Arnie’s eyes are impossibly huge.
‘That’s right.” I say, “Your brother. I know all about it and your parents killed your brother. Why? That I don’t know but I’m guessing it had something to do with your screwed-up idea about what religion is and God…”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Arnie is screaming so loud that a new vein has appeared in his throat. Spittle flies out of his mouth.
Taking the red, squeezable Nerf ball out of my pocket, I recall Lucas throwing it at my head repeatedly, calling out “Bong!” “Bong!” “Bong!” each time he got me. I cram it into the miserable pile-of-shit’s mouth until he makes strange sucking noises through his nose. I grab his chin, centering his eyes on mine.
Holding up the cigarette with my free hand, I go: “Let’s try this again…”
With burn spots dotting both hands and his lip, Arnie lasted a half hour before he passed out.
*
Convenient. Time to think. I poke my head outside to check the road, the rain placing a steady thin curtain of drizzle before the waning sun. Clicking the light bulb over Arnie’s head, I move to examine the belt on the far wall. It’s shiny – like it’s still new and it has an oily sheen but a few inches around the buckle show creases, signs of wear, as if the buckle end had been wrapped a couple of times around something.
Pulling the foam ball from Arnie’s mouth, drool runs out of one corner as I slap him several times. He’s coming around so I sit on my bag/seat and light another cigarette so it’s first thing he’ll see. He doesn’t disappoint.
His pupils expanding, Arnie rears back his head and screams, “I wasn’t bothering the boy! I just stopped to have lunch and he happened to be there. I swear! I swear to God! Please…” His eyes dart to the shovels again.
Taking the Judge from my pocket, I wedge it between his lips and say, “Don’t be ‘swearing to God’ – or you’re going to meet Him in a freakin’ heartbeat.” His eyes close and his mouth makes disgusting gagging sounds against the gun’s cold metal.
I said, “Arnie, I already know what happened, so don’t bullshit me.” I drag the gun out, his lips making a ridiculous popping sound. Most of Arnie’s burns are cauterized but a few ooze trickles of blood. His mouth is an obscene rash.
Arnie casts his eyes to the ground, mumbling, “I’m not saying anything.” And then a furtive glance at the belt.
All at once, I can see.
“Arnie, I want the truth. I want to know where my son is and you’re going to tell me.” Arnie starts shaking his head back-and-forth. “Yes... yes, and you’re going to talk. You can’t bullshit-an-old-bullshitter. I used to teach. Did you know that? Did you know that when you took my little boy?” My blood was rising. “Yeah. I used to teach psychology. I used to teach psychology and the one thing it taught me is you can’t bullshit an old bullshitter.” I moved to the wall, Arnie watching my every move. “I have ways of making you talk that you wouldn’t believe. Why…” I picked the belt off the wall, “…I have more ways of making you talk than there are…notches on this belt.”
Arnie’s eyes burst into big tears. I took the belt, put it before his face and said, “Arnold Mueller, I’m going to beat you to within one inch of your life if you don’t tell me where my Lucas is.”
His eyes swamped with tears, he said, “You can’t do that! I’m the Good One! You said so! I’m the Good One and I’ve always done what you asked!”
What? I look at Arnie but the man before me has changed. Gone is the defiant, self-righteous monster. In his place is a... boy. A man/boy who stares with glassy eyes at the belt, his face a blank slate as if he’s been hypnotized.
“Where is he, Arnie?”
“I did what you asked,” his tone modulated lower; “I did what you asked.”
“And what did I ask?”
Still looking at the belt, Arnie’s lower lip starts to quiver, causing the burn mark to bleed anew.
“I did what you asked. Really Mama, I did what you asked.” Now the voice of a real boy.
“What did you do? Tell me.” Myself, firmer now.
Arnie’s shoulders sag. “I can’t…”
Feeling a sick inspiration, I whip the belt across his shoulders and yell, “By God, you will answer me or there will be Hell to pay!”
“I can’t!”
I strike him again, my stomach revolting against me.
Arnie lets out a mewling cry and says, “I did what you said. He was bad. Bad and unruly. Unclean. I did what you said. The bad one. You said. I’m the Good One and the bad one must be punished.”
