The Next Time You Die

by Harry Hunsicker

  The kennel was a few hundred yards to the west. I pushed my way through the brush and headed that way.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The trees and shrubs were thick but not impassable. I avoided the densest part and struggled to keep my sense of direction. Fifteen minutes later, I climbed over a barbwire fence without snagging anything important and continued.

  Another few dozen yards brought me to the edge of a cleared area. The house was maybe thirty yards away. A couple of dogs barked in the distance.

  I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number.

  A man’s voice answered. “Burt’s Kennels.”

  “Is this the dog place?” I held the mouthpiece as far away from my face as possible.

  “Say again.” The connection crackled and hissed.

  “You got some dogs loose, running around on River Bend Road.”

  “Shit.” More voices sounded in the background. “Where’d you say?”

  “Right in front of your kennel.”

  I heard the man speak to someone other than me: “I gotta go. I’m responsible for them dogs.” Though I couldn’t make out what the other person was saying, it was obvious he didn’t want the man on the phone to leave.

  “You better hurry,” I said. “Lotsa traffic out here.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Oh, crap. One just got hit by a pickup.” I ended the call and dashed to the corner of the house. From there I crawled toward the entrance, staying beneath the windows.

  There was no porch, just a couple of steps leading up to a front door. I stood to one side and waited.

  After about ten seconds, I heard the door open. A middle-aged man stepped out and squinted. He looked toward the road and then back at the kennel. I tackled him. We hit the ground on the other side of the front door.

  The move knocked the wind out of him. He wheezed and tried to stand up. I stuffed a rag in his mouth and bound his wrists with a piece of duct tape.

  “Screaming would be a bad tactical move on your part right now.” I pulled the makeshift gag from his mouth. “How many are inside?”

  “W-w-what about the dogs?” His breathing was labored.

  “They’re okay.”

  “But—”

  “How many?” I put one hand on his sweaty throat and squeezed.

  “T-two.”

  “Are you sure that’s all?” I squeezed a little harder.

  “Honest to God. Only two.”

  I stuck the gag back in his mouth. I made sure he could breathe and dragged him to the side of the house, staying below the windows. The dogs went batty, barking and howling.

  In the middle of the side yard was a brick barbecue pit, rising about four feet above ground level. I wrestled him behind the cooker, out of sight from the house, and taped his ankles. Around a minute had gone by.

  I sprinted around to the back door and waited. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. The dogs had just begun to quiet down when I heard the front door slam shut. That meant either one or none was now in the house. I liked those odds better than two.

  The back door was unlocked. I opened it as quietly as possible and stepped into a dirty kitchen. The coffeepot was on, full ashtrays everywhere. A two-year-old Sports Illustrated swimsuit calender hung on one wall, next to an electric clock over the door leading to the dining room.

  I strained to distinguish the noises filtering through the dirty kitchen: dogs barking outside, coffeepot gurgling inside.

  And a muffled cough from the front of the house.

  I pressed against the far wall by the door. Heard floorboards creak. Smelled sweat and tobacco. A man stepped into the kitchen. He was about my size, in good shape, vaguely Hispanic.

  People on the frontlines of the hard life often develop an extra sense of danger, a knack that tells them to look behind them even though no sound was made. This guy had the gift. He turned toward where I stood, one hand reaching for his hip.

  He was exceptionally fast but I had the advantage of surprise. He was still in motion when I moved.

  An open palm slap to the right ear with everything I had, simultaneous with my left knee to his groin. He fell over on one side and huddled in a ball, moaning. I tied his hands and feet. He offered no resistance.

  “Where’s Clayton Barringer?” I kept my voice low.

  “Uuhhh.” He shook his head, trying to make the ringing in his ear go away.

  I asked him again. More groaning. I put a strip of duct tape over his mouth.

  The front door opened and then shut.

  “Ricky?” The man’s voice was muffled.

  I pulled the semiconscious man away from the door of the kitchen.

  “Ricky. Where are you at?”

  I heard footsteps.

  “Shit. You got the runs again?” The man’s voice got louder.

  I drew the Browning, eased a round into the chamber as quietly as possible, and moved toward the refrigerator, away from the entrance.

  The second man stepped over the threshold. He held a short-barreled shotgun in one hand, casually, as someone would carry it in a nonthreatening situation.

  “Drop it.” I moved away from the fridge and pointed the Browning at his face.

  He gulped and clutched the gun to his hip, not bringing it to bear on me, but not letting it go, either.

  I shot the kitchen clock over his head. Bits of broken plastic flew everywhere. The big hand landed on the back of his head, sticking straight up like a cowlick. He dropped the gun and raised his hands, cowering underneath the hole in the Sheetrock where the clock used to be.

  “On your knees,” I said. “Hands on top of your head.”

  “You are screwing up big-time.” The man eased to the floor. “You let me and Ricky go, and there won’t be no trouble.”

  I stepped behind him, put a foot in the middle of his back, and pushed. “Hands behind you.”

  “It’s your funeral.” The man crossed his wrists against the small of his back as if he might have done it a time or two before.

