Threat Ascendant

by Brian M. Switzer

  Terrence gave him a thoughtful nod. "That's what I'm here to talk to y’all about. Which one of you dumb asses is Clint?"

  The cell on the right held a pair of generic rednecks. Both were shirtless and wore their long, dirty hair in mullets. They had matching scraggly goatees. The taller of two raised his hand. "Me."

  Terrence took in the scab-covered furrows clawed into both cheeks and his busted and swollen lip. "Yeah, I should have guessed it was you." He laughed merrily, his tone high-pitched and scornful. "Man, my girl fucked your face up!"

  Clint punched one of the iron bars with the meaty part of his palm; the sound was soft and tiny in the cavernous space. "Man, FUCK that bitch. If I'm in here because that whore says I raped her, she's a fucking liar. I rode her like a champ but she begged for it every night, man." He jerked his thumb at his cellmate. "Ask Mikey, man. He heard her."

  "That's okay, Clint. I'll take your word for it." He raised his voice a few decibels. "What I'm about to say applies to you other guys. Tara has special plans for your boy Clint, here."

  Clint objected in a querulous tone. "Man, did you hear what I said? The only plan that bitch has for me is to fuck me more, because she couldn't get enough."

  Terrence ignored him. "We want to know where you were taking the women, and every detail you can think of about your destination. The first one of you to provide that information gets to go. We'll let you walk right out of here and go on with your life, as long as you promise to do it far from here and we never see you again. The three that don’t help us? The only thing you have to worry about is how much misery you'll experience before you die, and how quick that death will come."

  Fu Manchu used both hands to move the dying man's head and shoulders from his lap and set them gently on the floor. He rose to his feet and pressed his hands against his blood-soaked jeans as if trying to wipe off the blood. He studied Terrence, and again the peace officer was struck by the dearth of emotion in the man's eyes. "My name is Guy Patterson." Guy pointed at the man with the bullet wound. “That's my partner. We're the only two with any knowledge of the auction- the other boys are hired help and this was their first trip. So I'm the only person with the information you want. You get medical help for my partner and let the boys go… then I might answer your questions.”

  Terrence nodded his head reflectively. "You drive a hard bargain, Guy. But I think we'll go another way." With a smooth, practiced motion Terrence pulled his sidearm and aimed it at Guy's head. An expression of concern passed over his face and his mouth opened, but before he spoke, Terrence pulled the trigger. There was a flat report and a small hole emanating a trickle of blood appeared in the center of Guy's forehead. His knees buckled and he landed awkwardly on top of his partner.

  When the shot rang out, Clint and his running buddy flinched and squatted down. To his left, the fifth prisoner flung himself to the floor.

  Clint stood up straight and gaped at Terrence in wonder. "What the fuck?" He asked in a stunned voice. "You shot him. You fucking shot the boss." He gaped at Guy's body and watched the wounded prisoner try to squirm out from underneath it. "He was going to tell you what you want to know. Why in the hell did you shoot him?"

  "Because he was a scumbag who abused women, the same as you fuckers." He swung the pistol in an arc, pointing it first at the prisoner on his right, then the one on his left. "I'm supposed to save old Clint for Tara, but she didn't say anything about you two pieces of shit. Who's next?"

  The guy on the left huddled in a silent ball; Clint's cellmate shielded his face with his forearms and turned his head away. "I'll tell you everything, man, just quit pointing that gun at me."

  Clint shoved him, his face twisted with anger. "Fuck you, Mikey. Don't you tell this nigger anything.”

  Terrence lowered the Beretta but didn't re-holster it. "I thought the two dead guys were the only ones with any information, Mikey. How can you help me?"

  Mikey wiped his cheeks with his shirt sleeve. "Man, Guy was my uncle and Clint's next-door neighbor. We've been together since the power went off. I’ve taken women to the auction with him five or six times." He fell back against the jail bars. "I'll tell you anything you want. Just put the gun away."

  Clint vibrated with rage and reeled off an impressive string of curses topped off with a threat. "Mikey if you say one more word to this nigger, I'll kill you."