Screaming now, “Punished, how?!”
Arnie’s eyes stare at me, but they don’t see me. I understand. I’m not Benjamin Cain – I’m his Mama. I’m his Mama and I’ve asked him to do a bad, bad thing.
“Punished, how?!” I repeat, holding up the belt.
A soft child-like voice emerges from Arnie’s lips. “I... I put him in the ground, Mama.”
Oh God. Arnie’s parents didn’t kill his brother. Arnie killed his brother. Arnie killed his younger brother Felix because his mother told him to. The younger boy was willful and rebellious and didn’t fit their idea of a good God-fearing child. He was a bad son, Arnie was the good son. The Good One.
I think: Please God, don’t make this true. Don’t make it possible for this much evil to be in this world.
Hearing no word from me, Arnie turns and stares at the shovel and screams, “I’m the Good One and you said so! You said so! I’m the Good One and I put him in the ground!”
My head is spinning. Turning and turning and I’m going to be sick. I follow Arnie’s gaze and now see that the shovel in the corner is not just dirty but it’s freshly dirty. A clump of brown soil clings to the upper part of the blade only it’s not just brown but red brown; red like blood and I’m going to be sick. All the hate, all the bile, all the evil is going to come out and I have to get out of here... out, out, out and I stumble to the doors, throw them open and collapse on the scrubby grass, retching over and over until my stomach is empty. My soul is empty. Then I see the belt that is still in my hand and I vomit again until it feels like I’ll never breathe again. Stars start spinning in my eyes.
From a crouch I look back into the barn and I see Arnie, taped to the wooden chair, eyes agog and staring at the bloodied shovel. His head is motionless but his lip is drooling and my stomach turns again as I realize that Arnie, the good family man, the dedicated employee, Arnie the Good One – has wet his pants.
Suddenly, I’m whole. Suddenly I’m not going to let this... this thing live another moment. Better to put him in the ground and be done with it. I feel like I will never draw a clean breathe of air again until this abomination is gone. Dead and gone.
I push myself up, throwing the belt down and I rush into the barn. Standing in front of the chair I push the .45 caliber gun into the red wet of Arnie’s mouth. His eyes don’t even register it as I slowly press the trigger and…
I can’t do it.
“I’m a firm believer of nurture versus nature, Mister Cain,” Elma Russell had said.
She was right. Gerda Mueller killed my boy. Elma Russell is right because Gerda Mueller poisoned her son’s mind until he was nothing but a sick, twisted weapon. Arnie was the weapon but Gerda Mueller was the killer who took my boy’s life away – took all their lives away. Even Arnold Russell’s. He’s sick. Sick and twisted and I, of all people, should know that the planet is teeming with sad, warped, beaten people that can’t help themselves – that are so filled with hate and bias and evil that it has to spill out. It has to come out…
I stumble back outside, my lungs heaving and I crash to the ground, the gun tumbling into the dirt. I barely get to my knees when I hear a ringing. A far-off muffled ringing and then I realize it’s my cell. With unfocused eyes I squint at the screen and through the fog the caller I.D. reads: Charles Simmons.
Dear God, give me strength.
My voice sounds ridiculous. Hollow.
What am I supposed to say to this man? To Karen?
“Hello.”
It is a woman’s voice, one I don’t recognize. It’s a woman’s voice and in the background I hear the sound of Kyle, groaning and whining and complaining about wanting to go home.
The voice says, “You have something I want. I have something you want. Do I have your attention?”
Launi. Launi with Karen’s phone.
“Yes.”
“I want to speak with my husband. If you’ve done anything to him, if you’ve harmed him in any way – I’ll cut the boy into little pieces and flush the little bastard down the toilet. Understand?”
Evil. It has to come out…
I look at Arnie’s burnt, slack body. His eyes stare off into space at something only he can see.
“Yes, I understand.”
“I’ll call back in five minutes. Have him ready to speak with me.”
The phone goes dead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Impossible. I’m trapped and there is no way out – for Kyle or me. Arnie could never make enough sense on the phone to steer Launi away from harming Kyle.
