Woman Scorned

by Fritz, K. Edwin

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know this was your stream. I’ve only been here ten days and I didn’t get any food except for once and that I ate it all in one sitting ‘cause I was so hungry from the time before. I just got so thirsty I thought I would die. I didn’t know I had to pay to drink here. I’ll pay you, really I’ll pay you anything. Just please don’t kill me. I didn’t know I was trespassing. I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know!” Halfway through this little act he had put his hands by his ears. Now he started to smack the sides of his face and squeeze his eyes shut.

  Lace and the other two men let him beat himself for several seconds. At some point, Obe heard their chuckles of amusement and stopped.

  “Listen, esé,” Lace said. “We’re not unreasonable men. You’re new. How could you know? Perhaps,” he paused to open his arms wide to the rushing waters, “I can give you the greenhorn special.”

  “Lace?” Deek said. “You can’t be serious. He practically drank up half the stream. He owes you at least a full bag of food for that. More since he did it without asking.”

  Lace, however, was only smiling and didn’t respond. He continued holding his arms wide, allowing the sound and feel of the flowing stream to speak on his behalf. “I have heard of you, Obey like robe,” he finally said. “You lured the women to the alley last week. They had to turn back like dogs with their tail between their legs.”

  “Yes!” Obe said, excitedly. “That was me! I didn’t do it on purpose, but that was me. I did it!”

  “Yes, yes,” Lace said with a hushing motion with his hands. “You were quite the celebrity among those filthy Cretes. I bet they just loved you.”

  “Who are Cretes?” Obe asked. “Are they the elders? The Family of Blue has elders.”

  “They’re no family!” Lace suddenly shouted. “They steal, and they lie, and they kill good men out of spite and hatred. They are the very scum the women have been hunting, and they all deserve to die!”

  “Oh,” Obe said. Then he held his tongue and waited. He could feel it. The most crucial part of the encounter was about to come.

  “The Cretes live in the concrete jungle because they are nothing but animals. And if you tell me they haven’t yet made an offer to you, I’ll know you’re lying and I’ll kill you here and now!”

  He reached up the left sleeve of his jumpsuit and pulled out a long triangle of gleaming metal. It was a shiv, clearly, made from some long-ago remnant of forgotten tourism, but it was expertly don. Obe realized this man had spent time in prison long before the women had found and captured him.

  Then Lace nodded once and his two henchmen were behind Obe and holding his arms. Lace walked slowly forward and held the edge of the blade to Obe’s throat.

  “You mean the Family?” Obe sputtered, maintaining his air of stupidity. The fear in his voice was real enough. “Yes, okay? Yes, they asked me to be a part of them. But I told them no! I told them no! Honest I did!”

  “No, eh?” Lace asked. “What makes you think I’ll believe a little gringo like you? Just because you rolled your pant leg down doesn’t mean you aren’t lying to me. There are spies everywhere, O. B. E. Obe. How do I know you aren’t their newest mole?”

  Obe pulled his head back but the massive Deek pushed it forward again. Lace’s blade pressed against his throat and he felt the skin there stretch and slit open. Blood soon trickled down Lace’s blade and onto his tattooed hand. He leaned in close, the complex marks on his face seeming to glisten in the moonlight.

  “Because… because… Doov said I was a pussy!” Obe shouted. The words were loud and laced with fear and anger, and somehow they stopped time itself. Even the stream’s constant gurgle seemed to wait for the Hillbruh’s reaction. “I told him seven bags of food was too many and I’d never make it and he called me a pussy and said good luck on my own!”

  “Seven.” Lace said. It was not a question. “Doov is greedy in his old age.” He considered for another moment. “You really told him ‘no’?” he asked.

  “Yes!” Obe said. “But the joke was on me. I never got my food this time anyway. Those assholes ganged up on me and beat the shit out of me. I heard they still let loners get food, but that’s bullshit. They damned near killed me. Just look at me!” he shouted.

