by Frank Bill
Huffing, she said to Van Dorn, “Think they’s of harm?”
“My thinkin’ is they could do harm. I’d rather we pull distance from them, so we don’t gotta make the choice of who lives and who dies. Just keep a jaunt to the east here. There’s a steep drop that we can go down at an angle, walk its bottom for a mile or two, and it’ll open up to flat land next to where they’s an old log trail. Can follow it to Polk’s place.”
Dorn knew the terrain. Horace and he had hunted the land with the Widow in April for morel mushroom. The honeycomb fungus of fudge and vanilla shades, picked and placed into empty bread bags. Taken home. Sliced and soaked overnight in salt water to remove bugs and earth. Rinsed the next morning. Sopped in buttermilk. Then a flour, cornmeal, and pepper concoction before being placed into a skillet of sizzling bacon grease and butter until crisp.
Sweat beaked from the face of each along with the burn of their lungs elbowing for the intake of air that combined with the rush of energy. Of the not knowing if they’d live or die.
The air lit up with the distant crack of gunfire. A hail of bullets biting trees. The rear of August’s skull parted. The front of his face meteored forward into patches of skin, muscle, and bone tossed through the air. And his shape warmed the soil with dead weight.
Van Dorn took cover behind a tree, bent his knees, shouldered his rifle, turned to scope the area. Saw to the unmoving outline that was August splayed over the ground. Felt moisture cloud his vision. “Dry it up,” he muttered to himself. “Ain’t no time for getting wet eyed. They’s someone upon you, upon us.”
The hound sat before August, whimpering. Tried to lap its grip-tape tongue at August’s unmoving body. Sensing his loss of shape and temperature. Van Dorn went, took the dog’s hide into his fist, tugged him to cover. The Sheldon girl kept hidden behind several lumps of rock painted by moss some feet away to Van Dorn’s right. Each looked to the trees and wild wintergreens of plant. Studied each for movement. Eyes batted wide like the wingspan of a buzzard. With her long streaks of hair combed tight into a ponytail, she no longer looked stripped of self but streaked with a means of continuance.
“I don’t see no movement,” she told Dorn as she lay with her rifle pointed.
Dorn watched the blood drool from the ream of flank around August’s cutout shape. Wet crimson patterned outside of his neck and shoulders, tipped the ground. “The decline to the holler ain’t far. About two hundred yards or better.”
Crunch of feet came through the woods. Van Dorn caught two young boys scattering toward them. He sighted one. Hesitated. Nothing more than a young kid. Ten, maybe twelve. Disheveled. Madness streaked their faces. A blast crowned the air. The slapping pelt of lead expanded one of the boy’s chests. He dropped his AK. Patted and screamed at the heat distressing his body as he followed the AK’s descent to the earth. Dorn glanced from his crosshairs to the Sheldon girl. She’d shot the boy. “That answer your question on my taking another’s life?”
A tight-lipped grin stamped over Van Dorn’s demeanor.
Each lay waiting with their chests heaving. Bodies glazed by perspiration. Van Dorn shook his head. “They’re only kids. What we need is tuh get us some distance ’fore this gets uglier.”
The Sheldon girl told Dorn, “It’s done got ugly. Now it’s kill or be kilt.”
As they moved from their shelter of tree and rock toward the downward shuffle of the hollow, gunshots sounded. Held the crack of being close. The linger of smoke on the air and above the trees fragranced the woods. The crunch of more feet came, scattered with the climate. Dorn, Sheldon, and the mongrel ran until they stood before the downfall that led to the hollow’s bottom, where cinder formations lodged into the hillside, as though they were once meteors that’d fired down from the heavens and uprooted lengths of tree growth, creating bridges of walk and cover.
Dorn pointed. “There, we get to the bottom, they’s plenty of rock and broken tree for camouflage and shelter. We can maneuver at a slower pace if need be.”
Descending, the Sheldon girl, Van Dorn, and mongrel hound leapt and trounced in a hurry until Dorn lost his footing. Slipped with his weight proning face-first into the dirt covered by dead growth. Hands spread and reached for ground. Dorn tumbled like a weed carried in a flat desert wind, taking in the curves and jags of flint, tree, and briar. A large formation leveled out from the decline and it was here that Dorn stopped, bloodied and bruised. The mangy hound trekked toward Dorn’s outline, the Sheldon girl sliding in beside him.
