Outside, Mr. Cannon began to sob. This sound roused something in me. The man was in trouble and here we sat on our hands, listening to him cry. Enough. Logan had them spooked, but I knew just how ridiculous this actually was. Before it could get any worse, I stepped around Logan and into the hall. Mr. Cannon made a wet noise that could of been the word please.
“Lynn!” Logan hissed.
I turned the bolt and yanked open the door. Mr. Cannon must of been leaning against it because he fell on top of me, knocking me to the floor and collapsing on my legs. The hall light was off, but even in the gloom I noticed Mr. Cannon was naked but for a short green robe made out of some shiny fabric. Blood ran from his ear to his chin.
“Hajji motherfucker,” Logan said, quiet but pissed off.
He jumped past me and Mr. Cannon and swung his bat. Another silhouette lurked in the doorway, a tall man with a long, thin neck. He shouted as Logan’s makeshift club caught him on the shoulder. The hall flashed orange and the whole house shook with a noise so loud I almost couldn’t hear it. It rattled my teeth in their sockets. Something warm dripped off my earlobe. Mr. Cannon screamed until he choked, squirming against my feet. The air tasted bitter. In the doorway, Logan wrestled with the tall man. Sharp grunts and puffs of breath. My ears rang. Mom yelled my name in a muffled way, like her mouth was filled with cotton balls. Even in the dim light, I saw the flash of the butter knife as Logan pulled it from the waist of his pants. He lunged. Something happened to tip him off balance and the tall man swung the butt of his rifle into the back of Logan’s head. He went face-first onto the floor. For a long moment, nothing at all happened. Smoke drifted out the door. When Logan didn’t get up, the man felt his neck and then stepped over him, oddly careful not to tread on his body.
Mr. Cannon panted. Each time he exhaled, a small shrieking sound came with it. The tall man pulled Logan just far enough into the house to close the front door. Then he flicked on the hall light. With it came a flood of red. The wall beside me dripped with Mr. Cannon’s blood. My arms and shirt were splattered with it. Mr. Cannon took three quick breaths and screamed. I tried to slide out from under him, but I was trapped. My own breath came so hard and fast it made me dizzy.
“Now this,” the tall man said, “has got to stop.” His voice was high and nasal and the words came out slurred, but not like he was drunk. It sounded off somehow, more like when a person sings way out of tune.
Mr. Cannon’s head quivered and jerked.
“Please don’t kill him,” I said, still trying to squirm out from under his back.
“Not please don’t kill me?” The man laughed. He would of been handsome but for the mess somebody had made of his ear and the space around his temple. The skin appeared melted and shiny, like congealed cheese dip, and in the time since it’d cooled, hair had refused to grow there. His left ear was a collection of irritable red nubs. “What’s this sorry sack of dog mess to you?”
“Just don’t,” I said.
The man appraised me. His eyes were the chemical blue of drain cleaner. I watched him make a calculation. I was a column of numbers.
“You’re the girl, then.”
It wasn’t a question. I wouldn’t of answered it anyway.
“Shut him up,” he said, picking his way down the hall.
As soon as he walked into the other room, Hayes sputtered. An empty bottle fell over and rolled across the coffee table. The man laughed again, a joyless noise, cockeyed and scary as a bag of copperheads.
“Shit, Mr. Gibbs, I can explain,” Hayes said.
“That ain’t what I come for.”
Hayes said something about deals to be made.
“Don’t tell it to me. I ain’t the one pissed off at you.” Butthole Gibbs whistled and stepped back into the hall. “Hey, jellybean, wrap the fat man’s leg with this.” He tossed me a roll of duct tape and smiled when I caught it with one hand.
