by Terry DeHart
“Sure glad I didn’t have to shoot that dog today.”
“Me, too.” I don’t mention that a gunshot almost certainly would’ve caused the boys to run straight at us.
“Yep. Here’s to not having to shoot.”
He watches me to see how I respond.
“I can’t drink to that, just yet,” I say.
“No?”
“Tonight of all nights, I can’t.”
“You should ask me if I’ll help.”
“I know you won’t.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He walks closer. “Tell me about that young kid, Bill. Is he healthy?” he says.
“Seems to be.”
“Is he still wearing his cowboy rig?”
I nod.
“Well, I rue the day I bought it for him, just so you know.”
“They took my daughter. Will you help me get her back?”
“Sorry, no. But thanks for asking.”
He pours himself another shot and lifts it to his squirming, old-man lips. While his head is tilted back, I reach in and grab his revolver from its holster. I pull back the hammer and point the gun at his chest. He coughs whiskey breath into my face and then backs away.
“You going to be a problem?” I ask.
“Nope. You?”
“Peace is the answer, right?”
“Damn straight.”
I point the gun in a safe direction and lower the hammer.
“Okay then. Tell me about those boys.”
“You’ve seen ’em. Words alone can’t tell you more than their actions already have.”
“How many are there?”
“Less than twenty now. There used to be more, but they’re in a dangerous line of work.”
“I want to know about you, too. Why aren’t you over there with them?”
“Because I’m not suicidal, is why.”
“Okay. I can buy that. But maybe you spot for them in that Cessna? Maybe you help them and they let you live, but you have to know they won’t let you camp out here forever before they decide to charge you rent.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine.”
“How?”
“The Lord will provide.”
“There’s not a lot of that going around these days. You’ve got an angle. What is it?”
I point the revolver at his left knee.
“Maybe I have an angle, maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m just a crazy old man. But I’ll not tell you a damn thing more. No sir.”
He smiles and I swing the gun fast and the barrel catches him across the temple. But he doesn’t fall like people do in the movies. He just says, “Ow,” so I hit him harder and he goes to his knees. My next swat gets him to go down and I drag him to the lone office chair and use a roll of duct tape to strap him down.
Bill Senior
Bastard blindsided me. Didn’t see it coming. And he’s going after the boys, for sure. I could’ve shot him right off, but I’m glad I didn’t. No, maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t. I think I’ll let this play out, see what happens. He’ll go after his daughter. He’s got no choice. Then maybe this dude will set me free, somewhere down the line, if he’s still breathing after paying his house call on those boys.
Yeah. The more I think about it, the more right it seems. One way or the other, I’ll be fine. Serves the little shits right, too. Bill Junior doesn’t know when to stop. He won’t stop until someone gives him a dirt nap, and nobody knows the size of the body count he’ll rack up before that day.
I can’t say I haven’t thought about taking him out myself. Call it “for the good of humanity.” I’m not much of a father, but I’m the one who knocked his mother up, God rest her soul, and I can’t bring myself to put a stop to what the good Lord allowed to survive. But it looks like he fucked with the wrong daddy this time. Yeah, this dude seems to be just the one to teach him the lesson he’s been begging for. And even if this daddy gets himself killed, the boys will find me here, gift-wrapped in my chair, and I’ll be fine.
Anyhow, the boys would’ve been out here after this family soon enough. These people are eyewitnesses to God knows what, and sooner or later the cops and soldiers will be here, and there’ll be hell to pay for the ones that didn’t cover their tracks. No, the boys have to get this man, one way or another, and it suits me just fine that he’ll be taking the fight to them, instead of holing up here and getting my place all shot to hell.
So let whatever happens happen. I wash my hands of Billy and the others, and it’s high time I did it. Those boys are pure evil. Their time in the juvie hall only gave them ideas and got ’em more fired up. Lord knows how many people they’ve killed of late. And it looks like this good man and his family are next, God help them. I wouldn’t bet money on this dude winning, but I can wish him well, can’t I? Truth be told, I hope he takes a crapload of the little bastards with him.
