The Salt Palace by Darren Defrain

Author:Darren Defrain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Salt Palace
ISBN: 9781938604645
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2005-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XX

A New Truth

We watch the end of the game. The Jazz rally and the game goes to overtime, but they don’t have enough left in the tank, the Trailblazers feeding off the hostility and the intensity of the crowd, and they go down 94-9168 in O.T. Randy has finished off the bottle of whiskey, it is tucked under his wing like an egg, and he is fast asleep on top of the bed. I think I should take off his shoes, but that seems too personal. Besides, I’m afraid more than his shoes might come off if I pulled too hard. He looks so harmless laid out on the bed like he is. His chest, pock-marked and bitten, rises and falls, falls and rises to its own dreamy rhythms. His jaw hangs open and he moves his tongue as if he is speaking, though no sound escapes his lips.

“Don’t mutter so much there, Chompers,” I say. I’m disappointed that the Jazz lost the game. I can already see the headlines screaming out from the USA Today that the Trailblazers have turned the tide. I want another drink. Just enough so that I can fall asleep. Randy’s bag sits on the foot of his still-made bed, it’s mouth unzipped and falling open. I think I might find another bottle there which I can pin on him in the morning. He won’t remember, I think.

When I stand I realize I’m more drunk than I thought, but once I stand it’s as if my body is reading from a script. I stand before Randy’s bag, a huge duffel bag that must weigh as much as Randy does. It is so full of clothing and books that I can’t see into it to where he keeps his stash.

I bury my hand in the bag and work it around like a mole, probing book after book, garment after garment. There are about twenty rolled pairs of socks my hands glide across until I feel the cold neck of a bottle and pull it from the bag.

What comes out of the bag is the cold, silver of handgun. I don’t know anything about handguns or their caliber except to know that this one is pointed directly into my face. It is a huge, heavy gun. I’ve never held a handgun in my palm before, and it is much heavier than I thought it would be. Though it feels good in the palm when I turn it over. It feels like something you want to have in your hand. BANG BANG BANG, I squeeze off three imaginary rounds at the television set before I realize the gun might be loaded.

It’s not rocket science to open the gun and check the chamber, and there they are, like six cocoons, or like six wasps waiting to hatch from the nest. I pull them out, carefully, one after the next. They are silver, like the gun, and I think perhaps they are a joke, a souvenir. But they are heavy and stamped .

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