by Ed Kurtz
Not just any woman. Our Lady of Mercy.
She wore a veil and had twelve stars in a circle around her head like on my medal. Her hands were holding her robes open, as if inviting me to receive her mercy. She seemed to be staring at a point over my shoulder with a sad face that said, You fucked up again Carl, but you're still worthy of my mercy.
The whole thing scared the hell out of me, so I stood there clutching the shovel and closed my eyes. With my other hand, bound against my chest by the towel, I found the medal through my shirt and held it tight. I didn't know how to pray anymore so I kept quiet. After a minute I opened my eyes and she was gone. I peeked behind the shed—even inside, so I wouldn't lock her in if she got in there somehow, but didn't see her. I locked the shed, replaced the key and made it back to the car as fast as I could.
I half-expected to find the car gone and Danny stumbling around with a nail file sticking out of his eye, but he was standing outside leaning against the trunk with his arms folded. The only sound was the whisper of the river. I handed him the shovel. He didn't seem to notice me shaking.
"She hit on you already?" I said.
"She try," he said. "I pretend no habla."
"Sex is her tool. I should have warned you." She would have given Danny a tease, then tried to persuade him to turn on me and leave me crumpled in the bushes with Jeremy while they drove off in my prize of a car. But she didn't have enough time to work Danny properly, who was a little too loyal in any case. I didn't say a thing about what I'd seen at the shed because I didn't want to spook him.
"What we going to do?" he said, tilting his head toward the car.
I looked at him, knowing exactly what he meant, and felt out of my depth. Not for the first time that night. I thought of whatever it was Our Lady of Mercy was trying to tell me.
"Don't worry," I said. I knew her move on Danny was instinctual. I was worried about what she would do when we got rid of Jeremy and she got a chance to connive full-bore, but wasn't going to pass that on to Danny just yet. "She knows how to keep a secret," I said. "When she wants to."
Danny shrugged.
We drove to the end of the road, maybe another half mile. We only passed one other house, and it too was dark. I drove into the brush as far as I dared. I shut the car down and left the lights on. Danny got out with the shovel, found a spot at the edge of the light, behind a clump of palmettos, and began digging without asking. The ground was fairly sandy this close to the river, which brought a smell both fresh and musty. Ms. Vagabond and I sat in the car without speaking. The only sounds came from crickets, a small animal pushing through the brush, and the steady rhythm of the shovel. I was in pain and really wanted a drink. After a while I got out and opened the trunk. "Help me with this," I said.
She helped me drag Jeremy out of the trunk and toward the hole. Danny was digging smoothly and sweating through his shirt. I walked back to the car and started it so the battery wouldn't die. I felt confident enough that we were alone to take the chance. Ms. Vagabond stood next to Jeremy. She looked up quickly like she was afraid I was going to drive off and leave her there with Danny and Jeremy.
I was standing behind the car, generally on edge, when a wandering armadillo shuffled up to within three feet of me before either of us realized it. We looked at each other in surprise, and before it could scamper away, I hauled off and booted it about fifteen feet into a palmetto. It righted itself and took off running. I hopped up and down. Now I had a hurt toe too.
When Danny stopped digging, I walked back to the hole and helped him drag Jeremy into it with my good arm. It was about four feet deep. I was hoping no one decided to build here for a while. Danny got the hole filled pretty quickly. Ms. Vagabond and I gathered pine straw from different spots in the area and threw it on the grave before I tamped it down so I wouldn't leave foot prints. Then we threw some more pine straw down until the area looked as undisturbed as we could make it. I couldn't do anything about the tire tracks. I hoped it would rain soon.
Ms. Vagabond didn't act like she was going to say any words for Jeremy so I gave a quick silent prayer, something about returning to dust. It was all I could come up with.
