by Jason Miller
“Hey, dumbshit,” Yellow Mustache said. Meaning me, I guess. I was the dumbshit. “You reckon you’ve got a concussion?”
I didn’t answer, but they weren’t expecting me to. They liked the idea of my concussion just fine. They were bad men, and to a bad man nothing brought more pleasure than the idea of other people’s suffering. They stood and stretched and chuckled a little to each other and went out of the room. I took the moment to try and figure out where I was.
The lights hanging overhead were as big as punch bowls, the air smelled strongly of manure, and even with my limited range of vision I could make out a disc harrow lurking in a corner. There was a breast plough and some daisy rakes and a two-pronged hayfork and other such instruments of a similarly sinister appearance. You could have led tourists from certain parts of country through it all and convinced them it was a torture chamber. I wasn’t any too happy about any of it myself. It wasn’t the barn on the Harvels’ property. I’d caught a pretty good glimpse of that one a few hours earlier, and this wasn’t it. So I was on some other property in southern Illinois or northern Kentucky, in some other barn. Course, that only narrowed the possibilities to a few thousand. I was still doing the math when White Beard reappeared.
“You’re Slim,” he said. His face wasn’t pleasant now. This was his true face. He was as ugly as a monkey’s ass and he had sour breath and a brain gone badly psychotic. Somewhere, a mother was filled with pride.
“Not sure,” I said. “I might be Slim. I might be Martin Van Buren. You want people to remember their names, you probably shouldn’t give them amnesia.”
“Naw, you’re no Martin Van Whatthefuck. You’re Slim. I heard of you, know ’bout your shenanigans. You may not realize it, but you’ve got some renown on you.”
“I give it back.”
“Bet you would, too,” he said. “Listen, though, you talked to a guy today in Marion.”
“Couple of ’em, in fact.”
“Maybe, but you know the one I mean. The one you talked to. What’d he say?”
“Don’t remember,” I said. “He wouldn’t let me write anything down.”
He shook his head. There was regret in his face, but it was false regret.
“That kind of talk ain’t going to get you nowhere,” he said. He held something in his hand just outside my range of vision. “You know what this is?”
“Flower bouquet and an apology pie?”
He grinned. His teeth had slash marks across them like they’d been cut with a knife. He raised whatever it was for me to see. I think he knew I couldn’t see it the first time. He was having a game at my expense. It was a pistol-shaped thing with a trigger and a curved metal loop extending from the base and handle. The end of the loop was hot and bright.
“Not a pie,” he said. “Not any kind of apology. Try again.”
“Ray gun?”
“Soldering gun.”
“I was only kidding about the ray gun. You like science-fiction stories?”
“Brother, you’re in one.”
“You fixing to do some metal work?”
He shook his head.
“What I’m fixing to do is ask a question. For the second time. I don’t like to repeat myself, neither, so I’m unhappy already.”
“Times a-wasting. Fields full of sheep to fuck, I guess.”
“You’re a tough guy, all right. They said you were tough.”
“I’m not tough,” I said. That was truthful. I didn’t feel tough. Toughness was something in my rearview mirror, and I was riding a rocket ship away from it. “Ask me your question.”
“First, I want to tell you what happens if you don’t answer.”
“Look, I really don’t need to hear it. I only got into this mess in the first place because I like dogs. I don’t care about Dennis Reach, not really, and I don’t care about you or the Cleaveses or the White Dragons. You want to run around like crazy people doing what it is you’re doing, why, that’s fine with me, too. What say you cut me loose and we just call it even?”
“Sorry, but it’s too late for that,” he said. I didn’t think he was sorry, though. Not really. “The boy in Marion, the one you spoke to today, what did he tell you?”
“He said he didn’t care Dennis Reach was dead. He quoted the Bible some. That’s pretty much it.”
“That’s it?” he said.
“That’s the gist of it, yeah.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t believe you,” he said. “And even if I did, we got to do this the right way.”
