Rueful Regret

by Steve Vernon

  “Damn it bird,” Targate swore. “You pecked my pecker.”

  The bird tore at his hand.

  Targate growled, twisting the chicken’s neck around so hard and so fast that his elbows clacked together.

  He dropped the dead bird in the dirt and he sat down in the wallow of the pig stall. Right now the shadows and the dank and the pig shit were a hell of a lot more comfortable than the cold glare of the morning sun.

  He studied on the pig wallow.

  The old sow had lain there for so very long that the weight of its carcass had worn a slight gully.

  He looked at the dead bird.

  “I should have named you Fricasee,” he decided.

  The bird twitched in one final death spasm, blindly gouging its beak into the webbing that stretched between Targate’s thumb and his nose-picking finger.

  “Goddamn it!”

  Targate danced with rage, swinging the dead bird and slamming it hard and head-first against the pine walls of the pig stall.

  That fucking stung!

  “Jesus please us,” Targate swore. “Holy old bald headed blind dicked fuck meat!”

  Sometimes anger can ride a man like a tick rides a mule.

  Targate let the fury take him, dancing about the pig stall, scattering chicken blood and Targate blood all about the indented shadow of the long dead pig’s memory, slamming the carcass of the chicken against the pine board again and again, slam-thumping-hard, like a tom-tom drummer possessed by a jittering earthquake with an almost sense of rhythm.

  Stomp-thump-bang-stomp.

  “Goddamn you – you son of a drizzling tobacco sack cunny, blind nippled hang-melons, goddamn rat-swinging bitchlet chicken.”

  Stomp-thump-stomp-thu...

  Targate stopped when he realized that he was not swinging a chicken anymore. There was nothing left of the bird but its head and a red feathered tatter of gullet dangling down below.

  “Shit fire and save on matches,” Targate finished swearing.

  He had made one sweet fuck of a mess.

  He looked down at the blood stained pig bed and the pine walls surrounding him. The goddamn pig had lived out her whole entire life in this pine box – just waiting to die. There was a kind of poetry there, only Targate lacked the skill to sling anything more lyrical than chicken blood and regret.

  He wondered to himself if the ghost of that old sow was going to rise up and haunt the town forever more. He wondered if the pig’s death would herald the onslaught of seven times seven years of pure bad luck – but how much more unlucky could a dried up gullet wash of a town like Rueful Regret get, anyway?

  He let go of the chicken’s head.

  It fell into a dollop of pig shit.

  Maybe the sow would rise up from the dead and eat the whole damn town in its sleep.

  He had heard of such things.

  He watched the chicken blood seeping down into the pig shit as if it could give him some sort of a message or truth.

  A barn fly buzzard-winged down and made a more practical use of the shit and pig blood.

  Targate snorted.

  Of course nothing really ever came of shaking dead chicken blood over the shadowed memory-rut of a long dead pig sow. All that happened was Targate had himself a big pot of gumbo that night and afterwards when he jacked off thinking of pigs and chickens his spunk reaked of pig grease and chicken fat.

  In the morning he got up and went for his rifle.

  He had not fired the damn thing in a very long time.

  He had to clean it good and proper before making it useful.

  He used the rifle on his own head two hours later, adding one more spatter of slop in the pig stall.

  Sheriff Partridge found him there ten minutes later, blown to hell in a funeral of pig shit, chicken feathers and what little brains he had forgotten how to use. Partridge just stood there, staring at the blood and the chicken feathers and the gray jelly spattered against the dirty pine barn boards as if there was some kind of a message hidden behind all of that mess.

  If there was a message, Sheriff Joe Partridge sure could not figure out just what the hell it was supposed to mean.

  Folks who thought about it too long – and there weren’t really all that many folks who bothered to – swore that he had shot himself while cleaning the rifle, but most everyone else didn’t really give a good goddamn.

  Chapter 11 – Missing Itch

  “Well there went another day shot straight through the back of the skull,” Silver Grimes said thoughtfully to himself, laying there on top of the coffin in the back of the bone wagon staring up at the night sky through the worn-out hole in the hearse’s roof.

  There was nothing left to do but to bury what was left of the day with all of the rest of those other days that he had left behind along the way. The stars peeked down at him looking just a little as if somebody had shot the hell out of the heavenly darkness one night on a long drunken spree.

  Grimes wondered just what would happen if he fired a bullet straight up at one of them stars. Might be he might knock himself down an angel, accidentally. Might be the bullet might shoot up just as far as it could and then drop straight back down through his skull bone and introduce him to an angel – up close and personal.

  Even that was pretty damned unlikely.

  Grimes hadn’t exactly lived what you would call an honest upstanding life. If he was to be shot it was more likely that he would wind up downstairs in the furnace room, stoking the boiler with the old head horned devil poking a barbed wire pitchfork into the chewy leather pucker-hole of his ass every time he leaned too long or too easy upon the shaft of his coal shovel.

  Grimes sniffed at the ghost of a breeze that snuck down through the hole in the hearse’s roof. Death was what was out there, Grimes decided. Death was riding somewhere just behind the wind and the lonely – maybe looking for him.

  Or maybe not.

