by Jon Bassoff
More bourbon.
More bourbon.
And then a noise. The sound of a car engine. Durango sat there breathing heavily. The noose still tightened around his neck, he crawled out of the tent. Who the hell was out here in the middle of the night? Were they coming to get him? Coming to get his father?
Far too drunk, and he staggered through the darkness knowing he had nothing to lose, that all had already been lost.
And then he spotted the vehicle. From beneath a skeletal cottonwood, Durango watched as the headlights appeared dimly through the rain and mist. Shirt soaking wet, he removed it and tossed it on the ground. His chest was covered with wounds, still fresh. Had he done that to himself, a flagellation for the Lord?
He watched as the car came to a stop. Soon the passenger-side door flung open and a figure appeared. A woman. Durango squinted, trying to make out her features. Too dark. Too rainy. Moments later another figure stepped outside. Tall. Head slumped forward. His head was spinning and he was scared.
They opened the trunk. The rain kept falling, burning those wounds on Durango’s chest. He slicked back his hair with his hand. The hell were they doing? Carrying a body? Yes, that’s what they were doing. Dead. Everybody was dead or dying.
The woman was talking, but her words were blurred by the wind and the rain. The tall man was quiet. They dropped the body on the ground, started covering it with dirt and mud. Durango had seen too many corpses today. Who was the dead woman?
And then another figure appeared from the car and he wore a bowler’s hat and walked with a limp and Durango knew who he was, knew who he was, knew who he was.
Where he walks the rain falls
When he grins the children cry
Souls he steals and crushes
Dreams collapse and bodies die
Inaudible words and then the three killers walked back toward the car.
Dr. Freeman, you mutilated my father’s brain! Dr. Freeman, you ruptured my father’s soul! He was right, he was right! A destroyer you are.
But the booze was too much and Durango stumbled forward. The woman looked up. And now he caught a glimpse of her face. Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. He turned around and dashed into the depths of the forest.
When he glanced back, he saw that she was coming after him. His true love. Would she kill him too? And what about the body? Who was it?
“I think you know, boy. I think you’ve always known.”
He could see Scent’s eyes glowing and she was no more than five feet away.
“I know you’re there,” she said.
But Durango remained silent.
“Come out. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
She took another step forward and then stopped.
“Ah, hell,” she whispered. “I had to do it. Don’t you understand?” There was a long moment of silence and then she turned around, started back toward the car.
For a long time, Durango stayed hidden in the black forest. He listened to their voices, far away and muted. Then he heard the slamming of car doors and, soon after, the sound of the engine revving. From his vantage point he saw the car’s headlights stretch along the dirt road, saw the taillights get smaller and smaller, finally vanishing completely. Other than the rain falling through the trees and on the forest floor, the world was silent.
He no longer wore shoes, he no longer wore a shirt, and his body was scabbed from wounds of his own making. He didn’t want to look, but he knew he had to. Who was the woman? Silently he tiptoed through the branches and brambles toward the heap on the ground.
And now the devil, his voice calm and soothing, whispered in Durango’s ear. “Well, who do you think it is? Just a stranger maybe? Or perhaps somebody you once knew. Somebody very close to you. Get closer. Take a better look.”
A few more steps and Durango came upon the corpse. He got down on his haunches, wiped the rain from his eyes. He studied the battered face for a long time, dread slowly spreading through his body.
“Is it her?” the devil asked. “It’s been so many years since you’ve seen her face. Is it really her?”
Durango tried ignoring the voice. But the more he studied her face, the more he was convinced.
“It’s her, isn’t it? Dead, but only recently. What do you say we bring her back to the campsite. She’s the next one! Don’t you see, boy? It’s all so clear now!”
But Durango only shook his head. “It’s impossible. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does. You’re just looking at this in the wrong way. Death is a tricky business, boy. The laws of time are much different for the dead.”
