Killing Lester

Once upon a time, I killed a fella named Lester George. I killed him more than a dozen times before he got the point.

Lester was about as dumb as the dumbest thing you can think of. For me, he was as dumb as a book with no pictures. He was the kind of guy everyone ‘round town knew about, in one way or another. He had a reputation for getting you in trouble, which was fine by me when I was a youngster. I was looking for trouble, so when I found Lester we stuck together like a honeycomb in a tar pit, and he was the tar.

We’d run around town all day finding people to bother and looking for rules to break. We’d sneak beers and cigarettes from Old Tony’s liquor shop and drink and smoke on top of Shepherd’s Bluff, the highest point around. We’d play all sorts of stupid games, like pretending to trip on the sidewalks and then trying to look up the ladies’ skirts as we fell to the ground. Then we’d run off and pretend like we’d actually seen something.

But nobody knew about our stupidest game. We called it "Heels to Heaven" and it was a hell of a game. We'd hike up to Shepherds Buff and see who could inch the closest to the edge while backwards, and the other would keep daring him further. He was too dumb to know better, but I should've. He was also too dumb to get blamed for anything, so I always got the brunt of it.

Like one time I remember we were playing by Miss Glover’s house, in a wooded grove right behind her garden. She always had something new growing there, all sorts of pretty flowers of all sorts of colors. Well, we were playing and felt the urge, so we started pissin' in her flowers. Of course she came running out at that very moment, swinging a broom overhead like you would a battle-axe and yelling hysterically. I was only halfway done, but took off before my pants were even zipped. If you had a keen smell for urine, you’d been able to track me blind, right back to my hiding spot in the woods. I turned back to see Lester was still finishing up, ignoring Mrs. Glover’s yells, and she was pretty much ignoring him.

And she wasn’t whipping her broom through the air anymore. She seemed to be looking out for me in the woods, and yelled out what on God’s green earth we were thinking.

Lester looked up at her unabashed and flashed a smile, showing off two rows of perfect white teeth. He always had the most perfect teeth but he hardly ever brushed them, not that I ever saw. He held the smile for a few seconds before answering with his typical long pauses and drawn out syllables, like he had to think through all fifty words of his vocabulary before choosing the right one.

“Hi Miss Glover. Your flowers seemed kinda sad and I thought they might be thirsty. I just wanted to give them a drink. Didn’t want to pee my pants again. I’m sorry you’re mad.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at the dirt.

Miss Glover had let the broom drop completely and her face seemed to have softened a bit, so I naturally thought it’d be safe to venture out of hiding. A few minutes later I was running off again, this time with the print of a battle-axe on my butt and a, “Sawyer, you ought to know better!” thrown after.

I couldn’t be mad though. He wasn’t making that up, about the plants. He had told me the exact same thing before we went over there, that the flowers were probably thirsty. Just plain dumb. You can’t be too angry with someone stupid enough to think a flower's favorite drink is glass of piss.

He stayed stupid though, that was the problem. I grew up and he stayed right where he was. We still had fun, every once in awhile, but it felt like someone had come along and sucked out all the good feelings. The beer and cigarettes lose some fun when you walk them through the check out line, ‘stead of shufflin' them out the door in your pockets. It all started to do more damage than good. People started shaking their heads when we walked past. I started to avoid him, made up plenty of excuses. “I don’t want to be seen in public with you anymore” wasn’t one of them, but it’s what I was always thinking. He never got the message though and refused to leave me alone. Somehow he’d always find me and want to stir up trouble, like the old days. Most times I’d let him persuade me.

I never thought about killing Lester until I overheard a conversation between my neighbors, something about how that poor kid is never gonna go anywhere, not with what he’d done and all his stupid games. I assumed they were talking about Lester, but then I realized they were talking about me, and that got me thinking about things I’d never thought about before. Like how Lester never did anything good for nobody, especially not me, how most of the town had grown to hate us, how no one knew much about him or where he came from, how he probably didn’t even have a family to miss him, how much I hated his smile and how stupid he was and how he probably wouldn’t even realize he’d been killed.

I bought a revolver the next day from old Tony. I tucked it in the back of my pants, then just waited in the woods for Lester to show up, like I knew he would.

He walked up grinning. “Sawyer, I’ve got something to show you. It’s important. I think it’s something you need to see.” He motioned me to follow and started away.

“Not today Lester,” My right hand hid behind my back. He paused and turned around.

“C’mon, you gonna play at that again? It’s not gonna take long. Just follow me.”

“No, Lester.”

“C’mon.”

“No.”

