The sheriff didn’t bother opening the door. He reached for Terry, who slapped ineffectually at the giant hands, and hauled his redneck ass through the window. Mondale’s grasp swallowed up Terry and held him by both hands, then by both wrists.
He slid Terry’s left hand under his right arm so that he could hold Terry’s right hand in both of his own. Terry started screaming a hysterical, high-pitched scream. “Please, no. No, no, no, no. I didn’t know, I swear.” His fingers wriggled and writhed, but eventually were subdued. When his middle finger was secured, Terry took a deep breath.
The snap stopped time.
His finger made an unnatural ‘L’ with the other then dangled backward like a wet noodle. The breath leaked out of him and he sucked pathetically for more, but didn’t find any. The process was repeated with far less struggling on his left side.
Everything hurt. He was helpless like a fuckin’ mental cripple. Both middle fingers broken near off, were taped to the ring fingers. Everything was hard to do: eating, dressing, bathing, driving. Forget about work, he couldn’t handle a riding lawn mower, let alone a CAT, which left him many idle hours. And that was even worse. He couldn’t shuffle cards or tug his meat and daytime TV was for housewives. Hell.
He called Beth, which was an accomplishment in itself and asked if she wouldn’t mind letting the kid stay with him more while he was incapacitated. She agreed right away, which made him feel worse. That meant she was probably still getting some from that new guy. There was no satisfaction in getting what he wanted if it didn’t involve depriving someone else of theirs. But Wendell would be helpful to have around. He’d do just about anything Terry asked, then retreat to a corner to remain unnoticed until needed again. If only his mom had been that way.
Thursday night, Cal picked him up at six and Terry told Wendell not to expect him back all weekend. His son took the news stoically and Terry wondered if the kid’s delicate feelings were hurt or if he was stoked to have the place to himself. Sadly, it was probably the former. He was a strange kid. When Terry was that age, he’d have given his left nut for run of the house for a weekend. Oh well.
Cal was happy. Thursday was usually the best part of the weekend, and he regularly called out sick or just didn’t go in to work on Fridays. They headed for the Gulch and hit happy hour in the face. Each of them ordered a pitcher of Bud and three shots of Tequila. Terry shared his painkillers and the weekend had begun.
Two hours later, the cocktail of motor skill assassins had rendered Terry clumsy and he spilled the last of his second pitcher and cussed. “At this rate, I’ll be dry by Sunday.”
“Won’t let it happen, kemosabe.” Cal laughed. He grabbed his own pitcher and took it over to the next table. Charlie and Toby, the men already sitting there weren’t happy to see him.
“Fuck off,” the older one said as soon as Cal had settled and begun to pour himself another drink. Cal ignored him and drained half the glass in a single gulp. “Hey. Did you hear me? Fuck off, like now.”
“Get bent, Charlie.”
“What did you say?”
“Go out back and play with each other quietly, so the rest of us can finish a
drink,” said Cal. Toby, the younger one, stood up and Cal kicked his knee from under the table with a steel toe. The young man fell and smacked his face on the edge of the table, sending all the drinks and glass that rested atop crashing to the floor. “Son of a bitch!” cried Cal, seeing his unfinished pitcher go to waste. He reached across the table and smashed his mug on the side of Charlie’s head.
Quickly as he could, Terry made his way over and began kicking Toby in the ribs. If Toby managed to get to his feet, Terry would be useless with his mangled hands, but it didn’t happen. Terry connected the heel of his cowboy boot to Toby’s temple and the youngster stopped moving.
A horse kicked Terry in the kidneys and he collapsed with a whimper. The bartender stood over him with a well used baseball bat. “Get the fuck out, now!” Cal and Charlie stopped their ‘rasslin and together dragged Toby’s unconscious body out the back door while Terry followed, unable to contribute because of his hands.
When they’d propped Toby up against some garbage bags, Terry made his contribution by taking out the last of his painkillers which all three of them split. Charlie dry-swallowed his, then looked down at the man on the ground. “Shit. There goes my ride.”
