The Bewdley Mayhem

by Tony Burgess

  “Yeah, yeah, we’re gonna use the soles of your feet to wipe the grease off our chins.”

  “And, and, we’re gonna make a yule log outta your fat, shakin’ ass. Ha-ha.”

  “Hee-hee, that’s right Mr. Christmas dinner, every time that scared little rabbit of a heart beats it’s stirring our pudding.”

  “What do you think, Brother Jerome, let’s shove a big ol’ apple in his mouth and a pickle up his ass, so Pa can see what dinner looks like when it’s alive.”

  Marvin said this last word in a deliberately taunting and childlike way. They both laughed with less enthusiasm than before, and they settled into a boredom that appeared all too familiar to them. Jerome reached under the table and presented another drumstick to Owen.

  “Look, try and eat this, you’re a very sick man. Pa said we should feed ya, clean ya, wipe your ass, so help us out here, podna.” Marvin over-pronounced the word ‘podna.’ Jerome, who was now reading an unusually thick hardcover book, looked up and regarded his brother with a detached intensity.

  “Marvin, if I’m not mistaken, we’re gonna get nowhere with buddy, here, until we slip him a bit of the hair of the dog.”

  Marvin’s face brightened with a nasty knowingness and he reached into the case of beer.

  “No, Marvin, that’ll just make him puke again, he needs medicine, give’m a shot.”

  “You’re right, Brother Jerome.”

  Marvin gave the bottle to Owen, who shakily pulled it into his mouth, with primal need. Marvin seemed in awe of this, and he looked back to his brother reading and then over to the guzzling Owen again.

  “This boy has got it very bad. He’s eating the whole fuckin’ dog right before my eyes. Does Pa know that our man is a full-time juicer?”

  “Take it from him, Marvin. Give him some fresh air. Pa’s due.”

  Owen leaned his back against the outside of the barn. His eyes, now burnt clear, seemed to look much further out than his situation. Marvin had a sustained fascination with Owen’s face and he seemed to be intently reading Owen’s strange expression.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Owen didn’t respond. He was fixed on a scene that was taking place down the snow-covered hill and across the vast level field. Owen could see his car from where he stood and more than that, Owen could see himself and Jolene, standing in the snow. They looked angry, upset with each other, their arms gesturing pleas and accusations.

  “Oh, I see. Them two down by your car.”

  “Yes, Marvin. How long have they been there?”

  “Well, I noticed them early in the afternoon. So I figure, yep, they been there a while.”

  “I have to go talk to them, Marvin. Can you let me go do that?”

  “Of course, of course. Look, when Pa comes by, we’ll swing down and fetch ya. He’s mighty anxious to speak to you.”

  Owen turned and looked into Marvin’s face. They looked at each other for some time, matching each other’s fascination for the other, until Marvin broke away, awkwardly and silently. Owen continued staring at the same spot long after Marvin had turned the corner around the barn.

  iv

  Owen lifted the receiver of the phone and jabbed it in the air, towards Jolene.

  “OK baby, OK, if you think you can convince Murder Inc. that we have a better way, go ahead! Here, call Mr. Big, and tell him. ‘Hello, Head Killer Cheese, now that your Buffalo operation has been closed down by the Feds, isn’t it clear that your dirty fuckin’ business doesn’t pay?’ Like that, right, Jolene?”

  Jolene stepped forward calmly, and curled her hand over Owen’s and lowered the receiver onto the desk. She paused a moment and when she spoke her rationality contradicted a suppressed panic.

  “They’ve pulled out of here, right?”

  “As far as I can tell. I was at the bank this morning and that sure told the tale.”

  “And they left us operational, right?”

  “For now, honey,” he said, “only for now. The Bentham operation is identical to Ambient Response. They figure that that similarity will bring federal heat. And they’re right, god dammit.”

  “Yes, but all that’s left here is your legitimate, highly successful, telefundraising business. So, say we get investigated and everything comes out clean, doesn’t that leave Buffalo with options?”

  “Buffalo’s thinking only one thing. Their idea of diversification involves a lot of fire and smoke. And we are slated to go up in that smoke, sugar.”

  “Fuck, Owen. So what are we DOING here?”

