Savage Reckoning

by C. Hoyt Caldwell

  She took her GED and got a job at the local slaughterhouse. It was a miserable job that she didn’t just hate; it haunted her. The constant squeal of the pigs transported her to the tattoo parlor where she’d held Colleen’s hand and listened to her friend be tortured.

  On her twenty-first birthday, her uncle invited her to join his police force. He did it to keep an eye on her, and she took the job to pay him back for his kindness. She had every intention of putting in at most a year, and then leaving for someplace that was as far away from Baptist Flats as she could get.

  As much as she wanted to shoot some of the folks, it turned out that she liked police work, all one hundred pounds of her. Not only that, but police work liked her. Baptist Flats was a small town full of hard-drinking apocryphal Christians with two primary employers: the slaughterhouse and a corporate tobacco farm in the flatlands. The hard labor and boredom made it a breeding ground for domestic violence. Maybe it was her size, her good looks, or her guts, but whatever it was, she had a knack for defusing volatile situations.

  Still examining her star tattoos and flipping through the misspent days of her youth, a loud banging came at her door. It was a common occurrence given her place of residence. She lived in a motel at the back end of town that catered to drunken clientele who used the rooms to sleep off their overindulgent ways. Idiots always knocked on her door thinking they’d locked themselves out of their rooms.

  “Wrong room!” Dani shouted. She squirted lotion in her hands and proceeded to rub it on her arms.

  “Open up, little deputy!”

  She stopped rubbing in the lotion. It wasn’t a drunk looking for his room, it was a mistake she’d made shortly after moving in with her aunt and uncle and taking the job at the slaughterhouse: her old supervisor and boots-up buddy, CJ Bollin.

  “Dani! Open up!”

  “Go away, CJ,” she said, searching for her robe.

  “Open up, goddamn it!” He banged on the door louder.

  She located her robe on the back of the bathroom door and quickly put it on. “I swear to God, CJ, I will shoot you in the balls if you don’t go away!”

  He kicked the door. “Goddamn it, Dani! All I want to do is talk!”

  “That ain’t happening.” She retrieved her service revolver from the room safe and slowly moved to the door.

  “Seeing you in your costume done something to me. I forgot how damn fucking fine you are.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  He fell into the door and propped himself up with his shoulder. “I just want to get back to what we had, Dani. I just want a chance to get back to that. That’s all I want.”

  “CJ, I have my gun in my hand, and I’m running out of patience.”

  “I messed up, baby. I should’ve never let you go. I want to tell you how pretty you are and how much I miss you. I ain’t gonna try to fuck you, I swear. If things go that way, it’ll have to be all your doing.” He slid down the door and sat on the concrete walkway.

  “The only way things are going to go is me castrating you with my .38 if you do not vacate the premises in ten seconds.”

  “I did love to fuck you, though. Goddamn.”

  “CJ! Leave now!”

  “I ain’t never leaving you again…”

  His voice started to falter. Dani pressed her ear to the door and sighed in relief when she heard him snoring.

  She made her way to the bed and sat with her back against the faux headboard, cradling her revolver in her hands. She woke up at daybreak in the same position, relieved to find that CJ had awakened at some point during the night and left without incident.

  Chapter 14

  Big Bonnie Pike didn’t make a lick of sense to Step. For one thing, she was sweet. The woman flashed a huge smile at the skinny closeout king whenever he walked into her restaurant. It gave him a near warm feeling that unsettled his frayed nerves. He’d grown accustomed to being on edge, and to find comfort in Bonnie’s toothy grin just plain bothered him. He didn’t like comfort, didn’t find joy or peace in it. He preferred his days filled with impending doom. Laying eyes on Bonnie’s rosy, chubby cheeks robbed him of the distress that made him feel more at ease in the world.

  The other detail that set Bonnie apart from her kin was that she was, for the most part, outside of their criminal doings. She played host to her younger brother Harley and let him occupy a booth in her eatery so he could conduct business, but Step never knew her name to be attached to any of the closeouts he or any of the other contractors had done for the Pike family. He suspected she was into something that violated a state and/or federal statute here and there, she was a Pike after all, but he doubted it was anything serious.

