PIKE

by Benjamin Whitmer

  He pats her naked knee with his free hand, exhaustion and nausea washing over him like a chemical bath. Prying her open, exposing her like an oyster. Seeing all the way down to her quivering core. “I get nothing out of hurting you.”

  Her eyes swim. Broad and open on his. “They already knew about Sarah. That you kept an eye out for her. That you and her knew each other.” Her face squirms in his hand and knows he’s squeezing too hard, but he doesn’t stop. He’s not entirely sure he can. “Please,” she says through compressed lips, her voice rising and crackling like a piece of old-growth timber bent to its breaking point. He lets go, she melts in a cascade of tears. He takes the cigarette from her, drops it on the carpet, wraps an arm around her neck. Pulls her face into his chest.

  Derrick had figured she’d know what’s coming next, but she fights like she doesn’t. Her fingers scramble for his eyes as jerks her hair back, and pounds his brass knuckles into her forehead. Her skull crumbles like chalk and her eyes glass over, then flush with blood. Derrick cocks his fist for the next blow and her hands slap at his fist. He hammers her temple with the side of the knuckles, like he’s driving a nail. Her eyes blank, and she’s dead. Derrick stands, breathing heavily, his fingers aching at the joints. One down.

  A knock on the door. Peephole. Speak of the devil. Derrick slides his knuckles back in his jeans pocket. He slips his tactical knife out of his pocket, flicks out the blade. “C’mon, motherfucker,” Bogie wheedles through the door, “I need to take a piss. That cocksucker in the office won’t let me use his bathroom. Says I’m dirty. The nextmotherfucker who says I’m dirty is getting an asswhipping. You ask anybody.”

  Derrick swings the door open, not wide enough to give him a view of the room. Bogie swaggers in and heads for the bathroom door, his shoulders and hips sashaying side to side. Then he sees Dana’s body, crumpled against the bed. He turns, his eyes wide, his mouth in an idiot O.

  It’s taken something out of Derrick, killing Dana. His hands are weak. It’s like he’s broken a small piece of himself in two, a very small piece he keeps buried way back under his sternum. But he focuses and flashes his blade across Bogie’s neck. It snags, tears, rips a gash across his throat that all but decapitates him. Derrick shoves the kid backwards and his corpse hits the bed, spurting blood.

  CHAPTER 70

  ~ Jack puts his hands on hips and stares up at the streetlight for a while.~

  Pike waits for Rory and Wendy to return, letting his mind wander. When it wanders a little further than he likes, he signals the waitress and orders a bourbon and a Coke.

  Then spends a long time staring at them.

  Then drinks the bourbon.

  Wendy comes in sometime after that. Alone. She stands in front of the table and waits for Pike to pull on his coat, flushed and working to slow her breathing. They don’t talk for a long time on the walk home. Then Pike can’t not talk anymore. “Rory’s one of the best friends I have,” he starts.

  Her eyes flicker over at him, showing nothing. “He’s the only friend you have.”

  “I’m not sure what to say here,” he says, standing. “I was hoping you’d help.”

  She grins up at him, her face lit and shadowed like a kerosene lantern. “You don’t need to say anything,” she says, and her laugh warbles shrilly.

  They walk home the rest of the way in silence. And she goes to bed. But Pike can’t sleep, and he can’t take being indoors with her. So he takes his cigarettes and stands out front of the building, leaning on the front door, staring out into the night.

  He’s not sure he’ll ever sleep again. Thinking of Wendy’s grandmother, thinking of Wendy, trying to come up with more objections than he’s able. Rory’s a good kid, as good as he’s ever known. Wendy will never know what Rory’s done for her, but Pike does. The Cincinnati trip’s eating into him, and maybe Wendy can take the edge off of some of it. She’s young, no doubt about it, but he’s known youngerto start seeing men, to get married even. Both in Mexico and here in Kentucky. No matter how young she is, she’d be treated better than any woman Pike’s ever been with.

  A man stumbles from streetlamp to streetlamp towards him, as though gutshot and staggering wildly for home. Pike flicks flame on a Pall Mall and grins as the man passes directly under a streetlamp. It’s Jack, lurching down the sidewalk, a half empty bottle of Old Crow swaying in his right hand for ballast. He sees Pike and somehow makes it over to stand in front of him.

