LOGAN THEISSEN
WRITER - Austin, TX
The Violent Acts of Poets
They found the body in late March, and from there I suppose it was just a matter of time. Regardless of what you think of cops, it wasn’t too hard to put two and two together. Lily and I disappearing like we did. Even then, without foresight, there was a sort of irony to our adventure. A narcissism, I suppose -- to think we’d get away with it. Such a product of our times. Oh well. Guess everyone is.
Wish I could claim some sort of thematic importance to Durhams Corner, but honestly, it was just where the road ended. A candle that’s got no more wax to burn. No rhyme or reason in such a place.
In a way it makes sense for this story to begin where it ended. Like a snake that eats its tail. The circumstances that led us there seemed almost incidental, so incidental, in fact, that it must have been destiny all along. To this day, I can’t imagine these particular series of events unfolding in any way other than the way they did. I suppose that’s life though, isn’t it? Sometimes I think fate is as indiscriminate and omniscient as God, and then other times I fool myself into thinking they are the same thing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself now.
We did what we did out of love. We did it out of survival. We did it because my father once told me that a woman is to be respected at all costs. We did it because we were young and didn’t know no better.
We always said we never meant to kill those folks. Nobody could ever understand such a sentiment; couldn’t reconcile the action to the consequence. But it was a true statement. We never meant to kill them. Not any of them.
They say everything happens for a reason. Better to talk from the beginning.
***
Lily Miller. Lord, that girl lit a fire under me. Sitting in the back of Scott Reynold’s truck like that. She was small. Small hips. Small breasts. I’m not a tall man, but we fit together. She felt like the right answer. She had freckles and I had none. She had light brown hair and mine was dark. She had hazel eyes above those few freckles and mine were blue. Are blue. I saw her in the parking lot, and then later that night, I remember, I saw her again out at the bonfire. Few of us carved out a spot in the night, and she was there. Drinking beer. Rubbing bare legs to stay warm. Fine and at home in a lawn chair. And I was staring at her, across the fire, waiting to match eyes and when we did, well, it was like hearing the best song, loud, your face naked to the passing winds of an open car window, telephone poles flitting by.
This was before the realizations of her situation came clear into view. It started as passion, and before it sunk into desperation for the both of us, well, we made sure we fell in love before that happened. Fell in love before we started to need each other. We wanted a solid base, like we were building a house. And sometimes we would talk about building that house on a few acres, far away from her daddy. And the graves of my folks, sitting there like domino fossils in the ground, waiting to be unearthed by some far-off civilization; far away from them.
We should have high-tailed it out of Dodge that first night. We’d already done enough by then. But we didn’t. We parked to do some thinking and while we were thinking the whole wide world blew up.
It was cold that night. I don’t remember the day of the week or nothing like that, only that it was chilly as all hell. I had on my Dad’s old navy-blue mechanic’s jacket. Had his name on it -- Eli. He had blue eyes too, just like me. We were parked in Lily’s car, north off Waterloo Road, listening to the radio whispers of Tulsa. Dark night. Lights of town a few miles west, bouncing off the clouds, making that green glow.
At the time we didn’t know nothing about Macalester Freeman. Nothing about the accident up the road, about the bus that slipped on black ice, went sideways into a ditch, or how that bus was from the state penitentiary and carried in its confines a man such as Freeman. Capable of such violence.
Speaking of that violence, it’s in there, isn’t it? In your gut. In your blood. Maybe I didn’t use to think, but now I do, that it’s born in there. Right along with your fingers. Right along with your lungs.
He came up on us with a rock to bust the window. Went for the driver’s side because he knew someone got to be in that seat, and he was right. It was Lily. The window popped and shattered, and before I could reach he’d pulled her out of the seat. She was screaming and I could hear him beating on her. It sounded like she’d got the hiccups, and in those first moments there were only those sounds as I rounded the corner of the car. Meat packing sounds.
