Wildlife- Reckoning

by Jeff Menapace

  “Wouldn’t surprise me none,” Trudy said.

  “Dangle! Dangle! Dangle!”

  “That’s your favorite event, is it?”

  Darla answered by squealing and jumping up and down.

  “Makes sense. If I recall, you and Harlon was tied up before heading into that one. Your pick put you ahead.”

  “Yes, yes, yes!”

  “She don’t know what the hell she’s doing.” Harlon, his presence often forgotten these past few days, sat in the corner of the kitchen, head lolled uselessly to one side against the back of his chair, face now a constant one of disgust. “She just guesses.”

  “Harlon—” Trudy said with mock surprise. “I didn’t know you was there. Thought you was a pile of laundry or something.”

  “Funny.”

  “And my little girl won fair and square,” she said. “Seems as though you just got yourself a case of sour grapes. Or is that just your hemorrhoids flaring? Not that you can feel ’em, mind you.”

  “Oh, you’re just on a roll today, ain’t you, Trudy Roy? But I stand by what I said; that little brat of yours just guesses the winner of each event. She don’t put no thought or consideration into the participants, their strengths and weaknesses and all that.”

  “Oh, and you do, do you?”

  “Damn right I do. You can tell whose gonna last and who ain’t if you study ’em close.”

  “And yet you still lost to my baby girl.”

  “Bullshit luck is all it was.”

  Darla frowned and bolted from the kitchen.

  “You better hope you didn’t upset her too much, Harlon Roy. Because if you did, I’ll be fixing to let her have her way with you. Let her crawl right onto that useless lap of yours and get all creative like. And you know my Darla can be as creative as they come.”

  Harlon rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

  Darla reappeared in the kitchen, her trophy from the last Roy Night in both hands. Over three feet tall and fashioned with the bones of the final contestant (the contestant’s prize had been a quick death, and the distinguished honor to know beforehand that he would be immortalized on Darla’s shelf), the trophy was far too big for her to brandish with only one hand.

  She slammed the trophy on Harlon’s lap, the impact jostling Harlon’s chair, his head rolling from side to side. “Fucking little nuisance,” he muttered.

  Darla lifted the trophy and slammed it on Harlon’s lap again. The chair and his head rocked again.

  “Knock it the fuck off!” Harlon yelled.

  “First place!” Darla screamed. She slammed the trophy into his lap again. “First place!” And again. “First place!”

  “You little bitch, I swear to Christ if you don’t stop—”

  “What?” Trudy said. “What will you do, Harlon? Give her a mean look? You ain’t doing nothing, you crippled fuck.”

  “Cripple fuck! Cripple fuck!” Darla sang.

  “Aw, hell, I’m done! I’m done with this!” Harlon cried. “Put me out of my goddamn misery already, won’t you?”

  “Can’t do that,” Trudy said. “You’re family.”

  “And this is how you treat family?!”

  “It’s called discipline, Harlon. You need to be punished for what you done to Travis. All good families need some discipline.”

  “Fuck that! Fuck you all!”

  “Fuck you all! Fuck you all! Fuck you all!” Darla twirled around the room, her trophy her dance partner.

  “You keep carrying on like that, Harlon Roy,” Trudy said, “and we won’t even let you keep score tonight.”

  Harlon snorted. “I’m not keeping shit for y’all. In fact, see if I don’t talk a blue streak the whole night and spoil your fun.”

  Trudy approached Harlon. Stood a foot from his chair. “And what might you say to spoil our fun?”

  “Whatever it takes,” Harlon said. “I’ll ruin every surprise around every corner. That look of shock and fear on the players that y’all treasure so much when introducing a new event? I’ll announce it first, and with none too much pageantry, thank you very much. I’ll even give ’em hints on how best to survive the event—spoil all betting odds.” He strained his eyes to fix them on Darla, who was still capering around the kitchen with her trophy. “And you can be damn sure that somehow I’ll figure out a way that that little cunt doesn’t win this time.”

