Put on something nice
Just in case you die
You'll leave a pretty corpse behind
- Don Armando's 2nd Street Rhumba Band
Lights out tonight
Trouble in the heartland
Got a head-on collision
Smashin' in my guts, man,
I'm caught in a cross fire
That I don't understand
- Bruce Springsteen
There's an old rock song whose chorus goes: "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone." While that may be true, it is also true that sometimes, you don't know what you got 'til it's gone and you get it back. Leni Loud realized this on Monday afternoon as she watched her siblings (sans Lynn, who was off with Amber) happily eating ice cream and interacting with one another in the sun washed kitchen, laughing, smiling, talking; presiding over the scene, Leni felt love and affection balloon inside of her until she was certain she was going to pop and spray them all with deflated Leni-pieces.
In a moment of realization, it came to her that this is what she wanted most in life: To be surrounded by her family, the people she knew and loved most, the ones who knew and loved her the most. She let out a dreamy sigh and rested her chin in her hand. She was sitting at the counter; next to her, Lisa was digging into a sundae, her upper lip smeared with ice cream, her manners lost to sugary, frozen bliss. "Are we still going to the museum later?" she asked.
"Of course," Leni said, slipping her arm around Lisa's shoulders and drawing her close, squeezing a breathless umph from the girl.
"Excellent," Lisa said. "I rarely get to go."
"We can go as many times as you want this summer."
Those last two words hitched in Leni's throat: This summer. A finite amount of time, barely two months shoved up against another semester of school and being away from her loved ones. She thought of her apartment, of Kristy, of Dave and everyone else she knew, and her stomach ached with something approaching dread.
She didn't want to go back.
She wanted to stay here. Forever. Or at least until she could start her own family. She cast her eyes sadly down at the ice cream melting in a dish before her and took a deep breath. She wanted to go to the Chicago School of Design since she was a little girl; it was the best design school in the country and had produced some of fashion's crème de la crème. If she could only get it, she thought for years and years, then one day she, too, would be famous and rich...and happy, but she wasn't happy, not really. She plodded through the motions of her day like an automaton, a deep, gaping pit in her stomach that she tried desperately to fill but never could. Here, now, in the kitchen of her childhood home, her sisters around her, their voices and musical laughter filling her soul, she was happy.
That revelation plagued her for the rest of the afternoon. She managed to push it to the back of her mind as Lisa led her around the Royal Woods Museum of Natural History, her seven-year-old's giddy happiness barely suppressed, but it was still there, still nagging. Too soon it was over and they were home again. How was time going so fast? Every time Leni glanced at the clock, another hour or two seemed to have passed. Before she knew it, she would have to pack her bags, put them in the car, and let herself be taken back to Chicago. Tears welled in her eyes at the image.
She didn't want to go back.
After dinner, she found her mother in her office at the bottom of the stairs; she was sitting at her desk and going over paperwork, a pair of reading glasses perched precariously on her nose. For a long time, Leni simply leaned against the doorframe, her trembling hand resting against the jamb, and watched, her stomach in knots. She was ashamed at what she was going to say, but when your spirit really needs something, shame doesn't matter. She drew a breath and steeled her nerves. "Hey, mom?" she said.
"Yeah?" mom asked, scanning a sheaf of papers fanned out on the desk and frowning.
"I-I need to talk to you."
The hitch in her voice caught her mother's attention. She turned, a shadow of concern crossing her face. "What about?"
"About..." Leni trailed off, her face burning.
Mom's face softened. "Come here, sweetie," she said, motioning to a chair.
Head slightly bowed, Leni crossed the room and stiffly sat. Her mother leaned over, took her hands in her own, and said, "What's wrong, Leni?"
Leni blinked back tears. "Mom...I don't want to go back to school."
Mom blinked as if struck. "Honey," she drew, "why?"
Leni couldn't bring herself to look into her mother's face. She, and all of her other siblings, had been raised to never give up and to fight for what they wanted. For the longest time Leni fought to go to the Chicago School of Design, and for the longest time, she wanted it more than she wanted anything else. But now...she wanted to be home, with her family.
"I just miss you guys so much, and I'm not happy there. I want to be here with everyone else."
"Oh, baby," mom said, hugging her. "But you're so close to being finished. Just one more year."
"I don't care," Leni said bleakly into the crook of her mother's neck. "I don't care about it anymore. I don't want it." She held back a hot rush of tears.
"I know it's hard, honey," mom said, smoothing the back of Leni's hair, "we miss you and want you back too, but you have to think about your future."