  Owen pulled a briefcase up from under his desk.

  “When I was at the bank this morning reading the tale of the tape, I managed to find a sizeable pocket of cash that had been transferred to a very easily accessible account. Accessible to me.”

  Owen popped open the briefcase revealing an enormous amount of cash.

  “Christ, Owen, you ripped them off. Are you nuts? Are you crazy? Are you drunk? They’ll know about this and they will not let it go. Shit, Owen, this scares me.”

  “That’s why I’m leaving today, with this.” Owen drew an Ontario road map from his inside pocket. “And in two days, you’ll meet me in a place called Bewdley.”

  “Don’t leave me here, Owen. I mean it.”

  “I love you, Jolene. I’m not about to put you in any danger, believe me. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Owen.”

  Owen steadied himself against the car. A blast of wind whirled stinging snow across the desk and the man and the woman. It forced them to leave. Owen had slid down the side of the car and tears raced across the ice on his cheeks.

  “They killed you, didn’t they, Jolene?”

  v

  Ben Ransom’s car rolled to a stop. He looked over at the man slumped beside the wreck and he hurried from his car, drawing his great flowing, beige coat across his sizeable bulk.

  “Jesus Mother, what the fuck has happened to the poor guy.”

  Ben stood at the edge of the road, and stretched an arm over the grey bank of snow.

  “Hey, there. Hello. What’s going on? Are you alright?”

  Owen lurched to his feet and walked unsteadily toward the stranger’s outstretched palm. Owen reached the ridged barrier of snow and stood stiffly, while the wind whipped the torn edges of his coat against his legs. He looked down, defeated, at the heavy edge of the stranger’s coat.

  “Oh my God! What the hell happened? Did my boys do this to you? I can’t believe it. They play at some fearful games, I know, but Christ, did they do this?”

  Owen looked up and shook his head, without seeming to recognize the question. He allowed Ben to pull him to the road and he followed in mute submission into the car. Ben stared in curious horror at his passenger.

  “I have an idea what you have been through. You read my letter. You know what they did to my boy. What that crazy Stewart boy did. Was it him that did this to you? Christ, it could have been any or all of them. I’m sure the last detective I brought up here won’t be found until the spring. There are no living cops in Bewdley, there is no law here at all. There ain’t enough money here for anybody to take the risk. I should have warned you, I should have told you how bad it was. These men are so angry they’re sick, every one of them. Every family in town knows they’ll be hungry until the day they die. I think now they’re hungry for that day to come.”

  Owen brought a shaking hand up to his face and exhaled a jagged breath. His voice came out thickly sodden.

  “My name is Owen Lamb. Owen. I am not … please … police. I’m very cold.”

  Dan reached into the glove compartment and presented a mickey of rye to Owen.

  “Marvin said you might need this. He says he’s sorry. I see the goddamn sickness in them, and I can’t do a damn thing about it. I’ll take you up to the house, Detective, we’ll get you c
leaned up and do something about that head.”

  As they pulled away, Owen tipped the bottle up with two blackened, shaking hands.

  ★

  On the hill two dozen men with flaming torches and shotguns were scattering a herd of cattle around the barn. From its roof, small, intense flares of orange fed into black curls of smoke.

  Ben’s car was sitting halfway up the driveway, with its two occupants watching as the men ran up to the house, firing their weapons into the winter sky. A horse bolted down the driveway towards the car. Ben flew out in time to deflect it. He ran towards a group of men that now faced his direction.

  “I’ve got a law officer with me. He’ll shoot every goddamn one of you. You’re all under arrest, you murdering bastards! Get the hell off my land!”

  Ben slowed as he approached the men, recognizing the preacher, who stood, unarmed, with a wild-eyed, hair-blown defiance.

  “Stop, right there, Ben Ransom, or these good men will strike you down.”

  “Where are my boys, you sick bastard?”

  “In hell, Ransom. You raised devils, Ben. We sent them back to where they came from.”

  Ben leapt towards the preacher, but a half-dozen raised shotguns stopped him in a frozen fury. Suddenly the men burst into a chorus of jeering howls. The preacher pointed over Ben’s shoulder.

