“Bad Night for Harry” by Jack R. Johnson

In the morning Hank Jenkins sold me a ten-foot by sixteen-foot United States flag and cautioned me about terrorists. 

“Eco-terrorists, Harry, they burn up SUVs.”

Hank has this way of talking when he gets excited: his eyes bug out, and he doesn’t so much say his words as spit them. I wiped my face and took a step back. 

“You got to be careful, Harry,” Hank went on, “you got to be watching. Earth Liberation Front, they call them. ELF for short, isn’t that cute?”

Hank was concerned because I own the only SUV lot in Farmington, HomeLand SUVs. The “Homeland” part was Hank’s idea, too. He’s pretty bright when it comes to marketing. Hank sold me the flag for $244.99—a five percent discount price—and he threw in 150 free American flag decals to give away to new owners. “Because we are old friends!”

After Hank left, Tracy Lyons ran the new flag up the pole while I scanned the lot. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but Tracy was uneasy.

“Harry,” she said, “we have to talk.”

I could see Tracy didn’t want to talk about eco-terrorists, no matter what Hank said. She wanted to talk about us.

“Isn’t that a beautiful flag, Tracy?”

She remained unmoved, repeated, “Harry. We have to talk.”

I knew she wanted to pick up where we had left things off last week, but I didn’t want to. She seemed especially needy and that was not great if I wanted to be discreet, an important consideration because of my wife. 

The first time it happened was pure accident. A little kiss and she got all teary-eyed. She hugged me tightly, even whimpered. After the sales folks left, Tracy and I went to my office. The sun was down. I took off our clothes. I was in my underwear, staring through the blinds at my new line of Yukon XLs. The sky was dark blue, and the moon hung bright and low, shimmering off the SUV hoods. It was so beautiful. Tracy began to choke up. 

“Oh, Harry. I’ve wanted this for so long.”

She told me about her husband and how, one day, she was forced to take herself and her six-year-old, Lauren, into a domestic violence shelter. She told me that she so wanted to leave him and either live alone or find someone warm and kind. Like me, she said. 

After she was done speaking, I decided it was a bad idea getting involved with her. She struck me as a woman who is nothing but loose ends. Despite that, the next night I was a fool. I couldn’t sleep. So I called her and we met at the dealership again. One thing led to another and we ended up on the couch in the back office. 

“It’s so good to be with you,” she said.

She began running her fingers through my hair. 

“Isn’t this nice.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“Oh, I am. I am happy. I’m worried about my wife.”

Tracy went quiet.

Later that night, I still couldn’t sleep, so I wrote Tracy a letter. Now I thought the letter was artfully done. I told her I had a peculiar problem with enticing young women like herself who might see me as a decisive man of power and industry. I explained that men such as myself can operate as an incredible aphrodisiac to young and impressionable women like herself, offering them a vision of a perfect life. After I dropped off the letter at her desk, Tracy didn’t say a word. We went three days back to back, not a peep. I lay awake in bed thinking about it. Then, I broke the ice this morning by asking her to help me hoist the flag. That’s when she wanted to have her talk. 

We clipped the flag on the line and began to run it up the pole. 

“I am chickening out, Tracy,” I told her. “You are too much woman for me.”

She replied: “That’s not what you said in your letter. You said you didn’t want me to become overpowered.”

“Did I say that?”

She pulled once on the flag. It moved up about half a foot.

“Yes, you said that. You said you understood that you have a great power over women.”

“Well, that might be true, but the main thing is … I didn’t want to become so emotionally entangled … that was the main thing.” I cleared my throat, pulled up on the flag myself, about a foot. We both stood there at 8 a.m. with the morning traffic passing us and the wind whipping and the smell of exhaust filling the dawn air. It was an overcast day and things were shaping up for rain. Rain is flat evil for SUV sales. I tied off the line for the flag halfway up the pole and asked Tracy for a cigarette. I didn’t care who saw me.

“I thought you quit.”

“I did.”

She handed me a cigarette, and I tried to light it. The wind was blowing strong against her lighter. I leaned up against the pole, and she looked at me and said, “Well, I guess as long as you’re smoking I might as well tell you.”

