Ryan S. Lowell is a fiction writer. His work recently appeared in Workers Write: Tales from the Cafe. His short story Things Fall Apart was a Glimmer Train short story award contest finalist in 2010. He lives in South Portland, Maine.
The Business Men
It smelled like strawberries in the pantry. And I was already hungry and it made my stomach make a noise. I pushed in on my stomach so it would be quiet. I was supposed to be going picking with my grandmother the next day, and wouldn’t it be sad if I had to miss that because I was sitting in kid prison. Because I should not have been there in the first place. I was sitting on the floor toward the back of the pantry. I had an apron draped over me. The way I was sitting was not comfortable at all. But I could not move. She was out there now, in the kitchen. She had come in the house talking to herself, or the cat, I couldn’t tell for certain. I was as worried about the cat as I was about the woman. Me and the cat had bonded earlier and I was worried the cat was going to give me away by clawing at the double doors or something. She, the human, started using some noisy kitchen device, and I took the opportunity to poke my head out from under the apron. It was still dark, besides the light coming in diagonally through the door slats. She stopped using the device and it was very silent again. I was staring at the tiny slit of light between the double doors praying it would stay that way. Praying that she would hurry up and eat and leave. The slit darkened suddenly, and the double doors shook. And I should not have been there. I should have been shooting hoops with my best friend Bobby in his driveway.
But this is what happened, how I landed in that random pantry. It started the night before, when Bobby and I were playing basketball in my driveway. We were arguing about something stupid — he was the type who sometimes when he was in a certain mood needed to debate, no matter the topic and no matter his actual stance. I got annoyed. His ball bounced my way and I hit it with mine and sent his across the lawn. He chased after his ball and came back and called me a loser and got on his bike. I threw my ball at him and called him a bitch. He called me a loser again, and rode home. At first I was just pretending to be mad. But we are all pretenders in this town — that’s how we survive. The more I thought about it, the more I got actually mad.
So the next day I hung out with my other friends, Adam and Kris. We didn’t play basketball when we hung out. We made horror movies, we played guns, we stole penny candy. The three of us all lived on the same street. We usually hung out at Adam’s house, because his parents were separated and his mom was always working. Kris had the most Nintendo games, but his house was tiny and one of his parents was always there. We called ourselves the Business Men, that was our group name. I don’t remember why. But since we had started calling ourselves that, it had become customary to meet at Adam’s house and sit around his kitchen table and discuss what we were going to do, before we did anything. Again, I don’t have a good explanation for this. We were eleven.
So we were sitting around the table talking. Kris and I wanted to make a horror movie. That was all Kris ever wanted to do: he loved taking ketchup and fake knives and making me look like a bloody mess.
“That’s all you guys ever want to do,” Adam said. “I have an idea. First let’s go to the Quick Stop and get some penny candy. Then I’ll tell you guys what we’re going to do.”
“Why can’t we just make a movie?” Kris asked.
Now I didn’t care either way. Penny candy sounded pretty good.
“Because we just did that yesterday,” Adam said.
“I didn’t even see you guys yesterday,” Kris said. “I went to the mall with my mom.”
“Because you’re a sissy,” Adam said. “Come on.”
We went outside and jumped on our mountain bikes and rode down the street. My bike was loud because of the baseball cards flapping in my wheel spokes. When we stopped at the Quick Stop, Adam told me I was going to have to remove the baseball cards. “Why?” I asked. I was always asking why, why, why. My brother said I was an annoying little shit.
“Because it’s too loud,” Adam said.
We dropped our bikes on the ground and went in the store. Kris and I went directly to the penny candy. He passed me a brown bag and I started tossing candy in one piece at a time, pretending to count. Kris was actually counting his. I didn’t know where Adam went, but I figured he was up to no good.
I rolled my brown bag shut and went to the counter. The girl asked me how much and I said sixty five. That’s all the money I had. She gave me a look, but it wasn’t a suspicious look. Then she said: “Do you have an older brother?”
“Yep,” I said. “Jamie Chandler.”
“I knew it,” she said. She had a nice smile. I smiled back like a goofy kid and said, “Thanks.”
“Tell him to stay outta trouble, will ya?”
“I will,” I said. But I wasn’t going to do that. He’d tell me to mind my own friggin business. I went outside and waited for the other two. Kris came out next.
“Did she count yours?” He asked me.
“No.”
“She looked in my bag.”
“That’s because you left it open,” I said.
