by Logan Miller
Sparks looked down at Gates who was now cradling his daughter and whispering to her between violent sobs.
“We gotta go,” Sparks said. “We gotta get outta here.”
But Gates couldn’t hear him.
“My baby. Lelah. My God, who did this to you? Why did you come here? Why?”
Sparks staggered through the blood on the carpet and the tread of his boots tracked the blood onto the front porch and he took one step more and saw a fiery explosion of light in the darkness in front of him and then nothing else ever again—
BOOM!
A 12-gauge shotgun slug tore a mangled hole into his stomach and hurled him back against the porch railing and then dead on the ground.
Inside Gates heard the blast and stumbled instinctively to his feet, vaguely conscious, a grieving zombie indifferent to the consequences held for him outside. His vision was bleary and swimming and he stepped onto the front porch with his gun dangling from his hand, wearing his daughter’s blood.
He shielded his eyes against the porch light shining in his face and tried to see beyond it. He yelled something incoherent and slobbered out another threat and then fired wildly into the darkness and emptied his weapon in a sobbing wail. The gun blasts echoed and then rolled off into nowhere and brought silence.
He stared into the night and could make out nothing until a gunshot flashed light over a line of armed men in front of him and obliterated his face.
Marlo stepped barefoot out of the darkness as eight men materialized with him. They were armed with an assortment of automatic weapons and shotguns.
Marlo looked down at Sparks and contemplated the steaming hole in the deputy’s stomach. Marlo sighed and walked over to the porch and stared down at Gates. A quarter of the sheriff’s skull was missing.
“How did we get here?” Marlo said.
He climbed the porch and stepped inside the trailer. He could feel the wet murder cooling under his feet. The vital warmth was gone. A dark pool seeped across the floor from the young woman’s corpse. He stood over her and looked into her lifeless green eyes and bent down and closed them.
36.
Nine minutes later Caleb whipped the truck left across the asphalt and floored the gas down the dirt driveway toward the wood yard. He caught the sheriff’s cruiser in the corner of his eye and his mind rippled with confusion and he wondered why it was parked there and he became even more concerned.
He sped past without slowing and saw Lelah’s truck parked outside the trailer and jerked to a stop beside it. He jumped out and hurried toward the front porch and saw Sparks dead on the ground in a black stain. Then he nearly stepped on the death-twisted body of Gates.
He called out, “Lelah?”
He limped inside and the nightmare he feared more than any other was confirmed. He stumbled forward and kneeled beside Lelah and his head fell onto her blood-soaked chest. He caressed her face and kissed her bloodied lips and pulled her into him without any thought or care of what to do next because all was now gone and he was numb and lost completely until a voice rose out of the shadows.
“A man must always put things in perspective.”
A table lamp clicked on in the corner and revealed Marlo sitting on the couch with a sawed-off shotgun crosswise on his lap. Three armed men stood against the faux wood paneled wall. Two more huddled in the hallway leading to the bedroom. Three more stepped inside the front door from the night.
“A man needs to know what he’s dealing with, what he’s looking at,” Marlo said.
“Why did you have to kill her? Why—”
Caleb lunged across the living room for Marlo.
Three men immediately tackled him and struck him with rifle butts and a barrage of boot heels and pounding fists until Caleb was twisting on his back in a semi-conscious haze, his vision a whirling kaleidoscope of faux wood paneling and cheap ceiling paper and grinning remorseless faces.
“I did not kill her,” Marlo said. “Her father did. I don’t believe that will provide you with much comfort, but at least you should have the facts of the situation so that you may form an accurate opinion amid the chaos.”
Caleb’s mouth was awash with blood and powdery fragments of chipped teeth. He blinked and tried to sharpen his focus. Everything was blurry.
He rolled onto his stomach and crawled feebly across the carpet back toward Marlo. He felt a wrenching on his prosthetic leg and then he was twisted over and dragged backward. His prosthetic unhinged and the man dragging him crashed onto his ass and knocked over the coffee table. The man flushed with bewilderment at the prosthetic leg now clutched in his hand. He raised the prosthetic into the light and showed the other men in a gesture to justify his clumsiness. There was a momentary silence until the room made sense of the fake leg and then the men laughed for some time.
Marlo rose from the couch and walked over to a dusty side table. He lifted a framed portrait of Caleb in his Marine Corps dress blues and looked at it.
“Without perspective, things are distorted,” he said. “There’s no order. No scope. No value, no understanding, no definition of what is and what is not. The world is populated with nothing but Humpty Dumpty’s where everything is whatever anyone wants it to be.”
Marlo set down the portrait and then removed the lid from a small wooden box. He lifted a Purple Heart from inside, held it by the ribbon, and spun the medal in the light.
“For instance, I am a homosexual. I make love to my own kind. The female genitalia does not arouse me whatsoever. But an engorged male organ, throbbing with sexual anticipation, excites me very much, especially if the man has a well-sculpted physique. I don’t sound like a fag when I speak, but I assure you, I am a thoroughgoing butt-fucker.”