The rain had stopped completely, and now the moon was glowing dimly behind the clouds. Durango scratched at his wounds, breathed deeply. It was all crazy. He was all crazy. But still…Muttering words with no meaning, he placed one of his arms under her neck and the other under her legs. Her body was stiff and didn’t bend at all. Face reddening, carotid artery pulsing, Durango managed to stagger to his feet with the woman cradled in his arms. He wiped away the dirt and mud from her brutalized face. Then he began walking.
Through the forest he walked, wind blowing cold, gnarled branches swaying menacingly. And from somewhere hidden, shrieks of the dying.
“It’s your mother, isn’t it?”
“No. You’re trying to trick me. You—”
“Your father killed her, isn’t that right? Strangled her? Dropped her body in the well?”
Durango nodded. “Yes. That’s what he did.”
Another hundred yards and Durango spotted the campsite. His muscles were aching from the weight of the corpse. Groaning, he laid the woman’s corpse on the ground.
Then he sat down on a rock. He located another bottle of bourbon, his father’s last one, and drank a long swallow and then another and another.
They were all dead, every last one of them.
“That’s my mother. That’s my mother. That’s my mother.”
“Of course it is, Durango.”
When he woke up, the sun was shining, the air was warm, and the clouds had burned away. Durango’s head was pounding. He’d slept with a rock for a pillow. He gazed at his hands, filthy from other people’s death.
He pulled himself up to a sitting position. He waited for the devil to start chattering, the hot breath in his ear. But all was silent—the devil wasn’t there. He breathed deeply. His eyes, blurry and bloodshot, scanned the ground in front of him. The body was still there, still positioned grotesquely.
He dropped to his hands and knees and scurried over to the body.
And if not me, then the next one.
“My mother,” he whispered. Then he placed his hand on her bosom and squeezed his eyes shut. “For she has seen death and now she will see life.”
Chapter 29
The stranger had been sitting in a long white Chevy outside of Scent’s house for close to an hour. He wore working blue jeans and a woodcutter’s shirt, and his gray hair was slicked back into a ducktail. Scent kept hoping he was there for somebody else, but she knew he wasn’t. She sat at the kitchen table watching him watch her.
When he opened the car door and stepped outside, Scent felt her heart race. She chewed on the webbing of her fingers, tapped her foot incessantly. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, smoke snaking from his nostrils. Outside the sun was rising over the refinery towers. The man glanced at his watch, pulled back his hair. And then he walked slowly toward Scent’s house.
Who the hell was he? Not a cop or a detective. Didn’t have the look. Just to be safe, Scent grabbed her purse off the counter and found her 357 Colt Python. She moved quickly to the living room and stuck the weapon beneath the couch pillow. Then she stood in front of the door and waited.
From outside, a deep voice: “Baby? You in there? Open the door.”
Scent didn’t move.
“Open the door. I ain’t gonna hurt you. I know you’re in there.”
A minute or two and then the man started kicking the door and it wouldn�
�t hold for long. Scent gasped each time the door was kicked, and when it splintered apart, her knees gave out and she fell to the floor.
The man stepped inside, his face creased, blue eyes slitted. He walked slowly across the living room to where Scent was huddled.
“Get up,” he said and there was some gentleness in his voice.
Scent rose to her feet and backed up against the wall. The man stared at her without blinking.
“Where’s Baby?”
Scent’s mouth parted but no words would come. Instead, she simply shook her head.
“You Baby’s girl?”
“Yes.”
The man eyed her up and down, nodding his head slowly. “Where’s your mother?”
No answer again so the man took a few more steps forward until he was directly in front of Scent.
“Where is she?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
And again, Scent couldn’t speak. The man flexed his fingers. She noticed he wore a wedding band. Outside a train whistle blew, echoing in the morning air.
“Is she dead?” he said.
“Yes,” she managed to croak, and for the first time she felt sad about it, because maybe her mother had loved her after all.