Bright and Blank and Terrible
Mr. Cannon hushed when I told him the man would probably kill him if he didn’t shut up, but I honestly don’t think he knew what was happening to him anymore. The skin on his face had the blank, yellowish color of buttermilk, and he kept blinking his eyes and grinding his teeth. His leg was a gob of red mush below the knee, the foot turned nearly backwards. On first sight, my stomach rolled over. Bile seeped up to the back of my tongue. I didn’t know what all I could do about this with a roll of tape. Blood cooled in a puddle around him, stinking like burned metal. I did my best to stop him from bleeding anymore. Duct tape doesn’t work well with wet surfaces. It kept sliding away. Finally, I pulled out the belt from his dressing gown and tied off his leg above the knee. His boy business flopped about as I tried and tried to twist the tape around his ruined calf. I put as much pressure on the wound as I could. Bright yellow fat oozed out. Finally, I got the idea to tie the tape in a knot around his leg and then wrap it. When I yanked the tape tight, he moaned until his face went slack. Then he fell against the wall with a heavy thud. I would of thought him dead but for the vein twitching on his forehead. This was a small mercy for both of us.
In the living room, my mom said she was a nurse and asked if she could tend to Mr. Cannon. Nothing happened, so I guess the answer was no. Logan snored. His right hand flexed and relaxed. The butter knife lay a few feet away. I snatched it up and tucked it into the other side of my waistband from the phone.
“You about done with fatty?” The man appeared at the doorway to the living room half a beat after I smoothed my T-shirt down over the knife. The rifle rested in the crook of his elbow. His eyes moved about the hall. When they found my face, I wanted to run. They were bright and blank and terrible. He shook a fistful of shoelaces at me. “Time to move this show outside. Smells like shit in here.”
I didn’t notice the smell until he said it. Then I couldn’t smell anything else. At first I thought it might be coming from me, but no, Mr. Cannon had shit himself. Maybe when he passed out. His one remaining sock was smeared in it. The other foot had stayed bare and pink and clean.
“Come on, then. I got a chore for you.”
“Are you Butthole Gibbs?” The words came out at the same moment I shaped the thought.
Instead of shooting me, he laughed a new laugh. It sounded like someone balling up newspaper.
“Yeah.” He smiled. His left dogtooth was a bluish color. “But how about you call me Leon?”
Shoelaces and Duct Tape
Butthole “Call me Leon” Gibbs watched as Hayes and my mom dragged Logan through the kitchen by his feet. I held up his head, so it wouldn’t thump against the doorjamb. Blood clotted in his hair. Outside in the dark, it looked black against the white of his neck. When we set him by the clothesline, my hands were speckled with dry shards of it.
First, Butthole told my mom and me to prop Logan up and tie his hands behind the metal pole that made up one end of the clothesline. Then he dragged me by the sleeve to the other end and showed me how he wanted the last three shoelaces looped around Hayes’s and my mom’s hands and feet. Butthole had them sit down face-to-face, so the pole sprouted up between the outstretched Vs of their legs. One shoelace for each pair of their feet, and the last one for their hands. He made certain I didn’t leave any slack and yanked the one around their hands so hard my mom cried out. Then he had me wrap their wrists together with duct tape.
“This way, you two can always see how the other one’s feeling,” he told them.
What about me? I wondered, but had sense enough not to say. Still, he somehow saw the question in my face.
“I ain’t got nothing special in mind for you, but don’t worry, darling, I happen to know there’s something been planned.” He pulled over a rusty porch chair and sat down. “There’s nothing left to do but wait.” He pointed to a spot midway between Logan and my mom. “Stay there.”
I crouched in the damp grass and stared at his clothes. He wore a navy-blue blazer and gray slacks and a shiny pair of black penny loafers—a bright orange Lincoln head
stuck into each one. Butthole reached inside his bulging side pocket and pulled out what looked like a purple plastic cordless phone with a smiling girl’s face on the back. A child’s walkie-talkie. He grimaced before putting it up to his good ear and telling it, “I got them all trussed up and ready for you, chief.”
A static-warped voice shouted, “Roger. We’re on our way.”
I hugged my knees against my chest and thought about whether I could run fast enough to get around the side of the carport before he fired his gun. He caught me looking at the end of the house.
“No,” he said.
Five minutes later, Logan’s head moved. I glanced over at Butthole, but he only had eyes for his walkie-talkie, which he whittled at with a clasp knife. God knew what he’d do to Logan once he came to. But, Logan, being nothing if not determined to get his ass in trouble, opened his eyes. One, then the other. A few experimental blinks. When he saw me, he smiled sweetly. What could I do but send him one back?
