A Natural History of Hell: Stories Page 10

  After school that day, I walked home with my new friend, Constance, who only came to Bascombe High in senior year. We crossed the soccer field, passed the fallen leaves stained red with McKenzie’s blood, and entered the woods. The wind blew and shook the empty branches of the trees. Constance suddenly stopped walking, crouched, drew her Beretta Storm and fired. By the time I could turn my head, the squirrel was falling back, headless, off a tree about thirty yards away.

  She had a cute haircut, short but with a lock that almost covered her right eye. Jeans and a green flannel shirt, a calm, pretty face. When we were doing current events in fifth period social studies, she’d argued with Mr. Hallibet about the cancellation of child labor laws. Me, I could never follow politics. It was too boring. But Constance seemed to really understand, and although on the TV news we all watched, they were convinced it was a good idea for kids twelve and older to now be eligible to be sent to work by their parents for extra income, she said it was wrong. Hallibet laughed at her and said, “This is Senator Meets we’re talking about. He’s a man of the people. The guy who gave you your guns.” Constance had more to say, but the teacher lifted his shotgun and turned to the board. The thing I couldn’t get over is that she actually knew this shit better than Hallibet. The thought of it, for some reason, made me blush.

  By the time the first snow came in late November, the guns became mostly just part of our wardrobes, and kids turned their attention back to their cell phones and iPods. The one shot fired in the school before Christmas vacation was when Mrs. Cloder dropped her gun in the bathroom stall and blew off the side of the toilet bowl. Water flooded out into the hallway. Other than that, the only time you noticed that people were packing was when they’d use their sidearm for comedy purposes. Like Bryce, during English, when the teacher was reading Pilgrim’s Progress to us, took out his gun and stuck the end in his mouth as if he was so bored he was going to blow his own brains out. At least once a week, outside the cafeteria, on the days it was too cold to leave the school, there were quick-draw contests. Two kids would face off, there’d be a panel of judges, and Vice Principal Warren would set his cell phone to beep once. When they heard the beep the pair drew and whoever was faster won a coupon for a free thirty-two ounce soda at Babb’s, the local convenience store.

  One thing I did notice in that first half of the year. Usually when a person drew their gun, even as a joke, they had a saying they always spoke. Each person had their own signature saying. When it came to these lines it seemed that the ban on cursing could be ignored without any problem. Even the teachers got into it. Mr. Gosh was partial to, “Eat hot lead, you little motherfuckers.” The school nurse, Ms. James, used, “See you in Hell, asshole.” Vice Principal Warren, who always kept his language in check, would draw, and while the gun was coming level with your head, say, “You’re already dead.” As for the kids, they all used lines they’d seen in recent movies. Cody St. John used, “Suck on this, bitches.” McKenzie, who by Christmas was known as Half-toe Batkin, concocted the line, “Put up your feet.” I tried to think of something to say, but it all seemed too corny, and it took me too long to get the gun out of my lunch box to really outdraw anyone else.

  Senior year rolled fast, and by winter break I was wondering what I’d do after I graduated. Constance told me she was going to college to learn philosophy. “Do they still teach that stuff?” I asked. She smiled. “Not so much anymore.” We were sitting in my living room; my parents were away at my aunt’s. The TV was on, the lights were out, and we were holding hands. We liked to just sit quietly with each other and talk. “So I guess you’ll be moving away, after the summer,” I said. She nodded. “I thought I’d try to get a job at Wal-Mart,” I said. “I heard they have benefits now.”

  “That’s all you’re gonna do with your life?” asked Constance.

  “For now,” I said.

  “Well, then when I go away, you should come with me.” She put her arm behind my head and drew me gently to her. We just sat, holding each other for a long time while the snow came down outside.

  A few days after Christmas, I sat with my parents watching the evening news after dinner. Senator Meets was on, talking about what he hoped to accomplish in the coming year. He was telling about how happy he was to work for minimum wage when he was eleven.