  I lashed his hands together and rolled him onto his back. He sneered at me. His partner groaned and tried to turn over but gave up after a few seconds.

  “You really do have a death wish, don’tcha?”

  “Where’s Clayton Barringer?”

  “It don’t work this way.” The man was regaining his confidence, moment by moment. “You let me go and I’ll take you to him.”

  “I bet you will.” I opened the cabinet under the kitchen sink. “But I want to see him on my terms. You understand how it is.”

  “Then you’re shit out of luck.”

  I made no reply. There was an assortment of fun things under the counter: matches. rubber gloves, baking soda, plain white vinegar used for cleaning, a small bottle of bleach. I placed all of the above on the counter in plain view of the man.

  I said, “What’s your name?”

  He looked at the array of products but didn’t reply.

  “C’mon. You’re not going to get in trouble for telling me your name.”

  “Freddy,” he said. “Hey. What are you doing with all that stuff?”

  I ignored him and opened the closet in the far corner of the kitchen. The cooker where I had hidden the first man had looked recently used. On the floor of the closet, I found a nearly full can of lighter fluid. I added it to the other stuff on the counter.

  “Freddy, did you study much chemistry in high school?”

  “W-what are you talking about?”

  “You mix up certain household chemicals the right way . . . bad things happen.” I dumped a couple of tablespoons of vinegar into the fingers of a rubber glove.

  “Hey, wait a minute.” Freddy began to sweat. “What are you doing?”

  I filled the thumb of the rubber glove with baking soda, careful to keep it from mixing with the vinegar. I turned my back and grabbed the bleach and lighter fluid and acted as if I were adding each.

  Cautiously, keeping the two substances from contacting,
I pressed the end of the glove together and lit a match, holding the flame to the rubber until it melted into itself, forming an airtight seal.

  “Hope I added enough sulfur hydronium oxide.” I turned back around.

  “W-w-what?” Freddy was shaking now.

  “The stuff that makes it go boom.”

  “That thing is a bomb?”

  “Yep.” I shook the sealed glove a couple of times and dropped it a few feet from his face.

  “No.” Freddy gyrated and bounced as much as his bonds would let him.

  I walked outside and waited. Chemistry had not been one of my better subjects, and I had no idea how to make a bomb out of household chemicals or what sulfur hydronium oxide even was. Olson could take the stuff found under the sink and make weapons-grade plutonium, not me.

  All I remembered was how to make carbon dioxide by mixing vinegar with baking soda. A liquid combined with a solid and formed a gas. A rapidly expanding gas, trapped in a sealed container, would cause a detonation of sorts: not very loud, not even remotely harmful, just very scary if you didn’t know what was happening.

  A few moments later the rubber glove exploded, a muffled bang like an overinflated big balloon.

  I went back inside. Freddy had managed to roll to the kitchen door but couldn’t get through before the glove gave way. The room smelled like vinegar.

  “Crap,” I said. “Didn’t use enough reactant.”

  “Please.” Freddy was hyperventilating. Sweat drenched his clothes. “W-w-what do you want?”

  I ignored him and got another glove.

  “If it’s money . . .”

  I turned around. “Tell me where Clayton Barringer is.”

  “They’ll kill me.”

  I waved the glove. “The next one gets taped to your crotch.”

  He stared at the yellow rubber in my hand and trembled. “You take River Bend Road east. There’s a town that ain’t there anymore, called Morton. Just past where the state highway crosses is a feed store. Most days the old man works out of the back of there.”

  I dropped the glove on the counter and went outside. I grabbed the first man and brought him into the house. I placed everybody in a different room and made sure their ankles and wrists were fastened securely.

  I ripped the telephone off the wall, confiscated all their cells and car keys, and left.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I went back the same way, over the barbwire fence and through the brush. It was hot now, no wind whatsoever in the thick mass of vegetation. About halfway through, I stopped and threw the goons’ car keys in one direction and their cell phones—minus batteries—in another.

  I had fifteen minutes left before the hour was up and Tess was supposed to leave. I crashed through the brush with five minutes to spare.

  Tess and a man about her age stood behind the Bentley, talking.

  Tess said, “This is Cedric.”

  Cedric had on a pair of khaki cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a Che Guevara T-shirt. A muslin carryall was slung over one shoulder. He had scraggly red hair and a beard and ears too big for his head.

  “Hi, Cedric.” I grabbed a bottle of water from the rear of the car and took a long drink. “Would love to chitchat but we’ve got to run.”

  “Cedric and I were friends in high school,” Tess said.

  “That’s nice.” I stared at the young man. “Did you dress like that back then?”

  “Do you know how many gallons of fuel this thing burns for every mile?” Cedric tapped the bumper of the Bentley with an aluminum walking stick.

  “He was telling me about the new highway that’s coming through,” Tess said. “It’s going to cut through one of the last places in East Texas where the red-cockaded woodpecker inhabit.”

  “Really.” I tried to sound like I cared. “The red cock pecker?”

  “Cock-aded.” Cedric emphasized the last syllable.

  “Ohhh. That pecker.”

