Midnight Lullaby

by James D F Hannah

  Woody kept a blank expression. That's never good.

  I said, "You'll get your goddamn money."

  "Wonderful," she said. "Everyone can return to their dull little lives of quiet desperation." She shut the lid on the lighter. She held it in her hand, contemplating it. "Though there's still this matter of betrayal. It's vital that the stakes are understood by everyone." She flicked the lighter again. Nothing. Again. Still nothing. Again. This time the flame erupted from it.

  She looked at Teller. "We'll say you were a martyr for a greater cause," she said as she threw the lighter to her feet. The gas ignited, and she walked away.

  Flames rolled up and around Teller and crawled across his body. The night glowed an angry orange. He went from being a human being to a fireball in the time it took to blink, falling backward and trying to roll to put out the fire. Maybe he tried to scream, and couldn't. All I heard was the crackling sound of fire, consuming the gasoline, Teller’s clothes, Teller himself.

  I toppled over trying to stand. Two skinheads were on top of me as I tried to get up. I struggled. They caught me with easy blows to the gut, taking the fight out of me.

  The fetor of burning fuel and charred flesh smothered me, and I would have given anything for the stink of vomit instead. Woody was still on his knees, expressionless as he watched the flaming sight that had once been Teller.

  Teller burned for a while. It was long enough he stopped moving and the initial brightness from the gasoline faded, replaced by a steady flame.

  Monica Mayhew nodded to a soldier. He walked over to what remained of Teller, unzipped his pants, whipped out his dick, and pissed into the flames. The flames hissed, and acrid steam rose and filtered its way through the air, and I wanted to puke again. One by one, the rest of the skinheads walked over and pissed on Teller’s burning corpse.

  I tried to turn my head. Monica Mayhew told a skinhead to put me in a headlock.

  “There is a price for everything,” she said. “Watch this and understand it.”

  The skinhead held me where I was, and I stared as the fire that was Earl Teller burned until there was nothing but a glow, and what was left was roughly human in shape, charred black, nothing but charcoal and ashes.

  The skinheads kept me held down. I rolled my eyes up to look at the night sky. The moon was full and bright, half hidden behind clouds that blotted out the stars. I thought about Maggie, and nights we’d spent drinking and staring at the moon on the back deck of the shitty little house we’d rented in Morgantown. The place had a spite fence, and if the weather was warm, and we had enough to drink, we’d make love on the deck, knowing the neighbors couldn’t see us but we made enough noise, they damn well knew we were there. We didn’t care, though, because there wasn’t anything else in the world just then but us. I tried to will myself back to one of those moments, to force time to unwind and pull me away from this.

  It didn’t work. Monica Mayhew’s voice broke my thoughts. "Untie his hands," she said, crouching low. Her face was so close, it blotted out the moon. No emotion. Not anger, happy, sadness. Nothing.

  "No one leaves this life without wounds, Mr. Malone," she said. "We are only as interesting as our scars. How interesting do you find yourself to be, Mr. Malone?"

  She extended a hand and a skinhead next to her gave her a set of pruning clippers. To the skinhead holding my left arm, she said, "His hand."

  I stiffened my arm and tried to pull away. Sweat raced from every available pore. The skinhead shifted from a headlock to a half Nelson. The skinhead with my left arm pushed at the outside of the joint and made my arm bend.

  I wanted to fight more, but I couldn't. I had nothing left. So I just gave up. It was easier than I thought it would be.

  Monica Mayhew grabbed my hand and selected my ring finger, slipping it between the clipper blades. "So far, I've found you hopelessly boring," she said. “I hope you become much more interesting after this."

  She pressed on the handles. I heard the blades as they clicked and snapped together. They didn't go all the way through, and instead only took out bits of muscle and cartilage.

  I screamed, and jerked away again, but I had even less in me at this point. There aren’t words to describe that feeling. At first there wasn’t a feeling, the blade sharp, but then it hit me, and I screamed again.