  What Step didn’t know was that the smile she greeted him with was reserved only for him. None of her brother’s other associates got so much as a glint of an upturned mouth in their direction. The sweetness Step saw never made an appearance for anyone else. Kenny got collateral pleasantries from the matriarch of the Pikes simply because she never saw the chubby closeout king without Step. Everyone else came close to pissing themselves from a bug-eyed Bonnie glare.

  While the rest of the Pikes beat dollars out of crackers in every patch of hillbilly on every mountain range in the Southeast, Step knew big Bonnie as the owner of the Biscuit Shack chain of restaurants. It was a redneck diner that gobbled up a good bit of off-ramp real estate on I-75 from Knoxville to Chattanooga and little stretches of land off the beaten path. There were dozens of the roadside grease pits featuring artery-clogging fare—all of them owned by Bonnie—but she spent most of her time tending to the day-to-day operations of her first Biscuit Shack, located just off the highway heading into Rock Hollow. Unlike her brother’s associates, she treated her customers as if they meant the world to her, and she was loved for it. She had a volatile nature that she reserved for her staff, but she had plucked most of them off the streets and given them their first jobs, so they quickly learned to read her moods and avoid the full force of her wrath. They were the wretched in need, and she was their surly savior.

  She perched her round frame on a stool in the middle of the counter near the front door and guzzled coffee as those with Pike business paid their respects to her with a timid grin on their way to Harley’s booth. She locked herself into a look of total disdain until Step made an appearance. The lanky closeout king with a fickle disposition was blessed with the same pale blue eyes as her late sweetheart, and Step’s grin warmed her just the littlest bit.

  Kenny was contemplating Step’s notion of triggers and women when they arrived at Bonnie’s Biscuit Shack to get their latest closeout assignment, and his partner’s liver was still swimming in the homemade whiskey he’d swigged the night before. Neither of them noticed Bonnie’s cheeks flush when she laid eyes on the skinny closeout king. She squirmed in her seat as she soaked in his dazed, grim expression, and felt a little quiver in her plump belly. His smile flashed in between her heart’s quickened beats, and her cheeks flushed even more. Any other person would have missed his pathetic grin, but she saw it and committed it to a mental timeline of all his smiles.

  Step had not even realized he’d smiled. He hadn’t even noticed Bonnie was sitting in her usual spot, sipping her usual giant mug of coffee, serving as the Pikes’ gatekeeper. Kenny led the way, waddling to Harley’s booth. They both walked the route without plotting out their steps. They’d made the walk a thousand times before. They knew the path with their eyes closed. They knew they’d find Harley sitting on the far side of the booth, just beside the plate-glass window with a view of the parking lot. They knew they’d find Boss sitting with this back to the door with his left profile in full view of the outside world and anyone in it who had bad intentions and a loaded gun. It was the price you paid for not being a Pike.

  Harley was doughy without being fat, and he’d dipped into the same well of privilege as his sister. Unfortunately, he’d never discovered her source for cunning, and as a result, he was known more for blunders than wonders. B
ut what he lacked in brains, he made up for with determination and bullets. Poppa Pike wasn’t as hard on Harley as he’d been on Bonnie growing up, but that didn’t mean the old man wasn’t a prick who had made his first son’s life a miserable log of shit. Harley hated the blood he was bound to honor, but not enough to ditch the power and money bundled with it. He wasn’t qualified to park cars for a living, much less run a criminal organization, but he did a good job of faking competency by setting his face into a permanent scowl and treating everyone like they’d just fucked up.

  When the closeout kings finally drag-assed their way to Harley’s booth, Kenny was the first to sit down. He scooted in next to Boss and avoided eye contact with the two men he worked for like they’d bury him with malicious glares.

  Step took his seat next to Harley and returned perfunctory grunted greetings with the same level of disrespect and ill will he’d received.

  Harley cut into a charred T-bone steak. “You two’ve snipped at my goddamn nerves more than I should be expected to tolerate. You make a mess of the simplest fucking jobs. You look like shit, and one of you smells like you took a bath in a bad batch of sour mash.”

