Neal Pollack

“Good enough,” she say. “Zane, use your shovel to get out first.”

Show Time is at hand. I prop the shovel against the end of the grave, spade end down on a rock, and use it as a step to boost myself up. My heart’s racing now cuz I been thinking about everything else but the big moment.

Katrina back off a step or two as I climb out. Like me and Katrina plan, I hold my hand down to Hector and say, “Don’t leave it behind,” and he hands me his shovel.

Then he looks down to step on my spade end, his hands grabbing at the sod above, ready to boost himself out of the grave. He still looking down as his head comes up, and I take a full swing with his shovel right down hard on his head. Only it don’t hit quite square and the edge of the shovel scoop off a hunk of Hector’s scalp and skull bone, which goes flipping onto the grass at Katrina’s feet like a bloody tea saucer.

You could even see some of Hector’s brain sitting in it like some freaky Fear Factor stunt. Sight gross me out, man, don’t know why cuz I seen that before. Lying back in that grave, Hector give out this puny little cry and his body start in on some serious shaking.

Can’t say I feel nothing much as I watch Hector shiver and bleed out the top his skull, ’cept maybe tired and dirty, just want to finish and go clean off this dirt. So I lean down and grab my shovel up out of the pit, and just when I straighten up—BAM —this explosion slams the inside of my head—and everything goes queer and too slow—and then I’m coming out of this blackness and I find myself looking up from inside that pit, Hector underneath me trying to shake even with my weight on top of him.

After I don’t know how long, I’m coming out of another darkness and I see Eddie Mac and Katrina looking down at me. Eddie Mac holds a nine with a silencer on it. Then things go black again.

Next time I come back from the dark, I’m half covered with dirt. I can’t hardly see cuz dirt’s on part of my face and some in my mouth and I can’t lift my head to shake it off. I try to call out to Katrina, but can’t make no words. I try to get up but my body don’t care what I try, it won’t budge.

With my one eye that can see, I see that Eddie Mac’s busy shoving dirt down from the pile, working at the end where my feet are. I can hear him pant cuz the old guy’s working hard. I can move my left arm and I try to bring it up and take the dirt off my face. On the way up my stomach, I feel my strap under the coverall, hanging just under my arm. Real slow, inch at a time, I crawl my hand in and slip my nine out. They don’t see me move cuz

well, I don’t know why, I guess it’s too dark or they think I’m already dead.

I ain’t thinking about what happened or why. It don’t matter to me now if Katrina done me dirty this way, or Eddie, or even Blue, though all of them must have, I’m sure now. It plain this is where I’m gonna be for, like, ever. I don’t even give that much of a damn, really. Never know how you gonna end up. Or when and where. Or why, for that matter. You just know you will. Somehow, somewhere, sometime. That, and how’d you use your time? Those all some things to think about. Now, anyway. My line of work, I always figured I have something like this shit coming.

I coulda finished high school, coulda fixed cars. I could say I shoulda done all that. But this is what I want, so this is what I do, and this is what I get, no big deal.

They say before you leave the world you see your life flash before your eyes like some kind of big movie, which amounts to making some kind of sense of things. Nothing big and grand like that happening for me right here and now, probably cuz my life never make much sense anyway.

So I can’t even say why I’m looking up with my one free eye, lifting my nine out from under the dirt and pointing it at Eddie Mac. I can’t exactly say why it makes sense for me to put two quick slugs in him and then turn my wrist and put another two in Katrina. But as soon as I do, it feels okay.

Eddie Mac, he falls on top of that dirt pile and I can see his legs shaking bad as they stick down over the edge of the grave. More and more dirt slips in and I know it’s only a matter of time till his body slides down here.

Meantime, sweet Katrina, she down to her knees on the other edge, gurgling and gasping as she holds herself, red spreading across that blouse, down onto that cute little mini. She look so beautiful to me. And so sad. She cries a little bit, but I guess the pain cuts into that, and then she loses her balance and she fall right in on top of me.

Time short now. I can’t see nothing. I guess that’s Katrina’s blood making my face wet. I like the warm feeling. I like it’s her blood, not some stranger. She making it hard for me to breathe, which is just as well, I don’t mind. The kind of guy I am.