What happened next I’ll never be sure of. I remember seeing his shadow from the light of the moon, and I went for it, and I tackled it. The beast still had on handcuffs, and I remember he ended up on top of me, and he bashed down with his fists balled together, and I remember the metal scraping my throat. There was something wet on my face. Blood or spit. Probably both. He was bigger than me, I remember, but he was handcuffed and I was stronger. I could feel that strength. My strength. I remember getting on top of him and choking him with my left hand while my right crawled like a spider across the red dirt of the road, and I remember the feeling of that rock in my right hand, and I remember the instinctual way it rose up above my head, and I remember the way it went down. Meat packing sounds again. Wet splashing up into my eyes, nose, and mouth. Certainly blood this time. I remember how when I finally made full contact I pinpointed the spot and hit it again and again in the darkness. I can’t remember stopping.
After it was done I went to her and she was bloodied and pulpy. She was having trouble breathing and I cradled her in my arms. Neither of us spoke. We looked to the sky. Listened to the far off rumblings of the highway.
I dragged the body off the road to the ditch that ran perpendicular. Through the ditch I was blocked by a barbed wire fence, but I hopped it in the darkness, tearing the navy blue jacket, and dragged Freeman underneath by his feet. A seclusion of trees offered itself not far from the road, and I left him there and made my way back to the car. Lily was in the front seat, fingering her cell phone nervously. I told her that we needed the police and a hospital, but she shook her head. That road led nowhere. Not after her daddy and what happened in that goddamned trailer.
I opened the door to the passenger side and the overhead light blinked to life and I could see the bruised eye and bloodied nose of her, puffed lips and sniffs like allergies.There was a blanket in the back seat and we slept there, huddled together. Coyotes howled through the busted window and I blinked awake all night, until the pink glow of dawn showed, pregnant with life.
Part II
Lily Miller’s daddy was a trashman who blew up his trailer. He was inside when it went kaboom, and there were bits of him scattered around his trailer’s acre lot. The little pieces looked like confetti. Lee Miller was his name, and he ended up nothing more than bits of candy from a busted pinata. RIP, Lee Miller.
To supplement his trash income, he cooked. Chicken cutlets. Microwave dinners from the blue box. Spaghetti O’s. Eventually, meth. He wore a goalie mask when he did it, white with holes like Jason Voorhees, and wrapped a wet towel around his nose and mouth. I told him he was missing the point, and he cackled and drank his High Life. He fancied himself a king when he opened a High Life, and there was no getting him to listen to nothing.
Lily hadn’t been round him much growing up, her mother knew better than that. But my pops, Eli, and him grew up together in Kingfisher. I remember them sitting on upturned painter’s buckets, smoking menthols, and passing a bottle of Jim Beam some nights. This was before my father died. He was an alright man, Lee Miller. Some folks are only what they are, and he was one of those. Nothing wrong with being what you are, my father used to say.
It was after Lee Miller’s trailer exploded that our troubles began in earnest. Dead men pay no debts, unfortunately, and it’s up to the living to keep on surviving.
***
I let Lily sleep in the back seat when the morning came, even though it was cold. I just covered her a bit more under the blanket and kissed her forehead. Her bruises were dark getting darker. Like the night had bumped into her and rubbed off some of its neverending black, and now she was branded.
By the time I got to the convict Mcalester Freeman it was clear that I had killed him the night before. I didn’t know his name until later of course, but even nameless he couldn’t get much in the way of sympathy from me. His face was grey and blue like a Lacy dog’s coat. The whites of his stuck eyes saturated yellow.
I broke some mesquite branches, and with bloody hands covered him up best I could. There was a chill, and it stuck to the back of my neck while I plowed the earth with my fingers. It struck me that I had gone nearly twenty years of life without killing a soul. And now, two of em’ in the less than forty-eight hours. Goddamn.
When I’d done all I could do with the body, I began to pray over it. But I couldn’t concentrate right, gave it up halfway through, and went to wake Lily who was sleeping soft and kind.
