that. He had to.

He got to his feet, grabbed the cell phone, then fell down again and felt it spill out of his hand. Groped around, got hold of it. 9-1-1, he thought. Easy to remember, same as 9/11, the day it all started.

And, talking to the 911 operator, telling her who he was and where he thought he was and what had happened, a thought came to him. He pushed it away until he’d gotten the message across to her, then let go of the phone and sprawled on his back.

And the thought was there again. His mother, telling him how he had to wear clean underwear every morning, in case he got hit by a bus. Because what would they think in the hospital?

And what would they think, he wondered, when they found Francis J. Buckram, the former commissioner of the NYPD, stark fucking naked and not a single hair on his balls?

The worst part, he thought, as his consciousness began to fade, the worst part was that he wasn’t going to be around to see the expressions on their faces.

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