“What was I supposed to do?”
Adam came out of the store and immediately hopped on his bike. “Come on,” he said.
“Where we going?” Kris asked.
“The dugout.”
The Gerald Thompson Field was the old Little League field before they built the new one out on Central Street. Now they only used it for practice. We rode up the dirt road to the field and leaned our bikes against the inside of the dugout, so if somebody drove up to the field they wouldn’t see us there. I later learned that my brother had lost his virginity in that very dugout. The boy had class. And it ran in the family. I lost mine about five years later under a slide at the creative playground during a game of flashlight tag.
“Okay,” Adam said, getting serious, “listen up.” But then he just leaned to one side and farted.
“Gross,” Kris said, leaning in for a whiff. And in that stale humid unmoving air, the smell of rotten eggs seemed to fill the dugout like it was a closed room. I breathed through my mouth and ate candy.
“Go on,” I said. “Tell us this stupid thing.”
“It’s not stupid. We’re gonna sneak into a house.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re rich people.”
“So?”
“So they’ll have nice things,” Adam said. “I know for a fact there’s a necklace worth five thousand dollars.”
Kris was plugging his nose now. He said: “What are you gonna do with a necklace worth five thousand dollars?”
“Trade it. Plus there’s probably other stuff.”
Kris stopped plugging his nose and started chewing on his fingernails. But I didn’t care. I was thinking this sounded like something Bobby would not approve of, and so it sounded good.
“No way,” Kris said. “We’ll get caught.”
“First of all, if you don’t come, I’m never letting you borrow my pellet gun ever again. And second of all, they’re not home right now. They’re at work.”
“This is so stupid,” Kris said. But his face said he was conceding. Because his parents wouldn’t let him have his own pellet gun.
“Where is it?” I asked. I was chewing through candy now like it was nobody’s business.
Adam nodded towards center field. He said: “Just up there, through the woods.”
There actually was a path, but it was all overgrown like nobody had used it in a long time. We were walking our bikes because it was all uphill. We weren’t talking out loud, but I was talking in my head like a crazy person, replaying the fight with Bobby, playing it out different, making stuff up. The sugar high was hitting me hard. Adam was in the lead. He stopped, and whispered: “We’re leaving these here.”
“But,” Kris began, because his bike was nice and new.
“Who’s gonna take them?” Adam hissed.
We left our bikes there, and kept on. It wasn’t very far. We came into the backyard, and it was beautiful yard, full of neatly landscaped stone and pebble pathways and little raised gardens scattered all around. I stopped and gawked at a treehouse very high up; I was jealous, then I was curious how the hell somebody would get up there — the branches seemed to be way too far apart. We followed Adam up the stairs to a huge deck, which was about the size of my house. We crept across the deck on eggshells, and I figured Kris might piss himself he was so nervous. We reached the screen door and Adam pulled out his library card.
“I knew this would come in handy someday,” he said. I smiled. Kris was looking around in every direction, but there was nothing to look at. “Just hurry up,” Kris said.
Adam opened the screen door and I held it open while he slid his library card in the door and shimmied it down to the latch and the door popped open easily. We went in. We were in the kitchen. Adam disappeared down the hallway. Kris didn’t appear interested in straying far from the door we’d come in. He was glancing out windows and pacing back and forth, making me nervous. I wandered down the hallway and entered a room. That room led to another room, and then another. It was like a maze in there, compared to my house. I was standing before a picture wall eating my candy and staring at people I’d never seen when I felt something brush up against my ankle. I jumped — and landed with one foot on a cat’s tail. The cat shrieked and darted across the room. But then it stopped and came back and started purring. I rolled my candy bag up and bent down and petted the cat. I liked cats, but we’d never had any. I wandered into another room, and the cat followed me. This room had one big bookcase as a wall on one side, a couple leather chairs and a coffee table. On the coffee table there was a large glass jar of coins. There were no pennies in this jar, at least none that I could see. I remember thinking there was probably a hundred dollars in coin in that glass jar, which was more money than I could even imagine what to do with, and I stuffed the candy bag in my pocket and lifted the jar with both hands and made my way back to the kitchen.
Kris was sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal. He looked at me quickly, then back to the cereal.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“They have Rice Krispies Treats cereal,” he said through a mouthful of food. And I nodded. I understood. Because his parents only let him eat boring cereals like Corn Flakes and Grape Nuts. He looked toward a set of open double doors beyond the fridge, and said: “They have tons of crap in there.” Then he looked at me and said: “What are you gonna do with that?”
