Chipped Tooth

“We have all the time in the world,” Sal said as he wiped the sweat off his forehead with a dinner napkin he stole from some restaurant. He drove only with his left hand, knuckles white around the wheel as he swerved around a scarecrow.

Ears of rotten corn knocked against the windshield. The sound was indistinguishable from a rain of fists.

“I mean, it’s not like anyone’s on our tail,” he continued. His voice was overly jubilant as if he were trying to convince himself of his own words. “No one saw a thing. No one heard a thing. Hell, it’s like you said—no one’s been out to these fields in ages. We’ll have all the time in the world to find that nice, abandoned farmhouse you suggested. A place that’s really falling apart at the edges. No one will know. This guy—he fell off the face of the Earth.”

A jackrabbit leapt in front of us. Its eyes were alien in the glare of the headlights.

Sal didn’t even attempt the breaks. We careened over the creature.

In the rear view mirror, it limped.

“Shit,” Sal said. “Should’ve watched where it was going.”

Again, he wiped the sweat off his forehead. His left hand, his driving hand, had begun to shake.

“Once we find our farmhouse,” he said, “we’ll dig, right? It’ll be nice. It’s a balmy night and we’ll have a roof over our heads. We’ll dig and dig until we’ve got ourselves a nice ditch and then… then it’ll be over. We’ll be off scot-free. They’ll find him in a decade, when we’ve both got wives and cute little kids. He’ll be a skeleton, at that point. They’ll have to… what’s it called?” He snapped his free hand, trying to jog his memory. “Dental records! They’ll have to identify him by his teeth.”

Sal bit the side of his mouth. “Imagine—being identified by your teeth. Makes you wonder about your own mouth, doesn’t it? I chipped my canine when I was a kid… I dunno if I’ve ever told you. I tripped on the blacktop and hit my face right on the pavement. It bled for a solid day. That’s how they would know. They’d look at that chipped canine and somehow determine it was me. Course, they would have to ask Dr. Renault for my x-rays, first. Then they’d also see that I’ve still got my wisdom teeth… never did get those taken out.”

I noticed a bit of blood on the side of a back window and wondered if it was the jackrabbit’s.

“All my friends got their wisdom teeth taken out, but my mouth was large enough to fit four extra teeth. Doesn’t seem like something that would be all that notable, does it? Who cares how many teeth you’ve got, anyways? But when you’re murdered, I guess those things suddenly matter.” Sal took a sudden breath and turned away from the road. At first, I wondered if he spotted something outside the window.

Then I met his eyes. He was looking at me.

“Goddammit man, could you say something?”

“Slow down.”

“What?”

“You’re going 60 through a cornfield. I feel like I’m on a hayride.”

“Fuck, man. I’m just trying to—”

“—Like you said, we have all the time in the world. Drive like it.”

Sal followed my instructions. The speedometer dropped to 50, 40, 30… it wasn’t a smooth decline, however.

I glanced over the control console. Sure enough, his foot was shaking as well.

“You’re a mess,” I said.

He shook his head, incredulous. “I’m a bit shaken, is all.”

There was a long silence—the longest that had evaded the car since the start of our road trip. Sal’s mind was still running a mile a minute. He was mouthing things, subconsciously. I imagined he was still thinking about teeth, running his tongue along both rows and counting how many he had.

“I see one,” I said, snapping him out of his daze.

“A farmhouse?”

“Yeah,” I pointed to an odd, dilapidated silhouette in the distance. It took him a moment to register it and, when he saw it, he turned the wheel 90 degrees and an unmistakable THUD resounded through the car.

“God,” Sal said, shaking his head. “That was—”

“—Just focus on the road.”

A few minutes later, we rolled to a stop in front of the vacated barn. Our arrival sent particles of debris flying through the air.

Sal slammed the door open and coughed.

“All the time in the world,” he repeated, still consoling himself. “We have…”

He looked at his left wrist. Then, upon finding bare skin, looked at his right.

All the blood left his face.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

I moved aside and allowed Sal to rummage through the car. He checked the glove compartment, the sides, the floors—upturning every cushion and fabric cover and finding nothing but gum wrappers and cigarette butts. His movements were on the verge of becoming convulsions. The muscles of his arms spasmed, his breathing irregular.

“I left my watch,” he said. “I left my watch at the same spot we—”

“—Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?” He slammed the door again and collapsed against the side of his car, muddying his trousers as he melted onto the field. “I got my initials engraved on the inside.”

“We’ll get it back in the morning.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? We have to go back. We have to—”

I almost laughed. “Go back to the crime scene? With him in the trunk of the car? Are you listening to yourself right now?”

“We are so screwed. Someone will find it beforehand. Someone will find it right next to all that blood on the ground and they’ll—”

“—Sal, listen to me.” I took ahold of his shoulders, forcing him to stand up. “You said it yourself. No one saw anything, no one heard anything. Once we’re finished burying the body, we’ll swing back and grab your watch before any employees arrive for the morning shift. Then we can take your car to Dale’s garage and clean it until it’s brand new.” I gave him a soft slap on the face. “Right now, however, we have to stay level-headed and focus on the task at hand. Alright?”

