Donnybrook

by Frank Bill

  2

  Still fuming from the previous night’s inferno of lost supplies and profits, Angus turned down a valley road devoid of houses for miles on either side. Cedar, oak, and birch trees lined and spread through fenced fields hot from the sun and wild with dandelions and daisies. Angus slowed to a stop when he saw a break in the fence line’s wire. A farmhouse with a barn behind it sat small, almost hidden, in the distance. His arm, branded by ink, hung out the rolled-down window of the idling Pinto. A Pall Mall added hints of gray to the clear blue above. His one clouded eye met Liz’s fierce stare. “What you think?”

  Liz had left her ’63 Oldsmobile F-85 station wagon at the Stage Stop Camp Grounds, hitched with Angus in his Pinto. Searching the curving country back roads. Passing rotted houses and beat-down trailers. Tires hanging from trees. Children hanging from mothers anchored by out-of-work fathers, who lounged in metal gliders with cans of Bud or Miller in their hands. Empties surrounding their feet like the children they disregarded.

  Malice had seeded Liz’s insides after what Angus had done. Bled through her pores. Formed armies down her buttermilk complexion. She answered him, “Think if you’d have not left Beatle and Flat alone to cook that last batch, we wouldn’t be looking for a third house to squat.”

  Angus let off the brake. Squeaked down the hill. Pulled the coffin nail to his lips, the smoke into his lungs. Braked at the mailbox. His scarred face was etched stone, letting a ghost-white exhale escape with his words. “Open that box out yonder. See if there’s any mail inside.”

  Liz turned to the once-silver box, now the shade of waste from years of weathering. Angus flipped his coffin nail onto the cracked pavement. Liz pulled the mailbox open. Looked into the empty space. Felt her dreads knot up at the roots. Her neck popped. The side of her face thrashed the Pinto’s dusted dash. She felt the heat of the day coming through the words in her ear, scented stronger than last night’s house fire. Angus’s eighty-grit grip released her dreads.

  “Just ’cause you had a wet spot between your thighs for them two brothers don’t do a thing for me. Reason we’s looking for a new house to squat in is ’cause I listened to you.” Angus grabbed her lower lip between forefinger and thumb. “Lose the lip ’fore I rip it off.”

  * * *

  Liz rubbed the pulpy knot that had formed on the side of her face. All she wanted out of life was enough meth, cigarettes, and Budweiser to make it through each day. A stiff cock to satisfy her desire for companionship. But Angus had managed to ruin that.

  Her anger kept her heated with thoughts of how or when she’d end his rituals of blame and abuse. Angus put the Pinto into park. Exited the car. Liz followed. Eyed Angus’s wide back. Kept her distance.

  Walking up the cement steps, he glanced up at the barn. Not confined enough for cooking crank, in his opinion—too open and spread out—but worth taking a gander at later. Looking at the white paint flaking from the wood siding of the house, Angus said, “Looks dead as Beatle and Flat, don’t it?”

  Liz swallowed hard. Remembered sticky nights passed with Beatle and Flat in the dark bedroom of an abandoned house. After batches were cooked and profited. Angus, gone for more supplies. Three bodies saturated with burnt chemicals. Liz crazed with endorphins. Now, the two had been left facedown. A single .45-caliber hollow-point to each skull. Men with identical last names. Connected by blood. She said, “Dead it is. Far from any eyes. No cars. No nothin’.”

  Angus reached for the slick metal handle of the screen door with one hand, his compact-carry .45 Para Ordnance in the other hand.

  Liz asked with spite, “The hell you got that out for?”

  “Just in case they’s a surprise waiting in the house with a lip like yours,” Angus said.

  The inside smelt of must. Paths of burgundy fluid from a human paved the linoleum and cedar floors of the house as though a person or persons had been murdered. Boards creaked beneath their footing. The burgundy thickened in the bathroom. Was blotted and smeared on the sink, the claw-footed tub, the toilet seat. Curled hairs grew from a green sludge that had once been water. Angus twisted the faucet. A brown goo plopped thick then thin. Became clear as glass. He muttered, “Must have a well or a cistern.”

  In the dining room, Liz fingered burgundy prints that spotted a skin-tone rotary phone dangling from a curled cord. She thought about Beatle and Flat. Held the quiver of damp in her eye.

  Angus pushed the .45 into his waistband. Ran a hand over the head of jet-black locks that intertwined down his spine in a braid. Eyed the water-stained ceiling and peeling walls. “Some kind of awful haunts this place.”