  Trudy dropped her head and shook it. “Oh, Harlon…” She took a deep breath, raised her head, and exhaled slowly. “I might have been fixing to discipline you some more after such a threat, but calling my little girl a cunt? Well, now it’s all but guaranteed, isn’t it?”

  Harlon’s constant face of disgust stayed put. “Do whatever you gotta do. I’m past caring.”

  “Are you then?”

  “That’s right. Go on and fetch Wayne and Coop. Tell ’em what I said. You can even tell Wayne to bring in that stupid spider again; I’ll bite the goddamn thing in half this time. Spit it out right in his face.”

  “I don’t need Wayne or Cooper to help with this. Besides, time’s a-wasting, and they’re working double-hard to prep on such short notice.”

  “So then what you got planned, Trudy? Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen your hands get too dirty since I been here. Always counting on Wayne and Coop to do most of the wet work. Only thing you seemed good for was cleaning up after. But I suppose that’s all a woman is good for.” He grinned.

  “Darla, honey,” Trudy began, calm as can be, “how you feel about doing a little fishing?”

  Darla nodded emphatically.

  Harlon grunted. “Big surprise. Calling in Wayne and Coop to take me out on the boat. What’s the plan, Trudy? Makin’ me bait? Very original.”

  “Who said anything about going out on a boat?” Trudy said.

  She left the kitchen.

  ***

  Darla and Harlon stared at one another in the kitchen for a moment, neither saying a word. Only the distant sounds of the river and occasional grunts from Wayne and Cooper prepping outside were heard.

  “I’ve always fucking hated you, you know that?” Harlon eventually said to her. “Like some kind of fucking retard, you are.”

  Darla set her trophy down, turned, and bent over, showing Harlon her butt. She then patted it with both hands and made smooching noises.

  “Lord, please give me my legs back for just one minute,” Harlon said. “I’d stuff my boot so far up your little ass my shoelaces would be hanging out your nose like snot.”

  Darla straightened up, spun back towards Harlon, and gave him double middle fingers, giggling all the while.

  “Fuck you too, you little cunt.”

  Trudy reappeared. In her right fist dangled a length of black braided fishing twine, the majority of its considerable length gathered into a ball inside her fist. On the opposite end of that twine dangled a stainless steel hook Wayne used for catfish of the herculean variety.

  “What the hell you gonna do with that?” Harlon asked.

  “Whatchu think, dummy?” Trudy gathered up the twine and held the hook in one hand, its size just fitting in her palm.

  Darla looked on in wonder, mouth open, face forever dirty, nose runny. She seemed as unsure as to what her mother had planned as Harlon.

  Trudy approached Harlon’s chair, stopped, and turned back to Darla. “Ready, sweetheart? Let’s see if we can’t get a bite.”

  Darla nodded, yet not as emphatically as before; she was still visibly confused as to just how they were supposed to go fishing in their kitchen, of all places.

  Hook in hand, Trudy tossed the full length of twine back towards her daughter. “You go on and pick that up now, baby girl.”

  Darla did.

  “Hold it tight now.”

  Darla did.

  “When I say ‘when,’ you start pulling for all you’re worth, you hear?”

  Darla nodded.

  Trudy turned back to Harlon, tapping his chin lightly with the hook. “Open up now, Harlon.”

 
; Harlon did anything but, instantly clamping his mouth shut, muscles on the jaw hinges bulging like knots.

  Trudy did not even bother to fight him. Calmly and assuredly, she simply pinched his nostrils shut with her free hand and said: “I can wait.”

  ***

  Wayne entered the den through the back porch, wiping his hands on his jeans, then a forearm over his sweaty brow.

  Darla came rushing towards him, positively bursting. Something dangled from her right fist.

  “Daddy! Daddy! Look what I caught! Look what I caught!” She raised the length of black twine in the air, exposing the swaying hook and its catch.

  “Jesus, is that…?” Wayne asked, bending forward and squinting at Harlon’s tongue.

  Chapter 28

  “How much farther is it?” Leigh asked Steven.

  “A ways,” he replied. He glanced over at Leigh, saw her wipe a big gleam of sweat from her brow. “Hot, are you?” he asked.