The cigarette finally lit and I took a long drag and blew out smoke. “Tell me what?”

“My husband found your letter.”

“Well fuck.”

“That’s what he said.”

I coughed, blew out more smoke, jammed the cigarette in my mouth, untied the line for the flag, and tugged on it hard three times.

“What, did you leave it out for him?”

“No, I had it in my purse. He got suspicious and went through it. He says he’s going to kill you.”

“Damn it, Tracy.”

“He says he’s going to kill me, too.”

“Well, what did you say?”

“I lied. I told him it was just a kiss but he wouldn’t give me a chance to say anything else. He just told me to pack my bags and leave.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. We’re over at Mama’s.”

“When was this?”

“Last night, Friday night.”

“That’s great. You couldn’t call?”

“What would you want me to tell your wife?”

I pulled the flag the rest of the way up until it snapped into place. I took one last drag of the cigarette and felt the first raindrops of the morning. I flicked out the cigarette and walked across the lot into the dealership. Tracy followed at a discreet distance.

“You should bring the flag down if it’s raining.”

“Right.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t written that stupid letter.”

“I was just trying to be honest.”

“Like hell you were.”

“Has Bobby ever killed anyone?”

“Just deer.”

“Does he take any pleasure in it?”

“He says he likes to hear the sound they make when they fall in the woods.”

I opened the door for the dealership and we both stood there, listening to the rain open up outside.

“We should call the police.”

Tracy shook her head. “Bobby has a police scanner. He and Deputy Wylie go hunting together.”

“Still, don’t you think—”

  Tracy interrupted, “Also if you tell one person, just one, everyone in town will know, and Bobby will be obligated to murder you—and me too, maybe—just to maintain some respect. If you don’t breathe a word, he might just forget about it.”

“He’s going to forget about it?”

Tracy sounded defensive. “He might. I don’t think he’s 100 percent. I told him that you were just bragging. That you hadn’t done more than kissed me once and I had slapped you, and you wrote that silly letter in response.”

“You think he believed that?”

“He didn’t kill me, did he?”

I thought about that. “No he didn’t.”

The dealership was dead quiet. 

“So what do you think we should do?”

“Nothing,” said Tracy.

✶

In another half hour, the sales folks came in. Saturday is our biggest day, unless it rains, then I usually cut the boys loose early. We shut down the shop at three, and I climbed into my Yukon, making a beeline for my house. Once I was there, I double locked the back door, made sure the garage door was locked, then sat and tried to watch the Lakers’ game. But I couldn’t focus. I kept my eyes on the living room window. We have a large picture window that looks out over my front lawn and down into the street. It occurred to me that Bobby could see me from the street and take a shot from the shelter of our neighbor’s elm. I lifted up from the rocking chair and turned off the lights. I turned off the television, too, because I thought it made too much light, enough so Bobby could get a bead. 

In the dark, I watched the road. Whenever lights flared, I tensed, waited. It was difficult to say what would reach Bobby. He had a violent nature from what Tracy said and aspired to police work, which naturally made me nervous as police types are only a hair’s breadth from being criminals themselves. 

So I decided that I should be ready if Bobby came barreling up to the door. I pulled out my Ruger .44 semi-auto carbine with a Comanche scope from my rifle cabinet in the den. I loaded the clip from my dresser drawer and went back to the rocking chair facing our big picture window. 

With all the lights off. 

I had a good view of our front lawn and the driveway. I sat there until Marcie came home. She stood in the doorway, looked at me sitting in the dark, and looked at the Ruger. I had a hand on the stock and a hand on the barrel.

“It’s those terrorists,” I told her. “You just let them try to torch my Yukon.”

“But why no lights?”

“I’m drawing them in.”

Marcie shook her head and flicked on the lights. 

I drew back in the chair, glanced toward the road.

“You know Hank is always exaggerating. And what about your dealership? Why would they worry about one SUV when they could get the whole batch at the dealership?”

I nodded, lifting up from the chair so I would be clear of the window.

“Let’s go into the kitchen,” I said.

She looked down at my Ruger. “Put that thing back.”

