by Edward Lee
“You!” she yelled when the hand came off her mouth.
“That rascal behind ya’s my nephew Micky-Mack.”
The muscular arms around her loosened. Shuddering, Veronica craned her neck and saw a lean, 20ish man with choppy blond hair and a ragtag jacket. He grinned, showing bad teeth. “Hey there! Good golly, you’se a purdy one!”
It now occurred to her that Helton was sitting in front on the passenger side of the mysterious truck. “And this here,” he said, “is my son, Dumar.”
Now the driver looked back: a creepily skinny redneck with long, stringy black hair and a thin face. “Howdy, Veronnerka! My Paw done tolt us all about ya! Says you was a mite nice sellin’ him that fancified camera.”
The truth finally set in. I’ve been abducted by crazy rednecks! and she screamed at the top of her lungs.
The truck weaved. Helton and Micky-Mack palmed their ears. “Dang, girl!” the younger man yelled.
“Let me ‘splain!” Helton barked.
When Veronica stopped screaming, her heart felt ready to explode.
“Sheee-IT, missy!” Helton climbed in back and sat his large frame on a milk crate. Micky-Mack, erection in his pants and all, slipped out from behind her and took a crate next to her.
“Ya scream louder’n a blammed train whistle,” Helton said. “Ain’t no call fer screamin’.”
“What else can I do?” she yelled. “You’ve abducted me!”
“Aw, no, hon, now see, ya just don’t understand. We ain’t abductered ya, we only, kind’a, borrowed ya fer awhile.”
“Borrowed? Why?”
Helton flapped a sheaf of papers. “That camera ya solt me’s right nice, but holy jumpin’ jehossafats!” He frowned at the papers, whose front page read OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS - SONY HI-DEF HVR SERIES. “‘Tis true I ain’t had no proper schoolin’, but my Maw, she made dang shore I learnt ta read. I gotta tell ya, though, these damn ‘structions? I cain’t make head’re tails of ’em. May as well be readin’ Alfred Einstein!”
Veronica’s face seemed to slowly droop, like melting wax. “Helton. Are you saying that you abducted me because you don’t understand the instruction booklet for the Sony?”
The shaggy head nodded. “Yeah, hon. All these buttons’n switches? A hill fella like me’d never figure it all out. So’s I need you ta show me how to work the dang thing.”
Are these men on drugs, or are they just out of their minds? she thought.
“We’se need ya to help us out is all.”
“Helton, couldn’t you have just asked me? Did you really need to abduct me in a parking lot?”
Helton sighed. “Reason we didn’t do that, is ’cos, well, this is a ‘mergency. A family ‘mergency. We’se need a favor is all, and since I knows you to be a nice-type gal, I took it unta myself—”
“To abduct me!” she yelled.
Helton appeared downcast. “It’s only ’cos ya don’t understand the whole ball’a wax. But this is dang important.”
“Family videos at Christmas is important enough to abduct someone against their will?” she continued to bellow. “Helton, you’re not making any sense!”
Micky-Mack had been staring fixedly at Veronica’s bosom the whole time. He seemed pent up sitting there on his crate, but finally he rubbed his crotch, said, “Hail, Unc Helton, this gals tits stickin’ out are killin’ me. I’se just got to have me a feel,” and then his callused redneck hand reached for her bosom.
CRACK!
Micky-Mack fell off his milk crate due to the mammoth open palm that slapped him upside of the head. “Dang, Unc Helton! That hurt!”
“This ain’t no ruckin’, boy, and you know it!” came Helton’s authoritative scold. “Veronnerka’s our friend, and we ain’t layin’ a cotton-pickin’ finger on her less’n she says we can. Ya hear me, boy?”
“Aw, fuck yeah, Unc,” Micky-Mack whined and sat back on the crate, “but Gawd dang that hurt.” Dumar up front was laughing.
The truck rocked and rocked, and Veronica’s unsorted thoughts rocked with it. Madness, madness… Certainly, abductions of young women were always founded by some sexual motive. So…
Why haven’t they raped me? Why this nonsense about needing help with the camera?
“Okay, Helton”—it was the only thing she could think to say—“I’ll show you how to operate the Sony.”
“Why that’s just dandy, girl!”
She picked up the weighty unit, flicked some switches, turned on the lamp. “There. It’s ready now.” She turned the unit around to show him. “See that little square? That’s the view-screen. Whatever you see in that is what you record. And to shoot”—she shouldered the camera and began to record Helton’s astonished face—“you squeeze this little button here on the grip.” She panned around the inside of the truck, released the record button, then showed the view-screen to Helton. “Now I’m replaying the movie I just made. Watch.”
