Eveningland by Michael Knight

Author:Michael Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2017-02-21T16:03:22+00:00

An hour after the police have gone, you’re still hiding in the pantry. It’s dark in there but for a rectangle traced in light around the door. The shelves are mostly empty. The air smells like dog food and trash bags. Now that some time has passed you can appreciate the absurdity of your situation. It would have been better all around if you’d given yourself up. You’ve never committed a crime. You’re what people call a pillar of the community. You’ve been trying to come up with a way to extricate yourself without making your presence known—that would only put you right back where you started and this whole night has been a bad idea—but all you can think of is to wait until they go to bed. Your back aches from standing so you lower yourself quietly to the floor and cradle the shotgun in your lap.

Listen.

“I can’t believe he ate all this,” Tate says. “It’s not enough to bring a shotgun in my house, to threaten my life?”

“He wouldn’t have hurt anybody,” Hannah says.

“He had a gun. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I assume he meant to use it.”

“You don’t know him.”

“I know he ate my orange beef.”

“He paid for it,” Hannah says.

“Look,” Tate says after a moment, “maybe you’d feel better if you spent the night in a hotel. My treat. I think maybe that’s a good idea.”

When Hannah doesn’t answer, he says, “This isn’t what I bargained for.”

You understand what’s come to pass. How strange to bear witness as this man dismisses your wife, at once tragic and enraging and a source of vindication. All that food, it’s like gravel in your stomach. In the silence that follows, you can hear Clarence T scratching to be let in from the yard.

“I can’t believe I let this happen,” Hannah says, but even as she speaks, you have a sense of sagging down through the layers of how you’re supposed to feel, blood rushing in your ears as if from the swiftness of your descent, to some truer, deeper reservoir of feeling in which you are liable for the sadness you can hear in Hannah’s voice. Think of all those quiet hours that seemed to you like peace. How is it possible you overlooked her discontent?

“Pass me that fortune cookie,” Tate says.

You expect him to read it aloud but he only makes a noise in his throat and Hannah has to ask him what it says.

“It’s blank.” He sounds surprised. “Somebody fouled up on the assembly line somewhere in the People’s Republic. The Party will not be amused.”

Clarence T whines and scratches.

“Let the dog in,” Hannah says.

A moment later, the door creaks open and you hear Clarence T skitter in over the tile, hear him make a happy lap around the island. When he swipes at the pantry, your bones go brittle in your skin.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Tate says. “I’ll take you to the Radisson and you can stay there on me until your husband is in custody.

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