“You got a funny reckoning of right, you know that?”
“Maybe, but I got to be sure. I got to be so sure I can take what you’ve told me to my people and have them believe me beyond a shadow. Because if they don’t, and I tell them different, it comes back on me . . .” He leaned in a little closer. Our noses were nearly touching. “You understand?”
“Look . . .”
“What we’re going to do is this. Arlis is going to come back in here . . .”
“Aha!”
“What?”
“I didn’t know which of you was which. Now I know. You’re Bundy.”
He ignored this and said, “Arlis is going to come in here. He’s going to grease you up some. Not on you, you understand. He’s going to grease in you. Grease your nether. Then we insert the solder. Right down your mine shaft. The tip heats up, sizzles the oil, cooks you from the inside.”
“Seems like you might skip the oiling-up step. Feels like overkill to me.” Truth was, I could barely speak. My mouth had gone dry as powdered bone.
Bundy shrugged.
“To me, too. But Arlis likes it, and he has so little to make him happy.”
“He was my brother, I’d find that worrisome.”
“I’ll be honest, I do, sometimes. But you do what you do for family. So oil you up he will, and fry you shall.”
“Nothing to be done about it?”
“Lessin you can convince me you’re telling the truth. And you can’t do that lessin we use the solder.”
“Vicious circle.”
“It ain’t going to be your fondest memory, I’ll say that,” he said. “Look, Slim, time to get real. You ain’t walking out of here. Talk to us, don’t talk to us. It doesn’t make much difference, far as you’re concerned. You’re a dead man. See, you don’t mean anything to us, me or my people. You got into this thing kinda on a whim, and some things have gotten tangled since then.”
“You can say that again.”
He turned his head and hocked a loogie into the dust.
“But that boy in Marion, he’s something else. That one-handed motherfucker. Tibbs. He’s not something you can just push into a corner and forget about. He’s the real deal. Bottom line is, I got to know what he told you, and I got to be sure about it, and that’s all there is.”
“Look . . .” I said again, but it wasn’t any good.
Arlis came in, like he’d been waiting nearby the whole time, the little shit. He held a glass jug of oil in his arms, cradling it like an infant. The glass was frosted with age, and the oil was grimy and there were dead flies bobbing around in it. Arils set the jug on the table, and he and Bundy used carpet knives to cut me out of my clothes. They took turns working me over as they did. I struggled against the beating and the ropes—bungee cords, I guess they were—and one of them popped loose. I shrugged halfway off the table and hit Arlis so hard in the face he fell over and jarred the table and knocked off the jug. The glass broke, and the oil splashed all over the floor. Bundy hit me from behind and I lay down again.
“He spilled the oil,” Arlis said. I couldn’t see him, only hear him.
“I saw.”
“He broke my jug, too.”
“We’ll get you a new jug.”
“Not like that one. That was my good jug.”
“We’ll get you another good jug. Maybe even a better one. I know a place. Meantime, get some of that oil off the floor.”
Arlis
got some oil off the floor. The next couple moments were unpleasant ones. Even more unpleasant, I mean. Arlis did his business. The greasing business. It was like an eel was sliding inside of me. I gritted my teeth. Then Bundy reappeared, hovering over the table.
“Last chance,” he said.
“Won’t matter what I say, will it?”
“Nope.”
“Let’s get it over with then.”
I think I said that last part. I’m not sure. There was a flash, and a scream like a herd of wild animals was crying out all at once because a redneck psychopath had stuck a hot soldering gun up their ass. The metal table jumped up and hit me in the back of the head and there was a sound like a hundred metal drums banging out some fearful cacophony. The room went away and came back and went away again in a flurry like the flurry of the wings of a green bottle fly. The last time it came back, Bundy was there again, smiling at me with his knife-slashed teeth.
“Give me your thoughts.”
I opened my mouth to speak but the only thing that came out was a gasp. Bundy thought it hilarious. Finally, I said, “It ain’t nothing I’m eager to do again.”
