Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet

by Adam Howe

  Even all beat to hell, she was a fine one to look at. Almost as purdy as the Jarvis gal. About the only disappointing thing were her titties. Just a handful, Dwayne reckoned. Nothing like as big and ripe as Pammy’s on Boobwatch. Dwayne was turning his head to tell the townie that very thing—when the blade of the knife slammed into his temple, and suddenly titties were the last things on his mind.

  12.

  Curled helplessly inside the trunk, Tilly could only watch as Hingle wrenched the fillet knife in the gas station attendant’s temple. There was a sickening crunch of bone. The man twitched and whimpered like a dreaming dog. His eyes rolled up in his skull. Blood hemorrhaged from his nose, spattering the DWAYNE stitched on the breast of his coveralls. Hingle ripped the knife free with a savage grunt. Blood jetted from the wound, catapulting the Baywatch cap off Dwayne’s head to reveal a thinning thatch of chimney-red hair. Before the man could crumple to the ground, Hingle deftly grabbed him by the neck, holding him upright and wiping the blood off the blade onto the shoulder of his coveralls.

  Hingle grinned at Tilly.

  “Room for one more in there?”

  And then he shoved the dead man down into the trunk.

  Tilly woofed for breath as Dwayne’s deadweight pinned her to the floor of the trunk like a wrestler going for the three-count.

  Hingle curled the man’s arms and legs inside the trunk and then he swung the trunk lid down. It bounced off Dwayne’s bony ass and rattled back up. Hingle lost all patience with Dwayne. Gripping the upraised lid for balance, he started stomping the carcass down inside the trunk like he was compacting garbage. The air was crushed from Tilly’s lungs beneath the bloody corpse.

  “Get in there, you scrawny sonofabitch!”

  When Hingle tried the trunk lid again, it clicked shut and locked firmly into place.

  13.

  The dead man embraced her in the dark of the trunk.

  Warm blood drizzled down from his face onto hers—blinding her—spattering the back of her throat when she tried to scream. But with the deadweight pressing down on her, Tilly could barely breathe, let alone scream, and she knew that only the madman driving her car would hear her cries. Struggling to move beneath Dwayne’s deceptive bulk, grunting and gasping with effort, Tilly wormed her arms out from under him. But her hands were still bound with her pantyhose. She could only clasp them around the back of Dwayne’s neck like they were slow dancing in the world’s tiniest ballroom. She tried to roll him off her but he was just … Too. Damn. Heavy. And there was no room in the trunk. Nowhere to roll him. They were crushed together like twins in a tin womb. She was surprised the two of them had even fit in the trunk. And if she’d replaced the spare tire like she’d been meaning to, they wouldn’t have.

  In a flash of anger and frustration, she jacked her knees up into the fleshy balloon of his gut—“Get off me!”—and in protest the dead man belched fetid gas in her face, and then his bowels blew a raspberry as they voided, and the trunk became choked with the stink of shit.

  Tilly made a strangled sound halfway between a sob and a retch.

  What was she doing here, how had she let this happen?

  Her mind was more than happy to show her where she’d gone wrong; like a sadistic movie projectionist, it replayed all the times she might have fought back or tried to escape. Driving Hingle through the woods, she could have leapt from the car and tried to hide in the forest. She should have done more to alert the troopers at the roadblock. Back in Big Bob’s office—another lifetime ago—she could have kicked Hingle in the balls and grabbed the knife. She shouldn’t have been working tonight, it was her night off! She should have left town when she had the chance, stayed in college and not run home to mom when the old bitch had lied about being on her deathbed. And truth be told, Tilly hadn’t taken much convincing, had she? That one lonely semester of college had been more than she could bear—she hadn’t belonged there, had made a dreadful mistake in ever believing she did. She’d been looking for an excuse to leave even before her mother’s claws had hooked her back home and never let her go again. And why? Because she was a coward at heart, a pushover and a doormat, and now look where it had got her— Look at you now! Mom crowed. And suddenly it wasn’t Dwayne weighing down on her, it was her mother; and this wasn’t a car trunk, it was Lizette Mulvehill’s casket; and Tilly screamed as she twisted and turned beneath her mother’s crushing weight, cursing and clawing and fighting back as she’d never dared while her mother was alive.