  Pike nods. “Jack.”

  Jack’s eyes are pinched and his mustache is singed as though he’s fallen face first into a bonfire. “Pike.” He fumbles for his mustache and strokes it.

  “Having a night out?”

  He nods. “Having a drink.”

  Pike smokes his cigarette and lets Jack figure out what it is he wants to say.

  “There’s a woman I see sometimes. She lives back thataway.” Jack speaks slowly, as though he can only release each words after careful inspection. “I’ve been drinking for awhile, I started this morning at the office.”

  “Well. You ain’t hurting anybody.”

  “I don’t guess I am.”

  “You look like you could use some sleep.”

  Jack raises the bottle up at the streetlight and eyes the contents. “I’ve been sleeping at the office. Right now I don’t much want to be anywhere I’ve been for too long.”

  “Spent my whole life with that feeling.”

  “You know I ain’t even took down the pictures my father hung on the walls? Never even bothered to change them.”

  “They’re just pictures.”

  “They probably are. But there’s a meaning in it too.” He spins the lid off the bottle, drinks, spins it back on. “It’d be easier probably if Iris and I had kids. Could’ve hung their pictures up.”

  “Could just as well have turned out the same.”

  Jack coughs into his hand. “I don’t give a shit about this other girl.

  It was like the office, I wanted to be around somebody that I hadn’t been around too long.”

  “There’s worse reasons.”

  Jack puts his hands on hips and stares up at the streetlight for a while. “I miss her, Pike.”

  “Why don’t I drive you over to the hotel? Get you a room, let you sleep it off?”

  Jack nods. For a long time. “That’s probably a good idea,” he says.

  CHAPTER 71

  ~ The backs of their heads a wall to the world around them.~

  Derrick grinds gears, pounds the gas. The Monte Carlo burns down the highway like the engine block’s spitting fire, rolling and rattling like a Gatling gun. Derrick’s brain spits and burns in synch, working to fix on a way to find them. Cotton probably knows where Rory lives, but he sure as shit won’t let it slip to Derrick. He’s got a soft spot for the kid, and it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out what goes through Derrick’s head when he lays eyes on the little asshole. When it comes to violence, Derrick doesn’t think much of dilettantes. He’s got to know about every kind of violence there is, and there’s nothing he wants to do so much as disembowel anybody stupid enough to find meaning in it.

  The fights. That’s the answer. It’s Wednesday, the kid’ll be fighting tonight. The Monte Carlo screams into town, kicking slush. Time check. Too late. Derrick cranks the wheel, heads for the bar. Could still catch him.

  Then Derrick’s head jerks to the side and he hits the brakes. The car slaloms down the blacktop.

  He breathes out. He runs his hand down his chin, shifts into reverse, rolls the car backwards. There he is, sitting on the back steps. With a girl. Derrick cracks his window, lights a cigarette. He doesn’t bother moving the car so they can’t see him. They aren’t paying any attention. Their faces buried against each other, the backs of their heads a wall to the world around them. Their reflection spilling onto the blacktop in a monstrous mess of color.

  The kid’s a pedophile.

  When Derrick finally shifts the car into gear and heads down the street, he k
nows exactly what’s coming next.

  CHAPTER 72

  ~ Go ahead and pick up a cue stick or something, if you want.~

  Rory walks. All the way through town, out on 29. Whatever good feeling he caught off Wendy fades quick. He imagines Pike finding out, has to hold his own fist to keep from punching himself in the head. He’s disintegrating all over. “Shit,” he says under his breath, but the enormity of his stupidity makes the word sound vaporous.

  So. He starts to jog. Too drunk, too high. His boots suck snow, his knees crackle, the frigid air burns holes in his lungs. He lifts his legs and picks up his pace. New snow falling around him. A streetlight flickering ribbons of light into the dark. A car slugging through the dirty slush and gone in a gasoline chug and a wash of headlights, frittering down the road.

  Then he’s out of town, in the parking lot of the Green Frog Café. Then he’s inside. Leroy’s behind the bar, sipping a Coke, watching John Wayne on the television. “Cotton ain’t here.”

  “I’ll take a bourbon.”

  Leroy eyes him. “I know you?”

