The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

by Norman Partridge

  It was the kind of look that made a man look right back, and the same way, too.

  All of a sudden, Tate Winters wasn’t thinking about lemonade at all.

  The girl batted her eyelids in some kind of semaphore signal that Tate wished he could read. “Can you help us out, Officer?” she asked, cutting John Wallace Johnson off in midsentence.

  “You sure it was Arson and Claire?” Tate asked, because it was the only question worth asking.

  “I’m absolutely certain,” John Wallace Johnson said. “I’ve studied their pictures in the paper, and these two were dead ringers. Only the woman wasn’t smoking a cigar.”

  “That was just a gag, J. W.,” the little flapper said. She almost sounded mad. “Claire Ives doesn’t really smoke cigars.”

  “Hell if she doesn’t. That girl’s a vixen. Acts like she’s a man. Why, if I’d had a chance — ”

  “You did, J. W.” The girl winked at Tate. ‘You had your chance, and you ended up losing your car and your pants.”

  “Now wait just a minute — ”

  “Cigar or no cigar, it makes no difference,” Tate interrupted, kick-starting his bike. “I’ll put out a bulletin on your stolen vehicle as soon as I get to Fiddler.”

  “That’s fine,” J. W. Johnson said. “But what about us?”

  “What about you?”

  “Well, we need transportation back to town. Imogene can’t go about in her underthings. And I’m a young man with prospects. In September, I’ll be attending Stanford University. I certainly can’t go walking into town without my pants.”

  “Son,” Tate said, “this is a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, not a limousine.”

  “The officer’s right,” Imogene said. “There just ain’t room for you, J. W.”

  Before Tate could protest, the little flapper slipped into the saddle behind him. “Thanks for the picnic, J. W.,” she said. “If you get your Ford back, you can call me any old time.”

  The girl’s thighs pressed against Tate’s ass. It was a plain fact that there wasn’t much room in the Harley’s saddle, just as plain that Tate Winters was quite suddenly glad of that.

  “What am I to do?” J. W. Johnson asked. “I am a long way from anywhere. And I am without my trousers.”

  “There ain’t no Woolworth’s out here,” Tate said. “So you might as well start walking.”

  “Or look for a clothesline.” Imogene giggled. “You’d look awful cute in some sodbuster’s overalls, J. W.”

  Tate Winters didn’t know about that. He only knew that the world was a much more interesting place than it had been twenty minutes before.

  He twisted the throttle.

  The Harley roared and the flapper squirmed.

  Tate geared up and took off.

  Running hurt. Especially Claire’s hip, which hadn’t healed right after the crackup. And the way her skin pulled where she’d been shot in the shoulder bothered her, too, the scars tugging like she was wearing a tight sweater that didn’t fit right at all.

  Sometimes just moving made her feel like she was coming apart at the seams. But she had to run. For Arson’s sake, if not her own. He couldn’t see her this way, and that was a natural fact.

  Because, this time, she was coming apart at the seams, and she knew it.

  She clenched her right hand. There was no denying the blood on it. There was no washing it away. It was there, weeping from her palm through busted stitches.

  Wash it away and a fresh trickle would only well up along a lifeline that was much too short. Stitch it closed and those stitches would sure enough bust like all the others.

  Sure enough… somehow… no matter what she did…

  The cut just wouldn’t heal.

  The fear tried to rise up in her, but Claire pushed it down. She wouldn’t think about it. She’d think about running. Running with a gun in her hand. Running and breathing and being alive.

  Because she was alive.

  She was. But it was hard to think of that in a place like this. Everything here was dead. Cornstalks withered and yellow as parchment. Dry roots that tore up from the ground when tall girl rushed by with a loaded gun in her hand.

  Harvest time had come and gone, and there wasn’t anything left to reap in the cornfield.

  Only Claire. All of a sudden, she stopped running, her heart pounding in her throat. The sky had gone the color of iron, but it still held the heat of the day like a skillet.

