by Jim Nesbitt
“Because I brought you the killer of your woman.”
“Is that right? Now, how’s a dumbass campesino like you know something like that?”
“Jefe, the whole valley knows about the loss of your woman and this son of a whore who killed her. The price on his head. The way her death made you crazy with grief.”
“And you think bringin’ them here is enough to wash away your sins against me and your compadres? You think that?”
“Si, patrón. I ask your forgiveness.”
Conjo touched the dirt with his forehead. As he rose up, T-Roy cupped the ex-contra’s chin in one hand, leaning down, smiling and speaking softly.
“That’s a real fine gesture, pard. And it touched my heart. It truly did. I wish I could find it in me to forgive and forget, but I guess I just ain’t Christian enough.”
Conjo looked frightened and confused. The words meant nothing to him, but the look in T-Roy’s eyes did. T-Roy grabbed him by the hair and tightened his grip on Conjo’s chin, giving a sharp twist to Conjo’s head, working it like a balky valve wheel on a pipeline, bracing both feet wide, his face breaking into an open-mouthed leer of concentration. His long red hair shook from the effort.
Small crunching noises came first, followed by a sharp crack that caused Burch to wince. T-Roy let Conjo’s twitching body drop on its side, pulling a bandana from his back pocket, tipping his hat and wiping the sweat from his face. He pointed to one of his men.
“You there -- bring me that pack. Let’s see what prize these fine folk have brought us.”
T-Roy rummaged through the knapsack, clucking to himself like an old woman.
“My, my -- isn’t this nice,” he said, pulling Carla Sue’s Colt out of the pack.
He stepped in front of Burch. His voice lost all traces of studied politeness.
“This the gun you did Astrid with, you cocksucker?”
“I didn’t do your ...”
A backhand slap cut Burch off. The big man spat blood in the dirt and glared at T-Roy.
“... girlfriend. Wasn’t me, asshole. Ross had it done. Set me up as the patsy. Figured it might flush you from this hidey hole.”
“That’s an interestin’ line of bullshit. Too bad I don’t believe a word you say.”
“Doesn’t much matter if you do or don’t. You got the upper hand. You gonna kill us sooner or later. I got nothin’ to lose tellin’ you the truth. And you know I’m way too ornery to beg for anything from a shitass like you.”
Another backhand, this time with Carla Sue’s pistol along for the ride. The Colt gouged a chunk out of Burch’s jaw, just below his left cheekbone. He could taste more blood in his mouth. Heat and stinging pain marked where the pistol cut him.
T-Roy leaned in. His breath smelled like tequila and the inside of an unwashed jockstrap.
“You’ll beg, old man. You and her will beg plenty before I’m through. But I ain’t done with you yet. I got things to show you.”
“Cut the drama, shithead -- I ain’t interested in anything you have to show me. Heard all about this damn voodoo woman you got here. You want to hide behind her skirts, that’s fine. But why don’t you and me have it out. Man to man. Right here?”
“Pistols?”
“Be fine. You got a second one in that sack. It’s mine -- the one I used to kill that nigger you sent. He died real pretty, right after he killed my ex.”
“So, we’re even.”
“Not hardly. You forget Wynn Moore and the fact I didn’t kill your woman. I’m one down. Killin’ you would even it out, though. Maybe I can get that voodoo woman to let me do it twice. Put me ahead of the damn game. Maybe I’ll get that voodoo woman to send us both to hell where I can just keep on killin’ you.”
“And maybe I’ll just sic that voodoo woman on you. You might not like her culinary tastes.”
“It won’t matter what I like after I’m dead, needledick. Fact is, I’m dead already. So what you do and how you do it means about as much to me as the name of the young boy you’re going to get to suck your dick tonight.”
Burch shrugged as much as a bound man can.
“Pablo, Juan -- don’t matter to me. It’s your dick, their mouth.”
Burch saw a fist and Carla Sue’s Colt swinging for his head just before someone fired a flare gun behind his eyelids and he started a long fall down a very dark hole.
Chapter 36
The stench brought him back. Sweet and cloying on the surface, a gagging mix of the sewer and the morgue underneath.