Oh well. Life’s a bitch, et cetera, et cetera. Mother Nature has a way of finding her balance again after we crap in her shoes. There’ll be fewer people around here soon enough, and the fewer hostile people in the world, the better, is what I always say. Just give me my freedom back, some good weather, and a clear runway, and I’ll take my little bird for a walk in the sky. It’s ready. I’m ready. It’s all fixed up and ready to fly, and then this shit happens. But first chance I get, I’ll fire up my little freedom bird and climb to an altitude that takes me out of rifle range. I’ll fly my bony ass to a place where it’s warm and not quite law-abiding and the women aren’t trapped inside pinup calendars. I’ll find me a well-seasoned, hard-drinking gal and we’ll have us a time.
Susan
“I found something,” Jerry says. “Come take a look. Tell me what you think.”
I follow him into the other hangar. I see an old man duct-taped to a chair. He has blood in his hair. He’s breathing, but his gray-bearded chin is down on his chest. He’s knocked out cold.
“Did you find him like that?”
Jerry lets out a sudden unexpected laugh-cough.
“Not hardly.”
“What will we do with him?”
“Beats me. He’s got an interesting family history. He’s Bill Creedmore Senior.”
The boys are coming for us tonight. They can’t let us go. Someday this will be over, and bad people will be brought to justice. They’re monsters, but I don’t think they’re stupid. They’re cunning, like all scavengers are. They’re cunning like we are. If they don’t know right from wrong, maybe it’s our fault, the fault of our old society, but now there’s nothing left to do but kill them, if we can.
I get Scott ready to go. I make fresh bandages from rags I found in Old Bill’s office. I don’t trust that old man, and I’m glad Jerry took precautions. I don’t let myself think we’re starting to resemble the bad people in the world. No, I don’t mind that Bill Senior is taped to a chair, and I’ll take things from him whenever I get a chance. His monster of a son has taken our Melanie from us. Maybe the old man isn’t to blame for the way his son turned out, but I firmly believe that I could take Old Bill’s life, and we still wouldn’t be even. No. Not in my book.
So I wrap Scott’s face in paisley cloth from one of Old Bill’s clean rags. It beats me how that man can be as dirty and stinky as a bum but still have clean rags. He made some noise and struggled against his restraints when I took the rags, but he quieted down when I pointed the shotgun muzzle at his crotch. Why old men place such value on their sexual organs, I’ll never know. Hope springs eternal, I guess, even if it doesn’t spring often. But according to my way of thinking, Bill Senior has fathered enough children.
Scotty reaches up and unwraps the bandages from his eyes. He picks up the rifle he took from one of the dead boys. His hands reach without hesitation or fumbling and he ejects the magazine and tops it off with fresh ammunition. It takes me a while to realize that his vision must be coming back.
“These boys are country boys, and they’ll track us. They’ll hunt us,” he says.
He points
his crosshatched face toward me.
“What will we do with the old man?”
I shrug my shoulders and he nods.
“Okay. Now you’re making sense.”
Melanie
Cold and stinking. They throw bags of corn chips and bottles of water at me before they lock me back in the car trunk. I hate them and want them to die, but then my brain starts to work again. At first I can only scream, but after a while I try to talk to them when they take me out. They only laugh at me. Power. They are power and I am meat. I could have power, too, because I found a tire iron in the trunk. But no. I won’t. This is Gandhi. This is Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus of Nazareth and Mother Teresa. This is all of them, with me.
But that’s bullshit. Maybe the only thing I have in common with those people is stubbornness, and I haven’t used even one percent of what I have in that department. They haven’t seen anything yet.
So I stop talking to them. I don’t say anything when they come for me, and I try to stop screaming. I give them the same silent treatment I once gave my dad.
