Tatterdemon

by Vernon, Steve

  It was a good thing Maddy had never learned to be squeamish. Zigger pattered after her, following by nose and ear, getting under her feet, glad to be outside and surrounded by a thousand fascinating stinks.

  “You should have locked the damn dog in the house,” Bluedaddy said.

  Maddy snorted out loud.

  If she was going crazy she might as well enjoy herself.

  “I ought to harness that mongrel up to this bastard’s body and make him drag it,” she said.

  “So why don’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t think of it, I guess. I was kind of busy murdering my husband.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it murder,” Bluedaddy said.

  Maddy thought about that as she dragged.

  “You’re dead right, Bluedaddy. It wasn’t murder. He hit me. I was defending myself.”

  Now it was Bluedaddy’s turn to laugh.

  “Defending? From behind? With a fry pan the size of Cincinnati? I said you couldn’t call it murder but it sure as hell wasn’t self defense.”

  Maddy wasn’t so certain.

  She kept having doubts.

  “Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe I ought to drag him back in, call the police, and let them handle it. I mean, he was asking for it. He was going to hit me.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Bluedaddy noted.

  “You been watching?”

  “Girl, I was always watching. You let him hit you often enough.”

  “You’re saying I let him hit me?”

  “That’s gospel you can sing in the choir pit. Life is what we make of it. Nobody does things to us, we just let them happen.”

  “So that makes me innocent. That means Vic let me hit him.”

  “Maybe it does and maybe doesn’t, but it won’t mean diddly squat when that judge bangs his gavel. You’ll go to jail for sure. There ain’t no death penalty anymore, but there’s things can happen that are a whole lot worse than death.”

  Bluedaddy was right.

  There wasn’t a judge in the world who would see it her way. She’d just have to bury her mistake and hope that nobody found out about it.

  So she kept on dragging.

  The ground got steeper as she went.

  Maybe she ought to bury him here in the backyard.

  No.

  It was better not take chances. She leaned into it, using her weight. It was hard work.

  Uphill and mud didn’t make it any easier.

  “He can’t be that heavy, not with the way you cook.”

  “Fuck you and the dead horse you crawled in under, Bluedaddy. Vic’s in around two hundred pounds, give or take.”

  “That’s kilograms these days, girl. Don’t they teach you nothing in school?”

  “I grew up on pounds and ounces and it’s hard to forget the old ways,” she said. “Besides, he’s a lot heavier in kilograms, so I’d rather not think about that.”

  “Yeah, but he ought to be lighter after all that daylight you let into his skull bone. Did you ever see so much blood?”

  “Of course I have. I’m a farm girl, remember? There’s more blood in a hog butchering than a little fry pan manslaughter.”

  Ha. That was a fat lie. Maybe she lived in the country but she damn sure wasn’t a farmer. She still shopped in Crossfall and that was only forty miles from Windsor, maybe ninety out of Halifax.

  She and Vic got their meat from the co-op, just the same as everyone in town. It came wrapped in neat plastic packages. The closest she ever came to butchering was trying to bargain down the meat man on a tray of day-old chops.

  Bluedaddy grinned that eerie tattered grin of his.

  “What kind of blood you seen, girl?” he asked, like he saw right through her lie.

  “I ain’t been a girl in a lot of years. That means I’ve seen lots of blood. A lot more than most men ever see. Every moon, down she comes, the red sea.”

  “I ain’t talking about that kind of blood.”

  “There’s other kinds is there? Listen Daddy, I seen lots of blood. Even seen yours, that last time.”

  “That’s old history.”

  “Nothing’s old in the country.”

  Bluedaddy grinned at that. That was the way life worked in the country. You fought with your roots and never got too far from the tree. There was always someone to remind you about your last set of pooped in diapers.

  Maddy kept dragging.

  Through the yard and up the hill and out to the barn, where Vic parked his backhoe.

  * 2 *

  It started out simple.

  Duane wanted soda pop.

  Helliard wanted a chocolate bar.

  Only neither wanted to pay.