He was on his side, on the dirt floor of a shed. His arms were still bound behind him. His face and forehead were on fire -- places where Carla Sue’s Colt gouged grooves into his flesh, he guessed. One eye, the left one, nearest the floor, was swollen shut. With his tongue he could feel the jagged stumps of broken teeth -- four at least.
Across the room, flames licked the bottom of a fire-blackened cauldron that stood about chest high. He saw a short, barrel-chested man drop something slick and tan into the cauldron, heard that something plop into something liquid inside.
To his right, Burch saw T-Roy -- bareheaded and barechested, his face and ribcage streaked with dark wetness, his cheeks puffing in and out, forcing smoke from a large cigar into a column of smoke rising from a gourd bowl he held in front of him.
T-Roy spun to the four points of the compass, holding the bowl out and above his head, aiming the cigar smoke toward the corrugated tin roof of the shed.
He was backlit by candles burning on an altar. Light from guttering torches also flickered across his body, causing the slick, dark streaks to shine. Smoke swirled through his wiry red hair.
T-Roy placed the bowl and cigar on the altar and stepped up to a heavy, mahogany table. Burch could only see the legs and the underside of the tabletop. The legs were slick and wet, like the streaks on T-Roy’s body.
His back faced Burch. The muscles of his arms and neck were corded. His right arm rocked back and forth like a man sawing hardwood or a tough cut of beef. Burch heard a wet plopping sound. T-Roy turned to face the room, holding a human heart in both hands, rubbing it across his chest, then his face.
“Sweet Jesus.”
It was Carla Sue’s voice -- a raspy whisper right behind him. He craned his neck back, trying to see her. She caught the movement.
“Glad you’re with us. ‘Fraid you might miss the show.”
“Thought that might be you. Glad it isn’t.”
“You’re sweet. It’s our buddy. Hope he said his prayers last night.”
“He snored, remember? What’d I miss?”
“T-Roy, playin’ with his food like that. Chants and cigar smoke. Been like a hog butcherin’ otherwise. Been choppin’ up Conjo and slippin’ him into that cauldron.”
The short man handed another gourd bowl to T-Roy. He slapped the heart into the bowl, walked over and sat on his haunches in front of them. He showed them the bowl; the heart sat in the middle of a thick, greenish-brown paste that was barely liquid.
“Chilimole. An old Aztec recipe.”
His voice was low and soft, like an accountant with bad news about taxes or the bottom line. It had the patient tone of a teacher in conference with the parents of an unruly child.
“You cut the heart, like this ...” A thin strip of muscle carved with a large hunting knife. “... then swirl it in the chilimole ...” A strip covered with goo, perched on two fingertips. “... then eat it.”
T-Roy tilted his head back and dropped the strip into his mouth. He swallowed with a shudder that started at his head and traveled through his shoulders, chest and stomach.
He looked at them with blank eyes, carved and swirled again, then tilted his head back like a baby bird begging mama for a worm. The heart flesh dangled from his fingertips.
“This gives me power. Power over this man’s family and friends
. Power over my enemies. Power over things above and under this earth. That’s what the old woman says.”
“Must be a lotta power in the heart of some damn peasant contra.”
“Just an appetizer, my friend.”
T-Roy motioned to men in the far corner of the shed. They grabbed Burch, yanking him to his feet. He watched as the short man slung what was left of Conjo’s body -- head, trunk and split-open chest -- onto an oilcloth behind the cauldron. They duckwalked him to the table, untying his arms and stripping his shirt off, forcing him face up onto the tabletop.
His body formed a burly bow -- arms were stretched over his head, wrists roped together and tied to a table strut. Ankles were also tied together and roped to the table. T-Roy appeared at his side, with the knife and that calm, teacher’s voice.
“Just so you’ll know -- I’m going to bleed you into this bowl, then burn your blood. Usually, you do this with somebody who’s already dead, but I’m going to give you a special treat. I want you to see your blood burn.”
