by Frank Bill
Stone-shocked for a moment with what was happening, Dorn wondered if she had led these men to his dwelling after he’d abandoned her and the others earlier.
Automatic gunfire kicked up granules of soil. Van Dorn’s veins were swamped by adrenaline, he’d no other choice but to run. Couldn’t contemplate the Sheldon girl’s actions, he could only react, run opposite of the mayhem, away from the screams, shrieks of shapes being ignited, and the carbine that echoed all around him. Hoofed toward the barn, where he saddled his mule, Red. Heard the shouts of men from the house. The Sheldon girl’s face haunted him. Her long layers of moleskin hair. Smudged cheeks and blue eyes. Custard lips, limbs so thin they appeared ossified.
Mounting the mule, Van Dorn pulled on the reins. Guided Red out the rear of the barn.
Galloping along the river, Dorn halted the mule, turned to study the sky above the trees. Looked back to where the house was. Thought of circling back, but knowing there were too many of them, well armed and beyond pissed off by this point as he saw the hint of black rising. Smelling the burn of all that he’d known since returning to Harrison County: wood-framed windows, walls of shelves that held pictures of the Widow’s people. Fathers, mothers, and grandparents. Her history reduced to ashes.
Van Dorn told himself he needed to find distance, regroup, devise a plan, then maybe he’d scour the land. Not let the Sheldon girl lose her account of life. Not let it be taken or ended before it’d even begun. He’d start by traveling north up the worming Blue River. Cross over to the west, keep to the trees above and along Rothrock Mill Road, journey past the place of the killing, keep working his way toward Wyandotte Cave Road and beyond, hopefully find shelter amongst the rocky hills.
* * *
There was the uneasiness of eyes studying Van Dorn’s every movement as he reined Red down the grooved soil of broken bank where a canoe launch was located at the Mill. Red took the decline along the shore of pea gravel. Dorn studied the green glass of miniature ripples still present even without much rain, and thought of the river’s center and the folklore that plagued it.
The Widow had told him that a local man of the county, who was married with a boy, had drowned his lover in these waters, the lover being his cousin, though she was never found. The blame had been placed on the man’s son because of an altercation between him and the father over the female’s disappearance. Something the son had seen but the father denied. The Widow knew this as truth, telling that she’d been the one to have found the drowned female’s stray bones downstream when laying manure nets in large holes for baiting catfish. Though it was not nearly enough to construct a body, it had given the Widow reason to drag for more. She searched the river bottoms but nothing else was found.
Crossing the river’s center, Dorn’s mule came from the water on the opposite shore, climbed the hillside at a slant. Clomped over a dead-end road where people had once parked to fish. Other than tracking and shooting the deer, Dorn had not hunted or traveled this side of the river since the loss of power. He’d kept to his own, hunting the fields and wilderness to the southeast, not the northwest. Refraining from as many eyes as possible, especially the hordes that’d become more and more visible over the passing weeks.
Working his way over the leaves crunching like miniature tins, Red huffed and snorted, several times jerking as though he were spooked or sensed Van Dorn’s paranoia of those he’d ignited within the house.
Dorn halted Red. Listened to the woods. Read the signs: a huddle of sparrow about the ground in search of nourishment, a bush-tailed squirrel gathering nuts from below a walnut tree, and as Dorn watched he wondered, if he were to shoot a rabbit, would the fur about its bottoms be thicker than normal? It was mid-September and before he’d become a scavenger, he’d grown up with the wisdom of his father predicting the oncoming winters by the wildlife’s behavior and their appearance. So far their movements hinted toward a rough winter.
Waiting, Van Dorn listened and watched to see if he was alone. Several crows perched upon a limb, another sign for a bad winter. Dorn watched the birds’ quiet. Their quick blink of the eyes. Their glancing into the silence around them.
Dorn navigated Red back to where he’d begun to dress the deer, shot the men. Crows walked about the stains. Picking at the rutted remains of rot. On one of the trees below him hung what appeared to be a blackened appendage. He dug the binoculars from his pack. What he viewed was exactly that, a human limb. From another hung what appeared to be a hand.