Micky-Mack rushed over and squatted next to his uncle. In the modest view-screen they watched.
“Hey! That’s you, Unc Helton!”
“Shore is! Dang if that ain’t a fine movin’-picture camera!”
“It’s all stored on the camera’s memory, but it’s also copied onto this”—she snapped out the mini memory card. “You know, this doohicky that you bought twenty of. So for your friend to see your Christmas movies, all you have to do is give him this.”
Helton held out his hands. “It’s too good to be true!”
“That shore is some fancy camera!” Micky-Mack enthused.
Even Dumar, peering back, exclaimed, “Dang!”
Veronica set the camera back down. “There. Now you know how to use it, so you don’t need me any more. You can drop me off right here.”
Helton grit his teeth. “Naw, see, hon, it ain’t that easy.”
I KNEW it! “So it’s all a lie then, right?” she spat. “You abducted me because you want to rape me!”
“Please don’t think that,” Helton pleaded. “You’re right. We done sort’a took ya ‘gainst yer will, but it’s all fer a greater good. It’s like this…” Helton rested his shaggy chin on his dirty fingertips. “When a poe-leece man’s follerin’ some bad fellas, if that poe-leece man’s car breaks down, then it’s all right for him to stop the next car that come by and take it—I think it’s called common-deerin’. See, that poe-leece man’s allowed to take another car. Why? ’cos it’s fer a greater good.”
Oh my God! she thought. This is crazy! “Helton? How long are you going to…keep me?”
“Aw, won’t be long, couple’a days or—”
“A couple of days?” she shrieked.
“—or maybe a couple’a weeks, I s’pose. See, Veronnerka, it all depends how long it takes, and don’t ask me to ‘splain that, ’cos…ya simply wouldn’t understand.”
Madness, madness… “Helton, if I don’t show up for work tomorrow morning, then my boyfriend Mike will call me, and if I don’t answer, he’ll go to my apartment, and if I’m not there…he’ll call the police.”
Helton shrugged. “Don’t matter none. Oh, and since ya will be missin’ some workin’ time, we’ll’se pay double fer what’cha miss. How’s that?”
“How’s that?” she wailed. “That’s outrageous! You can’t just take people, Helton! It’s against the law!”
Helton’s tone grew stern. “So’s what was done ta my grandson.”
“What?”
Helton sighed. “Ya just wouldn’t understand, missy. So it’s easier ta just trust me…”
“Here we is, Paw,” Dumar said.
The truck slowed, jostled more violently, then stopped. Veronica, at last, broke down in tears and half-collapsed on Helton, hugging him.
“Please, Helton, don’t do this to me. Don’t hurt me—”
“We ain’t gonna hurt a hair on yer purdy head,” the bulky man assured. “And as fer you…bein’ our guest fer a spell… Believe me, it’s fer somethin’ real important.” Helton took something out
of his pocket. “And it ain’t that we don’t trust ya, but, well, we’se just need ya ta stay put fer now,” then—
snap!
Veronica moaned when she was handcuffed to the metal table leg. Then Helton moved her knapsack far out of reach—the knapsack that contained her cellphone and wireless laptop.
“Git yerself some rest, why don’t’cha?” the younger man said.
Helton smiled. “Micky-Mack’s a crack shot with the sling, so’s he’s gonna catch us a squirrel or two while Dumar’n me build a campfire. But we’ll be just outside so’s if’n ya need anything, just holler.”
Madness, madness, she thought beneath her sobs.
“And if’n ya gotta pee”—Helton handed her an empty can of Heinz pork and beans. “There ya go.” He suddenly took a more serious cast. “While’s the squirrel’s cookin’, I gots to have me a long talk with the boys.”
Helton headed for the back door and exited the truck.
Madness, madness, madness, madness, Veronica thought.
(II)
Ten minutes was all it took for the young and eagle-eyed Micky-Mack to bag several squirrels, and a few minutes after that, those squirrels were promptly skinned and gutted via Helton’s big buck knife. Now the tasty rodents roasted slowly on stake-skewers over the roaring campfire outside the truck. The smell was delectable, and it was unfortunate that one of the family’s favorite meals would be tainted by the specter of death, sin, and secrets that hovered over many backwoods folks. They all sat on logs, keeping warm the way men were meant to. Dumar and Micky-Mack looked expectantly to their elder.
