Like Lions

by Brian Panowich

  Coot displayed his empty hands—palms out—and then crossed his arms and leaned back on the Tracker. “I’d say I got plenty of business here, Scabby Mike. I mean, you are Scabby Mike, right? If you ain’t, I swear you need to be. You’re one ugly motherfucker.”

  Mike took the insult in stride. “You’re way out of your depth here, Viner. I’ll advise you again that you have no business here, and it would be in your best interest to tell your buddies to turn them trucks around and head South. That includes Salt and Pepper there.”

  Coot looked at Donnie and then Tate, and then started to laugh. “You know what? I never thought about it like that before. You’re funny—for a motherfucker with leprosy. I think I might like you.”

  “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “First of all—”

  Mark waved a hand to cut him off. He had yet to brandish his weapon, and was holding a red plastic cup of iced tea. “First of all,” he repeated, mocking Coot’s words, “I know you want everyone here to take you seriously with all your badass tattoos an’ all, but let’s be honest. It’s hard to talk to a man who just drove up a mountain in a Geo Tracker.” He looked around at the men on the porch. “I mean, am I right, y’all?” Some of Mike’s men chuckled. “What would you call the color of that thing anyway, fuchsia or raspberry?” More laughing filled the porch.

  “You must be Tuley.”

  “At your service.”

  Dopey chimed in. “I ought’a kill you right now, Tuley,” Donnie said, and turned his hat around backwards. It made him look even dumber.

  “You sure about that, Donnie?”

  Donnie looked surprised at the mention of his given name.

  “Yeah, I know who you are, too, and since we’ve both apparently done our homework, I’d suggest you choose your next words carefully.”

  “I can take you, man.”

  “Take me where, to the prom? Burger King, maybe?” Mark drank some tea. “Clearly you aren’t going to take good advice, so how about instead of you doing all this flirtin’, I put a couple holes in you and call it a night? Then, while you’re bleeding gravy all over the dirt there, your dip-shit cousins can drive your fat ass back down to Boneville in that pink bitch-mobile.”

  “You can—fuck you—Tuley,” Donnie said, stumbling over his words.

  “Huh? I can what?” Mark looked at Mike. “Is he retarded?”

  “All right, that’s enough.” Mike raised a hand to the sky. He was running out of patience. “Mark, if they ain’t climbin’ back into that weird Jeep-thing of theirs within the next thirty seconds, I want you to take out the squirrelly black one. I got Blondie.”

  “I figured as much, you blind sum’ bitch.” Mark sat his iced tea on the porch rail, and pulled out his gun for the first time. He racked the slide on a solid black .380 and chambered a bullet he’d made himself. He was fairly confident that bullet was capable of seeking out and killing anything—even a shadow. He aimed the gun at Tate Viner, who didn’t move or seem to care.

  Coot raised his hands. “Okay, fellas. Okay. No problem. We’ll pack it up and head on out. Hell, there ain’t a one of us that wants to be here no how, but can I ask you for just one thing before we go?”

  “Thirty seconds,” Mike said.

  “We came here unarmed.” Coot’s voice had lost its bravado.

  “I can’t speak on stupid, son. Twenty-five seconds.”

  “You killed my boy. My only son.”

  “Can’t speak on that, either. Twenty seconds.”

  “Do you deny it?”

  “Your boy killed himself. Just like you’re about to do. Fifteen seconds.”

  “My son was tied up and drowned to death, and then left on my mother’s doorstep for her to find. That’s some cold shit, and when I come here, unarmed, to speak to the men responsible, this is how I’m treated?”

  “Ten seconds.”

  Mark couldn’t help himself. “Okay, Coot. I’ll bite. What is it you want?”

  “One for one.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Just give me the man who had his foot on my boy’s neck, and it can all end right now.”

  “Scooter, it’s already over.” Mark shifted his aim and fired. Donnie’s backwards trucker hat flew off his head as if an invisible string had yanked it off him. The big man cussed and grabbed at his head with both hands.