Lowering his field glasses, Dorn thought of animals who urinated over a section of ground to ward others off, territorial pissing, only these were humans, they’d marked their territory with the dead. A warning, Dorn said to himself.
Behind him leaves trundled with the clomp of what sounded like footfalls. Turning. He glanced to the ground. To the trees that climbed up into the gloom. But saw nothing and the noise ceased.
Traveling on past the killing ground for what seemed an hour, Dorn came to the edge of a property line. Stopped. Before him lay several acres of dead cornstalks, tanned and broken over. Paths made way into what had once been a yard but looked like a hayfield that coursed up to a home forged of brick. White pillars from the side. Land that had once been farmed, probably sold when the parents grew old and passed away. Had maybe been developed into the beginnings of high-dollar homes. Something Dorn’s father and the Widow complained about on their late-night binges on Maker’s. Something Dorn and his father had seen firsthand while jotting down addresses to rob.
Searching his memory, unable to remember seeing this residence on his way to the Pentecost’s place with his father, Dorn recalled the long driveway. The home couldn’t be seen from the road.
Feeling eyes dig into his back, he could not shake the uneasiness of something bad. Lifted his binoculars, searched the area for evidence of transit, something out of place. Disrupted. The heads of two Labradors lay with bodies outstretched. One fudge. One black. No rise from their ribs. Their insides appeared gored. Splayed out. Looked like fresh kills as the blood appeared red and saucy. On the front porch sat a man in a rocker. Neck bent back, mouth agape, eyes removed with a vulture on the chair’s armrest, beaking at the orb holes. Split-glass flesh marred the side of his temple. A mess littered his front all the way to where parts of his legs looked to have been cut out. Sections of quad removed. The spill of the cutting painted the porch where a female lay tossed out on her back. Or at least it was what Dorn believed to be a female.
The actions were all wrong, though Dorn could not place his finger upon the wrong just yet.
Off beside the home was a matching brick outbuilding. Beside it, an indent of mossed-over land. Parked on the sun-bleached blacktop was a navy-blue Mercedes two-seater with the hood raised, nose to nose with a silver Lexus SUV, its hood also raised. Jumpers wired from one battery terminal to the other, connecting the two. Driver’s-side doors on each ajar. From the Lexus ran a boy. T-shirt, cargo shorts, hair matted, about eighteen or nineteen years of age. Cutting to the concrete walk that gave way to the home’s front porch of cadavers.
From nowhere came a jaunting figure. A head with porcupine hair. Sunken and carved features like a totem of wood. He donned denim bibs. No shirt. He tackled the boy, who hollered something indecipherable.
The figure raised the boy to standing. The boy kicked. Threw his arms sideways. Reached, dug his fingers into the man’s features.
From the porch the buzzard took to the air.
Dorn lowered the field glasses. Knew he’d need to make a choice. His heart pounded. Limbs tensed with each echo from the boy that bounced out into the woods where Van Dorn sat hidden.
But the boy wasn’t shouting for help.
Dorn swiveled the rifle from his back. Butted the stock to where shoulder met chest. Hesitated. Clasped his eyes. Opened them back up. Something was amiss. This he knew from hunting, like watching a deer being baited with a salt block.
Front door of the home swung open. Dorn lowered the rifle, raise
d the field glasses with his left. It was a girl. Looked to be the same age as the boy. Golden locks unfluffed. Flat and olive-oily. Stains about her face, smearing her front. She screamed, “Let go of him!” and from the weeds came another figure. Banded eye, cankered complexion, sleeveless flannel, wielding a hatchet. He hugged the female, raised her up. She rammed her head backward. The figure ran a tongue up the side of her face, laughed. The other figure dropped the boy to his knees. Laced his fingers into the boy’s hair. Brought a butcher’s blade to his widow’s peak.
Dorn lowered the glasses. Knowing he had to shoot them now if he wanted to save them. Risk his direction. Freedom. Alert others. Raised the rifle once more. Seemed there was one, then two, meaning there could be a third, a fourth, and so on. A damn domino effect.
React, Van Dorn thought, don’t think. That’s what his father would tell him. And Dorn leveled the .30-30. Closed one eye. Let the other rest on the knife wielder. But the boy, he looked not afraid. Dorn inhaled deep through his nose. Slowing the rhythm in his chest, the nervous twitch in his arms and hands. Flashes of Gutt on the tile. Men coming at him on the road. Horace drilling into his worldview since birth: Do what you must to others and abandon weakness.