  “Here comes your peace officer, Ben. He’s sure got Ransom work on his mind.”

  Owen fell to his knees about twenty feet from the car. He dropped his hands to his sides, and watched helplessly as the blast of a gun splashed a dark pattern through Ben’s back. As Owen fell forward the roar of feet compressing snow shut down his mind.

  vi

  A massive building, larger than Bewdley itself, that had once hired an entire town to manufacture heavy machinery, lay silently across the darkened north. Pickup trucks drove around it like fighting flies, losing bullets into its windowless body. Barrels that held spinning flames leaned off the street corners in Bewdley and glass flew in sporadic explosions across the icy sidewalks that reflected flame.

  Owen Lamb stood in the middle of the road in the centre of the small town, surrounded by men in heavy coats. One figure, the preacher, was stripped to his waist, and all the fires that burned seemed caught in his loosened eyes. The preacher was holding a handgun out to Owen, who held his own hand out to receive the weapon. Owen nodded his head, with helpless distraction, at the preacher’s instructions.

  “Well, Officer. It’s a noisy night in Bewdley. The men have cashed their cheques at the hotel, and you know what that means.” The crowd around them responded noisily to this and sent a volley of gun blasts into the air. The preacher had raised his voice over the din.

  “We need to make sure all these boys get home to their families, Officer, otherwise theren’t gonna be a penny to feed baby. These fellows get any more juice in ’em and baby’s gonna be target practice, brother. So get your peace-keepin’ ass in gear, son. There’s a job to be done here.”

  The preacher pushed Owen into the street, violently knocking him on his face. As Owen climbed to his feet, a half-empty bottle of wine landed near him. The gun clanked against the glass as Owen staggered forward, with the bottle clutched to his chest. Just before Owen reached the main highway he found himself standing in front of a large house with great wide windows. The inside of the house glowed halloween orange and he could see the naked bodies of men, with thick black lines painted down their arms. They were dancing and hopping, with their arms raised stiffly over their heads, which were crowned with the heads of cows. Owen took a deep drink from the bottle and threw it, weakly, towards the house. He was swinging his body in and out of balance. As he howled “Hello,” he shot the gun off and fell on his back.

  ★

  The sun’s cold, brilliant rays lit up Owen’s swollen face. Behind him stretched a freshly ploughed highway that disappeared into the convergence of white field and low clouds at the horizon. Fifty feet in front of him, his car lay under a thorough covering of new snow. Four men, dressed in crisp black overcoats, surrounded the bent vehicle. One man raised Owen Lamb’s briefcase and let it swing on his finger.

  “There’s a lot of money in here, Mr. Lamb.”

  The four men stood waiting for Owen to respond, as the wind tore at Owen’s face, pulling his saliva into the ice on his unshaven cheeks.

  “You look like hell, Owen. You look like frozen shit.”

  One man distractedly cleared the snow from one of the car’s windows.

  “Ready, Owen? Had enough?”

  Owen put his hands into his pockets and squinted off into the field. His voice was clear and loud: “Business, right, gentlemen?”

  “That’s all, Owen. Just business.”

  A single, weak cow raised its thin face when the shot blasted through the winter air.

  SUMMER

  The windowsill is painted white, but in this light, with the sun burning at the base of the blinds, it is silver. The paint on the sill has lifted along three banana-shaped areas that are joined at their stems. Ron Jeremy reaches up his hand and places a finger on each banana, rolling the pads in the shallow gulleys whose shapes remind him of a system of lakes. In this room, foul and soiled and spilling with dishes that look slept on, his long glowing back rises up, clenching perfectly between the shoulders which fall apart into hard round balls of muscle. This is the sexiest man in all of Bewdley, his head shaved clean, the tiny cleft in his ready chin burred with fine blond bristles, a long, soft cock swinging at the base of his hard torso — this is the body, the sea-green eyes and satin hips that leave the rest behind. While he fingers the lakes on his windowsill a salesman steps onto the white porch. The salesman, his long hair pulled back into a ponytail, brushes a card under his goatee and lightly stomps his feet to knock the wrinkles out of a suit that hangs like drug money off his penguin shape. The salesman lifts a heel slightly as he floats a finger into the doorbell.