  Liz’s body quaked from her hate-fueled high. She told herself this’d be a good place for Angus to meet his end after he cooked more crank. Turned to him, blank-faced. “Looks okay to me. Time to pay Eldon a visit.”

  * * *

  A slanted figure stood in the barn. Metal traps in the small left hand. Rabbits stripped of fur, gutted, with their muscles stretched, were clutched in the big right hand. His one eye twitched from Bell’s palsy, a paralysis that had struck him like his father had that day, the day he saw his father doing what he’d done. His face had drooped for months, after. Then slowly tightened back.

  He heard the crunch of tires coming down the hole-worn drive. Peeked into the daylight, between planks of barn wood. Watched the green car pull to a stop. Door opened. A man with raven hair running down his back got out. Slammed the door shut. Then a female with hair hanging like matted red buds of dried marijuana. They walked up to the old house. The man pulled out a pistol, and they went inside.

  The figure shook his head. Started to pace across the barn’s hay-strewn floor. He’d lived alone, unbothered on the farm, for years. Now he’d trespassers. One with a gun. He grunted a whine. He hated guns. Wondered why these people were here, if they’d stay. He stepped to a back corner, hung the traps from a rusted spike. Pushed the straw and dust away from the wooden slats next to the table. Reached down for the iron handle. Opened the floor. Followed the stringer of steps into the hidden opening beneath the earth.

  3

  Eldon McClanahan was an alcoholic pharmacist who gambled his money away on horse races, ball games, and high-stakes poker. Would wager a buck on almost anything. He’d be willing to dig up and sell his mother’s and father’s shriveled formaldehyded corpses if it’d get him enough dough to gamble with. The man had no shame.

  His wagering had won him overwhelming debt to a grain of characters running within the darker crevices of Harrison County. Word of his dilemma had reached the ears of Liz and Angus while they’d been slinging bourbon and beer at a late-night tavern. Discovered Eldon was desperate to turn coin to pay his debt and to keep on wagering. Scoped him out to use on a money project of their own devising.

  A few nights later, Angus made sure Eldon met Liz in the E & R tavern over a few drinks. Eldon took her back to his ranch-style home out in the woods of Harrison County, where she threw a powerful fuck on him. Had him sitting down to piss for a week. Made him dread waking up with morning wood since Liz’d rode him raw.

  After that night, Eldon would do most anything for Liz. Most especially he would happily skim tablets of Allegra-D from the pharmacy to front the ephedrine for her and Angus’s meth-manufacturing scheme.

  Now, having been profitable business partners for months, Liz and Angus stood on one side of the bar in Eldon’s kitchen. Angus pulled on a coffin nail. Blew smoke and told Eldon, “We done got another place. Just need more them pills you been getting us.”

  Eldon stood on the other side. Leaned back against a stainless steel sink. Holding a glass of Knob Creek and Coke. “You still owe me for the last batch.”

  Angus laughed. “Done told you they ain’t no last batch ’cause of the damn fire.”

  Eldon sipped his drink. Swallowed. Said, “Look, no money no pills. I got people I owe.”

  Eldon owed a certain bookie who had a collector he didn’t want to meet. Had heard the stories. The collector’d p
ay you a visit. Paralyze your body with several needles. Do things to you. You’d pay him back in lessons of unheard-of pain.

  Eldon took another drink. Liz smiled at him. His eyes fell to her faded Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt that held two firm breasts without a bra. Goddamn she knew how to fill a concert T-shirt. He knew how shapely those breasts were. Remembered how they’d bounced that night she rode him. Jutting up into the darkness of his bedroom when she raised. Slapping her sweaty flat stomach when her hard ass dropped onto his bony legs. Turned his white five-hundred-thread-count sheets a sweaty pink.

  “Hey, two-inches-a-love, quit staring at her tits,” Angus interrupted. “Say we get you three grand, you done got pills for another batch or we gonna have to wait like last time?”

  Heat from the whiskey pushed Eldon’s complexion to match his thin, carrot-colored hair. He stared into Angus’s one blue eye, his other a gray pearl engulfed by a split-glass tint. Told him, “Look here, Terminator, you’re not dealing with an amateur or you’d still be cooking cough syrup. I got enough pills right here in my backroom den for plenty more batches.”

