Heat Seekers

HEAT SEEKERS

by

J. Clayton Rogers

I

Put the gun away, Ash.

Ash Mason felt the good weight.  The metal and stock were warm.  The pistol had been simmering in the car trunk all afternoon while Ash traced an aimless path through three counties, trying to put distance between himself and reality.  The taint of linseed was transferred to his palm.  His father maintained the .38 with the same kind of morally regulated affection one gave to lumpish mementoes.  The things he really used, really needed, were chipped and dented into an utilitarian dullness.  The gun was pampered and weak.  Ash intended to strengthen it with use.

Ash?  Pat tipped his bag for another sip.  It was only beer from Hop 'n Go.  Leaving it in the bag made it look like he was drinking hooch.  The badass facade was squandered on a technicality.  Being underage, the beer was just as illegal.  You know how to use that thing, Ash?

I know who to kill.  That's enough.

You rustics crack me up.

No reaction.  Ash was looking away.  Not seeing his face disturbed Pat, who devoured eye contact as compulsively as chips.  Brown hair unevenly trimmed, a cowlick drooping back, having lost its dash—the rear of Ash's head was like a mask.

Your dad'll shit he finds the shoe box empty.  How many shells you take?

It's getting dark.  Ash raised and lowered his arm again and again.  The gun was like his uncle who shook his hand too hard.  He didn't like him, but he had to know him.  I better start shooting or I won't be able to see.

Never shoot before?

No.

Not even a rifle?  You're not much of a country boy.

You're the hunter.

Dad drags me up Warrenton every Fall.  The Great White Hunter.  You know how boring a duck blind is?  You ever gut a deer?  You cut them open, all this shit comes out.  They lose their guts, I lose my breakfast.  And we all hate venison.  Dad donates the carcasses to that program for the poor.  Ever see a bro eating a deer burger?  A McBuck!  No, I didn't think so.  So where does all that meat go?

Maybe you cut them wrong.

When they cut us open, that's how we'll smell.  You never forget the smell.

Maybe your dad doesn't know what he's doing.

A man who designs cathedrals?  But Pat nodded sagely.  Dad's forty-one and looks sixty.  Bad luck piles on the years.  Gets worse the older you get.  It's mathematical, like his cathedrals.  Inverse anal proportion or something.

It was getting late, but heat still rippled above the small lake cupped in the manmade pit.  Life wasn't much interested in this creation, roughly the size of a football field and deeper than you wanted to imagine.  No inlets, no outlets, no currents—just brute stillness.  On the far shore a rank of scrub pines shed parched needles.  Blade grass sharpened by adversity drooped in abject surrender. The water was false, unabsorbable.  A mandrake and his small gray harem plashed with puzzled serenity across the blank water.  They would soon figure out the sterility of this haven and move on, if they survived.

I have to practice while there's light.

Ash bore down on the ducks and pressed.  The trigger didn't budge.

Something called a 'safety catch', Pat snorked, phlegm swirling at the back of his throat.  Keeps dumbfucks from blowing off their peckers, or it's supposed to.

Where is it?

You're the mighty genius white-ass dipwipe.  You figure.

Over the years, two or three children and young men had drowned here.  Including one of Ash's cousins.  These did not seem like accidents to Ash, but acts of vengeance.  When swimmers dived too deep they piqued the submerged branches and vines.  These were the lake's memory chords.  Reminded of long-forgotten insults, they snared swimmers by the feet and dragged them down.  He had not known his drowned cousin very well but there was a time when he had taken the warning seriously.  Family trees vanished quickly in the backward haze of history south of Richmond.  It was impossible to verify a blood curse.  Rather than risk being the next target in nature's vendetta, he'd stopped swimming in the pit.

Listen to me, Ash.  I'm the voice of reason in an age gone bad.  Pat had been drinking since ducking gym.  Working on a mild high, he was not yet drunk.  He actually sounded like a voice of reason.  It wouldn't last long.  Let it rest.  Everyone's got a history.  You dated Ellen while hers was still happening.  It's all timing.

Nothing sticks in your craw, does it? Ash said.

I don't digest much, Pat admitted.  But I'm not going around zonking people, either.

Racers at Richmond Dragway revved in the distance like psychotic cicadas.  The abandoned gravel pit was a mile from the track.  Just as close was the headquarters for the Virginia Air National Guard.  When a fighter took off speech was reduced to pointlessness.  The approaching F-16's sucked up the dimension of sound, then ejected it in superheated, compressed diktats.  Pat Cunningham shouted back whenever one flashed over.  He enjoyed nonsense.