  "The song was wrong," Monica Mayhew said. "The first cut wasn’t the deepest. Guess we'll have to go again."

  There was another clipping sound, and I screamed again, and began to cry.

  33

  I woke up to the smell of coffee and bacon frying, and to the sound of Earl Teller dying filling my ears.

  I snapped into consciousness and shot upright in bed and realized this wasn’t my bedroom. The room was blank and empty, nothing but a bed and a dresser. Everything sparse and functional. I must be at Woody's house.

  I wore a Cincinnati Reds T-shirt and jeans with the cuffs rolled up an inch thick. This was Woody's clothes, since the bastard was a half-foot taller than me, and thought Pete Rose's exclusion from Cooperstown was a crime akin to Watergate.

  I had a moment where everything felt like it was all a dream. That I'd gone on a bender and imagined the trailer and the skinheads, and Monica Mayhew, and Teller going out in a blinding flash of hydrocarbons—

  Then I saw my left hand, layered underneath bandages, and the empty spot where my ring finger should have been.

  I leaned over the side of the bed and vomited. It was clear and watery, tapping into emergency reserves since I'd emptied my stomach's contents so efficiently at the cookhouse.

  Woody had left a bucket for me. I kept it contained somehow. My one small victory in this entire clusterfuck.

  I shuffled into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Woody was at the stove, flipping bacon. He filled a coffee cup from the percolator and set it at the table, then set in front of me a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs big enough to feed a battalion. From the refrigerator he got cheese and salsa and placed them nearby.

  I looked at the food and, for a moment, couldn’t imagine eating any of it, or anything else, ever again. I'd stopped eating pork years ago after watching a documentary that showed pigs are smarter and dogs. I figured that since I couldn't eat a dog, it didn't seem fair to eat anything smarter than it. My stomach did an involuntary rumble anyway because, let's face it, bacon smells great.

  I dumped an ungodly amount of cheese and salsa on the eggs and ate with a slow, methodical pace. Woody took a chair and drank his coffee. I wiped out the eggs but left the bacon where it was, pushing the plate aside.

  He gestured toward the bacon. 'I respect the 'pigs are smart' thing, but you need the protein."

  "I’m thinking about laying off cooked flesh for a while."

  “Can’t say I blame you. The whole situation went tits-up rather fast.”

  "That's one way to put it." I sipped from a water glass next to my plate. "Where's Bobbi?"

  "She's in bed. She got a little hysterical when I brought you in covered in blood."

  "Just like a woman to go to pieces over the littlest things."

  Woody snatched a piece of my bacon and whistled. Four dogs barreled into the room, squealing to a stop in front of him. He said something that sounded German and they all sat down. He said something else, and they rose onto their hind legs, front paws reaching into the air. Another command had them back on all four. He took three more pieces of bacon and positioned a piece of bacon at the end of each of their snouts. No one moved, just there with eyes focused on bacon as it teeter-tottered on their snouts.

  He gave another command, and each dog popped their heads up, sending the bacon flying, and snatching it in mid-air before devouring it. They stared at Woody, four sets of big brown eyes, hoping for more. He gave them another order, and they headed out the door, back to doing whatever a pack of dogs does when not begging for food.

  Woody ate the last strip of bacon from my plate. My stomach flopped around and I pushed back my eggs.


  "They let you waltz out of there with me without a fight?" I said.

  "They did, but they reiterated the urgency to produce the three hundred grand for them in a timely manner, and then they said to get you to the hospital before you bled to death."

  "I can't help but notice this isn't a hospital."

  "Taking you to Parker General and explaining the night's events wasn’t the best idea ever." He gestured to my bandaged hand. "Besides, it was a clean cut, and easy stitches.”

  "Modern medicine can reattach fingers."

  "If there's a finger to reattach."

  "They kept my finger?"

  "They did."

  "Why the fuck did they keep my finger?"

  "I'm not sure, Henry. Why did the psycho skinheads do something inexplicable? Because everything else they’ve done so far follows patterns of common sense, human courtesy, and concern for the law."