T-Roy ran the knife blade under the rope binding Burch’s wrists and made a deep slice on each side. Burch could feel the bite of the blade and the warm wetness spurting from the cuts, into his cupped palms and onto the floor below. T-Roy stood over him, watching the flow, watching Burch’s face for a sign of fear.
“You’re bleeding, old man. But that’s good for you. Gets the evil humours out and puts your body into proper balance. Wards off ague and the grippe. It’s good to be bled, don’t you think? Just like going to one of them medieval barbers. Only I ain’t gonna stop it.”
Burch fought off panic that rose from his gut into his chest. He willed his body not to struggle against the ropes. He willed his eyes to return T-Roy’s gaze with a flat, cold stare.
T-Roy leaned in close, resting his right ear above Burch’s heart, breathing his locker room breath into Burch’s nostrils.
“Damn, your ticker is doin’ flip-flops. It’ll make a fine meal, son. Much better than that damn ol’ pissant from Nicaragua, don’t you think?”
Burch said nothing.
“What’s the matter, old man ...”
T-Roy rose up and brought the knife blade to Burch’s chest.
“Not ...”
A flick of the blade opened an inch-long cut above his left nipple.
“... feeling ...”
Another flick, another cut above the right nipple.
“... very ...”
Flick, a long cut along the length of his sternum.
“... talkative?”
T-Roy centered the blade where Burch’s chest met his belly. Resting his palm on the butt of the handle, he pushed the tip in slowly until it drew a small bubble of blood. He ran his other hand across the cuts in Burch’s chest, smearing the blood across his face. In the torchlight, it took on the same rusty color as the shiny dark streaks Burch saw when T-Roy was carving on Conjo.
The room changed colors on Burch, going from flickering yellow to the tobacco-stained color of a smoker’s fingertips. The edges darkened slowly, drawing in toward the center. He lost minutes and seconds of time, snapping back to a view of the room then letting it slip away again, like a deacon fighting off the Sunday sermon nods.
He saw T-Roy with a bowl in his hands. He smelled a cigar. He felt someone brush along his outstretched arms. He heard the echo of droplets hit the bottom of a bowl.
Slaps to the face then someone shoved his head up, holding him back where the hair ended and the bald pate began. T-Roy held the bowl, sprinkling dark powder like a chef adding pepper to soup. The sides of the bowl were wet and streaked. His blood, he guessed. He didn’t care.
“I want you to see this, old man. See your blood burn.”
T-Roy struck a match. Flames flew up from the bowl. Burch smelled the burnt powder and fuel oil, mixed with something sweet and gagging. His vision faded. He was floating in darkness. He could hear murmurs above him, like voices on the other side of a door. Smells crossed his nostrils -- burning leaves, dinner, a trash heap, a spent shotgun shell, incense? He couldn’t tell and didn’t care.
A long scream snapped him back into the room. It was T-Roy, perched above him with a palm on his chest and the knife above his head, ready to slash downward.
His face was in profile, tilted upward like a man looking toward the sun, eyes bulging, mouth open, tongue out, making the noise of a terrified animal. There was something up there, up in the dark, cobwebbed corner where the shed’s tin roof met the rafters, something only T-Roy or a true believer could see.
“He sees the Vision Serpent. He has angered the ones he doesn’t believe in.”
The voice was cool, soft and old -- a wise grandmother in an antique chair. It took on a steely edge and spoke to T-Roy who was silent now, but was still looking toward the roof, palm on Burch’s chest, knife held high, shaking so hard it caused Burch’s belly to jiggle.
“You don’t believe, yet you would do the things believers do. You mock us. You mock the gods, the loas, the guédés we believe in. You mock an old woman and the serpent that floats above you.”
The shaking stopped. T-Roy looked down and gave Burch a vampish wink.
“Mock, hell -- I’m just trying to put on a good show for our guests, madrina.”
T-Roy tensed up, raising the knife higher and pushing down on Burch’s chest. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and started to scream.
The scream was broken by the roar of a Colt .45.