“Honey…”

“Don’t ‘honey’ me, Harry, I told you I wouldn’t have a loaded rifle in this house and I meant it.”

“How do you know it’s loaded?”

“You don’t hold it that way unless it’s loaded.”

“Right. That’s right,” I said. I backed away from the kitchen, moving toward the door. “I’m going to check out the lot.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

“Have you heard something else? Is that the problem?” Marcie stared at me. “What’s the matter with you, Harry?”

“Nothing. Isn’t people burning your livelihood enough notice? Do we have to wait for HomeLand SUVs to burn to the ground before I take notice?”

Marcie shook her head and went into the kitchen.

I left through the side door, checked the lawn carefully, made a dash for the drive and climbed into my Yukon, pulled out of my drive, and headed up the street. I circled our block about five times, looking for Bobby’s vehicle, which, as I recall, was a trashy Trans Am in bad need of a paint job. And a leaking sunroof. Messy people. Bobby and Tracy. I realized for sure that I should have never started that business. I popped open my glove compartment, looking for my secret stash of cigarettes. When I found the pack, I only had one left and it was broken. I crumpled it up and threw it out the window, pack and all. When I did that, I noticed our neighbor, Elsie Jenkins, parting her curtains to get a peek at who kept driving around the neighborhood. So I veered out of the subdivision and headed down to my lot. Bobby would not be looking for me down there. He’d be looking for me at my house. On the way over, I spied Sheriff Ernst heading in the opposite direction. I gave him an easy smile and a two-fingered salute. 

HomeLand SUVs appeared on the right, just off 301. Old Glory was still up there, flapping above the Explorers and the Tahoes and the Yukons. Really gorgeous. The place looked great. I scanned the rows of SUVs as I rolled in. No matter what kind of shape my personal life is in, I’ve always loved the sense of fulfillment I get from scanning my inventory. I spun around the lot and was ready to head back to the office for some television time when I thought I saw someone running near the back. I gunned my engine, turned a sharp right to catch him in my headlights. I saw dark hair diving behind a Ford Explorer. Dark hair!

“Bobby!”

I screeched my Yukon to a stop, flared the lights to high beam, and slipped down from the SUV, careful to keep behind my door. I figured I’d stay low with the lights flooding him, keeping him blinded so that he couldn’t get a clean shot.      

“Bobby!” I yelled. There was no answer, but I didn’t really expect one. “Bobby, I know you know. I am really sorry about what happened with Tracy.”

I leaned against the open door of the Yukon. I heard rustling behind the Explorer. Then I had an idea. I spied my rifle propped against the door. Keeping low, I reached in for it, managed to snag the shoulder strap and drag it toward me. It was loaded so I had to be careful. I had to keep down so Bobby couldn’t get a clean shot. Crazy bastard.

“It was only a kiss, Bobby. Do you hear me?”

I slung the strap around my wrist and leaned forward, bracing the Ruger between the edge of the door and the SUV frame. 

“I am apologizing, Bobby.”

While I talked, I roamed with my Comanche scope, a small zero of space filled with the cross-haired headlights of my SUVs, trees, and asphalt. My idea was to hit him first. Then I might have a fighting chance. 

“Let’s talk about this. I’ll buy you a beer. You want a beer, Bobby?”

The world is different when you see it through a Comanche scope. Everything is about aim. You don’t consider certain ethical questions, really, you become practical. Is it a good shot? What’s the wind doing? Do you have a clear path? Usually a chest shot is the best for a deer. When I saw him rise up from behind the Explorer, I caught a glimpse of something metallic, and aimed for the chest and squeezed. As soon as I squeezed the trigger I knew it was a good, clean shot. I could trace the trajectory of the bullet in my mind, cleaving his chest right above the solar plexus. In the same instance, I caught a glimpse of the man’s face and knew it was not Bobby Lyons. I knew as soon as the echo died that I had made a serious miscalculation. I didn’t know who this was. Damn.

“Bobby!” I yelled, even though I knew it wasn’t him. I crept forward, holding the Ruger at arm’s length. “Bobby?” 

