by Terry DeHart
I want to sit down on the asphalt. I want to hold still for a while, but I find the energy to pick up the shotgun and get my boy back inside the market.
Melanie
I’m sick. There’s blood everywhere. I knew Mom and Dad and Scott could be assholes sometimes, but damn.
Mom and Scott come inside. One of Mom’s arms is bleeding down over her hand and onto the floor. There’s nothing on her face. No fear or anger or horror. Nothing. She’s pale as death, and she walks over to me and runs her good hand all over me. It grosses me out, but then I realize she’s checking me for wounds, and I let her. She starts to do the same to Scotty, but Scotty pushes her away and says he’s fine, dammit, just give him some space.
Dad is sitting up. His face is dripping blood. When he sees Mom he smiles, and his teeth are bloody.
“Are we okay?”
“We’re alive,” Mom says.
“Are you okay?”
“Everything’s okay now.”
“Let me look at that arm.”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s a miracle.”
“Yes, it is.”
Mom sits down hard on the floor and squeezes her eyes closed. Dad goes to her.
“Help me get her coat off,” he says.
I kneel and unzip it. I get warm blood on my hands. Mom hisses when Dad rolls the coat down over her shoulders. She screams when he pulls the sleeves from her shot arm, and then she passes out. I catch her head and lower her face to the floor, where it’s bound and determined to go.
Dad tells me to get some first aid supplies. I stand up and look down. It’s the wrong place to look. The bodies of two boys are on the floor. I make the mistake of looking at their faces, and my stomach goes crazy. The store smells like burned gunpowder and blood and shit. I run to the back of the store. I get sick. My ponytail swings around and Mom isn’t there to hold it back. I barf up the mass-produced food that brought me such happiness only a few minutes ago.
I have no idea what will happen to us. I have no idea what we deserve.
Scott
Maybe I shouldn’t be happy, but I can’t help it. We stood face-to-face with the little shits, and we’re still alive. I know for sure that I centerpunched one of them. My 9mm slug must’ve hit his off switch, because he dropped like the sack of shit he was. No tears for him. Not from me.
And Mom was a savage. She did what she had to do, and more, but she looks like hell now. I feel guilty for pushing her away when she was checking me for wounds, so I go to her and put my coat under her head. I want to give her a hug, but she wouldn’t know about it. I’ve never felt so happy and so sad. I hold back my tears, but Dad squirts a few. He pats me on the back, then he goes to work on Mom’s arm.
I look out at the parking lot. Nothing is moving. No moans. Only bodies. Life’s a bitch, right? But I think we’ve earned a right to stay here. We should take whatever we want. Maybe camp here for a few days.
I pick up a bottle of booze and crack it open. It’s Crown Royal. Dad watches me take a sip, then he holds his hand out. I pass him the bottle and he takes a big mouthful, swishes it around, and swallows it. He gets that look in his eyes, the one that gives away the pure pleasure he gets from liquor, as if it’s okay that the world has gone to shit, just as long as he can still get his drink on.
I pick up Mom’s shotgun. I pick up her bloody coat and pull a handful of shells from the pockets. I top off the shotgun, rack the slide, and stand behind the store’s cash register. The Beretta is loaded and riding in the small of my back. I probably look like the last guy standing after a takeover robbery. But I can cover Dad and Mom from here, and I can also cover the door, so it doesn’t matter how I look.
Mom opens her eyes. Dad offers the bottle to her. She shakes her head but she doesn’t give him any shit when he puts it to her lips. She takes a sip and then another one, then Dad puts down the bottle and cuts her sleeve away. He pours whiskey over the tiny entry wound and over the bigger exit wound, and wipes the blood away. Mom’s arm is floppy and loose. It’s broken. Mel brings a bunch of stuff from the first aid section of the market, and Dad goes to work with it.