  14.

  Hingle lit another Marlboro off the butt of the one he was smoking, flicked the dog-end out the window, took a deep drag, sighed back in his seat, and then joined Merle Haggard on the radio for a rousing chorus of I’m a White Boy.

  Before leaving RITTER GAS & TOW he’d swiped a few cartons of Marlboro Reds and a sixer of Old Milwaukee for the road, plus what little cash money there was in the register. Nothing else worth stealing in that rat-haven, and the place stank worse than a latrine. So he’d flipped the sign in the window to CLOSED and taken off again. Now the filling station was a good half dozen miles behind him.

  According to his map, he was headed south on Broke Leg Road. All he had to do was keep following this potholed dirt track and it would lead him back to the highway. Lady Luck willing, he’d be home free the rest of the way to the state line. Then he’d find somewhere to hole up. Throw himself a Welcome Home party with little Tilly in the trunk. Somewhere nice and quiet where they could get to know each other better. Hingle smiled at the thought, drumming his hands on the wheel in time with Merle. After four years locked in a concrete box, things were looking up.

  He was still smiling when the Bug backfired a black cloud of smoke and started shuddering violently. The steering wheel convulsed in his hands. The engine sputtered and coughed an automotive death rattle. And then the car gave up the ghost and died, jerking to a stop in the middle of the road.

  Hingle pounded the wheel in anger. He hauled himself out of the Bug. Fanned the air as he waded through the smoke billowing from the back of the car. He raised the hood and scowled at the engine, cursing himself for not having the shit-kicker check it at the filling station before he shanked the sonofabitch. He glanced about the lonely forest road and sighed, not relishing the prospect of another long hike through the woods. At least it had stopped raining.

  Still cursing, he fetched the map from inside the car. Spread it out across the trunk lid and charted a course through the woods that would lead him to the highway. He folded the map and stuffed it in the back pocket of his pants.

  Then he took the knife from inside his jacket, and hauled up the lid of the trunk.

  The redneck was draped across the waitress like a spent lover. Her blood-spattered face peered over his shoulder. “Not disturbing nothing, am I?” Hingle chuckled. Then he caught a whiff of Dwayne’s shitty drawers and staggered back, gagging. “Phew! That you or him couldn’t hold it in?”

  Tilly had screamed herself hoarse. “Please …” she croaked.

  Hingle shushed her. “It breaks my heart, darling, it truly does. We’re gonna have to cut this short. What I had in mind for you—roses, champagne, Perry Como records; the whole nine yards—I was gonna treat you like a queen …”

  He shook his head with what Tilly thought was genuine regret. “But I’m sorry to say, me and you are gonna have to say our goodbyes right here and now.”

  Reaching down into the trunk, Hingle grabbed Dwayne by the back of his hair and dragged the man’s head from Tilly’s shoulder. She gasped for breath as the deadweight eased off her. Hingle lowered the knife to her throat. Tilly shut her eyes tight and shivered as the icy blade teased her larynx.

  Then something like thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Hingle raised his head sharply.

  A vehicle was approaching.

  When he saw what it was, Hingle almost laughed.

  Lady Luck always had been sweet on him.

  Before Tilly could cry for help, Hingle butted Dwa
yne’s skull down hard into her face, and as she slumped unconscious, he slammed the trunk lid shut.

  15.

  When Dwayne called the house to tell his brother they had company, Dwight was fooling around with the Jarvis gal, and he almost didn’t hear the phone ringing downstairs over all the racket she was making.

  They were in Momma’s old room. Momma’s portrait watched solemnly from the wall above the bed. The portrait formed the centerpiece of a shrine; pages torn from porno mags plastered every other spare inch of the wall. After Momma popped her clogs, it had taken the Ritter brothers many hours to redecorate, but they were pleased with the end result. Momma looked less pleased to be glaring out amid an orgy of naked breasts and swollen labia.

  The Jarvis gal was splayed across the four-poster. Buck-naked. Her wrists and ankles shackled with chains in a X-shape, like she was making snow angels on the soiled bed sheets.

  Dwight loomed at the foot of the bed, stripped to his grubby undershorts, the crotch tented with excitement. His coarse pelt of body hair was dewy with sweat.

