The Lipless Gods

by Brian Stillman

  Chapter 10

  Half the drive out to Butcher’s Camp amounted to a straight shot through woods, most of it tall blonde grass with few trees near the asphalt. The creek wound back from wherever it’d been lazing and from there on the highway curved and curled right alongside the water, rising and then lowering. Anytime road kill appeared, gray fur or feathers served on a lumpy red platter, Tiffany would produce a squeak, sometimes follow up by saying, “Gross. Grosser than gross.”

  Serenity was Hope’s working name. At least that’s what she’d told Tiffany. It could be a fabrication. They’d find out. At the front desk, Sipe would ask for Serenity. Once assigned to her, he’d tell her Tiff was out front, ready to drive her away. If she resisted, if Sipe thought she was drugged up or in danger, Tiff wanted him to extract Hope, willingly or not.

  “How big is she?”

  “How big? Tall? Or do you mean fat? If that’s what you mean she isn’t fat. Not like me.”

  “I just mean, is she normal kid size? I gotta carry some girl six feet tall, that’s not going to go so well. Especially if she’s not wanting to be carried.”

  “Oh. Right. No. She’s tiny. Well, skinny. Like Henry. Except, you know, the girl parts.”

  The side road off the highway to Butcher’s Camp was heavily shaded. Houses hid behind stands of pine and cedar. House numbers bolted or nailed to trees, arrows pointing down driveways into dimness, some driveways alternating the dimness and bright stripes of sun.

  There wasn’t a sign advertising the precise place to turn, those in the know just knew which artery delivered you to ‘therapy’. Trees ran tight on either side of the sloping drive finally depositing customers onto a broad lot. Sunlight sprayed the tops of trees, but the building and the gravel lot remained in shade. The windows on the second floor dark, the first floor windows lit.

  She parked the truck nose first against one of the two logs set on the ground in front of the covered porch. Above the awning was a second floor patio, encircled by a railing.

  The engine turned off, the aged rattle replaced by sound of trees tilting, squirrel chatter, a distant profusion of children’s happy shouts.

  “You can hear whatever’s going on over at the swimming pool from here. The hot springs,” said Tiffany. “It’s that quiet.”

  “No one’s here.”

  “Well, unlike my uncle, some people don’t want to be so obvious about their visits here. They’ll park somewhere else. At one of the cabins or even at the swimming pool and then they’ll lug it. Some skip the roads and just cut through the trees. Try and be real lowdown about it all. Uncle Norm can’t. Because of the oxygen tank and all. He has to be a little more direct about all of it. He hasn’t done it with her. Hope. He couldn’t. She’s. You know. It’d be like doing it with me.”

  Sipe didn’t ask what was wrong with the man’s lungs. He guessed it was smoking related.

  The Old Man didn’t regale the troops with stories of the good old days. He’d been anointed the Old Man when he was young, not much older than Connie. He’d tell one story though where his crew hit another and some old emphysema stricken piece of shit got shot, a stray bullet striking his oxygen tank. The sound not like you’d expect, more like a filled balloon being let loose to fly around the room. Pieces of the oxygen tank shred guys, both the hitting crew and the crew getting hit. The Old Man would punctuate the anecdote, make a production out of it, roll up his shirt sleeve to show some indentation in his bicep, shrapnel he’d insist, but it could’ve come from falling out of bed or some sloppy genes work when he was in the womb a half-millions years ago.

  “They got guns?”

  “I don’t know. Should they?”

  “This is a little town. Little town operation. They had any problems?”

  “We have our school party at the swimming pool. This year some boys skipped out on it at a certain point and came over here. I don’t think they even made it inside. Just tried to dare one another to even go in through the front door. Idiots.”

  “’Serenity’. That’s her?”

  “Right.”

  “She’s underage.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do they know that?”

  “I don’t know. The Ruchert’s run it. Bonnie might be at the front. She was that one time I came out here. She’s the sister. Her brothers run it although no one sees that much of Ty. He’s married and works for his wife’s father over in Pendleton. Mostly you just see Bret. He’s kind of big. He kind of dresses like you do, all black, but he does it to keep from looking fat.”

  “Big guy?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Big like he’s solid or is he big and soft?”