Mel comes behind the cash register with me and grabs a bottle of vodka from the wall of booze behind me. She rinses her mouth and sets the bottle on the counter. She spits and it splatters on the face of one of the dead fuckers. Her pale face goes green, and she runs to the back of the store and does her yerching thing again.
“No need to feel sorry for these cum stains,” I say. “Mel?”
She doesn’t answer, but I hear her crying, and I don’t understand it. Myself, I feel like I’ve just hit a big lotto. Maybe later I’ll feel guilty about this shit, but right now I’m very happy—so happy that the word “very” doesn’t describe it. We’re alive and none of us got killed and we took some bad people out of the world and we have all this stuff. If Mom hadn’t been hit, there wouldn’t be any downside at all.
I take another sip of whiskey. It goes to my head, but it’s not just the booze that’s causing every hair on my head to celebrate.
I’m very tired. I start going over everything that happened. I think I’d be feeling a lot better about myself if I’d have shot more of them. My brain won’t stop playing it back to me. If only. Why didn’t I? What if? Next time I’ll have to shoot straighter, and sooner. Those thoughts go through me again and again until I want to lie down and go to sleep. I want to get wasted on whiskey and go to sleep and dream about nothing at all.
I’m tired as hell, but Dad has work for me to do. Blood keeps running into his eyes, and he asks me if I can bandage him. He has a deep cut above his right eyebrow. I pour booze over it, and the red-gold shit runs all over Dad’s face and over his lips, but he doesn’t try to drink it. I dry the wound with a paper towel. Part of the paper sticks to the blood, and it’s like a huge shaving cut. I put a big white bandage over it, and wrap it with tape. I wrap the tape all the way around his head, and it’s just above Dad’s eye, so it looks like an eye patch that missed its target.
Dad takes the pistol from me and makes sure it’s loaded. He gives it to Mom and she braces herself against a pyramid of motor oil and covers us as we drag the bodies out of the store.
Blood trails. I’ve never seen a real one until today. Not all blood trails are the same color. Some of them are strawberry-colored. The worst ones are the color of blackberry jam.
I don’t look at the faces. I don’t feel sorry for them, but I don’t hate them either. They lost and we won, and it’s as simple as that. We were in the right and they were in the wrong, and now they’re dead. Life’s a bitch. I don’t look at their faces but I’m curious about the wounds. Maybe I watched too many TV shows about crime labs and medical examiners. Maybe I just want to know how well our guns work on live targets.
We drag them feetfirst. Their shirts roll up when we drag them and they show off their new decorations. Mom’s shotgun really messed these dudes up. Her buckshot gave them zits from hell. But it’s the little holes from Dad’s rifle that are the most interesting. Tiny holes in front. Pinpricks. Icepick wounds. But the exit wounds are the size of lemons, tangerines, baseballs. He’s shooting hollowpoints. I know my little .22 wouldn’t do anything like that. The .22 rimfire is supposedly the Mafia’s weapon of choice, but I’d rather be carrying something that blows chunks out of motherfuckers.
We go after the other two bodies behind the minivan. The dude I killed with the Beretta has straight black hair. The one Mom shot doesn’t have a face. We drag them over with the others.
I gather up the kids’ guns. All four of the dead guys had rifles, but one of them is different. It looks like Dad’s AR, but with a shorter barrel and a collapsible stock. That’s more like it. I grab four loaded magazines. Dad sees me with the rifle. He holds his hand out and I give it to him. He points at the rifle, but I can’t take my eyes away from his bandage.
“Look here,” he says. He puts his thumb on a switch on the left side of the gun. He pushes th
e switch to its top position. “This is safe.” He moves the switch to the middle position. “This is semi-auto.” He flicks the switch to its last position. “This is the burst setting. You get three rounds every time you pull the trigger. Don’t fire in burst mode unless you absolutely have no other choice.”
He puts the rifle on safe and hands it back to me. He nods. I set it against the front of the store. It’s mine now.
