Little Crew of Butchers

by Francine Pascal

  * * *

  “Should we go back to Mommy?” Lucy whispers to Charley. Her brother keeps watching the advancing Larry, trying to figure out if it’s a good “Hey, Charley!” or a bad one. It sounds okay. Larry doesn’t look angry. Maybe he doesn’t know about them going to see Luke and sending Daisy to help him.

  The twins are overjoyed to see Larry. Now the action can begin.

  “We were lookin’ all over for you,” says Benny.

  “Where were you?” adds Dennis.

  Both of them are jumping all over him like puppies.

  But Larry pays no attention to them.

  “Charley, come with me. I wanna show you something.”

  “What about us?” Benny wants to know.

  “I’ll show you right after. C’mon, Charley, it’s gonna be gone if we don’t hurry.”

  “Why can’t we come too?” A whine is starting in Dennis’s voice.

  “You gotta stay with Lucy. Shut up; I’ll be right back.”

  “Lucy has to come with me,” Charley says.

  “Just leave her here for a minute. She shouldn’t see this.”

  “How come?” Lucy wants to know.

  Larry whispers something in Charley’s ear that Charley can’t quite hear. Something about a cut-off dick.

  “Wait here,” Charley tells Lucy. “I’ll be right back.”

  “C’mon!” Larry is already running up the hill toward the woods, Charley close behind him.

  “What did he say?” Benny asks Lucy.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. All I heard was something like a cut-off dick.”

  “No shit!” both twins say in unison.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  On the far side of the picnic grounds, Luke skids the car to a stop. He and Daisy jump out. Luke is still unsteady on his feet, but he’s using every bit of his strength to charge ahead, clumsy and ungainly, but moving fast. They both dive right into the middle of the crowd.

  “You take that side,” Luke calls, “and we’ll meet up at the end near those booths.”

  “Right,” Daisy says. Neither of them considers how disreputable and out-of-place Luke looks. How unlike the happy groups of clean, crisply dressed suburbanites he is, with his bruised, swollen face accentuated by a four-day growth of beard, his wild and messy hair, torn jeans, and bare feet. And the fact that he’s running through a crowd that’s leisurely milling.

  Almost instantly, he’s noticed. The response that follows in his wake is hostile. But Luke picks his way so quickly through the clots of people, head bobbing back and forth in search of Lucy, that he’s gone before anyone can stop him. But as he passes through the crowd, each person stops and turns his head, trying to follow the stranger.

  Luke doesn’t even look at their faces as he whips past, his eyes focused downward, searching for the little girl. He’s not aware of the commotion he is causing until someone grabs his arm.

  “Hold on there!” A burly, beer-bellied hulk stops him.

  Luke tries to free himself, but the man’s grasp is like iron.

  “Let me go. I have to find someone. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  The minute Luke says the words, he regrets them. The fact that they’re true doesn’t alter the fact that they sound so bizarrely melodramatic. That attitude, combined with his appearance, makes the situation even worse.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. There’s a little girl in danger and I have to find her.”

  “Yeah, I know, life and death. You don’t belong here.”

  By now, an unfriendly crowd has materialized around Luke.

  “Who is he?” someone asks, and someone else answers, “Some kind of nut.”

  “Hey! I know that guy. He lifted a bottle of vodka from my store! He’s a thief! Lemme at that son of a bitch!”

  The big man holding Luke twists Luke’s arm behind his back. The barman grabs his legs, and they start pulling him to the ground.

  “Watch out! He’s crazy!” someone shouts. Luke fights, but the more he struggles, the more people jump in to restrain him. Finally, buried under a mountain of men and women, Luke’s fragile strength is exhausted. He’s physically overwhelmed.

  But still he shouts, “Let me go! I have to find her!”

  It’s no use. He’s powerless, trapped under the weight of flesh and bone that holds him as fast as the beams and concrete of his sewer prison. Once again, he’s an impotent, a homeless man, a drifter, a bum, the nonperson to whom the children reduced him.