“Trust me. It’s time I show you.”

“I swear to God Lester, if you ask me again, I’m going to shoot you in your frickin' face.”

He froze for a second, then grinned, laughed a little and took a step closer. “Come on man. I think this is something you need to see.”

I shot him right between the eyes. He fell back hard, like someone had tied a rope to his legs and took off running, or like someone had shot him in the head. I stood there for a few seconds with my gun still held out in front of me, pointing at the empty space where he’d been standing. I looked down then to see him staring up at me with my bullet embedded in his forehead, ‘cept he was wide awake. He lay there for a few seconds and then sat straight up, sprung up really. I didn’t know what to do, I just watched him for a while in complete shock. He looked around like he was taking in the scenery, then used his thumb and index finger to dig out the slug with the same casual absentmindedness as one would swat a fly. He plucked it out clean and held it out to me, saying he’d found something interesting, and the stupid grin on his face was so stupid I near did shoot him again, right then and there, even just to knock out some of those perfect teeth. But I had only brought the one bullet with me so I decided to wait until the next day. I didn’t expect killing to be such a chore.

So the next morning I took him by surprise. I shot him at my breakfast table, this time right in the mouth. I thought if his skin was so tough, maybe it would bounce back and forth down his throat and blow up in his insides and maybe bust up some of those teeth on the way. But he caught the dang thing. As soon as the gunshot sounded I saw him nip at the air. The barrel leaked a thin haze of smoke, but as it cleared I could see his eyes grinning and then a bullet clamped between his teeth like some sort of magician. He leaned forward and spit it between my bacon and eggs.

“You lose this?” He said it like he had actually just randomly found a bullet underneath his tongue. I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking plenty. I took the bullet and flung it on the floor, then ate my eggs and my bacon, then told him this time I had something cool to show him.

I led him to a nearby lake where we used to fish off stolen paddleboats. I walked him to the shoreline and told him I wanted to play a game. He seemed excited. First I found a small rowboat resting in the reeds of Mr. Vargas’ lakefront property and dragged this out to knee depth, then I told Lester to get in. I waded around for a few minutes until I found six big rocks and carried each one back to the boat. Then I told Lester to take off his shirt and tie it around the rocks to make a sack. I did it for him when he couldn’t. Then I told him to hang on to the sack of rocks as tight as he could and that the game was to see how long he could hold on. Then I paddled to the center of the lake, dumped him over the edge, then paddled back to shore. After twenty minutes or so I started to feel bad and decided he at least deserved a proper burial. I dragged out the boat again, rowed to the center, and dived in. There at the bottom of the lake that little bastard was sitting cross-legged in the sand looking as nondead as a drowned person could look. He had emptied out the sack of rocks and put them in a square. In the center he had traced a checkered pattern and set up shells for game pieces. He waved me over, saying he wanted to play a real game and still wearing that stupid smile. It had been the white of his teeth that let me find him in all that dark. But I was running out of air, so I yanked him back to the surface.

“I thought you wanted to play a game?” Lester said when we were back on shore. He was sitting cross-legged again, this time in the grass, picking apart a flower.

I’d had enough of this nonsense and gave him a good yelling at, but had to pause a couple times to cough up lake water. I finally asked him why he wouldn’t just die already. This seemed to catch his attention and he paused in the middle of uprooting another flower.

“I guess I just don’t feel like dying.” He said it very matter-of-factly, like it would explain everything, and with the same, slow rhythm as always. It took him a long time to think up that impressive combo of words.

“And I don’t think you really want me dead either.”

“How about you talk like a normal person for once!” I snapped, “It’d take ‘til sundown to have a full conversation with your stupid face. And don’t you doubt I want you dead. I’m working on it.”

For the next few days, I suppose you might have thought me some sort of serial killer, instead of the regular, one-time killer I was trying to be, but he just wouldn’t kick the bucket. The bucket was made of titanium, or something stronger, or there was no bucket at all. The worst was when I set up a nice picnic lunch to lure him up to Shepherd’s Bluff. We chatted for a while and he offered me a cigarette from his breast pocket, where he always kept them, but I told him I quit. Then after pie, I served up some gasoline and set him on fire. He lit up like a torch. And that was pretty much all that happened. It started raining after an hour and put him out. Then he asked for some more pie and went on like nothing had happened. He didn’t even have any burns. Or that time I tied him to a tree far from town to starve him out, then walked home to find him on my couch drinking a soda pop. Or when I tossed a grenade under his chair and he ate it like an apple before it ever went off. And there was that other day I slit his throat with a bread knife; he bled out into an empty milk carton, then drank it down to “fill up his blood tubes”. Or that time I borrowed Ernie’s truck and hit him at full speed, then had to pay Ernie for the damages.

