One Shot Away by T. Glen Coughlin Page B

walks straight to the stoop. “Your mother got a call from the police,” he says. “Did she tell you someone wrecked your father’s truck?” He places his hands on his hips and cocks his head. “The truck is virtually worthless now, good for the junkyard. Do you know anything about it, maybe something you’re not telling me?”
    â€œIs it any of your business?” Trevor stares at him.
    London grinds his teeth, then pounds across the lawn to the U-Haul.
    After a huddle in the driveway, the movers follow London into the house.
    Trevor walks Whizzer to the lawn and glances at the headless deer. His father touched up the deer with paint every year. Now the deer will never be fixed.
    A skinny mover clomps down the stoop carrying the television, the trailing wire clicking against each step. They slide the television onto the bed of London’s pickup.
    â€œWhy isn’t that going in the U-Haul?” calls Trevor.
    â€œEverything in the U-Haul is going to auction,” says London.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYour rooms are furnished, but I can use the TV as a spare. I’m giving half the money from the auction to your mother and putting the other half toward back rent.”
    Trevor feels like he’s just been struck. The kitchen furniture and Trevor’s maple dresser wait to be loaded into the U-Haul. The movers maneuver through the front door with a china closet that once belonged to Trevor’s grandmother.
    Trevor remembers his father’s tools in the garage. Some of the carving chisels and stone-splitting hammers must be a hundred years old. He jogs the driveway and lifts the garage door. He lugs a bucket of tools from under his father’s workbench.
    His mother is at the back door wrapping a box with tape.
    â€œMom, we can’t leave these,” he calls.
    She straightens, then shakes her head. “We can’t take them.”
    â€œI’ll put them in my room. I don’t care.”
    â€œLeave them for now,” she says. “We’ll figure something out with Harry.” Trevor knows it is hopeless. Harry will sell them for back rent. Trevor carries the bucket back. This cannot be happening.
    â€œWhat about grandpa’s trunk?” he calls. The trunk, battered and unpainted, is piled with newspapers in the back of the garage.
    Camille shakes her head. “I don’t think there’s anything in it. Your father was going to have a locksmith look at the lock. He thought the lock might be worth something.”
    Trevor pushes the newspapers to the floor. The wood is dark from age. The lion-faced lock has a mouth that serves as the keyhole. He tips the trunk one way, then the other. Nothing rolls or bangs around inside. He drags the trunk to the driveway. “It belonged to grandpa,” he says.
    â€œBut it’s filthy.” Camille wipes her finger in the dust.
    â€œI’m taking it!” He storms into the back door and karate-kicks the kitchen wall. His foot cracks the plaster. He stares at the shoe-shaped impression and doesn’t feel any better. He leans over and grabs his kneecaps with his hands. Nothing here was perfect, but now things are going to be plain wrong. My father is dead . The words pummel his brain. My father is dead. Joe Crow is dead . After Trevor and his mother leave the house, there’ll be no trace of his father.
    The puppy jumps on Trevor’s leg. London’s idea. A spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Trevor kicks a box across the room. Whizzer runs into the living room.
    Trevor flips on the lights in the basement. The weightlifting gym casts a shadow on the cement floor. He slides two forty-five-pound plates on each side of the Olympic-size bar and leans back on the bench press. He can hear his father telling him, “You do back and abs, rest a day, then work chest and biceps.”
    Trevor lifts the bar off the rack. His last set in this basement, in this