  I sighed. "Fair point and thank you. You come out unscathed?"

  “I came home fully intact.”

  “Ain’t you the lucky fucker?”

  “Considered hitting the slot machines on the way home, I felt so lucky." He laid his hand on his crotch and winced. "Surprised she didn’t rupture me with that pointy-toed boot to the balls.”

  I leaned back in my chair. "I feel the elephant on the table now is the three hundred grand, isn't it?"

  "I asked Bobbi. She doesn't know what they're talking about."

  "You believe her?"

  "I do." His tone was that I should as well.

  Bobbi cleared her throat. She stood in the doorway, looking small and pale and scared. Woody rose and walked toward her. She drew a step backward, and he stopped and she looked at me and bit at her bottom lip. It seemed as if she was about to say something, but she froze with her mouth open, and turned and walked out. The porch door squeaked open and then slammed shut.

  I reached out to Woody as he headed in that direction. "Let me talk to her," I said.

  He nodded. "Sure."

  Woody's front porch stared over the empty fields of farm land. Sunlight glistened off of old snow. A breeze moved bits of white powder around in whirling wisps.

  Bobbi wasn't wearing a coat. She leaned against a porch rail and smoked a cigarette and shivered. I sat down in a wooden rocking chair.

  She said, "Fuck, but I hate my life."

  "I don't blame you."

  She did a slow turn and burn at me, her blue eyes feral and angry. “You’re an asshole.”

  "I get a lot of that. But hey, you don't want agreed with, don't make statements like that."

  She glanced down at my left hand. "Fuck."

  I flipped my hand back and forth. "I'm not thrilled about it, either. On the plus side, though, it'll be a lot easier to flip people off with one less finger to worry about."

  She took a last drag on her cigarette before tossing it into a sand bucket Woody kept on the porch, then lit a fresh Marlboro Light from a pack of cigarettes in her pocket.

  "I have dated the wrong men, fucked the even wronger men, and done nothing but make bad decisions, but until now, I'm the only one getting hurt. The girls, they've dodged the bullets, it felt like. Then this shit happens." She shook her head. “What the hell?"

  I stood and took a position against the railing next to her. She held her cigarettes out toward me. "You want one?"

  I took one, and the lighter she offered. On the inhale I thought I might die. It tasted like shit, but then again, anyone who said they smoked for the taste was a lying motherfucker. It was nicotine, and I wasn't concerned about much else.

  Her eyes drifted toward the door. "Woody, he's the first man to treat me like a lady, not just a chick to fuck."

  "He's a good man, that one. I'd snatch him up for myself if he was so inclined, and I was similarly inclined."

  "That's a lot of inclining."

  "I'm not sure either one of us have that much inclination in us." I took another drag and exhaled. "Why do you think the Brotherhood thinks you've got their money?"

  "I'll guess it's because Richie told them I have it. Except, if I had taken it, I wouldn't even fucking be here right now. I'd have grabbed my girls and gone, and wouldn't have given a shit. But when I vanished, maybe Richie figured this would be a chance to use me as an excuse to take some cash for himself did something with the money, and then point a finger at me."

  I lifted my hand in the air. "Wonder if he's got one extra he can spare."

  There was shock on her face in the first seconds, as the words hung there in the cold air. but the shock melted into laughter. Her face flushed red, and she covered her mouth to hide her laughing.

  She finished a good chuckle at my expense and wiped tears from her eyes. "Mind if I ask you a question, since it seems nothing's off limits with you?"

  "Ask away."

  "How did you get that limp?"

  I took a deep breath.

  “A few years back, I was working radar on a stretch of I-68 outside of Morgantown, headed towards Maryland. It was a Wednesday evening, a nothing kind of night, and I’d tagged folks and gotten grief from them, the usual shit about how I had nothing else to do but pull over good, law-abiding folks who happened to be going 20 over the speed limit.

