He gave up, sweating, breathing heavily, looking up at the beast’s head. He spun away from it to face the truck’s headlights, looked at his hands, saw they were covered in black soot. He wiped them on his jeans, annoyed and frightened. “Hijo de puta,” he cursed under his breath. He stepped back into the road then turned back once more, saw those heavy teeth straining for him, the haunted hollows beneath the melted eyelids seemed to search his soul. He licked his lips, turned and walked back to the truck, muttering more broken prayers.
As he neared the open driver-side door, he glanced instinctively to check the trailer, a rancher’s habit of making sure all was secure before pulling away.
A small hand, the hand of a child, was reaching through one of the ventilation slots along the trailer’s side. The hand waved around, fingers reaching, as if feeling for purchase. Gabino froze, eyes wide. He cursed loudly, almost a sob, then took three quick steps toward the hand.
“Who’s there!” he shouted, his voice dying on the moist air. The hand slipped away, back inside the dark, silent trailer. Gabino ran to where the hand had been, smacked his palm hard against the side.
“Get out now or I’ll kill you!” he screamed, his words sounding muffled in his own ears, as if he were yelling from inside a tomb.
Not waiting for his nerves to turn against him, he ran to the back of the trailer, saw Widowmaker’s hind-end above the half-gate, her tail swishing carelessly. Gabino dropped the gate, the metal smashing down onto pavement with a crash. He pulled the Maglite from his pocket, darted the beam into the corners and along the walls of the confined space.
Widowmaker dropped her head, turned her neck, one bulbous eye catching the reflection of the light, the orb staring back at him with empty contempt.
Seeing nothing unusual, Gabino climbed up and double-checked both sides of the animal. Ridiculous, of course, the trailer was completely enclosed, only big enough for two horses. There was no piled-up hay, no place for a child to hide.
There was no one.
“Who is it?” Gabino said foolishly. The only response coming from the mare, who blew through her lips, scraped a hoof along the metal floor in tired exasperation.
Gabino looked to the horse, his good cheer vanished, his heart cold as a winter night, his eyes hard and empty as the horse’s. “I’ll be dealing with you soon, princess,” he said. “I’ll cut you open and bleed you. Then butcher you and burn you, yegua pendeja.” He lifted a fisted hand, sweat running down his strained face, meaning to punch the terrible beast in the eye. He held it there, pulled back, his lips pressed, nostrils flaring.
Widowmaker just watched Gabino carelessly, as if weighing his worth in flesh. Gabino, hands shaking, heart pounding, lowered his fist. Shame flooded him as he walked back out without another glance, lifted the gate, and slammed it shut.
Moments later, the truck drove off in a roar of exhaust. Gabino looked into the side mirror as he drove further and further away from the strange totem, watched as the black pole and the charred head stuck atop it were swallowed once more by the infinite, ravenous night.
He looked at his hands on the wheel, noticed the whites of his knuckles, and forced himself to take a deep breath, then another. As the minutes peeled by, he tried to relax, to focus on the job at hand.
Ten minutes later, however, he had still seen no sign for the turn-off, and his nerves began to fray once more. His heart beat hard in his chest, his stomach cramped from the strain on his nerves. Something was wrong.
Maldita sea, where was the highway? he thought angrily. It was taking too long, and he cursed himself for stopping to look at the bizarre horse head. He was behind schedule now, and the client would be waiting. His frustrated, fear-soaked rage was rising and he pressed down on the gas, eager to get off the cursed road. He looked down to the radio, clicked it on again, hoping for the reception to have returned, some music to fill the emptiness. Still he heard nothing but static and whispers of a distant broadcast. A chill coursed through his spine and his temples throbbed as he bit down panic. Those are voices, he thought, then turned off the radio in revulsion, lifted his eyes to the road.
A small boy stood twenty yards ahead, straddling the white-dashed divider.