Exhaling, Dorn firmly pulled the trigger. Gunfire breached the land. Neck sprayed hot. Hands released the boy. The bibbed figure dropped backward, palmed his neck.
Van Dorn shelled and chambered brass. Turned to the man hugging the female, who looked to be pawing at her pocket. She was released. Knees hammered the porch. The boy came at the man with a blade pulled from somewhere. The man turned his head upon his neck from one side to the other. Trying to hone in on where the rifle shot came from. But it was too late, Dorn sighted his silhouette between the crosshairs. Then the boy stepped into his aim. Took a stabbing swipe at the man, who stepped back. Lined himself in Dorn’s hairs again. Slapped at the boy with his left hand. Brought the hatchet with his right. Another explosion pierced the man’s face. Flung chunked juice, deflated his hide to the ground.
Bootheels hit Red’s ribs. He clomped through the stiff and scorched stalks toward the home. Trail of dust followed.
Dorn halted the mule. Stopped short of the concrete porch. Bore down on the girl and boy who stood staring at him. Appearing ghostly pale and angered. The other figure clawed at his neck, gurgled as his life slipped away with each drop of being that’d once circulated within, moistening the chiggered weeds.
The boy looked up to Dorn with a small gash at his skull’s peak. A rivulet of blood trickled down his forehead. A flaking rub decorated his plump lips. No tears dribbled from his brown eyes, which sunk into their orb holes. Cheeks appeared rashed and he smirked. “The hell are you?”
“Van Dorn. And you?”
“I’m Toby. This is my sister, Ann.”
Ann studied the mule. Her skin so deficient of pigmentation she looked like a species of cave fish that never knew light as she ran a tongue over her chaffed lips.
“Who are these that attacked you?” Dorn asked.
“Trailer trash like all you, that’s what our parents called them before they discovered their endings,” said Toby, as he glanced to Ann. Nodded his head. She reached to her pocket. Lifted her eyes to Van Dorn, who took in the measure of slick steel in Toby’s hand, and he smirked, said, “Or supper, as we’ve come to call it.”
Van Dorn glanced at the man in the rocker; his legs had been carved at the muscular regions. Then the two dogs in the yard. Cars that didn’t run. Appearing to be jumped. Van Dorn didn’t want to accept what he’d realized too late, what he’d interrupted.
Toby and Ann stepped to Dorn and his mule. Ann buried a curved surgical blade into the mule’s neck, tugged downward, parted its hide.
Red squealed. Blood steamed.
Toby dug his knife into the opposite side of Red, who kicked his front legs up into the air. Bucked Van Dorn from his saddled back. Wind was knocked from Van Dorn’s lungs when he hit the solid walk and a vibration moved from the rear of his skull and drove a loss of time from his mind.
THEN
Finding his way back to the Widow’s home, fast as a metallic element boring from a gun barrel, was Dillard and an unknown figure. A week had passed since Gutt’s GTO had been discovered at Tucker’s Lake. It’d been combed for evidence. Held no print, neither hair nor hide. Nothing to suspect foul play.
The unknown figure was not the type of man Dillard was known to hold commerce with, which was typically an Aryan-skinned local or paroled felon with sawed-off teeth and a scarred jawline. Instead, with him he brought a gaunt shape who’d a bourbon hide. Oreo hair and a maze of ink about his arms that gave headache to the eyes, trying to figure out where one faded carving began and the next stroke ended.
Before word had bled through the county with the finding of Gutt’s GTO, an offer had been put forward to Horace and Van Dorn. A place to lay their heads, begin their lives anew with the Widow. In return, the Widow asked for a hand around her place. Horace and Dorn accepted, as the killing and burial of Gutt had gilded a trust amongst the three.