  “The next one goes right through Pepper’s brain.”

  Donnie started to say something but Coot reached out and put his hand on his shoulder. He said something in his ear that no one on the compound’s porch could hear. Donnie glared at Mark, but turned, picked up his hat and walked to the other side of the Tracker. Tate stayed silent, but eventually walked over to join him. Coot moved forward and put a hand on the fence. He curled his fingers through the chain links.

  “I was gonna give you a pass, Mike, out of respect for the crown. You, too, Tuley, on account of who your granddeddy is.”

  Neither Mike nor Mark said anything.

  “It’s important that you all know I didn’t come here to flex on you. That’s not what I wanted. I only came here to collect on a debt, one for one, a free shot at your friend the sheriff and you refused. So that changes my terms.”

  “There ain’t no terms here, Coot.” Mike pulled back the bolt on his rifle.

  Mark got an uneasy feeling in his gut. “Open the gate, Mike.” He spoke in a whisper.

  “Shut up, man. I got this.”

  Coot let go of the fence and opened the door to the Tracker. “It ain’t gonna be one for one no more.” He climbed into the driver’s seat, and shut the door. “I’m taking three of you now.”

  “I’m serious,” Mark said a little softer—but more urgent. He laid his gun on the railing.

  The Tracker’s little four-banger cranked up, and Coot rolled the window down. “Remember what I’m telling you, Mike. I just wanted the one—the lawman. Everything that happens next is on you and that twat, Tuley, there. And speakin’ of twats—I gotta admit, the old fairy we went to see first was about as tough as they come.”

  Nails McKenna pushed his way to the front of the porch from where he’d been silently listening and stood between Mike and Mark.

  “But in the end, he broke. They always do.”

  “Mike, where is T-Ride?”

  “I said shut up, Mark.”

  Coot tossed something about the size of a basketball out the window and into the dirt—a pink-and-red basketball. “Yeah, he held out for almost six hours, but he—or she—or whatever—finally gave up who was there when my son was killed at that pond of yours.” Everyone stared at the pink fuzzy ball on the ground with mass confusion. It was Nails who first realized what it was. “NO!” he screamed. His deep voice thundered across the yard adding to the onset of confusion. He pulled his .45 and unloaded on the Tracker as he bounded across the yard. The shots were wild and not a single one connected. Coot cranked up the Tracker pulled away. Both pick-ups followed. Mark hopped the railing, knocking his gun and iced tea into the bushes, and sprinted behind Nails toward the fence. “Open the gate,” he yelled. “Open the goddamn gate.” Panic broke out across the front porch of the compound as everyone tried to piece together what Mark had already suspected. Mike turned to the man with the scar circling his ear. “Do it, Tank.”

  Tank ran into the house to flip the switch that controlled the fence. Everyone else just watched as Nails screamed and he and Mark made for the gate. It wasn’t until the last truck pulled off that anyone saw the rope tied to the live oak just left of where the truck had been purposely parked. The rope was also tied around an unconscious young man with a stringy goatee and a red flannel shirt.

  “T-Ride!” Mark yelled in vain in order to wake the boy up.

  Mike lowered his gun and squinted into the darkness. “Jesus.”

  A few more men started to follow Mark into the yard as they put it together. All of Coot’s banter—his insults and swagger—it was all a cover. The pile of rope o
n the ground by T-Ride was being pulled away faster and faster down the dirt road.

  Mark hit the fence at the same time Tank hit the switch inside. The gate began to move and Mark pressed himself into the opening until he could squeeze himself through. Nails pulled at the gate behind him in an attempt to move it faster. Mark pushed himself through the opening, slid down into the dirt, and reached for his knife.

  The knife he’d left on the table inside the house.

  He fumbled with shaking hands to undo the knot. T-Ride’s eyes opened slowly. “Mr. Tuley? What’s going on?”

  Mark worked frantically at the knot. “Just hold on, boy.”

