Analise
The air is tainted a heavy grey before the snow. That air is cold. It is still, hesitant, not sure what to do if and when it is pummelled by hard rain, crystals that flutter rather than drop, sticky, white, opaque. It is so different from what the air generally holds.
These things Analise knows. She knows how the cold turns water to ice, and how ice shatters like glass, if struck right. She knows that an icicle can break loose from an overhanging roof and fall into a man’s shoulder, or crash through his skull, or fall in front of or behind him as a warning.
She knows that she should wear gloves, and so she does. She knows she should hide her face behind a black scarf, and so she does. She knows that most people will stay home during the storm, happy to stay inside where it is warm. She knows she will go out.
She is hunting. That’s what she smells when the air is grey and cold between storms. She smells the hunt. She smells it each time she sees these men with flags and rifles, beards and bellies, angry and stupid. She knows their lairs.
She dresses. She hikes, in her baseball cap, jeans, boots, thick belt, a gift from her father, t-shirt, flannel, coat.
She walks out of the city. She sees the glory of diversity, of the kaleidoscope of human existence. She knows their mission, for progress, for the glory of difference, is doomed. She knows that the country will soon be at war. Sooner or later, she figures.
She drives to town. She watches the rural wasteland, 18-wheelers, barbed wire, big fields, small houses, RVs, flags, as she sips a Monster. She sees the lit-up sign of the gas station and marches towards it.
The bar was next to an Exxon station. The sign was hand-painted. “Mica 2 Bar.” When he came out, he paused, took a cigarette out, and lit it. The flame lit up his face, stubbled and dirty, wrinkled too much. He puffed, once, twice, then headed toward the big haul trucks, lined up in a neat row facing the road. Analise crouched down, under the side of the truck’s trailer, and peered back to the bar and the tatty black sedan that belonged to the bar’s owner. A truck, a few down the row, flashed its lights, beaming out across the road and into the field. The lights toggled off. No pull away just yet.
She shimmied under the trailers of three trucks and then crouched just next to the fuel tanks that stank of diesel and dirt. She watched as he made his way, slowly, drunkenly, out in front of the hulls of these American ships. When he turned right toward Analise, he didn’t see her. It was dark. He was drunk. She wasn’t much to see, anyway.
He reached the driver’s door, and she lurched at him, thrusting the knife up toward his scrotum, missing and digging deep into his left thigh. He swung down at her, fast, probably a military-trained reaction, but missed, and she pulled the blade free as her other hand slammed into his thick Carhartt coat; she ripped the jacket upward, and his belly slumped forward, white and speckled with black hair, the belly button thick and deep, and she stabbed him again. He fell. Backward. He hit the wet pavement, its black rough surface enveloping his denim pants, his tan jacket, his stubbled face, his black hair, his protruding, bleeding, white stomach. He was yelling. She didn’t care. She leapt on him, looked at his face, and plunged the knife back into his gut two, three, maybe four times. She looked up at the bar. Nothing. She pushed herself off, like a surfer rising up from a board after pulsing into a wake, turned, ran across the road, down into the drainage ditch, and ran.
The killing replays over and over again, quick, vivid flashes, as she runs between the semis and out toward the interstate. She isn’t repulsed or energised, just numb, like a job had been started; not finished. She reaches her car. She drives home.