“Well, Paw?” Dumar asked.
“We’se waitin’,” Micky-Mack added, antsy by the mystery of what it was that so pained Helton to relate.
“The time’a reckonin’ is upon us, boys,” Helton began, eyes reflecting fire-light and something like dark wonder. “We done got our chops busted by this evil man Paulie, and now’s we’se out fer our revenge. It’s been the law of the land since time began. Someone do you wrong when you ain’t deserved it, then ya got no choice but to do him wrong even worse. Says so in the Bible”—he pronounced “Bible” as bob-ul. “Says ‘a eye fer an eye.’” Helton sipped some soda yet scarcely tasted it. “What I got ta tell ya both tonight hurts me right in my heart—”
“It hurt me in my heart, Paw!” Dumar raised his voice, “seein’ my boy kilt so awful!”
“Simmer down,” Helton ordered. “And listen. In these parts, for years and years, folks been feudin’ over this’n that. It’s part’a man’s nature, I s’pose. But sometimes folks can be so blammed evil that they’ll do ya a wrong that’s so ever-livin’ bad it seems there ain’t nothin’ you can do back to get yer proper revenge. This happened to our family way back in a war they calt the Civil War when the Yankee Army come through here’n start burnin’ our ancestors’ houses down for nothin’ more than retrievin’ the nails out the ashes, which they’d melt down to make more bullets so’s ta kill more decent Southern folk. But that ain’t all they did, see?”
Micky-Mack was so intrigued he sat on the edge of his log. “What else they do, Unc?”
Helton’s voice lowered to a grim rattle. “They round up all the gals in all the nearby towns, even li’l girls nine, ten years old, and they made ’em all live fer a month in what they called a Sibley Camp on account that’s what the tents they put up was called—Sibley tents, and what they turned this camp into…was a fuckin’ camp.”
“A what, Paw?” Dumar asked.
“It were a camp, son, where Yankees from all over could come and git thereselfs a piece’a ass. A blammed rape camp’s what is was! The Yankee general was a black-hearted cad the name’a Hildreth—it’s him was the one who order this big camp put up, and by the hunnerts, the Yankee soldiers’d come to git their willies up in our gals and fill ’em with their evil Yankee peckersnot, and General Hildreth, what he done is he charged each soldier a five-cent piece fer each nut they git in the camp, making profit on his crimes against our gals!” Helton’s rancor echoed through the woods. He had to recompose himself. “And, see, bein’ that the gals was forced ta live in this camp fer over a month, they’se all wound up pregnant, and General Hildreth, he like that a whole lot, he did, ’cos even after his Yankees left, these poor gals’d pop out kids they’d have to raise, just bringin’ more’n more hardship on ’em. And worser than that even was that whiles the gals was in the camp, they weren’t givin’ nothin’ to eat, so’s one’a the gals—name’a Constance McKinney, it was—she were kind’a the speaker fer all the poor gals. What she do is she say to General Hildreth, ‘Please, general, ya gots to give my gals some food ever so often, else we all starve to death!’ So ya know what General Hildreth did? He give each gal a tin cup and then he laugh back ta Constance’n said, ‘Each time one of my men gets his nut up your dirty Rebel pussies, you just stand up and put this cup between your legs and let my mens’ jism dribble in the cup…’cos that’s all you’re ever gonna get ta eat while you’re here! Ain’t no way I’m wasting a single morsel of food on Rebel bitches!’”
“God dang, Unc Helton!” Micky-Mack wailed. He and Dumar were clearly unsettled. “Shorely only the most evilest’a men’d make gals live on cum!”
The shadow of Helton’s nodding head loomed huge in the forest behind them. “Oh, they was evil, all right, boy, evil as if they was the sons’a Lucifer hisself. Our poor gals got fucked or sodder-mized probably a thousand times each by these dag-blasted Yanks. Eventually, though, they moved on, leavin’ our towns burnt and dester-toot. See, the Yanks et all the livestock theirselfs, but what was left they kilt’n left ta rot so’s no one else could have it, and they burnt all the fields too. That blammed Hildreth even sent his men inta the woods to kill every animal they could see; he didn’t want nothin’ left for the folks here to eat. And, a’course, all them poor gals was knocked up and their bellies full’a Yankee bastards…”
Dumar and Micky-Mack shivered, not from the chill air but from the macabre suspense being conveyed by the fire.
