Lowland Rider

by Chet Williamson

  "The money. All the money the old guy had."

  "There's . . . there's no money here. No cash."

  "Bullshit, man. The money in the room upstairs. The room this guy"—the leader gestured with his gun to Rhoads on the floor—"wouldn't open."

  "Oh Jesus . . ." Jesse rubbed at his mouth nervously. "He couldn't open it. He didn't have the key."

  "Who does?"

  "I do." He fumbled in his pockets, wondering if he had been there, would Rhoads still be alive. All for the want of a key. He found it and held it out to them. "Here! This is it!" The bright key shone, grail-like.

  "Uh-uh. You come upstairs and open it for us."

  "But there's no money in it, just pictures and some books."

  "Don't piss me off. This guy here, he pissed me off. You piss me off, they pay for it." He gave an airy wave of his arm toward Jesse's wife and daughter.

  "Leave them out of this," he warned coldly.

  "Upstairs then. Manny, Juan, stay down here and watch them."

  Jesse and the other four ascended the stairs then, Jesse leading the way. He was glad the stairs were dark, so that he did not have to see the bloody spots where Rhoads's head had bounced, but once he nearly slipped on a small patch of wetness, which he imagined as being only one thing. Soon they were in front of the door. The leader gestured, and Jesse unlocked it, swung it open, and stepped back.

  The leader walked in and looked around like a sergeant inspecting raw recruits. He passed his fingertips over the gilded frames as if searching for dust, picked up a few books and thumbed through them, tucking them under his arm. He looked up and down, weighing the situation judicially. In an instant he changed.

  Fury took him, and he flung the books at Jesse, who staggered back, angry and confused. "What is this shit!" the leader shouted, spraying spittle with each word. He thrust his pistol under Jesse's chin, pushing it up, making him growl from the pain. "The money, motherfucker! Where the money?"

  Jesse's arms jerked spastically, wanting to push the gun away, to ease the pain that arced through the veins and glands of his jaw, but knowing that to touch the prodding metal would mean his death. "No money," he gritted out.

  The gun came down, giving relief for an instant. Then the barrel cracked along his jaw, and the pain turned his legs watery so that it was an effort to remain standing. As he brought his head back up, he saw in slow procession the leader's studded belt, the gold cross nestled in the hair of his chest like an altar in a jungle, the constellation of too white teeth set in the dark sky of the face.

  "One more time. One more. The money."

  "You can have all I've got. Or I'll get more. But there's nothing here, I sw—"

  Jesse was powerless to stop the second blow. The pain of the first had terrified him and taken away any sense of quickness with which he might have reacted. The backhanded metal caught him beneath the cheekbone, smashed his eye closed, ripped a gash from beneath his brow to his hairline. He fell back, the room dancing, and felt himself kicked, poked, half-lifted, half-dragged until the floor fell away and he knew that he was thundering, rolling down the stairs, the same stairs down which Rhoads had been, in comparison, so much more carefully transported. Wooden swords hacked at him from beneath, while on each side the walls bludgeoned him. He tried to cry out in his terror, to ease his pain in words, but he was capable of only a dry hissing.

  The cessation of blows told him he had reached the bottom, and then rough hands were on him again. Blood stung his eyes as he strained to see where he was and what was being done to him. His body ached in a hundred places, but through the agony he felt more delicate, refined torments, and, blinking away the blood, isolating the sensations, he knew that he was being bound to a chair. Cords sawed into his wrists and ankles, and another, like a snake, coiled round his neck so that, to breathe, he thrust his head up and back, and expanded his windpipe in a desperate way of which he had not known he was capable. His throat went raw with the effort, but he could breathe, noisily and harshly.

  "Looser," someone said, and the pressure on his throat slackened, the rough sound of his breathing grew quieter.

  "I told you, asshole. One warning, and that's all."

  Jesse's eyes cleared so that he could see the couch on which his wife lay. Knives flashed, and his body tensed, every muscle surged against their bonds, even though he knew he was helpless to intervene. But the knives descended on rope, not flesh, and in the place of the rope dark hands held Donna's arms and legs, pulling them apart, spread-eagling her. The knives sparked again, dove and rose like silver gulls, pecking away the surface of seawater to reveal fleshy sand beneath. Her bare limbs trembled, and he could see how desperately she tried to draw them together. But the dark hands were steely, holding her open, obscene in her accessibility.