  His damned missing arm itched.

  It always did right before bedtime. He could never figure out just how in hell a shot-off arm could itch so much when it just wasn’t there anymore. Some nights he figured that maybe pieces of Helen had been blasted into his wound and they were nagging at him just the way she used to nag.

  Women will do that to a fellow if you let them get away with it.

  Some nights Silver Grimes could hear her calling on the wind – her voice wearing over and into him like salt rubbed into a badly healed wound. He tried to make out just what she was saying to him but she sounded too damn much like a coyote or a whippoorwill or even a lonely midnight owl for him to trust any shape of translation that his tired mind might offer.

  Chapter 12 – The Toughest Man In The Whole Damn World

  Grimes remembered the night of hellfire all too well.

  The dream was seared into his memory like a cattle brand. He could still see that long tunnel of Clayton Bass’s shotgun barrel pointing out at him through the darkness – aimed straight at him but missing him somehow just the same – just like it was happening right now.

  Grimes remembered looking at what was left of his arm – all meat and splintered bone that did not look much better than the girl did. At least it was easy to see, dangling around in front of him like the way it had been. It had hung so funnily, he would have laughed at it if it hadn’t hurt so goddamn bad.

  The shot-up arm had hurt like ten kinds of twisted hell. It had hurt like Bass Clayton had somehow managed to pound a round of buckshot into each and every single nerve ending on his arm.

  It hurt so bad that Grimes could tell immediately that the shot up arm was going to come off fast.

  So just how was he going to do that?

  He thought about amputation while he tied off the arm as close to the unruined meat as could be imagined.

  Amputation, he thought.

  Am-pu-ta-tion – sounding out the word as if his sense of self-control depending upon his ability to wrap his concentration about that word.

  It was easier than thi
nking about the girl – thinking about how pretty Helen had looked just one half of a half heartbeat ago. How she had smiled right before the night had exploded.

  Amputation.

  It was more than just a poke and a romp, damn it. What Grimes had felt for Helen was something like what a man crawling facedown through a forty year desert of drought and thorns might feel after swallowing his first gulp of cool soothing water.

  A-m-p-u-t-a-s-h-u-n.

  The arm had to come off.

  He couldn’t just leave it hanging there to rot, now could he? It was dead and it was gone and yet it was still a piece of him that he had to actively let go of.

  But how?

  He supposed that he could try slamming the dangled end of the arm hard enough in the cabin door and try jamming it there. He figured that he was strong enough to maybe pull himself free of his own stringings and bonework. After all, there wasn’t all that much left holding the arm together.

  Only what if he passed out in mid-jam?

  He was losing blood. He would lose some more in the process. Even the toughest man in the whole damn world would keel over if enough of his juices spilled out.

  It just didn’t come down to grit.

  Amputation.

  “I better keep warm,” he told himself.

  He built himself a low hatful of fire. He kept the flames whispering at a soft crackle – just in case that shit-for-brains Bass came back with help. Assholes like that usually didn’t travel too far without having someone along with them to back them up.

  It made sense.

  As far as Grimes could tell Bass wasn’t the sort of a man to go a job alone.

  Grimes kept working at the fire. It was hard work, building a cautious fire with only one arm but it needed to be done.

  It took two broken Lucifers before the third struck true.

  Grimes sat there and listened to the flames talking to him.

  Am-pu-ta-shun-am-pu-ta-shun.

  Once the fire was gnawing away cheerfully at the heavier chunks of wood he heated the head of the axe in the corner of the flames. He had to be careful that he did not burn the axe handle off – only the handle caught, just the same. The smell of burning hickory filled the cabin, nearly masking the other stinks that weren’t nearly so damn pretty.

  Grimes dropped the burning axe handle and slapped at it with his one good hand, scorching his fingers in the process. He swore about as hard as he could. The profanity did not help his axe-juggling attempts all that much but it sure passed the time nicely.

  “Holy old bald-headed Brutus killed Caesar,” he growled out.

  Finally he was ready.

  He picked up the axe with his good hand, flaming handle and all.

  He swung the axe, carving a blazing swathe in the darkness of the cabin as he hacked at the tangle of dirty blasted meat and bone – over and over and over again – hacking at the ruin of the arm where the blast had took it. Cutting his way with his Judas hand against himself was a goddamn awkward process but he could not see any other way of getting the job done.

  Hack.

  “Shit.”

  Hack.

  “Shit.”

  He gritted his teeth, damn near biting his own tongue off.

  That’d be funny, he thought. Them finding him here with his tongue bit off and his arm hacked off – not able to say goodbye or to even wave it.

  Hack.

  “Shit.”

  Finally it was over.

  Finally he had hacked through the twisting snap of bone and gristle-meat.

  The darkness in the cabin grew a mouth and swallowed him whole.

  Some nights – even now – Grimes sometimes wondered if that darkness had ever bothered to spit him back out.

  Lying here – two years later – on top of his own coffin and staring up at the stars that didn’t even seem to notice him while he lay there.

  Still in the dark.

  He knew what he had to do and he knew just what part Bass Clayton was going to play in the whole damn process and he did not think of one simple damned minute that Mr. Bass Clayton was going to especially care for how the whole thing played out – not one damn bit at all.