Over him she stood, short of breath, muscles full-on ache and burn. Van Dorn lay on his back. One leg crooked and tucked up behind his ass, he rolled it out, straightened it. His face a mess of scrapes and jags. He’d a shoulder wound, a formation wetting down his right appendage. The hound licked at it. A stick had pierced and broken into muscle. Dorn shook his head and spoke. “Ain’t them some soured persimmons.”
“I ain’t gonna leave you as you did my mother and me.”
“You ain’t gotta. I can still navigate. I got two arms and the stiffness ain’t set in yet.”
“What of the stick that’s broken off in your skin?”
“When we get settled I’ll pull it free and smother its wet.”
Behind them came the halt of feet. The fall of rock pieces. Dorn looked, the same as Sheldon. Above them stood a mess of young boys, their faces covered by hide masks, and in their center was a figure devoid of welcoming. He’d a face of ink, and as he raised his rifle the boys who held ground with him did the same, giving in to the hyena-like whoop of battle cries.
* * *
There was an acre of stained farming posts with a six-inch circumference cut and lodged into the earth like some crazed alien spectacle; beginning at a height of twelve to sixteen inches, the farming posts were arranged to create a rolling-dice pattern for the number five or that of a plum flower. These patterns ran twenty-five posts to an area, then the posts’ height grew taller, some at two feet, but keeping the same pattern and numbering twenty-five. Other posts were cut to three feet, stair-stepping higher, building on up toward six feet. All were spread out, two feet from one post to the next.
Those that measured six feet had wooden spikes driven snug through bored-out holes from their sides. On the earthen floor, below the spikes were red ants, broken shards of glass, and sharp jags of flint. To fall was to implement injury. To test one’s mentality for failure.
Angus was taught first to walk them. Began on the lower rungs. Then came the kneeling, bending, twisting, and holding of postures. Throwing kicks and punches from them. Working on balance and foot placement. Trying not to fall. Sometimes standing on one leg. Jumping to a post. Squatting straight down, keeping his torso erect. His spine aligned, no forward slanting or arching. Other times he’d kneel low on one leg, the other was extended, held out to build tendon and ligament strength. He worked from these various movements, increasing his balance. Then came the bending forward, sideways, and backward. Sometimes reaching for an empty clay wine jug. Picking it up. Holding it. Curling the bottle toward him, the back of his hand facing away.
Angus trained in this manner, worked up to the taller posts. Then came the picking up and holding of saucers and plates on his palms, flat, as if serving food in a restaurant. He held these out from his body, balancing them, curving his torso, mimicking the posture of a drunken individual, a mime, staggering from post to post, mannerisms, Fu called them, but never dropping the plates or the cups.
“One must be well rounded. Know his surroundings. Be cautious of his footing, of where and when to step. Learning to open the six harmonies.”
Angus looked to Fu with confused amusement. “Six harmonies, kinda shit you spittin’ now?”
“Your body has three internal and three external harmonies. You shall learn them for combat. And when you’ve mastered them, you will be unbeatable, but now that you’ve mastered the poles with your eyes open, we move on.”
“To what, my fuckin’ burial?”
�
�Angus, you may be clean of toxins, but your mouth is as filthy as your fighting.”
Leaves crunched like withered bones beneath a maul with the memory of training. Of knowing when and where to step. Of sweat stinging into cuts and scrapes of flesh, burning tissue, sun beating down on a man’s hide for another day of learning.
With Angus’s pistol butt rimming the hem of the Aryan’s pants, he was led by the men with lantern light. Shadow suffused with dark, making each man’s jaunt appear hunched. The air about them was earthen, rotted wood and sooty smoke pollinating everyone’s intake of breath.