He was still breathing. My shot, I saw, had taken out his lung. His hand was grabbing at his chest, like it might be able to pull himself together. His eyes followed me. They were black and very pissed off. I’ve seen eyes like that in wild bucks I’ve shot. I took a cautious step back. 

“I’m sorry about this,” I said.

He just stared.

“No, really, I am. Normally, I wouldn’t.”

I stopped talking, annoyed with myself. It’s not as if I had set out to shoot the man. He was old. Older than I had thought when I saw him through the scope. Nearly sixty, I guessed. 

“It was a mistake. You’re going to be fine.”

He definitely was not Bobby. He wore a sweatshirt that advertised Key West. When he opened his mouth to speak, I noticed a black spot that was decayed, or maybe he was missing a tooth. He gurgled something I couldn’t make out.

“What?”

I lowered my ear and then he whispered again and I understood what he was saying: “Why?” Boy. Was that a good question.

I shook my head. “Oh, man. I don’t know…”

No response. I tried a different tact: “You were trespassing, okay? Not that you probably did it consciously, but still. You know. It is my property.”

This argument didn’t seem to change his mind about the relative merit of my position.

“We’ll get you some help here shortly, just hang tight.” Although it wasn’t like he was going anywhere.

He had that scrawny look old men get, a kind of gizzard-ly, whisker-ly unkempt-ness. I walked over to my Yukon and slipped the Ruger in the back, threw a blanket over it, and turned off the lights. I sighed, shut the door, and just sat there until my eyes got used to the darkness. I didn’t want to talk with him anymore, and I didn’t want to look at him anymore.  

It’s funny how much time can pass in a stressed-out situation, because your mind is working at a feverish pace, but your body is taking the same time it always does. I turned on the radio and listened to a Toby Keith song. Then I studied the old man until I didn’t think his chest was moving anymore. I slipped out of the Yukon again and walked over to him.

“Hey,” I said. 

I stared down. 

“Hey.”

I was scared of him still. His eyes looked glazed over. I nudged his shoulder with my foot, and he didn’t move. I waited another minute or so then knelt and put my ear by his mouth. I didn’t hear anything. I rolled him over and looked for a wallet. He had one, a scuffed-up thing he must have carried with him forever. I opened it up and pulled out his receipts. One was signed Larry Hawkins. I found an old driver’s license that belonged to Larry Hawkins. The license was from Florida. The picture matched his face, except for a day’s growth of beard.

“You are far from home, Larry Hawkins.”

I figured then he was a drifter. I was beginning to calm down a little. I had this idea. I could wrap him with an old tarp, slip him into the back of my Yukon, and dump him into the quarry. I’d have to be quick, but once it was done, this scene would be gone for good.

“Sorry, Larry,” I said. And I really was sorry, then. I was sorry for him and sorry for me. Sorry that we were both in such lousy shape. I glanced around and saw something black flung a few feet across the lot from where he lay. I walked over to it and stared. Then knelt. A camera. Not a fancy one, but decent enough, a Nikon, with a fifty-millimeter lens.

“Damn.” I stood up, walked back over to him. Homeless folks usually don’t carry digital cameras.

I opened his wallet again. Began looking through all the compartments, flipped one open and found a folded picture. A party shot. A man was on one side of it, holding in his left arm, like a broken wing, a woman who was falling down drunk. She had serious red eye in the photo. I looked closer and realized that the woman was Tracy. I flipped over the back and read: “Tracy Lyons 9/10.” Below this was a phone number—her and Bobby’s home number. I stared at it for a while, kneeling by Larry on the cold asphalt. My heart began to beat hard again. I dug through the other compartments in his wallet.

I found credit cards and a triple-folded hundred-dollar bill—emergency funds. I’ve done the same thing myself. Larry was no geezer. And he wasn’t homeless, and he knew Tracy and Bobby. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt.

The wind was kicking up, too. Overhead I heard Old Glory flapping. That’s something I didn’t know about. Do you keep flags flying at night, or just during the day? I wasn’t entirely sure what the correct etiquette was. Maybe I should have taken it down for the night? Maybe taking it down might have made things better for everyone concerned. Hank had a way of making you superstitious about these things.