  She stared at the dark thunderheads boiling down from the mountains, and that was when she saw the birds. They circled in a black ringlet, coming closer and closer, and their cries rode the whispered hush of the wind as the circle spun on black wings, a circle unbroken like the one in that song her mother sang when Claire was just a little girl.

  But her mother never sang about a circle of vultures.

  Claire couldn’t run anymore. She stared at her hand.

  In her palm welled a red oasis.

  Above her, the sky came alive with a chorus of thirsty screams.

  Clouds churned in the sky and a hot wind whispered low, rustling the dead cornstalks like a deck of cards that had been dealt one time too many.

  The three of them sat in the car. Arson was done yelling at Hank and Pearl. They should have known better than to push Claire that way, especially after all the hell she’d been through. The two of them sure didn’t have the stomach for that kind of hell.

  Claire did, though. Arson was sure about that. Claire was damn near healed up. Sure she had a few more scars than she’d had before their last run-in with the law, but she wasn’t one bit less pretty for ’em, not to him anyway. Soon enough she’d get her gumption back, too. She always did, and then things would be just the same as before.

  “If we’re gonna do this thing,” Hank said, “we’d better get to it.”

  “Hank’s right,” Pearl said. “That bank’s gonna close in an hour. We ain’t got no money. And I don’t care how much you holler, Arson Pike, I sure as hell ain’t gonna sleep in this cornfield tonight, not with all these damn vultures around. Why, just look at that sky. If the buzzards ain’t bad enough, just take a look at them clouds. Any fool can see that it’s gonna storm but good and I ain’t gonna get struck by lightnin’ sittin’ out in a cornfield in a stolen Ford Roadster. Christ, these days even folks on relief got decent roofs over their heads while we ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to — ”

  “Shut up, Pearl.” Arson whispered the words, eyeing her in the rearview. Boy, did she give him a look. The floozy bitch made Arson’s blood boil. She was just the kind of trash his brother would bed. Just the kind —

  Pearl opened her mouth. Red bee-stung lips on that fat little face of hers. Arson couldn’t hardly believe it. Hell’s bells and buckets of blood, he’d told the little floozy.

  She started to mouth off again. “Shut up,” Arson said, but it was like she didn’t even hear him. So he told Hank to shut her up, but it was plain that Hank wasn’t the kind of man who knew how to do that or Pearl wouldn’t be talking in the first place.

  Well, fair warning was warning enough.

  Arson climbed out of the car and reached through the open window and took hold of Pearl’s peroxide blonde hair and gave it a pull that made her scream. Then he dragged her out the door and kicked her in the ass and she gave out with a startled cry as she went face first into the dirt and then Arson yanked her to her feet and slapped her up but good.

  And, boy howdy, did the cure come over her but quick, like Arson Pike was one of those tent show miracle men. It was something to see. First Pearl was gabbing like she actually knew what she was talking about and then she was screaming like some she-goat taking a rutting and when it was all over her nose was bloody and her eyes were red with little girl tears.

  Sitting in the backseat, Hank didn’t say a word.

  He knew better.

  He didn’t want some of the same.

  Arson made to slap Pearl again, and she cowered like a whupped dog. “And you think you�
�re tough.” Arson laughed. “Well, you ain’t tough. Sister, I’m here to tell you that you ain’t half the woman my Claire is. She came through bullets and fire and car wrecks, and she didn’t crawfish half as bad as you do from a little old slap.”

  Pearl couldn’t look Arson in the eye, but she nodded, and she did it damn quick.

  “That’s better,” Arson said. “Now you get your ass out in that corn and find my Claire. You apologize for the way you been treating her, and you tell her that you ain’t nothin’ but a dimestore floozy who can’t keep her trap shut.”

  Again, Pearl nodded. And then she glanced around her, at all that corn, and she puddled up like she was all set to cry again.

  Pearl was scared to say anything, but Arson knew that she would. Teary-eyed, she waved her painted fingernails at the cornstalks and asked, “How am I gonna find her in all this?’

