Every Part of the Animal

by Duncan Ralston

  Caleb grinned and headed back.

  "Don't forget—"

  "Yeah yeah, huntin the dang possum," he called back over his shoulder.

  "Atta boy."

  Bo smiled after him until he was back in the house, then she headed to the shed. Back at the vehicle, she keyed open the gas tank and fed a length of plastic tube into the hole. She sucked on the end until her mouth filled with the awful flavor, then she poked the spurting end into a Jerry can. As it was filling, the faint, far-off smell of the forest fire and the sharp sting of gasoline in her nostrils, she thought about Roy and his farty armchair.

  Seemed like all she'd been doing since that girl showed up was clean up mess after mess—just like when Roy was still around. It was Roy's mess that had them striking out as far away from home as they could find. Those first few frantic and giddy months way up north, he'd had dreams of the gold rush, but by the time winter struck he'd never staked a claim. Never even priced out the equipment, though they'd had the money for it at the time.

  Spent that whole first winter—seven lousy months—sitting in that smelly chair drinking stubby bottles of Redhook until he passed out drunk. "Early retirement," he'd called it. Bo had preferred to think of it as drinking himself into an early grave.

  She'd set fire to that ratty old thing the day she took it to the dump. Stood drinking the last of his Redhooks as the orange flames warmed her face, watching it until it had burned down to the wire frame.

  She stopped the flow of gas with a thumb, and opened the back door. Then she let loose, spraying the golden fluid all over the back seat like Roy used to do standing in the front door on cold nights, like an animal marking its territory. When the flow slowed to a drip, the fabric was so thoroughly drenched it continued to drip onto the floor after she closed the door.

  Bo got in the driver's seat, untroubled by thoughts of fingerprints or hair or skin fibers. The interior smelled like the fake pine tree scent hanging from the rearview and gasoline. As she leaned over Darius to buckle his seatbelt, her nostrils filled with the sweet tobacco smell of his cologne.

  "Seatbelts save lives," she said with an ironic smile.

  Last things last, she unzipped his fly. Lifted his gut and unbuckled his belt. The silver steer skull buckle amused her. She sat back with a grin, and looked at him—really looked at him, not just at the gaping hole at the back of his head, and the horror in his eyes before she'd drawn them closed.

  Darius looked to be early-to-late-forties, judging by the wrinkles on his forehead and a tinge of gray in the bristles on his cheeks and chin. Manicured fingernails but rough hands. With his eyes shut, he looked peaceful. Sleeping. She tried to picture him living somewhere in East Texas, imagining what he might have been there. Had he always been in private security, or had he started out in law enforcement?

  A Texas Ranger? Ex-military?

  She reached into his jacket pocket and took out his wallet. Several credit cards. Small wad of cash, big bills—Bo pocketed a hundred and twenty dollars, and left the rest. A thick stack of personal business cards. Another stack of cards from others, one from a Detective Mason in the Dallas P.D. A reminder for a dentist's appointment he'd never make. A Sub Club card, one stamp short of a free footlong.

  She found a picture of a young boy, maybe five, tucked in behind the ID flap. Big smile, smooth shaved head like his daddy. Little robin's egg blue Polo shirt. No photo of a woman, so she had to assume the parents were separated.

  No wonder he'd taken a liking to Caleb, with a son of his own.

  A son who'd always ask his mother what happened to his father, like Caleb still does on occasion. A son who'd always wonder how he measured up to a father he barely remembered.

  She tucked the photo back into place, and slipped the wallet back in his pocket.

  The blasting stereo startled her as she started the car. Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty singing about a love too strong to be separated by the Mississippi River on the CD player. She pressed her foot on the gas, heading out past the outhouse. Since Roy's failed venture with the syrup six, maybe seven years ago, she only used the road to haul trees back for firewood. The bumpy ruts had grown over some in places, the front bumper pushing through tall ferns and brambles on its way deeper into the woods.

  "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man"—the song was just so goddamn sappy. Bo shut off the stereo.

  "I was listening to that."

  She jumped at the deep, resonant voice. The seatbelt jerked her roughly back into her seat, and she stole a glance at the dead man. His eyes had come open. He sat there, buckled in like a passenger despite the hole in his head, staring straight out the windshield.