“The man his self. Awake at last,” Butthole said, sounding downright happy to see it. Not mad at all. “You pack a hell of a wallop with a plastic bat. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to be feeling that one tomorrow.”
“You speak English?” Logan asked, his face the very picture of perplexed.
Oh, no, I thought, not this shit again.
“High school teachers might tell you different,” Butthole said, amused. No matter how many times I heard it, I could not get used to that high, wandering voice of his.
“Well,” Logan said, chewing this development over, “I guess you’d have to. Pretty good at it too. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were from Bulloch County. How’d you get all the way here from Iraq?”
“What kind of dumb shit are you?” Hayes chimed in.
“Oh, Mr. Hayes.” Butthole made tsk-tsk noises and rubbed one forefinger against the other. “It’s good to know some things don’t change much. You are still the same retard I remember.”
Hayes opened his mouth to say something to this, but my mom hushed him and yanked on his wrist by leaning back.
“At least your woman here knows when to shut up.” Butthole turned his attention back to Logan. “You, sir, are a genuine surprise.” He drew the vowels out in the word genuine. “A kink in the plan. A fly in the ointment. Nobody said nothing about a soldier. Fact is, you nearly got the drop on me. I know, I know, big of me to admit it, but it’s God’s own truth. I came to the door expecting a girl, a nurse, and one certified pudding head. What I got instead is you. Fatty in there will limp to his grave because of that balls up.”
Logan’s face crumpled into a look of deeper confusion.
“Wondering how I figured you, huh?”
“I thought you were here gunning for me.” Logan scooched himself backwards and up, so his spine ran straight along the clothesline pole.
“No doubt you pissed somebody off before I made the scene. But looks like I’m the one you’ll have to deal with. Landed yourself in something of a jackpot here, friend.”
“A soldier?” Hayes said. No one bothered to answer this.
My mom gave me one of her patented mom looks. Now I understand, it said, and I don’t like it one bit. We’ll be talking about this later. And I sent a look back that said, In the middle of this shit storm, you’re worried about something like this?
“Look, I just got to ask, ’cause you don’t look like the type that usually teams up with dumbass over here.” Butthole folded his knife shut, stuffed it in the front pocket of his pants, and stood, pinching the pleats to keep them sharp. “What in the hell are you doing mixed up in all this?”
“Is this a trick question?” Logan asked. The gash on the back of his head reopened. A small trickle of blood ran down his neck and into the sparse hair on his chest.
“Might well be a trick answer.” Butthole walked over and inspected him, nudging his leg with a shiny shoe.
Back in the house, Mr. Cannon let out a long, low groan. Then the yard went silent but for regular summer sounds. The box on the telephone pole beside the house gave off a high-pitched hum. Tree frogs barked. A breeze up at treetop level rattled the dry pine needles like stick pins in a jar.
“So?” Butthole rocked back and forth on his spiffy loafers.
“Name, Logan Loy. Rank, specialist. No, well, by now they’ve probably busted me down to, never mind. Serial number …” He shook his head. Droplets of blood flew. Butthole avoided them with a quick step back. Logan mumbled out a list of numbers.
“Son, do you even know where you are? I must of rung your bell pretty good.” Butthole dropped down into a squat. He poked at something on Logan’s chest with the walkie-talkie’s antenna. “Mmm, shrapnel, huh?” His voice strangely sympathetic now. “Got a couple of them myself.”
“He don’t have nothing to do with Hayes and his stupid trouble. He’s just my friend,” I said. My own voice was small and meaningless out there in the big, sticky dark.
Mom twisted her body so she could look over at me again, wondering about something. Her face was a jumble of hard lines and wrinkles in the porch light.
“That right, jellybean? Just a gentleman caller calling on the worst night in the world?” Butthole measured me again with a quick up-and-down of his eyes. For what, I didn’t know, but worried about it and wanted to fight it. He let out a large and dramatic sigh. “Up to me, I’d cut him loose, but I ain’t the boss of me in this …” He paused to smile toward the sky. “… this here endeavor. Only a paid employee.” He laughed at the idea, and this seemed to make those last few words into a lie. Somehow this reassured me. Not much, but some.