  Obe lifted his road-rashed palms to Lace’s eyes and Lace looked at them, lowering the blade a little. Then he examined the long scratch on Obe’s face and his angular, broken nose and lowered it a little more. Obe offered a view of the bottom of one foot where he knew the shredded skin still looked the worse for wear. In a moment Lace was pushing the sleeves of Obe’s jumpsuit up and examining his forearms.

  “Four, eh?” he said. “Four in ten days despite those feet. And you lured the women to that filthy ally.” His eyes squinted for a moment. “I bet you have a dozen other bruises under that jumpsuit, too. Ones that can’t be seen.” Obe merely nodded. Then Lace dropped the blade completely. “Let him go,” he said.

  Deek and his companion released Obe’s arms and he rubbed sorely at his right shoulder, unaware until just then that they had pulled the muscle there.

  “You run well, Obe,” Lace said, “and the Cretes are fools for letting you slip by.” He squatted in the bubbling brook and scooped a handful of cold water into his mouth. “I think we can come to an arrangement for your payment.”

  Obe breathed a slow sigh of relief, but felt he was far from out of trouble.

  “I told you there are spies everywhere,” Crete said. “And there are. Far more than Doov and his stupid Family think. And I’ll tell you something else… I can always use one more.”

  6

  When the following grocery day finally arrived Obe’s stomach was a constant rumble and he had returned his right pant leg to its correct, rolled, position. He’d gone back to the stream every night and drunk liberally. Lace, Deek, and the other Hillbruhs allowed him full passage in exchange for the information he was supposed to bring them, but water alone could not satiate his appetite.

  Today I get to keep my bag, he thought. And for this reason he wasn’t worried. What did worry him was that he now knew there were other spies hidden inside the Family, and he had no idea who they might be.

  He was more tired now, of course. The middle of the night treks up and down the stream’s huge ravine had worn him out, and the threat of cars still woke him early each morning. He was taking more naps than ever, but the daytime did not beget true rest.

  He soon met up with Leb, whom he was glad to see. Already Obe thought he looked fuller in the face, healthier. His hair was clean again, and in his eyes there was that sparkle of life. But when he looked closer, the sadness within them was nevertheless not good. Bad news, it seemed, had tainted his return to the Family.

  “There’s been another tragedy,” Leb told him.

  “A tragedy? What? Who? Are you sure?”

  “Well, if there’s one thing about the Family that I’ve learned, it’s that rumors and stories still fester and spread just like they always did back home. But when word comes about a death… when word comes about a bad death… it’s never wrong. I haven’t heard who it was. Nobody seems to know, but I understand it was two men at once, and supposedly both were well respected.”

  Immediately Obe thought of Doov and the other elders and then, reluctantly, of Rein. “Is it… an elder, do you think?”

  “Could be. We’ve seen it before, remember. I hope to God it isn’t. A double loss of the elders would be devastating. If Leet’s gone, we’d be left without any until Plint turns. He’s the closest, I think. In his high eighties or low nineties by now.”

  “Has that happened before?” Obe asked. “What happens to the Family if there’s no elders?”

  “Sure. I saw it once my first month. Morale was down. Very down. All men come and go, even the elders, but the Family’s main function is to make this hell-hole bearable. Morale plays a big role in that. Every time there’s a tragedy men seem to get sloppy in their running. I was hoping
we wouldn’t be hit so soon again after recovering from the last one. Seems I was wrong.”

  Obe looked to a pair of men on their way over to meet them. One of them was Tick.

  “Morning, Leb. Morning, Obe,” Tick said.

  “Tick,” Leb and Obe said in unison.

  “I’m Slet,” the other man said to Obe, and offered his hand. “Nice to meet you.” Obe took it and returned the greeting, but his heart wasn’t in it and Obe suspected neither was Slet’s. The rumor of the tragedy was simply more pressing.

  “You hear about the trouble?” Tick asked.

  “We were just talking about it. Do you know who it was?”

  “Yeah,” he paused only to meet them both briefly in the eyes. “Roe and Jile.”

  “No!” Leb said. “Damn.” Obe’s heart seemed to stop as if it had died for two respective seconds.