  T-Ride’s eyes widened as he felt the pressure around his waist. He had just enough time to say Mark’s name one more time before the rope pulled tight and lifted him off the ground. It flipped him sideways and spun him in mid-air. Mark was thrown back hard into the dirt as the rope bit deep into T-Ride’s belly, holding him there suspended and unnatural. Mark turned his head before the boy’s body gave way, and was ripped into pieces.

  Mark sat there in the dirt—peppered with T-Ride’s blood—as men grouped around the boy’s remains. Some of them cussed and made empty threats. One man threw up next to the top half of the body, but all Mark could hear was a strange moaning sound behind him. He turned and looked at the source of the noise. It was Nails. He was crying. The hulk of a man was sitting in the dirt behind Mark just a few feet away. He was rocking back and forth with his huge, shiny bald head hung low over his lap. He was cradling the balled-up bathrobe Coot had used to wrap up the pieces of Freddy Tuten—the only real friend Nelson Nails McKenna had left in this world—until now.

  17

  EDMUND’S KUNTRY KITCHEN

  FANNIN COUNTY, GEORGIA

  How in holy fuck do people eat like this?

  Vanessa used a wet-nap to slide the Edmund’s Kuntry Kitchen menu, sticky with dried jelly, to the other side of her booth. When she traveled with Chon, they always kept a relative distance between them as a precaution. Most of the time a few miles of separation worked out in her favor. She would normally find a decent place to eat, or read, and have a glass of wine, unbothered. Of course, this was Georgia, and aside from Atlanta or Athens, every establishment in the peach state was just another variation of Waffle House or Denny’s. Edmund’s was no different. It was a rectangular box of bright-orange booths with bright fluorescent lighting and a waitress who was born wearing an apron. This trip was just a long stretch of boredom and disappointment. How people preferred the mountains to the beach was a head-scratcher of the highest order. The lone waitress working this particular twenty-four-hour roadside eyesore had a name tag that read Jeremie—spelled with an “ie” instead of a “y.” Vanessa supposed that witty variation was intended to clear up any gender confusion. Jeremie was also the type of woman who might benefit from the distinction—not a curve on her.

  Vanessa sat at one of only two booths being occupied at this hour of the night. The other one was filled to capacity with three rednecks. Two were the size of an adult walrus and the third one was a thin, studious-looking kid with gold-rimmed glasses he had to have picked up from a Family Dollar store. The group of obvious locals had a round of sweet tea, and a basket of cornbread on their table, but as of the last ten minutes, all Vanessa had been able to squeeze out of this Jeremie woman was a glass of ice water that tasted like it had been drawn from a pond out back. Fuck it, she thought. She would never eat any of this deep-fried garbage anyway so she took a paperback copy of East of Eden out of her clutch and hoped she’d just continue to be ignored. Of course, three pages into the book, Jeremie finally decided to mosey over and ask if Vanessa was ready to order. She gently folded the corner of the page, closed her novel, and asked the extremely unremarkable blonde waitress if there was anything on the menu that wasn’t fried. Jeremie was stumped. She had to pick it up and look at it to find out.

  “Listen, Jeremie, I’m just waiting on some people and I’m not very hungry, so if I could just get a cup of coffee and a slice of the freshest pie you have available, I suppose that will do.”

  Jeremie looked uncomfortable as she switched her gum from one side of her mouth to the other. “Ma’am, I’m real sorry, but the booths are normally reserved for two or more customers.”

  Vanessa looked around at the twelve other empty booths. “It’s almost two in the morning.”

  “A little after, I think.” Jeremie was oblivious to the point.

  “Are you expecting a mad two-thirty rush?”

  “It’s just the rule, ma’am.”

  “Okay. I can understand that, or at least I could, if there was any other business in here, but considering the crowd, Jeremie, do you think we can let that particular rule slide?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I kinda already did when you sat down, but you’ll need to at least order a full meal, or Karl is gonna get all in my crack about it.”

  “Get all in your crack?” Vanessa lowered her glasses, and slid a lock of her shoulder-length blonde wig back behind her ear.