“Weren’t long after, the War ended, and the town’s men that didn’t get kilt or die in Yankee prison camps, they come back home, but imagine their horror when they did. Town in ashes, fields destroyed, folks livin’ on roots’n head-lice’n tree bark’n worms, their wives rack-skinny’n traumer-tized’n with a Yankee baby on their tit. It’s said that a good many’a our boys hanged theirselves in despair when they seed that.” Helton eyed the two young men. “But there were a pair’a Rebel soldiers who come back, and they didn’t kill theirselfs, no sir! They decided to do somethin’ ’bout it!”
“What, Paw? What?” Dumar pleaded.
“They hunt down them evil Yankees’n kill ’em, Unc?”
Helton raised a silencing finger. “Listen ta me now, ’cos this is important. These two men I’m speakin’ of? One was a fella named Clyde Martin—”
“Hey!” Micky-Mack exclaimed. “That’s my last name!”
“Dang straight it is, boy, ’cos this soldier, Clyde Martin, is yer direct ancestor, and the other fella, he was Lemuel Tuckton—”
“So, Paw,” Dumar calculated, “You’n me, we’se related to him?”
“Yes, we is. He’s my great, great grandfather, son. It’s the blood’a these two men—these heroes—that all of us gots runnin’ in our veins. When they see what General Hildreth did to the town, they got all in a swivet, they did. And they decided to go after him.”
“Please, Paw! Tell us they kilt Hildreth in a bad way!”
Did Helton smile in the crackling firelight? “After the War, Hildreth, he go back to someplace calt Filler-delfia, became mayor. Lived in a big mansion with pillars out front, had a beautiful wife and couple’a children, and his two best officers from the War, he hired ’em ta run his estate. See, Hildreth, he were pig-shit rich from all’a his war crimes over the years. So what Clyde Martin and Lemuel Tuckton do one night is after ridin’ on horseback all the way to Filler-delfia, they snatch them two’a Hildreth’s
officers…”
Micky-Mack and Dumar stared.
“Their bodies was found the next day, both dead as dead could be. Had their heads busted open, they did…but it weren’t no ordinary head wound, no sir. Hildreth ain’t never seen anything like it, so’s he called the family doctor to inspect the bodies. Both the tops’a their skulls was busted open—a ballpeen hammer, probably, the doc said—and ya could see their raw brains still sittin’ inside’a their skulls. But the doc look close at them brains with a magnifyin’ glass, and ya know what he saw?”
“What, Unc Helton! What?”
Helton nodded. “He seed what look like a single knife-slit in each brain, then he took a whiff’a them brains—”
“He smelt the dead fellas’ brains?” questioned Micky-Mack in utter puzzlement.
“He smelt ’em, all right,” Helton assured, and it appeared by his demeanor that something joyous deep inside was just itching to get out. “And he rekka-nized the smell, and then he stick his finger inta each slit and felt somethin’ slimy, like snot…”
Dumar’s brow furrowed. “Paw, ain’t no way snot could wind up in a fella’s brain.”
“It weren’t snot, son. It was cum—”
“Cum!” Mick-Mack yelled.
“Dick-loogie, Paw? Peckersnot? That what you’se talkin’ ’bout?”
“It shore is, Dumar! Man-batter! Joy juice! Cock-hock!” Helton affirmed, rising to his feet as the frenzy of the tale he told began to unwind like a spring. “What Clyde Martin’n Lem Tuckton did is they cracked them two officers hard on the top’a their skulls, picked out the pieces’a bone, and stuck a knife in each brain ta make a slit fer their dicks, and then—then”—Helton began to shake—“and then they fucked their brains!”
Micky-Mack almost fell off the log. “They fucked their brains, Unc Helton?”
“Holy sheeeeeeeee-IT, Paw!”
“They fucked their evil Yankee brains, and I’se mean they fucked ’em hard, and they each got theirself a nut, boys!” Helton was reeling. “Then they done the same to all’a Hildreth’s housemaids’n servants, snatchin’ ’em two at a time and humpin’ their heads!”—the frenzy rose, veins bulging in Helton’s forehead, eyes wide and gleaming in vengeful delirium—“then they snatched Hildreth’s children—his children!—and they fucked their heads, and then they done the same to his wife! And then, then, they snatched Hildreth himself and they fucked his head ta kingdom come! They fucked that head three times apiece, boys, comin’ each time’n blowin’ their load right inta the middle’a Hildreth’s twisted brain, they did, till his head was full up with their cum, and that, boys”—Helton stomped the ground—“that…is what’cha call a header!”