***
We went as far as we could until the gas hand ticked like a broken clock against empty. Lily and I goaded the fumes and pushed ourselves forward in the cab hoping for a few more rolls of the wheels. We succeeded and stalled out in gas station ruins. There was a broken car half-eaten up with rust and a sign on the store window advertising antiques.
I told Lily to get the revolver from the glove compartment, and she did, and she weighed it in her palm. She held it careful as an egg, said it was cold and heavy. Then she said, we ain’t got nothing. We got bruises, I told her. Bruises, health, and our gun. There’s money in antiques, she said before opening the door and unfolding herself, stepping outside holding the gun under the blanket wrapped around her.
I asked her what she was doing and she came around the car to me and stuck the revolver in the back of her jeans. She took off the blanket and draped it around me before kissing me and telling me that she loved me no matter what. No matter if the cops found us and burned us both. I told her that nobody would be burning nobody, but she didn’t say nothing and just looked back at the antiques store. Before she opened the door and I heard that bell ring, the one that sometimes comes with opening doors, she reached behind her and grabbed the gun.
When she came out she wasn’t hurrying, only carrying a brown paper grocery sack like she was bringing her lunch. I asked her what happened and she said that she had a big sack of money, that’s what happened. I asked her for the gun and she handed it over. It was still cold and heavy.
She pulled keys from her pocket and dangled them. The proprietor has an old truck out back, she said, so we went around and I saw the crimson truck the color of rust with white-walled wheels. The white-walls belonged to an earlier time. Maybe one where meth trailers didn’t blow up, where thugs didn’t threaten young girls for the sins of their fathers, where boys didn’t have to turn to men so soon, and where the laws of God and man rode side by side like brothers, instead of fighting like wild cats, twisting and bumping and snarling at one another.
We drove dead north keeping off the interstate as much as we could. I knew the cops wouldn’t figure it was us until they found Lily’s car with the license plates. I asked her if the cashier was gonna be calling the cops and she shook her head. She was driving and didn’t look over at me. Why not? I asked. It ain’t a problem, baby, she said. She was chewing bubble gum, wearing cutoff jean shorts. The frays, the little cotton tendrils, pressed up against her thigh, reminded me of jellyfish all washed up on shore with something dead about them. I don’t know why, but she made me think of the ocean sometimes, and I imagined us walking barefoot like everyone else along the rim of the sea.
It got dark somewhere in Nebraska and I took over driving. Lily fell asleep snoring with her legs across my lap, and the bracelet on her wrist tapped against the window like drunken code. A town blinked away in the distance, each light a firefly caught in the whirling purple clouds of the central shelf. A storm’s coming, I said to no one. Soon we dipped into a valley and the lights disappeared.
Part III
A rumor of money brought bad men to my door. Payback sought for Mr. Miller and the debts of a deal, no doubt. These things sometimes happen. We are wandering souls like spokes on a ferris wheel, always ending up where we’ve been, and sometimes that love of money is too much. The greed spills out like oil from the gulf until we can’t stand it no more. Round and round until eventually we all get chewed, spit, swallowed, and fed to the worms.
The bad men were three in number, with one shotgun, and poor timing. They roped around the house in the early morning hours, drunk and amateur, whispering commands seen on television. The valley walls enclosed my father’s house, and echoed muffled spits of “Go round back,” in the dark.
The leader held the gun, and I did not like the look of him. He had a shaved head and wore an earring in the shape of a cross. He also wore a white t-shirt, under an un-seasonally heavy coat. He must have sweated through it, because the trapped summer heat lingered until October in the valley. The coat covered the gun. The gun covered the man. Some kind of evil covered the house in the valley; its windows broken past midnight, the hell-bent wood floor creaking. You could hear things below the floor at night. Critters holed away from the elements.
The one with the crucifix ear was first through the front door, reaching around and unlatching the lock through the broken window. Lily and I huddled together and watched the knob shake, before the glass shattered and the faceless arm reached around to open the door. The arm did not sufficiently make it back to its owner.
