by J. L. Abramo
“He said you’d be along,” the man in front of Malone responded. “Said he was tired of running, now that he was back where he belonged. Said we oughta make sure you didn’t get no further than here. Paid good money for us to do that.”
Malone’s eyes shifted to the fat man on the ground, still out cold. “Money was wasted on this one.” He looked at the hawk nosed man on the other side of his gun barrel. “This one’s out of sorts too. Leaves you, I guess.”
The man answered Malone by charging him, trying to tear through the table. Titus Malone pulled the trigger of his gun, splitting the hooked nosed man’s head in two as the other man crashed into him. They both fell into the table, Malone still holding his gun out, trying to keep it out of the fray. The barkeep swore out loud and retreated back behind the barrel-supported bar.
The little girl stood across the bar by the door, her eyes taking in everything. She’d seen it before, too many times to count, in the last several weeks. Ever since she’d woken up that morning on their farm in Brownsville, Kentucky, the night after the big storm. The day after the rainmaker had come into town and promised to make it rain. The day after he’d left Brownsville, taking her mother with him.
The hawk nosed man’s corpse sprawled backwards, hitting the ground. Malone and the other man rolled back and forth. Malone hammered his attacker in the temple twice with his gun. The man barked obscenities and raised up, as if he were going to howl skyward. Malone brought the gun around quickly, clubbing the man upside the head with it broadways one more time. The man who talked through his nose wheezed and fell on top of Malone, barely breathing.
Malone grunted and shoved the dead weight aside, pulling himself out from under. Working his way to his feet, he glanced back at the door. The little girl stood there, her eyes on him, her hands fiddling with the frayed hem of the white dress she wore, the one he’d worked a field the other side of Atlanta for all day to be able to buy her. Now little more than a dirty rag, she tugged at the threads, watching him.
“You filthy bastard!” The fat man was up now, one eye already swelling shut, blood pouring from two busted lips. He had a gun in his hand, a .38, and he shakily aimed it at Malone.
Malone swung his gun around, not firing it, but slapping the fat man with it. He blubbered as the barrel crushed his teeth, dropping the gun to the floor. He tried to scurry backward, to get away from the next blow, but could not move before Malone’s boot connected with his head for a third time. Without a sound, he fell backward, crushing his bowler, his tongue lolling out of a toothless mouth.
As the last of the three fell, Titus Malone strode forward. The barkeep tried to get away, backing up against the only solid wall in the building. Malone upended the planks forming the bar with his free hand, sending the boards ass over end and knocking over one of the pillars of barrels. The bartender screeched, begging and swearing in the same breath. The man in the duster lashed out, taking the keep by his head of filthy black hair and bringing his gun around to rest against his skull.
“Take a gander around,” Titus Malone said through gritted teeth, the muzzle of his revolver pressed hard against the barkeep’s jaundiced forehead. The man whimpered in pain, the barrel pressing a circular brand into his skin, as Malone continued. “You gonna die for this? Canvas and clapboard tied to hold each other up. A few broken tables and busted chairs. And three men too stupid to stand down because some bastard’s paper money’s burnin’ a hole in their britches.” When words didn’t tumble out of the keep’s mouth like frightened rabbits running, Malone shoved the gun harder against his skull. “Or will it be four stupid dead men?”
The bartender’s sickly yellow eyes tore away from the man about to kill him and fell on the truth of Malone’s words. The three drifters lay either dead or near enough, having fallen in a lopsided triangle. He gulped, and then he saw her. A hint of filthy white dress peeking out from around the dirt caked duster Malone wore. A green eye veiled by wisps of blonde hair, shimmering like filthy gold in the red rays of the dying sun filtering through the windows behind him.
“Why,” the keep wheezed, his words whistling through three long broken front teeth, “you bring a girl out here? For all this?”
The muscles in Malone’s jaw drew taut, peeling his raging leer back into something out of a nightmare. He pushed the gun again, forcing the bartender’s head back farther. Whimpers became sobs as Malone’s breathing took on sound as well, an almost feral growling. “I’m all she’s got,” he answered slowly, “all that cares about her.” Malone felt a tug on the back of his coat as small hands tangled themselves in it. “And I won’t never leave her.”
