entry. He spoke: “Hello, I’m dying.”
The worker chuckled. “Pretty hungry, huh?
Well, what can we get you?”
Twilford considered. The thought of a hot
pizza, the grease-pooled cheese and tangy sauce,
made his stomach growl. His pain had settled
into a dreamy numbness. He hadn’t eaten anything today on account of the hangover, and now
he was starving.
“Cajun Deluxe Meat Lovers. Extra large.”
“Delivery or pickup?”
“First one.”
“Delivery?”
“Mm hm.”
“Anything to drink?”
Something important he had to tell this young
man, but he was having trouble remembering.
Twilford gathered air best he could and said, “No
sausage.”
“No sausage on the Cajun Deluxe Meat Lovers.
Got it.” The young man’s voice was calm and
comforting. Twilford pictured him as handsome
and pleasant, with a nice smile. He would have a
long, happy life. He would get married and raise
good children. “Anything to drink?”
“Two-liter . . . Mountain Dew. Why
not.”
“All right, your total is $22.57. And what’s the
address?”
The edges of Twilford’s vision blurred. Sunlight
filtered through the trees and warmed his skin.
“Pull over at the third mailbox on Haverty Road.
Don’t make any noise . . .” He coughed and felt
blood in his mouth. “ . . . The Nicholls have a
German shepherd with a nasty temper . . .”
“Sir, our driver can’t trespass on – ”
“Walk until you get to the barbed wire fence.
Go thirty paces south. There’s a break in the
fence. Crawl over it. Half a mile to the big oak
tree – it’s got a big knot near the base...”
“Sir, I don’t think – ”
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Carl, but – ”
“Carl, this is important. Find me, OK? I need
this. Go past the tree and due west. Hit the
mossy stump, you’ve gone too far.”
“I need an actual street number or we can’t
deliver.”
Daylight was fading. Was it dusk already?
Twilford felt sleepy. His mouth was filling with
something, maybe saliva. He tried to swallow
but couldn’t. A dark ring had encircled the sun,
closing in with each passing second. His hunger
flared like an ember in a gust, reminding him that
he was, at least for this moment, still alive, still
Twilford Baines, buck hunter.
“Now you wrote that I don’t want sausage,
right?”
Darrin Doyle is the author of a story collection (The Dark Will End the Dark) and two
novels (The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo; Revenge
of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story). His fiction
has appeared in numerous literary magazines,
most recently Passages North, Word Riot, Superstition Review, and BULL.