“You can ride with us.” said Cal.
“You are a white man,” said Charlie, “and I know a place.”
“Oh yeah? Like a reasonable place? How much?” Charlie reached into his back pocket and took out his Saturday Night Special.
“We can make a stop first.”
“Okey-doke.”
The Mexican population was a small, but growing minority in town, a fact that alarmed most of the citizens. They were a cluster that were rarely spotted outside the borders of Beantown, but were large enough to have their own grocery store that stocked mini tortillas and a rainbow coalition of salsa and beans. They also had their own video store with Mex titles starring big-tittied, big-hipped Mex starlets, and that were big on guns and mustache wax. They also had their own liquor store.
The volume wouldn’t be large enough to make a worthwhile score of the cash register, but there was a neighborhood Mex lottery held on Friday nights and Charlie figured they could hit that stash tonight for enough to make a good weekend for the three of them at a brothel he knew in West Memphis.
One advantage, Charlie figured, was that it probably wouldn’t even be reported to the police, seeing as how the lottery was unregulated. “Rock on,” agreed Cal and Terry opened the window so that the breeze would brace him enough to be a getaway driver.
They parked across the street and Cal put the car in neutral and pulled the parking brake. Terry slid beneath the wheel and rested one palm on top and one on the stick. “I got this bitch.” he said, confident on adrenaline and racial superiority.
Cal popped the glove box and grabbed a mask, and he and Charlie strode across the pavement like it was the streets of Laredo. Charlie kicked open the door unnecessarily and the cowboys charged in brandishing weapons. With the windows rolled down, Terry could hear the muffled shouts and make out the flailing of arms between the window posters for exotic Mex liquors and Budweiser, the king in any language. He wished that he were in there too. The testosterone surge had produced instant facial stubble and he thought about what kind of whore he’d select for the weekend.
It was taking longer than usual for one of these jobs, but that was to be expected, he figured, since there would be a separate safe for the lottery money. Maybe the greasers were giving them trouble about it, denying and playing dumb. Fucking beaner trash, he thought. Give it up.
A small contingent of civilians was beginning to collect on the sidewalk, somehow aware that something was going down. Spooky how the ethnics were connected like that. A couple of them even turned and looked at Terry who extended his bandaged middle finger to them out the window. He revved the motor as the front door burst open and a masked Charlie emerged pistol in one hand, grocery bag in the other. The door shut again behind him and was instantly painted red in a single blast.
Charlie didn’t even turn around. He sprinted across the street and began fumbling with the door handle. Terry stared at the door as the red paint began to slide down, effluvia separating and streaking the glass. The door was flung open again and a stout Mexican woman with a shotgun stepped over the headless corpse of Cal and took aim at the car.
“Go, go, go!” urged Charlie.
“Shit, shit, shit!” countered Terry. The car lurched and died at the same moment Charlie was flung across the seat and into Terry’s lap. He was missing the right side of his face. “Shit, motherfuck!” The car started again and Terry pushed Charlie to the other side of the cab. He clipped a parked car and had to use the back of his right hand to clear the blood and hair from the windshield. He succeeded only in smearing it before he had to shift again.
The car lurched a second time, but didn’t die and he picked up speed while the back window exploded. A sharp pain in his neck turned warm instantly and he gunned the car. Reaching the windshield again, he scrubbed harder and cleared a window just large enough that he was able to register the streetlight before he struck it.
He woke up in a hospital room. Nurses came in every half hour, police too, but he wasn’t speaking yet. He barely registered anyone’s presence. Someone snapped their fingers and he followed the sound to a deputy who spoke his name.
“Hickerson. Terry Hickerson. You hear me?”
He must have nodded his head because the next thing he knew they were wheeling him out of the hospital and taking him to the police station. At the station, Terry was seated at a folding table in the break room that doubled for an interrogation space. His head cleared disturbingly quickly as he eyed the Doritos in the vending machine and his stomach bubbled. The deputy came back in the room ten minutes later with two styrofoam cups of weak government coffee. In the light, Terry read his name - Musil.
