It's nothin' you wouldn't do.

 

The snap of fallen and dried foliage alerts the white tail to my presence before I could get a shot off.

“Ah fuck” I mutter.

The faintness of it. Exasperated by the cloud of condensation it let out into the chilly, early morning Oklahoma woods. Opting to give up, I threw the Sako 7mm Winchester Magnum over my shoulder and started in on the 4 mile trek back to my truck.

              I live about 17 miles outside of town to the northeast. The woods I was hunting were an hour an a half to the southwest. I made it most of the way home, but a bridge was out on my regular route back. I took a detour that put me a little bit behind schedule.

              I hadn’t been on this side of town in quite a while. So I wasn’t too surprised to see a new business had opened. There was an old light up sign. Not unlike one you’d see at a hole in the wall bar or cheap motel. It said,

“Red’s Florist Shoppe.” I saw it coming up on the left hand side of the road, and wondered what the extra ‘pe’ was for. I decided to stop partly out of curiosity and because I thought it’d be nice to surprise the missus with some flowers.

“Howdy, anybody here?” I said rapping my knuckles on the doorway into the greenhouse. I heard a voice call out from the back.

“Yeah hold on!”

I turned towards the road and lit a cigarette.

“Howdy partner.” I heard come out of a woman behind me. She was incredibly beautiful, with wavy auburn hair and piercing green eyes. She had a heavy smile on her lips, that momentarily flashed to a frown. After eye’ing my wedding band.

“Now I understand the extra ‘pe’.”

“Huh?” She said.

“Your English accent. I’d wondered what the extra ‘pe’ on your sign was about. “Oh yea, that. I thought it’d be a nice touch. It seems to be working, yeah?”

“Yeah I reckon.”

“Well what can I get ya cowboy?”

“Well I was just thinkin’ about my lady. I don’t really know too much about this kinda thing.”

              She fixed up a nice bouquet and charged me $25. I gave her thirty and told her to keep the change. I went back to my pick up truck, and we shared one last smile before I headed home. After I’d got down the long, pock marked driveway and rounded the last bend. I saw my wife’s blazer, and then my heart skipped a beat.

              There was a black pickup I’d never seen before parked in the driveway. I parked, and got out of the truck in a hurry. I was half way to the door before I turned around and went back to the flowers. Figuring it was probably one of her friends from high school she hadn’t seen in a while. I grabbed my rifle too.

              I took a hurried step to the second step leading to the deck I’d built the week before, and my momentum and shook the whole thing. I took a mental note to finish when I had the time. And absent-mindedly opened the screen door. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the door into the trailer I knew something was wrong.

              It’s almost like my subconscious had registered what was going on and began the proper endocrine protocol. Before my conscious mind accepted what was happening.

              I was standing on the 7x7 square floor linoleum floor space, just inside the door. Almost as if I was waiting for my subconscious and frontal lobe to sync up. I glanced at my dust covered work-boots on the floor. Lena’s sneakers lying next to them.

              And Just as I recognized her shoes lying nonchalantly against mine. I came back to reality, and first heard. Or rather felt through the unstable trailer floor. The rhythmic thumps. My blood started to boil. Rage moving from my loins, into my chest and resting inside the tips of my ears.

              I heard my wife’s sounds of passion. Pouring from the end of the trailer. And before I knew what was happening. I took what seemed like only two steps, and booted the bedroom door.

“JOHNNY!” She screamed. Pulling the quilt my grandmother had knitted me the Christmas before she passed. Up to her chest in surprise. Almost as if she was shielding me from what she’d done.

              The man that was on top of her moments before stood crouched between the wall and bed. Holding his junk, unsure what move to make next. His eyes were wide, his teeth were barred. Adrenaline surely pumping through his veins. His eyes met mine, and then drifted to the bouquet I held onto with a white knuckle grip. And then he saw the rifle in my other hand.

              He fell back into the corner of the room. Panic had taken all control of the man. The only thing he could do is utter the words, “PleasePlease.. Please.” Over and over.

              I stood silent for what could have been years. A million thoughts piling in an out of my mind. The majority of them telling me that this naked man standing in my bedroom could not have missed my work boots lying inside the door.

              I dropped the bouquet and instinctually grabbed the handguard. Shouldering the high-powered 7mm Winchester magnum. As I had thousands of times before. The dark haired man’s eyes followed the bouquet all the floor. And then the barrel of the rifle all the way to my shoulder.