  “I’m picking up all kinds of bad habits tonight.”

  “I’ll be goddamned.” Leroy shakes his head and slides the bourbon to Rory. “And you was my inspiration to quit all mine someday.”

  The door swings open. Rory ignores it. He swirls his bourbon in his glass, lets it slide down the back of his throat like a snake.

  “Cotton ain’t here,” Leroy says at the door.

  “That’s good,” Derrick answers. “Cotton’s gonna have problems with me after tonight.”

  Rory laughs out loud. He sits his empty shotglass on the bar, points a finger for Leroy to refill it. Derrick takes the stool next to Rory’s.

  There’s a shot of bourbon and a Miller Lite in front of him before he even bothers asking. “I saw you tonight.” He lights a cigarette with a match, the flame glimmering a pool of yellow fire on the leathery bar.

  “I wasn’t worth a shit.”

  “Not fighting.” Derrick drains his shot, hits his cigarette, sets it in the ashtray. “I saw you outside the bar.”

  Rory glances at him. “And?”

  “The first time I met you, you said you fight all takers.”

  “In the ring. I don’t fight outside the ring.”

  “That’s right. Aspiring boxer of the Hemingway variety. Don’t want to fuck up all your natural talent brawling in a bar.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I been fighting for what’s mine since before you were born.”

  “Come out some Wednesday and see if it’s done you any good.”

  Derrick’s left hand sweeps his beer bottle across the bar, smashes it against Rory’s head. Rory spins sideways off the stool, blood falling over his eyes like a veil. He cocks his fists, blind, seeing only spots where he can see at all. One of Derrick’s fists shoots out of the blackness, clobbers him in the jaw. Rory blinks blood, jerks his head left to right, looking for a target. Another fist. Rips his face sideways, something tearing a gash down his jawline, snagging and cutting free.

  Rory stops. Stops breathing, stops moving. He drops his hands without bothering to clear the blood, lets his head clear. He pulls his slamming heart in like a kite, drawing the ragged beats together until they’re close and steady.

  Derrick’s standing in front of him, his hands out to his side and slightly raised. He’s grinning a cold snakish grin.

  Rory spits a glob of blood on the floor, grins back. “Want to try that again?”

  Derrick shuffles his cowboy boots on the hardwood floor and steps with a looping right lead. Rory slips it and blisters a left hook into Derrick’s ribs. Derrick drops to one knee.

  “Get up,” Rory says. He steps back, slapping his hands together. “I cracked a rib, it won’t kill you.”

  Derrick finds his feet and rises slowly, pinning Rory in place with his stare. Then he blinks with pain. Rory’s there. Right cross to thetemple, jaw clattering uppercut. Rory fades back and Derrick drops to all fours, bleeding from his mouth, choking and coughing on tooth fragments. He stumbles for his feet, makes it to a crouch. Then wobbles and falls back on all fours.

  This is fine, Rory thinks, blood pouring down his chin, slicking his sweatshirt and peppering the floor. This is why I fight. It feels good, it feels even, it feels like something I don’t ever have to be ashamed of doing. “Go ahead and pick up a cue stick or something, if you want.”

  Derrick’s face darkens and the whole room darkens with it, like the sky’s lowered over them. He reaches around his back and pulls his .45.

  Rory has a flash of Wendy’s face. Just a flash. He can’t tell if it’s because he’s been thinking of her, or because Derrick has a look in his eyes that looks just like hers.

  CHAPTER 73

  ~ I’ll wait here.~

  It was a late driving salesman who spotted his body bloodying a ditch on 29, just off the logging trail to his shack. The dispatcher was flustered and she ran the report over the air in detail, describing every inch of the body, every wound on him. Then when finished, she began again, as though unable to stop. Then again. This until Jack’s voice crackled across the airwaves, “Margaret, shut the fuck up.”

  Iris doesn’t ask any questions when she answers the door to find Wendy standing next to Pike, clutching Monster in her hands, her skinny body twitching with sobs. Just reaches out and pulls the girl gently into her arms, where she crumbles, her face crushed with grief. She’s all the sudden a little girl again, ruined and exhausted and in desperate need of someone to take care of her.

  “I need you to watch her.” Pike stands like a fence post hammered into frozen ground.