  Terrence whistled a merry two-note tune. "Clint? Buddy?"

  Clint spun and faced him, his face a mask of rage and hate. "I'm not your buddy, nigger. What you want?"

  Terrence gave him a cold grin, one that had instilled fear and tougher men than Clint who were in better situations. "They told me not to kill you, to save you for Tara. But they didn't say I could hurt you so bad you wished you were dead. They didn't say not to take a fillet knife and see how many pounds of meat I can cut off your stinking redneck body before you pass out from the pain. They didn't say don’t pull whatever teeth you still have one at a time with a rusty set of pliers."

  Clint's face had paled and fear replaced anger on his features.

  Terrence eyed him head to toe, then continued. "If you make one more threat, or call me nigger again, I’ll go to work on you. And you'll curse God, your fat, smelly, trailer trash Mom and any one of the thirteen rednecks that could be your Dad. You understand me?"

  Clint kept his eyes glued to his feet and nodded that he did.

  "Good. You may not be as stupid as you look." He removed a key ring from his belt loop and approached the door. He inserted a key into the lock, looked up, and turned it. "Mikey, you come out of there. I’m going to put you somewhere by yourself so you don't have to listen to Clint, the toothless wonder fuckstick anymore. Clint, you go sit at the back of the cell and grab a bar with each hand." He studied Mikey as the redneck approached. He was a carbon copy of Clint. The same dirty mullet, the same scraggly facial hair, the same skinny frame. The only difference was Clint’s two front teeth were missing, and Mikey had all of his. They were yellow and black, but they were there.

  Mikey stopped at the cell door. He shuffled his feet and picked nervously at a zit on his cheek. He eyed the floor, the limestone wall across the alcove, the inky darkness at the top of the tunnel… anything to keep from making eye contact with Terrence.

  The peace officer spoke in a stern voice. "Mikey… look at me."

  The redneck glanced at Terrence's face and then jerked his eyes away.

  "You understand, on your best day and my worst, you have no hope of taking me. Right?"

  Mikey cleared his throat and gawked at Terrence. "Yeah. I understand."

  "Okay. I won’t cuff you, but if you get cute or try anything stupid, I'll ruin you. I'll beat you until you pass out, then revive you so you're awake when I snap your neck. You believe that?"

  Mikey's head bobbed almost imperceptibly. "Yeah. Yes sir."

  Terrence swung the heavy door open. "Come on out of there, then."

  90

  * * *

  They were halfway to the exit door when the prisoner in the cell on the left called out. "Hey! Hey, Sheriff. What will happen to me?"

  He took Mikey by the neck and turned to the man. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Garvey. I worked for Al, Guy's partner."

  Terrence looked him over. Another redneck, he was dirty and unkempt like Clint and Mikey. But he didn't share their build- he was beefier, with about thirty extra pounds on a six-foot frame. His wavy brown hair wasn’t cut into a mullet; instead, it sprung from his head in every direction. Terrence gave him a hard look. "Did you have anything to do with hurting Tara?"

  Garvey bounced nervously on his toes as he spoke. "Sir, I don't know who Tara is. I rode with Al. We bought three girls in Webb City and had just shown up at the camp when all hell broke loose. I'm still not sure what’s going on. All I just know I got shot in the arm, tied up, and brought here."

  Terrence stepped a few feet closer and pee
red at Garvey's arm. Sure enough, someone wrapped white medical tape around his bicep to make a sloppy bandage. The wound underneath had bled through the tape, turning it pink before the blood ran down his arm. He squeezed Mikey's neck as a warning and addressed Garvey. "So you and Al, you grabbed these girls out of their homes?"

  "No, we picked them up from a couple of guys. They grabbed the women and we bought them."

  Terrence squinted at him, taken aback. "So these dudes have these women they sell them to you. What are you, in the phone book under human slavery?"

  Garvey dropped his eyes. "No. We have a route we run, stop at certain places on certain days. If a guy has a girl when we make a stop, we'll buy her and take her to the auction."