  “You know,” Jeremie said, all surprised. “Like in, chew me out, or give me a hard time. You never heard that?”

  “Not until just now.”

  “Look, I just work nights. It sucks. I really don’t wanna rile Karl up, and never see a daytime shift, you know? I got kids, and an overnight sitter costs an arm and a leg.”

  Vanessa looked at the photo of two homey blonde children Jeremie had taped to her order pad. She took her Ray-Bans off and laid them on the table. “All right, then, I’ll tell you what. Bring me the three most expensive ‘combo meals’ you have on the menu, and put them in to-go boxes. Will that be enough to justify my seating selection?”

  “You mean, if you get all that, can you keep sitting there?”

  Vanessa sighed. “Yes, dear. That’s what I mean.”

  “Well, I reckon it would.”

  “Great.” Vanessa picked up her book and flipped to the dog-eared page.

  “You wanna know what all comes in those combos?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “All right.” Jeremie scribbled in her notepad.

  Vanessa looked for her place on the page.

  “And you said all of those combos are to-go?”

  Vanessa was getting tired of talking. “Yes, that’s right.”

  Jeremie smacked her gum, and scribbled some more.

  “And did you still want the coffee and the pie?”

  Vanessa set the book down, spine up, and took a deep breath. “Yes, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am, it’s no trouble at all. Would you like me to bring the pie out first?”

  “As opposed to the food I’ll be taking with me?”

  “Um, yes, ma’am—that.”

  “Yes, Jeremie, I’d like to have the pie first. Now, are we all good here? I’ve read the same sentence in this book three times now.”

  Vanessa must have pushed a button. “Ma’am, there’s no reason to get all snippy. I’m just trying to make sure you receive the best service possible.”

  Vanessa pursed her lips and nodded at the empty seat across from her. “Of course, Jeremie. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all up in your crack.”

  The waitress smiled. “Aw, that was a joke, right? You’re funny, ma’am—and you sure are pretty, too.”

  “Thank you.” Vanessa picked up her book for the fourth time and Jeremie disappeared through the orange-and-white double doors that led to where the Edmund’s magic happened.

  *

  She saw the idiot coming, before his huge ass even left the seat. The local boy in his early twenties stood, hiked up his jeans, and crossed the restaurant to Vanessa’s booth. She let the bangs of the blonde wig drop into her face as she dropped her chin. The walrus put his hands on the table and introduced himself. “I’m Teddy.”

  She looked up. Teddy’s T-shirt was a mustard color, but might not have started off that way when he bought it. It was just tight enough
to give a perfect outline of his impressive man-boobs. She could see right through the mesh sides of his trucker-style ball cap that had the letters F.B.I printed across the front. Vanessa nearly laughed directly in his face. “So can I help you, Teddy?”

  “I sure hope so. Me and my boys over there got us a bet going and we was wonderin’ if you could help us out with it.”

  Vanessa closed her book, and slid it across the table. She wouldn’t be opening it again. “How can I help, Teddy?”

  “Well, we were just sittin’ over there checking you out and all, and we were trying to guess where you’re from, since it can’t be from anywhere around here.”

  “Well, you’re right about that, Teddy.”

  “So do you mind us askin’?”

  “And what does the winner of this little wager get for guessing correctly?”

  Teddy leaned in a little and grinned. His teeth were surprisingly straight and white. “Well, little lady, the winner gets the privilege of picking up your tab.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

  She looked past Teddy and over at the table where the other two boys were sitting. One looked like he might be Teddy’s twin—Freddy, she imagined. He actually winked at her. The other one with the glasses smiled, and offered a shy wave. She didn’t wave back, but thought the kid had a nice smile and a kind face. Vanessa even thought that the kid might have a shot in life if he moved at least two hundred miles away from here in any direction. “So what was your guess, Teddy?”

  “Me? I said New York City, of course.”

  Vanessa put on an exaggerated expression of disbelief. “Well, hot damn, Teddy. You’re the grand-prize winner.”