Bitchin'!  Sock it to bin Laden!  Bufu those Bosnians!  Hey world, bend over!

Ash used the roar of the jet engines to mask his gunfire.  Every shot provoked waves of sweat.  Pat yelled at him, but the air was hollowed out by the fighters and Ash didn't hear.  He came over and slapped Ash on the arm.

The haze swallowed the flight of F-16's, leaving a brusque, rumbling wake.

The ducks didn't do anything to you.  Pat waved his bag.  The bottle inside was empty.

Ash pointed at the lake.  I didn't hit any of them.

No?

Don't get me wrong.  I tried.

The brightly colored drake and two drab females finished traversing the lake.  Neither bullets nor the ducks' paddling much stirred the heavy water.

They don't even know you were trying to kill them, Pat shook his head.  That's getting off easy.

I don't want to get off easy.

You shoot White, his bros'll come gunning for you.  Tec-9's are real popular with those Southside boys.  Pat ran a pale hand through his short sandy crop, harvesting beer sweat.  He was colorless as the bottom of a snail.  He once told Ash the sun couldn't touch him.  The voice of reason resisted tanning.  Funny how so many of them are named 'White'.  I mean, I know it's only a trick of language.  But those tricks can play tricks on you.

The numbness of evening came down.  Ash reloaded, but he was reluctant to shoot in the twilight.

Dumbfuck ducks, said Pat.  You can't survive long without knowing who's shooting at you.

We get shot at all the time, said Ash.  From every direction.  Only the lucky ones don't see it.

Put the gun away, Ash.

II

If you won't turn back, let's at least get a drink, Pat complained.

You think she's on the Route?  Ash felt weak and aching.  He'd slipped the gun under the car seat.

There's a 7/11, Pat pointed.  Slow down.  Goddammit!  OK, there's Safeway.  They never ID.  Just flip the bitch—what the hell's wrong?

Making a U-turn on Broad—flipping the bitch—Ash returned to the 7/11.  Pat took out his fake ID and entered the store.

Braced against his fender, Ash felt the warmth from the hood.  After the fast drive up I-64 the pace car sizzled with heated oil.  The crankcase stench combined with the traffic sounds beyond DMV to infect his mood.  Hundreds of kids cruised the Route between Lakeside and Jackson Ward.  Determined aimlessness.  They flagged friends and strangers; parked, broke away, coalesced, dispersed.

It was the Route out of preference, and because of its heritage.  Teenagers had been evicted from every predecessor.  The Route could be a street, parking lot, mall, or concatenation of bars.  West Broad had long been a favorite.  So too the Department of Motor Vehicles parking lot.  No one could say exactly when the authorities decided they were not just kids but public nuisances.  Drugs, violence and road congestion were among the reasons for displacement.  The only certain criteria was each time someone died on the Route, the police chased them to a new location.

Through the glass storefront Ash could see Pat in the check-out line.  He smiled up at the Slurpy display.  Trapped in an oversized fish bowl?  Not I.  Not the voice of reason.  The light display from a corner video game lanced purple lightening.  The line was long and the counter girl slow.  Pat tried to look impatient, shifting his legs like a man on business.  The twelve-pack he was holding slipped his grasp and fell on a magazine stand.  The wire display tipped over, spilling real estate flyers in the aisle.  Beyond mounds of overstocked Coke six-packs and gallon bottles of blue windshield cleaning solution Ash could see the counter girl say something smart.  Her face translated.  Pat said something back and stormed out the door.  Ash could see his scalp going red through his thin hair.

Bitch told me to pick up the magazines.  Pat slammed into the car.  "Hey, I was the one stuck in line because she was too stupid to run the fucking register."

Ash slid behind the wheel.

I'm not thirsty anymore.  Let's diss the Westies.  Pat was close to tears.  Who needs their slop, huh?  Let's do the Route.  I've really lost it, Ash.  I can't even hold a fucking case of Ice House.  My life was reviewed by Ebert and whoever.  Two big thumbs down.

It's a phase, said Ash, jokingly.

Pat thought he was being serious.  Even worse, fatherly.  Yeah.  Life.