And then we’re only half awake, dragging bloodlines across the white concrete that surrounds the gas pumps. Dad checks out the gray shoes the kids are wearing. Maybe he knew about them all along. He searches the bodies for information. We turn out all their pockets, making a little pile of bubble gum and ammo and gold coins and rubbers. We peel back their layers of clothes and it turns out that the dudes are all wearing the same kind of shirt. It turns out that they were all big fans of the Shasta County Juvenile Detention Facility.
Dad looks at me, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. We stack the bodies in the gas station’s dried-out landscaped area. They smelled like shit when they were alive and dying didn’t make them smell any better. We face them all the same way, their heads away from the store. We do good work. After all this excitement, we still take pride in our work. We stack them with care, like we stacked our firewood back home. I’m not sure if we’re trying to show the world what good workers we are, or if we’re showing a tiny bit of respect for the dead. It’s not a very fun job, to tell the truth, but we’re very precise in our work and we make a neat stack, don’t ask me why.
We finish our chores. It’s getting dark. The American flag is still flying above its Chevron sign. We siphon some gas from a Suburban that will probably never run again. We soak the bodies and set them on fire and then we sweep up the mess inside our bullet-shredded store.
None of us can sleep, so we all stand watch together. The night is cold and hard under the funky clouds. Mom’s teeth start chattering, and Dad gives her more whiskey. It’s all he can do to treat her for shock. He gives us each a small shot and he takes one for himself.
They wait until dark. When they come again, they come through the storeroom door, in back. They pin us down with their fire. Glass breaking and the juices of shot-up stuff raining down on us. Bullets shred everything around us. One of them takes off the lobe of my right ear. A shooter starts popping off in the aisle I’m sitting in and the bullets are snapping just above my head. I’m trying to hide my whole body behind a box of minibag popcorn, and I’m somehow fitting behind it. I’m praying and making promises to the God that allowed this to happen, but what I really want is a chance to shoot back.
I see a pair of gray walking shoes. I bring my new rifle up but there’s a sound and my left hand is on fire, and I drop the rifle. The tip of my little finger is gone. It hurts like a bitch but I pick up the rifle and crawl forward. Mel screams. I crawl as fast as I can, and I see movement and I put my rifle sights on it, but all I see is Mel reaching out with her arms as the fuckers drag her by her legs out the back door. I crawl after her, but then a wall hits me. It’s an explosion moving through the wine section. Glass breaks and wine hangs free in the air, bottle-shaped.
Bill Junior
We use three sticks of dynamite to blow the place on the way out and then I post a guard and gather the rest of men around the fire. The girl is at my feet. She’s duct-taped with her hands behind her back but her tits are naked and free and they look great in the firelight. The men circle and get eyefuls, and her green eyes are spitting fire and the men are laughing and pretending they’re falling in love.
Having a girl can be dangerous. It’s like having money or booze or drugs, and I need to set some rules so the men won’t be fighting too much. That, and the only other girl we managed to take alive didn’t last very long. It was my own fault because I didn’t make any rules about how they used her. If anybody needs rules, it’s these men, so I call for Luscious to bring me the guard duty list. I stand up straight and let the men babble for a while after their victory, but they know they can’t tear into the girl until I’ve had my say, so they quiet down.
“Here’s the deal,” I say.
I hold up the guard duty list. All our names are on it, including mine, because we all stand our turn at watch, no exceptions.
“We might be pirates and outlaws, but we share and share alike. After each man stands his watch, he’ll get a turn with the girl.”
I wait and let the idea sink in. Some of them nod, and I go on.
“Just remember the rules. Rule number one: Hurt her so we can notice it, and you get twenty lashes. Not easy lashes either, but hard ones from Luscious. Rule number two: Kill the girl and the penalty is Hunt Club. No exceptions, no mercy, and only a five-minute head start. Rule number three: Every man gets one cum, and no more.”
Some of the men are nodding, the smarter ones that can think beyond the reach of their peckers. I know how I want my words to sound to their ears. I want to sound like a man they’d follow into hell.