“What the fuck time is it, Deputy Musil?”
“Two-thirty.”
“What time you feature I might get to bed?”
“Just depends on your willingness to cooperate.”
“Shit, then I am never going to sleep tonight.”
“I just want you to answer a few questions.”
“See and I don’t want to.”
Musil took a sip of coffee and swished it around his mouth. He smiled a sad
smile at Terry like he pitied him. It pissed Terry off. Musil leaned back and turned his attention toward the snack machine. He said, “These damn apple pies are making me fat. See, the problem is that coffee is a necessity and what’s available here is shit.” Musil indicated the coffee in front of Terry which did look poor. “The only thing that makes it drinkable are these sugar bomb ‘pastries’ and the only thing that makes them tolerable is the bitter-ass coffee.”
Musil punched a button and the machine shat out a green paper wrapped apple pie. The policeman peeled it lengthwise, like a banana, and tore off a corner causing white cracks to shoot through the sugar coating. “I bet I could leave one of these in a bowl of milk overnight and it wouldn’t be soggy in the morning.” He popped the piece into his mouth, took another swig of the coffee and swallowed. “Terry. This has got to be your shit year.”
Terry had no objections to that statement.
Amateurs
They were two days into the trip when the train shuddered and the hiss of steam, fighting the brakes applied, caused his bowels to revolt. Through the window, Tip caught a glimpse of a hooded figure standing beside the tracks with a torch. He fought the urge to throw up on his own feet. The Pinkerton across the seat from him chuckled, casually thumbing the cylinder of his Colt and easing back the hammer.
Beside him, Charlie Holland squinted at the night through the glass. “What’s going on?” he asked. Tip dreaded hearing the answer.
The Pinkerton winked at them. “Looks like an unscheduled stop.”
Tip sat up and pressed his face to the cool window and spied more torches among the trees. Beside him, Charlie said, “Sonsabitches.”
The Pinkerton nodded. “Reckon they gonna wanna talk to you two.
The train came to a full stop and Tip heard loud voices saying his and Charlie’s names, but not talking to them. He fought the futile urge to try slipping his manacles and duck beneath his chair. Instead he sent up a silent prayer for quickness, if not justice. Charlie attacked his bonds with admirable verve as he levelled a steady stream of curses under his breath. “Motherfuckers. Sonsa-chink-whore-bitches. Cock-suckin-Lincoln-lovin-rot-ass-mongrels.”
The Pinkerton stood and showed Tip his palm. Stay. As if he could run. The detective meant to see them killed no doubt, only not here and now, which made him their only refuge at the moment. Tip looked over his shoulder at him moving to the front of the car and taking a position beside the door. Tip noticed he’d removed a second pistol, tiny. You could conceal it in an eye patch, he thought.
The approaching mob was announced by murmuring from passengers in the other cars and the fierce vibration of violence in the air growing stronger by the second. Charlie began to pull on his chains and Tip’s arms were jerked to his right side. Charlie had slipped one boot between his wrists and was attempting to force the cuffs over his hands. “Shit.” He wiggled his thumbs trying to make them touch the far sides of his palms. “Don’t just sit there, Tip, c’mon, gimme support.”
Tip squeezed his eyes shut instead. He listened for the still, small voice of God his mother had told him of, but it was in the storm this time. There was a dull thud against the door, followed by the sharp crack of splintering wood, and three men in potato sack hoods rushed in. The first one called out to them, “On your feet.” Charlie paid no heed and pushed with renewed strength. The irons were moving and taking several layers of skin with them.
“Get up,” the second hooded man said, “The devil await ye.”
A hand reached out and roughly pulled Tip to his feet and another struck him on the mouth and he fell back into his seat. Charlie lay on his back on the floor, absorbing kicks to his ribs, still pushing with his foot between his hands, up in the air.