The Route muttered in the distance.  Scaling, falling, revving, downshifting, a storm surge of sound that grew more ominous and alluring as they drew closer.  Ash pulled to the curb as a truck shot past, hotly pursued.  Bright helix flames stroked the orange flanks, the pickup's graphics punctuated by the streetlights at rapid strobic intervals—a comet spun off from the Route.  The cop looked dour and sluggish in its wake, its wail a peevish complaint that grew more annoyingly persistent as the chase progressed.  The decline of civility and civilization played out along the stretch of Broad that ran past the Science Museum and a state liquor store and a handful of all-night pharmacies.  Young man, you get yourself back here right this instant.  Do you hear me?  Hey!  Jerk!  Pull over.  Dumbass fuck motherfucker, stop now before I ram your fucking cock down your throat!  Both the pursuers and those pursued fully participated in the Fall.

Ash looped behind the dark block of the DMV building.  He was quickly snared in the circular traffic pattern of the Route.

If not for the constant, aimless orbit, Ash would have been completely out of place.  He didn't like the hi-tone West Enders who comprised the majority on the Route.  And the far-county boys in the circle were red to the core.  Westies considered someone like Ash pure country Jake.  Speech and appearance was their scale.

Too many Westies tonight, Pat observed.  'After my first million I want to bring peace to my fellow man.'

The falsetto quote was part of Pat's ongoing imaginary TV interview of his conception of an archetypal Westie.

'I know they caught me beating my wife and shagging my daughters.  But I'm crying.  See?  Here's a tear.'

A glitter-blue pickup roared past, its racing slicks mocking the laws of physics as it glided on the road.  Pat noted the color of the driver.  Hell, the bro's are getting redder than the rednecks.

For a quarter mile a concrete median divided Leigh Street. The Route was an affront to manmade laws, since it entailed a comprehensive snubbing of the No U-Turn sign at the end of the island.

No one around here speaks Universal, was Pat's critique on the symbol's inadequacy.

Ash idled in the center of the road, waiting for an opening.  Cars behind honked, snarled, all but erupted.  Tart blasts, long hoots, even an anachronistic a-ooo-ga.  They could be there to join the pattern or trying simply to pass through.  The Impatience Club was open to everyone, not so much multiculural as culture-free.  Pat leaned out the window and beat the the passenger panel.  Hold your fucking horses! he shouted.

Move it, shit-dip!

Lose the crapgadget, loser! Pat shot back, inserting a bird.

Lose the dickwad! a voice boomed mightily through a portable PA.

Pat jerked his head back inside.  Moron has a Coga.  When's the last time you saw one of those?

Last time on the Route.

Idiot, Pat said, looking back.  Some people don't know when things go out of style.

Like your father and his cathederals.

Yeah...  Pat gave Ash a curious look.  You actually listen to me?  Sometimes?

A gap formed.  Ash pushed in, then hit the brakes.  There was a lot of stop and go.  Ash spotted a guy from his school on the other side of the median, also stuck, his arm dangling out, anxiously escalading his fingers under the window.

Curt!

Ash, my man! Curt waved.

Any one else here?  It was understood he meant anyone else from Charles City.

Saw Jernigan about a half hour ago, but he went off to race someone.

Seen Morris? Pat yelled over Ash's shoulder.

Ah, you don't want that shit.  Curt made a face of disgust.  Your tang can't be that hongry.

I said you seen Morris? Pat insisted.

He's up at the corner.

Let's go, Pat punched Ash on the shoulder.

They weren't going anywhere.  Everything was snarled up front.  Horns blared.  There was cursing and laughter.  Faces unscrolled in the maze, a montage of eagerness and frustration.  Someone drove up on the sidewalk and there was a quick evacuation behind the bushes.  Taillights and overhead street globes imparted a radioactive glow to the car exhaust.  Scarcely a catalytic converter in sight.  Through a small patch of woods a driveway led to the city's heavy equipment depot.  Wheel loaders, truck cranes and giant yellow earth movers hunkered behind a hurricane fence.  Beneath the fence a row of young men raised their beer bottles in salute to someone on the road.  Their words were drowned by a hundred revving engines.

Hey Curt! Ash shouted.  You seen Ellen?

I seen Jack.  Man, was he blotto.

I said Ellen.

I seen Webster.  Man, was he blitzed.

Pat patted Ash on the shoulder.  Curt saw the gesture and shook his head.  Leave it alone, man.  Someone'll think you're amped.

'Someone' meaning the cops who frequently cruised the area, scoping the scofflaws and toting their sins, awaiting the moment the mass went critical, when even the surliest punk confessed it was time to abandon the Route.