  Liz ran an index finger over Angus’s gray work pant leg. Stepped forward. Bent over the bar. Knowing a peek of her sugar-cookie-pale breasts would shackle the rest of Eldon’s attention to her. She said, “Can I use your john? Gotta take a mean piss.” She batted her thick, carved, mascaraed eyelashes in a way that seemed to say out loud, Maybe you wanna come watch?

  Eldon tilted his mixed drink, taking in the split of pale flesh in her shirt. Imagined the sound of Liz unzipping her pants. Her powdered-donut-colored flesh meeting his toilet seat. Her warm piss splashing into the toilet. He felt the heat leave his face, travel to and harden his crotch. He tasted the smooth bourbon mixed with Coke coat his throat. Lowered the sweaty glass. Jutted his orange brows up into wrinkles on his forehead. Smiled. “Sure, sweetness, you know where it is.”

  He set the glass in the sink. Stepped from behind the kitchen’s cherry-stained bar. His cologne-bathed body followed the side-to-side shift of Liz’s ass from the kitchen’s ivory tile to the hall’s chocolate-stained hardwood. Felt as though he might explode wondering if she had on panties. What color they were. If they had pink elephants or blue dolphins printed on the crotch. Those were his favorites. Knowing she shaved her nether region. Then the light inside his daydream went out.

  * * *

  The man held scars. One side of his complexion had been hazed by flame. His hair raked back into a ponytail that twisted down his spine. Dye-engraved names were about his flesh like newspaper headings. He was a fighter, or had been a fighter. He was a man who’d tried to salvage what he could from life. He was hard and merciless. Then his image faded. Purcell lay in his hammock of woven rope. He’d a cigarette dangling in his right hand. Trees above offering shade. “Ballad of the Crimson Kings,” a tune by Ray Wylie Hubbard, rustled in the warm breeze from a CD player on Purcell’s screened-in porch. Guitar strings and banjo were being picked. Images of Jarhead ran like adrenaline in his veins. Then came the face of another man who went by Knox, Miles Knox. He and the boy Jarhead could’ve been twins except for age. Purcell hadn’t realized until now how much they favored each other. He didn’t know the man on a personal note. But he’d crossed paths with him at social gatherings where booze and talk were being passed.

  Clasping his eyes, he saw a female, in her grasp was a pistol, she stared at it. In her other hand was a picture of a man she’d left, ran from—it was Knox, only younger, and he was a dead ringer for the young man that Purcell had visions of, Jarhead Earl. She lifted the pistol, tasted the metal barrel, and then the wall behind her was salted with brain and scalp. Every muscle in Purcell’s body tightened, then bucked. He knew the female was Jarhead’s mother.

  Sitting up from the hammock, his feet smashed the grass beneath him, he reached for a sweating glass, ice rattled the liquid that was the shade of molasses. He finished the drink. Wanted the thoughts, the visions to rest. But they did not. Jarhead was traveling. It was night. There was trouble around him, Purcell could feel it. Then came the strobes of colored light and the pictures in Purcell’s mind cleared. Where Jarhead was, Purcell didn’t know. But he was getting closer.

  * * *

  They stood out by Ned Newton’s ’78 Chevy truck with a crumbling orange bed, two-tone blue-and-white front. Ned didn’t want to bring the cop into his dented sheet-metal house with its damn slanted roof. Dripping AC unit hanging from a window coughing freon into what passed for the living room, where empty baggies with trace amounts of crystal lay scattered about the floor and coffee table.

  Sheriff Whalen stood behind dark aviator glasses, his lips as dry as his fake words. “I’s sorry having to tell you that, Ned. Know you used to run with them two. Was hoping maybe you knew who them two been running with.”

  Ned’s pasty tongue ran over calico teeth. Wiggled them back and forth. Swollen tissue above his eyes made them appear spooned out as he met his reflection in Whalen’s glassed vision.

  “Nah, them two was stray of enlightenment. Was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  Whalen cleared his throat, knowing Ned was a lying, backstabbing piece of shit. Had yet to earn his time in a Coldcrete cell. But it was bound to happen sooner or later. “No one deserves to go out like that. Skin burnt to a crisp. With a bullet in they head.”

  Saturday-evening humidity pushed Ned’s thinning, spider-legged hair from his buttery crown. He asked, “You talk to anyone else?”

  “Poe over at Leavenworth Tavern, where they’s know’d to drink. He ain’t saying shit. Nor is any of the regulars. Why, you seen or spoke with them as of late?”