For a moment, the man’s face betrayed no expression, but then his lower lip twitched and a single tear fell down his cheek. He staggered to an old wooden chair and sat down, his head lowering and pathetic sobs emanating from behind his hands. Scent eyed the couch where her gun lay hidden, but didn’t move from the corner of the room.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “She just up and died. She must have been special to you.”
The man, his face hidden behind his hands, nodded, then continued sobbing, his shoulders rising up and down.
“It was only last week,” she said. “She’d been sick for a while, though. We gave her an appropriate burial. She’s in heaven, I think.”
A few more minutes, and the man wiped away the tears with his sleeve. His eyes were swollen red, and he looked as if he had aged a decade since walking through the door.
“Who are you?” Scent asked. “What was my mother to you?”
The makings of a sad smile, but then the agony consumed him again and he began yanking his hair and rocking back and forth in the chair.
Scent wasn’t too good at tenderness, but she moved slowly across the room and placed her hand on his shoulder. He reached across his body and squeezed her hand, pulled it to her face.
“You have her mouth,” he said. “The rest of you looks different, but you have her mouth. Those mischievous lips.”
“Listen. I don’t—”
He gazed at her, and his face was filled with regret and sorrow. “I’m so sorry I had to leave you,” he said. “You were just a light in your mother’s eyes. I’m so sorry you had to live a life without a daddy.”
And now the sudden recognition. So much older than those crumpled photographs, but of course it was him. Of course…
“This…this is too much,” she said. “I didn’t think…I didn’t think…”
He rose from the chair and grabbed both her hands, stared into her eyes. “I was always going to come back. Always. I loved your mother. I loved you. That may be hard to believe, but it’s true.”
Her head was spinning. “Why’d it take so long then? Seventeen years…”
“I was on the run.”
“You could have called. You could have—”
Scent’s father smiled. Many of the teeth were rotted. “I killed a man,” he said. “Stole a lot of money. They were after me for a long time. Pictures in the newspaper. You think the law will forget, but they won’t. Believe me, it killed me to stay away. But I was afraid if I came back, they’d know it. Maybe I was paranoid. Maybe. I’m sorry. I know I done you wrong. I know…”
“Mama never spent the money. Said she wouldn’t spend a dime, not till you got back. Well, you got back a few days too late.”
Her father raised his eyebrows, the sorrowful expression changing quickly to desire. “Never spent the money, you say?”
“That’s right. Kept it hidden. Made us live in poverty all these years. I tried finding the money, believe me, I did. But she wouldn’t reveal her secret. Not even on her death bed.”
“I might know…I might know…”
And now Scent could feel her heartbeat quicken. She studied her father’s craggy face, and suddenly she knew this was the way it was supposed to happen. All the trials and tribulations led to this moment. This is the way God wanted it to happen. Oh, where was Durango? Love was a possibility.
“Where?” Scent said. “Where’s the money hidden? I’ve looked everywhere. In drawers and under floorboards. In the attic and beneath the dirt. I can’t find it. I can’t find the money anywhere.”
“You gotten rid of her stuff yet? I mean after she passed?”
“No. Haven’t even been in her room. Couldn’t bear the thought.”
Without another word, her father walked through the living room toward Baby’s bedroom. Scent waited a moment, thinking, thinking. Once he disappeared into the hallway, she rushed to the couch, pulled the gun out from beneath the pillow. She kept it hidden behind her back.
Inside the bedroom, and he kicked away the dirty clothes on the floor. He eyed the dresser and the bookshelf and then strode to her bed. Scent watched from beneath the door frame. He began pulling off the mess of covers and sheets from the bed. Once the bed was stripped, he stopped, his hands relaxing at his side. On the floor, peeking out from beneath a comforter was Baby’s teddy bear. The man bent down and snatched the stuffed animal, gripped it in his hands. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocketknife. He sat down on the bed. Then he went to work on cutting apart the bear. Scent took a step forward, her mouth parting, tongue licking her lips.
