CHAPTER SIX
All Lucy wanted her brother to tell her was how come the man kept jumping up and down on Daisy if all they were doing was sexing? At ten, three years older than Lucy, Charley knew everything when it came to sex. He knew all the ways you could do it. Like a man could stick his thing into a lady’s place. Lucy knew that her special place for making a baby was really her belly button. Nobody told her, she just knew.
That always bothered Lucy, how a thing like a penis—she always called the dick-boy a penis because that’s what her mother said you were supposed to do, but when she talked to Charley he said it was his dick-boy—how could it squeeze into such a little place like a belly button? Maybe the button unhooked and there was a pocket the dick-boy, the penis, could fit right in. That’s what she figured. But that still didn’t explain why the man was jumping on Daisy. Maybe the button was stuck. Or there were other things in the pocket.
Another thing: she didn’t like that the man got to be on top; that was scary. He was a lot bigger than Daisy and could squash her. Lucy liked Daisy and didn’t want her to get hurt.
And how come they had to take off all their clothes? She wasn’t ever going to do that, take off her clothes in front of a man. Okay, with Charley or her daddy, but not with a real man.
But most of all not with Larry. She hated Larry. One time when he was over playing with her brother, Charley had to go to the bathroom. While he was out of the room, Larry tried to make Lucy show him her place. She said no, and he said if she didn’t, he’d hurt her. She remembered him standing real close, practically on top of her. Looking up at his disgusting face with a glob of yellow goo in the corner of his eye and his chapped lips with the peeling skin, she’d told him, You just try. And he said, Maybe I will.
But he didn’t. He went off pretending like he didn’t care.
With all Larry’s meanness to Charley and Benny and Dennis, Lucy thought it was good what happened to Larry at the Smilers Cool Shoppe.
Lucy knew that the man was lying; she saw him put the toothpaste back on the counter when he picked up the candy. Still, she liked it when he got Larry in trouble. They all liked it, even though the Duncan twins pretended they were on Larry’s side.
That man, the one from Smilers, was the one sexing Daisy. They saw his butt. And when he got up to chase them they saw his dick-boy and it was gigantic and sticking out like a handle. They all ran like crazy.
When they were safely far enough away, Larry stopped them and told them that they were all going back down to the beach tomorrow to look for that guy again. He said he had a plan. He was going to bring a big fishing net and they were gonna capture him. Gonna show him that he can’t mess with us.
But when they get home, Charley tells Lucy that they aren’t going to go to the beach and that Larry is an asshole and full of you-know-what and that they’re just kids and we can’t capture a full-grown man. And he says we’re not going to try either.
“Just let him make me,” he says.
* * *
That’s right after they get home. Charley can hardly speak he’s so out of breath from running. So is Lucy, but Charley is scared, too, and Lucy isn’t so much. Charley doesn’t eat much dinner and their mother wants to know if he’s sick, but he says he isn’t, so she just feels his head and doesn’t take his temperature.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Three hours later, it’s almost bedtime and Lucy is already in her pajamas. All she has to do is brush her teeth, but if no one remembers to make her, she could go to bed without doing it.
The hall phone begins to ring. Lucy doesn’t want to stop what she’s doing. She’s working on a large piece of construction paper painting a horse she had drawn earlier. Her watercolors are lined up beside her and she’s just starting to mix the brown. Her easel with its open paint jars, a birthday present from Mom and Dad, is wedged between her and the door. Charley will have to answer it.
Lucy is very good at art. It’s her favorite subject and she knows she’s going to be an artist when she grows up. Everyone says so. Even at seven, her paintings and drawings are so good they hang all over the house. Some of them even have real frames. She’s especially good at holding pictures in her head, and tonight she’s painting the horse from memory. She had seen it the week before from the car when they were on their way to Montauk Point. It was behind a white picket fence in a meadow alongside the road. The weekend traffic was tied up for about fifteen minutes, giving her a good chance to study the horse. She could tell it was a mother because of the little baby horse that kept trying to lean against its legs. Just like Lucy did with her mother sometimes when she was embarrassed or shy.
But Lucy doesn’t like the way she drew the horse. Its hooves don’t sit right on the ground. She plans to hang it on the back of the door so no one will see it.
Her bedroom is right near the hall table and the upstairs phone. She can hear Charley and right away she knows he’s talking to Larry. It’s the way he keeps saying yes to everything. Not the word yes, but things like uh-huh, sure, right, great idea. She can just see Charley nodding his head up and down even when he isn’t speaking. Then he says, “Okay, yeah, tomorrow, I know. Around ten on the beach.”
Larry must have asked him something else because he says he doesn’t have any rope except Lucy’s jump rope. Larry must have said bring it because then Charley says, “Okay, I’ll bring it.”
Lucy runs to her closet and stands on tiptoes on her wooden paint box until she’s tall enough to reach up and grab one end of her jump rope. She slides it off the shelf and shoves it under her bed.
Then she goes back to painting her horse.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It’s a lifetime later—or at least six hours. Luke sits on the small spit of gray shale beach, long dry from the quick downpour, rocking back and forth, drunk and angry.
