Our Lord and Savior Christian Slater
Sheldon Lee Compton
Penna had an eight by ten framed photograph of Christian Slater on her nightstand. In the bottom right corner was his signature in sweeping silver metallic marker. The signature might not have been real. It was a print, and she had forgotten that she had sent away for it as part of his fan club. In the most paisley parts of her mind, Christian signed that photograph especially for her.
Her mother was an invalid. She was always somewhere within the recesses of the house after eight o’ clock in the evening. The house seemed to slowly divide in half shortly after sunset, with collapsed shadows moving all the way up to the living room just off from the front door. A couch, a chair, a coffee table, and any further than that and it was the other side of the moon. Somewhere there was a kitchen certainly, and other rooms. Her mother never stirred, never checked in on her while they played hearts or Phase 10. It was all Penna ever did, play cards. Play cards and watch Christian Slater movies. Worn out VHS tapes on a dusty VCR player. Broken Arrow, Kuffs, Pump Up the Volume, Heathers. There was no cable. Only the movies.
Penna laughed in her wonderfully strange way, giggling mixed with a long peal barely held under her breath. The bulbs of her acned nose and her acned chin grew redder. She was not an attractive person. Nevermind an attractive woman. As looks go, she was uniformly ugly. Overweight, prone to sweating, she carefully tended to a mullet haircut with a massive set of bangs teased and hairsprayed into a fat horn on the top of her forehead. Most of the day, she slept, only getting up at nightfall, expecting to soon hear Kathy and Jason’s rumbling up the steps to the porch and then the three light knocks.
Well into a third round of hearts with these, her only two friends, she heaved herself into a better position on the side of her bed and smiled. She obviously didn’t prefer sitting that way. It made her uncomfortable, but she would not say a word, because whatever disadvantages Penna might have suffered in the looks department, she more than made up for it with her steadfast goodness, so good it was nearly wholesome, so good it was nearly uniform.
She dyed her hair regularly — pink, platinum blonde, a scattered dark red — all of these within a span of a few weeks. And she did this routinely. She had recently dyed it beyond-platinum and was now spastically nodding her head. Her spun bangs bounced like puffy clouds backlit by a summer sun.
“I have a boyfriend!” Penna’s voice came through high from the base of her throat. She placed her cards face down and tucked her hands between her thighs. She lifted her shoulders, dropped her chin to her chest. “His name’s Devon.”
Kathy lightly scoffed and drew a card.
“What?” Penna asked.
“I don’t know no Devons around here,” Kathy said. “Come clean. They ain’t no Devon. If there was we’d know him. Only about fifteen people in this shithole and we all know each other.”
“Gooooodamnit, Kathy,” Jason said. “Can’t you just leave well enough alone?” He tucked his chin into his shoulder and left it there. The look on Penna’s face was almost unbearable. She was so sad at that moment, Jason wanted to get up and leave. No explanation, no goodbye. Just leave. And then, right when he couldn’t stand seeing Penna’s face one more second, Kathy relaxed. “Alright, alright,” she said. “So what’s Christian going to say about this?”
Penna picked up the framed picture. Her face was marble. She put it back in its spot on her nightstand with some force. “There’s room for both.”
The plan was to have a barbeque that weekend, something outside the house. There were challenges. To begin with, it would be the first time Jason and Kathy would hang out with Penna during the day, not playing cards. Somehow both, without consulting one another, had come to the idea that Penna and cards and late nights were part of their escape. The five hours they spent playing cards with Penna were like a utopia, especially for Jason. A number of hours when he could be certain there was nothing to do except play cards and talk.
Beginning at around seven in the morning, Jason always got up with their one-year-old son Brady. Jason fed him applesauce for breakfast with his eyes closed sitting on the couch. They lived with Kathy’s parents and her dad, Roy, was always up at the same time. He didn’t pay much attention to Jason and Bradley until after he’d made coffee and went outside for his first cigarette. But after that, he would come to him and pick Brady up from Jason’s lap and put him in the middle of the floor and start playing with him. Jason sat watching. And nearly every morning Roy said the same thing. “We’re good. You can lay on back down if you need to.”
