“Fuck off, grease monkey, it’s way past your bedtime,” said Tony.
“Oh, yeah, we need another one like you ‘round here,” said the man.
Tony watched the numbers. They went chronologically around the circle, and she was coming in from the right, the high side. She counted down each shit-ass tin can. 1845, 1843, 1841, 1839.
1837.
It was a camper. A beat up, sorry-ass, rusting camper with a splintered picnic table near the door. Beside the table sat a woodie wagon with two flat tires.
I could be wrong, Tony told herself. I ain’t wrong much, but I could be wrong. Phone book misprint, the teacher said. Maybe there’s more than one Burton Petenski in Lamesa. Maybe he uses this dump as some kind of front, so he can use another name over at the ranch.
There were lights on in the camper. Well, maybe just one light, the place wasn’t big enough to need more than one. Tony stepped up on the block porch and knocked on the door.
“Tony?” The voice was from behind, the teacher’s voice.
“Go back to the street,” said Tony. “This is just a mistake, that’s all.”
She pounded her fist on the door, and inside she could hear a grumbling, a thumping, and then the door handle was wiggling back and forth.
Got to be wrong. This is not the right place.
The door jerked open; the whole camper vibrated. Tony held her breath.
There was a man in his undershorts, his hand on the knob and the other hand clutching a beer. A Bud. Mam’s favorite kind of beer. He had thick black hair and a black beard. A thin man, he had a major gut that hung over the elastic of the shorts.
“What the hell do you want, little girl?” he growled.
“You know me?”
“Should I?”
Tony said, “Let me in. Don’t make this worse than it is.”
“What…?”
Tony pushed her way past the man and slammed the door.
The interior of the trailer wasn’t much better than the outside. There was some furniture, a refrigerator and stove, and a table that folded into the wall when it wasn’t being used. A bathroom stall door hung open. Tony could see the little shower and the clogged toilet from where she stood.
“Burton.”
“What? What do you want?” His eyebrows went up and down over his face, dark waves on a stormy countenance.
“I’m Angela.”
The man froze, then tilted his head. He put his beer down on the folding table. “No shit.”
“No shit.”
“Love your ranch. Dad.”
“My ranch? What are you talking about?”
Tony looked over the table. Hanging on a little wire rack were two guns, a rifle and a revolver. Burton might not have done much, but by damn, he’d replaced the gun he’d lost to Mam.
“Get the hell out of here, Angela,” said Burton. “I didn’t ask you to come here. I got my own troubles.”
“So I’m trouble?”
“Could be. They see me with a kid, they might kick me out. I’m signed up as a single.”
“What about your ranch?”
“What ranch?”
“You sent me a birthday card when I was thirteen. You wrote on it, ‘how you like my ranch?’ There was a photo of you on a fence with the ranch behind it!”
Burton sighed and dropped onto a single hard-backed chair by the stove. “Oh, God Angela. I wasn’t drinking then. I had a good job, at a ranch outside of here. The Triple-Bar. Worked there nearly six months. I just called it mine for fun. I liked it. Then I got fired.”
“Why?”
“Drinkin’.”
Tony’s chest hurt. She leaned over to pull in some air, but little came. “I can’t believe it. You. God, you lied to me.”
“You just misunderstood. Now go home, Angela.”
“It’s Tony!”
“Get out of here. Go home to your Mama.”
It was in her hand before she even knew she had jumped on top of the folding table and snatched it down off its rack. And oh, this one had bullets in it. She knew. She could feel them inside like she could feel the little snake-like babies inside her last year. Solid, expectant, anxious to come out. She aimed at Burton, and his eyes grew as round as big, brown longhorn cow piles.
She fired. She fired again. Burton, hit directly in the chest, fell back off his chair to the food-littered floor. He didn’t have time to complain about it like the deputy had.
