by Frank Bill
On his feet, Dorn was stopped oak stiff by the cane-cutter wielder. Eyes leveled on each other, Dorn offered the opening of his .45 and the man kept his feelers raised, questioned, “What heathen are you, son?”
Van Dorn glanced down at Toby, who appeared put together all wrong by his Maker, his complexion a wad of gashed and battered flesh. Ann lay down beside her spewing blend of a brother. Feeble and slow, she worked her hands together like a puppet’s crossed and knotted strings in an expression of grief and confusion.
Van Dorn stared through the man. Shoot or be swiped by this idolater’s blade, he thought, holding his boot string in his left, shuffling his feet sideways toward the door opening. Keeping the pistol leveled on the man. Heart flicking in his ears. Hands felt weighted, similar to two sponges fully absorbed of liquid. The open door a foot away, Dorn lowered the pistol and ran to the daylight and the front of the home. Leapt over the female, the dead mother. From the corner of his eye he saw a massive blur. Knew it was Red. Heard the buzz saw of fly that swarmed about the sawed hide. Entrails and wasted meat. Landing, he stumbled over the one man he’d shot in the neck. Regained his balance. His boot came off. Twisting, he sat on his ass, slid his foot back into the boot. Behind him came the blade wielder. Knowing his hand was being forced in order to survive, he brought his hands together and cupped the pistol, and an explosion clipped sound. The man’s paunch opened to the size of an apple. A mash of cotton, skin, and muscle sketched the air. His abdomen appeared as though several paintballs had burst in succession. Dropping the blade, he patted the fresh wound, hands pasted with the discharge of his organs.
Rolling to his feet, Van Dorn limped through the knee-high grass, kept his foot semi-stiff to not lose his boot again. Lungs flamed like glass being shaped in a kiln. Muscles ached. Worry was knowing he’d abandoned his ammunition, compass, and rifle. The .30-30 was an heirloom from his grandfather to his father and then to him. Now it was a relic to the lost and doomed.
Crossing over Rothrock Mill Road, reading the sun, he was headed northwest and was now unsure where he’d go, what he’d do.
Darting into the woods for shelter, placing distance between the house of horrors and himself, he saw the images replay and erupt in his mind, over and over with the sounds of pistol fire and bodies falling.
Wanting to break down, fall apart, blinking his eyes, Dorn felt a blistering pulse in his frontal lobe. He came to a mess of fallen hickory. Worked his way over the leaves, through the limbs, and sat as though in a makeshift deer or turkey blind, a form of camouflage. Fear and anxiety scourged him.
Fool, he told himself. His father’s words. He could hear them now. If any of those men survive, they’ll hunt you down and end you.
The pistol lay in his lap. Hands raised to his face. The shoestring was wrapped around his digits, rubbed against his skin. His body held a dampness, congealed with the odor of being unbathed. Quaking and twitching, Van Dorn wanted to omit the killing, the murdering of the savage and nomadic in order to endure and persist. The violence splashed images within his brain. Words came vehement and unflinching. With only a pistol, a blade strapped to his hip, he couldn’t navigate back to the Widow’s, not that there was anything worth going back for. What he had to do was continue forward. Find shelter. Rest. Decide later if he’d seek out the Sheldon girl, the others who’d been taken, and try to understand the purpose of those who hunted and enslaved the women and children.
Anger bit hard within Van Dorn. He reflected on his leaving the Widow’s as he had. Burning the shelter. Food. Accommodation. He could’ve stayed. Fought. But why? Organizing his actions, if he’d not done as he did, they could’ve murdered him or enslaved him just as they had the Sheldon girl. He wondered if maybe she was forced to lead them to the Widow’s, her family possibly threatened to be murdered like the men he’d watched die. Hold it together, he told himself. No time to be weak. Let everything unravel. Not after all you’ve endured thus far.
Smudging the salty tears from his face. Lowering his hands. Sliding his foot from the boot, Dorn threaded the lace through the eyelets of worn leather. Slipped his foot back in. Tied it. Checked his pockets, found several wooden blue-tip matches from the night before. A handful of unspent .45 cartridges for the pistol. Two clips on his belt. Toby and Ann had not taken them. Their ignorance of guns was as moronic as his was for not retrieving his own supplies, he imagined. Seemed they knew only of blades and how to part the hides of souls and eat them. What a grisly existence, Van Dorn thought. One part Old West, two parts rural apocalypse.