Such a great person, Roy. Jason always took the offer and went back to bed. And Kathy was always right there, oblivious that anything at all was happening with her son. And so they sleep the morning away, tired from the previous night playing cards with Penna. Jason always felt guilty, head hung low, making sure he went straight to Brady and played with him for as long as he could. Kathy went to the couch with a blanket. Routinely. Jason had reserves of guilt, hidden guilt, and Italian fountains worth of regret. The cookout could help with that.
"We should take him down to Penna’s with us.” Jason rubbed calamine lotion across Brady’s back and arms. “To the cookout.”
“Why don’t we have Mom and Dad watch Brady and we can go to the lake and cookout there,” Kathy said.
“Well, I don’t know,” Jason said. And though they had only dated two years and been married for one year he had learned to walk carefully on serious matters. She was a natural at avoiding responsibility. “I think he’d like it. Yeah, he would bigtime enjoy the lake.”
Kathy got up from the couch. It was a couple hours before they could go to Penna’s. Her mother was clockwork. And she wouldn’t have minded Jason and Kathy going down early, but the one time they had ran into her, it was strange. She had turned to look at them as she faded down the hall, her nightgown swishing as she went. Jason had been reminded of the Bigfoot film footage when the thing turns and looks over its shoulder. Since then they made sure it was a good hour to go. Nine in the evening was the usual.
Instead of responding about Brady going with them Kathy went to the porch for a cigarette. Jason gave it a couple beats and followed her out, lit one himself. Nothing was said, Jason only watched his young wife until he could tell she was on board. He finished his cigarette and flicked it into the yard where they had created a small mound of used butts. Roy picked them up without telling anybody and neither of them ever wondered where they went.
The barbeque was going to be Jason, Kathy, and Penna. Her boyfriend, if she liked, they told her. Devon. She had not said yes or no on that. And Brady. He and Kathy sat in Penna’s driveway waiting. While they sat there, Jason tried to remember a time when he’d seen someone here at Penna’s house, any cars, people visiting. He couldn’t, and right away he got a chill, imagining the house, the three of them sitting on her bed in a dim room while somewhere in the house her mother roamed like a ghost, silent but watching, listening. Penna and a man in jean shorts and a Star Wars t-shirt came onto the porch.
“Hey,” Penna called out. “Be right there!”
Devon cracked a huge grin and swooped down the porch steps with Penna. He came up to the driver’s side window and leaned in a bit. Jason leaned away a bit. There was a wispy mustache on Devon’s upper lip and Jason could tell he was bucktoothed even with his lips pinched together. He had fantastic blue eyes. Pupils that seemed forever dilated and a blue so blue it seemed almost fake.
“No, I don’t wear contacts,” Devon said and chuckled in a low baritone. He turned as Penna came onto the porch. “Did you get it, babe?”
“I got it!”
Devon opened the passenger back door and stood like a valet until Penna got in. Once she was settled, he peeled off around the back of the car, slung the door open, and jumped inside. It seemed to Jason that it all happened in the span of a few seconds. The guy was fast.
There was some adjustment needed, since Penna hadn’t told them if Devon was a definite go. If Jason were being honest, he didn’t expect there to be a boyfriend at all, let alone a boyfriend who was going to show up for a barbeque at the lake. It would be a tight fit in their Grand Am. Now Penna and Devon were scrunched up, one on each side of Brady in his car seat. Jason felt a huge pang of guilt about it, not worse than he felt about letting his in-laws take care of Brady so much, but because here Brady was, in the middle of two people he had never met before. But he wasn’t crying, and Penna and Devon paid no attention to him at all. They both sat still as limestone.
About a mile from the lake near Fishtrap Dam, Penna and Devon were still silent. Even when Kathy prodded them, which she was better at than anybody Jason knew. Then, as if they had both been turned on, you couldn’t shut them up.
“We’re almost there!” It was Penna. She giggled in the way she had of giggling and this seemed to activate Devon, who started playing peep-eye with Brady, who immediately began crying. Kathy took him from the car seat and rocked him until they got to a good spot to set up.
It was a nice spot with a big sandbank and two grills. Across the lake tiny houseboats were docked just below what was a convention center. The center wasn’t visible from their spot because of the huge tree branches.
Devon was out of the car first, before Jason had time to put the Grand Am in park. He had his shirt off before Jason and Kathy had Brady out of the car seat. He jumped into the lake in his jean shorts and his tennis shoes.
“Jesus Christ,” Kathy said, looking over her shoulder.
Penna had slipped out of her pants and shirt. She was topless and had on a pair of white panties. She was taking her socks off by the time Kathy got to her. “What in the mortal fuck are you doing.” She whispered, as if Brady could understand. “Get your goddamn clothes on.”
For the first time since they picked her and Devon up, she frowned, a long drawn out frowning. “It ain’t nothing Jason ain’t seen before,” she said. “Probably bigger anyways.”
Kathy flinched like she might go after Penna, but you could almost see it in her stance. She knew Penna was too big to really get in a mix with. All that was left to do was watch her jump in with Devon. The two of them embraced and twirled in the water. Jason thought of dolphins circling with their big dumb happy faces. Or two dirty carps.
After Jason parked in a space along the top of the ridge where the two-lane road ran through, the skies darkened. Rain clouds gray like worn nickels sat low from the north. A strong cool breeze started and stayed for a long while. It was the force of the rain done it, Jason thought. Can’t get nothing done no matter how hard we try. All he wanted to do now was go to his in-laws and hit the back bedroom and sleep for a week and escape. But Penna was having no problem with the rain.
“I love swimming in the rain,” Penna shouted. Devon turned to the three of them on the bank and grinned so wide his teeth seemed to push at the edges of his ears. Jason noticed a large mole in the middle of his chest so dark it was almost black. And big. A mole almost big enough to hang a hat on. “Okay ready to eat?” Penna came stomping out of the water flinging droplets and chunks of rocky sand as she went.
“Ready to eat. Sure!” It was Kathy. She threw her hands in the air and made wide eyes at Jason. Kathy hadn’t been in a good mood since having to bring Brady.
“They ain’t nothing on the grill,” Penna said.
Kathy lost it. “Well sure they ain’t nothing on the grill, Penna, we just got here! And it’s raining. Lord have mercy!”
Devon stepped in between Kathy and Penna. He put his hand out near Kathy’s chest as if to say, one more word and I’ll send you flying backward, not the usual, now let’s keep this civil kind of open hand. “Girls it’s okay. My baby here is just hungry. Same way your baby there is hungry.”
Jason looked down to see Brady chewing the corner of a pack of Wet-Ones. He pulled it loose from him with a little effort. For a few seconds he just took Penna and Devon in. Happy. In love, it seemed. Strange, yes, but in love. Ugly and odd looking, but in love. Time to see if he could get charcoal going in the grill.
The grill had standing water in the bottom. Jason stacked aluminum foil to separate the water from the charcoal, dumped in about a dozen chunks, and hit it with the lighter fuel. Out of nowhere, Devon lit the coals and the grill erupted for a half second and settled. The coals were on fire. Devon stood proudly holding a lighter as big as a flashlight. Written on the side were the words MY BIG MOTHERFUCKING LIGHTER. He held it up like a medieval sword and yelled suddenly. “Burn Fishtrap Burn!”
Jason decided in that second enough was enough. Penna and this guy had been acting strange since they came out of Penna’s house. By god enough was enough. “Devon,” Jason said. “Devon! What is wrong with you?” He turned to Penna. “What is wrong with him, Penna? You all are being a little strange. I get new love and all that, but goddamn you two are pushing it.”
Penna’s frown from earlier reappeared. Devon’s face went blank. Jason noticed there was a light drizzle. He could see the tiny bowls popping on the water. The entire sky was now gray, no clouds, just totally gray. Kathy tossed the empty charcoal bag on the ground. She picked up Brady, gave Jason one more wide-eyed look, and started up the bank to the car.
“Wait! Wait!.” It was Devon. He had run up beside Kathy. “Yeah we’re just carried away is all. We’re sorry.” Kathy looked down the bank at Penna, who had gotten back in the lake and sat down. Her knees rested above the water just a bit. Jason was truly sure that her frown had gone farther down her face, all the way to her jawline. He recalled Devon’s big, toothy grin from earlier and felt tense in a primal way.
Devon leaned in for Brady, but Kathy turned and went back to the bank. Penna followed her with a bored gaze all the way. Jason was unsure what to do but follow Kathy’s lead, as always. He sat beside her on the metal picnic table next to the grill. Penna and Devon sat on the sandbank and put their feet in the water. Penna leaned back exposing her breasts even more than before. Every now and then Devon reached and pinched both her nipples and retreated as if he'd gotten away with something. They started whispering. Jason became convinced they were whispering about him and Kathy, maybe even Brady. He felt the hairs on his arms raise and lay flat, raise and lay flat, like pondweed dragged in a current. Just when he had worked up what he wanted to say, Penna piped up.
“Go ahead and get it, babe.”
Devon nodded like he’d been waiting all day to hear her say it. He pushed himself off the ground and made a mad dash up the bank to the Grand Am. He came back down holding something in his hand. His right hand. When Jason saw the gun he went numb. A low drone began inside his head.
Penna giggled. “It’s like when Elvis came and told Christian – ”
“Clarence!” Devon corrected her.
“Okay all right,” Penna said. “Claaaaarence. Well it’s like when Elvis comes and tells Clarence, who is really Christian, to kill Drexl. That’s what I’m trying to say!”
Devon stood directly in front of Kathy. “Which one’s Drexl do you reckon?” He raised the gun and Kathy saw it was a 9mm, the kind her dad kept in the glove box of his truck. She had watched him shoot it in the backyard, using milk jugs set up about twenty yards out. The milk jugs were blown all to shit when he was done.
“Who the fuck is Drexl?” Kathy asked. But she wasn’t yelling now, not being a smart ass. She wrapped her arm around Brady on instinct. She held him so tightly he fought, wiggling his arms and legs in unison. “He has a gun, Jason. He has a gun. He has a gun.”
As fluidly as Kathy did with Brady, Jason stepped in front of his young wife. When he did, Devon put the barrel of the gun to his chest, just left of center. Jason wondered if Devon could feel his heart thumping through the gun.
Devon said, “And these ain’t no blanks, buddy.”
Penna laughed hard, slipping her shirt back on. Then the frown returned. The corners of her mouth pulled so low Jason thought he could see her nose dropping, even her eyes sliding away at the outer corners. “Now my man you are too perfect. These ain’t no blanks, buddy. And then pow! pop!”
Devon squinted hard like his head hurt then opened his eyes and turned his body to Penna leaving the gun exactly in place on Jason’s chest. “No it’s not pow! pop! Not yet. We got to get rid of that baby. It’s messing all this up.”
“I agree,” Penna relented. She stepped to Kathy and reached out for Brady.
“You show them how it is, baby!” Devon squealed.
“I ain’t giving you my child you goddamn lunatic,” Kathy said.
When she did, Devon in a flash shot her in the neck and had the gun back on Jason before Kathy even let go of Brady. She clutched at him all the way to the ground. Jason lunged at him and Devon stopped him with an open palm against his chest. “I tell you what,” Devon said. “Here, take this and blow your brains out.” He gave Jason the gun.
Behind him, Penna stood holding Brady. She made a wringing motion with her free hand. “I break this little feller’s neck if you turn it any place but that noggin of yours,” she said.
Jason stared straight ahead at his little boy and put the barrel to his temple.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Penna came in a low voice. “Wait.”
She tossed Brady to Devon and took a red scrunchie from the front of her panties. She waved it in the air ceremoniously then pulled Jason’s hair into a tight little ponytail at the top of his head and wrapped the scrunchie around as many times as it would go and stood back.
“Oh ain’t it beautiful, Christian?” Penna whispered.
“Winona, honey, it’ll be damn near perfect.”
Sheldon Lee Compton
Penna had an eight by ten framed photograph of Christian Slater on her nightstand. In the bottom right corner was his signature in sweeping silver metallic marker. The signature might not have been real. It was a print, and she had forgotten that she had sent away for it as part of his fan club. In the most paisley parts of her mind, Christian signed that photograph especially for her.
Her mother was an invalid. She was always somewhere within the recesses of the house after eight o’ clock in the evening. The house seemed to slowly divide in half shortly after sunset, with collapsed shadows moving all the way up to the living room just off from the front door. A couch, a chair, a coffee table, and any further than that and it was the other side of the moon. Somewhere there was a kitchen certainly, and other rooms. Her mother never stirred, never checked in on her while they played hearts or Phase 10. It was all Penna ever did, play cards. Play cards and watch Christian Slater movies. Worn out VHS tapes on a dusty VCR player. Broken Arrow, Kuffs, Pump Up the Volume, Heathers. There was no cable. Only the movies.
Penna laughed in her wonderfully strange way, giggling mixed with a long peal barely held under her breath. The bulbs of her acned nose and her acned chin grew redder. She was not an attractive person. Nevermind an attractive woman. As looks go, she was uniformly ugly. Overweight, prone to sweating, she carefully tended to a mullet haircut with a massive set of bangs teased and hairsprayed into a fat horn on the top of her forehead. Most of the day, she slept, only getting up at nightfall, expecting to soon hear Kathy and Jason’s rumbling up the steps to the porch and then the three light knocks.
Well into a third round of hearts with these, her only two friends, she heaved herself into a better position on the side of her bed and smiled. She obviously didn’t prefer sitting that way. It made her uncomfortable, but she would not say a word, because whatever disadvantages Penna might have suffered in the looks department, she more than made up for it with her steadfast goodness, so good it was nearly wholesome, so good it was nearly uniform.
She dyed her hair regularly — pink, platinum blonde, a scattered dark red — all of these within a span of a few weeks. And she did this routinely. She had recently dyed it beyond-platinum and was now spastically nodding her head. Her spun bangs bounced like puffy clouds backlit by a summer sun.
“I have a boyfriend!” Penna’s voice came through high from the base of her throat. She placed her cards face down and tucked her hands between her thighs. She lifted her shoulders, dropped her chin to her chest. “His name’s Devon.”
Kathy lightly scoffed and drew a card.
“What?” Penna asked.
“I don’t know no Devons around here,” Kathy said. “Come clean. They ain’t no Devon. If there was we’d know him. Only about fifteen people in this shithole and we all know each other.”
“Gooooodamnit, Kathy,” Jason said. “Can’t you just leave well enough alone?” He tucked his chin into his shoulder and left it there. The look on Penna’s face was almost unbearable. She was so sad at that moment, Jason wanted to get up and leave. No explanation, no goodbye. Just leave. And then, right when he couldn’t stand seeing Penna’s face one more second, Kathy relaxed. “Alright, alright,” she said. “So what’s Christian going to say about this?”
Penna picked up the framed picture. Her face was marble. She put it back in its spot on her nightstand with some force. “There’s room for both.”
The plan was to have a barbeque that weekend, something outside the house. There were challenges. To begin with, it would be the first time Jason and Kathy would hang out with Penna during the day, not playing cards. Somehow both, without consulting one another, had come to the idea that Penna and cards and late nights were part of their escape. The five hours they spent playing cards with Penna were like a utopia, especially for Jason. A number of hours when he could be certain there was nothing to do except play cards and talk.
Beginning at around seven in the morning, Jason always got up with their one-year-old son Brady. Jason fed him applesauce for breakfast with his eyes closed sitting on the couch. They lived with Kathy’s parents and her dad, Roy, was always up at the same time. He didn’t pay much attention to Jason and Bradley until after he’d made coffee and went outside for his first cigarette. But after that, he would come to him and pick Brady up from Jason’s lap and put him in the middle of the floor and start playing with him. Jason sat watching. And nearly every morning Roy said the same thing. “We’re good. You can lay on back down if you need to.”
Such a great person, Roy. Jason always took the offer and went back to bed. And Kathy was always right there, oblivious that anything at all was happening with her son. And so they sleep the morning away, tired from the previous night playing cards with Penna. Jason always felt guilty, head hung low, making sure he went straight to Brady and played with him for as long as he could. Kathy went to the couch with a blanket. Routinely. Jason had reserves of guilt, hidden guilt, and Italian fountains worth of regret. The cookout could help with that.
"We should take him down to Penna’s with us.” Jason rubbed calamine lotion across Brady’s back and arms. “To the cookout.”
“Why don’t we have Mom and Dad watch Brady and we can go to the lake and cookout there,” Kathy said.
“Well, I don’t know,” Jason said. And though they had only dated two years and been married for one year he had learned to walk carefully on serious matters. She was a natural at avoiding responsibility. “I think he’d like it. Yeah, he would bigtime enjoy the lake.”
Kathy got up from the couch. It was a couple hours before they could go to Penna’s. Her mother was clockwork. And she wouldn’t have minded Jason and Kathy going down early, but the one time they had ran into her, it was strange. She had turned to look at them as she faded down the hall, her nightgown swishing as she went. Jason had been reminded of the Bigfoot film footage when the thing turns and looks over its shoulder. Since then they made sure it was a good hour to go. Nine in the evening was the usual.
Instead of responding about Brady going with them Kathy went to the porch for a cigarette. Jason gave it a couple beats and followed her out, lit one himself. Nothing was said, Jason only watched his young wife until he could tell she was on board. He finished his cigarette and flicked it into the yard where they had created a small mound of used butts. Roy picked them up without telling anybody and neither of them ever wondered where they went.
The barbeque was going to be Jason, Kathy, and Penna. Her boyfriend, if she liked, they told her. Devon. She had not said yes or no on that. And Brady. He and Kathy sat in Penna’s driveway waiting. While they sat there, Jason tried to remember a time when he’d seen someone here at Penna’s house, any cars, people visiting. He couldn’t, and right away he got a chill, imagining the house, the three of them sitting on her bed in a dim room while somewhere in the house her mother roamed like a ghost, silent but watching, listening. Penna and a man in jean shorts and a Star Wars t-shirt came onto the porch.
“Hey,” Penna called out. “Be right there!”
Devon cracked a huge grin and swooped down the porch steps with Penna. He came up to the driver’s side window and leaned in a bit. Jason leaned away a bit. There was a wispy mustache on Devon’s upper lip and Jason could tell he was bucktoothed even with his lips pinched together. He had fantastic blue eyes. Pupils that seemed forever dilated and a blue so blue it seemed almost fake.
“No, I don’t wear contacts,” Devon said and chuckled in a low baritone. He turned as Penna came onto the porch. “Did you get it, babe?”
“I got it!”
Devon opened the passenger back door and stood like a valet until Penna got in. Once she was settled, he peeled off around the back of the car, slung the door open, and jumped inside. It seemed to Jason that it all happened in the span of a few seconds. The guy was fast.
There was some adjustment needed, since Penna hadn’t told them if Devon was a definite go. If Jason were being honest, he didn’t expect there to be a boyfriend at all, let alone a boyfriend who was going to show up for a barbeque at the lake. It would be a tight fit in their Grand Am. Now Penna and Devon were scrunched up, one on each side of Brady in his car seat. Jason felt a huge pang of guilt about it, not worse than he felt about letting his in-laws take care of Brady so much, but because here Brady was, in the middle of two people he had never met before. But he wasn’t crying, and Penna and Devon paid no attention to him at all. They both sat still as limestone.
About a mile from the lake near Fishtrap Dam, Penna and Devon were still silent. Even when Kathy prodded them, which she was better at than anybody Jason knew. Then, as if they had both been turned on, you couldn’t shut them up.
“We’re almost there!” It was Penna. She giggled in the way she had of giggling and this seemed to activate Devon, who started playing peep-eye with Brady, who immediately began crying. Kathy took him from the car seat and rocked him until they got to a good spot to set up.
It was a nice spot with a big sandbank and two grills. Across the lake tiny houseboats were docked just below what was a convention center. The center wasn’t visible from their spot because of the huge tree branches.
Devon was out of the car first, before Jason had time to put the Grand Am in park. He had his shirt off before Jason and Kathy had Brady out of the car seat. He jumped into the lake in his jean shorts and his tennis shoes.
“Jesus Christ,” Kathy said, looking over her shoulder.
Penna had slipped out of her pants and shirt. She was topless and had on a pair of white panties. She was taking her socks off by the time Kathy got to her. “What in the mortal fuck are you doing.” She whispered, as if Brady could understand. “Get your goddamn clothes on.”
For the first time since they picked her and Devon up, she frowned, a long drawn out frowning. “It ain’t nothing Jason ain’t seen before,” she said. “Probably bigger anyways.”
Kathy flinched like she might go after Penna, but you could almost see it in her stance. She knew Penna was too big to really get in a mix with. All that was left to do was watch her jump in with Devon. The two of them embraced and twirled in the water. Jason thought of dolphins circling with their big dumb happy faces. Or two dirty carps.
After Jason parked in a space along the top of the ridge where the two-lane road ran through, the skies darkened. Rain clouds gray like worn nickels sat low from the north. A strong cool breeze started and stayed for a long while. It was the force of the rain done it, Jason thought. Can’t get nothing done no matter how hard we try. All he wanted to do now was go to his in-laws and hit the back bedroom and sleep for a week and escape. But Penna was having no problem with the rain.
“I love swimming in the rain,” Penna shouted. Devon turned to the three of them on the bank and grinned so wide his teeth seemed to push at the edges of his ears. Jason noticed a large mole in the middle of his chest so dark it was almost black. And big. A mole almost big enough to hang a hat on. “Okay ready to eat?” Penna came stomping out of the water flinging droplets and chunks of rocky sand as she went.
“Ready to eat. Sure!” It was Kathy. She threw her hands in the air and made wide eyes at Jason. Kathy hadn’t been in a good mood since having to bring Brady.
“They ain’t nothing on the grill,” Penna said.
Kathy lost it. “Well sure they ain’t nothing on the grill, Penna, we just got here! And it’s raining. Lord have mercy!”
Devon stepped in between Kathy and Penna. He put his hand out near Kathy’s chest as if to say, one more word and I’ll send you flying backward, not the usual, now let’s keep this civil kind of open hand. “Girls it’s okay. My baby here is just hungry. Same way your baby there is hungry.”
Jason looked down to see Brady chewing the corner of a pack of Wet-Ones. He pulled it loose from him with a little effort. For a few seconds he just took Penna and Devon in. Happy. In love, it seemed. Strange, yes, but in love. Ugly and odd looking, but in love. Time to see if he could get charcoal going in the grill.
The grill had standing water in the bottom. Jason stacked aluminum foil to separate the water from the charcoal, dumped in about a dozen chunks, and hit it with the lighter fuel. Out of nowhere, Devon lit the coals and the grill erupted for a half second and settled. The coals were on fire. Devon stood proudly holding a lighter as big as a flashlight. Written on the side were the words MY BIG MOTHERFUCKING LIGHTER. He held it up like a medieval sword and yelled suddenly. “Burn Fishtrap Burn!”
Jason decided in that second enough was enough. Penna and this guy had been acting strange since they came out of Penna’s house. By god enough was enough. “Devon,” Jason said. “Devon! What is wrong with you?” He turned to Penna. “What is wrong with him, Penna? You all are being a little strange. I get new love and all that, but goddamn you two are pushing it.”
Penna’s frown from earlier reappeared. Devon’s face went blank. Jason noticed there was a light drizzle. He could see the tiny bowls popping on the water. The entire sky was now gray, no clouds, just totally gray. Kathy tossed the empty charcoal bag on the ground. She picked up Brady, gave Jason one more wide-eyed look, and started up the bank to the car.
“Wait! Wait!.” It was Devon. He had run up beside Kathy. “Yeah we’re just carried away is all. We’re sorry.” Kathy looked down the bank at Penna, who had gotten back in the lake and sat down. Her knees rested above the water just a bit. Jason was truly sure that her frown had gone farther down her face, all the way to her jawline. He recalled Devon’s big, toothy grin from earlier and felt tense in a primal way.
Devon leaned in for Brady, but Kathy turned and went back to the bank. Penna followed her with a bored gaze all the way. Jason was unsure what to do but follow Kathy’s lead, as always. He sat beside her on the metal picnic table next to the grill. Penna and Devon sat on the sandbank and put their feet in the water. Penna leaned back exposing her breasts even more than before. Every now and then Devon reached and pinched both her nipples and retreated as if he'd gotten away with something. They started whispering. Jason became convinced they were whispering about him and Kathy, maybe even Brady. He felt the hairs on his arms raise and lay flat, raise and lay flat, like pondweed dragged in a current. Just when he had worked up what he wanted to say, Penna piped up.
“Go ahead and get it, babe.”
Devon nodded like he’d been waiting all day to hear her say it. He pushed himself off the ground and made a mad dash up the bank to the Grand Am. He came back down holding something in his hand. His right hand. When Jason saw the gun he went numb. A low drone began inside his head.
Penna giggled. “It’s like when Elvis came and told Christian – ”
“Clarence!” Devon corrected her.
“Okay all right,” Penna said. “Claaaaarence. Well it’s like when Elvis comes and tells Clarence, who is really Christian, to kill Drexl. That’s what I’m trying to say!”
Devon stood directly in front of Kathy. “Which one’s Drexl do you reckon?” He raised the gun and Kathy saw it was a 9mm, the kind her dad kept in the glove box of his truck. She had watched him shoot it in the backyard, using milk jugs set up about twenty yards out. The milk jugs were blown all to shit when he was done.
“Who the fuck is Drexl?” Kathy asked. But she wasn’t yelling now, not being a smart ass. She wrapped her arm around Brady on instinct. She held him so tightly he fought, wiggling his arms and legs in unison. “He has a gun, Jason. He has a gun. He has a gun.”
As fluidly as Kathy did with Brady, Jason stepped in front of his young wife. When he did, Devon put the barrel of the gun to his chest, just left of center. Jason wondered if Devon could feel his heart thumping through the gun.
Devon said, “And these ain’t no blanks, buddy.”
Penna laughed hard, slipping her shirt back on. Then the frown returned. The corners of her mouth pulled so low Jason thought he could see her nose dropping, even her eyes sliding away at the outer corners. “Now my man you are too perfect. These ain’t no blanks, buddy. And then pow! pop!”
Devon squinted hard like his head hurt then opened his eyes and turned his body to Penna leaving the gun exactly in place on Jason’s chest. “No it’s not pow! pop! Not yet. We got to get rid of that baby. It’s messing all this up.”
“I agree,” Penna relented. She stepped to Kathy and reached out for Brady.
“You show them how it is, baby!” Devon squealed.
“I ain’t giving you my child you goddamn lunatic,” Kathy said.
When she did, Devon in a flash shot her in the neck and had the gun back on Jason before Kathy even let go of Brady. She clutched at him all the way to the ground. Jason lunged at him and Devon stopped him with an open palm against his chest. “I tell you what,” Devon said. “Here, take this and blow your brains out.” He gave Jason the gun.
Behind him, Penna stood holding Brady. She made a wringing motion with her free hand. “I break this little feller’s neck if you turn it any place but that noggin of yours,” she said.
Jason stared straight ahead at his little boy and put the barrel to his temple.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Penna came in a low voice. “Wait.”
She tossed Brady to Devon and took a red scrunchie from the front of her panties. She waved it in the air ceremoniously then pulled Jason’s hair into a tight little ponytail at the top of his head and wrapped the scrunchie around as many times as it would go and stood back.
“Oh ain’t it beautiful, Christian?” Penna whispered.
“Winona, honey, it’ll be damn near perfect.”