Tony took Burton’s beer and poured it over his body. She turned on his gas stove and lit a rolled up magazine, then moved the torch about the place, touching things she knew would burn right away. The curtains on the window, filmy, cheap things like Mistie’s pink nightie. The bedspread on the little love seat. The rug by the sink. Burton’s thin-ass boxer shorts. Burton’s thick black hair, which puffed and lit and fell to the floor by the dead man’s head. A toupee.
Figured.
64
There was a gunshot from inside the camper. Kate cried out, and ran several steps forward, then stopped. Who had the gun? Who was shooting?
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Mistie began to cry.
A man who had been tinkering on his Harley-Davidson raced over, wiping his face with an oily towel. “That was a shot!” he said. “Who’s shootin’?”
Kate said nothing. She listened, but there were no more shots. “Stay there,” she ordered Mistie, and slowly approached the cinder block step.
“I wouldn’t do that, lady!” said the motorcycle man. “That Petinske fella can be mean as a badger when he’s drunk.”
Neighbors were gathering out on the circular drive, most in various stages of dress. “Somebody call 911!” said a woman. “That was a gunshot, I heard it!”
“I called already!” said a voice from the doorway of a Wilderness RV. “On their way. Ya’ll back up, what you got, a death wish?”
“Tony!” screamed Kate.
“Back up, woman, he can come out like a bull any minute!” said the motorcycle man. “We know how he can get!”
“Tony’s in there!”
The motorcycle man grabbed Kate by the arm and tried to pull her backward but she twisted free. “Let go! Tony’s in there!”
He threw up his hands in resignation. “Go get him, then, be my guest.”
The camper door opened, slowly. At first there were small tendrils of smoke curling out from inside, and then Tony was in the opening, stepping down onto the cinder block step, then down onto the ground, a revolver in her hand.
“Got him good,” Tony said simply. There was blood on her hands.
“Tony, what?” Kate took a step forward, and stopped as Tony began swinging the revolver back and forth. “Was it your father?”
Tony’s lip curled, a half-smile that chilled the back of Kate’s neck. “Oh, yeah, it was Burton Petinske. That’s who it was.” She looked past Kate to the gathering of neighbors, and waved the gun at them. “What the hell you lookin’ at? Fuck off! I’ve killed two today, and I’m just getting started!”
The neighbors flew away from each other like leaves on a winter wind. Some went back to their campers. Others moved behind cars, but continued to watch the spectacle.
“Tony, they’ve called the police,” said Kate. “It’s over.”
Tony looked at the barrel of the gun, smiled, and then pointed it at Kate. “Men and women,” she laughed sourly. “None of them are any good, are they? Mamas, Daddies, they’re all fucked up. You’re right that it ain’t a gender thing. But that don’t leave a whole hell of a lot, does it?”
“Not everyone’s like that,” said Kate. “Not everything” “You want it in the head or in the chest? I hear new niggers don’t want to fuck up their pretty faces when they die, so they would rather have it the chest.”
“God, Tony, don’t talk like this.”
“We’re all goin’ down, teacher. ‘Course, Baby Doll, she’s okay. Hey!” Tony turned to the neighbors behind their various cars. “Listen to me
, whatever happens, don’t let this little kid go back to her Mama or Daddy. They’re messin’ her up real bad. You hear me? I’m giving a deposition here. It’s the truth. You promise me?”
None of the neighbors said a thing. Nobody moved.
Tony shook the gun at one car. “You promise me?”
A little old lady with loose dentures said, “I promise you.”
Tony nodded. Then she said, “Mistie, you’ll be okay.”
Kate looked beside her. Mistie was not there. “Mistie?” she said.
Tony whipped about, staring at the faces of the neighbors, and in the shadows of the scrub trees. “Mistie! Don’t you be hiding now!”
Mistie did not answer.
Then Kate noticed the camper door, wide open and the smoke billowing out, harder, faster.
“She went inside?” Kate screamed. Both Kate and Tony ran for the door, but Tony knocked Kate back and Kate landed with a twist of her bad leg. She cried out.
“I’ll get her,” said Tony, “just stay the fuck back!” She disappeared into the camper.