  Tiffany bit down and made some sizzle sound like it hurt to try and figure it out.

  “Kind of…Half and half I guess. He’s a butthole and a half, that’s for sure. He was a real bully when he was in school. Uncle Norm remembers him giving wedgies to kids in the store, our store. Indian rope burns. At least he hung out with the group that did that sort of thing. Like offer rides and then take off, drive a kid to Pilot Rock instead or out into the woods, make them get out, figure out how to get back to town. Hee-larious. That sort of thing. Real mature.”

  “He usually here?”

  “I don’t know. Sorry.”

  A sudden moment of complete silence sounded. The squirrels, the trees, the swimming pool celebrants, all taking a breath like the face of God had pushed through the atmosphere for just a moment, or the pale smudge of moon had turned red as some of the road kill. The moment ceased. Matters on the world regained prominence. The chatter resumed.

  “Your uncle…He doesn’t keep a piece hidden anywhere on the truck? A gun? Even a knife?”

  “There’s a putty knife in the tool tray in back.”

  “That’s something. Not something that helps right now, but that’s something.”

  “Do you think you’ll have to fight someone?”

  “Here?”

  She nodded. Some of the blonde hair mooshed against her cheek, almost in her mouth. He pictured her chewing on it, waiting for him to reappear with her friend.

  “I don’t know,” said Sipe.

  “She’s not that big. She’s not fat at all, not like me. But if you have to drag her out of there, just so you know, she can get mean real fast. She’ll bite.”

  “I’m gonna need to pay.”

  Her response surprised him. This adult, put-upon look swung up onto her face like a mask on some sort of swivel. Pet peeves sometimes migrated one generation to the next. Could be her mom, her dad got in a twist over all things money. She was a sweet kid. Those were the ones that blew up the easiest sometimes.

  “Even if I go in there and used their bathroom, they’re gonna want money. That’s the way these kind of places run. So, I ask somebody some questions and she isn’t there, or she is and I take her out of there, pretend like we’re going on a walk or something, they’re going to want money.”

  “Right. Right, right, right. Hold on.”

  She pulled a wad out of her pocket. Not his wallet. Money from.

  “Is it enough?”

  “Should be.”

  “Where do you get all that money?” she asked.

  “Work. Some is mine, some is what they give me so I can pay along the way. Expenses.”

  “How much is it?”

  “You didn’t count it?”

  She shrugged. Sipe leaned forward, stuffed the money into his pocket.

  “Hey,” she said. “The girl. The pink frosting girl.”

  Sipe stared at the dashboard.

  “What about her?”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Paige.”

  “Paige?”

  “First name’s Michelle. She liked her middle more. Paige.”

  “My mom’s a Michelle. I always like that. That sound at least. The ‘ehl
’. I wish I had that noise in my name.”

  He was out and shutting the passenger side door when she said, “Shoot.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t have anything to read. I can’t read on a phone, not really. It gives me a headache.”

  Walking from Henry’s to Tiffany’s, removing his suit jacket to cool off a little, he’d felt the heft of the People magazine tucked in the inside pocket. Mostly he was keeping it so when Connie ever came within arm’s length again he could roll it up and swat the kid in the face. Something definitive, but that didn’t leave a bruise. Like that would happen. He imagined the closer winging in towards Pendleton’s probable dinky sized airport, right now. The cops would find the People on Sipe’s corpse. Wonder what the hell this refugee from the big city was doing with it.

  Sipe waggled the magazine at her. She took it.

  “February? This is old.”

  “You don’t gotta read it.”

  “Just saying. You know, honestly, you don’t look like a People reader.”

  “Not mine.” They’d been loading up Connie’s things in St. Helena. Connie doing a once over on the place, Sipe discovered the magazine on top of the apartment fridge. Sipe had waggled it at Connie and Connie had asked him to hold onto it.

  “Oooohhhhweee. I love me some celebrity trash.”

  Tiffany already thumbing through pages before Sipe was off the gravel and onto the porch, through the door, trying to ignore the antlers line-up, the greatest hits of the former hunting lodge, trying to not think about his own head, his eyes replaced by black glass, mounted in the Old Man’s office.