I flipped open every pocket and compartment in that wallet. In one side pocket, I saw something that made my heart pound again: a Fraternal Order of Police card, and in a separate compartment, three business cards that advertised, “Hawkins, PI.” A graphic star stood under Larry’s name, like a hometown deputy’s badge.

The wind died down suddenly and everything was quiet. For a moment, I imagined I wasn’t in the middle of my SUV lot with a dead private investigator. For a moment, it was silent, and even Hank’s Grand Old flag had stopped flapping. Somewhere, far off, I heard a car sizzling down 301. And I was in that car. I was heading to Mexico or Belize or wherever criminals on the run go. I had a carton full of cigarettes and a full tank of gas. The sun was just peeking through the dawn.  

Only it wasn’t the sun, but a streetlight, and I wasn’t on the road, but still standing in my SUV lot with a dead man bleeding on my pavement. I blinked once, sighed, and then considered what to do. I went to the rear of my SUV, but the tarp wasn’t there any longer. Marcie had used it for leaves, I bet. I stared down at Larry, walked over to him, knelt, and tried to lift him up. His chest was layered in drying blood, and he was heavier than I imagined. Dead weight, as they say. I dragged him for about three feet, then stopped, panting. Dragged him another three feet, until I was able to lean him up against my SUV.

I opened the rear hatch and then began to lift him in. I managed to heft his head and chest over the edge, balanced on the back door. Then I lifted him up by his legs and twisted him around until, finally, his head and chest cleared the back door and dropped inside. I shoved his legs in next. Gave them an extra push, wondering how I’d get all that blood out. Deer blood, that’s what I’d tell Marcie.

That’s when I saw Sheriff Ernst’s ride sliding onto the lot. Lickety-split, I slammed the back door to the SUV, rubbed my hands on the back of my trousers, and hurried around to the headlights. Sheriff Ernst roared up beside me, spitting gravel.

“Out mighty late, Harry.”

“Just checking on those eco-terrorists, Sheriff.”

“You sure that’s all?”

I felt my face freeze. I tried to keep my voice calm.

“Why, yeah, I mean what else—?”

He looked overhead.

“Don’t you think you ought to take that down? Going to be weather tonight, Harry.”

I felt sick as Sheriff Ernst parked his vehicle right beside my SUV, hopped out of his police car and walked up to the pole. To his left was the place where Larry had lain. I couldn’t tell if it was bloodstains or shadows, but I walked to the other side of the flagpole and began to bring it down.

“That’s a beauty,” he said, staring upward as the flag slowly descended.

“Thank you. Hank Jenkins gave me a pretty good deal on it.”

I unclipped the flag and was going to roll it up and take it in when the sheriff held my arm. 

“What do you think you’re doing, Harry?”

I froze, not sure what he was asking. 

“That’s not the way you store a flag.”

“Right,” I breathed out. 

“Stand over there.” Sheriff Ernst backed up so that he and I were about three yards apart. I held one end of the flag and he held the other.

“Now fold it in thirds.”

We began to fold. I looked at his left shoe. His heel looked like it might be stepping into Larry’s blood.

I tried to move back with the flag, but the Sheriff stood firm and wanted me to fold the flag toward him.

“Learned this in the Marine Corps. You see how it forms a triangle. When you finish, there should be nothing but a field of stars.”

When we were done, he handed me the flag. 

“Okay, now you know how to do this, right? You don’t want to leave a flag out at night, Harry. Not with those terrorists running around. They might just as well burn the thing. Know what I mean?”

“Absolutely.”

“No respect.”

“Right.”

I watched as Sheriff Ernst walked back to his police car, his left heel leaving little half-moons of dark blood on the pavement. When he was gone, I slipped into the SUV, put the folded flag carefully in the passenger seat beside me. I began to breathe again. My whole life was in that moment. It was both a beautiful and terrifying thing. I looked out at the row of polished SUV hoods, each shining so spotlessly you could see yourself there, the very image of the perfect life. I turned on the radio. Toby Keith was still singing about God and the USA when I put the Yukon in gear and headed to the quarry.

✶✶✶✶

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