Some Time to Kill

by Devin James Leonard

Part 1. appears in this issue.

conclusion

Another minute inched by, and Boyd considered the clock on the dash. “Any second now,” he said, and as soon as he said it, headlights glared on the trees and the asphalt around us. “Here it comes.”

We both turned to look behind us, where headlights were coming up the hill in our direction. The lights brightened and became blinding once the car crested the hill and got closer. It was a station wagon, driving at a safe, normal speed, and slow enough for me to take a split-second glance at the occupants as it passed by. The passenger side of the car was facing us, and in the front seat I saw long white hair, and in the back, the tiny head of a child not much taller than the bottom of the window. Old folks and kids.

“Christ,” I said, “those people don’t know how close they came, huh?”

“As long as we can figure out how to escape this never-ending night,” Boyd said, “they never will.”

“What about us? Will we know?”

“I haven’t gotten that far to find out. But I believe, if we can get to tomorrow, we will know. We’ll remember.”

Just then, a deep wave of lethargy settled into my entire body, and my mouth stretched open wide with a loud, drawn-out yawn. I had polished off the sixth and final beer in the truck, and I supposed all the alcohol I’d shoved down my throat tonight was finally catching up to me.

Boyd started the engine and spun the wheel out onto the road, driving me to my home that was two miles away from the location of the car accident that didn’t happen.

“What happens to me,” I asked him, my eyes shut, “after this part?”

“Not too sure,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve stuck by you this late.”

* * *

Boyd steered into my driveway and parked. He got out, and I got out more slowly, sluggish in my steps, drunk, tired, and wavering. Boyd came over to my side of the truck and threw an arm around me, and helped walk me into the house. All the lights were off, but Boyd found the switch in the foyer and flipped on the lights in the hall and adjoining living room.

And here was my abode. The hallway, what had once contained a small desk, half a dozen framed oil paintings on the wall, a packed coat and shoe rack, was now empty, save for my jacket hanging on a hook all by its lonesome, and my running shoes on the bare floor that I hadn’t worn in months.

Boyd guided me into the living room that appeared much larger now that all the furniture and framed pictures were absent. My recliner was the only thing left to sit on, no television, and no lights other than the one on the ceiling fan.

I sank into my chair with a heavy plop, and it wasn’t until my ass hit the cushion I realized my eyes had been closed since the moment I stepped out of the pickup. I was drunk as a skunk, and dog-tired. The amount of alcohol in my system could give a doctor’s anesthesia a run for its money.

My chin dropped to my chest, my head as hefty as a bowling ball propped up by a matchstick. I could not keep my eyes open, and even when I tried, my vision was blurry and doubled. Boyd was speaking to me, but it came out all muffled, as if he was talking behind a closed door. My hearing was going the way of my sight, as was my consciousness.

I vaguely heard him say, “Get some sleep, Wyatt. We’ll talk in the morning.”

And I thought, Yeah, if tomorrow ever comes.

* * *

“Good morning.”

My eyelids pried open with a sound akin to tape being peeled away from skin. My eyes, along with my mouth, were dry, and when I asked Boyd which morning it was, I found my voice to be just as coarse.

He was seated in front of me on a folding chair he must have found in a closet. Leaning back, one leg crossed, he seemed relaxed, as if he’d been sitting there all night, watching me doze. “We made it, Wyatt,” he said. “It’s a new day.”

“Jesus Christ, my head hurts,” I said, groaning and wincing. I sat up straight without lifting my head from the cushion. My stomach gurgled, and my vision spun faster than the fan above me.

“Here, take this,” Boyd said, stretching a glass of water toward me. In his other hand, he released a few aspirins into my palm. I tossed the pills back, swallowed half the cup of water, and shut my peepers, waiting for the nausea to subside.

“You haven’t been honest with me, Wyatt.”

I opened one eye to look at him. “No?”

“I’ll admit, I haven’t been a hundred percent with you, either. I drugged you last night.”

I frowned. “You what?”

“The beer I opened but didn’t finish? The one you drank for me? I slipped a couple of pills into it.”

“Well, hell!” I screeched, “What the hell for?”

“To ensure you went to sleep last night and woke up alive. That’s what all this has been about, Wyatt. Me saving you.”

“But you already saved me — me and the family — from the car wreck.”

“Saved you from the wreck, yes,” Boyd said, “but not from what would come after.”

“After?”

“I lied when I said I didn’t know how to stop this night from repeating itself. But you lied, too, when I asked you how your night was supposed to go. You just shrugged, as if you didn’t know. But you did.”

“How do you figure?”

“When I said I never knew what happened following the accident? Well, that’s not entirely true. I wasn’t certain but, now that I’m here in your home, I have a pretty good idea. Turns out, it didn’t matter if I prevented the accident, if I saved those old people and those little girls. Didn’t matter if you killed them or didn’t kill them, whether you splattered those people and got arrested or if you just moseyed on home all by your lonesome. Because I believe something else happens afterwards. And I believe you know what it is.”

Despite Boyd’s calm approach, a sense of underlying dread shook me. I felt as if I was being interrogated.