They don’t notice at first. They’re too busy going after my body, but after a while some of them start talking to me, after. And talking is my mission and also my chance to survive. I can’t preach to them. They’ve been preached to all their lives by cops and judges and the people in juvie, and just look where it got them. No. I can’t preach, but I can tell stories, can’t I? I can tell lies about how rich my family is, and maybe the power of greed is stronger than the power of lust.
Not all of them are monsters. Maybe none of them are, given enough time and caring and therapy. There’s Donnie, for instance. He could just be playing with my head like the others play with my body. And if that’s true, then it would be okay for me to hate them all. Then it would be okay for me to wish them dead, if not kill them myself.
But Donnie seems to be a good kid. He looks like he’s about thirteen, and he brings me things. After the first rapes he brought me baby wipes and a clean set of boys’ underwear and a fresh apple and a Pepsi and two pills that turned out to be Oxycontin. He’s a really super-white little kid, with his sad eyes and black hair, and he can’t look directly at me when he gives me stuff. He’s nervous and he wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve. I didn’t notice it before, but he has a speech impediment. He says, “Here,” but he pronounces the “R” like a “W,” so it sounds like “Hew.” And I think it isn’t very good advice, but what should I expect from a wild boy with unrealistic goals?
I didn’t thank him that first time after the hell started, because I thought he’d been sent by someone else. But it was all him that time, and the times that followed, and now I hope he’ll sneak over and give me things, and he does. He gives me a fur coat that smells like old people and mothballs. He gives me a granola bar and a pillow that’s slightly damp, smelling of laundry detergent, with a single bullet hole in the middle and only faint bloodstains remaining.
He doesn’t say anything this time, but he looks at me, then looks away when I meet his eyes. I ask him about getting a bath, and he says they took baths last night but forgot about getting me into the tub. He says he’ll remind Bill Junior. I thank him and I reach out to touch his arm, but he pulls away and walks all hunched over back to his comrades.
The other boys taunt him when he comes out of the shack. They say, “Donnie’s in loooooove. He wants to issy-kissy the itchy-bitchy, dooooesn’t he?” They have a good laugh, but then the mean ones start talking about what they want to do to me, and will do to me, soon, and I bite my lip to stop the screaming, and sometimes it works.
Scott
Dizzy. Feels like a truck ran over my head. If this crappy little settlement had a pharmacy, I’d be tempted to load up on drugs. But no, I’ll limit my drug of choice to Motrin. Mom stands over me. Her shot arm is in a lumpy, dirty sling, and she uses her other arm to offer me a bottle of booze. I refuse it. I think she’s trying to get me wasted so I won’t know when the little shits come for us and it’s time to die. I’m grateful and pissed off about it, both.
Dad is still away, but Mom isn’t pacing when she prays, so I know he hasn’t left to get Melanie yet. I don’t know how he’ll do it. There has to be more than a dozen of the little bastards left alive. I’ve never been able to believe in God, some huge eye in the sky that loves us and watches over our every move, and not only lets things happen, but sometimes makes them happen. I wish I could believe it. I wish I could look right into that supernatural eye and ask it to help my dad, but then I feel like a hypocrite and I cry a little bit. I cry and I tell myself that I’m only washing out my eyes, and fear has nothing to do with it.
But yeah, right. That’s what I used to say about most things—Yeah, right. Everything before was bullshit. But not now. This is them and this is me. No more flying around on trips to nowhere, smoking weed and buzzing through life at low altitude. No more playing computer games at night, waiting for my life to start. The bombs jump-started me, and that’s a good thing. I never would’ve been this alive without the bombs. God help me, I like it. I want to get back into the game, and if I was a praying man, that’s what I’d pray for.
And I can’t afford to ignore the possibility that He or She exists, because He or She is my last hope. I want to believe that my gramma is in heaven. I want to believe it so much that it hurts, so I kind of do believe it. At least I don’t rule it out, the heaven she believed in without doubt.