“But what if someone’s dumpster diving. What if they see—”

“If someone’s dumpster diving, they’ll probably try to sell your watch for some cash instead of filing a police report. The chances of that watch biting you in the ass are slim-to-none, Sal. The odds are really in our favor here.”

“Alright,” he said, nodding. Then, quieter: “Alright.”

“Now stop panicking and let’s bury this son of a bitch.”

…

We didn’t talk as we dug.

Sal was out-of-breath, his blue button-up now drenched several shades darker. The little black hairs he liked to sweep on his forehead now looked as though they had been laminated. We worked in the illumination the headlights provided, the hum of the engine providing a necessary respite from the eerie silence of the abandoned farms.

I watched him carefully from the corner of my eye. The act of digging seemed to provide him comfort, the repetition combined with the labor lulling him into a state of semi-meditation. Or, more likely, he had simply reached that breaking point of stress where everything reaches such a high that it all fades into a white-noise sort-of panic.

Once we were halfway finished, I pretended to see in the distance. I broke away from digging, shielding my eyes as I studied the rows upon rows of rotten corn.

It didn’t take long for Sal to notice my preoccupation.

“What’s wrong?”

“I thought I saw another car in the distance.”

He winced. “You don’t think—”

“—No, it wasn’t a police light. But someone’s out there. I think one of us should keep watch.”

“You go, man. I’ll keep digging.”

“You look like hell, Sal. You could use a break.”

He mulled it over for a moment. It was then that I realized digging hadn’t comforted him, it had simply tired him out. There was still a slight shake in his bones—a shake that indicated his limbs would give out if he dug for any longer.

“Alright,” he said. Then, quieter: “Alright.”

I reached into my pocket and handed him the gun.

Sal surveyed it for a moment. The look in his eyes—the horror combined with a childlike curiosity—only confirmed that this was the right course of action.

He nodded towards me and moved to the edge of the fallen barn.

He watched. No lights ever came.

…

Only a few minutes later, Sal was dreaming.

He wasn’t asleep. No—he was dreaming with his eyes open, the rustling of the ears of corn and tall grasses having lured him into a state of semi-consciousness. I could’ve said his name and all that would’ve responded would be the howl of the wind.

Most importantly, the gun was still in his left hand. His driving hand—the one that shook.

His finger was poised on the trigger.

That was the only thing that mattered, really. And it was the only thing I thought of as I crept up on him, slowly, taking care not to break his lucid state. In the headlights, the weapon shined with an air of mystery like an odd gleam at the bottom of a murky lake.

I grabbed his hand.

He jolted.

I saw the whites of his eyes as I brought the gun to his temple. Sal wasn’t a quick thinker, never had been. He didn’t even seem to register what was happening until the cool metal stung his bare skin.

I put my index finger over his.

He raised his right hand as if to swing whilst desperately trying to detangle his left hand from my own. It didn’t matter, however, because I already had my index finger over his and the gun was already at his temple and there was nothing that could’ve been done.

He shot himself.

…

As discussed, I travelled along the old dirt road by foot—a road I had neglected to tell Sal about when we drove away from the hit.

It didn’t take long for Uncle Dale to find me. He’d been driving loops through the countryside for a couple hours, waiting.

I rubbed dirt and pests off my trousers before hopping into the passenger seat. He studied my face carefully, noting the trace amounts of blood on my cheek.

“Any problems?” He asked, bringing a cigarette to his lips.

I shook my head.

“What’d you leave?”

“His watch. You should’ve seen his face after I shot Harry… I’ve never seen someone so shell-shocked. I could’ve taken his wallet and dangled his keys in front of him and he wouldn’t have noticed.”

He laughed, low and easy.

“Not the sharpest kid, was he?”

I didn’t say anything for a bit, watching the decaying cornfields as they rolled past.

“He realized he left it, on our way to the farmhouse,” I said.

“Really?”

“He tried to check the time.”

“Did he want to turn around?”

I nodded.

“And you convinced him otherwise?”

I nodded again.

“Good.”

“He… he talked a lot about dental records, too.”

“Dental records?”

“Yeah. He started rambling and somehow convinced himself they would identify Harry by his dental records when they found him as a skeleton in the future. For some reason, he started talking about his own mouth.”

“Huh?”

“He chipped his tooth on the blacktop when he was little, apparently. Fell face-first on the blacktop.”

“I remember that day,” Uncle Dale nodded. “He cried the whole drive home.”

We didn’t say anything for a while.

Then he cleared his throat.

“I didn’t take this decision lightly. But Sal… he talked too much. He was running out of time.” He studied me again—not my face, my hands. My left was rested on my lap, my right propped on the open window.

Both were still.

“You did good work today,” he continued. “As far as I’m concerned, son, you’ve got all the time in the world.”