Savage Reckoning

by C. Hoyt Caldwell

  The whore he called Bones lay on the mattress, her arm still tied off and the needle still piercing her bruised flesh. A tortured grin was frozen on her face. Her skinny, naked body revealed the cruel toll years of bad choices had delivered to her doorstep. She was once an All-American cheerleader who was raised in a middle-class home with a detached garage and detached parents. They’d managed to be a physical presence during her formative years without providing any kind of emotional support whatsoever.

  Her straight A’s and tumbling talents got her into college on a cheerleading scholarship. Everything seemed to be set up perfectly for her to lead a country-club life outside of Knoxville when she graduated. Then she stumbled into a fraternity party her sophomore year and tried heroin on a dare.

  Flash forward five years, and she’s lying on Step Crawford’s mattress with a needle in her arm, thirty pounds lighter, minus six teeth, and nowhere to be until ten P.M. the next day when she’d hop on a pole at The Rat’s Tail Gentlemen’s Club and dance for a roomful of rumrunners and drug dealers with even fewer teeth than she had.

  That’s where Step had met her. He was there on a closeout; he did a lot of closeouts in The Rat’s Tail. She stepped out on the stage and gave the saddest striptease Step had ever seen. Somehow she managed to convey the tragic turns of her life with every sway of her hips and jiggle of her tits. And she did it in the most beautiful way. It was masterful.

  Step met her offstage and without saying a word, he dragged her into the manager’s office and they fucked the living daylights out of each other. They fucked the misery out of their lives. They even temporarily fucked themselves free of the bitterness that poisoned their day-to-day existences. But, try as they might, they couldn’t fuck away the loneliness. Their need for one another sent them both into a frothing carnal fit that produced damaged furniture and desperate growls of ecstasy. They were drawn to each other’s crippling sadness.

  That’s all they shared from that moment on: sex and sadness. They talked occasionally, but it wasn’t Step’s favorite thing to do with the whore because her conversations usually centered on the dicks she sucked to get a fix. It was a thing with her, a sickness almost. The size, condition, and structure of male genitals fascinated her to no end. Still, besides Kenny, Bones was the closest thing Step had to family.

  Step’s phone vibrated on his leg. He watched it skitter across the denim fabric of his baggy jeans for as long as he could. At the last possible moment before it went to voicemail, he answered. “What?”

  “We got a closeout,” Kenny said.

  Step held some smoke in his mouth and then puffed it out in rings. “Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “I’ll pick you up in five.”

  “Is she there?”

  “Is who here?”

  Kenny chuckled. “How many women you got, Step?”

  “I don’t have any women.” Step twirled the bronze liquid in his glass, and watched it spin.

  “You know what I mean.”

  He sniffed the whiskey. “She’s here.”

  “Did y’all…you know?”

  “Did we what, Kenny?”

  “Have sex?”

  “No, we did not,” Step said, taking a sip from the glass. “We fucked, fatass.”

  Kenny hooted. “Goddamn, Step. You are one lucky son of a bitch. How do you always get the pretty girls?”

  Step looked at the woman on his bed who most closely resembled skeletal remains. “Simple. I find the ugly ones pretty.”

  “C’mon on, now. I’ve seen that girl dance. She’s fine as hell, boy.”

  “She is fine. When she’s dancing. Offstage, she uglies up a good bit.”

  “Then why do you like her?”

  “Who says I like her?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I ain’t got nothing against her. She gets down to business as soon as she walks in the door. She don’t ask me about my day or bore the living shit out of me about hers. She just drops her drawers to the floor and flat-backs it. She makes things easy. Life is hard enough without having to woo some goddamn woman and think about her feelings all the time.” Step laughed and drank from his glass. “Hell, I don’t have any fucking feelings, why would I give a shit about hers?”

  There was a pause before Kenny said, “You think that’s my problem, Step? You think I’m too nice? I’m always asking this woman and that about how they’re doing or what their day’s been like, but I’ll be damned if it ain’t worked out for me. Can’t get none of them to come home with me. I ain’t gonna lie, I’ve ’bout worn my hand out. Thing cramps up on me night and day because I’ve used it so much.”