Marlo placed the Purple Heart back inside the wooden box and inspected another war medal sitting on the table. He lifted the Navy Medal of Honor by the ribbon and blew off the dust.
“Let’s say you and I had met at a bar or a sporting event, or some mindless testosterone-fueled extravaganza like a monster truck rally, and over the course of our conversation a beautiful woman sashayed past us, and you began speaking about the carnal pleasures resulting from intercourse with her, the taste of her supple breasts in your mouth, the scent of her well-lubricated pussy, your finger probing her airtight asshole during coitus, the drunken lust dripping from your words. You would assume throughout this salacious digression that I shared the same affinity for the female form as yourself—and all because you lacked perspective.”
Marlo swept his hand through the air, gesturing to the room.
“The dead strewn about here, the carnage of this evening, were the consequence of foolish people lacking perspective for the grave stakes at hand. Ignorance writ large. Did they think I was a man of trifles? It appears so. But then again, that is only my perspective.”
Marlo stepped over to the window and pulled back the curtain with the shotgun barrel. He looked across the yard at the woodshed and the light hanging above the doorway and let the curtain fall back into place.
“This situation fascinates me, you see. Am I to believe that a couple of noodle-heads hiking through the forest stumbled upon the marijuana crop and decided to steal it? Did you value your life so cheaply?” He paused as though he were trying to answer the question for himself and then carried on with his thoughts. “I would never stroll into a Chinese restaurant, see that it was temporarily deserted, kick on the fryer and start peddling wontons. For several reasons: one, I don’t know how to cook wontons. Two, they’re not my wontons to cook. And three, I’m not in the wonton fucking business.”
He sighed and shook his head.
“Every living being in this room right now, the fierce-looking men surrounding you, are all in danger of losing their lives in a most gruesome fashion because of your foolish thievery. Yes. All of them. Me included. The million dollars in product you stole is a pittance to our bosses—they make hundreds of millions a year. Perhaps even billions. But they are fussbudgets. They are li
ke Jewish accountants with violent balls. The mere principle of thievery is toxic to them. It is intolerable. As soon as there is even the remotest inkling of suspicion, one must dispatch the suspicious in this business. No matter whom they might be. Which leads us to you.”
Marlo stood directly over Caleb now.
“There are only two ways to cure the situation for me and my men: you can return the marijuana that was stolen from us or deliver the million dollars it was worth. Now, do you have the marijuana?”
Caleb wanted to spit the tooth fragments and blood at the man towering over him but he was too weak. His nose was busted and he could not breathe through it.
“Do you?” Marlo asked.
“No.”
Marlo lowered the barrel of the sawed-off shotgun from his shoulder and pointed it at Caleb’s head. “I didn’t think so. What about the money?”
The wide barrel trembled inches above Caleb’s forehead. He stared into the black tunnel and thought of death and the thought had no emotion one way or the other. Life had no pull or luster, no magnetism drawing him toward its source. Everyone he loved was gone. But then a force unconscious and unbidden reared up and compelled him to struggle a little while longer and offered a quick reply.
“It’ll be here tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes. The money will be here tomorrow.”
A skeptical grin changed Marlo’s expression. How many times had he heard desperate pleas and lies in a human being’s final moments?
But Caleb noticed a brief hitch in the man’s composure, an unexpected pause, as though the man had mentally stumbled. The pause was telling enough and Caleb filled the breach with conviction. “If you kill me now, you’ll never see the money.”
“My years of experience tell me that all this bloodshed here tonight was the result of both the product and the money being absent—people rarely shoot each other when expectations are met. But now you want me to believe that the money is in fact forthcoming?”
“The guy left us a hundred thousand up front.”
“Where is it?”
“Outside. How do you think we got that new backhoe?”
Marlo stared down at him and studied his beaten face, his eyes, searching for a look that would betray his statement, a look of doubt, a physical tell. He could find none.
He raised the shotgun barrel and set it back on his shoulder and stepped through the wet murder and over to the doorway. He peered across the yard at the John Deere backhoe, the fresh yellow paint glowing in the moonlight. He had to admit that the new machine was a convincing piece of evidence, especially for a couple of wood-mongering paupers.
“He’s bringing the rest of the money tomorrow afternoon,” Caleb said.
Another look of doubt appeared to wash across Marlo’s face and his posture stiffened with a question and he squinted, but only for a moment, the briefest of moments. But Caleb could feel the shift in energy. He’d been on the other side before, the one asking the questions, the one doing the interrogating, the one with the loaded gun.
“And what is the name of this mysterious philanthropist?” Marlo asked.
“I don’t know him. He’s my brother’s friend. They made the deal.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
Marlo pondered the young man’s assertions. Perhaps he was telling the truth. It would certainly make Marlo’s life a whole lot easier if he was.