  "I didn't hear that," she told herself. "He didn't say nothin."

  "You go ahead and believe what you want to believe," Darius said.

  His lips weren't moving.

  What'd they call that? Auditory hallucinations?

  Bo stared at the woods ahead, keeping a steady pace.

  "You're a Loosiana woman, ain't you? Recognized your accent. Yup. Name wasn't familiar, but that accent was. Probably lived close to the Texas border—got a bit of 'ya'll' in ya drawl. But dat Creole flavuh sho' is hard to mistake, I guarawntee!"

  Speaking her thoughts? Her fears?

  He must have known. Had to be some reason Darius had been listening to that song. It couldn't just be a coincidence.

  Their song.

  Roy's song, not mine.

  "Does it matter?" she said to herself.

  "It don't matter a lick. They got your picture up now," he said. "On the internet. Won't be long before someone puts two and two together."

  "You shut the fuck up."

  "Language, please!" he said, and laughed his hissing laugh.

  Where the spruce and pine floor gave way to a brown carpet of maple leaves, tall, skinny trees stood ten, fifteen feet apart where the land had once been slashed and burned. No underbrush, just sporadic patches of mushrooms, exposed roots and large outcrops of bedrock, and maples stretching as far as the eye could see. Bo drove on straight through, weaving around the occasional tree trunk and exposed stone.

  "Somebody's gonna figure you out, Bo Lowery—if that is your real name. Hell, if Little Man Tate didn't blow my brains all over your supper table, I would have."

  "Bullshit. Nobody's gonna figure anything out. Ten years and nobody's figured out nothin. Ain't gonna happen."

  "What you think? You're untouchable?" His hissing laughter. "Bless your heart, girl!"

  "SHUT UP!" Bo screamed, so loud her ears rung.

  She turned, awaiting his retort. Darius's eyes had closed.

  On the other side of a steep hill, the maples opened on a valley clearing. Miles and miles of dry grass, scrub and bald rock. Beyond the next rise the wildfire baked the sky, heat rippling the horizon as if the fabric of reality were warping. The car bounded up to the top of the hill, where she parked under a copse of thick pine boughs, left the car idling, and stepped out.

  First thing she noticed, aside from the heat, was how eerily silent the surrounding woods were. As if the wildfire had choked out all the life.

  No man's land, she thought. No animals, either.

  She stepped out to the steep, craggy edge of the cliff, and looked right down into the fiery pits of Hell. Treetops burned like torches, the air thick with choking black smoke. Even from high above, it felt like she was standing next to an oven.

  Bo had always had a fascination with fire, ever since she was a girl. Something about it appealed to her inner cavewoman, she figured. Standing here above the violent, sky-boiling blaze, she felt a surge of giddy exhilaration she hadn't felt in years. Maybe since she and Roy struck out from Louisiana ten years back.

  Bo stared so long her eyes watered from the smoke and heat. When a mosquito bit the back of her, breaking the spell, she stepped back from the pit, oily with sweat, and resumed her business. Leaning back inside the car, she put it into Drive.

  "This is where you and me part ways
," Bo said, looking Darius in the eye as she unbuckled his seatbelt. "Have a nice flight."

  She slammed the door on him, went around back, and pushed.

  The sedan began to drag as something screeched against the undercarriage. Bo stepped back and knelt to peer under the car. The front right axle had snagged on the rock ledge. Darius weighing it down. Bo pushed and paused in short stints, hoping to shake it free. Worried now that she'd come so far only to have her plan thwarted, that even if she did get the car off this rock the fire would avoid it, leaving a wrecked rental under Darius Dawson's name with her fingerprints and hair all over it.

  The rumbling started low enough that she'd almost ignored it, thinking it was the fire. She stopped pushing and looked out over the roof as a massive yellow and red CL-215 buzzed above the smoke, dumping a white cloud of water over the inferno.

  Bo ducked. Heart thrumming.

  No way the pilot would have seen her. He'd be too concerned with the fire.

  Still, it was a close call.

  The plane veered south, but it would be back soon. Out to the lake and back with another load of water. Twenty minutes, tops.