  It was a damn fool question. Arson didn’t have time for it.

  Again, he kicked Pearl in the ass.

  She got to moving.

  Arson climbed into the car and slammed the door. His fingers went tap-tap-tap on the steering wheel. He stared at his brother in the rearview, and Hank looked away.

  “Goddamn city girl,” Arson said.

  The vultures circled low in the concrete sky. Claire studied the sharp talons that tore dead flesh, the black eyes that gleamed with hunger.

  She knew that vultures only ate the dead.

  A fresh gout of blood filled her lifeline and spilled over her fingers. She was bleeding, but she wasn’t dead yet.

  Not yet.

  The wound wasn’t anything, really. She’d had a lot worse. Bullets had ripped through her shoulder and legs, flames had seared her flesh when the law set fire to one of their hideouts, and her hip had been busted and skinned clean to the bone when their getaway car went off the road.

  Oh, how she’d bled. Claire had her share of scars and then some. But she never complained, and she always healed up. Always. Arson said he’d never known a woman like her. He’d never wanted another woman the way he wanted Claire, who could stomach as much pain as a man. She made him proud, the way she didn’t complain, the way she always came back for more.

  Claire wore her scars. She didn’t try to hide them. Her scars were like mortar between the bricks in a dam, holding back a river.

  Her skin was the bricks, her scars the mortar.

  The river was her blood.

  She needed scars to live. But this time, she couldn’t seem to scar. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t heal the cut in her hand. She didn’t even know how she got the cut. One morning she woke up and her hand was weeping blood on the pillowcase. First she bandaged it, but it didn’t scab over. No matter what she did it just kept on bleeding, just like the hand of one of those religious nuts you sometimes read about in the papers.

  So she’d stitched the wound, stitched right along a lifeline that was deep but short, and blood had seeped between her needlework. She’d stitched it tighter, and still the blood had come. She’d squeezed her hand into a tight fist, her fingers straining to hold back the red river within, and the stitches had only burst, and the blood had surged, filling tributaries in the lines of her palm.

  Claire didn’t want to show it, but she was scared. She tried to scar over the fear the same way she tried to scar over the wound, because she didn’t want Arson to sense it. If he caught scent of her fright, he might stop loving her. And if she kept on bleeding, if she bled right out —

  Then she’d be cold. Dead. Arson wouldn’t hold her in his arms anymore. He wouldn’t kiss her and tell her how brave she was.

  He would leave her. He’d said as much. When she died, he would put her in a hole in the ground. He would cover her over with dirt and leave her forever.

  Claire knew one thing — a body could only spill so much blood, and then there wasn’t any more to spill.

  The vultures circled lower, their clawed talons brushing dry corn tassels.

  Circling… circling… circling…

  Circling Claire. Shaking, she held tight to her gun. Something was wrong with the birds. Had to be. Vultures only ate dead things. Any fool knew that —

  And Claire was alive.

  The birds came after her.

  Her heart was pounding.

  A wave of ripping beaks, tearing talons.

  She was bleeding.

  Wings beating a black rhythm in a granite tombstone sky.

  But she was alive.

  They came after her and didn’t stop.

  There were lots of things Tate Winters should have been thinking about as he sped toward Fiddler. The road, the outlaw gang prowling his territory, the local bank that was ripe for the plucking. Lots of things.

  But all he could think about was the little flapper who sat behind him with her arms around him tight and her thighs pressed against his.

  Her name was Imogene, and there was something about her that just plain lit Tate up. He’d heard it was like that with men and women sometimes, but it had never been that way for him. Until now. Because there was something about Imogene that made him feel like a wild colt, all hot-blooded and —

  “Hey!” Imogene yelled in his ear and he damn near dumped the bike. “Pull over!”

  Tate braked hard and parked the Harley under an old oak at the side of the road. “Don’t ever yell like that,” he said as he got off. “I nearly lost it.”