  Step took a drag from his Porter 100. “You do know you have two hands, right?”

  “I ain’t about to use my left hand. I ain’t got no control over it. It’s liable to twist the wrong way and cause all kinds of problems with my man hammer.”

  “Man hammer? What’re you, twelve?”

  Kenny didn’t respond to his question. “Am I too nice?”

  “You’re too fat, and your face is too present.” Step chuckled to himself as he brought the glass to his lips.

  “You’re drunk, ain’t you? You’re always meanest when you’re drunk. You’re mean other times, too, but you are flat-out rude when you’ve been drinking.”

  “Listen up, Kenny, Ima tell you how to get a woman. You listening?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Make your case.”

  “Make my case? What in the hell does that mean?”

  Step swallowed the last of his whiskey. “It means, what have you got to offer a woman? Why in the hell should she put time into you? You’re fat, your face looks like a deformed ass, you’re always wearing those goddamn dirty-as-shit hats…you’ve got a lot to overcome, my friend. So, you gotta just come out and tell her what you’re gonna give her that makes her life better.”

  “You talking sex-wise?”

  “No, I ain’t talking sex-wise. Sex means about as much to a woman as a sensible diet means to you.” He poured more whiskey into his glass. “What have you got that women want?”

  “Well shit, brother, if I knew that we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Step held the full glass in his hand and admired its perfection before taking a big gulp. “So, we are down to the meat of the problem. You ain’t got no idea what women want.”

  “I can’t see how we’re just now getting to the meat of it. I more or less said as much some time ago.”

  Step ignored him. “You know what women want? I mean what they really want?” He peered at the skinny naked whore on his bed. “They want to forget shit.”

  Kenny hesitated. “You mean like the am…am…What the hell do they call it when you get hit over the head and forget things?”

  “Amnesia, and yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “I ain’t hitting no woman over the head.”

  “You don’t have to hit them over the head, dumbass.”

  “Then how am I supposed to make them forget shit? And while we’re at it, what is it exactly they want to forget?”

  His eyes still on Bones, Step reached for his pack of Porter 100s. “Who they are. The shit they have to put up with day in and day out. The state of their sorry-ass lives.” He extracted a cigarette from the pack and stuck it in his mouth. “The same shit we all want to forget.”

  Kenny chuckled. “How in the hell do I make them forget all that?”

  Step brought the new cigarette to life with the old one. “Each woman’s got a different ‘forget-shit’ trigger, Kenny. A man’s whole goddamn point in life is to figure out what that trigger is and pull it.”

  “What about your girl there, Step? What’s her trigger?”

  “Black tar,” Step said, snuffing the spent cigarette out on the windowsill.

  “Oh,” Kenny said, sounding almost sad. “No offense, but I ain’t interested in a junkie girl.”

  “Nobody is, fatass. That’s what she wa
nts to forget.”

  “What about Angie?” Kenny asked. “What was her trigger?”

  Step stopped mid-drag and his eyes dropped to the floor. He let the name “Angie” rattle around in his brain and then growled out, “I’m tired of telling you we don’t talk about her, Kenny.”

  “We don’t talk about her when you’re sober. I figured since you’ve had a snootful you might want to get into it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “They say it ain’t good to bottle stuff like that up, Step.”

  The liquor was adding weight to Step’s eyelids, and he struggled to keep them open. “Who’s they?”

  “Them, you know. The ones that say stuff we’re supposed to pay attention to.”

  “I got news for you, Kenny. They’re just making shit up as they go along.”

  Kenny sighed. “Suit yourself. Still think you should talk about Angie and all that to clear your mind of it.”

  “Goddamn it!” Step snapped. “You are not to say Angie’s name ever fuckin’ again! You understand?”

  “All right—all right. I just thought you was drunk enough is all.”