Every person has their kill limit. For most it’s zero, but I guess for me it was fourteen. I had too much blood on my hands; it was the same blood every time, but just too much of it. On the fifteenth day, I met him in the woods per usual. I brought with me the largest pair of garden clippers I could find at Old Tony’s, thought I’d try to snip Lester’s head clean off. But when he asked what they were for, I said they were for building a fort. I couldn’t do it anymore. It was too much effort, and I preferred his stupid company to trying to be rid of it and failing every day. So we used the clippers to cut down branches and we built a leafy teepee to sit in all day and waste time.

He was sitting in the corner with his knees tucked up under his chin. He was smoking and reached into his pocket to offer me one.

“You know I quit Lester” I said, “It’s bad enough that I’m always hanging out with you, just let me have this. Don’t ask me again.”

He looked down and shrugged and went back to puffing. He looked liked he was thinking harder than usual and I noticed his eyes were focused on the garden clippers.

“Did you really get those clippers just to build this fort?” He said it real quiet, almost like he didn’t mean to say it out loud.

I was surprised, and even more surprised by my own answer, “No.”

I guess I’d gotten tired of lying, just like I was tired of killing, “I was gonna give you a trimming. Cut your head off, I mean.” I eyed him closely, curious to see how he’d react.

He’d found a twig and was tracing lines into the dirt. “Yeah…” That’s all he said. Good ‘ole stupid Lester. Then he stopped his dirt drawings for a moment, “Can I show you what I was gonna show you now?”

I had to think for a few seconds before I realized what he was talking about. I was surprised really that he’d remember anything from that long ago ‘cause I’d always just assumed his memory had two slots, one for today and one for yesterday. But he was right, there was something he was fixing to show me that day, right before I shot him in the face.

I nodded and told him to lead the way. I knew after a quarter mile or so where we were headed, up to Shepherd’s Bluff. We didn’t say anything, just walked. My shirt was sticking to my back by the time we made it to the top.

I was panting with my hands on my knees. “Yep. This is Shepherd’s Bluff Lester, I know. Is this what you wanted to show me? We’ve been up here a million times.”

“No, over here.” He walked toward a tree that stood several yards away from the cliff’s edge. It was an old evergreen tree, only it looked pretty brown to me. I’d seen it before, just never paid it much attention. The branches stopped about four feet off the ground, but the needles must have been heavy cause the branches drooped down until they brushed against the grass.

Lester lifted up a section of the branches to reveal the hollow space they created underneath, big enough for a young boy to crouch and hide in. He pointed toward something on the ground, near the trunk of the tree, and I peered in after him.

There was a large block of wood sitting there, half buried in the dirt. It had been stripped of all its bark and sanded down to show a clean, polished surface. The years had weathered it down though, and its previous shine had greyed and gone ashen. I could still see a name though, each letter had been carefully burned into the grain, but it still looked sloppy, like a kid had done it.

It was the name of Lester George, his name on a makeshift tombstone from who knows how long ago. But I thought I knew.

Lester was looking at me intently, a new kind of sadness in his eyes. “You see it now?” he asked.

I didn’t respond, just kept on staring at the name in wood. Then I turned and walked to the edge of the bluff and looked out at our town and the evening horizon behind it. Lester was soon by my side again.

“So you know now?” I let the question hang in the air for a while, let it drift out into open space and drop towards the ground 50 feet below.

“It was a hell of a game,” I finally said. I looked over to him and saw his grin spread ear to ear.

“Yeah,” he said, “a hell of a game.”

I closed my eyes and saw that day. A young Lester inching ever closer, a young me daring him on, the grin on his face before he fell, that grin I could never unsee. I kept my eyes closed. “I’m sorry Lester.”

“I won didn’t I?” I heard Lester say, “First time I ever won anything. Seems like there’s nothing for you to be sorry about except for losing.”

I waited ‘til he stuttered out every word before letting myself chuckle, and I heard him laugh too.

“So you know now?” he asked again.

I kept my eyes shut, keeping me in a box of darkness. “Yeah, I know,” I let out a heavy sigh, “I think I’ve always known.”

I could smell smoke from one of his cigarettes and I held out my hand. I felt him place one between my fingers and heard the click of his lighter as he lit it. I put it to my lips and took one long draw, then opened my eyes. He was gone.

I smiled and blew the smoke straight up to the sky. Then I flicked it over the edge and watched it tumble end over end out of sight.