We got back in the car and eased down the road to a point where I could see that the river came close through a gap in the trees. I stopped the car and took the shovel from Danny. The river was about twenty feet lower than the road and looked fairly shallow here, but there was nothing I could do about that. I flung the shovel out as far as I could and immediately regretted it as the pain shot through my upper body. When I got back to the car I remembered Jeremy's clothes and the bloody towels we used to clean the floor. I took them from the back seat without looking at Ms. Vagabond. I threw them into the river, too much in pain to worry about whether they would sink in the tannin-stained water or not.
For weeks after that I woke up at night wishing I'd taken more care in disposing of everything, but at that moment I just wanted to get away from Jeremy and everything to do with him. The pain and exhaustion were getting to me. Even Danny sat in the car staring ahead with the enormity of what we'd done almost touching his eyes.
I drove in the opposite direction of the way we came into the area, hoping to throw Ms. Vagabond off further. I made a twenty mile detour to the north and looped back to the interstate. Once we passed a county deputy heading in the opposite direction, his young face faintly lit by his laptop, but I was doing the speed limit and he never slowed. Ms. Vagabond lay on the back seat, face and knees in the air. The car smelled like damp earth and sweat.
I pulled into a 24 hour gas station, parking away from the lights and cameras. There were a few cars at the pumps. I had brought eighty dollars to give to Ms. Vagabond before everything happened. I'd wanted to give her something for the road and her trip to Chattanooga, if that was where she and Jeremy had been going. We sat in the car, and I thought about the different paths our lives had taken and how it didn't make any difference now. Ms. Vagabond and I would be inextricably linked with each other, and Jeremy, even if we never saw one another again— which was what I sincerely hoped.
I pulled the cash out of my pocket and added another twenty. The money felt like a payoff instead of the gift I had meant it to be. I turned in the seat and handed the cash to her.
"This should help get you wherever you're going," I said.
She looked almost nervous and I wondered if she had heard us talking back in the woods. One reason I was dropping her off here was so she wouldn't think she was going to end up like Jeremy.
"I won't go to Tennessee now," she said. "For obvious reasons." Jeremy had been the Chattanooga connection.
"Carl," she said, looking me in the eyes with something passing for honest emotion. "I saw you watching me in the gym, after I showered."
I looked away, slightly embarrassed. "You still look good," I said after a moment. She followed my eyes toward a picnic bench in the shadows behind some phone booths.
"You want to go over there for a few minutes and I'll help take your mind off the pain?" she said, not seeming to care that Danny was there.
I thought about it for moment, long enough for her to guess what the answer would be. In other circumstances, I realized, I wouldn't hesitate.
Not wanting to lose momentum, she continued through my silence. "Seeing everything that's happened tonight and the way you handled it, which was pretty good by the way…" She was talking in her voice of fake sincerity, which came back to me now. I think she used it when she departed the box. I knew she was trying to work some scam.
"I was wondering if you could give me your car?"
There it was. I was in pain, I was confused, and now I was mad.
"What?"
"You know, so I can get away from here, maybe out to California. I've always wanted to go but never had the transportation."
I didn't share that I was worried every day that the car wouldn't make it to the gym and back, much less Los Angeles.
"I just gave you a hundred bucks," I said. "Buy a bus ticket."
She was making the mercy thing difficult.
Danny, out of her sight, slowly reached into his boot and eased his hand up with a knife in it. He must have had a sheath in the boot. I didn't know that about Danny. I was beginning to think there were a lot of things I didn't know about anything. He didn't look at me or her, but I got the message.
A sheriff's cruiser pulled into the gas station and parked in the light, near the entrance.
"It might be worth it to you," she said. I watched her glance over at the deputy as he got out of the car and walked into the store.
"Listen," I said, keeping my voice even. "You're just as mixed up in this as we are. I don't think it would be too smart for you to go talking to anyone about anything."
She opened her mouth to say something, but I didn't stop there. "Besides, I'm thinking you might have a warrant or two down in South Florida and the last thing you want is getting involved with the cops right now."
"Warrants?" She looked like I was trying to hurt her feelings. "Why do you say that, Carl?"
"You can find out about that kind of thing on the internet these days," I said.
Danny's eyes widened.
"So after you saw me this morning, you went and checked?"
