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Bang. Bang. Bang.
Stacey Rabideau opens her eyes.
Must be the furnace, she thinks. She closes her eyes and tries
to fall back to sleep. Nine months pregnant, she can't get comfortable.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She realizes it's not the furnace. Somebody is banging on the
bedroom wall of her mobile home in White Lake.
"Who is it?" she yells. "Go to the front door."
"It's Bryan!"
She unlocks the door and Doyle, an old friend, barges into the
room. Dando is waiting in the truck.
"Where's Shane?" Doyle asks, walking toward the bedroom.
"Did he get paid?"
"If he did, he gets paid at work and I don't get any money
until tonight," Rabideau says. "I don't have any money."
She is lying. There is a $20 bill sticking out of her purse.
She casually walks across the room and tries to hide the money.
She's tired of loaning money to Doyle.
"I need to get some money," he says. "My mom
wrote me a letter and disowned me. You wanna buy my fishing
pole?"
She has a hard time understanding him. He tells her he has been
up for two days, drinking vodka and smoking crack. He says he
got into a fight in a bar, broke his hand and needs money for
surgery.
"I'm sorry," she says, getting mad. "I'm pregnant
and I got my own kids and my own life and I barely got any money
and you aren't going to take it all."
He says he is going to take off and go to Mexico. He wants to
get a boat and start charter fishing.
She doesn't know what to believe. Typical Bryan, she thinks.
Big dreams, big exaggerations. Such a talker.
"Do you remember that gun I showed you the other night?"
he asks.
How can you forget when somebody comes over to borrow money
and whips out a sawed-off shotgun? He kept waving it around
like he was Rambo. Doyle described how he filed it down, showing
her the fine grooves and workmanship, the care and grace.
In reality, the handle is loose and the metal is rusty. It is
a Remington 870 Express, a 12-gauge shotgun, strong enough to
kill a deer with one slug, the same type that some cops in Waterford
carry in their front seats.
"I'm just gonna go out and start robbing people,"
he says now.
He starts rambling about his mother again, about going to Mexico,
and then, suddenly, he asks her which party stores are open.
"Party stores? I know the Shell is open," she says.
"They have a food market, but you won't be able to buy
your booze."
"No, that's not why," he says. "That's not why
at all. Does Shell have that bulletproof glass?"
She laughs at him.
She can't imagine him using a gun to rob anybody. To her, Doyle
is artistic and sentimental. He writes poems and loves to talk
on the phone, the kind of guy who remembers everything -- birthdays
and anniversaries, the kind of guy who becomes a woman's best
friend. She has known him for almost 20 years, since they were
in the eighth grade. He was one of the first boys she ever kissed.
He was a crappy kisser -- wild and all over the place -- and
they broke up, but they've been friends ever since.
But something is wrong. He looks different, more desperate.
He looks strung out and tired. He has been talking about suicide
for weeks. He has told her several times that he won't go back
to jail. After four drunk driving convictions, he was sent to
prison in 1994 for three years and was on parole until 1999.
He doesn't have a driver's license, though he drives all the
time. "They won't take me alive," he has told her.
"Go home," she says.
She figures he will just give up, go to bed and sleep it off.
Just like always.
He leaves and she goes back to sleep. A few hours later, somebody
is banging on her door again.
It's the police.
"Did you have a visitor this morning?" they ask.
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