  “Dark clouds rolled in from the west and the sky opened up this torrential downpour, and that will more than not slow folks down. I planned to close up shop as this car came out of nowhere, doing 90 easy. It was a Ford Mustang, late model, beautiful fucking car, and it as it zipped by me. A car going that fast, in those conditions, is a recipe for an accident. I radioed it in and flipped my lights on and jumped into pursuit.

  “The rain came down harder and harder, and he was zipping in and out of traffic, dodging cars and eighteen wheelers. Vehicles pulled over because the weather was getting worse, and I pushed it to cut that distance between us. The highway was slick, visibility was bad, it was a shitty situation, but all I saw was this guy causing a wreck, people getting hurt, people getting killed, so I stayed on his ass, because that’s what I’m supposed to do, keep people safe.

  “We must have raced liked this for five or six miles, which is nothing when you’re hitting 85, 90 miles an hour, when he pulled over. Used his fucking signal. Driving like a maniac and used a signal to pull over.

  “I put on my hat and got out of my cruiser and approached the vehicle. The rain, it was pounding on me. Sky was black. I had my hand on my gun because I didn’t know what I was walking into.

  “The driver’s door flew open and this guy, a skinny piece of shit, got out and swung a shotgun toward me and he fired. The blast caught me in my right knee, and I dropped like a rock, screaming. The reports I read after it happened said I drew my gun and opened fire. I emptied the magazine into him. Fifteen shots. I have no memory of that. Found out later the guy was a meth head who had killed his girlfriend earlier in the day after she refused to give him 30 bucks so he could get high. He stole the car from the neighbors and planned to trade it to his dealer for a hit.

  “The next thing I do remember was waking up in the hospital and being told how my right knee was destroyed, and I was getting a complete replacement, and there went my days of walking like a normal human being. Said I'd have a hell of a hobble for the rest of my days, and they were not shitting about that. I had a shit-ton of the surgeries—I lost count after a point—and I never put a state trooper uniform on again.

  “The state police gave me the options of taking a desk job or early retirement with disability. I knew I couldn't clock a desk job for the next twenty years, so I took retirement. And here I am, disabled with a state pension. I am living the dream, Bobbi. The motherfucking dream.”

  I exhaled.

  Bobby kept a watch on the fields. “Damn, son, but you're broken goods.”

  I opened my mouth to reply when Woody poked his head out the door.

  "Sheriff's on your cell phone, Henry, wanting to talk to you."

  34

  Simms told me to come to Walters’ house. He woul
dn’t say why, only to haul my ass there and don’t spare the horses. He asked if I needed directions. I told him I did not, and I cut off before he had a chance to ask me why.

  I washed myself off at the bathroom sink because I couldn't navigate the shower one-handed, and I tried to make myself presentable; it was an abysmal failure. My face was swollen and bruised, and my clothes were still filthy with blood and mud, and I wasn’t sure anyone had enough soap to get me to wear them again. Woody loaned me a flannel shirt, which hung on me like someone had washed me in hot water and dried me on high heat.

  We left Bobbi on the couch surrounded by several of Woody's larger guns and dogs both. She looked safer than I felt.

  Woody drove, on the theory that since I'd just woken up from shock-induced sleep following the hacking off of a digit, maybe I shouldn't be operating a motor vehicle. Yet another reason he was the brains of the operation.

  A thin column of smoke rose from the general direction of Walters' house. County and state police cars and fire trucks lined the subdivision street.

  The burned-out remains of a car sat in Walters' driveway. I recognized what was left of it as Earl Teller's excuse for a ride. A sheriff's deputy opened the trunk, looked inside, made a face, and ran into Walters' yard to vomit.

  A state trooper stepped in front of us as we headed toward the driveway. "Crime scene, guys. Need to back off."

  Thompson was talking to Simms near Teller’s car when he saw us and motioned for us. "Let 'em through." The trooper stepped to one side.

  Simms and Thompson stood at the front door. Both looked fatigued to the points of near-exhaustion. Their expressions said I hadn't been called out because they missed my company.

  Simms looked at my hand. "What happened to you?"

  "I cut myself shaving."