She took one step away with the black plastic case, and he threw the restraining order at her back, couldn’t help himself. It was that last bit, the thing about how she saw her job as protecting his son—from him. The papers struck her between the shoulder blades, like a dart. She stiffened, stood there with her back to him. Then she gently set the case with the Uzi in it down on the asphalt.
When she turned to face him, her smile was enormous. He wasn’t sure what would happen if she took the handcuffs off her belt, what he would do. But instead she only bent and picked up the papers and stepped toward him. Up close—when she was only an inch away—he was surprised at her mass. She had the stocky density of a middleweight. She gently tucked the papers into his shirt pocket, where they sat nestled against his multitool in its little leather case.
“Now, hon,” she said, “you’re gonna want to hold on to those to show your lawyer. If you want visitation rights to see your kid—any rights to see your son at all—you’re going to want to know what you’re up against. You are lost in the woods, and this is the closest thing you got to a compass. Do you understand me?”
“Right.”
“And you’re going to want to avoid assaulting or threatening or harassing officers of the State of Florida who might lock your ass up and disgrace you in front of your colleagues and passersby and God and everyone. You might want to avoid troubling men and women of the law who could drop in on your hearing to talk about you throwing things and showing poor control of your emotions. Do you follow me?”
“Yeah. I got it. Any other questions?”
“No,” she said, and picked up the case with the Uzi in it and then paused to meet his gaze. “Yes. Actually. One. I asked you if you ever pointed a gun at your wife, and you didn’t answer me.”
“No, and I damn well won’t.”
“Okay. I was wondering something else, though.”
“What?”
“You ever point a gun at your son? Tell her if she tried to take him away, you’d put his brains on the wall?”
His insides boiled with sick, with acid. He wanted to throw something else, throw something in her face, bust her lip, see some blood. He wanted to go to jail—but if she locked him up, he’d lose his rights to George forever. He didn’t move. He didn’t reply.
It didn’t seem possible that Acosta’s smile could broaden any more, but it did. “Just curious, hon. Don’t do anything that’ll get you in trouble, y’hear? Because as much as I don’t want to ever see you again, you don’t want to ever see me again even more.”
July 1, 2013
ON JIM HIRST’S BIRTHDAY, KELLAWAY drove out of St. Possenti and into the smoke, with a gift for his old pal in the passenger seat.
The smoke blew across the highway in a gray, eye-stinging haze, carrying the stink of a dump fire. It was kids that had done it, getting started on the July Fourth celebrations a few days early, tossing Black Cat firecrackers at one another in some scrubland out behind their trailer park. Now there were something like three thousand acres on fire. The Ocala National Forest was going up like a pile of straw.
Jim Hirst’s farmhouse was a quarter of a mile from the highway, at the end of a gravel track, crowded on either side by black mangrove and swampy ground. It was all a single story, the roof sagging in places, overgrown with moss and mildew, the gutters choked with leaves. Plastic sheeting covered half of the house, where the siding had been pulled away and windows had been extracted like teeth, leaving gaping sockets behind. It had been that way for three years. Jim had scraped together some money to begin a remodeling project, but not enough to finish one. The lights were off, and the wheelchair van wasn’t there, and if Kellaway hadn’t heard someone shooting out back, he might’ve thought no one was home.
He walked around the unfinished half of the house. The big sheets of plastic flapped desultorily in the breeze. The gun went off with the steadiness of a metronome sounding 4/4 time. The shooting stopped just as he came around the corner into the backyard.
Jim Hirst was in his electric wheelchair with a six-pack on the ground beside him, two cans already empty and tossed in the grass. He had the gun in his lap, a small automatic with a fancy sight, the mag azine out. An AR rifle leaned against the wheelchair. Jim had a lot of guns. A lot of guns. He had a fully automatic M249 light machine gun in the garage, hidden under some floorboards below the workbench. It was identical to the one mounted on the Humvee they’d shared for six months in the Gulf. Kellaway wasn’t in it, though, when it went over a Russian land mine that nearly tore both the vehicle and Jim Hirst in two. By then Kellaway had been transferred to the MPs, and the only thing that blew up on him there was his future in the army.
“I didn’t see the van. I thought you forgot I was coming by, maybe went out somewhere,” Kellaway said. “Happy birthday to you.”
Jim turned and held out his hand. Kellaway tossed him a bottle, a Bowmore Single Malt, aged twenty-nine years. The scotch was a brassy, mellow gold, as if someone had found a way to distill a sunrise. Jim held it up by the neck and admired it.
“Thank you, man,” he said. “Mary bought a lemon cake at the supermarket. Get a slice and come play with my new toy.”
Lifting the pistol out of his lap. It was a gray Webley & Scott with a laser sight like something out of a spy movie. He had a box of 95-grain Starfire rounds next to his hip, hollow points that would open like toadstools when they struck soft tissue.
“Mary get you that? That’s love.”
“No, man, I got me that. She massaged my prostate, that was what she did for me.”
“Is that the finger up the ass?” Kellaway said, trying to mask his distaste.
“She has a vibe. That and a vacuum pump on my cock, it all works out. That’s love. Especially since for her it’s less like sex, more like clearing a clogged drain.” He started out laughing, but it turned into a rough, rumbling cough. “Christ, this fuckin’ smoke.”
Kellaway scooped the bottle of scotch out of Jim’s lap. “I’ll bring us glasses.”
He batted through the screen door and found Mary in the kitchen, sitting at the table. She was a thin, bony woman, with deep lines around her mouth and hair that had once been a rich, glossy chestnut but had long since faded to a shade of mouse. She was texting and didn’t look up. The garbage pail was full to the brim, an adult diaper on the very top, and the room smelled of shit. Flies buzzed around both the trash and the lemon cake on the table.
“I’ll trade you a glass of scotch for a slice of cake.”
“Sold,” she said.
He rooted in the cupboard, came up with a few coffee cups. He poured her an inch of whiskey and set it down next to her. When he leaned forward, he saw her texting a series of hearts to someone.
“Where’s the van?” he asked.
“It got took.”
“What do you mean it got took?”
“We were six months behind on the payments,” she said.
“What about the check from the VA?”
“He spent it on other necessities.”
“What other necessities?”
“He’s out there squeezing the trigger of one right now.” The gun began to go off again. They both listened until the firing stopped. Mary said, “He’d rather finger one of those than me.”