  “Why?” Iris strokes Wendy’s head.

  “You sure as hell don’t want her to ride with me.”

  Iris flinches. “Let’s get you somewhere where you can lay down,” she says gently to Wendy. Then to Pike, in a voice like metal grating on concrete, “You stay right there. Don’t you go anywhere.” She takes Wendy by the arm and leads her into the house.

  “I’ll wait here,” he lies.

  He only makes it one street down from her house when Jack’s siren sounds. His breath hisses between his tight lips and he eases the truck to the side of the road. He leans to his glove compartment and pulls out his .357 and sticks it under his leg.

  Jack walks cautiously to his window, his right hand drifting to his pistol, unconsciously aware of a danger his brain isn’t. He looksthinner. His cheekbones protrude under his heavy eyes and his chin is an axe edge. “You heard it on the scanner, didn’t you?” He stands a couple feet back from the truck. “I’m sorry, Pike. He was a hell of a good kid.”

  “He was.”

  Jack removes his cowboy hat and runs his fingers through his gray hair and replaces the hat on his head, his eyes everywhere but Pike’s. “You know I’ll do everything I can to nail the son of a bitch. I’ll put every man I can find on it and not one of us will sleep until he’s doing time.”

  “You know better.”

  An old Chevy slushes down the street past them. Jack looks after it like he wishes he was inside it. Anywhere but where he is. “You know the hell of it? I turned in my resignation yesterday morning. As of two weeks from now, I’m in real estate.”

  “It’s a good move.”

  “Think you could wait two weeks?”

  Pike looks at him.

  “I didn’t figure.” Jack sticks his hands in his pockets and turns his face up at the night. “They’ll probably kill you.”

  “Probably.”

  “Well. That’s your business.” Jack exhales a steady stream of frost at the sky. “I’m going home. To bed. If you’re still alive when I wake up, don’t let me see you in town again. Ever.”

  “Done.”

  Pike shifts the truck into gear, drives away.

  He used to have to summon up every demon he could muster. His ex, his daughter, every wife-beating junky he ever knew. He was a machine that ran on cocaine and self-ha
tred. But he doesn’t need to work himself up tonight. There are a million reasons to kill Derrick, but none of them matters. Pike’s heart is huge and meaty in his chest. He feels it harnessing his blood, mastering it the way you’d master a wild horse. He wheels his truck to a stop in the gravel lot of the Green Frog Café, checking the .357 in his shoulder holster. Then he steps out of the truck and pulls his 30-30 lever-action rifle from behind the seat.

  CHAPTER 74

  ~ It takes two.~

  Leroy’s behind the bar, washing a glass, the light under the bar registering a roughneck nobility to his broken nose and jagged jawline. Pike kicks the steel door straight back off its hinges and centers the 30-30’s front sight on Leroy’s forehead. “Don’t.”

  Leroy does, his hand bolting under the counter. Pike pulls the trigger, blasts his face into a red vapor, the air molecules in the room bursting with the deafening gun blast. Leroy’s body folds to the floor, all but headless. Pike levers a new round into the action. Twin retards, Jessie and Jesse, sitting at one of the tables, holding cards. Cotton looking up at him from the pool table at the end of the bar. No Derrick. The twins move fast, tipping up the table, doing their best to hunch behind it. Cotton moves faster, scuttling behind the bar.

  Jesse and Jessie first. Pike ducks sideways against the bar, fires a 30-30 round through their table, levers, fires again. The table’s thin, Pike hears the rounds smack flesh. A hand pops over the table, raps off three quick shots with a .25 pocket-pistol. None even close. Pike puts another 30-30 round through the table. Jesse falls sideways, Pike puts a bullet in his head.

  A thin high screech. Jessie jumps from behind the table, runs at Pike. His hands out-stretched like to strangle him. Pike shoots him the neck, levers, shoots him again center-mass. Doesn’t even slow him. Pike drops the empty 30-30, unholsters the .357, fires three rounds into his chest from three feet away. Jessie falls over him, his hands still senselessly groping.

  Then a boom. Then a burning in his left arm. Pike catapults over Jessie’s body, puts it between himself and the bar. Cotton pumps the 12-gauge, fires again through the bar, the pellets smacking into