The cadence within his chest had quieted. Only to speed back up when the bark of hounds traveled through the forest around him. Swiveling his head left, he listened. Then swiveled to the right. The barks, some thick baying, others low, muffled, and throaty, sounded as though there were three, maybe four dogs. Van Dorn stood. Rooted through the blind of leaves and limbs. Studied his direction. The barks were coming from behind him. Feral, he imagined. He mashed over the leafed earth. Barks came in groans that pitched and bounced similar to that of an old engine, churning and chugging, the distance being lessened.
Dorn sped up his jaunt, anticipating the tick of enamel at his heels, knowing the damage a pack of canine could tread upon a person. Or so he was once told.
THEN
She’d wanted something more than Horace could offer, that bond of tenderness, not just warmth of companion. Something she once held with Alex. Something Van Dorn’s father never recognized since Dorn’s mother had run out on them.
Living with the Widow for more than three years, Van Dorn was now seventeen. And with all the numbers that’d fallen from the calendar, Horace and the Widow never held words of degradation, scalding each other with put-downs. The Widow would grow silent after hinting to Horace about that next step, of becoming more than what they were. More than offering a hand to her around her place and the land after she’d given him and Dorn a new life. Human emotion toward another was there, but not the commitment of vows; it wasn’t in him.
On those days or evenings when Horace turned her ideas away, of running off to Tennessee to be married, she’d retreat. Want time to herself. Held silence outside in the wooden swing held up by links of rusted chain, where she’d glide back and forth with the Maker’s, telling them to Go, just. Fucking. Go! Letting Horace and Van Dorn embark on their solitude elsewhere.
Traveling with Horace to the Leavenworth Tavern for a drink, Dorn would sit and they’d talk. Horace offering his philosophies of the female. Of his understanding of their wants and desires, but knowing the complications that came with bonding by paper. Physically was another issue, a new set of rules to govern. These father-son talks were more of a release for Horace than a learning for Van Dorn. A confiding.
“They get goddamned hormonal,” Horace told Dorn. “Wait one day, you’ll see what I speak of. They trap you with their tools, cooking, cuddling, and that warm between their nethers.”
Late evening was falling upon them at an outdoor table, looking over the Ohio River. High above its gray water they sat on the drab deck, a thick braid of rope running through the surrounding posts, connecting one to another. At a far table sat a man, hair slicked, not one strand out of place. Like the tint of a Hershey’s chocolate bar with hints of silver. Arms graffitied by silky red and orange flames. T-shirt. He was hard-looking like Horace. Appeared as not one to fuck with. He made eye contact with the two. Nodded his head, raised his glass of brew, took a swig, and said, “Not seen you and your sibling round here before.”
Horace nodded back. “We make our company silent.”
The man slid his chair from the table. Stepped toward Dorn and Horace. “Mind if I join you and your offspring?”
Horace was on his third Maker’s over ice. Looked to Van Dorn. “Up to my spawn.”
Van Dorn sensed something about the man. The way he carried himself. His demeanor. Not cocky but confident.
“Makes no mind to me,” Van Dorn said.
The man offer
ed a hand. “Name’s McGill, Bellmont McGill.”
Horace took his hand. “Horace Riesing. This here is my son, Van Dorn.”
McGill winked at Van Dorn. “That name rings a bell.” He sat in the chair he’d clattered over the deck boards. Pondered on the name, then spoke. “Couldn’t help but eavesdrop on your words, your knowledge of the opposite sex.” He used his hands as he spoke. Continued with “Pounding the soft part of the truth. I come here sometimes. Normally bring my daughter for company and the drive home. Name’s Scar. Oh, she’s a wad of fury. Feel for the man that tries to settle with her. Like her mother, more tom than puss.”
Bellmont slapped the table with his punch line.
“Blood’s blood regardless of gender. Long as they carry the knowledge of their kin, that’ll constitute their worth,” Horace said.