  “Daisy! Daisy!” he shouts. His last chance, but there’s no way she can hear him through the noise of a thousand people enjoying a carnival picnic.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Charley follows Larry through the picnic area to the parking lot.

  “C’mon.” Larry motions to Charley, pointing to a black SUV. “Get behind that car.”

  “What for?”

  “Ya wanna see the dick?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, ya gotta wait here. I gotta find out if they’ll let you.” Larry is dancing on the balls of his feet, practically bristling with energy. “I’ll be right back,” he says and takes off.

  Obediently, Charley waits, adjusting himself to hide from the sun. He watches Larry head back in the direction they came from.

  Weird, a cut-off dick. Probably from some kind of animal, but Larry made it sound like it was human. Holy shit, what if it was from Luke? What if Larry went back before Daisy got there?

  Larry’s crazy. He could do something like that.

  Now Charley doesn’t want to be here. He checks his watch. It’s almost eleven thirty. If he’s not back by twelve his mother is going to have a fit. They’ll have to leave the picnic. That would solve everything. He’ll wait another ten minutes, then go back, get Lucy, and tell Larry his mother is waiting.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  The three children watch the teenage girl sitting alongside the basketball court smoking. It’s weed; they can smell it. The girl smokes slowly, and when the joint is too small to hold, she wets her fingers, squeezes it out, and puts it carefully in the breast pocket of her jean jacket. Then she lies back on the grass to better enjoy the lovely float.

  The twins are pretending to be high from her secondhand smoke.

  Lucy watches them twirling crazily across the court, laughing, falling down, and crawling as if they can’t get to their feet. She moves back out of their dust to the small circle of shade by the basketball hoop and watches the hillside for Charley.

  From time to time Lucy turns back to the twins, observing them with the same kind of detached interest a person would use to watch two dogs playing. For Lucy, there’s always something animal-like about the twins, like pets who do what they’re told.

  Except animals are cuter.

  In all the time she’s known Benny and Dennis, she’s never heard them talk normally to anyone. Larry tells them what to do and they do it, no matter how dumb it is. And they agree, over and over, just agree with anything Larry says. Lucy wonders if they ever talk regularly to each other. What if they get married and have children? Will Larry still tell them what to do?

  At that moment, Lucy hears Larry calling her name. “Lucy! C’mere, quick! Charley’s bleeding! Hurry!”

  Without a word, Lucy takes off up the hill, the twins racing after her.

  “Not you two,” Larry shouts. “You go get his parents and meet me at the shooting gallery!”

  Benny stops, but Dennis keeps running. “Can’t we see first?”

  “No, asshole! Go get Charley’s dad!”

  Amidst grumbles of “How we gonna find him?” and “Maybe he’s not even here,” the twins go off like obedient pets toward the picnic grounds.

  * * *

  When Lucy gets to the top of the hill, Larry turns
and runs into the woods, keeping close to the edge of the gully. The little girl dives blindly after him. Lucy loves Charley more than anybody in the world, even Mommy and Daddy.

  Larry’s weight slows him down, but it’s still hard for Lucy to keep up because of the thick underbrush. Where the long legs of the twelve-year-old can easily step over clumps of leaves and branches, the little girl must climb over. In no time, her bare legs are lined with bloody scratches from the bottom of her shorts to the top of her socks, and her hands are cut from grasping thorny branches. But it doesn’t slow her down. She’s right behind Larry.

  So close that when he pulls up short, she nearly runs into him. “Where is he?” Lucy looks around frantically. There’s no Charley in sight.

  Before she can turn back to Larry, he wraps his arm around her chest and pulls her hard against him. With both arms pinned at her sides, Lucy is trapped in his sweaty grasp.