"I have been thinking about my future," Leni said. "I want to be here, with you guys, then I want my own family."
"But you have to have a career, and you love fashion designing so much. You might not feel like it right now, and it might not be important to you at the moment, but you do, and you'd be so good at it, Leni."
"So? I'm not happy. Lincoln and Luan are gone and pretty soon everyone else is going to grow up and move away and I'll never see them again." She broke down and started to cry. "I don't have much time left and I don't want to waste it at that stupid school."
Rita Loud rocked her sobbing daughter and cooed to her like a baby, remembering a time when she was a baby. If Leni was right about one thing, it was this: We don't have much time. You might think you have nothing but...then you wake up and your babies have babies of their own and the halls of your home, which once rang with the laughter of children, stand quiet, populated only by phantoms of memory.
Leni was incredibly gifted when it came to fashion. Rita knew she would go on to do great things and probably become very famous in the process. The thought of her letting go of that made Rita's heart constrict. Being homesick was normal for a college kid. Rita herself was so homesick during her first two years that she sometimes thought of dropping out much the way Leni was. She stuck with it, and now, with those two dark years long in the past, she was glad she had.
She told Leni this, holding her at arm's length and stroking her hair. The girl's big, childlike eyes shone with unshed tears.
"It hurts now, Leni, but if you drop out, one day you'll regret it. You'll always wonder what could have been."
Leni processed what her mother had told her. "I don't know," she said softly.
"How about this?" Rita said. "If you still want to leave school by the end of the summer, you can. There's a lot of time before you go back...a lot of time for you to get more than your fill of your sisters."
Leni nodded and wiped her eyes. "Okay. That sounds good."
Rita smiled and rubbed Leni's bare arm. "I love you."
"I love you too, mom," Leni replied, and hugged her.
She left with the deal rattling through her brain. She would wait until the end of break to decide. Maybe things would be different then, maybe she would be filled with enough love and happiness to sustain her at least one more semester...maybe she would graduate and start a career after all.
Maybe.
Omaha, Nebraska sits just across the Missouri River from Council Bluffs, Iowa: It is a collection of low buildings rising from gray urban sprawl surrounded by flat, grassy prairieland. I-80 angles south in the city's West End and eventually enters what Lincoln Loud couldn't help but think of as The Wastelands. In any direction, you saw nothing but grass, sky, and sun...and maybe the occasional power line, farmhouse, or micro-town. At 3pm on a Monday afternoon, traffic was light, consisting mainly of tractor trailers.
"This place is worse than Iowa," Luan said.
"Yeah," Lincoln said. He was gazing out the window at the dry, brown grass stretching away from the highway's northern shoulder. "Not much to look at."
"You can always look at me," she said and smiled prettily.
Lincoln grinned. "Like I said, not much to look at."
Her mouth dropped into a perfect O of surprise, then she slapped his arm. "Jerk." He laughed and rubbed the stinging wound.
"Imagine what it was like back in the old days when you had to ride a horse," he said. "It'd take you, like, a week pass through."
"I'd go crazy," Luan said. "Especially back then? It was probably emptier than it is now."
Lincoln turned to look at her, but something caught his eye in the rearview mirror: A forest green Jeep Grand Cherokee two car-lengths behind. It wouldn't have stood out to him normally, but he'd seen it several times since Des Moines, always in roughly the same spot and maintaining roughly the same speed, never passing, never falling back, though sometimes a car or motorcycle got in-between them. He didn't think much of it before because, hey, it's the interstate, it happens, but looking at it now, the sun glinting off its steely front bumper, a chill passed through him. It was currently in the passing lane but making no move to pass.
He looked away and focused on the highway ahead, drawing a deep breath and damning himself as paranoid. The asphalt was clear and open for at least a half mile: In the hazy distance, a Mac truck ambled along. It's the interstate, Linc. People follow you. You just have a guilty conscious. That's all. He glanced in the mirror again. The Jeep's tires hummed hypnotically along the blacktop, revolution after revolution. Sunlight gleamed on the windshield, and Lincoln squinted, but couldn't see who was inside.
"I'm getting kind of hungry," Luan said and looked at him. "How about you?"
"Eh," he said, "kind of."
"Next town's fifteen miles," she said. "Wonder if they'll have a McDonald's. I could go for some chicken nuggets."
Lincoln looked in the mirror again. The Jeep was still there. Of course it was. Where else would it be, Timbuktu?
"Sounds good," he said, his voice distant.
"You alright?" Luan asked.