I was so wrong. The Jeep wasn’t Arnie hunting for Kyle or Kyle’s house. It was Launi and Launi was looking for me, looking for the Volvo with the stupid bumper sticker and she found me and I led her right to Kyle. It wasn’t Fulton – it was Launi that got into my house, seeing those pictures and getting my phone number from my records. I’ve failed again. Launi took the boy and probably killed Karen and Charlie and is now waiting to talk to someone who can barely utter gibberish and she’s going to go mad. Because she is mad. She’s infected with the same venomous evil that the Mueller family passed down to Arnie, just like children of abuse turn out to be abusers themselves. Of course she’s infected. Arnie must have lived with her family after he ran away and he and Launi married young. She knows he has killed.
And now she’s going to kill Kyle.
I jump into the van, searching for anything liquid, and I find a warm plastic bottle of water. I rush to Arnie, pulling his head back by the hair, and pour the bottle over his bruised and burnt face, desperately trying to buy time. If I can just get him lucid enough I…
My cell rings.
Shit.
Arnie’s head is rolling on his shoulders, eyes fluttering and unfocused as I shakily push the answer button. My dry throat can barely muster words.
Launi says, “Give me what I want.”
I croak, “I want to talk to the boy.”
“Do you want him to bleed!? Do you?! Answer me – right now! I’ll open his throat and you can listen to the sound of his blood splattering the floor! I’ll do it – I swear I will!”
Her scream is as horrid as anything I’ve ever heard.
“Give me what I want!”
It’s over. I’ve failed. My boy is dead. My boy is dead and so am I and this maniac is going to kill Kyle; Kyle who did nothing wrong except remind Arnie of the brother that he murdered.
It’s over. Even if I could get Arnie to respond there could never be any exchange. Launi Russell intends to kill both Kyle and me. I have only one choice.
“Listen, bitch. You’ll get to talk to Arnie-boy when I say. I want to talk to the boy now. If you don’t put him on the phone I’m going to take that pretty-boy-Dutchboy-hair of his and set it on fire and let it burn till he squeals like a pig! Get my drift?”
There is a long, careening scream from the phone and then I hear her breathing: fast, panting, and wildly insane. I can picture the spittle flying from her mouth as she says, “You... you... you better do as I say! Put him on the phone right now!”
“I said I talk to Kyle first.” I pray I’m playing her right. I say, “Shove it up your ass,” and hang up.
The cell rings right away. I don’t even give the bitch time to speak.
“I guess you religious types don’t understand English. I said I want to talk to the boy first. What is it with you and Goldie-Locks? Don’t get any humping at home so you got to get some kind of perverted kick somewhere else? Maybe I ought to have a little discussion with Arnie here – maybe if I peel back a little skin off of his ugly little face I’ll see the real man there... maybe I’ll…”
There is a horrendous scream and I hear the sound of the phone flying against the wall, or the floor. Scuffling sounds, scraping and knocking and then unbelievably in the background I hear a man’s voice cry out “FBI” and my head grows faint.
I have to sit to keep from passing out.
I stare at the phone in my hand until I hear a man’s voice.
“Cain? Cain? Answer, dammit…”
Unbelievable.
“Fulton? Please tell me that’s you.”
I heard heavy breathing. “Damn right it’s me. Listen, I’ve got to move fast. The boy’s okay – we got here just at the right time. It’s a good thing that you had her preoccupied on the phone, we were able to come from the back. Stupid cow didn’t even lock the back door. And Ben…”
Relief was flooding my body. “Yeah?”
“She had a knife the size of New Jersey. Not to worry – we’ve got her secured in a back bedroom and we’ll get the boy back home in an hour. He’s fine – confused as hell, but he’ll be okay.”
Thank you, God. “And... and the parents? Charlie? Karen?”
“Both fine. The father wasn’t home, he was at some fire prevention thing but he’s there now. We were on the mother minutes after it went down. She was just drugged – we think chloroform.”
“Minutes? How? I…”
I could hear Fulton chuckle over the phone, the sounds of men bustling about behind him almost as loud as his own voice. “I told you I’d keep my eye on you. We’ve had a male and female team on your place in Breakline almost from the get-go.”