  So Duane walked up to the store clerk and said hi while Helliard pulled Big Fuck out.

  “Open the cash drawer,” Duane said, waving his hunting knife like an open sesame wand.

  The clerked popped the register open, too quickly for Duane’s liking. He slammed the drawer shut on the boy’s fingers.

  “You got a gun in there, boy?”

  Duane was yelling, even though he wasn’t more than a half-inch from the boy’s face. Then Duane made a quick movement, like a magician yanking a rabbit out of his sleeve. He laid the knife straight across the back of the clerk’s hand. The knife popped a couple of good veins and most of the working tendons. The clerk yowled like a scalded cat.

  Ha.

  As dumb as he was, Duane was practical. It was hard to squeeze a trigger or press an alarm button if you’re busy hanging onto a handful of blood.

  Helliard didn’t like it, though.

  “Damn it, Duane. You’re getting blood all over the money.”

  “Bloody money spends the same as clean.”

  It made sense.

  Then this old man popped out of the backroom like a jack in the box – waving one of the largest double-barreled shotguns Helliard ever saw.

  “Prick!” the old man swore.

  “Shit!” Helliard swore back. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “Prick with ears!” the old man cocked the hammers.

  Helliard turned Big Fuck around, dropping the big pistol in his haste to evade buckshot wounds.

  “Shit,” Helliard said. All he could see were the old man’s eyes. All dark and preacherly and sewn nearly shut with wrinkles, like he was tired of all the things he had to look at. For half a second Helliard saw Daddy laying in that hospital bed just as big as life and talking a blue streak.

  “You dumb fuck,” Daddy said from whatever dream space he was hiding behind. “You couldn’t even kill your old man, dropping your gun like a goddamn virgin killer, how the fuck did you ever manage to get laid?”

  Duane didn’t see a thing. He was too busy blinking the clerk’s bloody finger spatter out of his eyes. Then the old man’s shotgun spoke. A load of buckshot opened Duane’s belly. It hit him so hard, Helliard expected to see him fly into the wall like in the movies.

  Only this wasn’t movies.

  Duane stood there blinking stupidly as one side of him blew in and the other blew out just as quick.

  What was left of his insides leaked out onto the floor and began soaking into the cracks between the floorboards.

  “Shhh…” Duane whispered, like he was trying to keep a secret. “Shit.”

  The old man wasn’t whispering. He was too busy fumbling for a reload, cursing full throttle, like a water tap someone forgot to twist shut.

  “Shut up, Daddy,” Helliard muttered, scrambling for Big Fuck.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Duane kept on cursing.

  The clerk freed his hand from the cash drawer. He waved it like a drunken lawn sprinkler.

  The old bastard kept cursing, spilling shotgun shells like they were Halloween candy. “Holy old baldheaded Moses, son of a Judas priest, Christ on a high-hanging cross...”

  Helliard grabbed Big Fuck.

  He pointed the pistol up at the old man who was busily cranking the shotgun
around towards Helliard. The two of them looked like a couple of fucked-up tank drivers, trying to see who could turret their aim around quick enough.

  Duane slid to the floor like a sack of wet oats.

  “Shit, shit, shit...”

  “Shit or get off the bleeding pot,” Helliard shouted, still aiming.

  “Jesus, bejesus, be-jumped-up-jesus!” the old man cocked the hammer.

  Helliard saw the shotgun ready to speak again. He swore he could see shells aiming out of both barrels. He dropped like a fumbled pancake and hit the ground just as the shotgun blew. As he hit the ground, he cranked off a shot that big-fucked an innocent jar of mayonnaise.

  The clerk waved his knifed-up hand.

  Blood flew like an explosion in a ketchup factory.

  Helliard expected to see one of the clerk’s fingers fly off.

  Duane lay there, moaning like he’d eaten one too many bags of chippies.

  Helliard squeezed three more shots, working his way up from the old man’s belly, chest and his big old nose. The old man tipped back and fell to the floor. The old man’s last shot blasted skyward, blowing out an overhead bank of fluorescent lights.