“Qué chingados!” he screamed and slammed down on the brakes, the truck skidding, the weight of the trailer pushing it forward and sideways, jack-knifing on skid-hopping tires. The heavy thud from the massive weight of the horse, its body slamming horribly into the side of the trailer, reverberated in his ears. He turned the wheel as the truck’s tires bit into the asphalt, savagely trying to straighten out the trailer without tipping it and still miss the boy, who stood dead-eyed and motionless in the path of the onrushing headlights. For a few perilous seconds, Gabino thought he’d lose control and tip the trailer. He caught a glimpse of its broad side filling his driver-side mirror. Worse yet, he would kill the child. At the very last moment, he was able to bring the truck under control, braking hard and twisting the wheel just enough to keep the fishtailing trailer from flipping.
The truck came to a skidding stop three feet from the boy, corkscrewed and steaming. Gabino squinted through the windshield, his hands glued with sweat to the leather-wrapped steering wheel. He sat back hard, took in a deep breath, not believing what was happening. He wiped sweat from his brow and screwed up his eyes, stared past the truck’s hood into the light-clouded darkness. Part of him expected to see nothing, as if a shadowy corner of his brain, already stressed and taxed to its limits, had created the child in an anxiety-fueled hallucinogenic burst.
But the boy was there, standing calmly in the bright headlights, his brown eyes barely visible just over the hood, and Gabino thought he could not be more than ten years old. What the hell was he doing out here in the middle of nowhere? In the middle of the night?
Gabino opened his door, seething. He walked to the front of the truck, towering over the small, frail boy, who looked up at the thief with wide, patient eyes. The boy was dark-skinned, his hair black and choppy. He wore a large, ratty t-shirt and soiled brown pants. As Gabino looked him over, he saw the child was barefoot.
“What are you doing? I almost killed you!” Gabino screamed at him, grabbing the child’s thin bicep and tugging him away from the front of the truck, as if he were still in danger of being crushed. “You probably hurt my horse, you bastard!”
The boy stared mutely, as if not hearing him, not seeing him. Then, as if a switch had flipped inside his head, his eyes focused, the faint trace of a smile cresting at the ends of his mouth.
“Señor,” he said, his voice thin and melodic, “may I have a ride?”
Gabino stared, eyes wide and blazing. He huffed and looked around into the inky void surrounding them, his hand still clamped to the boy’s arm, as if expecting a parent to come from behind a tree and claim the child, scolding him as they dragged him off into the dark.
“Aye, what is this night?” he said to himself. He released the boy, rubbed his eyes with his dry, rough fingertips. He turned, walked a few steps away, his fists clenching and unclenching as he tried to think, to clear his head.
The boy said nothing.
Gabino sighed, turned, then dipped his head toward the truck. “Get in, child,” he said, then walked shakily back to the cab. “Come on, vámonos!”
He climbed inside, punched the power lock on the door. Across from him, the passenger door opened and the shoeless boy climbed in. Gabino shook his head, put the truck into gear, and slowly pulled out, the trailer straightening behind them. He revved the engine quickly to speed, his primary concern now being his arrival time at Fat Ted’s. Ted would have his hide for being late, and Gabino’s disconnected mindset of uncertainty and nervousness was melting into feelings of deep fear.
He did not dare check on the horse. What was done was done. If the damned thing had broken its neck, so be it. He could not fool with it now.
“Put on your seatbelt,” he said to the boy, more out of annoyance at the truck’s beeping reminder tha
n concern for the boy’s safety. “I’m dropping you at the first gas station, once we get on the highway.”
The boy did as he asked, but said nothing, just looked out the window. The truck passed through a light mist, translucent as a shadow, and the night cleared. Stars speckled the sky, the red moon had turned plump and white as chalk.
Gabino turned to ask the child why he was so stupidly, and strangely, in the road at night, when he saw a flash of green square go by, marking the 301 highway as five miles ahead. He let out a sigh of relief, released the breath he had been holding, clutched, deep inside his chest. Finally, the highway. What was wrong with him anyway? A scared old man, frightened by pagan posts, likely placed by rancher kids as a joke, and small ten-year old boys in ratty clothes wandering the fields. What a man he’d become! He laughed at himself, feeling the tension release, knowing he would make the scheduled time to meet the client, almost giddy with the idea of dumping the child at the first opportunity.