  “Hey, leggo!” Lucy tries to wiggle out of his hold, but he’s got her fast. But only for the moment. He shoulda pistol-whipped her, Larry thinks. She’s nearly impossible to hold, squirming and wriggling, kicking his legs and butting her head against his stomach. All the while twisting around trying to grab his arm in her teeth.

  She’s a little cyclone of fight and unless he’s shoots her fast, she’ll get away.

  Since he’s used his stronger right arm to hold Lucy, Larry has to reach over her with his left to get the gun out of his pocket. He squeezes her small body as hard as he can, flattening it enough to just reach the edge of his pocket … The strength of his grip crushes Lucy’s chest and all her fight goes into her struggle for air.

  By scratching the fabric with the tips of his fingers he’s able to work the butt out far enough to slide it into his hand. Still holding Lucy tight, he raises the gun to her ear and pulls the trigger.

  An amazingly loud, sharp sound cracks the air.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  The sound is loud enough to deliver its message to the milling crowds on the picnic grounds. Loud enough that they stop instantly and search the sky for fireworks. But that naiveté lasts only a moment until someone shouts, “Oh my god, that’s a gun!” and a wave of confusion and fear, but not yet panic, rumbles through the crowd.

  Parents reach out for children, husbands for wives, brothers for sisters, and strangers for neighbors. Everyone turns away from the sound, pushing in the opposite direction. The people holding Luke jump up, backing away without a thought for their captive, and shove their way into the crowd.

  Freed from his human prison, Luke leaps to his feet and pushes forward against the tide of people. Now no one cares what he looks like; their only interest is in getting away from danger. They know instinctively that it’s more important to be scared than brave.

  A woman’s scream, erupting from somewhere deep in the crowd, further convinces them fear is the right reaction. The forward movement grows stronger.

  Luke fights his way into the advancing throng, leading with his shoulder, slipping sideways between people, moving steadily toward the wooded hillside where the gunshot came from.

  Please, God, don’t let me be too late.

  * * *

  The scream is Leddy Adler’s. The twins have found Charley’s parents.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  The explosive power of the gunfire has ripped the weapon from Larry’s hand, ramming it straight up into the air, its flight power propelling it over the side of the gully into the dry riverbed. The bullet itself soars harmlessly over the children’s heads, lodging in a thick, low- lying branch.

  The force of the shot tears Lucy from Larry’s arms. Like the gun, she falls over the edge of the gully, hanging precariously, fingers wrapped around a ropelike tree root, legs dangling free. Deafened by the gun, she hears only silence underlined by a thin, shrill hum.

  Larry is thrown back too. His body slams against the tree behind him, momentarily knocking the wind out of him. His head is also wrapped in a thick wooly silence. He can’t hear himself greedily sucking in lungful after lungful of air.

  * * *

  Lucy recovers first. Kicking out frantically at the rocks on the side of the cliff, she hunts for a ledge on which to hook her feet. Her head is high enough that she can see Larry plastered against the tree.

  Finally her toes find a protrusion wide enough to give her purchase. Scrambling up frantically, Lucy keeps her eyes locked on Larry. All around her, sound has stopped.

  Lucy reaches the top as Larry finds his breath. He sees Lucy; shit, he thinks, he didn’t kill her. The best he can hope for is that he wounded her. The botched shooting is bad enough, but worse, the gun is missing. Larry thinks he saw it go in the direction of the gully. He rushes to the edge and sure enough, there it is, lying in the middle of the riverbed. All is not lost.

  But he has to make a quick decision. He can’t hold onto Lucy and retrieve the gun at the same time. He opts for the gun and jumps the six feet down to the bottom of the gully. As he does, Lucy scrambles to her feet and races off toward the edge of the woods.

  Larry grabs the gun and is up the gully in time to see which way Lucy ran. He starts after her. She’s close enough to shoot but maybe he’ll miss and then what? Shoot again? That would leave only three bullets. And maybe he’d miss the third time.