  Jesse cried out in protest, in horror, and in love. But they jammed a cloth into his mouth so that only his eyes screamed as they did to her what he had never done, and he heard, like songs of dying men, the breath pass into her and out of her, through nostrils made huge by hidden hurts.

  Humiliation and sorrow and rage all warred within him, and he wished for death rather than the contemplation of the mystery of things to be. But death did not come, not yet. Only the repetitive, eternal abuse of the woman he loved, only the death he read in her eyes.

  The leader came over to Jesse, grabbed him by the hair, and swung his head up so that Jesse stared directly into his face. "All right, fucker, you just lost something. You want to lose more? Money worth that much to you?"

  "I swear . . ." Jesse grated out, "no money . . ."

  "We kill the bitch, man. I'm not shittin'."

  Jesse began to cry, but as he sobbed the rope dug more tightly into his throat, and he was forced to stop in order to breathe. But the tears still ran down his face.

  "That what you want?" The leader pulled his pistol from his waistband and brandished it. "Get offa her," he told one of the others.

  "I ain't done, man!"

  "Asshole, I said get off!" The boy fell back at the leader's push. His pants, tangled around his ankles, tripped him up, and he sprawled on the floor, knocking over part of the makeshift crib. Jennifer began to scream.

  The men laughed, all except the leader. "Shut up," he said, and they obeyed. "I hate kids that scream, man. I got screamin' kids around me all the fucking time. It drives me crazy, you know?" He knelt by Jennifer's side and pointed the gun at her face. "Shut up, kid."

  "No …" Jesse said. "Oh dear God, no . . ." Jennifer shrieked on, louder now.

  "I told you to shut up." The leader's thumb brought the hammer back with a dry click.

  "Luis, don't."

  The leader looked up at the boy who had spoken. He was tall and thin, and looked younger than the others. "Did you say something to me?"

  The boy's hand jittered nervously at his side. "Not the kid, Luis, huh? Please?"

  "Why not? Tell me why not, Carlos? Tell me why I shouldn't blow all these motherfuckers to hell. Go ahead, you tell me."

  Carlos's mouth opened, but the sound of the shot drowned out anything he might have said. Everyone but Luis, the leader, jerked as if an electric shock had struck them, and Jesse surged against his ropes, his eyes closing with the effort. When he opened them, his daughter was dead.

  "You gotta talk faster than that, Carlos." Luis got to his feet, grabbed an afghan from a chair, and threw it at Carlos: "Cover up that mess."

  Jesse was hollow. At that moment he felt as if an icy shovel had dug out his chest, and he wondered weakly if he was in shock, or dreaming, or dying from having the light taken from his life. He only dimly saw Carlos kneel and gently cover his little girl's broken form, heard as if from a far distance Luis's voice saying, "It's war, man. The fortunes of war. Us against them."

  Then he remembered Donna. She already looked dead, her eyes opened wide, staring at the ceiling, unable to accept the reality of what had just occurred.

  "No money now," Luis said. "I believe you now, man. Shi
t. What a wasted day. I hate to waste my days." He put the pistol against Donna's head and pulled the trigger. Everyone jumped again.

  "Madre dios, Luis!" Carlos cried, his hands held out in supplication.

  "You want to let them live, you asshole? Identify us? That would be fucking smart, wouldn't it?"

  A short, stocky boy stepped forward. "What about the stuff upstairs? Paintings and shit."

  "Fuck it." Luis shook his head sharply. "Can't move that shit."

  Jesse sat, stunned, no longer aware of the ropes biting into his wrists, his neck. He was shocked beyond tears or screaming. The realization that his family was dead, and that there existed such men in the world who could unhesitatingly perform such an act had poleaxed his mind. He had believed, had known there were such people in the abstract, but to actually come face-to-face with them, to have them destroy your wife, your child, was unfathomable, unbelievable, unbearable. The world had become, all too suddenly, a mass of corruption, a cancer. Jesse Gordon was drained of love, of compassion, of sanity.