  “Afraid so. Word is they got into a fight and Jile ran off.”

  “A fight?” Obe asked. “Those two?”

  “There’s no such thing as a true friendship, Obe,” Leb said. “Not here.”

  “I’m still not so sure about that,” Slet said. “I heard it was a few hours later when Roe was looking for him, found him and called his name, and when Jile turned and began walking toward him a car showed and broke them up. Half hour later it was over. Jile was dead and Roe was bawling like a baby in a dumpster somewhere.”

  “My God,” Leb said. “This is horrible.”

  “It gets worse,” Tick said. “Doov found Roe and tried to talk to him, but Roe broke away and ran off. He went straight to the Cliffs of the Moon and jumped off. Didn’t even slow down. Just went over the edge like…” and here he just looked at the ground with wide eyes, “like a stupid lemming.”

  The men shared a silent pause as each grappled with their own tumbling thoughts. “I can’t believe this,” Obe finally said. “I never even talked to either one of them, but the way they worked together… I just can’t believe this.”

  “They were turning out to be real inspiring to the incoming greenhorns,” Leb said. “This is an injury to the Family to be sure. Usually a tragedy only affects the ones who’ve been here a while, but this… this will hit everyone. Who knows how long it will be before another pair like that forms. We may never see it in our lifetimes.”

  “It sure is a tragedy,” Slet said.

  “We’re going to tell some others,” Tick said.

  “Sure,” Leb said. “People need to know.”

  As Tick and Slet moved on, Obe felt crushed and was glad to be alone with Leb again. “How does the Family handle a thing like this?” he asked.

  Leb sighed, looked around to be sure no one was within earshot, and whispered what Obe had somehow already known. “The same as it handles every tragedy,” he said in his hushed voice. “With too little attention to what truly matters. The standard funeral will begin and end it. Pisses me off, but nothing can be done about it. It’s the way of things. All we can do is mourn them properly in our own way.”

  Obe didn’t respond because he couldn’t. Leb had already said it all. He had been hoping the Family would be the answer to his other, more pressing problem, but it was looking less and less likely that would be the case. Still, he asked Leb just to be sure.

  “Hey Leb,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

  “Of course. Anything.” He lowered his voice again and added, “And I won’t charge you for it, either.” He winked and Obe smiled his thanks.

  “I was wondering if the Family could help me with something. Something I can’t do alone but is, well, pretty important.”

  “Maybe,” Leb said. “They do have power. And lots of influence. But they only get involved in stuff that they can benefit from, and usually they only help out the more respected members. You have a pretty strong start, though, with your first run, so anything’s possible.”

  “Okay,” Obe said. “That’s kind of what I figured.”

  “What’s the favor?”

  Obe thought about how he could explain his brother’s presence here on the island. “I need to find someone in green sector,” he said. “It’s someone I may have known from back home. I don’t know his name, of course, not that that matters. He wouldn’t know it either. But I think he has a small scar on his forehead. And if he is there I’m fairly certain I could jog his memory. I’ve… remembered a few things about him lately, and someone from green sector told me he’s here.”

  “Jesus,” Leb said. “Are you sure?”

  “No,” Obe admitted. “The whole thing sounds like a fantasy, to be honest. But I can’t ignore it. I… need to know. You know?”

  “Sure,” Leb said. “I can understand that.” He looked over his shoulder to where several men were walking past and waited for them to be gone from earshot. “He must be someone pretty close to you to remember him at all.”

  “Yeah,” Obe said. He considered very seriously telling Leb everything, but held back. It’s too much of a risk, he thought. Even with Leb. “We may have gone to school together,” he said instead.

  “Wow,” Leb said, shaking his head. “Well, I’ll be honest with you, Obe. The odds are the Family will never help you with a thing like that. They could do it. They’ve got the manpower. But it’s a big project to scour the whole green sector and talk to all those men. It’s too big of a risk. Maybe if you were elder or near elder status it would happen, but right now… sorry, bud. You’re just too low on the totem pole.”