  Helliard dragged himself on the floor, too shit-scared to stand. His eyes were blind with terror and pissed-off rage. Barely seeing, he caught hold of the clerk, dragged him down to the ground and pistol-whipped him to death.

  Minutes later, the clerk long dead, Helliard kept beating and beating, like he was possessed by the spirit of an Energizer Bunny of destruction.

  * 3 *

  “Here comes Peter Cottontail...”

  Bluedaddy’s singing only made things worse.

  Maddy wished for earmuffs as she keyed the backhoe into life. Vic’s sheeted body leaned and bounced against her. His flesh chilled in the cool night air. The blood on the sheet congealed into a brown, crusty jam.

  Bluedaddy hovered over the two of them in the backhoe cab.

  “Hopping down the bunny trail...”

  Maddy used the singing to keep her mind off her sore back. She had nearly sprained her back hoisting Vic’s carcass into the cab. It would have been far easier to just swing him into the front scoop, but that seemed kind of sacrilegious.

  “Jesus on a popsicle stick, Daddy. You couldn’t carry a tune if God gave it handles and a rope to hang on to.”

  Bluedaddy’s grin buzzed and crackled above her like a burning rattlesnake. “I’m just trying to get into the Easter spirit, Maddy my girl. Just trying to get next to God, is all.”

  She geared down and pointed the snout of the big yellow machine towards the field.

  “Too late for that, Bluedaddy,” she told him. “You went the wrong direction, if I know you. Besides, you been dead too long to worry about how close you’re sitting to God.”

  “You ought to know that, being a husband murderer and all.”

  Maddy ignored his snipe. She felt too giddy to give a damn about what her dead Daddy thought. It was late and she was tired. The swig of Jack Daniels, from the bottle she’d fished from off the floorboards, hadn’t helped one bit.

  She kicked the bottle to check its slosh, making sure there was plenty left. She might want to celebrate later. She might want to have a little toot, to wake Vic off to his happy haunting ground.

  The bottle bounced between her feet.

  She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. The roar of the heavy machine filled her with a greasy tilt-a-whirl excitement.

  “Hoppity, hoppity, hoppity, little bunny.”

  It was Vic’s backhoe. He made a half-assed living from it. It seemed only right to bury him with it. Like a Viking war chief tucked into the burning belly of his favorite longboat. Only Maddy wouldn’t burn the backhoe.

  It was just what you’d call the delivery mechanism.

  She headed across the field following the heavily rutted trail. She wasn’t worried about anyone seeing her. Vic often came home Friday nights, drunk as a tavern fart, drag racing the backhoe from one end of the field to the other. Besides, the nearest neighbor was a mile away – old Lily Milton, a fat old hermit who was dead to the world by now.

  Still, it didn’t hurt to be careful.

  Maddy parked the yellow beast and lowered the scoop arm.

  She skidded its teeth across the dirt, trying for that first gulp of earth.

  “Yeehah,” shouted Bluedaddy. “Look at her go. Just as quick as a nun’s kiss. I bet you wish you had a rig like this the time you buried me.”

  She shivered over the memory his taunts stirred.

  “Here comes Peter Cottontail...”

  She hadn’t made up her mind if Bluedaddy was a for-real ghost or just a crazy woman’s hallucination. The only thing she knew for sure was his singing voice ought to have been buckshotted out of its misery half a hundred years before he was born.

  She tried to keep her mind on the digging.

  “Hopping down the bunny trail...”

  “Daddy will you please stop singing?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s pissing the hell out of my ears.”

  “Where’d you hear language like that?”

  “From you.”

  “You got a point,” Bluedaddy said. “Anyway, I was just singing to help keep you awake.”

  “Singing like that’ll wake the dead, Daddy, that’s for sure.” Maddy said. Bluedaddy chuckled, like she’d said something funny. “Besides, we killed you a long time ago. Me and Momma dug your grave. It’s long dead and over with.”

  Maddy couldn’t say that word, grave, without thinking what a hard old word it was. The word had an edge to it. You just couldn’t say it without hearing a steel blade clanging against unexpected rock.

  Or a fry pan.