  “Hey buddy, howyadoin’. Name’s Ray Bird, I can see I got ya’ up — jeeze I’m sorry ’bout that. Look, I won’t take up much of your time, I represent a little company by the name of Airtight Originals. Uh, here’s my card.”

  Ray looks past Ron’s heavy fingers long enough to push a crumb from the corner of his lip into his mouth.

  “Hmmm. Ray Bird? My name’s Ron Jeremy. Uh. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, Ron, you strike me as a sophisticated man, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve done some hard time with the great books, thought a little about life. I wonder if you knew that our little hamlet here is home to no less than three world-class artists.”

  Ron smiles yes and no, tell me more, while he wags his head in a sort of figure eight. His baldness is bracing, his lips part towards a grin.

  “Really? In Bewdley?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What, what kind of paintings?”

  “Well, Ron, landscapes, you know the Group of Seven, Ron?”

  “Sure. Tom Thomson and, uh, Lawren Harris and that other …”

  “Well, do you know Cornelius Kreighoff?”

  “Uh, no, can’t say I do.”

  “OK, doesn’t matter, what these boys paint is storytelling landscapes. They take nature scenes, paint them beautifully, you know in that style, impressionistic, and they use these scenes as backdrops for depicting human narratives, human lives, like, say the shodding of a horse, only the scene, familiar enough, is usually interrupted by something, by say a neighbour bringing news that there’s a fire in town or something. Beautiful, interesting paintings. Here, why don’t we take a look.”

  Ron throws his head to the side and down in a way that takes Ray’s breath away.

  ★

  Dr. Mendez creates a little hourglass with his hands, letting hot white sand drain out onto his thighs. Just outside this parabola of sand falling into a tiny bright trout stream, two men ar
e standing at easels. They both look sullen as they unhappily daub tan non sequiturs onto their otherwise reasonable landscapes. A third easel lays collapsed onto a small shrub and near it a canvas lies face down. One of the painters, a tall man in his fifties with hair dyed as black as the nose of a jet, wipes his brush and pushes a thumb across a vermilion blob, flipping this colour as cleanly as he can onto the tan cloison, hiding it.

  “Mendez! Get the hell over here and pick your things up. What sort of sulk are you in, for God’s sake? I’m sorry, of course you can paint however you like, I respect that and I’m very sorry, and so is Peter. Aren’t you Peter?”

  The third painter pushes a burgundy fingertip through his heavy, particoloured moustache, sending a yellow knuckle up into his blue nostril.

  “Of course, Mendez, I don’t give a damn how you paint, I paint my paintings and you paint yours, history must decide who is the real kook here, pick up your things Mendez, this is undignified, get over here and set up beside Carl.”

  Meanwhile, Mendez has been clearing away a square of sand down to a moist plate. He places the ball of his hand in the centre and claws the wet sand. The ebbing of a narcotic in his system provokes him and he feels petulant and unforgiving. He pictures himself bouncing out of the sand, apologising broadly and laughing at himself, but this cannot happen and he chastises himself.

  “Gentlemen, the sun is wearing a sweater today that she may pull off at any moment, so I cannot commit to any of her light this afternoon. I am going to wait in the car. Please accept my apologies. I don’t wish to ruin your endeavour.”

  Mendez rises from the sand and with stiff painful steps he makes his way past his companions, who ignore him, up to the field and onto a sand path that leads to the car. When he’s about halfway there a dog bursts out of the bushes and chases him the remaining distance. A hunter, crouched behind a broad orange boulder, follows Mendez with the sights of his rifle. In the car Mendez punches the glove box, knocking its contents onto the floor. He administers a drug to himself, intravenously, and sits back in the seat rubbing BenGay onto the tops of his thighs. In the rearview mirror he can see a man in red plaid shaking a hunting cap into the mouth of the dog. And now this little mirrored rectangle suspended nine inches from Mendez’s nose begins to behave differently. The red plaid falls into the man, cooling him, and the hanging black lips of the dog jump like a hyphen onto the surface of the glass. Mendez tilts the mirror so that the hyphen runs parallel with the bottom of the frame, dividing the scene into perfect halves.