  “Very,” Leigh said.

  They all were. Visibly. Sweat stains and damp hair were abundant.

  “We kind of had a few drinks beforehand,” Stacey said, “and I guess we’re sweating it all out now.” She offered up a friendly chuckle and added: “That’ll teach us, right?”

  Steven pointed to a dark green cooler by his feet. “Water in there, if you want it.”

  “Hell yeah,” Leigh said, nudging her way past everyone to get to the cooler. She tripped over Mick’s feet and nearly stumbled overboard.

  “Jesus, Leigh, relax,” Morgan said.

  “Better one of you hands it out, I think,” Steven said. He bent and popped the cooler’s lid. Pulled a jug of water from the cooler’s pool of ice. Everyone gasped with delight.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Mick said. “Send it this way.”

  Stacey took the jug from Steven and pursed her lips Mick’s way. “Ladies first,” she said, popping the lid and taking a giant swig.

  Bryan peeked inside the cooler. “There’s another one in there,” he said. He looked at Steven. “Can we pass that one around too?”

  “If you like.”

  Bryan snatched the second jug, swigged hard from it, and then passed it around.

  Groans and moans of joy followed each gasp that followed each swig.

  “Be all right if I had some too?” Steven soon asked.

  Everyone exchanged oh shit; our bad faces.

  “Of course!” Stacey said, taking one of the jugs, now close to empty, and handing it to Steven. He raised the jug into the sun, eyeing what little remained.

  “Sorry,” Stacey said.

  He tossed the near-empty jug overboard. He did not look pleased. “Want me drinking your backwash, do you?”

  “No…of course not,” Stacey said.

  “Should I even ask if there’s anything left in the other jug?” he said.

  Leigh held up the second—empty—jug with the face of someone caught cheating. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  Steven looked away and shook his head in disgust.

  Stacey was visibly upset. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “We have no excuse.”

  Everyone nodded and muttered in agreement.

  Stacey peered inside the cooler, its lid still open. “There’s a lot of ice in there,” she said. “A lot of it’s melted. Maybe we can fill Leigh’s jug—”

  “My jug?”

  “—with the ice water?”

  “Forget it,” Steven said.

  Stacey looked at everyone for support. They returned apologetic faces.

  She turned back to Steven. “Again, I’m really, really—”

  “Forget it.” He flipped the cooler’s lid shut. “I’ll be fine.”

  Stacey sat back along the edge of the boat and sighed. Desperate to be back in Steven’s good graces, she delicately asked: “You still want to be in our movie?”

  Steven glanced at her. He no longer seemed bothered about the water. He looked, in fact, serene. A young man and his boat on a cathartic little trip up the river.

  “I look forward to it,” he said.

  Chapter 29

  Travis’s boat drifted into view, engine idling, letting the current take him the rest of the way.

  The family stood in a row along the front deck, overlooking the river below, Darla with her hands on the deck’s wooden rail, grinning, squealing, bouncing.

  Travis guided the boat to a gentle stop along the bank just below the deck. He gestured towards the far right of the house, towards the family’s dock situated around back.

  “Gonna guide it in and tie her up,” he called up to them. “Then I reckon we tie them up. Won’t be asleep forever.”

  Wayne and Cooper and Trudy exchanged looks of satisfaction and respect for their newest addition to the family that was Travis Roy and the gift he was bringing them: a boatload of drugged tourists slumped and sleeping heavily on the boat, their greed bringing one of the trickier parts of the plan to fruition better than force ever could.

  Chapter 30

  They were bound and tied to chairs in the den, wrists behind the back, intentionally placed in a circle so they could see one another when they woke.

  “Christ, they been out a spell,” Wayne said. “How much they drink?”

  “All of it,” Travis said. “Sweating like pigs, they were. Greedy pigs.”

  Cooper clapped a hand on Travis’s shoulder and kept it there. “So, you was disappointed the other night we went fishing, yeah? Thought we ended the fun a bit too early?”

  Travis looked at Wayne first, then back at Cooper. “That’s right.”