  "Let me die," he said clearly, seeing nothing but the great abyss before him.

  "What, man?"

  "Let me die. Kill me."

  He hated them, but it was a weak hate, enervated by despair. He had fallen so far that the desire to strike the darkness at the bottom was far greater than his hatred.

  "Kill you? That what you want?"

  "Yes."

  "Man, what you wanta die for? Man, that's sick."

  "Spic. Spic asshole. Motherfucker." Jesse said the words dully, to enrage Luis, to make him throw up the gun and fire and send Jesse into that deep, welcoming dark he so craved.

  "Nice talk. Listen to this. This guy's, what is it, suicidal. You wanta die, huh? You feel pretty bad, right? Okay, you die. But we make it take a while, huh?"

  "Luis," the short boy said, "we gotta get out of here. Somebody hear the shots and—"

  "We go. But we burn this shit first. Manny, I seen some kerosene in the back. Get it." Luis narrowed his eyes and looked at Carlos. "You got some problems, chickenshit?"

  "I got no problems."

  "Then you get that chickenshit look offa your face."

  They stood in silence until Manny came back with a two-gallon can of kerosene. "Throw it around, man. Get the place nice and wet . . . good, that's good. Hey, careful! Don't get any on our man here. We don't wanta grill him, we just wanta roast him slow like."

  When Manny was done, the smooth surfaces of the room gleamed, the fabrics were darkened, the smell was sharply sweet. "Who got a pack of matches?" One of the boys handed a dog-eared book to Luis, who tossed it back into the boy's face. "A full pack, man! Got to be a full pack." He accepted another, examined it, and nodded approval. "Good. Okay. Now who got the purse and the wallets?"

  "Yo." A hand held up the booty.

  "All right. Out." They left obediently. Luis stood in the doorway and looked at Jesse. "You wanta die, you go ahead."

  He struck a match, set fire to the pack, and tossed it into the room. It landed on a kerosene saturated couch, whose upholstery sprang into fiery life. Jesse watched it burn, watched as the yellow-blue flames crawled onto and across the carpet, enveloping more and more of the room. A door slammed, and when he looked back, Luis was gone. Jesse got ready to die.

  The heat seared him, and he imagined his flesh was already burning, popping out in big bubbles that splashed blood geyser-like into the air. He saw the couch on which Donna lay burst into flame, and watched as her body glowed and darkened and disappeared in flame. He thought of nothing. His mind was empty of all but death, blasted by what he had seen and heard in what he expected to be the last hour of his life.

  The fire had just begun to touch his daughter, and his mind was slowly becoming aware of how much the individual flames looked like fingers gently cradling his little girl, when the front door flew open and a breeze rushed in, making the fire leap up and roar dully. Then someone was at his side, and a knife flashed, and there was new pressure at the places where the ropes held him, and a voice:

  "Fuck him, man, can't do this, ain't right, get you out of here, man, get you out…"

  Carlos sawed at the ropes haphazardly, so that several times the knife slashed Jesse's wrists and legs, and each sharp pain sparked him, galvanized him into a clearer recognition of what was happening, what had happened, and why, so that by the time the ropes were off him, and he knew that he would not burn, he had become alive again, alive and full of hate.

  His legs, though free, would not function, and he toppled sideways out of the chair. A grunt of pain escaped him, and he reached out toward the fleeing Carlos, who turned, looked back, hesitated, then came once more to Jesse's side. "Come on, man," he said, fitting his hands beneath Jesse's armpits, "we gotta get out."

  Suddenly Jesse twisted in the boy's grasp, grabbed Carlos's left wrist with his right hand, and pulled him across the front of Jesse's body so that the body fell on his left side. As he scrambled for footing, Jesse's arms came up and down, smashing into Carlos's face. The boy moaned and went limp long enough for Jesse to find the knife. He opened the blade and began to stab.

  Carlos squealed and tried to stop the knife, but it was useless. Jesse was far stronger, and Jesse was mad. The twists and turns of life and death had sidetracked rationality. He did not care that Carlos had come back at the risk of his own life to save him. The only thing that mattered at that moment was that Carlos was one of them who had done it, who had done everything, and he plunged the blade into the boy's face and chest and neck over and over, until they were both soaked with blood, and Carlos lay still.