From behind, the Pinkerton appeared and put the barrel of his Colt under the chin of the first hood and the lady stinger in the ear of the third man. “The devil gonna have to wait a spell.”
The second hooded man stopped reaching for Tip and looked at the Pinkerton. His muffled voice appealed to reason. “We got no strife with you. We only want justice.”
“You’ll have it. Just gonna have to wait a bit.”
“Bullshit,” said the voice beneath the first hood, “These boys kilt Bob Manuse plus another posse.”
“And they’ll hang for it. In Rawlins,” said the detective calmly.
“Not good enough. Rawlins awful far from here,” said the third man.
“I’m employed by the Union Pacific to bring these men to Rawlins,” said the Pinkerton, “That’s where they’re going. You wanna see them swing, you can buy a ticket like everybody else.”
Behind them, a fourth hooded man entered the rail car. “What’s the hold up?”
The first man addressed him, “Union Pacific.”
The fourth man, clearly the leader said, “Mister, we got no strife with the railroad. Nobody else needs be hurt today.” He held up his palms to show that he was unarmed as he approached. “But we will be having justice from thee.” The Pinkerton dug the barrels of his guns into the flesh beneath the hoods, causing the first and third man to strain their necks for relief. The fourth man moved cautiously around the huddle of men till he was facing the detective. He bent forward to remove his mask.
What he revealed himself to be was middle-aged, about thirty, and balding. He was in need of a shave, but not unkempt. His features looked soft and healthy, but there was granite behind his eyes. “Sir, my name is Felix Vincent Warden, and I am kin to Robert Manuse by marriage.” Here he paused and looked directly at Charlie struggling on the floor and then into the returned gaze of Tip. “I intend to see these die men tonight, I’m sure you understand. Ain’t no cause for they to be responsible for no other deaths, but if you don’t stand down, we will do what we have to.”
The detective sighed and said, “Mr. Warden, I will shoot the very first one of you to put a hand on my prisoners and then I’ll shoot one more of you for good measure.” He nodded his farewell in a gentlemanly manner and added, “Kindly step the fuck off the train.”
Charlie groaned with the effort of straining against his cuffs. His wrists were scraped raw and bleeding, but he’d moved the right side almost over the thumb knuckle, which gave with a crack and a cry from Charlie. His hand slipped through, and he leapt to his feet and lunged at the second man in a hood, who calmly took a single step back and shot Charlie in the belly.
Charlie dropped to Tip’s feet. Tip winced and dry-heaved between his k
nees. The detective, cat-quick, shot the second hooded man up in the fatty part of his arm, with the tiny weapon, causing the man to drop his own gun. The little pop from the toy gun hardly seemed real, but the blood that bubbled out of the flesh wound was convincing.
Charlie lay curled on the floor, cursing and gargling blood, while the man who shot him sat in an empty seat and grabbed at the hole in his arm. “Would one of you shoot that son of a bitch!” he said.
The Pinkerton re-cocked the lady stinger, and the hooded men flinched and turned their heads slightly to Felix Warden who had taken on a purplish color. “Now listen here, you fancy son of a bitch –” he said. The Pinkerton fired a shot, from the Colt this time, through the ceiling right beside the first hooded man’s ear. The man descended to the floor clutching at his head through the hood and the Pinkerton levelled the Colt into the second man’s face.
Below them, the first man had pulled the hood off of his head and was screaming, “Shot my fuckin ear out! Shot my fuckin ear dead! Can’t fuckin hear anything!” His eyes were wide and he was looking from hood to hood for recognition that he was indeed saying something. Receiving none, he scrambled to his feet and ran out the door.
From outside the train there was a commotion of voices calling for Warden to tell them what was happening. From the next car more men could be heard approaching the door. The Pinkerton told Felix Warden, “Tell them to stand down or I’ll shoot the first one through the door.”
Warden commanded in a level voice, “Stay back. Do not come in. Everything’s under control.”
“That’s good, Felix, now –”
Warden continued, his voice raised, “But you boys hear any more guns, you come in shooting!”
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