Maybe hope is God and God is hope. Maybe it’s as simple as that. Yeah. I can pray to that. Please help me, whoever You are. Give me the wisdom to figure out where I stand with people and with myself. Even if You’ve moved on, or You’re dead, or You’re only make-believe, I still think I’ll talk to You. Dad needs my help. He’s going out to kill or be killed. I think he’s planning to trade his life for Melanie’s. But then what? Then Mom will be stuck in hell with a half-blind son and a pacifist daughter. We’ll be easy prey for the vultures.
So let it come back. Let me see again. A single person isn’t worth much these days, but another gun could make a difference. I know I’ll be making a lot of promises to You soon, and here’s the first of them: If You get us through this shit, all of us alive and whole, I’ll give the rest of my life to You. I’ll dedicate my life to some holy cause that You see fit to tell me about.
I’m serious, here, Mr. God. I’m every bit as serious as one of the heart attacks You use to kill billions of people. I’m as serious as a lightning bolt or a tornado or the blast of a volcano. Take us through this and I’ll be Your faithful servant. Amen.
I drift off for a while, then I open my eyes. I start to feel like a fake asshole, because I was praying, and meaning it, and other people might say it’s just a coincidence, but when I open my eyes again, I can see better. My vision isn’t all the way back, but I think it will get there. And He’s got me, then. I stumble outside and I can see faraway ridgelines, darker against the dark sky. I can see the enemy’s bonfires, too. The world is like a wet oil painting, but it’s fine art, to my eyes, and He’s got me in His service now.
I go back to my bed of hay, my little manger bed, and I dream in Technicolor.
Bill Junior
She’s a fine one, all right. I can’t get her out of my head. Part of me wants to take her for myself, but the men probably wouldn’t stand for it. Pirate leaders are always making hard decisions, because their men don’t want to be led at all, right? Isn’t that the whole point of being a pirate? Sure, a little bit of assholishness is called for, whippings and Hunt Club, and all of that. I need them to fear me. They want to fear me, but I also want them to think of me as a fair man. A little assholishness goes a long way, but no, I can’t take the girl for myself. If we find more girls, maybe I’ll take her then, but I can’t do it now.
But she’s still in my head, so I go to see her. I arranged a bath for her, with hot water and fresh bars of soap and five different kinds of shampoo and our two queer dudes standing guard. It’s two hours before the next wat
ch ends, so she’s had some time to get her shit together. I walk into her shack. It’s warm inside. There’s a propane heater glowing red in the middle of the floor, but I leave the door open, like I did before. She’s sitting in a chair. There’s a little desk in the shack and someone brought her a mirror, and she’s combing her hair. I walk to where I can see her reflection, and she’s combing her hair without looking into her eyes. I look at her eyes myself, and they’re green and steady, and I’m glad to see it.
She doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t say anything, so I clear my throat. I feel almost like I don’t know what I’m doing.
“I’ll get you a bath every week.”
“Good.”
I’m quiet for a while. I want to ask her how she’s doing, but I have a pretty good idea. Then she surprises me. She asks me how I’m doing.
I tell her not to worry about that. There isn’t anything else to say. I want to tell her I’m not such a bad guy. I want to say I’d like to get to know her, and wouldn’t it be nice of we’d met some other way, but damn that shit sounds lame.
I walk away. When I turn to close the door, she’s looking straight at herself in the mirror, and her eyes are like the eyes of a pissed-off angel.
Jerry
Seems as if I haven’t slept in years. I might go crazy or I might drop dead in my tracks, but I can’t sleep. Even if I suddenly grew tired, I couldn’t sleep now.
I sit with Susan on a hay bale. I put my hand on her knee and she stands and then she paces.
“You can’t go alone.”
“There’s no one else. There’s you and me and Scotty and Melanie. We’re not leaving without her. And we can’t leave Scotty here alone.”