Outside, Lance had left Squee writhing in the grass while he went after Roddy, who’d come at him again from behind. Lance threw him off, then staggered to where Roddy’d fallen and kicked him, hard, in the stomach and the ribs. Roddy curled into himself, fetal, like Squee across the yard. He tried to catch Lance’s leg, but Lance kept kicking, sent a hard-toed boot flying into Roddy’s back someplace that shot a blinding pain through him, and his back spasmed, and then he blacked out.
He came to seconds later on the ground, and lifted his head to see Lance dragging Squee by the arm across the lawn toward his truck. Squee was limp, blacked out too, just a body being dragged across the ground. Roddy struggled to stand. Lance fell against the truck, lost his grip on Squee, then got himself turned around and pulled the dead weight of the boy up against him and flung him into the cab. He pushed Squee’s legs inside, then wedged himself into the driver’s seat, pausing to look for his keys. He found them right there in the ignition, and fumbled to start the engine. The truck had stalled where it hit Roddy’s so the key was still in the on position and wouldn’t turn. Lance was confused, tried again, then wrested the key out of the ignition and started from scratch.
When the front door of Eden’s house shut behind her she was already halfway across the lawn, coming at Lance with the shotgun raised to fire. Lance was so absorbed in trying to get the keys into the starter and turn over the engine that he didn’t even see her coming, hadn’t remembered Eden at all until the shotgun butted through the open truck window and into his shoulder. He lifted his head from the ignition, shoving the gun aside as he rose. Eden tightened her grip on the stock, her finger ready on the trigger, and replaced the gun at Lance’s chest. He was surprised, almost tickled, to see her there—Eden Jacobs, the lady who’d fed him cheese and crackers after school —with a shotgun aimed at his breastbone.
Eden saw Squee slumped beside his father and nearly dropped the gun. She didn’t want Lance—she wanted the child. She wanted the child out of the way of harm. Now that she had Lance stopped against the nose of her dead husband’s shotgun, she wasn’t sure she knew what to do. Should she say something? Threaten him? Or just stand there with her finger on the trigger and wait for the mercy of sirens to round the crest of Island Drive? She moved her eyes from Lance to Squee inside the truck, his arm twisted, she now saw, at an angle that made Eden cry out. And as she did, Lance started to speak, and she turned back to him and saw his dirty, drunken, stinking face curl into a smile, his watery eyes lit with what Eden could only think to call merriment. He laughed then, a choke of a laugh, false and patronizing. He laughed and said, “Why don’t you shoot me, Eden? Why don’t you just kill me?” The stale beer stench of him was enough to make Eden draw her face away instinctually, and Lance laughed at that too, made as if he was going to inhale and blow a whole gust of his foul breath right at her, but then he faked, reached up, brushed aside her gun, and leaned back down to resume his fumbling with the keys in the ignition.
Eden stood there, her shotgun now pointed into the seat-back cushion. She had a shotgun in her hands and felt more impotent than she’d ever felt in her life. She had no words to use. She stood dumbly as Lance fiddled under the dashboard, his total concentration on the gadgetry. He was so blind drunk he couldn’t even line up the key in its slot, but he fought on stubbornly, a child trying to force the round peg into the square hole. And then it worked: as if by accident the key slipped into the ignition. Lance sat up, gratified. He grinned at Eden. And as he turned the key he laughed and said, “You think I don’t want you to shoot me?” His words were slurred. He said, “What the fuck do I care?” and then the engine turned over and Lance’s sick smile broadened, and Eden thought of this piss-drunk bastard driving that boy down the hill on a goddamn dirt road, and she could already see the truck, its front end bashed in, flipped and smoking on the burnt-out turf of the abandoned golf course, Squee’s body thrown limp against the ceiling, and that was all it took for Eden to lift the gun again and jab it at the side of Lance’s smiling face.
The truck stalled. Lance doubled over onto Squee, his hand flying up to his face to cup it where the gun had slashed. When he rose again, the shock on his face was mixed with pride, as though he were somehow responsible for the nerve of this old lady. The angle had been awkward, the swipe relatively ineffective, like a pool shot slipped at the last second, the cue just glancing the ball and nudging it aside. Lance lifted his head as if to congratulate Eden on a brave try there, only to find that in the seconds he’d been down she’d managed to turn the gun around. She had one hand on the barrel, the other on the stock, and as Lance opened his mouth to speak, she steadied herself, and with the kind of force she’d only ever used to bring an ax down across the neck of a chicken, Eden Jacobs slammed the butt of that shotgun into Lance Squire’s forehead.
NIGHT IS THE SUREST NURSE OF TROUBLED SOULS
LANCE FELL OVER SQUEE on the truck seat; neither of them moved or made a sound. Yards off, Roddy gave up the struggle to stand and just lay there breathing at the sky. Peg peered out from behind the door of the house, which she had employed as a full-body shield. Beside Lance’s truck, Eden had gotten the shotgun turned back around so that it was once again aimed at Lance’s chest. She had no idea whether or not the gun was loaded—had always been somewhat afraid to check, envisioning the headline: “WIDOW DIES AT OWN HAND—LATE HUSBAND’S HUNTING RIFLE TO BLAME.” At the very least she could see herself in the
Eden realized then that she didn’t much care if Lance Squire was lying dead in the truck in front of her. Which is what she contemplated during those eternal minutes as she stood there and watched Lance breathe:
