Quiet Homes in the Hills

D’s old beater doesn’t have a passenger seat, so you’re sitting in the back. The car’s cutting through shreds of midnight fog when he really punches it. Your necks lurch, and he laughs. He laughs, and the tires squeal, and drops of whiskey spatter the leather.

“Could you kill someone?” D asks.

You say you probably could, if you knew they deserved it.

“Dogmen,” D says, which means guys he doesn’t like: cops, stepfathers. “You could kill them.”

You say you’re not sure. If they really had it coming, you could do it.

D turns hard onto the freeway, and your head vaults like a gear sent looping. Eight gaping lanes either way, and all of it dead. All of it gray and the little rings of fog around the streetlights. You see stars, but they are moving. Airplanes and satellites. All the junk in your head. One day there will come a cold dawn, when the problems are true, you know this, but D lays into the throttle and whatever you know evaporates.

D’s this guy you used to get high with, junior year. Maybe it all started up again after Ashley left, but who knows; it’s been a blurry couple months. You don’t remember whose idea it was to drive out to her house. She’s still got something of yours.

The car reeks of burning oil. You keep expecting D to ask if you could shoot Ash in the brain. He's that kind of grinning asshole. Everyone can guess he drowns cats. You will say this: you can swing the hammer if it comes to that. You will speak slow and strong and tell him that you can, that you can do it, so he knows.

“Kick my seat again,” D yells. From the backseat, you kick and kick, and the car swerves over empty lanes. The scentless air-freshener, a palm tree, sways from the rearview. The back of D’s fist hits your face like a thrown stone. You taste iron. He is laughing. You fill your mouth with whiskey, and it burns your splitting lip.

The freeway's desolation, the shape of each overpass on its way to other suburbs, it's all a vast emptiness, malls and mountains and clear cut forests, a windblown wasteland peopled by a species of peering, skittering exiles.

“Ash's old man is legit brass?” D asks. “Real dogman type?”

“I grew up with him always up the road,” you say. “Him washing his car. Him mowing his lawn.”

“With the napalm cologne and real tall checkered socks?”

“Guy's got lots of guns. Knives,” you say.

“I like knives.”

“He wouldn't like you. You're what his knives are for.”

“What's the name?” D asks.

“Chuck, with the crewcut, the ice-blue eyes. Be gone for half the year when we were kids and Ash hating him for it.”

“He still pulls that shit?”

“Yeah,” you say.

“Off bombing folks?”

“Brass got his soul forever.”

“So tonight he's gone?” D asks.

“He's gone all weekend. Nobody home.”

“Nobody home,” D says.

D exits the freeway and careens through grids of industrial lots. You pick at the trash stuffed into the cupholders. D dryswallows another pill. You run your tongue over a busted lip, how grotesque it feels. Are you a kid who can do anything but doesn't believe it? Or a kid who can't do anything but doesn't believe it?

It's January, and there are still some homes with their Christmas lights ablaze. Gaudy fake snowmen waving hello. You stick your head into the rushing cold. The air is wet on your dry eyes. You blink. Strangers are shooting fireworks from the hills above town. Sparks of orange and green diffuse into the fog like battlefield artillery. They can’t be real. Nothing to do here but drugs and vandalism. When you don't know how to build anything you only want to destroy what's come before. You watch a flicker of police sirens winding away toward distant cities.

D stops the car to piss hot whiskey, and you take over driving. Now he’s in the backseat. He’s singing. You crank the stereo, but the speakers are blown, and it’s just caustic electricity. You take a long pull from the bottle and toss it back to him. You switch the brights on and off. D starts kicking the driver’s seat with his black boots, the kind of shitkickers meant for stomping cigarette butts and roaches. You swerve so hard to make him stop he tumbles across the back.

You and Ash were never royalty in school, but you’d been together longer than most. Strange to think about her now. Everything she was, you can't let her be that way anymore. It's you or me, she said. I break your heart or I break my own. You didn’t see it coming. Everything she was to you is locked away, and you don't know where she hid the key.

The memory hits like someone falling down stairs. You’d taken the bus an hour west, to the fancy strip mall by the beach, looking for a gift. You’d messed this up before, forgotten Valentines. You were trying to get ahead for once. So you walked from shop to shop but didn’t buy anything. You couldn’t afford any of it, none of the earrings or bangles or hand-poured candles – and you knew, absolutely, you didn’t belong in that world. A nervous kid in shitty clothes. Faces behind counters watching you leave. Only Ash could be your ticket in, your point of access, but without her you were nothing. So you’d bought a nice box at a stationary shop and wrapped the silver chain your aunt left before she went away. This has to be enough, you’d thought.

Out of town, there are no streetlights, and the air smells like sage and rain. The shapes of fences are sharp in the headlight glare. Behind you, D’s yelling. You glance in the rearview as he throws the empty whiskey bottle out the window, and you expect to hear a shattering but there is nothing.

D's howl: “Ashley cheated on you man.”

You don’t answer. You’re getting closer now. The tires squeal and break loose as you shift into fourth.

“She cheated on you man. You gonna string her up. Hang her high.”

You shouldn’t respond to this.

“She slept with someone else, man. She ain't yours no more.”

“She didn't cheat on me,” you say.

“No,” D says. “She dumped you to fuck some other guy. She's a nice girl.”

“You don't talk about her.”

“What if I fucked her? I bet she's a real nice girl.”

You lay on the brakes, and the car shudders to a stop. You get out, throw open D’s door, pull him from the backseat and kick him once in the gut. Him grunting and vomiting on your old sneakers.

D jumps to his feet with a snarl and tackles you to the ground. You both roll from the cracked asphalt into muddy grass. He lays a right to your face, and you spit out a twiggy mouthful of weeds. Your lip tears open again. You think about the little time you've spent with D and how much he's hurt you.

You drive onward in your cloud of burnt oil, passing the dim silhouettes of craftsman homes. No music now, you’re too close. Both of you are black-eyed and completely loaded when you roll into Ashley's neighborhood.

“You could take him though?” you ask.

“Who?”

“Chuck.”

“Who?”

“Chuck, Ashley’s dad.”

“Yeah. I can take a dad. Not my dad. Someone's dad though.” And D thinks for a moment. “Nobody's a real dogman like a dad is.”

The town's stale orange venom glows over the hills. There are patches in the clouds and you can see stars, one or two. You pass a house with its porchlight gleaming and the door too perfect, the welcome mat swept clean, the dust motes immobile forever. Somewhere behind that door folks are sleeping under flannel blankets with their white curtains drawn. They'll shiver when moonshadows creep across their bedframes.

“To stand strong, above the tides of melancholy, like a lighthouse,” you say.

“Yeah?”

“You liked that one D?”

“Didn't really hear.”

“A poem I wrote.”

He says huh like he understands, but he never heard.

Matters have become more serious. Your lights are off. You park the car. D hands you a black mask, and you pull it over your face. You look at each other, and D’s eyes are hard. “You. Tonight. You ante up. She ain't yours.”

You nod.

No cars in her driveway and you’re relieved. The neighborhood is silent. This has always been the point in the night when D ceases to be a predictable variable.

“I’m thinking about what we’re doing,” you say.

“Don’t wig out on me.”

“What are we doing out here?”

“She took something of yours in the breakup, and you’re taking it back. Simple,” he says.

You watch D with his hazy eyes and his lizard-throat and think for a moment.

“Simple,” you repeat.

“Attaboy.”

You notice your thrumming heartbeat. For some reason you check the time. You can’t tell if the fog is lifting or getting thicker.

“You know what you're looking for?” D says.

“Yes. A necklace. My necklace,” you say.

“Where is it?”

“Has to be in her room.”

D puts his hand on your shoulder in a gesture that is too friendly for tonight. You brush it off. You both hop the fence and stand teetering in Ashley’s backyard. The windows are dark. Nobody home. You know the whole scene. The pool, the barbecue, Chuck’s horseshoe pit, the bottlebrush where you and Ash used to make out. You have this crystalline memory of walking home with her after high school, and she’s holding a cherry-red branch of bottlebrush.

“Nice place,” D says.

“Gotta take your shoes off when you get inside.”

“Chuck’s a rich cocksucker with a pretty daughter.”

“His little darling,” you say.

D searches the yard and finds an old brick behind the air-conditioner. You glance at the sleeping neighborhood peering over the fence. All those silent homes. All the blinds shut tight. With one strike, D neatly breaks the bay window and reaches inside to unlatch it. You watch the neighbor’s houses for any signs of life. Someone switching on a lamp. Someone sneezing. But everything is hushed. There’s a soft electric hum from the streetlights in the fog.

D's already opened the window and crawled inside. His black boots disappear into Ashley’s home. Everything around you is so still. This ordered street with its textbook cul-de-sac and clean black asphalt, the neat chaparral hills. You and D are entropy walking. You take a breath and climb inside.

D’s in the dining room. He’s already shuffling through the junk drawers beside the phone.

“Go find it,” he tells you.

“Okay.”

“What are you worried about?” he asks, but you don’t respond.

In the front room, dust hangs in the dim slats of light filtering through the blinds. Near the door there's a family photo of Chuck and Ash, all dressed up and looking charming and trying desperately to hide their dysfunction.

You take a breath. Because the walls are too close. Your shoulders are clenched leather cords. Your gut is twisted from the weight of how wrong this is. Everything is so tense in the dark. All the furniture, all the frames on the walls. You run two fingers over the soft felt on Chuck’s pool table and swallow your nausea. You could have been anywhere else tonight.

D walks in from the dining room, and you realize he isn’t hitting you anymore. He isn’t reminding you that you’re weak. He doesn’t mention who Ashley’s with. He seems quiet. Maybe you’re both starting to come down.

“D, are you scared?”

“Don’t wig out,” he says, and he watches your eyes. “What is there for me?”

“Plenty.”

He stares at you through his black mask for a moment, like he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t say a word. You’re breathing so hard the mask is already wet around your mouth. D disappears down a hallway. You can hear him rifling through cabinets. The Christmas tree is still standing in the front room. It’s been there so long it doesn’t smell like anything. You think about popping one of D’s pills, but decide against it. You start up the stairs.

The door to Chuck’s office is open when you step onto the white carpet of the second-story hallway. Inside the office, on the wall, his collection of antique, exotic knives look like all the thorns of hell’s pale garden. Oiled leather handles, blades curved and serrated and so deadly, all of them. You wonder where this guy gets them all. That's the room D should be raiding. Guns, knives, every kind of danger.

Ashley’s room is at the end of the hall. There are frames down the walls, diplomas and prized certificates and photos of grandparents. A picture of Ashley’s mother at the oldest brother’s graduation. Chuck with a dumbass smile holding an enormous trout by a stream. Ashley in dresses, looking like summer, looking like spring. You hear D in another room. He’s stealing bullets; he’s looking for wristwatches. By now he’s already filled his pockets with fresh prescription bottles.

You come to the door into Ashley’s room, and you think: it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. You slowly push it open and step inside. Her bed is made. You expect to see a big pile of clothes by the closet, but she’s keeping the place tidy. It smells like her.

You start digging through her things. All of her shoeboxes and all of her drawers with broken handles full of bobby pins, sunglasses, and torn envelopes. You find an old worn suitcase, but inside there's only a single blank piece of notebook paper all folded up. What are you expecting to find?

There is nothing here, nothing at all, that you need.

What did that necklace mean to you? Anything? What it means to you now is that Ashley has it, and you don’t have it, and you hate her for that. You open another cabinet and find nothing. Another, nothing. You slam the thing closed and the whole dresser shakes.

Earlier today, you thought you knew what was wrong. You thought you needed to turn some corner before you could get her out of your head. But what if you don’t find anything and you don’t turn that corner? It scares you to think about. This is the moment when you expected to realize something, anything, but it’s only the anger inside, the bitter uncontrollable snarl. How proud would she be, seeing you like this?

All the drawers are open, all the lids to all the boxes are strewn around the room. You’ve yanked the sheets off her bed. You’ve dug through her trash like a dog. Her closet is flung open. You’re tearing skirts off hangers. You’re breaking the hangers. No luck with her jewelry box. No luck finding anything in her shoes. You hurl a vial of nail polish, but instead of shattering it punches a dent in the drywall. You kick her bedroom door closed. You’re tearing posters off the walls. You’re ripping pillows in half, and goose feathers are falling everywhere. There’s feathers everywhere. You’re screaming. Where is it? Where the fuck is it?

“Hey!”

You look at D with your bleary eyes.

“Jesus goddamn Christ. Did you find it yet?”

You shake your head. No, you haven’t found it yet.

“What does it look like?”

You look at D. He’s standing in the doorway. You watch him.

“What does it look like?” he asks.

You clear your throat. “It’s silver,” you say. “It’s a silver chain.”

“Okay.”

D steps forward. You catch your breath while he starts sorting through debris. You look around at Ashley’s things and realize it’s not the same place you used to know. This is hers. It’s all hers now. It’s always been hers.

“This is rough, man,” D says. “Needles and haystacks. We should be seeing a little glint of silver somewhere.”

“Yeah,” you say, and you take a sorry, ragged breath.

You sit beside Ash’s closet and hold your head. Everything in your head. You feel terrible. Day after day you wake up, and you’re a wreck. Someone the other day on the street tried to give you a dollar, and you took it; you took it so fast. You’re never finding anything in this room.

“Needles and haystacks, man,” D says.

You stand up, too quick, and the blood rushes to your temples. You lean back against the wall. Then there comes the terrifying flash of headlights at Ashley’s window, and something loud rolls into the driveway. He’s home early, you know it, and your heart starts again.

D stares at the glare as a cave dweller might. Feathers have settled everywhere. D’s yelling: “You said nobody was home! You. Said. No. Body. Was. Home.”

“I thought he was gone for the weekend.”

“You fucked up, man.”

“I don’t know. All I heard was Chuck’s gone for the weekend. That’s all I heard.”

D punches you so hard you fall. Your lip tears open again. You stand and hit back, but D has that strong right. The room spins. It’s all fists. You go down, and you’re wrestling in a storm of goose feathers before you just straight kick D in the jewels and say, “Gone for the weekend! That’s all I heard. This isn’t my fucking fault.”

“No?” he chokes.

“You boosted everything you wanted?”

He nods, yes.

“We need to go.”

D’s doubled-over holding his junk. “He’s gonna notice the broken window downstairs.”

“Maybe he calls 911 first. Buys us time.”

“Maybe he just kills us.”

“That would solve a lot of our problems.”

D points to Ashley’s bedroom window. “Can we jump?”

You can jump, you think, but it’s a legbreaker. You look at D. “I thought you wanted to take him,” you say. “Nobody’s a real dogman like some girl’s Marine dad.”

“No way,” he says. “This is smash and grab. I’m not messing with that guy.”

“No?”

“No way in hell. The window?”

“Yeah, open it.”

D nods. Matters have become so much more serious. You take a plastic folding chair from Ash’s closet and prop it up under the doorknob. You glance back at D, and he’s already opened the window and broken the screen with one, two kicks. There’s noise from downstairs. You hear Chuck’s voice calling out, but you don’t hear what he’s saying. Your heart is a mallet in your chest.

“We’ve made a friend,” you say to D, but he can’t hear you. He’s already crawling onto the slate roof outside. You look around. This is the last time, absolutely, the very last time, you will ever see this place.

“Ashley!” you hear Chuck yell, and it’s the worst kind of deja-vu. He has exactly the barking voice you’d expect. “Ashley! What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Dad,” you yell, and you’re out the window.

It’s wet and cold out there. The fog has turned to rain. You’re kneeling just beyond the window, holding the side of the house with one hand, trying to find your footing. Ahead, D’s scrambling hands-and-knees on the thin shelf of slate roof. He edges up to a corner and stands, about to leap onto the front lawn, but he's put too much weight on a roof tile, and it cracks. A stone shard slides into the driveway. There’s a shattering sound that can only be the sound of Chuck’s windshield, freshly broken. D tumbles off-balance in a skelter of limbs – there’s nothing for him to grab – and pitches off the roof. You hear the dull clamor of plastic hitting concrete because he’s fallen onto the trash cans.

Dude’s dead, you think. Has to be.

Behind you, Chuck’s kicking down Ashley’s door. Two or three more kicks from now it’s all going to be splinters, plastic chair and white door and everything. When that happens, if you’re still here on this roof, it won’t be long before you’re so much more mangled than D. The door breaks, and Chuck's yelling so loud.

“You scumbag!” he screams. “You’re dead!”

You sort of just take a breath and squint your eyes and run for it. You run to the edge of the roof where you think the lawn is and somehow make it without slipping and jump as far as you can through the wet air. Fifteen feet down at least. There’s the sudden cracking flare of gunfire behind you. You need to land right or something’s broken bad, but you’re not thinking about that.

“You’re fucking dead!” Chuck yells.

You hit the ground, and a sharp pain rips through your shins. The lawn is muddy and slick. Coughing and holding one leg, you get up quick and look for D, who's picking himself out from the tumbled garbage bins. Trash is spewed across the sideyard, beer cans and rotten leaves, the ribs of a chicken carcass. D’s got a fresh gash across his cheek. He looks at you, and you look at him, and you both know. You break towards the car at a dead run. Chuck shoots again from the window, and the bullet sparks the sidewalk like a firecracker and echoes off into the night.

“Goddamn punkass scum!” he screams until his voice breaks. Windows are lighting up all down the street. D spins the tires on wet asphalt, and moments later you’re doing sixty down that dark road.

“Feel any better?” D asks.

You’re in the hills again, between towns. It’s all night behind you, nothing in the rearviews.

“About?”

“Ashley fucking some other dude.”

You laugh.

“Do you?”

“No, man,” you say, “I don’t think so.”

There’s a stop sign ahead, and D isn’t slowing. The engine hums onward; your heart hasn’t quit pounding. The scentless palm tree dangles from the mirror, above the carpet of trash beneath your feet. D will never clean it, and you’ll never help. He blows through the stop as another car enters, lights flashing as you avoid collision, horn fading to nothing.   

You watch the night rush by. Dark roads again. You could both be dead, just like that. What is there to say? D turns off the main road and heads into the silent rows of industrial streets.

After a while, he mutters, “They say it’s only up from here.”

“They say a lot of shit.”

“And you didn’t even find the damn necklace.”

“No,” you say. “It’s gone now.”

“Gone forever,” D says.

You want to convince him that… That what? That everything’s fine now? You know there’s another bottle of whiskey somewhere in this car, and you start digging around for it. Nothing will be fine, not anytime soon. You both know it. You find the bottle and take a burning swig, and it is exactly what you wanted. D turns down an alley and parks in a vacant lot to wait out the night. You take turns with the bottle until it’s spent.

When you wake it’s morning, and D is driving. The sun shines on your tired eyes. You’re about to ask where he’s heading, but you stop yourself. The clouds are low in the pale sky. You’d like to pretend you don’t know where you are, or how you got there, but you remember enough. You sit up, and clear your throat, and watch the street signs as they pass.

Matt Knutson is a graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop, where he received the Joanna Leake Prize for Fiction. He's been a resident at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sledgehammer Lit, Bridge Eight, Expat Press, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @mattknuts