“What do you think?” I set the glass jar down on a chair and went over to the pantry. It was like a grocery store in there. Just then we heard a noise upstairs, then Adam coming down the stairs. Kris and I looked at each other. Then Adam was running down the hallway, saying: “They’re home! They’re home! Go!”
Kris did not hesitate. He dropped his spoon and ran out the door. All I could think about was not leaving a trace. I grabbed the bowl and set it in the sink. I tossed the cereal box back in the pantry. Adam stood before the door, saying: “Come on, man, let’s go.”
I started towards him, and he went out. I stopped and looked back. The jar was sitting there, perched on the chair. I don’t know what I was thinking, because I should have booked it after the other two. But instead I kicked the door shut and went back for the jar and lifted it up, and that’s when I heard the front door open. I shuffled my feet over to the pantry, set the jar down quietly, and pulled the double doors shut.
Her phone started ringing, that’s what stopped her. But the double doors had opened enough that I caught a glimpse of her pale white arm and long dark hair. She answered the phone, “Hi,” moving away from the pantry, and she must have gone into another room because I could no longer hear what she was saying. I took the opportunity to breathe normally. Then, sitting there in the dark pantry with one leg uncomfortably twisted underneath me and an apron draped over my head — I felt like I had been there before, in that very same situation. It was a strange feeling, and it would be a few more years before I’d learn that there’s a word for it. I remember trying to think about it practically, instructively; what did I do last time I was in this situation? How did I get out of this?
I heard the front door again, and then there were two voices, low, inaudible. But they were coming my way. I held my breath and pulled the apron back over my face. A man’s voice said something about the bathroom, then she said, “We have to be quick.” I heard the refrigerator open and close. I heard them kissing. It sounded gross. I had recently learned about the bases from my brother. I overheard him and his buddy talking about getting to third base and I didn’t understand what it meant. Second base meant French kissing, I knew that. Me, I’d barely made it to first, and that was because a girl kissed me during recess. I’m pretty sure it was a dare. These two, on the other hand, seemed to be skipping all the bases and heading directly home. It was all heavy breathing and zippers unzipping and those sloppy kissing sounds. My face was in a perpetual state of cringe, and I wanted to blurt out: “Get a room!” But no, that would have been dumb. I was trying to imagine where they were exactly; I didn’t remember seeing a bed out there in the kitchen. She sounded like she was in pain now, and he was breathing very heavily like he was doing pushups or something. And I found myself trying to picture these faceless people somewhere out there in the kitchen and suddenly something changed: I felt a new muscle in my shorts making noise, trying to move more than my awkward sitting position would allow. It was weird. Then suddenly she stopped making those painful sounds and hissed: “Oh my God! He’s here! Get out!”
At first I thought she was talking about me. There was a lot of frantic rustling around, zippers zipping, she whispering, “hurry, hurry, get out!”, the man saying nothing. I heard the back door — the same door I should have exited through about ten minutes earlier — open and shut. Then it was quiet. She left the room. I heard her going upstairs, then I heard the front door open again.
I moved my leg out from under me. It had fallen asleep. By now my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light in the pantry, but it wasn’t doing me any good. I sat on my butt and stretched my legs out. I briefly considered bolting out the back door, then decided against it. I heard a sound behind me, a tiny clicking sound. Then another. I turned around, but it was darker back there and I couldn’t see anything. Then I thought I saw something move — a tiny dark spot moving horizontally across my line of sight — and I didn’t know if it was my eyes seeing things or if there really was something. The scratching at the double doors made me turn back fast. It was the cat. No, I remember thinking, no! But the cat kept scratching and I was getting worried, so I shimmied over to the double doors and pushed them open enough for the cat to come through. I pulled the doors shut, leaving about an inch of space between them and a little more light to work with now. I slid back, watching the cat. Green dolls eyes coming at me, no longer purring as it had before. I was almost scared of the cat — it was like something I’d seen in a movie we’d watched over at Adam’s house when his mom wasn’t home — and it slinked by me like I wasn’t even there. I was confused — until I remembered hearing Bobby’s mom talking about how they needed to get a cat to deal with their mice problem, and slowly my eleven year old brain put two and two together.