The barkeep listened, nodding, slowly realizing he’d expected a bullet canoeing through his head instead of an answer. His gaze locked on Malone’s eyes, the brown of dried, hard ground, glistening with madness. Or maybe something else. “She...” a cough strangled him, catching in his throat, “she said you’d not come. Told him he was crazy, thinkin’ you’d come all this way for them. Said what you said. That you’d never leave the girl.”
“Where?” Malone demanded.
“Two down,” the sickly man answered, “this side of the street. Not the one on the road, that’s a card house, empty until later. Behind it, a little two-room shack, never fully finished even, left from when a pastor tried to bring God here. Neither of ’em stayed. There.”
Titus Malone grunted, his entire body shivering as tension along his muscles repositioned. He let go of the handful of greasy black hair wrapped around his gloved hand. The barkeep yelped as he fell backwards against the hard packed dirt floor, his pants now soaked more with urine than sweat.
Lowering the gun to his side, Malone turned, his free hand searching for the girl behind him. She moved as his fingers reached for her, forcing her father into an awkward half pirouette trying to find her hand. It was one of their games, one of those things that fathers and daughters did out of habit. She giggled, circling around his right side, bumping into his gun. She stopped, holding her breath. Malone turned all the way around, finding her staring at where the revolver had been, and took her hand in his larger gloved one.
“Let’s go, Delta,” Malone said gently. “Time to see your mama.”
Delta nodded once. Turning to leave with her behind him, Malone brought the gun around, pointing it more than aiming it at the barkeep, still laying prone on the ground, a sallow worm squirming in its own filth. “Best not get up from there,” Malone warned, “’til after dark.”
Their backs to the men on the ground, living and dead, Malone and the girl maneuvered their way out of the claptrap room. Kicking the door completely free of its frame, Titus stepped out into the muddy clay street, the girl still struggling to keep up with his large strides beside him. No one paid them any mind. Not the two drunks by the trough across the street. They both sat in the clay, leaning against the water bin, mumbling to one another. Not the women haunting the bath tents to their left. Not the three men standing in front of what passed for a general store, each of them leaned against a rather well kept Lambert Model A truck. No one. Like every other makeshift settlement along roads carved by farmers, outlaws, laborers, and whores, this town was populated by the deaf, dumb and blind that wanted to keep on living.
“We’re not gonna see Mama.” The little girl’s voice was quiet, yet each word hit hard like a fist.
Malone’s eyes scanned over the building beside the bar they’d just left, watching the tent flap for movement. “Yes,” he said, “we are. What we came all this way for. To see your mama.”
“No,” Delta countered, her steps growing slower. “You came to see him. To shoot him for taking Mama.”
Malone stopped in front of yet another chaotic mix of canvas and tenant farmer’s shack, this one with a roughly hand painted sign hanging from its roof down in front of the door. CARDS. Leaning forward, he saw the corner of another building, this one all wood, but slanted worse than most of the tents around it.
“Yes,” Tit
us Malone said, looking down into the dirty, angelic face of his daughter. “I mean to kill him.”
The girl looked back at her father, not staring, just simply looking. Her eyes found the tiny lines around his mouth that used to pull its corners up into a smile. They saw the ruddy red of his cheeks, a trophy won by hard work in the fields. And they saw the man he’d become, ever since they’d left their home, the man he’d be until all this was done.
“He didn’t make her,” Delta said, clenching her father’s hand tighter than ever. “He didn’t make Mama go with him.”
Titus Malone’s eyes narrowed. He took a breath, nodded once at his daughter, then turned and walked off of the street. As they stood at the left of the card house, Malone let go of Delta’s hand, and pulled his duster open. Taking his time, he reloaded his gun. As he emptied the spent shell and worked a fresh one into its place, Delta stared at the house before them. A tiny box made of four tilted walls and a poor excuse at a pitched roof, now bereft of shingles. Tar paper crinkled as a dry Georgia wind blew over it, the same breeze that teased the little girl’s unwashed, yet still beautiful blonde hair. Nothing moved in the house, no curtains hung on the two windows she could see. Two roughhewn wood steps rose from the ground to the door, no porch adorning the front.