Sliced apart, there was no stuffing inside the bear. Just money. All the money in the world.
The man tossed the murdered bear to the ground and spread the piles of cash on the bed. His looked up at Scent, his mouth stretching into a smile.
“How do you like that?” he said. “We can live a life now. You and me. I’ve got some friends in Mexico. But we can’t wait. We can’t. Go get your things packed up. Do you hear me? Get your things packed up.”
Just like that, the money found. It was God’s will. Everything. Her mother was right. He’d come back. Baby’d been the sane one. Of course she had. It was funny if you really thought about it.
Scent pulled the gun from behind her back. Her father barely had time to comprehend when she squeezed the trigger and there was a loud pop. She got him good, right in the middle of his chest. He stood there for a moment and then stared down at his shirt becoming soaked with blood. He dropped to his knees and then to his stomach. “It’s too bad,” he said, and that was all.
She watched him die, just like she’d watched her mother die, just like she’d watched the fat man die, just like she’d watched that boy Tom Hartwood die. It wasn’t her fault. God had made her bad. She moved across the room, avoiding her father’s last-gasp effort to grab at her ankle. Through giggles, she grabbed the piles of money and tossed them in a pillowcase.
She packed her suitcase quickly, tossing dresses and panties and sweaters and toiletries, leaving behind everything else. So much death in her wake, but now she could start living. She’d go and find Durango, that’s what she’d do. Maybe his goodness could smother her badness.
But as soon as she opened the front door, she came face-to-face with the Holland brothers, the older one only carrying a Kierkegaard book, the other two gripping machetes.
“You killed my brother,” Grady said. “And so…justice.”
Grady turned toward the twins and gave a quick nod, that was all. In a split second they were on her. Kaz grabbed her and pinned her to the ground. Vlad, the one with the eye patch, sliced Scent but good, starting at the collarbone and extending all the way to the belly button.
More slicing, across
the cheeks, along the thighs.
Grady stood with his arms crossed, as still as an idol. His brothers took their turns cutting and hacking, their torsos and faces soon covered with the whore’s blood. She was twitching and gasping, eyes bulging, as the blades cut through her flesh, blood spurting like geysers.
Visions of Durango, her savior, as the brothers hacked off her feet and hands, sliced off her tongue and nose and ears.
Her breath was gone but they kept at her, all humanity’s rage, and as she watched her own blood spread across the hardwood floor, she thought this sure was a funny way to die.
Chapter 30
Freeman sat on the edge of his bed in the motel room, his hands folded on his lap. He wore flannel pajamas and blue slippers. His glasses were on the nightstand, his cane on the floor. His eyes were focused on Edgar, watching him sleep.
Eight hours prior he’d been helping bury a body. He, the world-renown Dr. Walter Freeman, had become an accessory to murder. What kind of sentences did they hand down for this type of crime? Five years? More? Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t survive a single day behind bars. Suicide before sentencing. He still had his handgun. If necessary, only if necessary.
Meanwhile, he couldn’t get the horrific images from the night before out of his mind. Scent piercing her own mother’s throat with an ice pick, the blood spraying everywhere. Mrs. Wallis, eyes terrified in death, being stuffed into the trunk of his car. And then the dirt and mud covering her pallid face.
And Edgar slept. The murder hadn’t bothered him in the slightest…
Freeman rubbed his eyes with his hands. He could feel those old nemeses, anxiety and depression, scratching at his skin. He rose to his feet, legs unsteady. He grabbed his spectacles from his nightstand and shoved them to his face. Then he grabbed his cane and began pacing across the room, suddenly terrified, but of what?
He spied a half-empty bottle of gin on the windowsill. He snatched it away and untwisted the cap. But as soon as the gin touched his tongue, he had a change of heart. He dropped the bottle, watched the booze spread across the filthy carpet. Not alcohol. That would only create more misery.
