“Oh, I brought my own bags,” Rebecca said, holding out her cloth bags.
“You say you brought your own bags?”
“Yeah. Here you go, ma’am.”
“Why? We got bags.”
“Mine are reusable.”
“Reusable?”
“Reusable.”
“Suit yourself,” the old woman said, taking the bags
“And three-hundred and fifty dollars in diesel, please,” Rebecca said.
“What’s that?” the woman asked, her lips pressed so tight they went white, her wet, leaky eyes—yellow and pink rimmed—darting from Rebecca’s long dreadlocks to Megan and back again. Rebecca thought she could smell her, sour like turning milk.
“Three-hundred and fifty dollars in diesel.”
“You want three hundred and fifty dollar dollars in diesel fuel?”
“Yes, ma’am. Please.”
“Huh, well, okay-dokey, if that’s what you want.” The woman shook her head in a slightly bewildered way and punched the keys of the ancient register. How many times had Rebecca and Calendula bought large amounts of diesel here? Eight? Nine? And the old witch acted surprised every time, eyeing her like she was some space alien asking for directions to the White House. Rebecca could feel the eyes of the over-friendly redneck in the cowboy hat on her, checking out her hair, her ass.
She eyed the cartons of cigarettes behind the old crone’s head.
“Do you have American Spirit?”
“What did you just ask me?”
“American Spirit cigarettes? Do you have American Spirit cigarettes? The organic kind?”
The old woman eyed her with pursed lips. “No. Got Camels. Got Marlboros and Winstons. Dip and chew. No organic cigarettes.”
“Just give me a pack of Camels.”
—
It took forever for the damn tank to fill, the diesel slowly gurgling into the rusted tank welded into the bed of the decrepit truck. Megan sat in the cab with her ice-cream cone, waiting for Rebecca to be done. Cowboy hat was back outside, staring at them. Finally the tank was full and Rebecca pulled the nozzle from it and set it back in the pump. It came to three dollars less than she had paid, but she wasn’t going back in that store. She swung herself up into the truck and started it up.
“Ready, kiddo?”
Megan nodded, melted ice cream running from the corners of her mouth and dripping off her chin.
Rebecca put the truck in gear and started forward as a white pickup came tearing into the lot, screeching to a stop in front of her. She hit the brakes and lurched to a stop inches away from it. The guy in the truck eyed her from beneath a baseball hat cocked all sideways. She could see a glimmer of gold chains around his neck.
She gestured with her hands for him to move out of her way. He just sat there, never taking his eyes from her. Slowly, he lifted a hand and pointed at her.
Shaking her head in disbelief she gave the horn a quick blast. He squinted, then inched the truck forward, out of her way. She pulled out, glancing over her shoulder to see his finger still extended, now turned sideways with his thumb held up, like a pistol, jerking his arm up and down as if he was firing.
“Fucking rednecks,” she said under her breath, hitting the gas, the tires spinning in the gravel lot and then chirping as she swung out onto the asphalt road.
4
Calendula gaped at the clones Coyote had brought back, rubbing his wart with his thumb in quick, tiny circles. They were beautiful. Trays and trays of little marijuana starts in rock-wool cubes, their roots creeping out in white, mycelium-like tendrils. Twelve hundred of them, covered in clear-plastic humidity domes, like little alien embryos, incubating, taking root, getting ready to colonize. Take over.
“Plant the best and toss the worst two hundred,” Coyote said. He gave Calendula a wink, then added, singing: “That’s the way you do it.” This prompted a cough. “By the way—the, ah, expenses? They come out of your half. At, you know, market value.”
It took Calendula all day to set the tiny plants in the lava-rock-filled baskets, get the pumps going, the nutrient solution slurping through the elaborate maze of tubes, pulsing, flowing, circulating.
Now, he lay in bed, exhausted, the humming in his head slowly giving way to sleep, and behind his aching eyes all his vacuous mind could envision was those tiny green plants perched in circulating waters.
—
There had to be mice in the house. Calendula could hear them at night, when he wandered out to the living room to put more wood on the fire: scurrying about inside the walls, scratching and gnawing. But he never caught one. The traps he set, baiting them with peanut butter and bits of cheese, were a mystery—if they weren’t set off they were just plain gone. But there was never any sign of rodents: no droppings or chewed up food. No nests.
Lately he’d begun to dream of mice. Large, furry black ones with wet-pink noses, climbing over him in a swarm, their tiny claws scratching at his face as they fought their way into his open, screaming mouth. He would beat and flail at them, pulling them away in handfuls, but it was always too much, and they would fill his mouth so that he couldn’t breathe and, suffocating and gagging, flailing his head back and forth, he would be conscious of the awful feel of their whiskers tickling the back of his throat before he woke in a terrible panic, his heart pounding.
But it had to be something much larger than mice dragging the traps away. It was the only thing that made sense.
He checked the traps behind the woodstove. Gone. He went to the kitchen and checked the ones in the back corner, behind the porch door. Gone as well. He got down on his hands and knees and opened the bottom kitchen cupboard and peered inside.