Somebody was stomping down the hallway. It was the man, and he was muttering angrily to himself. I heard the back door pop open — the sound of that door was getting way too familiar to me, like that of the front door at my own house — and then I froze up. Because I realized he was looking for the other guy. I started to slide toward the back of the pantry, but it was too loud and by now it was futile: if he yanked those double doors open, I was caught. And it’s funny looking back now, thinking how little decisions like that can change the course of a life. Through the space between the doors I saw him flash by one way — probably looking out the windows — and then back the other way, but he didn’t check the pantry, and maybe he should have. I was leaning back now with my hands flat on the floor. I raised my right hand to wipe the dirt off it, and I hit the cat inadvertently. But the cat didn’t care. The cat was preoccupied.
“Hey,” I heard the woman say. I hadn’t heard her enter the room. Her voice was quite calm, considering.
His was not calm: “Was he here?”
“Who?” The woman said.
“You know damn well who.”
“No.” She sighed.
“Bullshit.”
“Nobody was here.”
“After everything we’ve been through, and with the counselors and all that crap — I can’t fucking believe this!”
“Can’t believe what?” She said. Her voice even with his now. “That I came home to take a shower because I had a little, uh, problem, at work? You can’t believe that?”
“I’m not an idiot, Carrie.”
“You’re being a paranoid psycho,” she said.
“Don’t blame me for you being a whore.”
“Don’t say that, Jay.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“I know what’s going on,” she said. “ You’re listening to those people again, your brother and his slut wife and your dad who hates me too…and what they’re doing is projecting their own insecurities and bullshit on me because they’re jealous and…”
“No,” he cut her off, “no no no…for God’s sake, Carrie, you gave me a fucking STD! And Lord knows who gave you that shit, you sick bitch!”
“Get the hell out of my house!” She screamed, and then there was a struggle. They were thrashing around, but not like her and the other man. They were banging into walls and cabinets, and she was making these intermittent grunting sounds like she was lifting weights. I wished so badly to see them, not because I liked to see people fight, but because I wanted to see what they looked like. One of them hit the wall hard — I felt the house shudder under my little butt — and then I heard a drawer open, silverware rattling around, and then a thud. A disgusting thud.
Then it was very quiet. I held my breath. Luckily the cat and mouse game behind me was at a silent standoff, and I was praying it would stay that way. It was quiet for so long, I started to wonder if they’d killed each other.
She began sobbing. Slow, snotty sobs, and through the sobs she whispered: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I remember feeling sorry for her. Because she was probably somebody’s mom and she was crying and I hated hearing my mom cry. She was still crying when she said: “This is an emergency.” A pause, then: “My husband and I were arguing, and things started to get out of hand, and he started hitting me and I thought he was going to kill me…”
Her voice trailed off. I heard her going up the stairs. I was locked in a state of confusion, unsure of what to do. I looked back for the cat, but I had been staring at the light in the door slats and my unadjusted eyes saw nothing except black back there, and I realized it was time to go. I wanted to take the cat, but even at that age I knew it was dumb idea on multiple levels.
I hopped up on my feet like a green belt and pulled the double doors apart. Immediately I saw the man laying on his side on the floor. The blood puddle was mostly around his head. The steak knife was in the side of his neck. It didn’t look very different from the stab wounds we had concocted in our own little horror movies, except it didn’t smell like a hot dog stand in there. But I didn’t have time to do a thorough critique. I had to move. I jumped over the dead set of legs and darted out the door and stupidly threw it shut, and I felt the whole deck tremble as it slammed, and I ran down the deck stairs and through the backyard and down the path to my mountain bike and I started peddling so fast my chain fell off.
When I got home, mom was there puttering around. Dad was at work. My brother was in his room with the door closed, probably watching one of those dirty movies. Mom asked what I was up to, and I said not much, going to play basketball. I didn’t let her see me long enough to figure out I was a little upset. I thought I was mad at Adam and Kris for leaving me there, but really I was mad at myself. Sometimes you need to get mad at yourself to figure out what you’ve done wrong. Mom told me to be home before dark. I said no problem. I got my ball and dribbled up the street to Bobby’s house. He was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he said. He set his bowl in the sink. We went out to the driveway and started shooting around. He was quiet at first, probably still a little mad at me. But after a while we started talking about basketball drills. I didn’t say anything about the stabbing I’d just sorta witnessed. I pretended it hadn’t happened. I didn’t tell him about it until seven years later when we were drunk at our graduation party, and by that time the Business Men had long since disbanded and the woman was in jail for murdering her second husband.