Little Crew of Butchers

by Francine Pascal

  Daisy hangs back and watches as the last of twilight fades. She’s a stupid girl. A stupid shop girl. Even thinking that Luke would be here … She was just a quick fuck, like those kids in the car. He probably doesn’t even remember her name.

  “Fuck him!” The words come out in a whisper as the foolish shop girl turns and leaves the parking lot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The rats advance, sniffing the ground, moving aimlessly as if they have no interest in Luke. As if they don’t even know he’s there. Yet they keep moving in his direction. The one behind his head is the closest. He can almost feel it touching his hair.

  Luke shakes his head violently, and it jumps back. But only for an instant. With his free hand, he scrambles around, searching for something to defend himself. He feels a slab of broken cement half wedged under his back. Grabbing the edge, he pries it back and forth until he’s able to wrench it free.

  The rat behind his head moves to the side of Luke’s face, its pointed snout inches from Luke’s mouth. Involuntarily, Luke jerks his head back; the rat rises up on his hind legs, half turns, then drops back on all fours in the same spot.

  Luke keeps his hand still but moves his head back and forth forcefully enough to keep the rat away from his face. Shaking his head, he’s able to herd him down past his shoulders, giving his hand room to lift the cement. He can feel the hairs of the animal graze his naked arm. Slowly, evenly, Luke raises his hand. The rat, emboldened by his superior position, barely moves out of the way.

  Now Luke’s arm is fully raised. He hesitates for just a moment then crashes the heavy chunk down on the rodent, catching him fully under the cement. Raising his arm up again, Luke smashes down on the writhing animal a second time. Wet globs of blood spray up in the air and drip down onto Luke’s chest and face, but he keeps smashing until the thing is a smear of bloody pulp.

  All the while, Luke screams. And screams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Ryan cries out as the powerful orgasm shakes him. His cry seems to echo around them, on and on, filling the car. Slowly, Ryan realizes it isn’t his voice. It’s a bloodcurdling scream coming from outside, from the beach. A sound that could be made only by an ax-wielding madman charging at them.

  Panicked, Ashley leaps up, slamming her arms against Ryan’s head with such force that he falls back against the steering wheel, accidentally blasting the horn. Pain crunches into Ryan’s kidneys. Wincing, he wrenches Ashley away and shoves her across the seat. In almost the same movement, he reaches for the ignition key, jams it in, and floors the gas pedal. The Dodge Stratus bucks over the parking lot, picking up speed as it heads toward the gate, neatly slicing off half a ball-cut boxwood bush as it shoots through the entrance and out into safety.

  Both teenagers will be traumatized forever—or at least for the rest of the summer. Ryan does wonder briefly if the screams hadn’t been for help, if he should have gone to help whoever was screaming. But he dismisses that notion. It isn’t nearly as good as the scenario where he’s the hero saving Ashley from the raving monster.

  And the next day, when the police find the clothes floating in the sound, he thinks maybe it’s from the victim and they’re lucky to be alive. Ashley says it was because of his fast thinking. Ryan leaves it at that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  In the sewer, Luke hears the horn and the screech of tires. He explodes in fury.

  Won’t anybody help me!

  But he has helped himself. The killing of the rat serves as a warning to the others; they disappear back into the darkness. Not forever, Luke knows, but maybe for as long as the scent of their compatriot’s blood is still fresh in their noses.

  Shorelane, he thinks, will be the death of me. Isn’t that the expression? This ordinary town that wasn’t in any way interesting or special, this town he toyed with from the moment he first walked down Main Street. Unless some miracle takes place, this would be where he would die.

  Suddenly it amuses him. The irony of it. That’s good. Stay above it.

  Luke allows himself the memory of how easy he thought this dumb little town was going to be. As usual, he had it all figured out, the challenge of it: wits against adversity. Like a movie where the hero is deposited in a strange town with no money or friends and has to find both and get laid in forty-eight hours. Great stuff for a romantic comedy. Maybe he’ll write a treatment. Yeah, right.

  Still, Luke thinks, he could start again. No shortcuts this time. If only he could have the chance.

  The moon’s reflection is bright on the water; the night seems especially light. It must be clear. No clouds. But Luke smells impending rain, that soft, wet, clean smell.

  Surprisingly, he doesn’t feel frightened. Even after the rats. Instead, he’s almost relaxed. Is this his mind’s preparation for death? It could be, Luke thinks. After all, people don’t go screaming into death; instead they seem to slip gently into it.

  His mother always accused him of not thinking ahead, but maybe that was the best thing he ever didn’t do. When you can’t fight the inevitable, just slide into it. What the hell. Like she said, he was going nowhere anyway.

  Exhaustion and the heavy scent of the coming rain slide Luke down into the comfort of sleep. At the brink of the thick, warm abyss … he jerks awake.

  No! Goddamn it!

  No fucking way!

  I’m not going to die!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sunday, July 3

  It’s early, before nine in the morning, when the children arrive at the beach. The day is summer warm and bright, and the water sparkles, glistening in the sunlight. From the shore, they can see what looks like two dots riding the waves in the bay. Curious, they follow them down to the water’s edge.