  “And then there’s the pollution,” he said.

  “So what are you doing here at the moment?” I drained the last of the water.

  “Counting grackles.” Cedric looked smug.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I frowned. Grackles were the cockroaches of birds. Drop a nuke and there would be grackles, roaches, and tax collectors left when the dust cleared.

  “No, I am not kidding.” He crossed his arms. “It’s a project for my master’s.”

  I turned to Tess. “We need to go.”

  “Bye, Cedric.” She smiled and waved.

  “Wait,” he said. “When will I see you again?”

  I could feel his hormones raging from ten feet away.

  “I don’t live here anymore.” Tess’s tone was gentle.

  I got in the car. Tess opened the passenger door and slid in next to me. I said, “Unrequited love?”

  “You don’t have a clue, Hank.” She buckled her seatbelt. “Where are we going now?”

  “A town called Morton.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Me, neither.” I cranked the steering wheel and pointed the nose of the Bentley toward the highway. “That’s the point.”

  The town of Morton, Texas, was nothing, a null set, the essence of emptiness: three or four houses that looked abandoned, a brick building that might have been a general store a century or so ago. Now it was a skeleton, the roof gone, windows missing.

  I drove slowly, looking for signs of life. No cars or even stray dogs disturbed the narrow road. A few hundred yards past the general store was a wood-framed building. It had been white a long time ago. Now the paint was a memory, a few thin strips clinging to the gray wood. A barely legible sign overhead said it was the Morton Feed Store. There was a FOR LEASE notice in one window.

  A late-model navy blue Chevrolet pickup was parked on the gravel and dead grass that served as a parking lot. A few hundred yards later, I pulled to the shoulder and turned around.

  I drove back the way we’d come and stopped across the road from the store.

  Tess opened her door.

  “Stay here.” I got out and jacked a round into the chamber of the Browning. “Clayton Barringer’s mean enough to make a psychopath cross the street.”

  I jogged across the highway and stopped next to the pickup, parked under the shade of a pecan tree growing to one side of the building. The hood of the Chevy felt hot. I heard the engine ticking.

  The front door was ajar. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, trying to get them ready for a low-light situation after the sun.

  I opened my eyes, kicked the door, and dashed inside, sweeping the building with the muzzle of the Browning.

  Clayton Barringer stood behind a counter in the center of the room, counting a stack of currency. He looked up for a moment before going back to the pile of money. I did a little calculating myself. He was probably in his midsixties now, still looking fit in a white button-down shirt and a straw cowboy hat.

  The room smelled like fertilizer and weed spray and was empty except for the counter and a couple of chairs lying here and there. The floor was dusty.

  Clayton finished counting and stuck the money in a canvas bag. “You can put the gun away. I’ve been expecting you.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “You been running around half the state with that McPherson slut.” He sighed. “You think I wasn’t gonna get wind of it?”

  I was glad Tess had, for once, followed my instructions and hadn’t come inside.

  “You always were a persistent bugger, even as a kid.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Better than ever.” He patted the bag and smiled.

  “Tell me about Jesus Rundell.”

  “Times are changing.” Clayton came out from behind the counter and sat down in a wooden chair. I could see a .45 automatic in a slide holster on his right hip.

  “Why didn’t you have me killed?” I kept the Browning pointed his way. “After Billy.”

  “One thing at a time.”
He pulled a pack of Winstons from his breast pocket and stuck one in his mouth. “You know how much this state is growing?”

  I nodded.

  “Mexicans pouring over the border.” He lit the cigarette with a battered Zippo lighter I remembered from twenty years ago. “They made Interstate 35 a NAFTA highway. More traffic, more people.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much going on around here.”

  “Dallas is growing east. Tyler and Longview are getting bigger, too. It’s just a matter of time before it gets here.”

  “One big city.”

  Clayton Barringer nodded. “And that’s good for business.”

  “Thanks for the lesson in demographics,” I said, “but where does Rundell fit in with all this?”

  Clayton walked to the window on the far wall. The glass was dirty, streaked with decades’ worth of dust and grime, diffusing the light from outside. He stared out the window for a long time without answering, smoking quietly.

  Finally, he dropped the cigarette on the floor and ground it out with the heel of his boot. He turned around and said, “Rundell offered me something I couldn’t turn down.”

  “What?”

  “You could have worked for me. You and Billy would have made a great team.”

  “That’s not my way.” I shook my head. “I break enough laws trying to stay honest.”

  Clayton stared at me without speaking. His expression was a cross between paternalistic and condescending.

  “I’m sorry about Billy.” I sat down on one of the chairs scattered about the room, the Browning dangling by my side.

  “No worries, son. You played the cards the way you saw fit.”

  I felt twelve years old again. A wave of emotion rippled across my chest.

  “My operation grew west.” Clayton walked back to the counter. “Rundell and his people wanted to move into Dallas. I had places close by. It seemed a natural fit.”

  “Dallas is an open city.”

  “Things change.”

  Tires crunched on gravel outside. A car door slammed. I stood and gripped the Browning tighter.

  “You don’t need that,” Clayton said.