  “This guy’s got it down,” said my father.

  I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, but I said, “Constance says he’s a loser.”

  “Loser?” my father said. “Are you kidding? Who’s this Constance, I don’t want you hanging out with any socialists. Don’t tell me she’s one of those kids who refuses to carry a gun. Meets passed the gun laws, mandatory church on Sunday for all citizens, killed abortion, and got us to stand up to the Mexicans . . . He’s definitely gonna be the next president.”

  “She’s probably the best shot in the class,” I said, realizing I’d already said too much.

  My father was suspicious, and he stirred in his easy chair, leaning forward.

  “I met her,” said my mother. “She’s a nice girl.”

  A gave things a few seconds to settle down and then announced I was going to take the dog for a walk. As I passed my mother, unnoticed by my dad, she grabbed my hand and gave it a quick squeeze.

  Back at school in January, there was a lot to do. I went to the senior class meetings, but didn’t say anything. They decided for our “Act of Humanity” (required of every senior class), we would have a blood drive. For the senior trip, we decided to keep it cheap as pretty much everyone’s parents were broke. A day trip to Bash Lake. “Sounds stale,” said Bryce, “but if we bring enough alcohol and weed it’ll be OK.” Mrs. Cloder, our faculty advisor, aimed at him, said, “Arrivederci, Baby,” and gave him two Saturday detentions. The other event that overshadowed all the others, though, was the upcoming prom. My mother helped me make my dress. She was awesome on the sewing machine. It was turquoise satin, short sleeve, mid-length. I told my parents I had no date, but was just going solo. Constance and I had made plans. We knew from all the weeks of mandatory Sunday mass, the pastor actually spitting he was so worked up over what he called “unnatural love,” that we couldn’t go as a couple. She cared more than I did. I just tried to forget about it.

  When the good weather of spring hit, people got giddy and tense. There were accidents. In homeroom one bright morning, Darcy dropped her bag on her desk, and the derringer inside went off and took out Ralph Babb’s right eye. He lived, but when he came back to school his head was kind of caved in and he had a bad fake eye that looked like a kid drew it. It only stared straight ahead. Another was when Mr. Hallibet got angry because everybody’d gotten into the habit of challenging his current events lectures after seeing Constance in action. He yelled for us all to shut up and accidently squeezed off a round. Luckily for us the gun was pointed at the ceiling. Mr. Gosh, though, who was sitting in the room a floor above, directly over Hallibet, had to have buckshot taken out of his ass. When he returned to school from a week off, he sweated more than ever.

  Mixed in with the usual spring fever, there was all kinds of drama over who was going to the prom with who. Fist fights, girl fights, plenty of drawn guns but not for comedy. I noticed that the King of Vermont was getting wackier the more people refused to notice him. When I left my sixth-period class to use the bathroom, I saw him out on the soccer field from the upstairs hallway window. He turned the stun gun on himself and shot the two darts with wires into his own chest. It knocked him down fast, and he was twitching on the ground. I went and took a piss. When I passed the window again, he was gone. He’d started bringing alcohol to school, and at lunch, where again we were back by the woods hanging out, he’d drink a Red Bull and a half pint of vodka.

  Right around that time, I met Constance at the town library one night. I had nothing to do, but she had to write a paper. When I arrived, she’d put the paper away and was reading. I a
sked her what the book was. She told me, “Plato.”

  “Good story?” I asked.

  She explained it wasn’t a novel, but a book about ideas. “You see,” she said, “there’s a cave and this guy gets chained up inside so that he can’t turn around or move but only stare at the back wall. There’s a fire in the cave behind him and it casts his shadow on the wall he faces. That play of light and shadow is the sum total of his reality.”

  I nodded and listened as long as I could. Constance was so wrapped up in explaining, she looked beautiful, but I didn’t want to listen anymore. I checked over my shoulder to see if anyone was around. When I saw we were alone, I quickly leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. She smiled and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  On a warm day in mid-May, we had the blood drive. I got there early and gave blood. The nurses, who were really nice, told me to sit for a while, and they gave me orange juice and cookies. I thought about becoming a nurse for maybe like five whole minutes. Other kids showed up and gave blood, and I stuck around to help sign them up. Cody came and watched but wouldn’t give. “Fuck the dying,” I heard him say. “Nobody gets my blood but me.” After that a few other boys decided not to give either. Whatever. Then at lunch, the King of Vermont was drinking his Red Bulls and vodka, and I think because he’d given blood, he was really blasted. He went around threatening to stun people in their private parts.

  After lunch, in Mrs. Cloder’s class, where we sat at long tables in a rectangle that formed in front of her desk, Wisner took the seat straight across from her. I was two seats down from him toward the windows. Class started, and the first thing Mrs. Cloder said, before she even got out of her seat, was to the King. “Get that foolish jar off the table.” We all looked over. Wisner stared, the mist swirled inside the glass. He pushed his seat back and stood up, cradling the jar in one arm and drawing his stun gun. “Sit down, Scotty,” she said, and leveled her riot gun at him. I could see her finger tightening on the trigger. A few seconds passed, and then one by one all the kids drew their weapons, but nobody was sure whether to aim at Mrs. Cloder or the King, so about half did one and half the other. I never even opened my lunch box, afraid to make a sudden move.

  “Put down your gun and back slowly away from the table,” said Mrs. Cloder.

  “When you meet the Devil, give him my regards,” said Wisner, but as he pulled the trigger, Mrs. Cloder fired. The breeching slug blew a hole in the King of Vermont’s chest, slamming him against the back wall in a cloud of blood. The jar shattered, and glass flew. McKenzie, who had been sitting next to Wisner, screamed as the shards dug into her face. I don’t know if she shot or if the gun just went off, but her bullet hit Mrs. Cloder in the shoulder and spun her out of her chair onto the ground. She groaned and rolled back and forth. Meanwhile, Wisner’s stun-gun darts had gone wild, struck Chucky Durr in the forehead, one in each eyebrow, and in his electrified shaking, his gun went off and put a round right into Melanie Storte’s Adam’s apple. Blood poured out as she dropped her own gun and brought her hands to her gurgling neck. Melanie was Cody St. John’s “current ho,” as he called her, and he didn’t think twice but fanned the hammer of his pistol, putting three shots into Chucky, who went over onto the floor like a bag of potatoes. Chucky’s cousin, Meleeba, shot Cody in the side of the head, and he fell, screaming, as smoke poured from the hole above his left ear. One of Cody’s crew shot Meleeba, and then I couldn’t keep track anymore. Bullets whizzed by my head, blood was spurting everywhere. Kids were dropping like pins at the bowling alley. Mrs. Cloder clawed her way back into her seat, lifted the gun and aimed it. Whoever was left fired on her and then she fired, another shotgun blast, like an explosion. When the ringing in my ears went away, the room was perfectly quiet but for the drip of blood and the ticking of the wall clock. Smoke hung in the air, and I thought of the King of Vermont’s escaped souls. During the entire thing, I’d not moved a single finger.

  The cops were there before I could get myself out of the chair. They wrapped a blanket around me and led me down to the principal’s office. I was in a daze for a while, but could feel them moving around me and could hear them talking. Then my mother was there, and the cop was handing me a cup of orange juice. They asked if they could talk to me, and my mother left it up to me. I told them everything, exactly how it went down. I started with the blood drive. They tested me for gunpowder to see if there was any on my hands. I told them my gun was back in the classroom in the lunch box under the table, and it hadn’t been fired since the summer, the last time I went to the range with my dad. It was all over the news. I was all over the news. A full one-third of Bascombe High’s senior class was killed in the shootout.