  Step closed his eyes and blew streams of smoke out his nostrils. “Didn’t you say something about a closeout?”

  “I did. There ain’t no hurry. We’re due to meet up with Boss for breakfast. Take some time to dry out. Give me a call when you’re on your way.”

  Step told Kenny to fuck off and then disconnected the call.

  Chapter 13

  Dani stood naked in front of the full-length mirror. Even she thought her five-foot, one-hundred-pound frame looked ridiculously small. She turned her hip to examine the trail of star tattoos that snaked down her torso. They started at her shoulder blade, arched down across her lat muscle, curled around to the hump of her ass, crossed over her hips, dipped inside her pelvic bone, and finally ended at the top of her inner thigh. Each star in the trail meant something to her. They were her salvation.

  She was the only daughter of a preacher. Not just a preacher, a fire-and-brimstone, hell-hath-opened-up-its-gates-and-summoned-the-wicked-upon-us preacher. He warned his parishioners every Wednesday and Sunday that the devil had plans for them if they didn’t take up God’s plan, and God’s plan included a lot of praying, a lot of donations to his church, and a lot of private time with the women of his congregation.

  When Dani was fourteen, she had the misfortune of interrupting one of her father’s private sessions with the wife of one of the deacons of the church. A week later, she was sent to Christ the Son’s Training School for Our Anointed Daughters on the coast of North Carolina. They promised to turn unholy, promiscuous young girls into proper servants of Jesus. Dani didn’t even know what promiscuous meant when her mother told her that’s where she would be sent. She would remain there until her father was satisfied she was obedient in the eyes of the Lord. Then and only then would she be allowed to come home.

  It was her first roommate at the school who’d told Dani what promiscuous meant. Colleen Appledale was her name, and the two girls became immediate friends. They studied the Holy Word of God together by day, and shared all their unholy desires and fantasies at night. Dani found herself far more fulfilled by the profane than the pure. Over the years, the girls helped each other explore the sinful side of life. They frequently managed to escape the grounds of the school late at night and demonstrate to the boys and men of the local town just exactly how unholy they were. They called themselves everything from the Anointed Sluts of Jesus to the Wicked Stars of Christ. One night, after sharing six shots of tequila with a local tattoo artist named Chester, they’d both branded themselves with their first star. The rest of the stars appeared over the next weeks and months.

  Dani forgot about Baptist Flats. She forgot about her parents. She forgot about the god she had been sent to learn how to serve. Dani wasn’t just living in sin, she was living it up in sin.

  Everything was one big party until Colleen woke up nauseated three mornings in a row. On the evening of the third day, instead of sneaking off to a bar, they hitched a ride to the next town and purchased a pregnancy test at a chain drugstore.

  They spent the rest of the night back in their room bawling their eyes out and holding each other when the test revealed that what they feared was now their reality.

  “My daddy is gonna kill me,” Colleen had said.

  Dani had heard stories of Colleen’s father’s legendary temper many times from her roommate. She knew that Colleen was afraid that her father would literally kill her. That’s when Dani suggested something she never thought she would. It was a radical idea even for a rebellious teenager. “He doesn’t have to know.”

  Realizing what her roommate was suggesting, Colleen sniffed back a tear and asked, “Where?”

  “There’s a clinic in town…”

  Colleen shook her head emphatically. “Place is always surrounded by protestors. Some of them are bound to be from the school. They’d catch us and call my daddy. He’d kill me twice. Once for getting pregnant, and again for trying to rid myself of it.”

  “We’ll go down to Wilmington then.”

  “How?” Puddles of tears had built up in the corners of Colleen’s eyes.

  Dani thought for a moment and then said, “The bar. We’ll get Chester to take us. It’s probably his baby anyway.”

  Colleen looked horrified. “Don’t call it a baby…” She lost herself in thought and then said, “It could be Chester’s. Maybe. What if he wants to keep it? You think he might?”

  Dani hesitated and then shook her head slowly.

  “Yeah, probably not.”