  Kenny fought the urge to sell Step out as the one carrying the smell.

  Step didn’t acknowledge Harley’s complaints with so much as a sideways glance. He turned his attention to a manila folder on the table between Boss and Kenny and asked, “Our new closeout?”

  Kenny snatched up the folder and opened it. “This looks like an old picture.”

  Boss slapped the back of his head. “It’s one of them photo tricks or filters or whatever the hell they call it. We got it straight off her Facebook page.”

  Step shifted his gaze from the back of the folder to Boss when he heard the word “her.”

  Grease leaked from the corner of Harley’s lips down to his chin, and he spoke while stuffing his face with the overcooked meat. “Boys, you ever worked landscaping?” He swallowed the hunk of T-bone and washed it down with a sip of coffee that was as sweet as it was caffeinated.

  “Never had no land to scape,” Kenny said. “I’ve rented every place I’ve owned. They do the mowing and such for you in those situations.”

  “Don’t be a fucking dumbass, Kenny,” Boss said. “You can’t rent a place you own. You either rent or you own.”

  “Whatever my situation, I ain’t landscaped a lick of grass.”

  Harley leveled a stare on Kenny, waiting to see if he had any more to add. When enough silence had passed, he continued his line of thought. “I had a landscaping job when I was a kid. The old man wanted me to know what hard work was all about, so he arranged my hiring with this fella who didn’t even have an office. He had a truck and a trailer full of equipment. That’s it. That’s all he needed. We worked like dogs in the heat: mowing, weeding, edging, sweating. Worked from dawn to dusk, six days a week.” He turned to the window and watched a row of trees on the other side of the road bend in the wind. “I hated that fucking job.”

  “Sounds like you had a right to,” Kenny said.

  “Didn’t hate all of it, I guess. I loved to trim the hedges. Fuck that got me going. There ain’t nothing like the sound of a pair of shears slicing through the overgrowth on a bush. When I left that job, I took them shears with me.”

  “Okay,” Kenny said, “now this is something I’ve always wondered. What’s the difference between a hedge and bush?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Kenny?” Boss asked. “Are you that fucking stupid?”

  “I’m just wondering why one’s called a hedge, and the other’s called a bush. Is one more dignified than the other?”

  “They’re the same fucking thing.”

  “They are?”

  Boss turned to Harley. “Do you see the shit I’m dealing with?”

  Harley calmed himself before picking up where he’d left off. “I’ve got plans for my shears.”

  “You getting back into landscaping?” Kenny asked.

  “Of sorts,” Harley said tearing into his steak.

  “What sorts are there?”

  Harley grinned placidly. “You’re a fuckup away from finding out firsthand, Kenny, because I’m a twitch away from taking those shears and cutting off your balls. Step’s, too.” His smile gave way to his signature scowl. “This sloppy-ass improvising bullshit is gonna stop. You hear me?”

  “Gun jammed,” Kenny said as he picked a spot on the table to fixate on.

  “I’m sorry,” Harley said, “I must look like I give a fuck ’cause otherwise you wouldn’t be coming up with some lame-ass excuse as to why you can’t expire a dumb-shit cracker for going upside down on his fucking debt to my family. Is that the look you see on my face, son?”

  Kenny shook his head. “No, sir. Mostly I see that you’re pissed off.” The chubby closeout king hesitated before adding, “And you appear to be a bit hungry, if you wanna know the truth.”

  Harley rolled his eyes in lieu of stabbing Kenny in the face with his fork. He motioned toward the folder. “This is a special case. It’s a favor for a stakeholder. You’ll be paid half your normal rate.”

  Bewildered, Kenny asked, “Half?”

  Step slid the folder across the table, opened it, and studied the picture. A woman stood next to an older model Chevy, holding a flyer. She’d clearly been crying. The name on the flyer caught his attention more than anything else: Kate Lynn Farrow. He knew that name, but he couldn’t remember how.

  Harley crammed steak into his mouth. “You do this without fucking things up, I’ll bring your pay back in line.”