  "Did you hurt those girls like Clint hurt Tara?"

  Garvey was offended. "No! No, I never raped anybody. It’s a business. Buy a girl here for a nickel, take her there and sell her for a dime."

  "Riddle me this, Chucklehead- is that your way of saying you did nothing wrong?"

  Garvey held his hands out and spoke in a beseeching tone. "Sort of. Somebody else stole the girls. They were going to the auction. Hands down, that was guaranteed. Do you think they'd rather with me or with Clint over there? I make sure they have food and water during the trip. Clint just rapes them. So yeah, somebody’s making a buck off of them. It might as will be me, and I never hurt them."

  Terrence shook his head in amazement. "My old grandpappy used to say a man can justify anything when there’s a dollar in it for him. I tell you what Garvey, I'll do this for you. You make it sound like the women should be grateful to you. So, I'll let them decide what happens to you. If they tell me ‘Garvey's a great guy who was just doing his job and if I have to get sold into slavery by somebody it might as well be him’, I'll let you go about your merry way. But if they say, ‘kill that motherfucker and make him suffer’," Terrence shrugged his shoulders. "We'll do that, too."

  91

  * * *

  Danny didn't leave Tara's side for two weeks.

  He tended to her like a new mother with her first baby. He applied ointment to her cuts and scrapes and put cool compresses on her bruises. After arranging to have her meals delivered, he fluttered around while she ate- refilling her water, cutting her meat, and cajoling her to eat more. He fended off visitors, aware she was self-conscience about her bruised and battered appearance and embarrassed about what had happened. Tara allowed Tess, Becky, and Willa to visit once a day, for ten minutes; at ten minutes and two seconds, he was pushing them towards the exit. When the Doc stopped by to check up on her, Danny watched him like a hawk until he examined her privates; then he stood with his back to her and tried to ignore her cries of pain. Coy and Jobe visited once, so Tara could thank them for helping with her rescue. After that, when Coy tried to return, Danny told him it was a bad time and to try again later. He gave her long, luxurious sponge baths in an eight-foot cattle trough and washed her hair. He sent her dirty laundry to Becky every other day and once a week gave Tess a list of toiletries and personal items she needed.

  They slept together on a full-sized bed. Danny laid on his back and Tara put her head on his chest and snuggled close. He draped an arm around her shoulders and watched her drift off to sleep, vowing to himself no one would ever hurt her again. On the afternoon of their fourth day in the little lean-to, she gave him the play-by-play of her abduction and imprisonment, starting with Clint appearing behind her on the road and leaving nothing out. He held her while she sobbed, fighting back tears of his own and calling on every bit of his self-control to keep from going to the jail and killing them all.

  They played hours of Monopoly (she always won) and game after game of checkers (he beat her almost every time). He sat Indian-style with his back against the couch while she sprawled on the floor and used his lap as a pillow and they took turns reading to one another. They read her favorite books- Runaway Jury and The Rainmaker by John Grisham, Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. They started Bad Feminist Essays until Danny refused to read another word, enraged by at what he referred to as ‘Roxane Gay's hypocrisy’. He told her stories from life with Will and Coy on the ranch and she laughed until she cried. He rooted around in the storage tunnel and found a briefcase stuffed with poker chips. They used them for a running game of poker and in a short time she owed him over $14,000. She won much of it back playing Scrabble for a dollar a point. While it delighted Danny endlessly to build words like anal, boob, and rod, Tara delved into her legal vocabulary and played the double and triple-point boxes like a pro.

  Following her one-week examination, the Doc pulled him aside to report on her condition. "I'm pleased with her physical recovery. Her cuts and bruises are healing up well; you’re doing a good job with her antibiotics and ointments. As far as her plumbing goes, the abrasions have healed up and the swelling has gone down. Physically, she's doing great. Recovering mentally, though, is a whole other ballgame. Does she have nightmares, crying jags, huge emotional swings?"