“Your talk is in an odd tongue. Where is it you and the boy live?”
“Down off Harrison Springs Road.”
Van Dorn glanced at his father, unable to believe his openness to the stranger. His becoming too lax from the booze brought on a nervous pang in his belly. His father was never an open book to others. Kept to himself. His troubles and ways were his own business and nobody else’s.
“Hmm, I know near every person in the county. Hell, I own enough of it.” McGill took a swig of his brew and, sounding cocky, he said, “Maybe you heard of my gathering I hold every year, Donnybrook?”
“An Irish festival?”
“Sorta, it’s a festival of carnage for the working. Where men and women can eat, drink, fuck, do what drug they prefer while wagering and watching men beat the tar from one another for three days and a big ball sack of coin. Lets them forget about all this loss of wages and self that our world keeps stealing from the middle and lower.”
Horace took a swallow of Maker’s. “Sounds barbaric. Unruly.”
“Oh, it’s inhumane and pugilistic,” Bellmont said. “Would you care for another swallow, the round’s on me?”
“Maker’s on the rocks. Appreciate it.”
“Welcome. And your boy, Van Dorn, what’s your poison?”
“Sweet tea. I’m not of age.”
Surprised, Bellmont leaned his head back, slanted his neck, squinted his eyes. “Sweet fucking tea? You a Jehovah’s Witness or some shit? Of what age are you, son, look to be twenty-one or better, almost as big as your ole man?”
“Seventeen, sir. Almost eighteen.”
“Seventeen and you hold a tongue of manners.” Slapping the table again, he said, “Tea and Maker’s it is. Be right back, Poe seems to be lagging on his help round this fucking grease shack.”
As Bellmont sat the glasses of hops, mash, and tea about the table, Van Dorn and Horace offered another thank-you. Bellmont sat down, looked at Dorn, and said, “Know where I’ve heard mention of your name.” He threw the bone out slow. Words simple. Methodical. As if wanting to see Horace’s reaction to his own. “I’ve an acquaintance goes by the moniker of Manny. He’s connected with a runner of guns in the area named Dillard Alcorn.”
Except for a heated breeze, a wave of silence passed. Horace scuffed his chair over the boards. Situated himself with caution. That pang in Van Dorn’s gut caused his nerves to bleed with the same. Bellmont knew this. Eyed Horace, raised a palm. “I’ve no quarrel with you, nor does Manny. Any man who gives fit to Alcorn is a man to be admired. Alcorn’s a wannabe racist. Proclaimed his blood to be Aryan but turned a blind eye to supply weapons to Manny and his gangs, who are Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan. One of which is run by his son, a revolutionary type down south of the border. In my mind that’s yellow as yellow gets. Goes against everything he preached in his early days. He lays claim that you and the Widow somehow offed his idolatrous brother, who in the minds of most should’ve been buried long ago. Manny knows when his ass has been spit-shined by a man of worth. He’s territorial, not ignorant, you earned his respect in many ways.”
Chewing on Bellmont’s words, Horace sat in quiet. Considering his cards. Dorn knew he wasn’t buying it. There was something foul about the entire moment. Like trading sins the way he and his father had done on the road. Breaking into abandoned homes, stealing the weight of metal. Knowing it was wrong. Horace telling him they had to do it to get by. If not us, then who, some other thief?
Horace rattled the ice in the moistening glass. Brought the bourbon to his lips. Laid it back on the table. “Alcorn thought he could harass something from the Widow that doesn’t exist. I recognize his misery. Wanting to find his sib. But he was warned of striking the wrong path.”
Bellmont’s eyes flickered. “Agreed. It’s been near three years since he vanished. Never hear of the Widow going to Alcorn’s place and accusing him of murdering her provider. His own baby brother.”
Though Horace knew the story as told by the Widow, he questioned Bellmont, tried to shovel away more answers. “Why do you word it as you have?”
“’Cause everyone know’d of Alcorn’s distaste for his brother’s choosing to wed a stained-skin female. Then to inherit the family store. It left a taste of acidic ore upon Alcorn’s tongue, was the Widow’s truck that Alex drove the day he found his extinction.”