I didn't say a thing. I just looked at her. She tried to hold my eyes for a few moments, then looked away. She gathered up her grimy backpack and reached for the door.
"You can't blame a girl for trying," she said a little too brightly.
I was bluffing about the warrants. I had no idea if you could find them on the internet, but it sounded likely.
She was about to get out of the car when Danny looked directly at me and shook his head. "No trust," he said quietly. Then he looked at the cruiser. I knew what he meant. She could walk right over there, tell the deputy what we did, and we'd be fucked. Even if they never found Jeremy's body, Danny wouldn't wriggle out of this one.
I hated it, but I knew he was right. I put the car in gear and drove out of there into the dark night. This time it was quick and messy. We didn't take any of the care we did with Jeremy. I took the car down a dirt road about a mile from the gas station. Ms. Vagabond had started to protest but Danny turned around in the seat and held the knife in her face and she didn't make too much noise aside from a whimper.
I stopped in the middle of the road and Danny was out of the car, dragging her out of the back seat. Now she started to yell and he cuffed her in the mouth. I didn't see how he could pull her into the brush as easily as he did, but after a minute her thrashing stopped. I stood in the road and watched Danny wipe his knife on her pants leg and stuff it back into his boot. He came back to the car and handed me my five twenties. He showed me another grimy roll of bills she must have had in her pocket. I held my hand up and he put it in his pocket. We stopped at a bridge and tossed her backpack into the river below, maybe the same one we'd buried Jeremy next to.
For a few weeks I would tell people who asked why my arm was in a sling that I fell down the trailer steps. But everyone, except Danny, encouraged me to sue the trailer park owner and enjoy a big payday, so I stopped telling that story. One morning I woke to a commotion across the drive. The Immigration guys were leading several people out of Danny's trailer in handcuffs. They had finally figured it out. I watched through the blinds until they were gone.
I had taken Danny to the Greyhound station two mornings earlier where he got a bus to Miami and a flight to San Pedro Sula later that day. He said that he almost had enough money saved, but he felt it was time to go home. He gave me not an address, but more like directions to find him in case I ended up in Central America.
I stayed at the gym for another few months but could never muster the same enthusiasm for the job. Every time I walked by the protein rack I heard Jeremy's final breath like it was my own.
Every once in a while I had a dream where Our Lady of Mercy had Ms. Vagabond's face and was holding up the SMILE sign. Aside from that I never saw Our Lady of Mercy again, but must have touched that medal under my shirt fifty times a day to make sure it was still there.
One morning I didn't go to my shift. I left the gym keys in the trailer when I loaded the car with most of what I owned and headed north later that night, not long after sunset. I figured I'd drive as far as the clunker would take me. There really wasn't anything else I could do.
Death Of A One-Percenter
by Mark Mellon
They came to a wooden bridge, an earthen dam beneath it. A rarity in drought-stricken Texas, the dam trapped a large pool of water, a beautiful sight, even if it was dark green and algae covered. Past the bridge, the land was relatively lush, live oaks and other trees graced with green leaves.
"Let me guess. We're on Clements land now."
"You're sharp, Pargrew. Daddy C has pull with the county board. We get special irrigation rights from the Sabernale Creek."
The gravel road ended before a massive double iron gate, "Wild Hog Inn" in curlicue wrought iron letters on the arch. A wooden sign had the same title, but also depicted two pink cartoon pigs on a hotel room bed in avid coitus. Sween pointed a black remote. The right gate swung open. Sween drove through and over the cattle grid. The road was paved, smooth concrete hardball, wide enough for four cars to drive parallel.
Like most country boys, Sween drove like hell. The heavy Mercedes spun through hairpin turns and raced up and over hills. Pargrew took his hat off and ducked low to avoid banging his head on the roof. They reached the crest of a large hill, heavily covered with cedars. Sween parked the car in a cobblestone courtyard. Both men got out. Pargrew heard machine gun fire the moment he left the car, a faint but still unmistakable chatter, trigger for bad memories.