From behind, a wailing of sirens, the lightning flashes of police lights. Neighbors in the drive hurried out of the way as four cruisers forced their way into the driveway and bucked to a halt. Police heads popped up from both sides of the cars, all holding weapons, all pointing them at Kate and the burning camper.
“Put your hands up and walk this way, slowly!” one uniformed man called.
“Tony’s inside, and Mistie!” shouted Kate. “Save them, they’re in the fire! Hurry!”
“Hands up, now!”
Kate put her hands up. She noticed her unshaved pits. Fuck it!
“Forget me!” screamed Kate. Her food stomped the ground. “Goddamn it, get Mistie and Tony!”
One policeman rushed up and snatched Kate’s raised arms. He twisted them abruptly and painfully behind her back. Another police went to the camper door and kicked it open wider. He coughed in the onslaught of smoke.
“Get out here, now!” he called inside.
New sirens, higher pitched. Red lights instead of blue. A fire engine roaring up beside the police cars.
Suddenly, Tony appeared at the camper door. Her hair was singed, her face blackened. Her voice, raspy with the damage to her lungs. “I can’t find her!” she wailed. And then she put one hand to her face and sobbed, while the revolver dangled by her side. “I can’t find Mistie! She’s dead in there! She’s dead ‘cause of me!”
“Get down here, now!” said the police by the camper. “That place is an inferno, you don’t want to….”
“Yes, I do!” said Tony. She threw the revolver as hard as she could throw it. It flipped end over end and landed at the flat tire of Burton’s woodie wagon. And then, Tony turned, entered the camper and slammed the door shut.
“Damn it!” shouted the cop. He leapt onto the block porch and tried the handle. Tony had locked it.
“Tony!” screamed Kate.
“Stupid ass girl,” said the motorcycle guy.
“Mistie!” Kate twisted in the grasp of the policeman, and he jerked her arms up behind her, driving a vicious shard of pain through her back. “Get in there!”
Suddenly, the camper windows blew out at nearly the very same moment, like a firework set on a timer by a master technician. Firemen in full uniform were off their vehicle, scurrying like yellow jackets, hooking a hose to the hydrant at the side of the drive.
Kate dropped to her knees. The police officer yanked her back up. One officer snatched up the revolver Tony had tossed, then said to Kate, “You looking for a kid? She’s under there.” He pointed beneath the woodie wagon and shook his head. “Bob, get that kid out from under there. You’re better with children than I am.”
Bob, a young officer with a neatly starched uniform, coaxed Mistie out from under the wagon. She was clutching a handful of dead grass and staring at the ground.
“What’s your name?” Bob asked her. But she didn’t say a word.
She was put into a separate cruiser from Kate. And they were driven away from the fire and the neighbors and the burning camper trailer and its cinder block step.
65
They got to ride home in an airplane. Mistie had never been in an airplane before. It wasn’t really big but the seats were soft and there was a window to look out at the clouds. Mistie had on a new dress, one a police lady had given her back before they’d flown out of Texas. It was pink and frilly, and Mistie knew that Tessa didn’t have a dress that pretty. It was a dress that Mistie could wear in a pageant if her Mama let her be in a pageant.
The teacher had handcuffs on. She sat across the aisle from Mistie on her own soft seat and watched out the window. Beside her was the policewoman who had given Mistie the pretty dress.
Not long after the plane took off, one lady came up the aisle and asked Mistie what she’d like to have to eat. Mistie shrugged. She said, “Are you going to put us in jail? Valerie had a bad liver.”
“Honey, children don’t go to jail,” said the lady. Mistie was glad. The lady gave her a hamburger with pickles, French fries, a big Coke with a straw, and some banana pudding. Mistie took off the pickles and put them in the little pocket on the back of the seat in front of her.
“Mistie,” said the teacher after Mistie was done eating.
“Don’t talk,” said the policewoman beside her.
“I have to tell Mistie something.”
“You aren’t supposed to talk to her. You’re in deep trouble, lady. I’d keep my mouth shut.”