There, to his utter amazement, was a huge pile of traps. All the missing traps, stacked intricately into an elaborate pyramid, like a house of cards.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw in the darkened corner of the cupboard what could only be a pair of glowing eyes.
A terrible, terrifying shudder went through him, sucking the breath from his lungs. Crammed into the shadows, folded up upon himself in the tight, cramped space, was a little boy—he couldn’t have been more than seven—wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off jeans. The slick, waxy skin of his chest was a gleaming white and his eyes were playful in their dark sockets, twinkling with a malignant, obstinate gleam. His pale lips twitched into a smile and suddenly laughter was everywhere.
Calendula leapt back in shock. Sweat poured from him and his hands shook uncontrollably. That’s not real, he thought. It can’t be real.
He caught his breath and turned back to the dark cupboard and peered in once more. Yes, there in the corner were those eyes again, but they were different this time. Closer together, smaller and yellow, and he realized with a start that it wasn’t laughter he was hearing but the low murmur of a growl, followed by a hiss. And then he made out the face. It wasn’t human. It was an awful mess of fur and rotten skin, with a long fang-filled snout.
Before he could react, the beast sprung at him: a possum—big as an alley cat—trailing a scaly, pink tail as thick as his thumb.
The creature crashed through the pyramid of traps as Calendula threw himself away from the cabinet. He landed sprawled on his back, traps scattering everywhere, and then the thing was on top of him. It scrambled up his chest and went for his face with its sharp yellow teeth.
He managed to get his hands around its neck and hold it back as it thrashed and scratched at him with its black claws, but it was deteriorating, falling apart in bloody clumps of flesh and fur, slipping through his hands, and he couldn’t hold on to it. He watched helplessly as it melted through his fingers and descended u
pon him in a fury of fangs and claws while whirlwinds of echoing laughter swirled all about him.
Suddenly he was in bed, howling, and Rebecca was there, rubbing his shoulders and back and telling him it was all right. It was a nightmare, just a nightmare.
He fell back, breathing so hard he was on the verge of hyperventilating, and realized he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. In bed. Couldn’t remember coming in or getting undressed or anything else about the day. Nothing made any sense anymore, and he lay there in the dark, panting, wondering what day it was, what hour it was, trying to figure out what was real, what wasn’t.
5
The mannequin—a pale, bald and curvaceous female figure with rosy-red lips and heavily made-up eyes—dangled by one leg from a rope hung on a giant Doug fir, lazily spiraling in the cool winter breeze. Diesel carefully centered the crosshairs on its face, took in a breath through his nose, held it, and gently squeezed the trigger.
The shot rang out, echoing through the hills, obliterating a chunk of the mannequin’s head and sending it dancing up and down on its tether. He brought a hand up, rotated the bolt and pulled open the breech—ejecting the casing—then closed the bolt back. Holding the rifle out in front of him, he took a moment to admire it: a thing of beauty, well-polished, the steel and wood gleaming.
“Merry Christmas, son.” He handed the 30.06 over to DJ. “A Winchester Model 70, the ‘Rifleman’s Rifle.’ Belonged to my father, and his father before that. Now it’s yours.”
DJ took the rifle into his hands, chewing loudly on a piece of gum. “Thanks, Pops.” He seemed distracted and far away. Diesel suspected he was high on meth. Real high, and that he’d been that way for days.
“It’s a classic, pre-64, with cut checkering, Mauser-type extractor. An all-around superior firearm to the ones manufactured after ’65. What do you think?”
“Awesome. Love it.” DJ was barely looking at the rifle, his eyes instead constantly returning to the .38 snub-nose pistol which lay on the truck’s hood with several other weapons from Diesel’s armament: his beloved Beretta submachine gun, and a scary-looking, matte-black SR5 with a big banana clip.
The storm had passed, and the sun was gleaming down from a white, winter sky, the earth releasing a fresh scent of soil and sod that mixed pleasantly with the stink of gunpowder smoke and hot metal.
“A lot of deer been taken down with that rifle. A lot of meat. Hunting season don’t begin for a while now, but when it comes I was hoping we could take ourselves a trip. Go camping. Come back with some venison for the girls to cook up. Fill both our freezers. Whaddaya say?”
“Sure thing, Pops.”
“Course, just cause it ain’t hunting season don’t mean we can’t take down a few hillside trout sometime. No one’s going to miss any of them pesky black tail, that’s for sure. Just have to butcher ’em ourselves.”
DJ nodded silently, eyes glazed, looking at nothing, just chomping on his gum. Diesel sighed. “Yup, hoping we can pass this tradition down to that son of yours. Once he’s born and grownup enough to fire a rifle, that is. Well, go on and try her out.”
DJ put the rifle to his shoulder, squeezed his left eye shut, put his right to the site, and pulled the trigger. The report rang out—a loud crack— and the mannequin’s crotch exploded.