  Even if he does hit her, he might have to use another bullet to kill her. Shooting one kid is shit. Nobody’s gonna make a big thing about that. Yeah, maybe here in Shorelane, but not on national television. No way.

  Unless he can catch her and for sure use only one more bullet, he’s gonna have to just forget her and go for the others.

  Fuck!

  In this instant, there’s no one in the world Larry hates more than Lucy. Not even his father. Lucy Adler has fucked up everything, just like she always does. Maybe it would be worth only killing her just to kill her.

  That’s different from the way he feels about killing the others.

  Killing them is more about him. But with Lucy, it’s a regular ordinary murder. He wants her gone. He wants to watch her disappear.

  But he can only do that if he catches her first.

  * * *

  Lucy feels Larry gaining on her, but she still can’t hear him. Terror-fed adrenaline courses through her body; time and again she feels her breath giving way, only to have a new surge of strength fed by sheer survival instinct. Larry is big, with long legs. He will surely catch her before she gets to the edge of the woods. She has to find a place to hide.

  Not a moment later, Lucy almost stumbles over the branch of a fallen tree. Ducking, she creeps through dead leaves and scrub brush until she reaches its trunk. The tree, probably hit by lightning, fell so powerfully that most of the roots ripped free from the earth. Underneath, where the dirt has been lifted, there is a small crater practically hidden by debris. Small, but big enough for a seven-year-old girl.

  Lucy creeps on her belly in between the roots, digging as far down as she can with her hands. The space is too tight for her to turn around, so she just lies there, cheek pressed against the earth. She wishes she wasn’t wearing a pink belt.

  * * *

  Larry knows the little girl can’t outrun him. It’s just a matter of minutes before he gets her.

  Except she’s disappeared. Right in front of his eyes, she’s gone.

  She can’t have reached the edge of the woods that fast. She was close by, right in front of him.

  * * *

  Lucy can’t hear Larry’s footsteps, but she knows from the vibrations of the ground underneath her that he’s very near. She holds her breath, waiting for him to pass. Her eye catches a slight movement in the leaves. It stops. He must have passed. Lucy exhales; with her face still tight against the ground, she fills her lungs again, drawing in moist air from the forest floor—and a tiny bug as well. Automatically she pushes air out from her nose to expel the bug. It doesn
’t work. She does it again, more strongly, and feels the bug shoot from her nose.

  * * *

  Larry is still close by, stamping and kicking at the underbrush. He stops and listens. The ringing in his ears has faded, but not enough to pick up small sounds. He searches the piles of twigs and leaves. Staring hard at the ground, he thinks he sees the tiniest breeze move some of the dark bottom leaves. He’s about to investigate when, in the periphery of his sight, he spots a small patch of pink.

  He takes a large step in that direction, pulls out the gun, and points it straight at the strip of pink. He butts the underbrush with his foot; leaves fly up, along with a small pink belt that hooks around his sneaker. The belt, but no Lucy.

  Larry looks up in time to see the little girl fleeing, charging toward the picnic field, racing for her life.

  * * *

  Lucy hits the end of the woods at top speed, bursts out into the clear, and keeps going, tumbling down the hillside, rolling, arms and legs curled up into a ball.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Luke breaks through the crowd in time to see what he guesses is Lucy’s almost-unrecognizable form sliding down the hillside. He races toward her.

  The little body comes to a stop. Unfolding herself, Lucy stands dizzily. She’s alive!

  He made it on time.

  “Lucy!” Luke hurries toward her. At the same instant, Leddy and Ned come rushing out of the crowd, shouting their daughter’s name. Luke stops and turns. He knows the couple racing toward Lucy must be her parents. He watches them scoop up their little girl, and then he turns to the top of the hillside to see what he already knows will be there.

  Larry emerges from the woods.

  Luke takes a deep, satisfied breath: he’s caught him. The thrill stretches his lips into a trace of a smile, and he waits with sweet anticipation for the boy’s eyes to find him.