Clown in a Cornfield

by Adam Cesare

Her tone was why people thought she was such a bitch. Her tone and that she kind of was.

In Kettle Springs she could keep her head down, avoid the drama. No one here knew Quinn as the girl whose mother slumped low in the bleachers during last year’s regionals, then puked down her chin. Nobody in Kettle Springs knew how Samantha Maybrook had died.

Philly ate its rot, was constantly demolishing the old to make way for the new. Looking at these houses, Quinn was struck with the feeling that Kettle Springs had left its best days behind. The town had given up.

Life, Quinn had decided on the long ride out here, was a matter of perspective and attitude. There was a way to look at anything and make it seem okay. She felt sure of it, because . . . well, what other choice did she have?

As Quinn scrutinized the decorations, she noticed that, oddly enough, nothing seemed to date beyond the early 2000s. It was like time had stopped for the Eatery just after the turn of the century. The effect made the Eatery seem less like the walls were celebrating the restaurant’s place in the community and more like they were preserving the artifacts of a time long past.

He’d been in politics long enough to know that after what had happened with the parade today, he was done. He’d lose the election to a frozen Butterball turkey, if someone drew eyes on it and filled out the proper paperwork.

His hair fell over his eyes in a way that made him look sad. Beautiful, but sad. And Quinn knew in her heart that if her mother were alive, she would warn her. Cole Hill was broken. He was trouble in every conceivable way a boy could be trouble. And Quinn already wanted to save him from himself. And she could hear her mother’s voice say: “Exactly. Look how well that worked out for your dad.”

Glenn Maybrook hadn’t given his daughter very many “facts of life” talks. But when he did, the talks were often in the form of things he’d witnessed firsthand in the emergency room. One such talk that had stayed with her ended with the words: “And that’s why you always mix your own drinks.”

“I’m not some gun nut,” Rust continued. “I don’t have any bump stocks or semi-automatic weapons. I’m not sitting in my basement with a bowie knife, carving rounds into cop killers. I eat what I hunt. I think if you’re going to eat meat, you should know where it comes from and what you’re taking from the world.”

For better or worse, Kettle Springs was her home, was her town, was now where she was from, fucker.

That death had meant something. Had fundamentally changed who Quinn Maybrook was. But this death . . . Quinn didn’t know what she expected to feel, having taken a human life—even a life that had ended while doing a horribly evil thing.

How much had they both changed since they’d been on speaking terms? The skin on Rust’s face seemed aged, lived-in. Cole had been filming prank videos, practicing his alcohol poisoning, and curating his social media presence, while Rust had stayed doing what he’d always done: living.

“So you’re going to wipe out an entire generation of the town, because, what—you think we don’t respect you enough? As if your generation gives a fuck about us. Everything was better way back when, but when we try to tell you how things are now, you don’t want to hear it. Make Kettle Springs great again . . . You’re not only a psychopath, you’re dumb as shit,” Cole said.

“Stop actin’ like you’re children. You fight and fuck and drink. You are not children. You grew up too fast.” He paused. “Maybe that’s the cause.”

“But convincing the town that we needed to cull was not as hard as you’d think. I mean, we didn’t say it right away like that. You can’t say it all yourself. It has to seem like their idea. So you nudge. You tell people they’re right, tell ’em what they want to hear, you listen—really listen, not pretend listen—but then the whole time you’re doing that listening, you’re pushing the boundaries forward. Reshaping morality. Drawing a new line in the sand while nobody else is watching, then wiping away the old one. And the whole time you know . . . You know where it’s all leading.”

“You know the thing that gets me?” Cole said. “How you pretend to care. Even in your insane way, you pretend to care. You’re all so worried about what’s wrong with the kids, when you’re the ones selling us guns, telling us times were better when men were men, pretending that global warming is a hoax, and turning hate into a team sport. I mean, yeah, you have taken it all a step further, sure, but it’s not like anyone over the age of fifty has ever really given a shit about us. You guys may be homicidal lunatics, but, hey, at least you’re being honest about how you wish we were dead.”

“If it makes you feel any better, think of yourself as a phoenix. Your death becomes a rebirth. Baypen reopened. Kettle Springs saved.”

Her only thought: At least I saved a bullet. Who even was she anymore?

Madness. Hate. Insecurity. Tradition. The American Dream.

Quinn took comfort in that. The fact that history bent toward progress, no matter how hard the assholes tried pushing back.