“Almost there now,” he said, spirits rising. The boy turned to him, dark eyes searching, glittering in the dark interior of the cab.
“Señor, have you heard the story of the seventh son?” the boy asked. “If you please, I will tell you.”
Gabino spared a long look at the child, considered his wet eyes, then shook his head and looked back at the road, anxiously awaiting the freeway entrance ramp.
“Where I am from, there was a boy,” he began, his voice a silky ribbon, high and confident, “who was the seventh son of a seventh son. The people in our village thought he was a devil, but he was only a boy, just ten years old.”
Gabino said nothing. His hands tightened on the wheel.
“One day, the villagers invaded the boy’s small home. They beat his mother and dragged his father, kicking and clawing and screaming, to the village square. They hung the father from a tent pole. At the top of the pole was the Mexican flag.”
Gabino cleared his throat roughly, part of him listening to the boy’s lilting voice, the other listening for signs that Widowmaker was still alive in the trailer. The road continued to pass beneath them. “I had a son...” he said under his breath, as if it explained things. “His name was Luis.”
His young passenger continued, unwavering. “The boy was taken to a small hut, one that had not been used for many, many years. Inside that hut they dug out a dirt pit, filled it with chopped wood, put a large metal cauldron on top of the wood, lit a fire, and boiled the water while the boy watched. He never stopped screaming for his mother and siblings, who were bound at the feet and wrists with leather straps, secured in their own hut, but not so far off that they did not hear his pleas.”
The mysterious child took a breath, rested a hand on the seat between them, and continued. “After a while, when the water in the cauldron boiled, the villagers dropped the boy into it. He screamed, fighting to escape, even as the water melted the skin from his bones, even as his insides bubbled and boiled. They hit him in the face and head with long sticks, keeping him inside until he finally stopped screaming and crying, until he was dead.
“When the deed was done, the villagers released the other members of the family, then went to the church. While the water cooled, the entire village prayed, and the mother and her living children ran away, fearing for their own lives.
“After their prayers, the villagers pulled the boy’s body from the cauldron. They cut what remained of his eyes out and buried them in a field. They cut out his tongue and threw it into a thin river that ran through the village. They cut off his hands and feet and buried them in a patch of ground by the church where they had prayed. What was left of his body they burned to ash in the town square.
“His father’s body still hung from the flag post, the same strong wind that pushed the dead man’s body also blew his youngest child’s ashes into the air.”
Gabino saw the ramp ahead, a large green sign marking the entrance.
“That’s just a story,” he said, easing the truck onto the ramp.
“They say nothing ever grew there,” the boy continued, trance-like, ignoring Gabino’s remark. “The ground around the church turned to poison, killing trees and bushes. The river turned bitter and carried disease. The fields withered, and where his ashes blew, all around the village, death came, killing old and young alike. A plague. Now, no one lives in that village. It’s dead earth, forever cursed.”
Gabino pushed the truck to eighty, cruising easily on the freeway now, the traffic flowing. He spotted a gas station almost immediately, and indicated with his blinker that he was getting over.
“Okay, time to go,” he said, exiting. He pulled into the gas station parking lot, stopped the truck, not daring to glance toward the child.
There was a long pause, the cab filled with the child’s light breathing. Gabino, staring straight ahead, heard the door open and close.
He drove away, and did not look back.
PART THREE
Fat Ted and the Chinaman
Fat Ted stood in the kitchen looking out the small window as the shining black sedan pulled up the long driveway. He flipped a switch by the door and two giant spotlights, mounted to the house and facing the yard, frazzled to life, lighting up the entirety of the land in front of the house—the patchy, weathered grass, the thin dirt driveway, the massive black cypress trees that blockaded his habitat from the road and, more importantly, outside view. Anyone wanting to see Ted’s land had to drive up a private quarter-mile road while underneath a canopy of trees that extended nearly its entire length, and then into his spotlighted yard. There was a large barn out back, and behind that a dense mile of tree-line, where his property separated from the state-owned land. Set back into those trees he’d erected a ten-foot high fence, coiled with barb wire, that wrapped completely around the property.