Who's she with? Ash shouted.

Morris won't stay put forever, Pat groused.  He has to keep moving.

I just want to talk to her.  Ash had to raise his voice over a swelling chorus of car horns.

She's around, Curt said reluctantly. 

Who's she with?

She's got a cell.  Fuckin' call her and find out, you're aching to know so bad.

I don't have a cell!

Curt couldn't hear.  Traffic had opened up.  The drivers behind Ash were loud in their demands.  He shifted out.

Morris, Pat insisted, bouncing up and down in his seat.

Don't bust a cap.

That's precisely what I'm thinking.

Some voice of reason.  Ash flipped the bitch at the end of the circuit.  Instead of making the next turn he went straight, towards the dark edge of Jackson Ward.

The Route almost always took root close to black neighborhoods.  Want to sin?  Go to the source.  The school worked hard to eliminate the ponderous lie.  But sin was the concensus of the majority. The majority had to be pure, or relatively pure, or at least believe in its purity, however false the premise.  The world simply wouldn't operate if it was rotten to the core.  The proof of the belief, if not the proof of the reality, was the frequency with which the white kids came (fearfully) knocking at the 'hood door.  They were like kids on a merry-go-round, circling, circling, then making sudden stabs for the ring.  Reach too far, and you fell.  Only then would one of them admit the possible existence of the vague, uncertain territory of sin, and that they might have transgressed its border.  Either that, or blame someone else.

At one time the neighborhood had been much larger.  Block by block, its old poverty had been demolished.  To make way for what, no one knew.  Overgrown fields ran up to the edge of the Ward, waves of grass and junk eroding the next row of foundations.  A lean-to marked the turnoff to Broad.  An old man resided there during the day, selling steamed crabs to anyone who believed the 'FRESH' on his sign.  The old man always left before dark.

That's not Morris, Pat said, looking hard at the black man sitting under the corrugated tin lean-to.  Ash pulled over.

Come on, Pat said, opening his door.

I want to keep a clear head.

Clear, yeah, Pat snorted.  Come on.  I don't know this guy.  He might try something.

So we both get shot.  But Ash got out.

The man was lounging against the lean-to, one foot propped on a rickety bench.  His pants dragged.  His do-rag packed his hair into a thin caul-like layer.  To Ash it seemed unreal, like a costume.  As though, in the morning, he would put on a pinstripe to begin his day at Scott and Stringfellow.  He gave them a crisp smile, like an efficient waiter.  Good evening, gentlemen!

Where's Morris? Pat asked warily.

I'm Morris.  He verified his claim by embracing himself.

Some of us can tell you people apart.  You're not Morris.

Ah...! Morris drawled.  You're talking about Last-Week Morris.  He's gone.  I'm This-Week Morris.

What happened to Last-Week?

Ancient history.  What is it you want?  This-Week Morris was not ostentatious.  His only jewelry consisted of a dull wedding band.  Hell, Ash thought: a family man.  The new Morris had intensely white fingertips, as though he'd bleached his hands.

I was thinking of a tab, said Pat.

That's nice.  You keep thinking.

Bam?

Slam-bam.

Maybe, you know, something red? Pat persisted.

Reds?  I heard there's all sorts of reds.  I hear funny words like redbird, red and blue, red dirt, Panama Red, red devil—

How about something blue?

True blue?  Got a death wish?

Do you?  But even Pat balked at the idea of P.C.P., and he shook his head.  No...blue.

Oh, I heard rumors of blue acid, blue angel, blue devils, blue bomber, blue cheer, bluebird—

Then white?  Pat was crawling out of his skin.

You got foo-foo dust in your brain?

Red, white and blue...  Ash shook his head.

Morris gave a low, throaty laugh like only a black man could.  Yeah, we got plenty of white here.  Blanco.

You don't have anything?

What I heard don't mean I understand.

Pat was hot and red.  He glanced down the street.  A few old men and women sat on their porches, trying to catch a breeze.  Most had sense enough to stay inside.  Two prowl cars dashed by.  Morris did not react.

Jesus, Pat breathed once they were gone.

Don't fret, young 'un, said Morris.  The heat don't care.

You mean you're too small-time for them, Ash said.

I mean they don't care.  Morris propped an ankle on his knee.  He wasn't wearing socks.  He seemed as naturally seedy as the locust trees hanging over the lean-to.  So man, you talking about a tab?  How about a coolie instead?

A coolie, okay.

"Or