Grabbing the wrist I pulled as hard as I could toward the hinges of the door. I meant to break it in half. I did not plan for the glass. The remnants of the window looked like ocean waves frozen on some far away alien planet; abstract and artisan in the moonlight. They ribboned the meat of the bad man’s arm like there had been some sort of accident, the sound of scraping bone punctuated the screaming, and blood spurted across the door and wall unlike anything I have ever seen. My grip slipped and for a second I thought I had sawed his arm off, but it retreated from the window and disappeared around the closed door like a wounded animal. There was a howling. The man was clutching the arm, wrapping it with shreds of shirt, and when I walked to the porch and looked down at him, there was nothing but a strange, abstract, tangled movement; like watching a bag of snakes at night; like there was a black-holed well where his stomach should have been.
“There is a hole,” I said, picking up the shotgun, “In your soul.”
I don’t know why I said it. I was not the biblical hangman that he would soon face. It rhymed and simply slipped out of my mouth. I chose to let it linger.
I could hear his accomplices running across the field, up the slope to the main road and the gate of the property. It was a full moon and you could see them stumbling back and forth, too slow and drunk. They fell, and got up. Cursed. Coughed. Hollered. Repeat.
Lily swept by me, off the porch, taking the shotgun with her. I yelled after her and kept pursuit as she tracked the other two. I made progress but she was not slowing, not stopping, not aiming. She held the shotgun from the hip until she tripped and fell forward. The shot ripped the night and echoed through the valley. Some animal howled back like they were accepting the challenge.
Most of the pellets went through the man’s back. They ripped through muscle and lung, so by the time we stood over him he was coming up blood. It flooded him and his insides and bubbled from his bearded face. Lily handed me the shotgun and turned back down the slope to the house.
I used to believe that it was an accident, her tripping and killing that man. But later I was not so sure, and finally I believed she would have killed him tripping or not. Either way I took the kill as my own, when they asked me later, and sometimes if you believe something hard enough it becomes true. Such is the stability of truth.
The body on the porch had kept its arm but lost its life. He was small, but the amount of blood that haloed around his sunken frame was astounding and leaked through the wooden slats of the porch. You could hear it dripping. A coyote punctuated the night with a reedy cry.
“Where is the shovel?” I asked Lily.
***
After the gas station, we drove in our new car until the county fair beckoned us inside. What county I could not say, but it had children with cotton candy faces, and fathers wearing cowboy hats, and mothers wearing infants on their shoulders.
Teenage girls wore the rainbow in their hair, bunched in groups, and chattered at teenage boys who wore tank tops. Ringing jackpot bells sold tiny fortunes of knick-knacks. Carnies pulled clientele like Bourbon Street salesmen.
“Baby, what are you going to win me?” she cooed at me.
Fluttering eyelashes, and a turn of the head. A shadowed smile. She was all of it to me, and I hoped to be everything to her.
“I suppose I’ll win your heart,” I replied.
“Boring,” she said. “I want one of this ridiculous stuffed animals.”
Of course she did. So I won her a giant teddy bear by throwing balls through a rigged hoop until I ran out of tickets, and then by stuffing a twenty dollar bill, one of my last, into the hands of the hazy teenager with drugged eyes.
Eventually we went back to the car, back to the road for another night. Later we pulled over in the darkness and had sex, for the last time, in the back seat with her giant teddy bear as awkward company until we set it outside.
The sun came up and we fell asleep being forgetful and dumb to waste another day, not knowing then that our hourglass was dripping empty.
Part IV
Lily Miller died in my arms, gut shot, on a day in the middle of April. The weather was beautiful. A chill surfed along with the wind under a shining sun. I didn’t get to hold her too long before the police came into our little fort and busted me with the blunt end of a shotgun. There was lots of screaming about the gun, where was the gun, that sort of thing. But I just kept repeating, “I ain’t got no gun.” It was the truth. Lily had left it in the car.