  He was clutching the salesman’s disembodied arm like a withered brown baton. Foul with decay, the limb was attracting the interest of the flies that whorled above the bed. A jagged stump of bone jutted from the shoulder where the limb had been wrenched from the salesman’s body. Gripping the bone like an ivory handle, Dwight waved the arm above the bed as if conducting an orchestra, the flies buzzing in symphony. He scratched his nuts with the clawed hand, raked the fingers up and down his spine. Then he proceeded to jab the rotting fist between the Jarvis gal’s thighs like he was plunging a blocked drain.

  Her screams were music to his ears. Whenever the excitement was too much for her to bear and she passed out, Dwight gave her a good jolt from the car battery. Jumper cables trailed from the battery to the set of alligator clips that were clamped to her teats. Oh yeah, that’d wake her back up right quick; with a pop of sparks, and the sickly sweet stench of scorched flesh filling his nostrils.

  Hell, sometimes he gave her a jolt just to watch her thrash about and holler.

  When he finally heard the phone ringing, Dwight was tempted to ignore it, he was having such a hoot. La-la-la, I can’t hear you, Dwayne … But Dwight knew if he did, Dwayne would only be sore at him. At best he’d catch a whipping; at worst Dwayne would clamp the car battery to Dwight’s nut sack. And Dwight knew from bitter experience he preferred dishing out pain to receiving it.

  Reluctantly, he left the Jarvis gal and trudged downstairs to the kitchen to answer the phone. No “Hello, brother” or nothing, Dwayne just ordered him out to Broke Leg Road to fetch the meat.

  Dwight returned to Momma’s old room and started changing back into his coveralls, bitching to the Jarvis gal how Dwayne was always bossing him around.

  “It ain’t right,” he complained. “I’m older than that runt by five minutes.”

  Well, she wasn’t much of a shoulder to cry on, so Dwight just left the Jarvis gal with the salesman’s arm sheathed inside her, and went outside to his truck.

  Roscoe poked his head out from under the porch. The dog gave a whimper when he saw it was Dwight and ducked his head back into the shadows.

  Dwight climbed in his truck and gunned the engine, the winch jangling like a butcher-hook as the truck jounced away down the trail towards Broke Leg Road.

  16.

  Look at this fucking hick, Hingle thought, as the ape clambered out of the tow truck. A squat troll of a man. Balding up top, with a mane of mullet hair. Reminded Hingle of the redneck comedian, Gallagher. Maybe the mullet was some kind of tribute? He could imagine this goon laughing his ass off as Gallagher smashed watermelons with his sledgehammer. The tow truck driver was wearing the same coveralls as his brother, but even filthier, if that was possible. And they had to be brothers—twins, maybe—the inbred likeness was unmistakable. DWIGHT was stitched on his breast. Hingle wondered if there was a third brother, and what his folks might’ve called him; there couldn’t be many names left beginning with ‘Dw—’.

  “Car trouble?” Dwight said.

  Clearly the brains of the outfit, Hingle thought, with a glance at the clapped-out Bug. Dwayne got the matinee idol looks—comparatively, at least—while Dwight was gifted with the ability to state the fucking obvious.

  “Sure looks like it,” Hingle said.

  When he killed this hick with the same knife he’d used on his brother, Hingle figured he’d be doing the world a rare favor. Cleaning some pollution from the gene pool. But first he’d let him fix the Bug. And if he couldn’t, then he’d just take his truck. Sure as hell beat hiking through the woods again.

  “Well,” Dwight said, “then you’re lucky I happened along.”

  All but dragging his knuckles along the ground, Dwight joined Hingle beside the upraised hood at the back of the Bug. He frowned at the engine in that way grease monkeys do before they fleece you. “Uh-huh,” he said, finally.

  “Sounds expensive,” Hingle said.

  “Mister,” Dwight said, “your first mistake’s not buying American.”

  He scowled at the Volkswagen and shook his head disapprovingly.

  “Your second mistake’s right here.”

  He pointed a filthy finger towards the back of the engine.

  “Come take a look at this …”

  Humoring the guy, Hingle stooped forward for a closer look—

  17.

  —and Dwight clipped him upside the head with the tire-iron, and he slumped to the road like a sack of cement.