  "Come on, you son of a bitch…"

  She threw all of her weight behind it. Tendons in her neck pulled taut. Legs straining.

  With a final banshee screech, the axle tore free and the car surged forward, pitching over the edge. She watched it soar, her excitement swelling, the way she used to feel as a kid when she'd stuck pennies on the train tracks and waited for the train to hit them—wondering, Will it jump off the tracks? Will someone get hurt?

  By the time the plane returned with another load of water, the sedan had been swallowed by flames.

  "WHO WANTS PANCAKES?" Bo said cheerily as she stepped into the house, belying the ever-present undercurrent of anxiety.

  "Ooh! Me, please!"

  The dog skittered across the floor, clamped a venison t-bone between its tiny teeth, and returned to where Caleb sat on his butt on the floor, dropping the bone at his feet. Caleb tossed it again further off, and the dog ran for it, yapping.

  "He looks happy," Bo said.

  "Momma, can we get a dog?"

  "You know how I feel about that."

  "Why? Just 'cause Daisy bit me when I was little don't mean you gotta give up on the lot of em."

  "That ain't why. 'Sides, a dog's just another mouth to feed. Come winter we'll have trouble keepin just you and me fed, you know that. Now go wash up, and I'll get them pancakes on the stove."

  Bo whipped up a batch of pancakes and venison sausage, and laid it out on plates. The dog sat by Caleb's feet as he tucked in, famished from going without breakfast so long. Bo ate hers with zero enthusiasm, mechanically moving the food from plate to mouth, like an assembly line robot. Chewing without tasting.

  We are well and truly fucked, she thought, as if the idea had only now just occurred to her, and she looked up at Caleb as if she'd spoken the swear aloud. The boy chewed away dreamily, his brow furrowed, but seemingly in a contemplative way.

  "More syrup?" Bo asked him.

  He nodded enthusiastically. She poured maple syrup from the last of Roy's collection onto Caleb's rapidly shortening short stack, glad he seemed to have gotten over his stomach pains. He'd been getting them a lot recently, mostly after dinner. She'd figured it was food-related, possibly an allergy, though neither she nor Roy had been allergic to anything. She supposed it could easily have been caused by stress, since Caleb usually finished his homework before dinner.

  Not as fragile as you thought, is he?

  Caleb reached down and gave the dog a nibble of sausage.

  "Not at the table."

  They ate in silence.

  "D'you think Rainey's hungry?"

  "Ask me if I care."

  Caleb poked at his pancakes. "We're gonna have to feed her sooner or later or she'll starve down there."

  Bo dropped the fork on her plate with a loud clang. "I told her to keep quiet, you understand? I told her his life depended on it. A man is dead because of her selfishness. She don't deserve your pity. You know who does? Darius Dawson. The man whose life she didn't think twice about throwing away just so she could get her ass outta the goddamn cellar!"

  Caleb's chair squeaked as he stood and ran for his bedroom. The dog followed him, barking at his slammed door.

  "Everybody's throwing tantrums," she muttered to herself.

  She stewed on it. Ate a few halfhearted bites of pancake. Dropped her fork again.

  "Fine," she said, getting up and stomping over to the hatch. She tore it open. The door smashed down on the floorboards. "You want up?"

  Rainey Layne, her face bruised beyond recognition, squinted up into the light. Skin glistening with sweat, hair stringy and damp. All around her cans and shattered glass were strewn, pickles and preserves drying on the dirt floor. Her hesitant nod proved how broken she was.

  "You made a helluva mess down here, little girl," Bo said, looking around with an impressed grin. She went to the broom closet, returned with the broom and dustpan. "You ain't gonna fight me?"

  Rainey shook her head.

  "All right then. I'm coming down," she said, descending into the cool cellar with the broom. "You understand why we done what we done?"

  An almost imperceptible nod.

  "Now there are two ways this can play out," Bo said. "In one, you come out of this a hero. In the other… you end up dead."

  Fright evident in those bloodshot blue eyes, bruised as black as night.

  "I'm guessing you're interested in hearing my proposal. Well okay, here goes." Bo began sweeping up shards of glass from the dirt. Carefully. Methodically. "Your man Darius went to the hotel bar early last night, leaving you on your lonesome. I found the bill. Now either he's a drinker, and he went there alone, or he'd got himself a hot date. Good looking man like him'd probably have no trouble elsewhere, but here in Fort Garrison, the pickins are slim."