A team? The couple. The bickering young couple down the street.
“Is that with federal sanction?”
“No.” Again, a chuckle. “I don’t think they’re going to make a big stink about my team – they scored a bull’s-eye, although I’m sorry they didn’t catch this witch breaking into your place.”
Bullshit. Breaking and entering is small potatoes, and an arrest then-and-there would have tipped Arnie off.
Fulton said: “Where are you right now? Is Russell there with you? We didn’t catch you leaving the park. We only knew something was up when the boy came back home alone.”
Of course they didn’t see me leave. I left with Arnie. I let the line go silent, slowly making my way back inside – back inside to a gibbering Arnie who was still staring at the shovel.
“Ben? Ben? Where are you? We need to talk. If you have Russell we need to take him into custody. Ben, you’ve got to…” I cut him off. I placed the phone back in my jacket where the gun had rested.
*
It was a high keening sound, shrill and child-like like the voice Lucas used to make when he inhaled helium from his birthday balloons. Arnie was giggling with this sound, the cadence sending a tremor down my back by the sheer insanity of it.
“I did it,” he said, “I did it and I’m glad I did it because he was the face and Mama said the face was bad.” A brittle hee-hee-hee echoed off the wooden walls.
Arnie’s eyes weren’t unfocused anymore; he was straining to capture my eyes, to convince me.
“Mama was right. His face was bad and unclean and the bad and the unclean must be punished hee-hee. What Mama didn’t know is the face never really goes away. He’s everywhere. He’s everywhere and I’ve got to go on punishing him or pretty soon we’ll be overrun – we’ll be drowning in his sin. Hee-hee Daddy didn’t understand – he couldn’t see the forest for the trees!”
Arnie’s head turned back to the shovel. “Ha! Ha! Ha! ‘Forest for the trees’! ‘Forest for the trees’!”
Arnie’s lips had dried and now small cracks appeared on them and his face had a ruddy sheen like he had a fever. His eyes darted from the shovel to mine and his wide, saucer-size orbs begged me.
/> “You see?! I’m the Good One! I’m the Good One and I just made a joke! A joke! Who’d have thought that?! He couldn’t see the forest for the trees! Ha, Ha!”
Oh, God. Forest for the trees.
My rage returning, I grab the shovel and run outside, skirting the Bono’s van and entering the stand of trees directly behind the step-van. As far as the eye can see the ground is thick with dry grass and overgrown scrub vines, the trees overhead just dense enough to shadow the ground but still allow enough light to see – even with gray overcast skies overhead. When we had first driven up to the rutted lane behind the shed, the ground in the copse of trees looked undisturbed, virgin. Now, my senses were almost hysterically heightened and I could see that there was a subtle run through the grass – a path that someone had used, but used infrequently, so the path was present but not worn to dirt.
I remembered my impression upon entering the shed for the first time: The Muellers ate their own crops.
I’m an idiot. The front acreage shows no sign of ever being disturbed, with the exception of the driveway and the now-destroyed house. The victory garden is out back. Out back in the trees.
I followed the hard-to-see path through a hundred feet of pecan trees till they abruptly ended. In front of me is a perfect fifty-by-fifty foot square. I look back the way I had come and sighted in my mind the path I had just taken. A straight line... right back to the shed. Of course. There would be seed to haul and fertilizer to spread. Who would want to walk farther?
The entire expanse of the plot was barren dirt with a peach-fuzz of sparse one-inch high weedy grass shoots sticking up – except for two small rectangles of dirt. I involuntarily let out a moan as I realized that the bare shapes resembled plots. Burial plots. I looked at the shovel in my hand. Except for a few clots of dirt the spade was pristine. No rust, no scratches, the handle smooth and shiny as if it had just been purchased. No Mueller used this implement to plant a garden twenty years ago. The dirt on the shovel’s blade was reddish brown. The soil in this part of Texas was not like this. Normally, the dirt in these parts was the hard, clay-like caliche that you would find in most desert-like climates.
Candy from a Stranger Page 19