“I bet. But here’s the thing. That wasn’t even the full deal. Arlis likes to start off slow. That was just the edge of your bunghole. Not even really through the window. Think how bad it’ll hurt when he goes all in.”
“Why don’t you show me first?”
“The guy in Marion. The one-handed man.”
“I’ve never even been to Marion. Is that a town or a lady?”
He looked at me a moment.
“Have it your way. Arlis?”
I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him drawing nearer between my legs. I was about to die and I knew it. Die or go insane and then die. I said some prayers. I said some words to Anci and Peggy. I had some words with my dad. Not all of them kind, but words. I wished things had turned out different. I wished I’d taken that job filling potholes for the county. I wished Peggy and I had gotten married, had time to do that. Make our family together. But mostly I wished I’d never met Sheldon and A. Evan Cleaves. I lifted my head off the table. Best to see it coming, I thought. Look it in the eye. And that’s when I saw Jeep Mabry watching us through the window.
“Boys,” I said, “how’s your life insurance?”
The door slammed open so hard it came off its top hinge. Jeep came in like a devil harvesting sinners. There was an ax by the door and he grabbed it and swung hard as Bundy turned and rose from his place near the table with a cry of alarm. He was fast, but Jeep was faster. Twice as fast. The ax hit Bundy in the neck near the top of his right shoulder and damn near severed his head. Arlis screamed. He lunged at Jeep with the soldering gun, but he slipped a little in the puddle of spilled oil and lost his footing. Jeep kicked Bundy loose from the ax’s beard with a sickening crack and stepped forward smartly, almost casually. He might have been going for the last gallon of milk in the dairy aisle. Arlis tried to get up, but he was too slow. With a hard downward stroke, Jeep buried the ax in his brain. The boy spat some words you couldn’t quite make out and then died right there in his own mess of oil and dirt and dead flies.
Then Jeep was at my side, untying me.
“Hope you didn’t need one of them alive for anything,” he said.
“Now that you mention it,” I said, but truth was I wanted those monsters dead, too, so I didn’t pursue it further, or regret the leads we’d certainly just lost. “How the hell did you find me? Even I don’t know where I am.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “Anci did.”
I sat up. It was agony. Breathing was, too. I didn’t dare try to turn my head. The ribs on my left side were broken, and everything below my waist was on fire.
“Anci?”
“She put an app on your phone that lets her track you. Parents use them these days to keep tabs on their kids. Guess who’s the kid in this situation.”
“I’m getting a sense of it.”
“She’s scared you’ll be mad at her,” he said.
“Mad at her? I’m going to raise her allowance. By tomorrow morning, she’ll be bathing in orange soda.”
“You’re a good papa.”
“I know.”
He helped me off the table, slowly. There were some coveralls hanging from a nail near an empty horse stall, and he fetched them for me and helped me get dressed. They were absurdly big on me, and they smelled like shit, but they hid my shame good enough. I looked at the Harvels on the floor. They weren’t getting up anytime soon.
I felt Jeep leading me away from the sight.
“Doctor?” he said.
I nodded.
“Doctor.”
11.
“THIS IS MY FAULT,” ANCI SAID.
We’d retreated to Lew and Eun Hee Mandamus’s place near Tolu. A regulation hospital would have raised too many questions and made too many witnesses. We didn’t want either. Thanks to some medic training during his days in service, Lew had me stitched up good, treated my other wounds. Eun Hee administered some homeopathic stuff she said might help. I took it all and was grateful. I was grateful not to be dying, hog-tied naked to a metal table at the mercy of the nightmare Harvels.
I said, “It is not your fault. Stop saying that.”
“It is. It was my idea, and it’s my fault.”
“Nope. Listen, squirt, only bad actors are responsible for their bad actions. No one else.”
“You’re sure?”
“Completely and entirely.”
“I’m going to give you a hug now,” she said.
“Okay, but go easy. I’m fragile.”
“I promise. On three?”