  The dots come closer, clarifying themselves into Coast Guard speedboats. On each boat they can make out men standing on the stern dragging long poles in the water.

  “They lookin’ for sharks?” Benny asks.

  “Ya think?” Dennis looks to Larry.

  “They got sharks here,” Larry answers. With the gun in his pocket, he’s feeling like a boss, a real big shot. It doesn’t even bulge in his oversized pants.

  “I saw one like last week,” he tells his crew. “Not the whole thing, just the fin sticking up.”

  “No shit!” The twins are always ready for a Larry story, no matter how implausible.

  “Maybe it was a porpoise,” Charley says. “They got them here, too, ya know.”

  “What are you, some kind of asshole? Don’t you think I can tell the difference between a porpoise and a shark?”

  As usual, Charley backs down stammering that he didn’t mean that, just that he read there were going to be a lot of porpoises in the bay this summer. Something about new mating grounds. He could see from Larry’s face how wrong he was.

  “Could you tell how big the shark was?” Charley tries covering.

  “About forty feet or so. Something like that.”

  Lucy rolls her eyes, and makes a quiet “yeah, right” sound.

  Larry looks at the little girl. Paying no attention to her isn’t good enough. She’s always doing something that annoys him, and the worst part is that she doesn’t give a shit. He can’t figure her out. Why isn’t she afraid of him? Charley and the twins are much bigger and they’re scared shitless. He hates Lucy. If he shoots the homeless guy, which he’s probably going to do, he would have to kill Lucy too. Nobody else would tell on him, but he couldn’t count on her. Yeah, he would shoot her. But just to make sure, he would do it when no one was watching.

  That decided, Larry goes on to describe how the head of the shark was so far from the fin he thought it was another fish.

  “Maybe it was.” Stupid Dennis, trying to get in on the story.

  “No, jerkhead,” Larry says, rapping him on the side of his head hard enough to throw him off balance.
r />   “I only meant it coulda been a herd of them.” Still trying.

  “School, asshole.” Charley jumps onto the winning team.

  “On Sunday?” Dennis can’t let go.

  With the exception of Dennis, they all fall down in hysterics. Even Lucy plops herself down on the sand, laughing.

  Finally, their attention moves to the speedboats coming into the dock at the far end of the beach. This looks like action. With the little girl bringing up the rear, all five children run down the shore toward the boats. It’s a good quarter mile; by the time they get there, the boats have docked.

  “Was it a shark?” Larry calls to the Coast Guard officers, squinting against the morning sun.

  “Hey, son.” The officer looks down at him doubtfully. “You kids aren’t supposed to be on the beach. Better get outta here now.”

  “Okay,” Larry says, “but was it a shark?”

  It feels good to be talking to a cop when you have a gun in your pocket. Like they’re equals, except the cop doesn’t know it. But if he gives Larry a hard time, he’ll find out soon enough. Larry could take out the gun and shoot him before anyone could do anything. He’s close enough not to miss.

  But he isn’t going to do that. He’s going to save the gun for Luke. And Lucy. For sure Lucy.

  “It wasn’t a shark,” the officer says. “It wasn’t anything.”

  But the officer standing alongside interjects, “Tell ’em, Frank. Maybe it’ll teach ’em not to play down here alone.”

  “You’re right,” Frank says. Getting down on one knee, he speaks gently to the children. “Looks like somebody maybe drowned here.”

  The children are shocked.

  “Who was it?” Charley asks.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “You see,” the other cop gives his safety lesson, “that’s what happens when you go swimming and nobody’s around. If you get in trouble, nobody can help you.”

  “Did you find him? Can we see him?” Larry starts climbing the side of the pier.

  “Hey, stay down, kid. There’s nothing to see. We didn’t find the body.”

  “So how do you know somebody drowned?” Benny asks.

  “We found his jacket and shoes.” The officer reaches into a wooden crate and holds up Luke’s dripping wet jacket and shoes.

  As if on cue, all five children move in toward each other. They never take their eyes off the clothes the cop is holding up.

  “Did you see anyone around wearing this jacket?”

  The children huddle even closer together, a knot of small bodies.

  “Did you?” The officer asks again.

  They shake their heads firmly.

  “You’re sure?”

  They continue to shake their heads.

  “You’re not sure?”

  Now they nod furiously.

  “Good.” He stands up. “Now beat it and don’t come down here alone, or I’ll have to tell your parents. Got that?”

  More nodding as the children back up and speed down the beach, even Lucy running fast enough to almost catch up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Word of the drowning spreads quickly through Shorelane. They were talking about it in Smilers Cool Shoppe all morning, but Daisy has an unexpected toothache that requires a dentist appointment. She decides since she isn’t going to get paid for the morning, she’ll go in after lunch, and she goes directly to the coffee shop to meet Mary Elizabeth. It’s noon before she hears the news.

  “They think maybe it was suicide because they found his jacket and shoes washed up in the same place near the pier. Like he left them there and then drowned himself,” Mary Elizabeth says.

  “Oh my god, how awful. Who was it?”

  “They don’t know. So far nobody’s missing. I mean, nobody who lives here anyway.”