  She apologized. Tate barely heard her. Damn, but she was pretty. Maybe he should just go ahead and get it over with. There was a James Cagney picture playing at the theater in Visalia. Tate thought that James Cagney was top-drawer. He could ask her out to a picture show, and then —

  “Didn’t you see it?” Imogene asked.

  For a moment, Tate thought she was talking about the picture show, but then he realized he’d missed something. “See what?”

  “Back there.” She pointed down the road a piece. “I saw J. W.’s Ford parked on that side road between those cornfields.”

  Tate sighed and thought for a minute. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a way around the thing he knew he had to do.

  “Well?” she said finally. “What do we do?”

  “You wait here while I have a looksee.”

  “Are you kidding?” Imogene grabbed him by the arm. “This is Arson and Claire we’re talking about. You know they go armed, and they got two others with them. I’ll bet those folks have guns, too.”

  “I got one of those myself.” Tate patted his holster. “Now, I want you to promise me you’ll stay put. If you hear any shooting…” He paused, thinking it over. “Damn, if you hear any shooting I guess you’d better make yourself scarce.”

  “I hear any gunplay, I’ll head for Fiddler on your bike and bring back the cavalry.”

  The very idea of a woman on a motorcycle, especially one in a black slip, made Tate laugh. “This ain’t no toy, darlin’.”

  Imogene stiffened. “It just so happens that I got a boyfriend who’s got one.”

  “Not J. W.?”

  “Hell, no. J. W. can barely handle that goddamn Ford.”

  ‘You like this other fella better?”

  “Not much…” She grinned. “Well, maybe a little.”

  “I’ll remember that.” Tate couldn’t figure out what else to say. He felt like a fool, asking Imogene about the other fellow. A jealous fool.

  Well, he just couldn’t stand there like some lovesick idiot. He had to do something. He started walking. He wanted to look over his shoulder, get one last look at the little flapper because he knew damn well that he might never get another, but he didn’t.

  Imogene called after him. ‘You better not get yourself hurt.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m cooking your dinner tonight.”

  Tate smiled, but he didn’t look back.

  “Steak?” he asked.

  “Steak,” she answered.

  Pearl shivered. Ahead in the corn, the vultures were going crazy ov
er something.

  All that cawing and screeching raised her hackles. God knew what the buzzards was making a meal of. Pearl didn’t want to know. That was the God’s honest truth.

  She figured she’d better go the other way. She didn’t have the stomach for that kind of stuff. That was one of the reasons Pearl didn’t like Claire Ives. Claire never flinched when it came to spilling folks’ blood. Even Pearl had to admit that Claire sure had the stomach for bad business and then some. That’s what the newspapers said, and they were right.

  Still, it burned Pearl the way the writers played up that little tart, like she was a movie star or something, when they hardly ever mentioned Pearl at all.

  If they only knew the truth. Just lately Pearl had noticed a thing or two that made her think that deep down Miss Claire Ives was just as nervous as your old Aunt Bessie. The little tart was sure enough full of piss and vinegar when it came to spilling other folks’ blood, but she had sure gone and lost her nerve when it came to spilling a little of her own.

  Like with the cut on her hand. Stitching it up like that, when it was just a little old cut. Squeezing it all the time and busting the stitches. Why, if Miss Claire Ives didn’t leave that hand alone, it was gonna get all infected and blow up like a damn circus clown’s.

  Pearl would like to see that. She’d like to see —

  Just ahead, someone screamed in the tall corn. A woman. The sound was something awful. Pure misery.

  Maybe it was Claire. Maybe she was hurt —

  Oh, lord, but the sound of that scream turned Pearl’s stomach. She didn’t want no part of a scream like that.

  For a second, she stood frozen, too scared to run away. Then the sound of gunfire cracked at her like a whip, and she took off like greased lightning. Her goddamn corset was too tight and she could hardly breathe but she sucked the sweltering afternoon air as deep as she could and kept on running as fast as her feet would carry —