bulged and she struggled against the ropes with a renewed vigor.
“I can’t,” Steve said, looking from the knife to Linda.
“It’s her or me.”
“You want me to—”
“Her or me.”
Elaine’s eyes locked on Steve’s. He saw forgiveness in them. Hopefulness.
He lifted the knife in the air. Snowflakes kissed his knuckles and melted on his skin. The sky looked full of swirling white ash. The farmhouse became a grinning skull. Steve took one last look at Linda as she lay bound in the trunk. The wildness, the danger, was gone.
He turned to Elaine and whispered, “I love you.”
A tear spilled down her cheek.
As he plunged the rusty knife into Linda’s throat, he could not take his eyes from his wife. Elaine placed her fingers over his, and together they cut into her, sawing and twisting the knife, the fresh blood an emulsion that bonded their hands. Steve kept his eyes on Elaine, watching the ferocity grow in her as they cut.
After they were finished, after they disposed of Linda’s body beneath the cold, loose soil of the nearby cornfield, the snow swirling about them like fevered ghosts, they made love on the hood of the old Corolla. All the while, it felt to Steve like they were blissfully falling, shards of glass winking all around them, twenty-five floors straight down to an eternity of hard pavement, of vows no longer broken.
He realized he did not have to choose between safety and danger, domesticity and passion. He knew that now.
He knew it.
Telephone
Jill Johnson inserted herself into the oval of six and seven-year olds standing at the front of her class. “You know how Telephone is played, don’t you?” she asked. She was met by nods of affirmation and a few dumbfounded stares. “I whisper something into someone’s ear, and that person whispers it into the next person’s ear, and so on until it gets to the end. Then we’ll see how much the words have changed. Okay?”
She leaned over and whispered into Benjamin Cale’s ruddy, wax-rich ear, “I like plums and apples.”
Benjamin knit his brows, then leaned over to Lydia Rathberger, cupping his hands over her strawberry blond hair. It went like that from person to person, around the entire class, until Bobby Blaisdell whispered into Gail Dupree’s ear, and Gail, directly to Mrs. Johnson’s left, nodded. Mrs. Johnson smiled at Gail, “Tell the class what you heard.”
Gail Dupree smiled back and said, “’They know you did it.’”
Johnson squinted at Gail.
Mrs. Johnson leaned over to Benjamin again, this time whispering a simpler, rhyming phrase, one not so easy to confuse. “Candy is dandy,” she whispered.
Benjamin nodded and whispered to Lydia, who in turn whispered to Craig Masters, and so on and so on, until once again, Gail Dupree nodded as Bobby whispered into her ear. She smiled. Mrs. Johnson said, “And what was it you heard, Ms. Dupree?”
And Gail said, “They found her where you drowned her.”
Mrs. Johnson stared at Gail. “Is that what you heard?” she asked. Gail nodded.
Mrs. Johnson looked at Bobby. “Is that what you heard?” Bobby nodded.
Johnson scanned her students. She no longer smiled. “What I said was ‘Candy is dandy.’”
“It still rhymed,” noted Gail.
Mrs. Johnson said, “We’ll do this once more, but we’ll go the other way around this time.”
She bent down to Gail, and whispered, “I loved her.”
Gail looked at her as if she hadn’t heard correctly, but Mrs. Johnson nodded, and so Gail stood on tiptoe to whisper into Bobby’s ear, and he shrugged and passed the message along. When it got back to Benjamin Cale, Mrs. Johnson hesitated a moment before asking him, “Okay, Benji — what did you hear?”
Benjamin Cale smirked. “‘They’re coming to arrest you.’ That’s what I heard.”
Mrs. Johnson blinked slowly. She heard a sound rising in the distance, a sound outside of the classroom, outside of the school building, a sound racing up the streets, getting closer and closer. The sound of sirens. “Is that what you heard, Benji,” she asked, the words causing her tongue to feel heavy and thick against the roof of her mouth.
Benjamin nodded.
“Well,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Okay.” Her eyes followed the three police cars as they slowed outside the building. Officers emerged. She dropped her hands to her sides, and plopped down into one of the small student desks as the rest of the students ran to the windows to see what the commotion was about. Her fingers briefly felt once more the memory of soft flesh going from warm to cold as she held it beneath the swift flowing Zumbro River.
Gail Dupree turned from the window and asked, “Mrs. Johnson? Can we play again?”
Turn Signal
It was the yellow strobe of light that first caught Johanson’s attention. At first he thought it was the Gophers/Wolverines game reflecting off the window, but when the television screen went blank for a moment, the pulsing light continued.
He pressed his face against the glass of his shack, cupped his hands around his temples and looked out over the impound lot. Cars and trucks sat like sleeping lions. It was quiet out there. No one had stopped by in the last two hours. But at three AM on a Wednesday, that wasn’t unusual. Johanson yawned. His eyes locked on the blinking glow of light. It came from the back of the lot, distorted through cracked and broken windshields, a dull reflection on the few cars surrounding it. Better check it out.
A train roared by, shaking the frame of the two story shack. He waited until it’s loud rumble passed before stepping out into the frigid night.
About sixty yards away on the other side of the railroad tracks was the main office. Another glow, that of a television, came from one of its windows.
Shatterbaugh. Wonder what he’s watching?
The place was creepy enough without Shatterbaugh. He was one of those guys who’d fix you with an ‘Are you fucking stupid?’ stare no matter what kind of question you asked him. The job was a lonely one, but better to be alone that hang out with that psycho jerk all night long. Johanson headed toward the other light. The one that blinked on and off. The one near the back of the lot.
The impound lot was shaped like a giant ‘U’. A dirt road wound past the waiting cars. A tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the lot. People coming to claim their cars checked in first with Shatterbaugh, who checked their ID’s and gave them their keys, then came down to the gate where Johanson let them in.
Most of the vehicles had been towed in for parking violations. But there were others that were islands of twisted metal, doors ripped off from the jaws of life, roofs caved in from flipping over, tires missing, shattered windshields, upholstery torn to shreds and stained with blood.
Johanson probed his flashlight into the vehicles as he passed. He shivered. Kept his hand on his holster. For what? To pacify the chill that spider-webbed down his spine? He stepped through the mud and watched his breath escape in a mist. The Mississippi River, less than thirty yards in the distance, passed silently, like a long dark cat