  Senator Meets showed up at the school three days later and got his picture taken handing me an award. I never really knew what it was for. Constance said of it, “They give you a fucking award if you live through it,” and laughed. In Meets’s speech that day to the assembled community, he blamed the blood drive for the incident. He proclaimed Mrs. Cloder a hero, and ended reminding everyone, “If these kids were working, they’d have no time for this.”

  The class trip was called off out of respect for the dead. Two weeks later, I went to the prom. It was to be held in the high school gymnasium. My dad drove me. When we pulled into the parking lot, it was empty.

  “You must be early,” he said, and handed me the corsage I’d asked him to get—a white orchid.

  “Thanks,” I said and gave him a kiss on the cheek. As I opened the door to get out, he put his hand on my elbow. I turned, and he was holding the gun.

  “You’ll need this,” he said.

  I shook my head, and told him, “It’s OK.” He was momentarily taken aback. Then he tried to smile. I shut the door and he drove away.

  Constance was already there. In fact, she was the only one there. The gym was done up with glittery stars on the ceiling, a painted moon, and clouds. There were streamers. Our voices echoed as we exchanged corsages, which had been our plan. The white orchid looked good on her black plunging neckline. She’d gotten me a corsage made of red roses, and they really stood out against the turquoise. In her purse, instead of the Beretta, she had a half pint of Captain Morgan. We sat on one of the bleachers and passed the bottle, talking about the incidents of the past two weeks.

  “I guess no one’s coming,” she said. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the outside door creaked open and in walked Bryce carrying a case in one hand and dressed in a jacket and tie. We got up and went to see him. Constance passed him the Captain Morgan. He took a swig.

  “I was afraid of this,” he said.

  “No one’s coming?” I said.

  “I guess some of the parents were scared there’d be another shootout. Probably the teachers too. Mrs. Cloder’s family insisted on an open casket. A third of them are dead, let’s not forget, and the rest, after hearing Meets talk, are working the late shift at Wal-Mart for minimum wage.”

  “Jeez,” said Constance.

  “Just us,” said Bryce. He went up on the stage, set his case down, and got behind the podium at the back. “Watch this,” he said, and a second later the lights went out. We all laughed. A dozen blue searchlights appeared, their beams moving randomly around the gym, washing over us and then rushing away to some dark corner. A small white spotlight came on above the mic that stood at the front of the stage. Bryce stepped up into the glow. He opened the case at his feet and took out a saxophone.

  “I was looking forward to playing tonight,” he said. We walked up to the edge of the stage, and I handed him the bottle. He took a swig, the sax now on a chain around his neck. Putting the bottle down at his feet,” he said, “Would you ladies care to dance?”

  “Play us something,” we told him.

  He thought for a second and said, “Strangers in the Night.”

  He played, we danced, and the blue lig
hts in the dark were the sum total of our reality.

  A Terror

  Emily woke suddenly in the middle of the night, sitting straight and gasping as if finally breaching the surface of Puffer’s Pond. The last thing she could remember was the shrill cry of the 6:00 a.m. whistle from the factory down Main Street in The Crossing. Then a sudden shuddering explosion behind her eyes; a shower of sparks.

  She pulled back the counterpane and moved to the edge of the bed. There, she rested; her bare feet on the cold floor, letting the night’s hush, like between the heaves of storm, settle her. Only when a fly buzzed against the windowpane did she remember everything.

  Her health had been bad, her spirit low. She’d felt so weak for days on end that she could barely make it out into the garden to cull wilted blossoms. Her pen, which usually glided over a page, sowing words to correspondents or conjuring a poem, had become a weight nearly too burdensome to bear. At her father’s insistence, the doctor had come the previous week and demanded to examine her. She’d reluctantly allowed it, in her way. He stood in the upstairs hallway, peering through the partially open door of her room as she shuffled past the entrance, back and forth, three times, fully clothed. He’d called out to her, “Emily, how can I diagnose anything other than a case of mumps in this manner?” but she was loathe to see him, to have him or any other stranger to the Homestead near her.