He opened his mouth to lie, but told the truth instead, "That Jeep back there's been following us for, like, four hundred miles." He glanced in the mirror again. "I don't like it."
Luan glanced up into the mirror. A green Jeep appeared in trembling rectangular glass. She could make out the dark silhouette of someone behind the wheel. "It's the..." she started, but Lincoln cut her off.
"I know, it's the interstate, Linc, and people follow you, but...I don't know, I have a bad feeling about it."
Luan studied the Jeep. It was an older model, so it couldn't have been a police car. If a cop had been following them that long (across state lines), it would be a fed. Feds don't drive thirty year old Jeep Grand Cherokees.
"You're being paranoid," she said.
"Maybe," he muttered. He glanced in the mirror again. A cloud of dread was forming in his stomach.
Luan looked at him and shook her head. Lincoln had a bad habit of worrying. She turned her eyes back to the highway and raised the radio volume. DNCE was striking up "Cake by the Ocean" and she grinned. "Oh, I like this song." She turned it up louder and bobbed her head along. Lincoln looked nervously in the mirror.
Wayne DiRosario had been behind the killers all day, trying to work up the courage to strike. He could feel his mother's dark presence...could feel her reading his mind; his brain tingled as if massaged by nimble phantom fingers, and it made him wince. He shoved a handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth and leaned over the wheel. He was in the next lane over, and he could just make out Lincoln Loud's face in the rearview mirror. I'm fucking your mother, Wayne.
"Who hasn't?"
His mother was a whore. And not just a whore, but a whore-whore. She laid in bed all day and hiked her dress up so neighbors could screw her for money. Wayne saw it. He saw it again and again and again, her fat stomach and thighs hanging out, her face red and her hair matted with sweat. She didn't even make them wear condoms, and when they were done, she'd lay there with her rotten sex bared to the world, smoking cigarettes, shooting heroin, and reading trashy paperbacks. Wayne learned early on never to go into her room unless he wanted to see his mother doing her best beached whale impression, and he never did, because she disgusted him.
Hot hatred welled within him as he remembered all the yelling, all the hitting, all the nights he laid awake in bed and listened to her headboard slap the wall between their rooms, all the times he found her in a heap on the floor with needles sticking out of her arms. He gripped the wheel and bared his teeth.
In the mirror, Lincoln Loud was laughing at him, his mouth and eyes wide. We're fucking and doing drugs and killing people and you can't stop us! You're a failure! You're a faggot! Fuck you!
Wayne was shaking now.
Fuck you! Fuck you!
"Fuck you!" Wayne roared, and punched the gas.
Lincoln glanced into the mirror again. The Jeep was still there. Same bat-spot, same bat-speed. He was beginning to turn away when it swung violently into their lane and accelerated with a loud vrrrrooom. His heart jumped into his chest. "Luan!"
Luan looked into the rearview just as the Jeep slammed into them, knocking them forward. Luan screamed and jerked the wheel as they began to fishtail. Lincoln grabbed onto the handhold above the door and held on as Luan regained control. The Jeep was inches behind them. It surged forward again, and Vanzilla shuddered at the impact.
"What the fuck?" Luan screamed, her voice muffled by the music (I keep on hopin' we'll eat cake by the ocean...). The Jeep fell back, then rushed forward again, hitting them a third time. Luan clamped her hands on the wheel. She glanced over her shoulder, a frightened look on her face. She hit the gas, and the van shot forward. Lincoln looked in the mirror, and saw the Jeep flying at them, its bumper dented. Before hitting them, however, it swerved back into the passing lane and raced alongside them. Lincoln looked down, and his heart stopped when he saw the man from the restaurant looking at him, his dry, olive skin tight against his skull and his big yellow teeth bared. He jerked the wheel, and the Jeep's front end smacked into Vanzilla's side.
"What the fuck is he doing?" Luan screamed, terror in her voice.
"I don't know!" Lincoln howled, his throat tight with fear. The man jerked the wheel again, but Luan did likewise; they avoided another impact, but the front tires slid, and she had to fight to keep them from crashing.
"Do something!" she cried hysterically.
He looked around, and his eyes fell on the glovebox. He shot forward and opened it with trembling hands. The gun was sitting on top of a jumble of papers and fast food napkins. He sat back and held it up.
A fevered smile spread across the man's sunken face. He reached into his coat and brought out a gun of his own. Lincoln' heart stopped.
That's when Luan hit the brakes, and they came to a shuddering stop, Lincoln slamming against his seatbelt, the gun flying from his hand and striking the dashboard. The Jeep streaked along for a minute before coming to its own stop, its taillights blinking red.
