“My mom’s happy. You don’t even know how much,” said Marshall. “But I feel like an asshole, because none of it is real. I had to tell her that I’d turned the petition in as a surprise for her. She thinks that I changed all those people’s minds. But eventually someone’s going to check those signatures, and the whole thing is going to be thrown out.”
Marshall picked up the bag he’d set down earlier on the coffee table. He reached in and took out a hand towel and unwrapped it. Inside was the gun Loo had given him. The Beretta with the slide lock. He handed it to her like a baby, supporting its head. The metal grip felt cold in her hands.
“You should keep this,” she said. “In case the shooters come back.”
“They’re not coming back,” said Marshall. “And if the gun is here my mom might find it.”
Loo flipped the safety on the Beretta. She flipped it back and forth, on and off.
“Did the police take the slug?”
Marshall nodded. “They found the casing, too.”
“Then they can match it,” said Loo. “Track the gun. Find out who really did this.”
Again he would not meet her eyes. “Publicity is the only thing that works. That’s the one thing my stepfather’s right about. Now, even if the petition tanks, there will still be a chance for this to go through with NOAA.”
“You shot up your own house?”
“I emptied one round,” said Marshall. “And after all those years of people slamming doors in our faces, everyone’s calling us heroes.”
“You can’t lie about this,” said Loo.
“But I should lie about the signatures?”
“This is different. It’s my dad’s gun.”
“Your father didn’t do anything. He’s not going to get into trouble.” Marshall twisted the towel he’d used to hide the Beretta, then threw it on the couch. “But if the sanctuary doesn’t happen, my mom—I don’t think she could take it.”
Loo thought of the bloody money in the back of the toilet. She touched Marshall’s arm. “Tell them it was an accident.”
“It wasn’t.” Marshall picked up the brown bag from the table. He put it in her hands. “It’s my fault this happened. I’m the one who lost the signatures, so I’m the one who had to fix it. And I’m going to keep fixing it until it’s done.”
The bag was still heavy, even without the gun inside. Loo reached in and pulled out a jar of homemade maple syrup, the golden color shining like amber through the glass.
“Look,” he said. “I just want things to be okay between us.”
“Okay,” said Loo. “Okay.” As if saying it twice would make a difference. But it was definitely not okay. It took everything she had to not break all of his fingers. She slid the gun back into the bag, next to the jar of syrup, and walked out of house and past the policemen, clutching the paper sack tightly in her hands, like a secret, like a dead heart.
Bullet Number Eleven
HAWLEY SHOT HIMSELF WHILE CLEANING his Colt in the motel room he was renting. He’d had too much to drink and the trigger got caught and the chambered bullet he’d forgotten to take out went straight through his left foot. Once he was through cursing and yelling, he pulled off his boot, peeled down the sock and there it was—a clean hole right in the skin between his ankle and toes, coming through the other side between the ball of his foot and heel, the skin torn and ragged by the exit, blood pouring out onto the floor. The bullet had made its way past the rubber sole of his work boot and jammed into the crumbling tile, right next to the mini-fridge.
Hawley howled as he stood and tried to put weight on it, then punched the wall and hobbled into the bathroom to inspect the damage. He sat on the edge of the tub and turned on the water. He yanked down a towel from the rack and wrapped it around his foot and ripped the ends and tied it tight. Then he opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out the orange toolbox and started rummaging. He’d been adding more to the prepper’s WROL kit over the past few years, trying to be ready for the worst, which just seemed to keep coming. He was out of morphine and fentanyl lollipops, so he cracked a bottle of Percocet. He started cleaning and disinfecting and dressing the wound. Then he climbed into the empty bathtub, his bad leg propped up on the ledge.
The blood from his foot was leaking through the bandages and clouding the bath. All he could think of was how stupid he was. He leaned back. He could feel the tile and concrete, hard against his neck. He reached down and grabbed the bottle of painkillers off the floor. He took another Percocet and waited for the pills to start working, imagining them sliding down his esophagus and into his stomach, the juices breaking them to a powder, and then into a liquid and then the very elements of chemistry, dissolving into his bloodstream, spreading out through his veins to the ends of his toes. Once the pain started lifting, once he was numbed enough to the world, he’d move. But not until then.
It had been over three and a half years since Lily had died. Hawley had finished his errands, hit every name on the list but King. Thanks to Jove, the old boxer was locked away for good, a double sentence for the murder of the bush pilot and his girlfriend. The world seemed safe enough for now, safe enough to sleep again, and Hawley slept so much that his dreams had started moving to the forefront of his life. He dreamt about the weeds at the bottom of the lake, he dreamt about a car with hinges that could fold down into a suitcase and he dreamt about Lily, crawling into his bed, burying her face in his neck and wrapping her legs around his waist. Little by little, the world he passed into when he closed his eyes became more real than the one outside his door. He woke up wanting only to return to that other, vivid place, the hours between seeming dead and pointless. When he did leave his room, things felt off; everyday actions became more and more alien. At the grocery store the cashiers and the people in the aisles buying food and the folks in the parking lot parking their cars and the ones he drove past on the street all seemed to be staring at him, like they knew he didn’t belong.