  “It’s a woman,” Step said.

  Boss snickered. “Your powers of observation are astounding, boy.”

  “Kenny and me don’t close out women.”

  Everyone at the table stared at him. Kenny and Step had closed out a few women before. If pushed, Step wouldn’t be able to explain his statement or his objection to closing out Laura Farrow. As far as he knew, she was as deserving of a closeout as the dozens of others he’d done over the years. It’s not like he was closing out saints. His closeouts definitely earned their fates. Occasionally there was collateral damage, but Step’s philosophy was that anyone who kept company with a closeout wasn’t far from being a closeout themselves.

  Harley pointed at the picture of Laura with a grease-stained fork. “That ain’t a woman. Think of that there as a weakness in the foundation of our empire. If it ain’t removed, the whole goddamned thing could come tumbling down. You, me, everyone who’s drawn pay for the work we’ve done is royally fucked.”

  Step cleared his throat. “Kenny and me are still dealing with Billy.”

  “Billy’s no longer a concern,” Boss said, sipping his coffee.

  “There’s no way he’s coming up with a payment by Friday—”

  Boss cut Step off. “You need to stop worrying about who can and can’t meet their obligations. Billy cleared his books last night.”

  Kenny turned wide-eyed to Boss. “The man was poor-mouthing the shit out of me and Step. How in the hell did he come up with the pay so quick?”

  Boss calmly wiped his mouth with his paper napkin. “How?”

  “It’s just awful curious—”

  Boss threw an elbow into Kenny’s nose.

  Step rose up before Harley nudged him with his shoulder. “Run tell my sister we’re in need of extra napkins.” The skinny closeout king didn’t move as he fantasized cutting Boss’s heart out with the bone from Harley’s steak.

  Kenny dropped his hat on the floor and cupped his bleeding nose.

  As if sensing a total collapse of decorum, Bonnie rambled to the table with a handful of napkins. She shook her head in a scolding fashion.

  “It wasn’t nothing but a love tap,” Boss said, sounding almost nervous.

  “Tilt your head back,” Bonnie said before tenderly holding a stack of napkins to Kenny’s nose. “You boys know to play nice in my establishment.” She caught a glimpse of Step’s blue eyes and felt her cheeks fl
ush again.

  Kenny winced as her grip inadvertently tightened on his sore nose. “You’re squeezing a bit too greatly, Miss Bonnie.”

  She quickly drew her hand away. “Sorry, baby.”

  “Things is just about wrapped up here, Sis,” Harley said. “Just dealing with a little insubordination is all.”

  Bonnie eyed her brother. “I noticed you didn’t start your meeting off with a prayer.”

  Harley stiffened.

  “You know I don’t like that. All Pike business is to be blessed over by the Lord. You know that’s our way.”

  Kenny weighed in with his nasally opinion. “I don’t s’pect you’d want the Lord looking over this type of work, Miss Bonnie.”

  She scowled. “The type of work don’t matter to the Lord near as much as the workers. Angels have spilled more blood and taken more lives than all of Satan’s demons in hell. Good and bad are twins, and only the righteous can tell them apart.” She turned her grimace to her brother. “Bow your heads, all of you.”

  They all tilted their chins to their chests halfheartedly.

  “Our Father,” Bonnie said, “guide these men in your spirit and keep their hearts true to the task they’ve been assigned. We serve your will, and live your divine word. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

  All but Step echoed the amen.

  Satisfied her brother’s business had been sufficiently blessed by the Lord, she flashed Step a smile and then returned to her stool.

  Harley shook his head, annoyed by the interruption. “Let’s wrap this up, Perry. My stomach’s churning from this bad meat and these aggravating idiots.”

  Boss nodded and said, “You two morons get the message? I can go over it again, but you should know that it ain’t gonna work out too well for you if I have to.”

  Step stood. “Not necessary.” He helped his partner to his feet.

  Harley sucked on the bone from his steak. “I got business that’ll occupy my mind elsewhere for a time. While I’m gone, you two need to sort your shit out. Understood?”