The only folks coming to see Fat Ted were the folks Fat Ted wanted to see.
The man in the black sedan fit the latter category, and Ted licked his lips as the luxury car pulled to a stop. Ted turned to check the cheap plastic-faced clock mounted to the opposite wall, and cursed Gabino for being late.
He would just have to stall. Show the man around, make him a drink. Small talk and all that jazz. Then he’d walk him out back, show him some of the other merchandise that had been brought in, maybe interest him in some pre-cut meat he had frozen. Perhaps he would show his client the bone pit. A man like this one might like to see something like that. Fat Ted thought he might enjoy that quite a bit.
The car door slammed and Ted gathered himself. He glanced in the mirror, started to fix his clumped hair, then just plucked a broad, sweat-grimed ball cap from a nearby shelf and pushed it on. He grabbed his black duster, threw it on over his sagging sweat pants and Dolphins jersey, size XXXL.
He picked the .38 up off the round white kitchen table, shoved it into one duster pocket. He grabbed his knife holster, fastened it to his wide thigh, just managing to squeeze the buckle closed on the last punch hole of the worn strap. He opened the door, stepped outside, all smiles, and waved at the man waiting patiently outside the car, arms folded across his black suit coat, hair tidy, shoes shining.
“Howdy,” Fat Ted said, wobbling into the night.
The man looked down, as if thinking, then uncrossed his arms.
“The horse?”
“Coming, coming,” Ted said. “A little behind is all, but no trouble. My man Gabino just called, he’s five minutes out,” he lied, huffing like a buffalo. “All good.”
The man, who looked partly Asian, and partly something else, just glared. Fat Ted wondered if he was even an American.
“You Hawaiian? You didn’t sound Hawaiian on the phone.”
Ted stopped a few feet from the man, slipped a hand into the duster pocket, let his fingers tap the butt of the .38. “You Hawaiian?” he repeated, his eyes scrunched up, his voice sounding nasally, even to his own ears.
“Five minutes,” the man said.
Ted felt a clock ticking in his head, and he didn’t l
ike it. “All right, all right,” he said, hands up and out now, palms pushing the air. “I said he’s coming, right? So he’s coming. Look, you want a drink or something? I got bourbon in the house.”
The man shook his head. Ted noticed he had a small, trim ponytail flapping around back there, like a thin black snake curled up at the base of his skinny Hawaiian neck.
“The horse,” he repeated.
Fat Ted stared at him a moment, wondering if the man was dense or just plain retarded. He chuckled, then patted his bulbous sides with his arms, unsure how to proceed with this strange, but well-paying, individual. He tried to remind himself there was a lot of money at stake, and ten large was ten large was ten large, and if the guy wanted to sit out here and act like some sort of maniac, that was just hey-ho-dandy with Fat Ted.
“Lookie, that horse gonna be here in five minutes. Why don’t we head to the back, and I’ll show you where we’ll do the slaughter.”
The man looked up as if seeing Ted for the first time. He had large brown eyes, a trim mustache riding the curl of his lip. He stared, and did not move.
After a minute of this act, Ted got a little uncomfortable. Then he got nervous. “Hey man, you gotta relax, you know? I mean, look,” he said, his tone darkening slightly, “do you even have the money?”
The Hawaiian spun to the car, abruptly, impatiently, and opened the rear door. He pulled out a briefcase, took two quick steps, and handed it to Fat Ted like he was giving him a bag of shit. “Here,” he said, his nose wrinkled.
“Well, all right,” Ted said warily, without pleasure. He plucked the case from the man, kneeled down, set it flat on the brown grass, punched the two clips and lifted it open.
It was full of money, neatly-stacked. Small bills, just like he’d asked.
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