You're a real-life fantasy, you're a real-life fantasy but you're moving so carefully; let's start living dangerously...
Luan was slumped over the wheel and panting, her eyes pooled with animal fear. Lincoln fought to catch his thundering heart. The Jeep just sat there. Time passed. Lincoln grabbed the gun.
"What's he doing?" Luan asked.
"I-I don't know."
A car passed in the next lane and then merged into theirs to pass the Jeep. As soon as it was clear, the Jeep rolled forward then started to turn, its back tires crunching gravel and its nose pointing toward the northbound lane.
"Go!" Lincoln said.
Luan punched the gas, and they zoomed by just as its nose swung into the wrong direction. Lincoln looked back and saw it beginning to turn after them.
He caught sight of Luan's drawn, pale face, her lips trembling and her eyes shiny with primal terror. "We need to get off the highway," he said. "Get help."
She swallowed. Lincoln looked in the mirror. The Jeep was rocketing after them, getting closer and closer.
"Brakes!"
She hit the brakes, and the Jeep shot past them again. Lincoln turned to tell Luan to go, but stopped when he saw her teeth gritting. She slammed the gas, and the van jumped forward. The Jeep came to a stop, and Lincoln held on as they plowed into its rear-end. Metal crunched. The Jeep's back window shattered. "Fucking bastard!" Luan shrieked, throwing the van into reverse, then hitting the gas. They slammed into the Jeep again, and it t shot off of the highway and into the grass, its tires kicking up a cloud of dust. Cars streamed by, honking.
"Go!" Lincoln screamed. He watched the Jeep back up onto the blacktop and point toward them. Maybe Luan's anger was affecting him, but he suddenly felt a rush of dangerous rage. He looked at his lover, her face a mask of worry, her own anger having faded, and his teeth gritted. He didn't like seeing the woman he loved scared, he didn't like seeing the mother of his future children in danger.
They were flying down the highway at eighty miles per hour now. The Jeep was a blip in the distance, but was gaining fast, hurtling forward like a bullet. "Is he back there?" Luan asked.
"Yes," Lincoln said.
"Shit."
Wayne DiRosario jerked the wheel to the left and hit the gas. He pulled alongside the van's right flank. Craning his neck, he could see her behind the wheel: She threw a terrified glance at him. "That's right, bitch!" he screamed. He jerked the wheel again, this time to the right, but Mother was anticipating it, and did likewise: The van went off the road and zipped along the gravel shoulder, its rear end shuddering. Wayne let up on the gas and allowed them to get ahead.
You can't get us! You can't get us! Failure! Loser! Faggot!
He bore down on the gas pedal, changed lanes, and crashed into the back of the van again. It pulled ahead, and his bumper came with it. For a moment in was locked with theirs, then it fell off and was sucked under his tires.
Wayne screamed maniacal laughter and punched the ceiling. "How's that for faggot, you fat whore?" He punched the ceiling again and again. He was absolutely crackling with energy. He hadn't felt this alive in years. He turned up the radio, and music boomed from the speakers:
Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,
Devil with the blue dress on
Wasn't Mother wearing blue today?
Another sign. He was going to win!
The van was pulling ahead. He leaned over the wheel and pushed the pedal to the floor. Before he could bump them, they swung into the other lane. He kept his foot on the pedal and came up beside Lincoln. Wayne looked up at him, and their eyes locked.
"Fuck you!" Wayne yelled and pressed his middle finger to the glass. He threw the wheel to the left, but Mother evaded, shooting across the grass median between lanes, sailing across the eastbound lane (narrowly missing a collision with a white car), and hitting the shoulder. The van tipped, and for a glorious moment, Wayne thought it was going to roll, but instead it swayed back and planted its feet firmly on the pavement. It swung around and came back into the westbound lane.
Wayne laughed. He was having so much fun...
Lincoln looked in the mirror. The Jeep entered their lane and zoomed forward again, but Luan was able to outpace it.
Ahead, Lincoln spotted a service road leading away from the interstate and filtering into a parking lot before an A-shaped building with a glass front. People milled around out front; a man talking to another, a woman holding dog on a leash. REST AREA the sign said.
"There!" he cried, pointing.
Luan glanced out the window then up to the mirror. The Jeep was getting closer. If they stayed on the highway, it would eventually make them crash. If they parked...
The entrance was coming up quick. Baring her teeth, she spun the wheel, and the van entered the rest stop doing seventy. She stomped the brakes, and the tires squealed against the pavement. Everyone looked toward them.