***
On her last day, I drove while she read Lolita, by Vladimir Nabakov. She’d picked it up for a dollar at a garage sale we’d stopped at sometime before. One dollar for a piece of genius like that. “What a deal,” I said. She never got to finish it, but she liked it fine, the bits she did read. She had one favorite passage in particular, and she read it to me as we passed a sign that said Welcome to Durham’s Corner. She read it three times in a row, and each time her voice got a little bit sadder, like the realization of what we’d done finally coaxed her out of our dream. You could hear it in her voice, and as the police lights flashed in my rear view mirror, she hardly moved. She looked back, held the gaze of the policeman, and then turned back to me. I’d never seen her look that way. She looked like a little girl. And that’s when I realized that’s exactly what she was. Both of us, really, were children in the scheme of things. I concluded then and there that I was going to get her out of that mess, no matter the cost, and she was going to go on and be a real person, with a real life, even if she could no longer do it with me.
***
The flashing lights multiplied and followed us into town. I was panicked, I’m ashamed to admit, and yelled at Lily to get the gun out of the glove compartment. But she wasn’t listening to nobody then, just staring out the window, and finally I stopped yelling when she looked at me and smiled. We didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. I loved her and she loved me, and I think even when everything gets taken, that’s what we hold on to, that’s what we take with us to heaven, or hell, or prison, or freedom, or wherever we end up. In the end it wasn’t complicated at all. It was just about love. So when I saw the trees I ripped across the road and headed toward them. I figured the trees gave us the best chance to escape, and it was strange, bumping across that field, because I really did believe I could lose them in the trees. Even with four, five, six cars on our tail, I believed.
***
I slid the truck to a stop on the dirt road, rushed to Lily, and dragged her out of the passenger side door. I could hear the cop cars rolling in behind us, but I did my best not to look. The sirens felt like they were pounding out from my chest, they were so close. Lily ran beside me as we headed for the crumbling brick building. Durham’s Corner. Random observations and questions seemed to rush through me like bullets. I thought of Durham and his corner. His own place. His own stake. Something to own and grow with, and now all that was left was the crumbs. They’d named a whole town after him. What a thing, to be the namesake of a home. Even if it was only for a few hundred people. What a thing. Then Lily collapsed beside me and pulled me out of my daydream. It was like she was on strings and some puppet master jerked her leash back. That was the bullet, no doubt. I often thought about the police, the gunfire, and which one of those gentleman sent that lead slug into her belly and out again.
***
I carried her into the broken building like a bride. There was so much blood, and I tried to stop it, tried to cover her with my hands, and when that didn’t work I held her up to me as she wrapped her skinny arms around the back of my neck. She whispered to me that she was in a great amount of pain, and I just kept repeating sorry, over and over and over again. There was a commotion outside, but I didn’t pay it no mind. We rocked back and forth until I felt her go limp, and then I just cried, wept like a child, until they came and knocked me unconscious. They wouldn’t have known it, and it surely wasn’t intended, but I thanked them for that small mercy.
***
In the weeks that followed there were many headlines and opinions. Politicians and parents alike concerned themselves with what we’d done. Some saw us as sinners, some as victims. Most all of them saw us as children, and plenty more as killers. To their credit, I suppose that’s what we were. Ultimately, I didn’t mind all the questions much. I stayed pretty quiet in the police station once I’d come to. Stayed pretty quiet in the interrogation room, as men with mustaches and pot bellies played good cop-bad cop, trying to ring my confession. They asked what my parents were going to think, and I didn’t answer them then neither. The one playing bad cop eventually got upset with all that silence.
“You’re a killer, son!” he screamed at me, but I only smiled. He probably thought I was a loon, but it wasn’t that. It was just that he had reminded me of Lily Miller, of her reading that book she’d bought for a dollar, a piece of fiction, of something not real, something cooked up long ago by some Russian guy, but something that spoke across time to a runaway girl in a car, through her favorite passage, which I repeated.
“Emphatically, no killers are we,” I said to the police officer. “Poets never kill.”