  The next night the girls snuck out again and enlisted the help of Chester the tattoo artist. He convinced them that going to Wilmington wasn’t the answer. They’d have to ditch school. Even with him driving, they wouldn’t be back until well after dark. The school would send out a search party, the girls’ secret would most likely be discovered, and what about the money? Abortions weren’t free.

  As they sat panicked on their barstools, Chester gave them an alternative solution. He could have a woman he knew meet them at his tattoo parlor that night. She’d taken care of a few girls at their school. It was a simple procedure. The girls wouldn’t miss a second of school. Chester would trade out a tattoo to pay the woman. It was the least he could do since there was a better than good chance he was the father.

  Colleen readily agreed. Dani had her doubts. She expressed them to Colleen, but the terrified teen was more frightened of facing her father’s fury than she was of terminating a pregnancy in the back room of a tattoo parlor.

  The woman was tall with a curved spine that gave her the appearance of a hunched over fairy-tale witch. But she wasn’t. She was kindly, reassuring. There was no need to worry, Colleen was in no danger. She was so early in the pregnancy that having a mole removed would have been more bothersome.

  Colleen lay on the table where she had received dozens of star tattoos. With Dani holding her hand, the woman began. Fifteen minutes passed. Each minute was filled with shrieks of pain. When the woman was finished, Chester carried Colleen to his car and drove the two girls back to their school.

  Dani helped her friend crawl through their dorm window and put her to bed, a bed she would never leave.

  The school used its connections in the community to have Colleen’s death attributed to a burst appendix. She was the second girl to die from the malady in ten years.

  Dani was assigned another roommate. The new girl was intolerably pious. Dani saw no reason to remember her name, for they wouldn’t be roommates long. There was the matter of Chester that the last remaining Wicked Star of Christ had to deal with.

  She snuck out of her room as the sanctimonious new girl protested. She would turn Dani in, but it didn’t matter; Dani didn’t plan on returning. She made her way to Chester’s tattoo parlor and convinced him he owed her one last star. She removed her jeans and panties and lay on the table where Colleen had been butchered by the kin
dly fairy-tale witch. She stared at the heavily stained tile ceiling while Chester applied the star tattoo at the very top of her inner thigh.

  When he was done, he grinned and said, “Damn, girl, I’m boned up something crazy. I’ll throw in a little extra work there on the back of your neck if you let me get into that pretty little thing.”

  “Colleen’s name?”

  “Sure, sweetie. Colleen Applewood right across the back of your neck.”

  “Appledale.”

  “That’s right,” he said, unbuttoning his pants.

  Dani stopped him. “The tattoo first.”

  He dropped his shoulders and sighed. Reluctantly, he had Dani turn over, and he inked her with Colleen’s name. When he was done, Dani examined the tattoo with a handheld mirror in the bathroom.

  Chester scanned her from head to toe. “You’re about the finest little thing I’ve ever seen come through that goddamn school, Dani Savage. I swear to Christ you could be a fucking porn star.”

  Dani turned to him. “Am I prettier than Colleen?”

  He clucked out a laugh. “Poor old Colleen doesn’t hold a candle to you.”

  “Didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘doesn’t hold a candle.’ Colleen’s dead, remember?”

  He nodded. “ ’Course I remember—”

  Dani lurched forward and smacked Chester on the side of his head with the handheld mirror. Momentarily stunned, the tattoo artist stepped back and shook chunks of glass from his hair. He growled and rushed the girl he thought could be a porn star and beat the consciousness out of her.

  She woke up in a hospital bed with her uncle Otis standing at her side. He explained that her mother had sent him. Dani’s father had refused to let anyone in his family near her. “You’ll live with Jeannie and me,” Uncle Otis had said.

  And that’s how it came to be that Dani owed her life to her uncle Otis. The god she had been sent to find at a boarding school on the ocean found her in the home of her aunt and uncle. He didn’t demand to be worshiped or obeyed or feared. This god simply existed and watched over her in the warmth given to her by Otis and Jeannie Royal.