Choosing his steps carefully, Angus stayed near weightless. Walked in the center with his hands bound behind him. Hershal had a single bolt-action rifle with a clip strapped over his back; he tugged on the chain attached to the collar around Angus’s neck. Angus clasped his eyes with each tug, breathed deep through his nostrils, into his belly, taking in the woods and its musky scents that mingled with the odor in front of him, spreading its human nature within his body, creating a watermark to his memory; he’d know each of these men by their odor if he were ever to lose his sight. Withers walked beside Hershal, carrying an axe in one hand and a machete in the other.
Having pressed the buttons of each ash-assed shitheel, Angus hadn’t broken their strides. Hadn’t caused them to lose their focus, offer him an open invitation to rid the world of their trespass and free himself. Ignorant and foolish is what he’d been. Should’ve left well enough alone. That he knew now. He needed to be free of these men for the sake of Fu, who would be or could only be measured by the withered pattern of skin and bone he’d leave behind if not treated with medicine. Some form of antibiotics, Angus thought as they walked about the hoofed-out path of dirt, an old horse trail. After all that Fu had done for Angus. This was how Angus repaid the man. What a sorry son of a bitch he’d attained to.
Through the dark, along the trail’s flanks, trees lay uprooted. Left to rot. The call of a bird rang out every so often with feet throwing the echo of smashing steps over the tough soil. Alcorn broke the rhythm of feet marching over the land and spoke to Angus. “Do you have people, ’loper?”
Angus found humor in the man’s words. “That’s a helluva question to announce at a man you’ve enslaved and marked as the devil.” Angus paused, let the man chew on his words before finishing with “My people are beneath the ground.”
Behind Angus, Withers said to him, “You’re lucky we’ve not skinned you and placed you upon a spit.”
Angus laughed. “For a Christian man, you talk awfully vehement.”
“Fuck you, ’loper.”
“You’d find pleasure in that, wouldn’t you, heathen?”
Hershal jerked the chain, reared Angus’s head back. “Watch that serpent tongue.”
And Alcorn told Withers, “Careful with him, we need food and territory. From that we yield respect. Know it’s how these woods are now run. The weak perish. The strong are given privilege, why we need his skills, case you’ve forgotten.”
Angus shook his head. “Sounds like a helluva congregation you’re gathering with.”
“You’ll see, ’loper, you’ll see.”
They dredged from the horse path. Made their way over the land of fallen limbs, where the leaf floor crunched beneath their footing. Crossed over a shallow point of the Blue River. Took to a road that ran into farmland with the fluorescent burn of the full moon overhead until they came upon a small blur of light that grew in depiction, until everything was sketched and carved and shapes became separate from the dark. Angus made out the sanction of campers, some beat, rusted, and dented, lining each side of a back road but surrounding an old white chipped and flaking church that climbed high into the navy-blue sky. In front of the church burned a monstrous bonfire of rotted logs and limbs.
Men, women, and children stood within the area, those who’d not been discovered by Cotto, armed with tools for gardening and hunting. Hoes, shovels, shotguns, axes, rifles, and revolvers. Scruff faced, bruised, pale, and ragged were these run-down people who eyed Angus and the fallacy of males he traveled with as a slave. He felt as though he’d entered another dimension. Stepped back into a time of traveling carnivals with Gypsies, barbarians, and Vikings. The only value was skin, and these people’s entertainment depended upon the blood and fists of two men.
Alcorn stopped before the concrete steps that led up the double hardwood entrance doors of the church, where two armed men of long hair braided with faces nettled by whisker stood, clothed by dirty white cottas over their postures, golden crosses stitched into the center of their chests, eyeing him.
“Tell the Methodist Aryan Alcorn awaits with a ’loper for the meat cellar.”
“Refresh my recollection with what ye are?”
“Me and my men are uplanders, migrated from down around White Cloud some years back before the government milked our souls and tossed us to the coyotes to be picked raw.”
Winking one eye bold, the other thin, the one man told Alcorn, “You’d a familiar way about you, couldn’t recall it. Been here many nights but never have you walked away with territory. But your fighter, what is his namesake?”
Alcorn’s face stiffened. “Chainsaw Angus.”
Angus’s insides tightened, his nerve endings fired madly, and a chill bumped down the vertebrae of his spine. There were numbers that surrounded him, not just a few fingers of men, but many. He feared if any recognized his name, knew of what he’d done, murdered McGill, a man looked up to by many within southern Indiana, they might end his breath at this moment on these steps. Or it could bring friction, stir up a shit storm that’d free him. Fuck it, he thought, the meek ain’t gonna inherit the earth anytime soon.