“Goddamn little shits!” he shouts, punctuating the words with fist slams on the sand of the empty beach. He does this three, four, five times.
Then his hand hits some small rocks.
“Ow!”
It hurts. He blows on his hand and shakes it in the air. The bruised side burns with pain. He tries to soothe it against the cool wet sides of the Stolichnaya bottle. When that doesn’t help, he settles for the internal succor of a long swallow of vodka. It seems to quiet him. He leans forward, resting his head on his knees.
The night is still. A warm and humid tent of thick air hangs over him. The only sound is the gentle splash of the bay as it spills lightly, hypnotically, onto the shore. The noise lulls his angst into the woolly softness of a heavy, drunken sleep.
Minutes pass. Without warning, an ear-splitting clap of thunder blasts the stillness. Luke jolts up, arms akimbo, chest leading into the air as if shot by a high-powered rifle. Almost simultaneously, fat pellets of rain begin to fall. They fall hard, making Luke jump unsteadily to his feet.
He is very drunk.
He looks around for shelter; not a hundred feet away the mouth of a large rain sewer looms. Unlike sanitary sewers that carry city waste, these sewers only carry runoff rainwater through openings at least ten or twelve feet high. The pipe looks more like a small cave, with ample diameter to give shelter.
Luke grabs the vodka bottle in one hand and the gallon jug of water in the other. Weaving crazily across the sand, falling to his knees, and pulling himself up again, he makes his way to the gaping opening. Just as he closes in on safety, another clap of thunder sends him sprawling to the ground as an enormous bolt of lightning flashes the night to day. The water jug flies from his hand, but he holds tight to the vodka.
Dazed and out of breath from the outburst of drunken energy, he crawls the last five feet, dragging his body into the sewer.
The few drops of rain stop as abruptly as they started. Yet, the general accumulation from the miles of pipe that feed into the main line and down to the sewer is enough to send a sma
ll rivulet of rainwater running through and into a waiting bed in the sand. From there, it flows on into the bay.
Inside the sewer, safe from the elements, all Luke wants is do is go back to sleep.
The breeze outside has cleared the sky; a triangle of moonlight falls into the opening, casting enough light for Luke to find a dry bed on the sandy floor. He takes off his jacket and rolls it into a pillow, but he’s so wobbly from the alcohol that it takes him four tries before he can get it positioned under his head. When he finally does, he lies down with thoughts of Daisy, the lovely Daisy, her full heavy breasts generously out of balance with her tiny waist and the silky feel of her skin. Her image sways before him as he passes out.
CHAPTER NINE
Luke sleeps in the rain sewer without moving as the peaceful night passes into the early morning. From time to time, a nearby train rumbles by, shaking the concrete walls of the sewer and sending a gentle tremor through the ground, but the sound is never sharp enough to disturb Luke or make him change position.
But it’s enough to shudder a cluster of wooden beams that are shoring up some temporary cement work above his head. Each time a train passes, the slight back-and-forth movement of the beams pulls them a little farther away from the cement ledge against which they have been wedged.
Around five a.m., a long freight train thunders by at great speed. One of the four-by-eights dislodges fully and swings out over the sleeping man, knocking a second beam out with it. As the far ends of the beams rip from the ceiling, they pull long slabs of concrete out after them.
An instant before the debris strikes, Luke hears the loud cracking sounds. His eyes shoot open just in time to see what looks like the entire ceiling hurtling down onto him with its lethal weight.
He screams when the wood and cement hit him, first from fright and then from agony. From the neck down he feels his body flatten under the terrible weight and he hears his own howl far off in the cavernous sewer, hears it drifting away into an elongated echo. When that sound ends, a new scream starts. The pain tears through his brain. The heavy beams push down, suffocating him, pinning him so that he can’t move.
He feels a thick heaviness dragging him down, his body sinking slowly into numbness. The open space below him grows deeper and hazier and then softer and blacker until the pain dulls to pins and needles and Luke collapses down inside himself.
Like a dead man, is his penultimate thought. Then …
Help me … Please, I don’t want to die.
CHAPTER TEN
Saturday, July 2
The first awareness Luke has is the feeling that he is crawling, dragging himself along a deep, dark tunnel. His feet are cemented in lead boots so heavy he has to use his arms to pull the weight of his body, but the walls are too slippery to grab and under him the seaweed is wet and slimy. He keeps sliding backward.
Ahead, deep shades of red begin to streak the sides of the tunnel. He can see pinpoints of colored lights in the distance. He has made no progress, but still the distance comes closer, and the lights brighten and spread in all directions until everything is washed by a glaring whiteness so harsh that his eyes snap open to escape it, thrusting him abruptly into daylight. For an instant there is no feeling at all.
And then the pain punches in.
It shoots to his brain, exploding in his body with each breath. First it comes from his legs, the worst of it concentrated along the back of his calves; when he tries to flex those muscles, there is a sharp pinching at the top of his thighs. When Luke tries to move his arm, a bolt of pain courses up his spine and buries itself like a spear in his shoulder. Inside his brain, pounding against the wall of his skull, is a hammer of white heat. And all over his body there is a weight, a million pounds pinning him against the earth.
