North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud Page A

leaves. Now he’s speeding down a winding two-lane blacktop, going so fast he can’t stay in his lane. If anyone else appears on this road, everybody’s fucked. He makes a fast right when he comes to the turn-in for Wild Acre, the truck hitting the bumps in the road too hard and smashing its undercarriage into the dirt. He pushes it up the hill, the untended dirt road overgrown with weeds. The truck judders around a bend, something groaning under the hood. The wheel slips out of his hands and the truck slides into a ditch, coming to a crunching halt and slamming Jeremy’s face into the steering wheel.
    The headlights peer crookedly into the dust-choked air, illuminating the house frames, which look like huge, drifting ghosts behind curtains of raised dirt and clay. He leans back in his seat, gingerly touching his nose, and his vision goes watery. The full moon leaks silver blood into the sky. Something inside him buckles, and acid fills his mouth. He puts a hand over it, squeezes his eyes shut, and thinks, Don’t you do it, don’t you fucking do it.
    He doesn’t do it. He swallows it back, burning his throat.
    He slams his elbow into the door several times. Then he rests his head on the steering wheel and sobs. These are huge, body-breaking sobs, the kind that leave him gasping for breath, the kind he hasn’t suffered since he was a little kid. They frighten him a little. He is not meant to sound like this.
    After a few moments he stops, lifts his head, and stares at the closest house frame, bone-colored in the moonlight. The floor is covered in dark stains. The forest is surging behind it. In a scramble of terror he wrenches the rifle from its rack, opens the door and jumps into the road.
    The gun is slippery in his hands. He strides into the house frame and raises the gun to his chin, aiming it into the dark forest, staring down the sight. The world and its sounds retreat into a single point of stillness. He watches, and waits.
    “Come on!” he screams. “Come on! Come on!”
    But nothing comes.

S.S.

    In the morningbeforegoing to work, Nick found his mother and gave her a kiss. He used the flashlight to locate her, careful as always to keep the beam from touching her. This time she was in the kitchen, her wheelchair backed into a small alcove between the refrigerator and the oven. She seemed only barely conscious when he reached her, which was not unusual; her head bobbed gently when his lips touched her cheek, as though nodding in recognition. When he backed away from her he almost tripped over a plate she had left lying on the floor. A quick scan with the flashlight revealed the bright red splash of blood on the china, a glaring arc of beauty like a detail from a Pollock canvas. Nick retrieved the plate and placed it in the sink. He went back to his mother and made sure the blanket was secure around her legs, and that she was warm.
    The kiss was an act of duty and of love; if there was a difference between them, Nick did not recognize it.

    Miss Josephine’s wasa little Cajun restaurant half a block off the distal end of Bourbon Street, in what Nick had always thought of as the Fag District. It was far enough from the main drag that the owner claimed to be unable to afford an air conditioner in the kitchen. So the staff opened the delivery door, admitting the warm, viscous subtropical air, laced with the perfume of rotting garbage coming from the trash bags stacked along the curb every afternoon. The kitchen was tiny and cramped, even with only the three employees: Nick, who labored over the steamy exhalations of the power washer; and the two black line cooks, Tyrone and Big Jake. When business was slow—which was nearly always—and there were few dishes to wash, the owner justified Nick’s hours by having him prep food for the night shift and sometimes for the following day. This work consisted of peeling potatoes, cleaning spinach, de-veining shrimp, and skinning and cutting long, phallic ropes of