  “Might as well get to this,” Grimes said.

  HE got up off of the coffin lid, clambered into the hearse seat and said giddy-up to the horses.

  He was heading for Sally’s tent.

  Chapter 13 – Still Kicking

  Bass woke up in darkness.

  A hard tight darkness that closed in about him and would not let him draw a breath.

  He could smell a stink that did not smell like his own particular stink.

  He could see a tiny full moon glinting tantalizingly above him.

  “Goddamn it,” he swore.

  His voice felt dry and raspy and cotton-mouthed. He would have cheerfully torn the tobacco sack from between the legs of a full-grown grizzly bear with his bare hands for a sip of its lukewarm piss.

  He sat up – or he tried to.

  “Shit.”

  He was in some sort of a box. Or maybe the bottom level of a bunk bed. Or maybe somebody had packed him up in a wooden trunk.

  “Maybe they are fixing on shipping me to San Francisco,” he mused aloud.

  He felt around the box carefully.

  There was no telling what he had got himself into.

  “I always wanted to go to San Francisco.” he half-whispered.

  “You aren’t going to San Francisco,” a voice said from the darkness above him.

  Bass looked up.

  There was an eye filling the moon-spot and staring down at him.

  Bass could see a little more clearly now.

  The moon was nothing more than a peephole drilled into the box. Or maybe it was an air hole.

  Now that was a comforting thought.

  “Shut the hell up, would you?” A voice asked from somewhere behind the stare of the moon-eye peephole.

  Now Bass recognized the voice of the moon-eye.

  It was Grimes, of course.

  “What the hell?” Bass asked, kicking up hard against the wood of the box.

  “I said hold it down,” Grimes repeated.

  “It’s dark in here,” Bass complained.

  “Do you want me to open up another bullet hole for you to see by?” Grimes replied.

  A shot rang out in the darkness.

  Bass shut up.

  It was goddamn scary being pent up in this trunk like he was. He did not much care for hemmed-in places like this.

  He felt around himself – trying to make certain that he was not shot.

  That was when he felt her.

  Shit.

  He wasn’t alone in this box.

  “Goddamn,” he whispered softly – because sometimes only a good goddamn will do.

  He could feel a face now, close beside him.

  The face was crawling.

  “GODDAMN!”

  He felt little stubby worms crawling across the cold leathery meat of her face.

  Maggots.

  “Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn...”

  Outside of the trunk he could hear Grimes giggling uncontrollably, as if he had just sprung a leak in his funny bone.

  “...goddamn, goddamn, goddamn...”

  This wasn’t a box.

  “...goddamn...”

  This wasn’t a trunk.

  “...goddamn...”

  This was a goddamn coffin – and Bass was stuck inside of it.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  “You found her, did you?” Grimes asked.

  Her?

  Bass forced himself to feel the face in the darkness, one more time. He bit down hard on his fear, trying to sink his teeth in and just hang on.

  It was about as easy as hanging onto a greased up eel.

  It did not help much when he bit down on a maggot.

  He felt a chin and a hollowed-out nose and some eye holes and all of those goddamn maggots crawling under his fingertips.

&n
bsp; And then he felt her hair.

  “Sally?” he asked softly.

  He kept trying to get a better look at her – only it was too goddamn dark.

  “Goddamn it, Sally?”

  Six shots rang out in the darkness.

  “Sally?” Bass asked again.

  Bass could smell the reek of the gunpowder drifting down. He couldn’t see any more bullet holes in the darkness – so Grimes must have been shooting in the air.

  “I said keep quiet in there,” Grimes ordered.

  “Goddamn it Grimes,” Bass swore. “You killed Sally.”

  “Her name was Helen,” Grimes corrected.

  Bass was confused.

  His head was still fuzzy from his recent waking. He was scared, hung over and too damn much in the dark to make much sense out of anything at all.

  “The pig?” he asked.

  “No, goddamn it,” Grimes swore. “Helen. The girl you shotgunned to death. Her name was Helen.”

  “What’s she got to do with Sally?”

  Grimes chuckled.

  “Damn near everything,” he said.

  Then he pulled away from the coffin peephole.

  “You chew on that for a while,” Grimes said from somewhere beyond the coffin lid. You chew on that and think about just what you have done. Think good, long and hard.”

  Then the moon was gone.

  Grimes had either sat on the peephole or else plugged it up.

  Damn it.

  Not a peephole.

  An airhole.

  “Grimes?”

  Nothing.

  Bass lay there in the darkness, listening for anything.

  “Are you out there Grimes?”

  No anything.

  Just nothing.

  Bass lay there and waited, breathing slowly through his mouth. The pasty-tasting mouth-breathing air only made him all the more thirstier.

  “I guess there is no chance of you pouring a pint of cheap whiskey down through that peephole, is there?” Bass asked hopefully.

  Nothing.

  What if Grimes had buried him alive.

  Damn it.

  Bass hadn’t heard any shovel work – but how much could a man possibly hear, nailed up like he was in this coffin?

  “Grimes?”

  He was starting to panic no matter how hard he tried to calm himself down.