With that, he leads them toward the front of the packing plant, one hand on the pistol grip of the rifle, the other with a firm hold on the handguard at mid barrel, the buttstock against his shoulder.
Feigning death, Orlando relishes the prospect of telling Alana about this when next he sees her. After years of listening to the tales she has read aloud, he has learned to craft the events of his day into little stories that frequently wring from his lady a gasp of surprise or a shudder of horror or a laugh of sheer delight. In this, he feels that he is giving back, returning to her some of the pleasure that she has shown him can be found in storytelling. She has taught him more than he would have imagined when they had their first date after meeting through Enchantment Now, and the most important lesson he has learned is that a successful relationship is all about giving. Who would’ve thought? Orlando has been especially amazed that this truth applies to sex no less than to other aspects of a relationship. Before Alana, he had given no thought to what a girl felt when he was doing it to her. He finds it funny to realize now that he had assumed girls took no pleasure in it, that they only claimed to be thrilled so they could get their money or, on those occasions when they weren’t whores, to avoid maybe being hit for not stoking a man’s pride with faked orgasmic cries. Some days he thinks he loves Alana, and some days he knows he loves her, but he no longer has a day when he doubts that he loves her.
Orlando finds himself wondering about this guy who came out of nowhere, this mysterious rifleman, wondering what his motive might be. He’s for sure not some lawman, because they never come alone and because they don’t shoot seven dudes in one episode without flashing a badge and telling everyone to put down their weapons. Besides, in recent years, there has been mutual respect and shared interests between the gangs and many district attorneys, between the gangs and the most clear-thinking politicians, even between the gangs and some sheriffs and police chiefs who have realized the futility of putting their lives on the line when the previously judgmental establishment has evolved to include both lawmakers and lawbreakers who recognize the wisdom of cooperation.
In a moment of sudden enlightenment, Orlando conjectures that no man alone sets himself against eight armed gangbangers for mere money, or for vengeance, or for sport, and certainly not as a matter of principle, but only for one thing—love. Before Alana, he would not have achieved this moment of illumination. Nina has a guy whom Aleem never knew about, a guy who will do anything for her, even hang himself out there in order to blow away the leader of a gang and the leader’s main men. It’s Romeo and Juliet all over again, Harry meets Sally, Bonnie and Clyde; it’s the thing that makes the world go round, even if some guys, like Orlando, take half their life to realize what that is. Masud and Speedo are certainly dead, which is the way it has to be when Romeo has an AR-15 and burning love in his heart. Seven have died trying to thwart the love of a man for a woman. It’s an epic right up there with the best novels that have a romance in them, and he can’t wait to shape it into a story that will leave Alana wide-eyed.
This is a night for serial enlightenments, for now he realizes that if he shoots these three in the back and subsequently gives each the coup de gr?ce of a second bullet in the head, he won’t be able to tell Alana about the rifleman’s love for Nina, not any of it. The anecdotes with which he charms her concern the strange and sometimes amusing twists and turns of his daily enforcements. They occasionally involve a killing, but he has never wasted anyone who was a great romantic figure. Considering the disrespect and trouble that some ninth-grade boys have given Alana, she might warm to an account of his killing John, but she will freeze at the realization that he also popped the devoted and adoring rifleman and his true love, Nina. If Orlando avenges his homeys yet wants to share Alana’s life as she ascends through the education establishment to positions in which she controls the dispensation of many millions of dollars, he dare not share with her the events of this night. She will inevitably wonder if he truly believes in her love for him and his for her, if whether the time might come, some currently unimaginable circumstance, when a sense of duty to his homeboys will require him to kill his own true love. Such a tragedy will never occur. As she has changed him, Orlando is now—as he’ll always be—incapable of committing such a horror, but she will not be able to put out of mind the Orlando as he was before he knew her. Suspicion. Suspicion poisons relationships.
The thing is, he can’t bear not sharing with Alana the stirring tale of the romantic rifleman who, in the grip of passion, killed so many that his true love might live. It will be the best story that he’s ever told her, and she has a love of stories, being an English teacher and all. Abruptly, yet another revelation thrills him—that if he does not kill these three for whom he is lying in wait, the story he’ll then tell Alana will be even better, even more stirring, and she will see that Orlando and the rifleman are of like kind, two shining knights for whom love for a woman trumps all else, even duty to their homeys.
Oh, but how completely this violates the code, the utilitarian ethics that have shaped his life in the gang. He can continue being an enforcer, and he will no doubt still enjoy the work, but if he doesn’t kill these three, he will know that he hasn’t always been faithful to the gangbanger creed. As he waits for them to pass by, as he hears them approaching, he lies in a misery of conflicting emotions, in a torment of conscience, not least of all in fear of being unable to explain to the new masters of the gang why he alone survived events in the orchard. He presses the gun flat against his heart. His hand grips the gun. His finger slides from trigger guard to trigger. He eases the weapon out of his raincoat. To kill or not to kill. Man, boy, woman—they pass him unawares, presenting their backs as easy targets to this fifth of four corpses. A way out of his predicament occurs to him, another revelation, and so he watches as they walk toward Cider and Juice, as they continue to the nearest row of dead apple wood, as they disappear into the night and rain.
He has not been faithful to the gangbanger creed. He has left his homeys unavenged. He can live with that.
THERE COMES A MOMENT WHEN EVERYTHING IS STILL AND RIPENS
As they make their way through the orchard without risking the flashlight, the rain stops, but the wind sighs a while longer. The trees rattle their bare limbs like dry bones, as if they were never wetted in the downpour.
Michael leads John and Nina, who still limps slightly, across the surging torrents in the drainage ditch, where the runoff passes through a culvert. The road lies dark and untraveled, and it seems they might be the only people in the world.
The one remaining gangbanger never sets upon them. Maybe he’d been sent into town to call for help before the shooting started.
Where the body of Masud was once marked by a portion of his raincoat filled with air and ballooning above the racing water, there is now no indication of him. Perhaps the coat deflated, and he lies waiting to be revealed when the flood relents, or maybe he has been washed farther south.
The Bentley stands alongside the highway, where Michael left it, such a handsome and unlikely conveyance that it might be taken for a mirage. They are wet and muddy, but it doesn’t matter what a mess they will make of the interior, for even a Bentley is just a car.