"Run!" she said, throwing her door open.
"Fuck that," Lincoln said, "I'm gonna shoot this motherfucker."
"Lincoln!"
The Jeep exited the highway and came to a screeching stop. Lincoln jumped out of the van and darted to the back bumper just as the man got out of the Jeep. Lincoln saw a head and shoulders dropping behind the front end and resting something long and black on the hood. He realized what it was and started to drop just as the man opened fire: Bullets struck the back of the van with metallic pinging sounds. The rear window exploded in a shower of glass.
Lincoln hit the pavement as a dozen screams filled the day. Luan? Where was Luan?! He crawled backwards, and saw her on the other side of the van, pressed flat against the ground. "Get under the van!" he yelled, and she looked at him, her eyes wide. "Now!"
She nodded, and squirmed under.
The gunfire continued in bursts of three. Tat-tat-tat...tat-tat-tat. Using the back of the van as cover, Lincoln knelt and flicked the gun's safety off. When the firing stopped, he popped out, brought the gun around, and fired three times: The first round struck the Jeep's front tire, popping it, and the man's head disappeared behind the front end. The second went wild. The third smashed into the Jeep's passenger window, and it shattered. He spotted the man coming around the front of the Jeep at a crouch, swung, and pulled the trigger. The round struck the bumper, and the man went down; Lincoln doubted he'd been hit.
As if to confirm his doubts, the man popped up like a jack-in-the-box and aimed the rifle. Lincoln ducked behind the rear tire: Tat-tat-tat...tat-tat-tat.
Thinking fast, he rolled under the van, brushing against Luan. She was lying on her stomach, her hands laced over her head and her body shaking. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she sobbed.
Lincoln's rage grew. Crawling on his stomach, he reached the back end. The man, emboldened, was standing by the front of the Jeep, the rifle pressed into the crook of his shoulder, seemingly firing at random, lost in the simple act of terrorism that he'd forgotten he had a target.
Heart racing, Lincoln brought the gun up, aimed, and fired: The world slowed, and Lincoln saw, actually saw, the round crash into the man's stomach. He fell back a step and collided with the Jeep's front end. Baring his teeth, Lincoln fired again, this round hitting the gunman in the chest. He flew back against the hood, the rifle fell from his hands, and slid down the side of the Jeep until he sat in a heap against the right front tire. Lincoln crawled out, blood slamming in his temples. Cautiously, the gun in front of him, he approached. The man's chest rose and fell; his shirt and suit coat were drenched with blood. Blood also pooled on the pavement.
Lincoln was on top of him now. The man's head flopped back, and his eyes squinted. "Fuck you," he said, and reached into his coat.
Lincoln pulled the trigger, and a red hole appeared in the middle of the man's forehead: His eyes went wide, and he slumped over, dead.
People were screaming. He glanced over his shoulder and saw someone lying in a pool of blood on the sidewalk bordering the parking lot. Other people were crouched behind trees, big metal trash cans, and along the side of the building.
Cold swept through Lincoln, and his felt his knees giving away, but he caught himself; his heart was throbbing and he could barely breathe. He turned to the man to make sure that he was dead, and something caught his eye: A folded piece of paper was sticking out of his breast pocket. Lincoln knelt, reached out, and took it in his hands. He opened it, and read it with widening eyes.
"What?" Luan asked. She was standing over him, her right arm straight, the elbow cupped in her left hand. The wind tossed her hair around her wan face, partially obscuring her shell-shocked eyes.
Without a word, he handed it to her, and she read, her jaw dropping.
It was a check for a thousand dollars.
Signed by Lynn Loud Sr.
For "services."
"A hitman?" Luan asked, her spirit withering and tears flooding her eyes. "He sent a hitman?"
Lincoln nodded. All of the anger was gone, replaced by great sadness. He hugged himself.
In the distance, sirens rose, and he looked up at his sister. She pressed the flat of her palm against one eye and cried.
"Come on," he said, getting up and taking her in his arms. "We have to go."
"D-Dad tried to kill us!"
"Fuck him," Lincoln said, "it's you and me now." He forced a smile. "That's all we need."
Luan swallowed hard and nodded, then threw her arms around him. "I love you, Lincoln."
"I love you, too." He ran his fingers through her hair and looked into her tearful eyes. "Now come on..."
She nodded and kissed the corner of his mouth.
They climbed into the van and sped off just as the first Nebraska State Police cruiser arrived on the scene...