the finger with a lot of showy prestidigitation. The nail is still painted cotton candy pink, and the skin around the edge of the wound is drying out and shriveling slightly.
Strange to think how it used to be a part of everything she did for her whole life, and now it’s on its own. She goes to put it back in the duffel but changes her mind and puts it in the glove compartment instead.
S UBDIVISIONS . T HOSE magnificent bone-white homes duplicated row after row on grids that seem to grow like crystal with the sharpness and precision of God’s artisanship, with softly sloping sidewalks and square patches of overgrown lawn and garage doors like gleaming toothy grins. She likes them, the way the homes fit together like interlocking blocks. When she hears the word community, this is the image that comes to mind: families nested in equally spaced cubes and united by a common color of stucco. If she was living in a different time,she would like to live here, where everything is the same for everybody, even the mailboxes.
Here among these pretty homes, on a four-lane road with a wide grassy island in the middle where banyan trees are planted at equal intervals, she finds an accumulation of meatskins, a trail of maybe twenty, all loping awkwardly in the same direction. She pulls the car up past them to the front of the line where there is a large man trying to outpace the congregation behind. In his arms is the body of an ancient woman no larger than a child.
She slows the car beside him and rolls down the window.
Hey mister, she says, you’re collectin quite a crowd. You’re gonna be in a bind if you get tired of walking before they do.
The man looks at her with flat gray eyes, empty of comprehension, and keeps walking.
Come on now, she says, that’s one grim parade you got behind you. Whyn’t you and your grandma come around to the other side and get in the car. The least I can do is get you a head start if you like derbyin so much.
The man looks at her again. He is big, with unwashed hay-colored hair that hangs in strings and a dishpan face with slow, heavy-lidded eyes that seem too small for the breadth of his flat cheekbones. There is something on his forehead that looks like soot, and he breathes through his mouth, his lower lip jutting out. He begins to trip and stumble over his own feet, and she gets the impression he has been walking for a long time already. The old woman in his arms is dead, but it doesn’t look like she’s been dead for long.
You’re a dummy, ain’t you? A little slow in the head like? Well all right, dummy, we’ll do it your way.
She pulls the car on up ahead and shuts it off, then reaches into the duffel bag for the AR-15 scoped rifle and slaps a cartridge into it and gets out of the car.
The man keeps walking past her, and she gets down on one knee and leans against the side of the car to steady herself and then starts firing. The sound isn’t a crack like some of the olderrifles she’s used. This one is military issue, and it gives a muffled pop with each shot like the crank of an engine.
The first two she hits in the head with one shot, which she can tell by the spray of blood and bone and the way they drop already motionless and dead before they hit the ground.
The third, a woman in a nightdress, she hits in the shoulder, which spins her around, and it takes two more shots to get her in the back of the head.
The next shot hits the neck of an obese slug, and he puts his hands up, birdlike, to stop the flow of blood. Then she hits him in the forehead.
She fires until the clip is empty and then reaches into the car for her gurkha knife to finish off the rest and make sure they stay down. Then she rises up out of the slop and fans herself with her panama hat and feels the breeze on her face and breathes in the pure air sweeping down through the palm trees lining the street.
By the car the man has set the ancient woman delicately down on the sidewalk. He crouches beside her,
Strange to think how it used to be a part of everything she did for her whole life, and now it’s on its own. She goes to put it back in the duffel but changes her mind and puts it in the glove compartment instead.
S UBDIVISIONS . T HOSE magnificent bone-white homes duplicated row after row on grids that seem to grow like crystal with the sharpness and precision of God’s artisanship, with softly sloping sidewalks and square patches of overgrown lawn and garage doors like gleaming toothy grins. She likes them, the way the homes fit together like interlocking blocks. When she hears the word community, this is the image that comes to mind: families nested in equally spaced cubes and united by a common color of stucco. If she was living in a different time,she would like to live here, where everything is the same for everybody, even the mailboxes.
Here among these pretty homes, on a four-lane road with a wide grassy island in the middle where banyan trees are planted at equal intervals, she finds an accumulation of meatskins, a trail of maybe twenty, all loping awkwardly in the same direction. She pulls the car up past them to the front of the line where there is a large man trying to outpace the congregation behind. In his arms is the body of an ancient woman no larger than a child.
She slows the car beside him and rolls down the window.
Hey mister, she says, you’re collectin quite a crowd. You’re gonna be in a bind if you get tired of walking before they do.
The man looks at her with flat gray eyes, empty of comprehension, and keeps walking.
Come on now, she says, that’s one grim parade you got behind you. Whyn’t you and your grandma come around to the other side and get in the car. The least I can do is get you a head start if you like derbyin so much.
The man looks at her again. He is big, with unwashed hay-colored hair that hangs in strings and a dishpan face with slow, heavy-lidded eyes that seem too small for the breadth of his flat cheekbones. There is something on his forehead that looks like soot, and he breathes through his mouth, his lower lip jutting out. He begins to trip and stumble over his own feet, and she gets the impression he has been walking for a long time already. The old woman in his arms is dead, but it doesn’t look like she’s been dead for long.
You’re a dummy, ain’t you? A little slow in the head like? Well all right, dummy, we’ll do it your way.
She pulls the car on up ahead and shuts it off, then reaches into the duffel bag for the AR-15 scoped rifle and slaps a cartridge into it and gets out of the car.
The man keeps walking past her, and she gets down on one knee and leans against the side of the car to steady herself and then starts firing. The sound isn’t a crack like some of the olderrifles she’s used. This one is military issue, and it gives a muffled pop with each shot like the crank of an engine.
The first two she hits in the head with one shot, which she can tell by the spray of blood and bone and the way they drop already motionless and dead before they hit the ground.
The third, a woman in a nightdress, she hits in the shoulder, which spins her around, and it takes two more shots to get her in the back of the head.
The next shot hits the neck of an obese slug, and he puts his hands up, birdlike, to stop the flow of blood. Then she hits him in the forehead.
She fires until the clip is empty and then reaches into the car for her gurkha knife to finish off the rest and make sure they stay down. Then she rises up out of the slop and fans herself with her panama hat and feels the breeze on her face and breathes in the pure air sweeping down through the palm trees lining the street.
By the car the man has set the ancient woman delicately down on the sidewalk. He crouches beside her,
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