“Our house was better,” Delta said as Titus took her hand again, his gun raised before him in the other. “Lots better.”
Titus moved cautiously the few yards between the card house and the misbegotten church. As he came to the steps, he stopped, listening. Noises played inside the house, filtered through two walls. But still, Titus heard them. The creaking and scraping of metal. A guttural gasping, somewhere between a belch and “Oh God.” And soprano squeals of pleasure, punctuated by breathy demands for “More.”
Malone turned toward his daughter and knelt down on one knee. “Stay here,” he said. He watched as fear started across Delta’s face and he raised a single finger of his free hand to her pink lips. “Shush, girl. I’m not leaving you. Just going in here for a minute. And you can’t go. Not here.”
Tears brimmed Delta’s green eyes as she fought to keep her lips from trembling. As she nodded, Malone stood up, tousled her blonde hair with his open hand, and made his way up the two steps. He turned the door’s knob and pushed it open, pausing as the hinges screeched like off key crickets. The sounds from the room beyond didn’t stop, so Malone entered.
A faded purple settee sat in the center of the front room, whatever lace and glory it once had long faded due to age. Three tiny hand cut wooden pews dotted the room in a haphazard fashion, the only hints that this place might have been meant to be a church. Malone’s steps across the floor raised tiny clouds of sawdust, shed from the unfinished beams and walls that made up the building. He walked quietly, not out of precaution, but simply because it was how he moved. The moans and yaps of sex entangled with the squealing of a hard worked bed frame grew louder, almost as if they knew they had an audience. The door to the back room was closed and Titus stopped in front of it. He clenched his empty hand into a fist as he held the gun barrel up and kicked the door in.
Light from the setting sun flowed from the only window in the room, set crookedly in the middle of the wall opposite Titus Malone. The two bodies entangled in each other on the bed were bathed in a halo of red, a scarlet glow. The man was on top, twisting his head around at the caving in of the door. Matted black hair stuck to his forehead as his ebony eyes widened.
Malone took a single step in through the destroyed door and leveled his gun at the man mounted on the woman in the bed. Rolling out of her, the naked black-haired man opened his mouth, a rumbling yell rising out as he pitched to the left, going for a gun sitting atop an overturned crate.
“No more banging the drum, rainmaker.” Titus Malone allowed the man to get one foot on the floor, mostly clear of the woman. He squeezed the trigger, the gun struggling to jump in his hand. The bullet planted deep into the man’s neck, the fingers of his left hand splayed out desperately for the gun they’d never reach. The woman, still lying in the bed, shrieked. Blood and flesh spurted, mingling oddly with the sunlight from outside. The man turned his head slightly, as if trying to look back at the woman in the bed, and tumbled forward clumsily. Falling first on the left side of the bed, then sliding down the edge of the mattress to the floor, face down in his own blood.
Titus stepped fully into the room and up to the iron bed. The woman, her face stricken with terror, had crawled up from flat on her back, now cringing against the headboard. She made no effort to cover herself, leaving the sheets puddled around her sweaty, naked body like melting snow. Her eyes, green like her daughter’s, fell on the gun staring at her chest with its single ominous, lifeless eye.
“Titus!” Her voice was high, like her carnal comments had been, but lust had given way to insane fear. She leaned forward, rocking onto her knees, a slender alabaster arm outstretched to him, pleading. “Titus, don’t!”
“You left, Lizzie,” Malone said flatly, his gun not wavering. “All the other men, I let that go. Because I still had you. You were still there.” His right cheek twitched as the anger moved toward a fevered pitch in his voice. “But then the rainmaker came. And you left with him, with a con man. You left us.”