"Well. There she is, the ranch home. Ain't she something?"
For a Texan, Sween was understated. One of the largest single buildings Pargrew had ever seen, the ranch home was a Spanish Mission style mansion expanded to an impossible geometric scale, built from the costliest materials, stained glass windows and marble walls chased with gold and silver, the size of Versailles or some other gigantic European palace.
"Not much on low-key, is he?"
"High, wide, and handsome, that's Daddy C. Come on. Leave your bags."
Palm trees tilted at lazy angles flanked the black marble staircase. Ten foot tall, double mahogany doors were set within a brown granite arch, a relief carving of a snarling boar's head on the keystone. Sween knocked. The left door opened. An old black man in a butler's uniform smiled.
"Howdy, Sutro."
"Morning, Mr. Sween. Please come in out that heat, gentlemen."
They entered air-conditioned cool. Filtered by stained glass, the light was gentle and gauzy. Pargrew stood in a lofty, barrel-vaulted hall filled with hunting trophies, lions, hippos, Cape buffalo, a giraffe, and twelve-foot grizzly bears reared up on their hind paws.
"This Mr. Pargrew, sir?"
"Sure enough, Sutro."
"Welcome to Mr. Clements country place. My name Sutro, the butler. You let me know you be needing any little thing."
"Thanks, Sutro."
"Where's Daddy C at?"
"Out target shooting like he always do. I take y'all back."
Sutro headed down the long hall, toward French doors in the distance. Pargrew and Sween followed. Muffled at first by the huge house's walls, the ever-present machine gun fire grew steadily louder as they walked down the hall. Sutro opened a door. They stepped into heat again.
Black-veined white marble steps led to a swimming pool and patio, wildly overblown like the house, the pool Olympic size. Tiny in the enormous blue pool, a skinny teenage girl in a white bikini lay on a float in the shallow end—just another American girl on summer vacation except for the hearing protectors on her head. Sween waved to her.
"Howdy, Ella," he shouted. "How you doing?"
Ella didn't bother to respond. She merely pointed with one long, thin arm toward the gunfire. Sween shrugged.
"Come on."
They went past thick hedg
es twenty feet tall. A dugout was cut into a ridge below the hedges. Two men in straw cowboy hats and camouflage clothes sat behind a lightweight .50 caliber machine gun. The plain below the ridge was littered with bullet-ridden corpses of sheep, cattle, and deer, almost unrecognizable hunks of bloody, tangled fur and meat.
"Bring out some more game," the older man shouted through a loudspeaker. "My trigger finger's plenty itchy."
Black men in blue coveralls dragged a large metal cage on wheels from behind a concrete wall. The cage held a white rhinoceros, an enormous two-ton beast.
"Whoo-ee," the younger man crowed. "You done got us something fancy to kill today, yessir."
"Nothing but the best for my boy."
The great beast balked at the smell of death everywhere, and at first refused to leave the cage. A man reached through the bars and twisted the rhino's tail, an old ranch hand trick. With an outraged snort, the rhino bolted through the open gate. He made a futile dash for freedom.
"Yee-haw. Get that sumbitch."
Machine gun bullets laced into the charging rhino. Little spurts of blood popped up with each bullet's impact. The enormous animal crashed to his knees, mouth open wide in agony. More bullets slammed into him. The stench of burnt cordite was overpowering. The older man clapped the younger one on the back.
"Damnation, Jack Bob. Sure enough got a clean kill on that one."
"Learned from you, Daddy C."
They left the dugout, headed toward the house.
"Tell the foreman to keep the carcass," Daddy C said. "The skin and horn are valuable. Bet there's a market for rhino steaks too. Sure can't leave it for the buzzards, can we? Well, looky. It's old Ted Sween and he's done brought company."
Daddy C strode over and pumped Pargrew's hand.
"Damn sure enough glad to meet you, son. This is old Daddy C you're shaking hands with. What do they call you at home, anyways?"
"I'm Alec Pargrew. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Clements."
"None of that, Al. You call me Daddy C like everyone else."
