Todd Cantrell
WINNER of the 2009 Flash Fiction Contest
The houses are coming apart around here, piece by piece. The wind is a drunken sculptor, chiseling away the ornament. My boy comes home with his pants loaded with sand. There is grit in my bed, under my feet, in my cereal. My wife lives in sleep, and her lips taste like old licorice. Some days I wallow in remembrances of former, easier lives.
One day men in unmarked black cars show up. They wear white, button down shirts and dark sunglasses that give them away. They tell us to stay in our houses, because two armed men have fled into the woods. The two men came to our city after a hurricane blew away their city. They killed several people, maybe more, the cop says. The word spree is used.
A black helicopter flies low over the tree line that borders the development. I scan the trees through binoculars from my third floor window, looking for my wife and son who are on their way home from the park.
The cop parked in front of my house leans casually against his car and laughs into his walkie talkie. He is ready and, I think, even eager to kill. My wife giggles and tosses her hair as she talks to him. My son clings to his leg, drooling over his holstered pistol.
The next morning, I see the bloated carcass of a wild boar lying feet up on the side of the road, and I think I see bullet holes in its side. The buzzards feast and my boy pretends to shoot the birds with his finger. The animal rots there for two weeks. Aren't there people who take care of this kind of thing?
Some say the two men jumped into the Chattahoochee and swam away. Some say the cops shot them unprovoked and covered up the crime in a massive conspiracy. Some say they're still in the woods around our neighborhood, living off wild turkeys, boar and donuts and coffee from the nearby Quik Trip.
On a moonless night, I hear noises down at the community pool. Through my binoculars I see two men swimming naked, their dirty clothes piled on the edge. I see the naked men floating on their backs. The pool light gives the water a radioactive glow. They don't seem like killers.
All these rooms and we cling together on the couch. My wife, my boy and I holding onto each other, out of love and fear, making us a bigger target. They cut down all the old big trees and planted tiny saplings, which bend like Russian acrobats in the unfettered wind. Paint chips litter the yards and window screens billow. The yards go to dust. The windows rattle like chattering teeth.
A few nights later, my boy comes into our room dragging his blanket. My wife is gone on sleeping pills.
I hear scary noises, he says, rubbing his eyes.
I go to his room. Far off, there's a lonesome clarinet playing. It's coming from the woods. The wind carries the mournful tune through the canyons of our tall houses. Perhaps the instrument was mistaken for a weapon, I think. This could all be one big misunderstanding. I can see how this could happen. An upstanding man, my life has been marked by cruel misfortune. Many times I have been this close to banishment, through no fault of my own. I sometimes imagine walking into the dark woods and being soothed to sleep by clarinet.
The neighborhood looks like the ruins of a poorly conceived and hastily constructed civilization. Those that remain have barricaded themselves inside their houses where they stare at large screens. Some time later my boy appears in my doorway.
Go back to bed, I say.
They're coming, he says.
I put him in bed with my sleeping wife. Through my binoculars I see two figures coming down the street toward my house. What if I was wrong about the clarinet? There will be no helicopters or men with guns this time to put us back to sleep. I walk outside in my bathrobe and slippers. Behind me stands my house stripped of shingles, siding hanging off like peeling skin. In the street, the wind kicks up little cyclones of dust.