“Johnny NOO!!!” Lena, the love of my life. Screamed. As I racked the bold to my Finnish hunting rifle and pulled the trigger.

              A cavity the size of a grape fruit opened in the man’s chest. He slammed into the corner of the wall, his head slumped. He’d tried to raise his hand in protest, but it was far too late. His head lolled rhythmically with his last throes of death.

              His last action on this Earth after fucking my wife. Was a sickly, gurgling death rattle. He threw the bones and rolled snake eyes.

              The smell of burnt powder, and ozone from the muzzle flash was thick in the air. Lena was screaming. Out of guilt? Panic? Shock? Surprise? Who knows. I couldn’t hear any of it. The cramped space of a trailer bedroom was not the ideal place to discharge a hunting rifle.

              The smell of gunpowder was soon replaced by the metallic oppressive scent of blood and seminal fluid. My ears were still ringing the vague percussive impression of my wife’s screaming registering in my ears.

              Her eyes were wide. Wild with over stimulation. Her hands, cupping the sides of her face. A seemingly endless supply of oxygen fueling her frantic protests as she looked to her lover’s mangled body and back to me. Almost as if she expected me to do something.

              I looked at my feet, a single blue rose lied on top of my worn cowboy boot in an ironic pose of melancholic stillness. I shook it off, and was suddenly hit with reality. Her shrieking finally piercing my ears.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Shut up!” I said. Consumed with primal burning rage. Having fully processed what I’d done. What her inclination to infidelity had brought into my reality. Like the sudden appearance of a moon-sized comet into our solar system. On an imminent collision course with Earth.

              I cycled the bolt chambering another one hundred and fifty grain, belted magnum cartridge and she screamed in dire protest. Fully expecting me my violence to shift to her.

              I loosened the grip on my rifle and carefully sat it against the dresser and picked up the blue rose.

              I threw it to her.

“Take your flowers and get the fuck out.”

 

 

Part two:

 

              I knew I didn’t have much of a chance. Or a whole lot of time to decide how I was gonna stack my deck. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t really care either way.

              After she’d ran out. Taking her righteously acquired hysterics with her. I got to work. Grabbing whatever provisions I could.

              I grabbed my grandfather’s .357 from inside the nightstand and the chocolate box I had stashed a few hundred dollars in. I hastily grabbed a few changes of clothes and went through the kitchen in a frenzy. Barely paying any mind to what I was throwing into my canvas army duffel.

              I went to the bathroom to pack my hygiene and glanced at the small trash can. The top of it filled with haphazardly discarded pregnancy tests. It didn’t matter what they said. It was over. Everything I knew or planned to know. The moment I’d made a wrong step back in those woods and spooked the deer.

              I pulled into the driveway to my brother’s house in no great hurry. It didn’t really matter to at all what could happen, or when. The weight of the revolver in my waistband reminding me of that.

“I’d had a feeling you’d be pullin’ up little brother.” Tommy said.

A can of beer hovering a few inches from his chin.

              Judging by the empties he had in a pile next to his guitar, he started early. I walked up the stairs quickly and then stopped. Loitering at the top. A mixture of shame and fear washing over me for the first time.

“Come little brother, sit.” He said, waving to the wicker chair next to him. Beer in hand.

              He took a draught of the cheap pilsner, crushed it and tossed it to the pile of dead soldiers at his feet in one motion. He sat silently, fighting the urge to burp as he rolled a cigarette.

“I’d offer you a beer, but judging by the look on your face. I’d say you just kilt somebody.”

              He took a drag from the bend cigarette and paused for what seemed like an eternity.

“Hell kid, don’t say anything. It’s better I don’t know a damn thing when they show up lookin’ for ya.”

He stood up, smoothed out his faded dark blue wranglers and said, “Come on Johnny.”

              We went to the barn where he explained to me how he’d take a tractor and bury the tractor after I left. He asked me what provisions I had and went to work shuffling around the shop. Pulling our random pieces of equipment.

“Here.” He said motioning me to open my hands.

“Take my bike. I’ll pack up all this shit while you clear out the truck.”

“Take backroads out to the old strip pits on 156^th. Sleep. Hide, whatever until Monday next week. By then they’ll have gotten tired and given up. Whatever you do, do not light a fire.”

“I love you big brother.”

“I love you to Johnny.”