“The time before last night, when the police came, and you got arrested, I followed you to the station. While you were being processed, you somehow got hold of one of the officers’ sidearms, and you shot yourself.” Using his thumb and finger, Boyd mimicked the shape of a pistol and pressed it against his temple. “I thought it was a fluke, you offing yourself. Thought it was because you were wracked with guilt for killing those people. Because even when you made it home, accident-free, no arrest, I still woke up in my truck again. So I knew this was happening, not because I was put here to prevent the accident. It was something else. Do you know what it is, Wyatt?”

“What?” I said in a low, hoarse whisper. I still couldn’t look at him.

“You didn’t shoot yourself because of the accident. It had nothing to do with you killing that family, the drunk driving. I wasn’t a hundred percent certain, but, just in case, I slipped you some sleeping pills. Then I took you here, to your empty home.” Boyd spread his arms to the room. “Soon as I saw this place, I knew I was right. It had to do with your family, Wyatt. Your family left you. You were planning on killing yourself, no matter what came of that night.”

Boyd stopped for a moment and reached behind his back. What he brought out, in the flat of his palm, was a small-caliber, chrome-plated pistol. My pistol.

“When I asked you how your night was supposed to go, and you said nothing, this is how it was supposed to go, right? This is what you had in your mind to do, what you would have done if I didn’t come along. Whether you got arrested or made it home in one piece, this is what would have happened each and every night if I wasn’t here to prevent it. I’ve had to live and repeat this night, over and over again, Wyatt, because, in the end — you commit suicide.”

I couldn’t speak. Shame had paralyzed me. Guilt stifled my breath. Embarrassment flushed my chest and neck; I felt the warmth rise to my cheeks and my heartbeat hammer away like an erratic sump pump. I cleared my throat, averting my eyes to my lap. “Congratulations,” I said. “You win. Now what are you gonna do? Hold me hostage for the rest of our lives — keep me from going through with it — so you don’t have to wake up at the intersection again?”

“No. What’s gonna happen is I’m gonna convince you not to.” Boyd set the pistol on the floor and leaned toward me with his elbows resting on his knees, hands pressed together as if he were in prayer. “Don’t you see, Wyatt? You’ve been given the opportunity to make things right with your family, your life, whatever it is. I’m here because some — I don’t know — higher power or who-the-hell-knows-what has put me in your path to stop you from ending it. The universe has given you a fresh start, a second chance.”

“You really believe that?”

“After the night — nights — I’ve had lately, I’ll believe anything.”

“Fresh start,” I said. “Why me? What’s so special about me? Why do I get a second chance?”

“I’ve asked myself that very question all night long. All the nights I woke up in my truck, all just to prevent you from dying? I asked myself, why him? And why me? Why save this drunk? All I could think was maybe there’s something you’re supposed to do in the future, something important that wouldn’t happen if you weren’t around.” He leaned back and said, “But then I remembered why I woke up furious. What I was planning on doing.”

Boyd reached behind his back again and pulled out another firearm, this one a black snub-nosed revolver. “I told you the story of how I beat up some kid for someone else pranking me with my boots? How I smashed your face in with the beer can the first time? I’ve done worse things than that in my life, Wyatt. I’m not a good person. The reason I think it happened to me? It’s because I was gonna do something terrible last night, and I believe the universe put me in your path to halt our plans and give us both a fresh start.”

“What were you going to do?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is I didn’t do what I was aiming to do with this gun. I’d put it aside once I realized this time loop was happening. You see, I think this happened to me — saving you — was a way of saving myself, too. You were my important thing I had to do.”

“Something important,” I said, and scoffed. “Me? Doing something important? Can’t imagine what the universe has in store for a loser like me.”

“But don’t you want to see what that something is? Maybe it’s getting your family back. Could be the time will come for you to save somebody else. Who knows?”

I shrugged. “It’s hard,” I said, “you know? It’s going to be hard.”

“You’ve got me to help you now,” Boyd said. “If nothing else, we’re sort of friends now, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” I said with a snort.

“And if that doesn’t work,” Boyd said, “then I’ll just emotionally coerce you into not offing yourself.”

“How’s that now?”

“If I wake up to this same night again, I’ll know it means you killed yourself, and I’ll have to start all over. Only if it comes to that, I won’t try to convince you to live. I’ll let you drive into town and kill those poor people. I’ll sit back and watch it happen. I’ll let you get arrested, so you can snatch the cop’s gun and shoot yourself. I will not stop you.”

With a chuckle, I said, “All you’d be doing is — ”

“And then I’ll kill myself, too,” Boyd said. “Instead of going to sleep, I’ll off myself, so I can end this repetitive night from ever happening again.”

“And, pray tell, how that’s supposed to be coercion? I still get what I want in the end.”

“Because I think you’re a decent person, Wyatt Modell. I don’t believe you’d allow yourself to go through with it if you knew your demise resulted in my death and four other people’s on top of it. Everybody lives, or nobody lives.”

I swallowed this blackmail like a cue-ball-sized pill down a dry throat. He had me beat, all right. I couldn’t say much about being a decent person, but if it meant staying alive for the sake of five others, then sure, I could try.

“All right, you’ve made your point,” I said, then, “So, we’re friends now, huh?”

“I’d say so,” Boyd said.

“How are you going to help me?” I asked.

“One day at a time.”

“Starting today?”

“I got some time to kill.”