Burch could hear the bullets smack into T-Roy’s skull and back. Flying Ashtrays and hardball -- he could see them punch out gobs of blood and flesh as they slammed on through T-Roy’s chest and face. His head snapped downward in profile, the lifeless stare of one eye glaring at Burch like a shark or marlin brought to the side of an angler’s boat to die after hours of struggle.
It is a look that says this animal still wants to fight, still wants to kill. But it can’t. It is a look a man doesn’t forget, one that brings on shudders in deep sleep or daydreams. Burch knew he would carry that look with him always.
“Hope you burn in hell, mister.”
Carla Sue’s flat, cold voice. He got to see her kill another man. Just before the room went dark again.
Chapter 37
In and out of the sweet nowhere that the mind uses to hide a body from a bad hurt, he saw the half light of dawn and short, muscular men in straw hats pull on the heavy rope of a hand-drawn ferry. Someone whispered Los Ebanos.
His jaw throbbed like someone had slammed it with a cold chisel and his tongue was so swollen he couldn’t talk. He looked at his watch and saw white gauze and adhesive tape on his wrist. His head started spinning and his vision went black.
Back again, but seeing nothing. He felt the solid sway of a big car on the move and heard the sudden, whooshing sound of other cars passing by an open window. A hand stroked his head. A voice said: “Don’t you die on me now, Big ‘Un.”
Gone again. He watched Wynn Moore order a bottle of Pearl, cup his palm on the ass of a dead whore named Candy Slice and wink at his dead aunt as she sang “... shall we gather at the river. The bee-u-tee-ful, bee-u-tee-ful a ri-iv-er ...”
He heard Shoat Nimitz, quarterback on his high school team, call his favorite play, 28-Pitch. On the deuce. Pull and get the cornerback. Make him cough blood. Smell the turf. Feel the back rip on by.
He threw a forearm. Pain snapped him awake. He saw a sign through the rear window of the car -- Pete’s Paradise Motel. Faded blue on white. His vision slipped away.
He felt the cool brush of fresh sheets. She was with him again.
He could taste her musk, overripe and almost rotten, but so sweet that he arched his head off the pillow, straining the root of his tongue for more. He heard her muffled moans of approval, then a sharp yelp of pleasure as she raised her head, tossing her thick hair -- black and glossy as a Chinese girl’s
-- across her back, from right shoulder to left, in time with his rhythm.
“Shit, boy -- that tongue. Forgot how good -- mmmm. Shit, boy. Right -- annnhhn -- right there. Right -- annnnhhnn.”
Ragged breaths. Much noise with no words. She flicked her mane faster. She cried louder. She rode him, hands planted on his soft belly, nails raking into the hair just below his chest, arching high and back, face toward the ceiling, yelling at the light, the fan and the neighbors up above.
He brushed her nipples with his fingertips, bringing her back, causing her to look down at him with a half smile, teeth just showing through her parted lips. He gave her a thrust. She hissed and pitched forward.
“No fair, boy. Get me flying and take advantage. Got to even things up. Now, what have we here?”
Her hair felt cool and heavy on his thighs and gut. She took him up slowly, pausing now and then to look at his face and run her nails through his chest hair. She grinned, then turned back to her task, taking him up and over, slurping like something starved and thirsty, riding his knee between her crotch.
She smiled her half smile. She was his first and longest love and she was with him again. He said his first words.
“Do me a favor. Don’t say okra.”
A loud, burring jangle -- familiar and unwanted. It wouldn’t stop. Her half smile faded. So did she -- gone again and he couldn’t bring her back. The jangle pulled him up and away, insistent and dragging him from a place he didn’t want to leave.
He woke up. With a hard-on. And a wet spot on his sheets. With a ringing phone on the night table on his left, above his head, stabbing his ears and brain and leaving him with only one way to make it stop. He reached across his body with his right arm -- white-hot pain sliced into his ribs. He tried a blind and awkward reach with his left and knocked the handset out of the cradle with a clatter that killed the jangle. He grabbed the spiraled cord and reeled it in, tucking the business end of the blower between his jaw and shoulder, wincing with pain.
He tried to speak, but couldn’t. He listened to a long-distance hiss on the line.