“I’m sorry,” she pleaded, advancing toward him on the bed, scuttling on her knees. He didn’t waver, didn’t lower the gun. “I’m so sorry, Titus. I didn’t know...I didn’t know...” She leaned closer, just a few inches between them now. Her fingers teased, then pressed against his unshaven chin. Still, he didn’t move. “I didn’t know how much you loved me.”
She leaned closer to him, brazenly pressing her body against the gun, caressing his bristly cheeks with lithe strokes. Her tongue played along smeared red lips as they neared his, teasing him to taste them again. Fear still haunted her face, but hints of passion, of desire flickered along her features. Yet he did not waver. His eyes glared coldly ahead. His mouth remained pulled into a narrow frown. And, even as she played with him and seemingly ignored the barrel now resting between her breasts, the gun remained still.
“Take me home,” she breathed, her whiskey-laden breath mingling with the raw smell of flop sweat and interrupted sex filling the room. “Take me back, Titus. So, we can be together. All three of—”
She bit back the next word as she glanced over Titus’ shoulder in the midst of her obscene attempt at seduction. She looked into a reflection, almost. Eyes as green as hers. Blonde hair, too, dirty and unwashed, but still something else they shared. The delicate turn of her nose, the high cheeks. Lizzie Malone hesitated, at first thinking she was still drunk. Then, realizing that Titus would never have left her alone, Lizzie gasped.
“Delta.”
A tremor rumbled through Titus Malone as he yanked the trigger of his gun. Lizzie’s back exploded, painting the wall with gore again, splatters of blood falling on the bed sheets like wretched rose petals. Lizzie spasmed, the force of the shot staggering her, sending her backwards, still on her knees. She wavered, almost as if she might try to stay upright, but pitched hard to the right, turning at her waist. She fell almost languidly, her arms and head hanging over the bed.
Titus followed Lillie’s descent with his eyes and the gun. As her head came to rest, she looked back at him, wide open green eyes, vacant, yet accusing. And still her. Titus fired again, the bullet piercing her left eye, carrying most of that side of her skull with it.
Titus Malone lowered his gun, sliding it into its holster on his hip, and he stood, studying the room. The way it smelled now more of gunpowder than fucking. How the dying sunlight now seemed more precise, sliver like needles of red striking on Lizzie’s pallid, naked body.
The bodies. Two people dead to him from the morning he woke up to find Lizzie gone. It was then it had become up to him to make sure they paid for what they’d done to him. To Delta.
“Daddy.” The voice was still small, only because she was, but there was nothing girlish about it. It was hard,
empty, and firm.
Titus heard her speak, but didn’t turn immediately. He’d watched Lizzie’s eyes move and surprise enter them just before he killed her. He’d also heard the opening of the front door and the shuffling of feet across the floor. And then he’d shot her. She was already dead to Delta, too. No need for her lying words to pollute his daughter’s ears ever again.
“Daddy,” Delta walked up beside Malone and took his hand. “Let’s go home, Daddy. Our house is lots better.”
Titus nodded and looked down at the little girl. Her eyes were not looking up at him, but straight ahead, where the two corpses lay, just heaps of flesh, like so much trash. And both red with their own blood, dripping off of them and mingling with the sawdust on the floor to make a horrific mud.
“Yes,” Titus Malone said, tugging at Delta as he moved out into the front room. “Let’s go home.”
Back to TOC
DELIA’S GONE
James A. Moore
Carl Price didn’t much like taking vacations, but sometimes a man just had to get away. It was the stress of the job. Sheriff of Brennert County meant he had a lot on his plate and lately it had been getting to him so, despite his personal desires, he listened to his doctor and agreed to take a week to himself.
The fishing was supposed to be good at the lake and his family had a cabin there. It hadn’t been used much by him, but he paid for a groundskeeper and the man was honest enough to keep the place in order.
Back in his living room, a rather Spartan affair, there were exactly four framed pieces on the wall to the right of his recliner. A picture of him with his parents as a kid, a picture taken at his wedding, long before his wife left him of course, a picture of his folks together on their fifteenth wedding anniversary and a frame that held three different sheriff’s badges: One for his great grandfather, one for his grandfather and one for his dad. It was a bit of a tradition in the family.