But through the pain that tears at his body there is an even greater surge of relief. And it comes in a charge so strong it brings tears to Luke’s eyes. He is alive!
But he can’t move. With the exception of his left arm below the elbow and his head, his body is pinned under a terrible weight. His feet can turn somewhat from side to side and his right hand, up to the wrist, is free, but every other part of him is locked in.
Luke wiggles his toes. It’s painful, but there is movement. And movement in both his hands. He can raise his head high enough off the ground to see around, but his view is blocked by a beam, black with creosote, lying not six inches from his chin. The beam is angled across his chest, reaching down from his right shoulder to where he cannot see. From the feel of the weight, it runs all the way down his legs.
And that isn’t the only thing holding him. A slab of cement presses on his left arm just above the elbow. But he can still bend the lower part of his arm.
Rubble and beams must have fallen sometime during the night and are holding him down. But he isn’t paralyzed. Luke’s sure of that. All his extremities can move. He’s seen enough movies and television shows to know that if you have nerve damage, you can’t feel your toes and fingers, much less move them.
Maybe he’s lucky. Maybe he hasn’t even broken anything. After all, he’s young and in good shape. From the feel of the weight, it would be a miracle, but he’s lying on soft sand, and that might have helped absorb the blow. That same softness gives him a bit of leeway beneath the debris, but moving anything is still too painful. Additionally, Luke can’t tell if he’s bleeding. That’s the real danger: it could take hours for him to be rescued; by that time, he could bleed to death.
The pain begins to recede as Luke’s panic grows. The thought of bleeding to death is terrifying. He lifts his head, straining to see where he is, if there’s any blood. He can’t see any. He tries to ease his head over to the side to look beyond the beam but another pile of cement blocks that view as well.
On either side of him, at least six feet away, he can see the rounded walls of what looks like a gigantic tunnel. The rain sewer. He went in to hide from the storm. After Daisy, the picnic—and those lousy kids.
But what happened after? It’s totally wiped out. No memory at all. Luke thinks maybe the beams hit his head, but then he turns to the other side and sees the bottom of the empty vodka bottle.
Ah yes.
It’s all coming back. Yes, he definitely remembers Daisy. And at the same time, he remembers those goddamn kids! Just the thought of those little bastards brings a nice, healthy anger that helps quiet the panic he feels about possibly bleeding to death.
With the panic quieted, exhaustion takes over, and Luke falls back to sleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A sharp pain shoots through Luke’s chest, waking him up to reality. With the free part of his left arm, he tries to push away the cement that has pinned the top half of his body, but it’s a huge slab that must weigh fifty pounds. He can’t get any purchase. When he tries to push the beam that crosses his chest, he has no luck either.
He tries to burrow his other arm into the sand to work it out from under the beam but is stopped by a sharp piece of wood that threatens to cut into his arm.
At least he’s facing the right direction, toward the opening to the beach. It’s light enough now, probably sixish. He is maybe twenty feet from the entrance, but the opening is big enough so that a passerby could see him if they look in the right direction. At least they can see the pile of wood and cement and maybe his feet.
If they can’t see him, he realizes, they can certainly hear him. That’s when he starts to shout. The echo helps. For every one shout he gets two back. Sure, it’s early, but fishermen start at the crack of dawn, don’t they? He’d seen those two fishermen on the dock last night, so people did fish around here.
Luke remembers it’s Saturday. The beach will be crowded with bathers, not just fishermen. It’s warm enough for swimming. In a couple of hours the place will be jammed with people.
The situation is still bad. He’s thirsty and hungover. And there’s a crust
of sand over his lips. Fortunately, he can reach his face with his free left hand; just barely, but enough to wipe the grit away.
As long as he doesn’t try to move, the pain in his body is more of a dull ache, secondary now to the stillness of his confinement. At least he doesn’t feel the wetness of blood.
Unlike paralysis, in which the limbs are deadened, every inch of Luke’s body is alive. His bones and flesh are held fast, but his nerves twist and turn, veering and leaping in all directions, trying to move until the agony bursts from his brain and Luke screams. Sound is his only freedom and he puts every fiber of power into the cry. It is so loud and long that there is even time to detach himself and listen. He’s never heard that sound before. Not from anyone.
Except for the gentle splash of water lapping against the shore and distant seagulls, the answer is only silence.
Luke’s energy dissipates; he lies quietly, exhausted and defeated. But only momentarily. Then the life force sweeps back in. Someone will come, he tells himself. Someone will come soon.
He closes his eyes to wait in the safety of darkness, hoping for sleep.
* * *
Something touches Luke’s cheek, waking him abruptly from his dreams. Instinctively, he shakes it off and opens his eyes. Inches from the left side of his face is the large furry head of a sheepdog. Luke turns aside and the dog begins to lick his ear with its pink tongue.
“Cut it out! Stop it!” Luke shoves the dog away with his head. But the dog persists and Luke shakes his head back and forth quickly in an effort to get out of the way. The dog likes the game; he pulls back on his feet with little yelps of pleasure then dives in again, aiming for Luke’s ear.
Little Crew of Butchers Page 4