  By then, the flames were crawling around Jesse's feet. He folded the knife, jammed it into his pocket, and staggered out the door. Halfway down the street, he heard the first siren, and shambled back into an alleyway. It was dark and empty and cool, and he closed his eyes and fell onto the stones, letting their chill dampness soothe his aching body. He slept.

  When he awoke, it was still night, although the dim light in the alley had another quality now. It was of a dark redness, like blood, and in its light Jesse's bloodied hands were black with a blackness one could fall into. He looked at his hands and remembered everything. Then he rolled over and vomited. When the sickness passed and he could think again, he thought first of Donna and Jennifer and of the fact that they were dead, gone away from him forever, and he began to weep. Rage took him, and he slammed his fists against the unrelenting stones until the sides of his hands began to bleed. Then he stopped, and remembered that he had killed the boy who had come back to help him.

  The world was an open sore, and now he was no better than those who had hurt him. He saw the city as a great wound in which maggots teemed, thirsting for blood, and he was one among many, one of the filthy white grubs that clawed and burrowed. The killing had dehumanized him, and he felt filthy, as if he would never be clean again, regardless of whether or not the blood would come off his hands. He felt soulless. He felt dead.

  He would bury himself.

  He evaded the crimson eyes of police cars and fire engines by leaving through the other end of the alley. There was still change in his pocket, enough to get a subway token with which to get back to his apartment. He went through the night, all the way from the Bronx to Manhattan, with blood on his hands and clothes. But no one said a word to him about it, so he knew that he was dead and unseen. No one who shared his subway car looked at him, no one noticed him on the street, even the doorman in his building sat with his back to him and did not look up as Jesse stepped into the elevator.

  In his apartment he stripped off his clothes and washed until his body was clean. Then he walked naked from room to room. He picked up things that had belonged to Donna, that she had touched every day. He stood over Jennifer's crib, looking into it and seeing her there. He looked into the mirror for a very long time, memorizing himself, knowing that he would never be naked again.

  From his chest of drawers, he took three pairs of underwear and three
pairs of socks, two short-sleeved cotton T-shirts for summer, and two black wool turtlenecks for winter, two pairs of jeans, a wool stocking cap, and a lightweight, down-filled jacket. He picked up a color photograph of Donna and Jennifer from the nightstand, set it on the bed, then put it back where it had been.

  "No," he said quietly, even that small word making his battered jaw ache.

  A brown leather shoulder bag was in his closet. He got it out, opened it, and fit the clothes inside. As he zipped the bag shut, the telephone rang. He looked at it, but did not answer, and eventually it stopped ringing. Then he sat down and waited for morning.

  Just after dawn, he drank some milk and ate a few slices of bread. At nine o'clock he dressed in a suit, and put the bag over his shoulder. The last thing he ever did in the rooms he had shared with his wife and child was to take the bankbooks from the china closet and put them into his pocket.

  His bank opened at ten o'clock, and he closed out the checking account and the savings account he had opened with his father's insurance money. The bank employees were doubtful and suspicious, but Jesse's credentials were in order, and they gave him the money grudgingly, over fifty thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills and ten rolls of quarters. These he added to the contents of his shoulder bag.

  The morning was cool as he walked the twenty blocks to Penn Station. He watched the people he passed more closely than he ever had before, and saw greed in the grim faces of the men, hardness in the painted faces of the women. He was glad to be dead, glad to be going under the ground where they all, every one of them, were dead.

  The station was crowded with people hauling suitcases on wheels, and Jesse thought the noise they made sounded like hundreds of squealing rats. He went down a hall toward a subway entrance until he came to an alcove housing a wall full of metal lockers with a decal of an eagle, wings spread, on each one. There was a restroom nearby, and he went into it. A young black man stood at a urinal. He glanced at Jesse, then back at his own reflection. Jesse entered the booth at the far end of the row and took off the suit, folding it neatly, and put on one of the pairs of jeans and black turtlenecks he had in his bag. Then he put a small wad of twenty dollar bills and a handful of quarters into his pocket and zipped the bag shut. When he came out of the booth the black man was gone.