I’d only been home six weeks, and the truth is, sometimes I would have nightmares. Horrid, visceral dreams that were almost memories but not quite. I’d wake up screaming, sweating, twisted up bad in the sheets. I guess this happened most nights, and I didn’t really like going to bed because when I did, I knew where I’d end up: back there. Those hot and spinning days. The stink of death that hung heavy in the air. Jake’s leg rotting and the two of us pinned down with nowhere to go. What I did to get us out of there.
But the dreams didn’t bother anyone but me. Aunt Lincoln’s house was way out of town, and nobody would hear. I figured it would end, the visions that haunted my nights. I figured probably all of us had them in some form. I just needed time. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Cindy. The two of us weren’t a couple yet, not officially, but we’d been spending a lot of time together.
At the diner, I was talking to Kelly Ramsey about her chickens, which one of them laid olive-green eggs, she said. Kelly was a waitress there, and we’d gone to school together, only now she had two kids already, both boys, and we talked, most days. Kelly Ramsey was talking about those green eggs—“same size as any other egg, only green, olive green.”
And then a jangle at the door, the little Christmas bells that hung from the handle hitting the glass. When I turned there was a certain slant of light. Two guys walked in, and they were armed, they were there to kill all of us. They were there, crossing the threshold, and I had seen them before, and they intended harm. One of them had a gun and the other was hiding something behind his back. The look on their faces. Meanwhile, men women children there in the diner, almost every booth full of people eating their lunch, all of them talking and laughing and having a grand old time. Only nobody seemed concerned about it, so it was just me, trying to figure a way to stop them.
“You got an egg carton at home? Bring it with you next time, and I’ll get you some.” Kelly going on about those green eggs.
In a high chair close by, a baby squealed and flapped her arms. Jim and Jada Miller’s youngest. Phil Williams raised his arm to get Kelly’s attention and said, “Kelly, can I get some ketchup when you have a chance?”
The men were spreading apart, one on each side of the room. Sneaky, those two, because although there was malevolence in their eyes, they moved in a way that was nonchalant, in a way that nobody took note of them at all.
I had my Ruger on me. I had a license to carry a concealed weapon, everything legal, and I wasn’t about to let this go down without a fight, all those innocent people having lunch, and two armed psychos about to let loose. So I slipped it from my pocket, the gun, and fast. “Everybody down!”
Then. So much screaming and moving, the whole room flooding with noise and turmoil. A shipwreck, a kingdom falling. The mosque collapsing on Doyle and Turnbull. Phillips bleeding out on my fatigues. Blood blood blood. Everything reeling and white and where was I and where were the two men with their guns?
The baby in the high chair crying now. Phil Williams and his wife tucked beneath their booth, hunched low, heads down, and also crying.
How long did I stand there with the gun? Minutes? Seconds? The room a vault of whispers and cries.
“Kenny.” A voice, somewhere in the room, far away, like it was coming from a long tunnel, but quiet and calm and familiar.
Another voice. “Don’t, Kelly. Think of your kids.”
Where were the two men? Where had they gone?
“Kenny! Kenny, it’s all right. Put the gun down, Kenny.”
An unnatural quiet in the room.
“The men. There were two of them.” Something hammering loud and roaring, like a jet taking off. My own heart, I realized. I put the Ruger in my pocket and walked out of there, out onto Main Street, the day sunny but cool. May. The wind picked up and tossed crabapple blossoms that floated down onto my shoulders.
* * *
Judge came to see me later that day. After I walked out of the diner, I guess someone called the police and also him and this is what they must’ve arranged: a visit from the judge. I would rather have the police, to tell you the truth, but what I got was him. I heard the engine and watched from behind a curtain in the living room. Rolled up in his Lexus, stood outside the car for a moment, eyeing up the house, doing what he did best, I suspect: judging. Aunt Lincoln had not been the most fastidious when it came to upkeep, so there were tires and scraps of metal and a huge heap of five-gallon buckets that she used for growing fat, juicy tomatoes, all of this littering the yard. There was a mattress on the front porch, and an old green couch that was perfectly comfortable but an eyesore all the same, plus the steps were starting to rot. Though I’m sure Judge couldn’t see it, I’d already put quite a dent in the mess, hauling four loads of junk to the transfer station, cleaning up the place. I’d taken a chest freezer from out back, three gas grills, nine filing cabinets. Plus I’d been burning all the papers Lincoln had held on to. Insurance policies from 1989, catalogues, receipts, magazines.