  She smiled, scooping up a small pile of glass into the dustpan.

  Rainey shifted uncomfortably beside her, wriggling her arms behind her back. Not to escape. Just working out the kinks.

  Bo took the bar bill out of her pocket, playing Show and Tell.

  "But since it was only Jack and Cokes, and I doubt a Southern gentlemen like him would go Dutch, I figure he was alone. Maybe he drinks on his own a lot. And maybe this time, he staggers back upstairs, drunk and randy, and tries to get himself a little piece of ass. But maybe you didn't like that much. You… I don't know, kicked him in the balls. Took his keys and run off."

  Rainey cocked her head to the side, her jaw working under the shiny, blood-streaked mound of duct tape.

  Bo leaned the broom against the stairs and sat second from the bottom. Folded her hands together, elbows on her knees. "You get in the Escalade thinkin maybe you'll come out my way," she said, "since you know from earlier I got guns, and I ain't afraid to use em. You figure I could offer you some protection. Only you've had a few yourself. Or maybe that Mary Jane of yours had a little something extra in it—you know, give it some oomph." A sly wink. "Just between us girls. We've all been there. Either way, you crash the car. Meanwhile, Darius calls on old Fergus Redican in the middle of the night, asking about a rental car. Fergus is mighty pissed, and a tad suspicious, I might add, but he's a Redican boy through and through, and he can't pass up a sale."

  Bo unfolded the rental receipt. "See there? Just past midnight."

  Rainey blinked her puffy eyes. Breathed out deeply through her stuffed nostrils.

  "Darius catches up to you sometime after that. You've staggered off from the wreck and you're wandering down the road, half-conscious. He drives you out to the woods, and maybe he tries to fuck you again, now that you're semi-conscious. Pliable."

  Rainey shook her head. A tear fell from her eyes.

  "So, he tries again. Only this time he's pushed you too far. You bein a streetwise girl, you make him take off his jacket. You take off your shirt, which is why you're wearin th
e bikini top you sometimes wear as a bra. And while you're preparing him for the main event, you snatch his .9mm from out the holster, and you put a bullet in right through his head."

  Bo grinned. "Paint a pretty picture, don't I?"

  Rainey wept openly. She sniffed up a wet string of bloody snot that had run from one nostril.

  "Now, does sound like something that mighta happened?"

  The girl nodded, shrugging.

  The stair creaked as Bo raised up off it. "I'm gonna take the tape off now. So you can tell me how it went down. The way you'd tell it to the police."

  Approaching Rainey like a cornered animal, she reached out slowly. Rainey drew her head back as if she might strike her again.

  "I ain't gonna hit you. I think I done enough of that." She grabbed a ragged flap of tape. "This'll sting a little."

  Rainey squeezed her eyes shut.

  Bo pulled. The tape tore away from her skin with a tear, and the girl cried out in pain. "Sorry about that." Gingerly, Bo crumpled the strip of tape and tossed it in the corner, where it landed in a muddy puddle of peaches.

  Rainey licked her lips. "Why the black man gotta be a rapist, you racist bitch?"

  She surprised a laugh out of Bo. "You got spunk. I'll give you that, kid."

  "So what happens if I say yes to your shitty fuckin' deal?"

  Bo squatted near her. "Well, there's a problem. See, you were out of your mind with fear, thought you had to get rid of the body, so you drove him out to the wildfire and run him off a cliff."

  Rainey swallowed hard. "Jesus…" Laughing, she said, "You really fucked up here, didn't you? I mean, you really shit the bed."

  "We shit the bed. You and me. You're the one crashed into a tree, driving drunk and high, talkin about takin away my kid. What did you expect? I was gonna take it lying down?"

  "You really are fucking crazy, you know that?"

  Bo raised a hand to hit her. The girl flinched. She lowered the hand. Said, "It takes one to know one, don't it?" Then she stood, looking down on her beaten captive. "You think on that deal, missy. Ain't gonna last long, and it's the best shot you got of getting out of here alive."