* * *
One by one rifles were raised. Crosshairs filled with those shapes of dented aluminum. Triggers were tugged and shapes gave, holes expanded through the cans of Old Milwaukee and Budweiser that lined the rotted posts of corroded fence wire and fallen sycamore.
How many evenings had Van Dorn and the Sheldon girl spent taking in the homemade targets? Forging bets from a distance with each shot that grew and grew. Starting with dreams of what one would do with the other. Where they’d take the other to see things they’d never eyed. Going to a movie. Buying a book that’d yet to be read. And the flirting that adolescent boys find with young girls, saying you missed, you owe me a kiss.
And now they stood below this savage man and his doped-up miscreants. Young boys whose faces were hidden behind masks, their eyes lost and catatonic, each gripped and lugged an automatic rifle. Some donned Slipknot T-shirts, others wore button-down flannel or seared cotton. They were a mix of small-town suburbanites and rural kids whose fathers worked in a factory, a mill, as a mechanic, farming, or selling insurance or real estate.
Dorn lipped a low-level voice to Sheldon: “When I say run, follow me through the holler.”
“We cain’t outrun them and make it to ole man Polk’s place with you hurt.”
“They’s a cavern on down a ways hidden by some fallen sassafras, it’ll take us out the other side of the hill, in behind an old Methodist church.”
“That’s a ways down. He’ll follow.”
“That’s my hopes, that he follows. Follows us to the end.”
“We don’t got no means to see in a cavern.”
“They’s lanterns on each end.”
From above, Cotto spoke, “Van Dorn, you’ve attained to my cause, become my goal. You possess knowledge. Skill. Have killed my best men. You’ve become my addiction. My craving. Reminding me of myself at an adolescent age. Time has come for me to take you and this Sheldon girl. Enlist you to help lead my slaughtering of the rural.”
“Run!” Van Dorn shouted. And young boys flinched, raised their rifles, and tore through the surrounding vegetation and woody perennial with gunfire.
* * *
It was how Angus woke every morning.
From a seated posture with lids pinched shut, Fu instructing Angus to relax. Inhale s
low through his nose. To let his mind focus on one area, the lower gate. Expanding the space below his navel and above his dick. Build the internal glow as he exhaled, gradual. Releasing the air. Repeating this reverse breathing, over and over. Deliberate and controlled. No squeezing. No forcing. Relax. Imagine a small ball of light budding and swelling with each breath.
From day to day, Angus sat. Focusing and building his breath. Training his mind to guide his breath through his body. Up his spine and to his brain. Through his chest. Out to his arms. His hands. Down his legs, to his feet. Unblocking any stagnation within his meridians or gateways. Creating a positive flow. Feeling the tingle that built within during the seated meditations that sometimes lasted hours. Gradually he was constructing his internal energy or, as Fu called it, his Chi.
He sweated. Tendon and ligaments burned and shook through yoga postures. Held until Fu decided Angus’s foundation had been erected and the real training was to begin.
It was what Angus recalled and focused on as the paint-flaked doors of the church unbarred. Footsteps ricocheted into the foyer, where a long braid of knuckled rope hung down. Up above, it attached to a monstrous iron bell. Once used to signal the beginnings of church services. Now for something barbarous and untamed.
Beyond the foyer, candles burned from walls and lanterns within the open space of the church, offering a grainy glow where the floor’d been sawed and chinked out. A twenty-by-twenty squared pit, shoveled and constructed some ten feet deep.
Around the squared sinkhole, wooden pews sat like bleachers for the unruly to watch the brutality unfold. At the pit’s far end lay an upraised platform upon which a man sat robed in ragged black silk. Golden crosses decorated his chest. Tall, pallid-skinned; his eyes recessed into the rotted folds beneath each orb. He’d patches of purple and red about his cheeks and hands with a rice-crispy crust similar to hardened soap scum. Tangles of hair looked to have been clipped using a large cereal bowl, drawn on one side as if parted by an axe’s edge.