  Daisy almost stops breathing. A shiver travels down the nerves in her stomach and spikes out into her inner thighs.

  Mary Elizabeth sees her intense reaction. “What?”

  Instinctively, Daisy moves her hand to her cheek. “Oh—I—my tooth …”

  “God, I thought it was about the guy who drowned.”

  Somehow, Daisy manages to smile. She stands up, leans over, and picks her purse up from the floor.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” Mary Elizabeth asks.

  “I can’t. My mouth is still numb. See you back at the store.” She throws her friend a purposely crooked smile and leaves without waiting for a reply.

  Once outside, she walks quickly toward the bottom of Main Street, crosses the wide plaza, and climbs the circular marble steps to the police station. The entrance room, with its rows of wooden benches, is empty except for one policewoman manning the front desk.

  The policewoman doesn’t look up when Daisy walks in. She continues to not look up while Daisy stands uncomfortably in front of her desk. Her usual dealings with criminals or families of criminals, she feels, gave her license for rude behavior. Taking her sweet time, she examines a sheaf of papers then slowly lifts her head to look at Daisy.

  “Yes?” Along with an unspoken, And why are you disturbing my important work?

  “Hello,” Daisy smiles, her normal greeting for strangers, and is met with open annoyance. Haltingly, she begins, “The man who drowned …”

  The policewoman offers no help.

  Daisy continues. “Could you tell me about him?”

  No answer.

  “I … I think I might have known him or something.”

  “There is no man. We don’t have a body.”

  “But I thought …”

  “We have some clothes. You wanna see the clothes?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong …” Daisy begins to form a “thank you,” but the woman has already pushed the intercom button. There is no answer.

  “Just wait here,” she says and disappears through a doorway. Daisy would have fled, but she’s in the habit of taking orders—especially from authority figures. So she waits. A few moments later, the door opens again, and a policeman Daisy recognizes as Helmut Smite beckons her into a long corridor.

  “How are you, Daisy?” he asks.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  The policeman opens a door to the closet of an office. “You wanna sit over there?” Helmut asks, pointing to a wooden folding chair squeezed against the desk in his tiny cubicle.

  Daisy sits.

  “Kathy tells me you were asking about the drowned man. Do you think you know him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about it. Is it some guy you met here in town?”

  Just from the leer on his face, Daisy knows Helmut is going to want to know all about everything. And everything is just what Daisy doesn’t want to tell him.

  In the beginning it is always easier to push Daisy than it is to push anyone else. Indeed, it’s so effortless that the pusher could be fooled into thinking he could go on and on. But at a certain point, Daisy stops and nothing, not even good reasons, can make her move.

  Helmut, with his steady leer, is getting close to that point.

  “The policewoman outside said there were clothes. Could I see the clothes?” Daisy asks.

  “A boyfriend maybe?” Helmut isn’t ready to pass up a good fuck story.

  “No,” says Daisy. “My boyfriend’s in the hospital. He just had surgery for hemorrhoids.” She watches with a certain pleasure as the delicious expectation in Helmut’s face collapses. Daisy’s sense of humor isn’t always noticeable, but it’s there.

  “Yeah, right,” he says, diving reluctantly back into the boredom of Shorelane police work. He reaches into a cardboard box next to his desk.

  While Helmut is bending down, Daisy resolves that no matter what he shows her, she won’t react. She barely waits for him to lift the two large
clear plastic bags and drop Luke’s jacket and shoes on the desk before she blurts, “No one I know,” and shoots to her feet, halfway out the door before Helmut can blink.

  “Sorry, Helmut, can’t help you.”

  And she’s gone.

  Helmut looks up in time to catch only the last of the disappearing act. No hot story there anyway, he thinks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The air in front of Daisy swims with tiny flashes of light. It feels so hot and thick—the weight of it seems to pound against her head as she fights her way down the corridor to the entrance and out the front door. Fortunately, no one is blocking her pathway. She wouldn’t have seen them.

  Bursting out into the bright sun, dripping with perspiration, dizzy from shock and pain, Daisy trips down the steps, searching frantically for a place, any place—a bench, a plot of grass—anywhere to throw herself down just to catch her breath.

  What if it was her fault? Not suicide, but maybe he was hurt worse than she thought. One of the rocks did hit him. Daisy remembers the blood on Luke’s forehead and her stomach turns. But it was nothing; he seemed fine. He said he was fine! But what if he had a concussion and got dizzy later and fell and the tide came in …

  Daisy finds a patch of grass behind a row of rhododendrons and sits down hard on the ground.

  That’s when she begins to cry.

  She feels a terrible loss. All the expectations, all the possibilities, no matter how foolish, had existed, even if only in her dreams. Now she can’t even have them there. Gone. Irreparably destroyed. Luke would never be in her life again. In any life. He was gone. Poor Luke.

  Maybe it had been stupid to fall in love with a stranger, but Daisy had. And she should have had the courage to act on it. So what if it wasn’t the right thing? Fuck the right thing! People hardly ever did the right thing anyway, Daisy included. Most of the time, in fact, she did nothing. As if that were safe. But just like omission could be a lie, doing nothing could allow wrong to be done.