  She rammed the scoop hard against the dirt to bang out the echo of old memories. She tore through the dirt, digging it extra deep, until she was done.

  “Now all I got to do is fill the grave.”

  She stared at Vic’s corpse, thinking about how hard it would be, lugging it down from the cab.

  “To hell with that.”

  She turned the backhoe around. She opened the cab door and banged her left work boot squarely against Vic’s dead ass.

  “You’ve wanted to do that for years, I bet,” Bluedaddy said.

  “Never you mind, Bluedaddy,” Maddy said, even though he spoke gospel.

  She nudged her boot forward and levered Vic’s carcass up, over and down. He rolled down the side of the backhoe, straight into the grave. His body bounced as he hit bottom dirt. His left arm jumped like he was still alive.

  “Look at him bounce, Maddy,” Bluedaddy shouted. “That boy’s still kicking.”

  A gout of red anger and a slight hint of panic flooded her heart.

  “Oh no you don’t,” she said.

  She raised the scoop and lowered it down. She raised it again and lowered it back down. Over and over, mashing Vic’s body into the dirt like a stubborn potato. Then she clambered from the cab, carrying the spade she’d brought for close work. She stood over what was left of his body, raised the spade and started swinging. This was for all of the history. This was for every goddamn thing been done to her all her life.

  She beat the corpse like a woman possessed by a jackhammer.

  Just in case he was still alive.

  Just in case he took into his head to dig his way back out, breaking bone with every swing, never taking her eyes from Bluedaddy.

  She wouldn’t stop until there was nothing left to break.

  She beat him like batter, pulping him into the earth itself.

  Ground beef, she thought.

  Bone meal.

  Mush.

  Bluedaddy watched her work.

  He never said a word.

  He just sat there, singing softly to his old blue self.

  * 4 *

  Back at the Night Owl, Helliard raised himself up from what was left of the clerk. He dragged and stumbled over to Duane’s body. He couldn’t tell if Duane wa
s dead or not. Buckshot made a hell of a wound. Duane’s stomach looked like a mess of spaghetti and meat sauce.

  Helliard checked for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  Duane was dead as tombstones.

  He had to be.

  He wasn’t even making any breathing sounds.

  Helliard closed his eyes. He could hear Daddy’s thin, raspy wheezes. He saw Daddy’s eyes staring from the hospital bed, just begging him to shoot. He heard the moan as he turned his back, unable to find the guts to shoot Daddy out of his misery.

  “Damn it.”

  He raised Big Fuck.

  The gun weighed a thousand pounds.

  He placed the barrel against Duane’s stone cold brow.

  He fired once, just to be sure.

  * 5 *

  Three hours later, Helliard hit the road with his engine howling, the gas pedal squashed flatter than the shadow of a steamrollered footprint.

  He hadn’t meant to fall asleep like he did.

  It must have been some kind of reaction to all the killing.

  Killing like that sucked the life out of a man. Still, it was one hell of a good-morning coffee, waking up face down in the leftovers of Duane’s exploded skull. It took a half hour to rinse the blood from his scalp, then fifteen minutes to find and spill kerosene from one end of the store to the other.

  It took another half hour to load the car.

  Soda pop and chocolate bars.

  Rope and duct tape.

  A couple of large tins of kerosene and a big old hunting knife, twice the size of Duane’s.

  The last thing he grabbed was a bag of potato chips.

  He took the stuff he needed, mostly. And he would need it. The kind of road Helliard was traveling, he would be bound to need this sort of gear.

  He rolled the big car down the road with the light of the burning store behind him. Big Fuck lay in his lap like a lover.

  The old man’s shotgun bounced on the floorboards.

  Helliard saw a paperboy, teetering along on a rusty bicycle. Quicker than rattlesnakes he popped Big Fuck out the window and let fly.

  BAM!

  The bullet made a hole in the boy’s chest big enough to see through. The bike skidded to the side of the road. Papers flew in the air like ink-stained shreds of confetti. The bike hit the ground and died, front wheel ticking like a Las Vegas roulette wheel.