“Damn, son. You mean to shoot out that thing’s pussy?”
“Thought it’d be more realistic if it had a hole to fuck.”
“Christ. Ain’t you a character.”
DJ grinned, then gestured to the .38. “S’up with that one there?”
“Just a little thing I picked up the other day.” Diesel lifted the pistol from the hood of the truck, his big hand swallowing it and making it look tiny, like a deadly little toy. He flipped open the cylinder, and pressed six bullets into the dark, empty holes. Spreading his legs and aiming with both hands he fired off all six rounds in quick succession. The first two missed but the last four sent the mannequin spinning wildly. “Ain’t too accurate at a distance, but it’d come in mighty handy in a up-close situation. You wanna try?”
“Yeah, man. Please.”
Diesel emptied the spent shells onto the ground and reloaded the weapon, then handed it to DJ who—gripping the stock—turned it over in his hands. “No hammer, huh?”
“That’s right.”
DJ held the gun out at arm’s length and fired once. Then again, and again, each shot missing the swaying mannequin while Diesel laughed, finishing off his beer and lighting a cigarette.
“Told you, ain’t too accurate. You might wanna try with two hands next time.”
“How much you want for it?”
“Wasn’t looking to sell it.”
“Yo, come on, Pops.”
“Nope. Don’t want to do it.”
“Every man has his price. You told me that, Pops, those are your words.”
“Ha. Well, I guess I did. And if that ain’t true I don’t know what is. Shit, I don’t know. I paid three hundred for it.”
“Give you three fifty.”
“You are good. That’s for sure. I’ll give you that. Okay it’s yours.”
“For real?”
“Sure. Just don’t do anything stupid with it.”
“Naw. I won’t,” DJ said, releasing the cylinder and giving it a spin.
“You got the three fifty?”
“Not on me.”
Diesel spit. “Typical. Now, you wanna shoot the Beretta or what?”
THREE
“You gotta jump down, spin around, trim a bale of ganja.
Jump down, spin around, trim a bale a day . . .
Boss man gets a big old stash. All we get is finger hash.”
—Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney
“Trim a Bale of Ganja”
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a tiger by the toe,
If he hollers let him go . . .
O-U-T spells out, pig snout, you are out . . .
Not because you’re dirty,
Not because you’re clean,
Because you kissed a girl behind the magazine.”
—Children’s counting rhyme
1
It was Christmas when the beat-up black van splashed down the muddy driveway and pulled to a stop in front of the chef house, the screeching guitar of black metal music blasting from their stereo.
Immediately, Rebecca didn’t like them.
It had stopped raining. Megan—her dark hair pulled into pigtails with an uneven part down the middle—was eating a grilled cheese and Rebecca had just opened a bottle of champagne. She sipped it—satisfyingly ice cold, from a chipped coffee mug—and watched them from the kitchen window.
The driver was a short girl with stringy hair, bleached a gleaming platinum white. Rebecca could just make out a line of black marks tattooed beneath her eyes. She leapt down from the van, landing squarely on both feet, and slammed the door shut behind her. She scanned the area, her head bobbing slightly to the music, both thumbs tucked into the belt loops of her jeans.
Then the side door slid open and the other two stepped out, both men with beards and long hair. One wore a floppy felt hat like an old-time preacher might wear, the other a leather vest with patches sewn all over it. They whispered amongst themselves, then the girl came strutting up to the chef house. Preacher hat leaned against the van, rolling a smoke, while leather vest kicked at a muddy clump of dirt.
“You must be Coyote’s new worker,” the white-haired girl said when Rebecca opened the door.
“Uh, yeah. Who are you?”
“I’m Tatum.” The girl slipped a cigarette into her mouth, lit it, and, squinting, peered around Rebecca into the house. Megan, sitting at the kitchen table eating her sandwich, ketchup running from the corners of her mouth, looked up and gave a friendly wave. “You got a kid in there? Pretty fucked up place to bring a kid.”
Rebecca stared down at the smug little woman blowing smoke from her nostrils: narrow eyes above an ugly slash of tattooed symbols, a frayed shirt that read Cannibal Corpse, tall boots reaching nearly to her knees with bright red laces. Rebecca pushed her glasses up her nose, shrugged back her dreads and tilted her head, feeling her eyes and lips clench, her fingers beginning to shake. But before she could get a word out, Coyote was suddenly there, sucking on a Coors Light.
“Tatum! About fucking time you showed up. You and your crew ready to get to work?”
“That’s why we’re here. Let’s get to it.”
“All right. Good attitude. Rebecca will get you some scissors and trays.”
“No. I won’t. I’ve got to go.”
“Where you going?”
“It’s Christmas. I’ve got to call my mother.”
Tatum and Coyote glanced at each other and grinned. “Okay,” Coyote said, taking a gulp of his beer. “Go call your mother.”
—
Phone pressed lightly to her ear, Rebecca tried to focus on her mother’s words.
“I’m so glad that you called, and didn’t just send me some text or email. So impersonal.”
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