“On three.”
She didn’t wait for one. The hug hurt like hell but felt like heaven.
The remainder of my convalescence, I was surrounded like a city under siege. Jeep was there and Anci, of course, and Jeep’s wife, Opal. Jeep snuck off not long after dropping me off to dispose of the Harvels’ bodies. I didn’t ask what he did with them, but if Jeep didn’t want bodies found, they never would be.
Periodically, Lew appeared with pain meds and other medicines. He seemed worried especially about infection. No telling what was growing in that barn, or on the Harvels.
“You looking thoughtful, Slim,” he said, changing the bandages on my ribs. “What’s on your mind?”
“Lew, what kind of a thing might a dog have sewn up inside her?”
“Come again?”
“The dog. The Cleaveses’ dog. Shelby Ann. She had an incision under her collar, like someone sewed something up inside her nape. I didn’t think much on it at the time. Now I’m thinking on it.”
“Could have been a tracking chip. Those are pretty standard these days. Help you to locate a missing pet. A runaway.”
“Not the Cleaveses’ style,” I said. “Besides, if she had a tracking chip, they wouldn’t have needed me to look for her in the first place.”
“I guess not,” he said. “Well, when you find her, we can find out together.”
“First I have to find her.”
A LITTLE WHILE LATER, PEGGY FINALLY SHOWED UP, MADDER than I’d ever seen her. Her Charger roared up to the gates of Shinshi in a bellering sandstorm of shredded road gravel and river loam. Then the real storm arrived.
“Those goddamn pieces of pig shit ought to be glad they’re safely dead,” she said.
“Believe me, they’re dead. They’re deader than Trotsky.”
“That’s not dead enough.”
“Deader than Trotsky’s pet turtle, then.”
“That’s closer,” she said, and calmed herself down some. “I’m just satisfied they didn’t do serious damage to your rear end.”
“I am, too.”
“It’s such a cute rear end.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Pretty fond of it my own self.”
She smiled and leaned over and kissed my hot forehead. She said, “You’re going to hunt these men now, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Don’t suppose you’ll let me talk you out of it?”
“A few days ago, you might have,” I said. “But now I don’t think I’ve got a choice. Not if I want to live any kind of life worth living. Besides, Dennis Reach might not have been worth much, but he didn’t deserve to die like that, and not because of me.”
“You’re a good man.”
“I don’t feel like one.”
“That’s how good men always feel,” she said. “Take Jeep with you at least?”
“If he’ll go.”
“He’ll go. You’d have to tie a safe to him and throw him in a lake to keep him from going. And even then he’d still go.”
“Course then he’d be wet. And still tied to a safe. And madder than hell about it.”
“Situation like this, these kind of people, a little hell is called for,” Peggy said, “you want to know my opinion about it.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I THANKED LEW FOR ALL HE’D done. I hugged Eun Hee and accepted her care package of homeopathic pills, potions, and unguents. Then I drove over to Shotgun & Shakes, where Carol Ray was back in her office, sipping coffee and being adorable.
“No offense,” she said, “but you look kinda beat up.”
“I feel kinda beat up. It’s a set.”
“You want some coffee?”
“I wouldn’t say no.”
She got me some coffee, then leaned against the front of her desk, crossing her long bare legs at the ankle. If I’d had a pen, I’d have written a poem about it.
She said, “Let me ask you a question, Slim.”
“Shoot.”
“What makes a man go into your line of work? Private-eye work, I mean.”
“Dunno. All kinds of things. Boredom. A yen for troublemaking. Professional misfortune, maybe. I used to be a coal miner.”
“Pull the other one.” She blew on curls of steam rising from her mug.
“I did.”
“Shaft, low, or slope?”
“I’ll be damned. One of the cognoscenti.”
We toasted our shared misfortune.
“A gal doesn’t marry three times in southern Illinois without a coal miner being in the mix somewhere.”
“Maybe I know him.”
“Don’t all you guys?”