It was after lunch when the sun stroked down upon Horace, Dorn, and the Widow. Netted beads of sweat from their tawny skin. They planted by the signs of the zodiac, meaning each day was branded by one of the twelve signs that appeared once a month, which lasted two or three days, then changed, guiding Horace and the Widow by the markings on a red-and-white calendar that hung in the Widow’s kitchen. Using the constellation that was to be foremost in the sky at the time of planting, the body part associated with the planet and its closest element, would yield the best time for seeding, knowing when it would be too hot, cold, wet, or dry.
Horace managed the flaking green plow that forked from hands, reined and harnessed to Red, the mule who pulled it up and down the dirt, the rusted curve of a triangular blade cutting rows through the soil. While Van Dorn hoed lines for sowing, and the Widow came behind, dropping seedlings and pushing the dirt over with bare feet. They marked the end of their rows with a single stick. The paper packet the seeds came in placed upon it. They had lines of corn, green beans, peas, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, and zucchini.
Dillard walked out into the loose soil, the unknown man following. The Widow stopped what she was doing and Dillard said, “Know you’ve heard they found Gutt’s car but no trace of Gutt.”
And the Widow replied, “Word is all around the county. Some say he’s run off. Others say he had an unpaid debt. Regardless, it concerns me none.”
Hulking over the Widow’s firm and shapely outline, Dillard raised his ink-collaged arm of bullets, blades, and swastikas, steered a finger to her face. “It concerns you plenty. I know he was to pay a visit to you. Now he’s vanished and you’re shacked up with these two hides. Think you’ve indulged in more than you’re letting on.”
Horace halted Red in the garden. Sensed the tension that was to be unleashed from Dillard. Turned and began to walk over the fresh cake-mix soil, boots imprinting the dirt, leaving a path of his tanned muscle that glistened within the heat while the knuckles of each hand bled the color of bone.
The Widow told Dillard, “Who I keep company with is no concern of yours. Done told you he never visited the store.”
“Awful coincidental that my brother vanishes when these two road rags roll into town.” Dillard looked to Horace and demanded, “Who the hell are you, simpleton?”
Dorn walked up till he stood near shoulder to shoulder with his father, just behind the Widow; he was almost the exact size and shape of Horace, only younger. Hair split-ended and stenciling over his eyes. Hoe in his right hand, ready to swing if needed, back up his father. Horace kept a straight face, sweat stinging his eyes, told Dillard, “None of your fucking concern, wannabe bigot.”
Dillard smirked and said, “When it concerns my brother, I make it my business.” Dillard leaned to his right and told the man beside him, “Think maybe his tongue needs adjusting. What do you think, Manny?”
The tatted man alongside Dillard smi
led. Jutted his head up and down. His tone was broken and foreign as he sized up Horace and Dorn and the Widow. He said, “Think they all need calibrating.” Without warning, Manny stepped toward the Widow. Waved a slap to her face. Startled her as she tripped backward but didn’t fall. Dorn was behind her. Caught her weight.
Before Manny raised another motion, Horace laid skin down on him with a right fist. Chiseled an ovaled opening into his sight. Pinched his eye, stumbled Manny into Dillard. Horace circled Manny, kept him between him and Dillard. An obstruction. Quick, he tugged Manny’s ear, head-butted him. Then drove a fist into his throat.
Dorn had pulled the Widow away from the onslaught. Shielded her.
Arms and legs gave. Manny’s knees stumped into the soil as though two pieces of firewood waiting to be split. Hands spread to catch his balance. On all fours Manny heaved. Tried to find the wind that had been cinched. Horace had started to lay the tread of his boot to Manny’s complexion when Dillard raised a black Glock 19 handgun to the rear of his head.
“Enough, motherfucker.”
Seeing the Widow disrespected, pistol pointed at his father, Van Dorn grabbed the hoe. Circled it over his head with a whooping battle cry of “Ahhh!” Prepared to etch a split down on Dillard’s face.
Horace turned. Brought right and left hands to halt Dorn, took the hoe from him. Told him, “This is not your fight, son.” With lungs fast expanding, Horace turned back to Dillard and smirched, “Seems big men need to bring guns and a Spaniard to do their bidding against road rags.”
From the ground Manny wheezed, “Ain’t Spanish. I am Guatemalan. And if I’d my Mutts with me you and your spawn would not be breathing.”
Keeping the 19 on Horace, Dillard told him, “I need answers about what happened to Gutt.”