“In less than twenty-four hours you’ll have your money,” Caleb said. “It’s either that or a bunch of dead bodies. My corpse ain’t worth much.”
“I’ll call your bluff and give you twelve hours. The only lawmen for a hundred miles are now dead. There’s nobody left to save you.” Marlo motioned to the two men huddled in the hallway. “Victor and Rhodes. Stay here with him. If the money does not arrive by noon tomorrow—put a bullet in his head. As many as you like.”
Marlo paused beside the dusty table and stared down at the small wooden box.
“You can interpret your war medals in one of two ways, sailor—as either the commendations of an intrepid warrior or the garish trinkets of a clumsy bumpkin.” He turned his head and his eyes fell on Caleb. “I have been to war many times, and as you can see, I still have all my limbs.”
Marlo stepped through the cold blood and halted at the front door.
“Give him back his leg. You fucking barbarian.”
37.
He stayed on the floor with her in his arms the way that he always did in the early morning darkness when he held onto a few more minutes of her before going to work. His face was wet with her blood and his tears but the tears had stopped coming for now.
He heard several vehicles start up outside and then move into the night. His prosthetic had been thrown across the room. He heard it land and flip a few times and then thud against the wall. He heard the two men that were left behind step into the kitchen and open the refrigerator. He heard them push aside some beer bottles and then sweep things out of the refrigerator and onto the linoleum just to be destructive. Because they could. Because there was nothing the one-legged man on the floor could do about it.
Caleb sat up slowly and looked across the room at them. They were standing in the wedge of light from the open refrigerator door. One man had a compact military shotgun, flat black with a pump action. The other man carried what looked like an MP9 or some other kind of machine pistol. The man with the shotgun had a bottle of beer in his hand.
Caleb started crawling—
“Hey,” the man with the shotgun said. He pointed the barrel at him, resting it on his forearm, his other hand occupied with the beer. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Can I put my leg back on?”
They chuckled.
“Sure,” he said. “You can put your fucking leg back on.”
“But do it slowly,” the man with the machine pistol added. “You move too quick and we’ll shoot your other leg off.”
He impressed himself with the threat, a bona fide comedian. His partner thought it pretty funny too. They found another beer in the refrigerator and opened both bottles and tossed the caps at Caleb. One of the caps struck him in the ass. This gave them a good laugh.
Caleb crawled over to his prosthetic and sat with his back against the wall. He slid his fleshy nub into the carbon fiber sleeve and worked the flexing action of the ankle joint. He tried standing, but the leg gave out and he fell down onto his right side. The men laughed again.
“You should do stand-up.”
“But first he has to learn how to stand.”
They tapped beers in honor of their humorous talents.
Caleb took off the prosthetic and examined it in the dim light. He worked the ankle action back and forth. He slid back into the sleeve and pushed himself off the floor and braced himself against the wall. When he attempted to put his full weight on the leg it gave out again and he tumbled onto the floor a second time.
This really set them howling. Beer exploded from nostrils and mouth.
Caleb sat on the carpet and continued working the ankle action. He checked the screws and wiggled the joints.
“I need to go to the woodshed and get my tools,” he said to them.
“What for?”
“To fix my leg.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not working.”
“Why not?”
“Your buddy stripped out one of the screws when he pulled my leg off.”
“Are you pulling our leg?”
Again they laughed.
Caleb raised the prosthetic and moved the ankle joint back and forth.
“Do you think we’re fucking idiots?” the man with the machine pistol asked. “You think we’re going to let you go out there by yourself?”
“No. I figured you’d come with me.”
“Take his leg, Victor,” the man with the machine pistol said. “He might try and use it as a weapo
n.”
“Hold my beer.”
Victor walked out of the kitchen and snatched the prosthetic from Caleb’s hand.
“Get up gimpy,” he said. “I want to see you hop out there.”
Caleb crawled over to the end of the couch and lifted himself up and onto his left leg and started hopping across the living room. He steadied himself against the front doorjamb and then hopped onto the porch and down the front steps. He made the soft dirt and nearly fell, bracing himself on the ground with his left hand and then his right, like a sprinter in the starting blocks. He pushed himself up and found his balance and hopped toward the woodshed some thirty yards ahead, leaving the glow of the porch light and into an area of dark shadow.
The two men followed behind him with their guns at their sides.
“Little Bunny Foo Foo hopping through the forest—“
They laughed.
“Where do one-legged people eat?” He made the sound of a drum roll. “I-Hop.”
Caleb ignored them and hopped across the yard. He was almost to the woodshed when the man with the shotgun kicked out his leg from under him. It took Caleb by surprise and he crashed so suddenly that he was unable to shield his face from the impact. Gravel cratered into his cheek and forehead and he saw a white flash and there was an explosion in his eardrum from the collision of his jawbone with the ground.
He sat up and tried to gather himself in the spinning darkness. For a moment he felt as though he would vomit. He took several deep breaths and fought to keep from tipping over. After a while the night stopped whirling and flattened out again.