  Ned’s joints felt as though they were being chiseled. He shook his head, needing something he was out of, a bump of crank to subside this ache from within. He’d be paying Poe a visit, he thought. Told Whalen, “Been six month or better.”

  Whalen nodded. Knew he was being lied to. Changed the subject before he lost his temper. “Still fighting? Or you just training fighters these days?”

  Ned’s face lit up with a five-tooth grin. “Can’t lie, Ross. I still fight from time to time to support myself.”

  Support your habit, Whalen thought.

  Ned had been a backwoods brawler since he could place one foot in front of the other. Story was, the first time his daddy opened the backs of his thighs with a piece of leather for talking back, Ned doubled up on him. Took the belt away, punched his dad till he spit the shade of roses. Broke his jawbone. Mashed his eyes and lips. Was still hitting his father when he was pulled off him by his uncle. Who convinced his brother to take Ned twice a week to a boxing gym some thirty minutes down the river in Portland, Kentucky.

  Whalen waved a hand before turning to leave, said, “You always was a mean son of a bitch. Even with this badge, I’m glad we never crossed.” He thought, I’d like to cuff you. Take you out in a field of tall grass. Put one between your bug eyes. Leave you for the buzzards and opossum to chew.

  Whalen opened the cruiser’s squeaking door, said, “You hear anything, you know where I’m at.”

  * * *

  Wet dripped from the parted cartilage of his nose. Blotted and crusted onto flared lips. Ran down his butt-crack chin. Fertilized his crop of curled chest hair. A few teeth stuck to and stained his pink Izod shirt. Eldon’s tough talk had disappeared when the swelled slits of his eyes blinked back open.

  His hands were twisted behind him with lamp cord, attached to the legs of the wooden chair in which he sat. A blurred outline swayed her hips in front of him. He focused. A pair of hands were pushing goose-feather-soft mounds of female flesh before him. Hank Williams blared “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” from the radio on the kitchen counter behind her.

  Angus sat next to the radio, wiping the blood from his knuckles onto a white dish towel. He’d beat Eldon pretty fair, he thought. Laid the towel down beside the three large bottles of Allegra-D. Shook his head. Said, “Two-inches-a-love, didn’t your daddy never tell you not t
o think with your pecker? Even with all that schooling, you’re still a dumb shit.” Angus pointed down at the three bottles, said, “Had to be sure you had these.”

  Eldon’s eyes darted from Angus to Liz, who was running a hand down the front of her pants. Tonguing her lips. Giggling psychotic-like.

  Eldon looked back at Angus. Slobbered, “You can’t do this!”

  Angus gave a Charles Manson stare. Threw both hands into the air, palms facing up, said, “Who’s gonna stop me? You?” His laughter bounced into the high white plastered ceiling. Liz began to unzip her painted-on jeans. Revealing no panties, just cadaver-white flesh.

  Eldon closed his eyes. Tried to fight the rush of blood. Getting hard. Shook his aching head and realized he’d no pants on. Was bare ass and balls to the wooden chair. He opened his eyes. Looked around Liz to Angus, yelled, “Untie me, dammit! We’re partners!”

  Angus quipped, “Two-inches, you should’ve been more partner-like when you had the chance, given the pills over. All you got going for you now is right in front of you.”

  Red drooled from the corners of Eldon’s mouth. Liz’s jeans slid down tight thighs pocked with slug-sized bruises. She stepped out of them. Approached Eldon. Straddled him. Pulled her worn black T-shirt over her head. Wrapped it across Eldon’s face. Pressed her firm mounds up against the shirt covering Eldon’s head. Behind Liz, Angus’s voice said, “I’m gonna get. Let you get your two inches of fun on.”

  Liz smarted. “More man than you’ll live to be.”

  Angus eyed her from behind. Clenched his fist. Swallowed his words. Not here. Not yet.

  Eldon felt Liz’s hand reach down into his lap. Her ass raised, she guided him into her wet. He wanted to rupture but fought it. He heard Angus’s voice. “Here, take this ’fore I forget.” Liz took the tool for killing.

  Boots trailed away. A door opened. Closed.

  Liz started to bounce with a violent rhythm. Looked at the indentations of eyes and wavering lips hidden beneath her shirt. Eldon moaned. Liz imagined the scarred face with a raven mane beneath her shirt. She couldn’t forget Flat. Beatle. Or the humiliation.