Dancing around information, Bellmont was offering too much knowledge. Speaking of a feud that Horace and Van Dorn had walked into unknowingly. There was a tension at the table that evening. It was as though the Widow had been waiting for Horace and Van Dorn to walk into her store at the right moment. Give an eye for an eye. From that evening on they came to acknowledge that they were the obstruction that kept the Widow alive. Kept Alcorn away from her, as though they were her guardians.
Sipping his bourbon, Horace asked, “You hold no ill ways toward the Widow?”
“No reason to. My ills are with fighters. I barter their skills and bleed them of their worth. Just as the Romans did to the gladiators. Promoters to boxers. Only I feel and know of their pain and struggles. My wife and I used to do it together. Traveling to the rural-area taverns and bars, watching the bare-knuckle fights, harvesting new blood to build my life’s dream, the Donnybrook, and we did, year after year. Watching it grow. Till her liver turned to rot from the tilt of too much booze combined with narcotics. Now I run the racket with my daughter. I’m savage to those that fail me. But kind to those that swim in the salvage and sacrifice of this land.”
“Savage how?” Horace asked as he lowered his gaze upon Bellmont, wondering if this was an indirect warning.
Bellmont thought for a moment, offered a smile that some offer just before pulling the trigger on a monster buck. “Could I interest you and your boy in a real-life example?”
He looked to Van Dorn. Could see what he felt, an unease. Same as what he felt after the back-and-forth of words, there was something untrustworthy about McGill.
“I think not.”
“Fine. Then I shall tell you. Have either of you ever seen the damage a hound can do to the skin of a man?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“It’s unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed with the eyes. More defined and brutal than a fist, knee, elbow, or head-butt. Depending on the canine’s dentitions. Sometimes pelting the flesh with kidney-bean-sized holes. And the blood, black and oozing. It’s how I created something called the hound round with my ole buddy Manny, to separate the men from the boys when a party decides to falsify my trust, declining my offering of a better existence through brutality.”
Van Dorn watched the intensity within Bellmont’s face. How it tightened and reddened with each discharge of word from his tongue. Watched Bellmont take a drink of his beer. Wipe the foam from his lips and say, “If ever you should cross a pack of wild or feral dogs, run for your fuckin’ lives. They’ll not stop till you’re an open stream of warm, collage the earth with your skin, then stain it with your insides.”
NOW
Scents of dank soil and outgrowth came in a hurried rush. Trouncing through the decay of tans, emeralds, and silvers. Trees fallen, uprooted from severe w
eather. Rotted and withered. Branches scraped and briars snagged Van Dorn’s skin and clothing and his lungs burned. Stopping to compose and catch his breath, he listened for the barks that now came like a solid pack of uncaged beasts from the south. An orchestra of bawls that rose up into the trees and rained down upon him, punching louder and louder.
Speeding his pace, Dorn noticed the ground in the distance. Imperfections in the land, how leaves laid lower in spots and so he jumped over, or maneuvered around them, knowing they were animal traps. He was unsure of who’d set them, his mind fogged by the events that had come quick. His stomach growling for food. Blood sugar low. All he could do was react. He’d traveled too far north, unable to calculate whose property he was trespassing through.
Now, behind him, twigs snapped and the terrain crunched with hound paws, closing the distance. About the earth before him, Van Dorn took in a large section where tree limbs lay crisscrossed and lightly camouflaged by plant and leaf that covered a massive pit. He leapt up and over the obstruction with all he had in his tank. Landed on the other side. Unbalanced, he felt his left ankle give and twist. Dirt smeared beneath his nails as he reached to balance and break his fall.
The sounds of falling paws over the land ceased. Turning, he watched the snap, give, and collapse of branch. The monstrous area of terrain that he leapt over gave, swallowed the hounds whole with the yap and growl that turned to whines, yelps, squeals, and then hush.
A sensation of burning crawled up Van Dorn’s leg. Trying to stand, he felt as though a dagger were scraping chips from the bone of his shin. A heave of pain came in his chest. Eyes winced. He dragged himself to the hole that’d been covered. A booby trap for trespassers like those from the jungles of Vietnam his grandfather had spoken of. Bit by bit he came closer. Seeing how the territory had snapped and given.