“I want to tell her I know I won’t be a teacher anymore,” said the teacher. “But I’ll tell them everything I know. I’ll make them hear me tell the truth. Too many kids are growing up without good mothers. Without good fathers. It’s the doom of our society.”
The police lady said, “Be quiet or I’ll have to gag you.”
“I want to tell Mistie that it can be made right. I’ll do everything I can to make it right.”
“Bob!” called the police lady. “I need a gag down here!”
The teacher turned and smiled at Mistie. She didn’t look scared. She looked happy. She looked like Princess Silverlace when the bad knights had been banished from the kingdom and the good music was playing at the end of the show.
Mistie smiled back.
THE BEAST THAT WAS MAX
By Gerard Houarner
Part One
To Dance Like Mist in the Moonlight
When Max pulled up to the corner of Lisbon Place and South Moshulu Parkway, Lee came out of the building entrance alone. That was not part of the plan. Max took a deep breath, fought through the sluggishness of a sated predator, and raised himself to his killer’s edge.
The Beast within him rumbled, its suspicion dulled by the evening’s pleasure. Still drunk on blood and pain, the Beast rolled over Max’s memories of their fresh excesses and barely acknowledged Max’s alarm or its cause.
Max put the Lincoln Town Car in neutral, turned off the headlights, and stepped out into the brisk early-April air. He put his hand on the Ruger in the back holster under his old French surplus motorcycle duster and scanned for an ambush. A half-dozen eight- to twelve-year-olds played under a set of lit ground-floor windows. Locals hurried past, burdened with bags or focused on their destination, taking no notice of him or Lee. Spiced meat and pizza scented the breeze. Latin and hip-hop music melted into the rhythm of passing cars and buses, children’s voices, TV commercials. Ordinary stimuli, he decided.
The roofline and darkened building windows drew Max’s attention, along with the cars parked along the street, then the buildings to either side and across the wide avenue, where they were obscured by gloom and budding trees. Lee waved, as if to distract him. Max’s heart beat quicker, and the Beast pricked its inner ears. The avenue provided long lines of sight, but neither Max nor the Beast caught the sense of watchers behind cars or trees targeting them. The Beast resumed its slumber. Sensitive to the terror of prey, Max felt something was going wrong, that
he was slipping into danger. But there was no sense of another predator’s focus. At least, not yet.
Without a clear target for his suspicion, Max let his hand fall from the gun. He drifted toward the trunk, checked the curb and roadbed for blood. The seals were good. And, of course, there were no stifled moans or cries for help coming from under the hood.
Lee held both hands open and out as he closed the distance between them. Max nodded his head, acknowledging Lee picking up on his discomfort. Lee’s weathered face, surprising Max with the age folded into its terrain, brightened at Max’s acceptance. The man’s army fatigue jacket flapped in a gust, showing the slight paunch covered by a skull T-shirt and the unbelted waist of a pair of black jeans. No weapons showed.
Before Lee could speak, Max leaned back on the Lincoln, pressed his hands against the cool metal, and asked, “Where is she?”
“Change of plans,” Lee said, joining Max in leaning up against the car. “We have to pick her up.”
“I have my own plans. I need to get her done, then dump the bodies.”
Lee jumped off the Lincoln, glanced at the trunk, paced three steps back and forth in front of Max. “Dump the bodies? What bodies? What do you mean, get her done?”
Max went to the back, checked for anyone nearby, opened the trunk. A stench rose out of the car.
Lee stared, coughed. “Damn, Max. You were going to put her in there?”
“Of course. After I killed her. I was going to have her get in the back with you, behind the front passenger seat. We were going to take a ride on the Saw Mill River Parkway. I was going to reach across and put a round in her head when we got off on the Tuckahoe exit. You were going to help me get rid of the bodies.”
Lee closed the trunk for Max. “But you’re not supposed to kill her. And you’re sure as hell not supposed to do that shit to her,” he said, waving a hand at the back of the car. “What the hell, are you having a South America flashback or something? We’re not in Guatemala anymore. You’re supposed to take her to Omari’s safe house and protect her.”
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