Logan grumbled at him. All I heard was the words “ass kicking.”
“I’d like nothing better than to see if you could manage it. Don’t mind the occasional challenge. But it ain’t to be, friend. I’m on the clock tonight.”
Butthole went back to the porch chair and sat. He took off his jacket to fuss with the tear that Logan’s weapon had made in the shoulder. I thought about the butter knife digging into my hip and what I might do with it and when. I wasn’t tied up yet, and that was something at least. Moths flew back and forth above the kitchen door, casting monster shadows on the patio. A mosquito nibbled at my ankle until I smashed it into goo. The time between the flashes of lightning and the rumbles of thunder got smaller and smaller. From eight seconds to seven, and then from seven to six. The first I heard of what would happen next was the barking of dogs.
Those Dogs Looked Like
They Were Fixing to Eat Us
The purple walkie-talkie chirped once and then a familiar voice said, “The dogs are approaching the kennel. I repeat, the dogs are approaching the kennel.”
A second voice broke in, somewhat softer but definitely irritated, and said, “Stop fucking around with that and give it here, you—”
Dogs barked in the background. And then continued to bark somewhere on the other side of the house. A big car, maybe two, pulled up on the street. A door slammed. Another two doors followed, almost on top of each other. The dogs went crazy, howling now like crazed women.
Butthole grinned. “Ready for the greatest show on earth?”
“Jesus fuck,” Hayes said.
“That’s right,” Butthole said, “Jesus fuck.”
“I knew there were more, Lynn. I told you.” Logan nodded his head, pleased about this for reasons only known to him.
I tried to hush him with my eyes.
Metal rattled and clunked on the other side of the house. The sounds the dogs made changed, their voices quieter but more intense. Butthole stood up and turned toward the carport. I knew I had to move. My mom craned her neck to watch me. Three steps, two seconds. I slipped the knife out of my waistband and put it into Logan’s hands while I hugged him. For whatever reason, Butthole hadn’t made his bindings as tight as the others. His hands had a little play.
“You know what to do,” I whispered against his neck, having absolutely no idea myself.
“I won’t let them,” Logan said. His eyes shined. He smiled.
I kissed him on the mouth.
“Hey, now,” Butthole shouted, all the jolly out of his voice, “none of that shit.”
“I just wanted—”
“Sit your ass down. Don’t make me—”
“Leon,” someone yelled, all hale and man-friendly, “I knew you’d wrap this shit up. ’Bout fucking time, too.” It was that bastard Marty. But I’d known all along he’d come, even if I hadn’t thought it outright.
“Yup,” Butthole said.
Marty came striding around the corner of the house and looked for a moment as though he might wrap Butthole in a bear hug and then thought better of it. Instead, he brought his hands together in a porkchop clap to give him an excuse for the silly gesture. The man looked even bigger than I remembered. Fat, yes, fat as hell, but with a broad back and big arm muscles underneath all that padding. A few steps behind him, four or five dogs strained against leashes. With all their jumping and yipping, I couldn’t keep them straight. They pulled my old friend Travis so hard he slipped and nearly wiped out coming around the corner. Burns trailed behind, hands stuffed in the pockets of his bomber jacket. A drop of rain hit my arm, but none followed.
“Hey, Leon.” Burns waved a hand, wearing a grin so wide and tight it nearly split his lips at the corners.
“If you ever call me that again, I’ll cut your dick off and make you eat it,” Butthole said.
Travis laughed.
“You neither.” Butthole pointed his purple walkie-talkie at him. In his hand, it looked like something vicious.
“Don’t worry about them, but—” Marty frowned and pointed at Logan. “Who the fuck is that one?”
“Come here, chief.” Butthole led him around the corner into the shadow of the carport.
“I’m glad we ate,” Travis said, speaking over his shoulder at Burns. “This looks to be a long one.” The dogs yanked so hard he slid a couple of feet in the damp grass. Those dogs looked like they were fixing to eat us.
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