“Other than that, boys, you can do whatever else you can think of.”
A cheer rises up from the ranks of them. It’s what they used to call a round of huzzahs, and it warms my heart.
“To get the ball rolling, we’ll start with the watch that just now ended.”
Little Donnie Darko lets out a holler because he just came in from his watch. Some of the men grumble something about why should that little peckerhead go first, but I hold up my hands.
“If anyone has a fairer way to do it, let me know right now.”
I watch them hard and they stop their grumbling. Biggus says that at least little Donnie won’t tear her up none, and he pities the man that gets a turn after he plows the field. They’re laughing then and grabbing their nuts.
“Okay. Stick to the rules. That’s the way it’s going to be.” I smile and even the smallest one of them smiles, too, because they all know they’ll have a turn. “There’s one more thing, though. We need a proper whorehouse. See to setting it up.”
They’re really hyperactive then, and they run over to the old junkyard office shack. They push everything outside, including the dog-chewed body of old Junkyard Jake, and they drag the girl in there and Donnie runs through the crowd and the men give him about a hundred high-fives and then he goes to the shack to claim his prize. The men surround the place. Some of them are carrying torches and it looks like a wedding in one of those places where people aren’t civilized.
Donnie Darko goes inside and closes the door. The men quiet down and listen for the sounds they’d like to be making themselves, but there aren’t any sounds. No screaming or ripping of clothes. No pounding or slopping around in paradise. Someone says that little Donnie is soooo romantic, and that gets a laugh, but after that the men get bored.
Donnie isn’t more than a half hour before he comes out smiling. The men cheer. He bows. “Best piece I ever had,” he says, and his buddy Stumpie says, “Yeah, because it was your first, not counting your hand,” and the men hoot and whistle and Donnie joins them and they lift him on their shoulders and carry him to the fire.
I grab Luscious and a Coleman lantern and we go into the shack. It has a garage door and I open it so the men can see that I’m not taking my turn early. The girl is on the floor face-up with her pants down. Her hands are still taped together behind her and her mouth is gagged and her jeans are pushed down to the tape around her ankles. Her legs had to have been closed when Donnie slipped it to her. Maybe Donnie didn’t do anything, but that’s between the two of them.
I take the cloth out of her mouth. It’s a sock with old blood and lots of miles on it, and I expect her to scream when I take it out, but she doesn’t.
“My name is Melanie,” she says. Her voice is low but strong, and I want her to last a while, so it makes me glad to see that she’s okay.
“Glad to meet you,” I say.
“You’re Bill Junior.”
“Yep.”
“Are you the person I talk to about getting a bat
h?”
She’s not happy, but she’s keeping her shit together. It kind of surprises me.
“I’m the person you talk to about getting anything.”
She doesn’t cuss me or break out crying. She looks right at me with her steady green eyes, not talking down to me or trying to kiss my ass. It’s like we just met in a park somewhere and we’re equal in every way and maybe we’ll get to know each other better and maybe we won’t. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or impressed with the girl.
“Well then, I could sure use a bath,” she says.
“Yeah? You don’t want to eat first?”
“No.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
She doesn’t thank me and it kind of pisses me off, but I let it go. As I walk away it comes to me that she didn’t ask about her family, and it says something about how smart she is. How in control of herself she is. I tell Luscious to keep someone watching her because people like that can be dangerous, don’t ask me how I know. People like that make plans and they keep the promises they swear to themselves.
The men drag the girl over by the fire and then they get to work sprucing up the whorehouse. I doubt if any of us has ever been to a real whorehouse, so they only have television to go on for inspiration, but they do a good job of it. They line the walls with leather cut from the upholstery of cars and they lay down a carpet of optional floor mats from Toyotas and Nissans and domestic, made-in-America what-all.
While they’re making their love fort, I send Luscious to see about heating up water for a bath. It’s high time we all had one, to tell the truth.