Coronado - Dennis Lehane [13]
Shelley dissolved into Jewel as the VC platoon reached the porch steps and released their safeties all at once, the sound like the ratcheting of a thousand shotguns. Sweat exploded in Elgin’s hair, poured down his body like warm rain, and the VC fired in concert, the bullets shearing the walls of the cabin, lifting the roof off into the night. Elgin looked above him at the naked night sky, the stars zipping by like tracers, the yellow moon full and mean, the shivering branches of birch trees. Jewel rose and straddled him, bit his lip, and dug her nails into his back, and the bullets danced through his hair, and then Jewel was gone, her writhing flesh having dissolved into his own.
Elgin sat naked on the bed, his arms stretched wide, waiting for the bullets to find his back, to shear his head from his body the way they’d sheared the roof from the cabin, and the yellow moon burned above him as the dogs howled and Blue and Woodson held each other in the corner of the room and wept like children as the bullets drilled holes in their faces.
BIG BOBBY CAME by the trailer late the next morning, a Sunday, and said, “Blue’s a bit put out about losing his job.”
“What?” Elgin sat on the edge of his bed, pulled on his socks. “You picked now—now, Bobby—to fire him?”
“It’s in his eyes,” Big Bobby said. “Like you said. You can see it.”
Elgin had seen Big Bobby scared before, plenty of times, but now the man was trembling.
Elgin said, “Where is he?”
BLUE’S FRONT DOOR was open, hanging half down the steps from a busted hinge. Elgin said, “Blue.”
“Kitchen.”
He sat in his Jockeys at the table, cleaning his rifle, each shiny black piece spread in front of him on the table. Elgin’s eyes watered a bit because there was a stench coming from the back of the house that he felt might strip his nostrils bare. He realized then that he’d never asked Big Bobby or Blue what they’d done with all those dead dogs.
Blue said, “Have a seat, bud. Beer in the fridge if you’re thirsty.”
Elgin wasn’t looking in that fridge. “Lost your job, huh?”
Blue wiped the bolt with a shammy cloth. “Happens.” He looked at Elgin. “Where you been lately?”
“I called you last night.”
“I mean in general.”
“Working.”
“No, I mean at night.”
“Blue, you been”—he almost said “playing house with Jewel Lut” but caught himself—“up in a fucking tree, how do you know where I been at night?”
“I don’t,” Blue said. “Why I’m asking.”
Elgin said, “I’ve been at my trailer or down at Doubles, same as usual.”
“With Shelley Briggs, right?”
Slowly, Elgin said, “Yeah.”
“I’m just asking, buddy. I mean, when we all going to go out? You, me, your new girl.”
The pits that covered Blue’s face like a layer of bad meat had faded some from all those nights in the tree.
Elgin said, “Anytime you want.”
Blue put down the bolt. “How ’bout right now?” He stood and walked into the bedroom just off the kitchen. “Let me just throw on some duds.”
“She’s working now, Blue.”
“At Perkin Lut’s? Hell, it’s almost noon. I’ll talk to Perkin about that Dodge he sold me last year, and when she’s ready we’ll take her out someplace nice.” He came back into the kitchen wearing a soiled brown T-shirt and jeans.
“Hell,” Elgin said, “I don’t want the girl thinking I’ve got some serious love for her or something. We come by for lunch, next thing she’ll expect me to drop her off in the mornings, pick her up at night.”
Blue was reassembling the rifle, snapping all those shiny pieces together so fast Elgin figured he could do it blind. He said, “Elgin, you got to show them some affection sometimes. I mean, Jesus.” He pulled a thin brass bullet from his T-shirt pocket and slipped it in the breech, followed it with four more, then slid the bolt home.
“Yeah, but you know what I’m saying, bud?” Elgin watched Blue nestle the stock in the space between his left hip and ribs, let the barrel point out into the kitchen.
“I know what you’re saying,” Blue said. “I know. But I got to talk to Perkin about my Dodge.”
“What’s wrong with it?