  Danny thought for a moment. "Nightmares, yes. Crying jags- she's teared up a couple of times but only cried once, and that was when she told me what she'd gone through. Emotionally, I'd say she's on a pretty even keel. Remember, nobody ever had to wonder what was on her mind before this. She’s always been open with her feelings. Is she emotional? Yes. More emotional than she used to be? Maybe a little, but not much.”

  "That's good, Danny. The attack will affect her for a while. She'll doubt her self-worth, wonder if she brought it on herself, and wonder why God or karma punished her. A lot of victims of violent rape worry no one will ever desire them again, that people will see them as spoiled goods."

  "If there is a downswing in her emotional state you have medicine for that, right? Some kind of anti-depressant or feel-good pill?"

  The Doc sucked on a tooth. "That's not a good idea, son. Pills like that are out there, and I have handed them out a few times on a short time basis. But they have side effects, and this isn’t the time for a hazy mind. I think in most cases it's better the patient keeps a good handle on what's going on around them and finds other ways to deal with their emotional problems."

  "That makes sense." Danny guided him away from the apartment and toward the tunnel exit.

  As they walked, the Doc pursed his lips and bowed his head for a moment, then look back up at Danny. "A lot of people would like to tell her hello and convey their best wishes."

  "Tell them to send a card." Danny stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. "I'm sorry, that was smart-assed. It’s Tara's call, though. I'm not keeping her here- she doesn't want to see anybody right now."

  "I understand. But at some point, you need to push her to leave the house. She can stay in there forever, but that won’t help her get better."

  "I got it, Doc."

  "Will asked me to let you know he needs to see you."

  Danny's chuckle was mirthless. "I bet he does. Tell him I'll be down when I can."

  He offered the doctor his hand and they shook, then Danny made his way back. He closed the door behind him; Tara waited for him in the tiny living room.

  "What did he say about me?"

  "You'll be crazy forever and I'm the only person who will ever be able to stand having you around."

  Her eyes sparkled and one side of her mouth curled up in a wisp of a smile. "Good thing I'm okay with that. Come on and I'll whip your ass at poker."

  "Woman, you can't afford to play poker with me anymore." With a grin of his own, he followed her into the bedroom.

  92

  * * *

  On the afternoon of their eighth day together Tara was kicking his ass at a game of Yahtzee. He studied the dice, trying to decide whether to go for his large straight or play the threes when she leaned across the game table and gave him a short but firm kiss on the lips. She leaned back, wearing a coy little smile.

  He poi
nted at the table. "You stirred up my dice with your big ol' titties."

  Her smile went from coy to flirtatious. "I bet I can stir up more than that," she said with a wink.

  After that, it was as if they needed to touch one another all the time. When they sat at the little dinette and played board games, they rubbed their feet together under the table. Sitting on the floor at mealtime with their backs against the couch, their hips and thighs were in continuous contact. When one left the room they touched hands before leaving and again when they returned.

  When the girls came for their daily visit the following morning they couldn't help but notice the change. At separate times, each of the three shot him approving expressions. When it came time for them to leave, Tara walked them out rather than Danny and stayed in the tunnel with them for an inordinate amount of time. The lean-to walls were creche paper-thin and several times he heard the four of them burst into high-pitched gales of laughter.

  That afternoon they laid on the bed together, reading. Danny propped his head up with several pillows and thumbed through an old Cattleman Magazine. Tara laid on her side with her head on his chest and an open book on his belly; their legs intertwined, and he absentmindedly rubbed her foot with his big toe.

  Without a word she closed her book, frowned at him, and burst into tears. He held her head against his chest and stroked her hair, saying nothing. When five minutes passed and her sobs hadn't lessened, he whispered in her ear. "It's over now, and you're safe. You have nothing to be afraid of." He thought he was helping, so she surprised him when she struck him in the chest.

  His shirt muffled her voice and it was thick with tears. "That's not why I'm crying."

  He pushed her into a sitting position and sat next to her. He cupped her face with his palms and swiped at the tears on her cheeks with his thumbs. "Then why are you crying?"