  Obe nodded, frowning. He was surprised and slightly embarrassed to realize that he was suddenly near crying. He had put forth so much effort into first remembering his brother and then into hoping to actually find him. The simple truth of having lost him like this was secretly devastating.

  They fell, then, into an awkward silence which became worse as the seconds passed into minutes. Eventually, Leb left to share the news with still others, and Obe supposed he also had many faces he wanted to reacquaint himself with now that his punishment was over.

  When Baj arrived, the usual line formed. It was shorter than last time, but only by a little. For once Obe had no runs to mark, and he sat quietly on the ground, the tragedy of Jile’s kill and Roe’s suicide eating at him as much as his stomach seemed to be doing. He thought again and again how he had never spoken to them, had never even been formally introduced to them.

  At some point his eyes drifted to the dark stain on the thigh of his jumpsuit. Blood had dried and meshed into the fibers there. Blood mixed from some man who didn’t last even a single week on the island and from Obe’s own broken nose. Wasn’t there some kind of meaning buried there? He didn’t know what it could be. All he could think about was death and pain and misery.

  He thought about how much his nose had hurt when that tall manhe was dead now, too, and Obe couldn’t even remember his name had smashed it with his elbow. He thought of how gruesome the kill was that he’d witnessed, how it must feel to be so miserable that you’d run right off the edge of a cliff without slowing to think.

  He was glad when Doov and Paist finally stood on their buckets. He needed a sense of closure. Leet, he saw, was conspicuously absent.

  7

  Elton didn’t understand. He was taking the pretty girl with the red hair and the red skirt and the soft, smooth legs out to his car. And she was following him. She was going to be his new angel. Then he was in a wheelchair. Then he was looking out a window and it was nothing but the tops of clouds outside. Then he was seeing boots of a big woman. An angry woman. Then he was in the wheelchair again. Then he was looking at the pretty girl’s legs again. Then someone was chaining him in his own basement. Then he was seeing a hole in the clouds and it was nothing but water through there. He didn’t understand at all.

  “…akie, Elton.” An angel was calling to him. She was singing to him. She would explain it. She sounded so nice.

  “Wakie wakie,” the angel said again. “Elton, dear, can you hear me?”

  “Yesh,” he said, but something was wro
ng with his tongue. It wouldn’t move right.

  “Well, there you are Elton. Good morning. Did you have a good nap?”

  “I’m shleepy,” Elton said. “My tongue ish mad at… me.”

  “I know, Elton. I know. But that will be gone soon. That’s just the drugs. You’ve been asleep a long time. But you’ll be okay. Well, until we kill you, of course.”

  Elton smiled. That’s good, he thought. That was good. He would be okay. He just gave the pretty girl too many drugs. That was all. He would be okay.

  The big man started to slip back into a peaceful sleep, and that’s when the rock hit him in the face. He sputtered a sound, fluttered his eyes. Nobody was there. The rock was gone. He yelled, angry at the rock. He was trying to sleep, didn’t it know that?

  Then a bigger rock hit him. It wasn’t a clunk- it was a boom, and suddenly his eyes were open. He was in a little white room. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling on its wire. He jerked his head but his head was strapped down. He was on a metal table.

  Oh shit, he thought. The angels killed me and sent me to Hell. These is demon angels, and they’re mad at me for what I done. I think I’m gonna hate this.

  “Wake up, pig!” The angel voice was gone now. It had been scared away by this new demon voice. He couldn’t see the demon, and that was bad. Really really. Where was his demon? Only his demon would be strong enough to fight an angel demon.

  “Where are you?!” he screamed. Another rock hit him on the side of his face, and this time he saw it wasn’t a rock at all but a fist. Someone was punching him! The demon was going to hit him ten times for every time he’d hit or hurt his first angel. He knew it instantly. People tied to tables in basements didn’t sing songs, they screamed and cried. He knew that too. Really really.

  A face floated into his view from above. It was a woman, not a demon, but she had a demon stare in her eyes. She was upside down but Elton could see that much. She was angry. So angry at what he’d done to his angel.