  The townie lay twitching on his back. Blood pooled on the asphalt and haloed his head where the back of his skull had split. His eyes were in orbit, his legs drumming the ground like he was dancing a jig. Dwight waited patiently for the townie to lie still, as he knew from experience would happen right about … now.

  He crouched down beside the fella to check his pulse.

  Still beating strong.

  A good clean capture.

  Satisfied the townie would keep, Dwight hoisted the fella onto his shoulder and carried him effortlessly around the Bug. He draped him across the front seats. Blood rained from his scalp wound into the footwell. Dwight closed the door on him, slammed the hood down over the engine, and hooked his winch to the back of the Bug. Then he clapped the muck off his hands, started up the truck, and towed the car back to the house, singing tunelessly to himself.

  He pulled up in the yard and unhooked the Bug from the truck. Hauled the townie from the car by his ankles and started dragging him. The fella’s outstretched arms dug ruts in the dirt as Dwight dragged him to the bulkhead doors alongside the house. Dwight raised the bulkhead doors and lugged the townie down to the root cellar. A naked light bulb dangled from the ceiling. Dwight yanked the cord and dirty light shone down on the rough earthen floor.

  Hanging down from the wooden rafters were two rusted lengths of chain with handcuffs at the ends of them. Dwight clapped the cuffs around the townie’s wrists, and then hauled on a pulley and hoisted the chains till the fella hung suspended from the ceiling like a decrepit Christ, with only the tips of his big toes brushing the ground. The townie’s shoulder blades groaned like old wood as his arms were forced to take his weight, and he gave a pained moan in his sleep.

  Dwight fetched a sling blade down from the pegboard wall—some folks called it a Kaiser blade, Dwight always called it a sling blade. With a few practiced slashes, he stripped the townie of his duds and left him wearing just his shorts. He tossed the townie’s clothes into the corner of the cellar.

  The fillet knife fell from inside the jean jacket. Dwight didn’t think much of it. A man had every right to protect himself. There were a lot of sick people out there in the world. He fetched up the fillet knife and added his new toy to the tools on the pegboard.

  When the townie came to, the first thing he’d see was the pegboard. And as a new guest, he’d get to choose the first tool that went to work on him. Dwight always got a kick out of that; watching the meat agonize over w
hich of the tools was likely to cause them the least amount of pain. They’d always be surprised. In the right hands, even the most innocent-looking tool could find your sweet spot and make you sing. Take a spoon, for instance. A spoon could crush a testicle, or scoop an eyeball right out of its socket.

  Dwight made a mental note: Spoon.

  Leaving the townie hanging from the rafters, Dwight shuffled back and canted his head like an artist admiring his work. He reckoned he’d earned a beer for his efforts. In the corner of the cellar was a refrigerator chest. Dwight hauled up the lid and reached down past the dismembered census taker. The fella’s dying scream was literally frozen on his face. Dumb bastard knocked on the wrong door with his questions. “And how many people are currently residing in this abode?” he’d asked. “Living or dead?” Dwight had replied, before he whapped him over the head with a meat mallet. Dwight shoved the census taker’s torso aside and fished a can of Keystone from the bottom of the refrigerator chest. He took a long pull and smacked his lips and nodded. “Yep.” What more could you say?

  Glugging his beer, Dwight trudged upstairs to the kitchen. He called Dwayne at the filling station to let him know the meat was ready and waiting to be tenderized—oh, and to fetch home more beer, they were almost out.

  When Dwayne didn’t answer the phone, Dwight was tempted to get started on the new fella without him. But he knew he’d catch hell if he dared. An hour later and Dwayne still wasn’t answering the phone and Dwight was out of beer by now and getting antsy. “Goddamn it, Dwayne …” What was keeping that runt?

  Stomping outside the house, Dwight leapt in his truck and gunned the engine. Hitting the gas, he was so angry with Dwayne that he reversed the truck into the Bug, cursing at the crunch of metal and glass. The Bug jolted forward, its nose crumpling against the oak tree next to the house. Deciding he’d check for damage to his truck when he returned—and vent his frustrations on the townie if he found any—Dwight threw the truck into gear and then floored it away down the trail, starting out to the filling station to see what was keeping his brother.