  Cooper squeezed Travis’s shoulder. “Well, I reckon you’re about to get your money’s worth tonight, son.”

  “So you say,” Travis said.

  Wayne laughed. “Sounds like a bit of a challenge to me, Coop.”

  Cooper grinned back. “I’m up for that challenge. You up for it, Wayne?”

  “I’m up for it.” He looked at his daughter. “You up for it, baby girl?”

  Darla’s response was all nods, wiggles, and squeaks. She might have been an ecstatic dog, Wayne’s question: “Go for a ride in the car?”

  Wayne looked at Trudy. “You up for it, sweetheart?”

  “I’m up for it, sugar.”

  Cooper squeezed Travis’s shoulder again. “Everyone’s up for it, son. How about you?”

  Travis smiled. “I’m way up,” he said.

  They all laughed.

  “How does it work?” Travis asked. “We do everything in here?” He motioned around the den.

  “Oh no,” Cooper said. “There are parts of this place you ain’t seen just yet, son. Parts that—how should we say—have been specifically constructed for such a night.”

  Travis frowned, confused. True, he hadn’t been given the grand tour of the place just yet, but then it never occurred to him to ask. Like the store that has little on display in the shop window, he assumed nothing of worth was in back.

  Unless, of course, the store had intentionally made that shop window as unappealing as possible. The Roys did not want anyone’s interest piqued enough to venture into the shop. They wanted that shop window to fail to catch the eye. For window-shoppers to carry right on, going without so much as a pause of curiosity for what lay in back. Unwise by marketing standards, yet brilliant for the anonymity they treasured when getting up to no good.

  Wayne said: “They’re not in plain sight, of course, Travis. You’ll soon notice our property line extends further back into the east end of the swamp. Whereabouts hidden as proper as a mole on a shaggy dog. And back there, you’ll soon notice just what kind of ‘specifically constructed’ additions to our home Cooper was referring to.” He beamed. So did Cooper.

  “Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to seeing it,” Travis said. He took another good look around the den. Something was missing. “Where’s Harlon at? He not playing?”

  “Harlon’s in a bit of a ‘timeout’ at the moment,” Trudy said.


  “What’s he done?”

  “The usual. Wouldn’t shut the hell up. Only this time he was threatening to ruin Roy Night with that big mouth of his.”

  “And?”

  Trudy looked at Darla. “Honey, think you might be able to go fetch your uncle and wheel him on in here?”

  Darla bolted from the den.

  Soon, a loud moan from one of the back rooms like someone disturbed from sleep. The moan then becoming some sort of incoherent roar, caveman like. Little-girl grunts from Darla’s efforts accompanied by intermittent squeaks from the wheels of Harlon’s chair being jostled into position. Now a rhythmic squeaking of the wheels in motion, soon picking up speed, the caveman roars of protest growing louder.

  Harlon appeared, Darla behind him, pushing for all she was worth—with no apparent intent of slowing down. She rammed his chair smack into the farthest wall, Harlon’s body flying forward out of the chair and colliding limply with the wall like a crash test dummy, then, like some kind of carnival game—Step right up and fling the man in the chair against the wall and see if you can get him to land right smack back in his chair!—Harlon fell right smack back into his chair on the first try, the carnie host in Travis’s mind’s eye grudgingly forced to award Darla the coveted stuffed teddy bigger than she was.

  Harlon cried out in his chair. Started moaning and pleading and carrying on—all of it gibberish.

  “What the hell’s wrong with him?” Travis asked.

  Harlon looked at Travis and said something. It came out a garbled mess.

  “Why can’t he talk?”

  “Did his tongue,” Trudy said matter-of-factly. “It was either that or sew his lips shut. But I reckoned if he was determined enough, he could rip ’em open and start trying to make good on his promise of ruining our night. Besides, Darla and me had much more fun doing it the way we done, didn’t we, sweetheart?”

  Darla returned an enthusiastic nod.

  “Even helped me cauterize the stump after so he wouldn’t choke on the blood, didn’t you, baby?”

  Another enthusiastic nod. Then: “Wanna see it?” she chirped.