The Devils Teardrop

fired his Uzi and fired and fired and fired . . .
    And watched the people fall and scream and run. Things like that.
    It wasn’t like the theater. No, no, he got a lot of them this time. Which will make the man who tells him things happy.
    The Digger locks the motel door and the first thing he does is walk to the couch and look at Tye. The boy is still asleep. The blanket has slipped off him and the Digger replaces it.
    The Digger turns the TV on and sees pictures of the Ritzy Lady boat. Once again he sees that man he recognizes—the . . . click  . . . the mayor. Mayor Kennedy. He’s standing in front of the boat. He’s wearing a nice suit and a nice tie and it looks odd to see him wearing such a fancy suit with all the yellow bags of bodies behind him. He’s speaking into a microphone but the Digger can’t hear what he’s saying because he doesn’t have the TV volume on because he doesn’t want to wake up Tye.
    He continues to watch for a while but no commercials come on and he’s disappointed so he shuts off the TV, thinking, “Good night, Mayor.”
    He begins to pack his belongings, taking his time.
    Motels are nice, motels are fun.
    They come and clean up the room every day. Even Pamela didn’t do that. She was good with flowers and good with that stuff you did in bed. That . . . click, click . . . that stuff.
    Mind jumping, bullets rattling around the cra . . . crane . . . cranium.
    Thinking, for some reason, about Ruth.
    “Oh, God, no,” Ruth said. “Don’t do it!”
    But he’d been told to do it—to put the long piece of glass in her throat—and so he did. She shivered as she died. He remembers that. Ruth, shivering.
    Shivering like on Christmas day, twelve twenty-five, one two two five, when he made soup for Pamela and then gave her her present.
    He looks at Tye. He’ll take the boy out . . . click . . . West with him. The man who tells him things told him he’d call after they finished in Washington, D.C., and tell him where they’d go next.
    “Where will that be?” the Digger asked.
    “I don’t know. Maybe out West.”
    “Where’s the West?” he asked.
    “California. Maybe Oregon.”
    “Oh,” responded the Digger, who had no idea where those places were.
    But sometimes, late at night, full of soup and smiling at the funny commercials, he thinks about going out West and imagines what he’ll do out there.
    Now, as he packs, he decides he’ll definitely take the boy with him. Out West out . . . click.
    Out West.
    Yes, that would be good. That would be nice. That would be fun.
    They could eat soup and chili and they could watch TV. He could tell the boy about TV commercials.
    Pamela, the Digger’s wife, with a flower in her hand and a gold cross in between her breasts, used to watch commercials with him.
    But they never had a child like Tye to watch commercials with.
    “Me?” Pamela asked. “Have a baby with you? Are you mad crazy nuts fucked . . .” Click . “. . . fucked up? Why don’t you go away? Why are you still here? Take your fucking present and get out. Go away. Do you . . .”
    Click . . .
    But I love you all the . . .
    “Do you need me to spell it out for you? I’ve been fucking William for a year. Is this news to you? Everybody in town knows except you. If I were going to have a baby I’d have his baby.”
    But I love you all the more.
    “What are you doing? Oh Je—
    Click.
    —sus. Put it down!”
    The memories are running like lemmings through the Digger’s cranium.
    “No, don’t!” she screamed, staring at the knife in his hand. “Don’t!”
    But he did.
    He put the knife into her chest, just below the gold cross he’d given her that morning, Christmas morning. What a beautiful red rose blossoms on her blouse! Heput the knife in her chest once more and the rose got bigger.
    And bleeding bleeding bleeding, Pamela ran for . . . where? Where? The closet, yes, the closet upstairs. Bleeding and screaming, “Oh Jesus Jesus Jesus. . . ”
    Pamela screaming, lifting the gun, pointing it at his head, her hand blossoming into a beautiful yellow flower as he felt a thud on his temple. I love you all the . . .
    The Digger woke up sometime later.
    The first thing he saw was the kind face of the man who would tell him things.
    Click, click  . . .
    He now calls his voice mail. No messages.
    Where is he, the man who tells him things?
    But there’s no time to think about it, about being happy or sad,