Butthole “Call me Leon” Gibbs watched as Hayes and my mom dragged Logan through the kitchen by his feet. I held up his head, so it wouldn’t thump against the doorjamb. Blood clotted in his hair. Outside in the dark, it looked black against the white of his neck. When we set him by the clothesline, my hands were speckled with dry shards of it.
First, Butthole told my mom and me to prop Logan up and tie his hands behind the metal pole that made up one end of the clothesline. Then he dragged me by the sleeve to the other end and showed me how he wanted the last three shoelaces looped around Hayes’s and my mom’s hands and feet. Butthole had them sit down face-to-face, so the pole sprouted up between the outstretched Vs of their legs. One shoelace for each pair of their feet, and the last one for their hands. He made certain I didn’t leave any slack and yanked the one around their hands so hard my mom cried out. Then he had me wrap their wrists together with duct tape.
“This way, you two can always see how the other one’s feeling,” he told them.
What about me? I wondered, but had sense enough not to say. Still, he somehow saw the question in my face.
“I ain’t got nothing special in mind for you, but don’t worry, darling, I happen to know there’s something been planned.” He pulled over a rusty porch chair and sat down. “There’s nothing left to do but wait.” He pointed to a spot midway between Logan and my mom. “Stay there.”
I crouched in the damp grass and stared at his clothes. He wore a navy-blue blazer and gray slacks and a shiny pair of black penny loafers—a bright orange Lincoln head stuck into each one. Butthole reached inside his bulging side pocket and pulled out what looked like a purple plastic cordless phone with a smiling girl’s face on the back. A child’s walkie-talkie. He grimaced before putting it up to his good ear and telling it, “I got them all trussed up and ready for you, chief.”
A static-warped voice shouted, “Roger. We’re on our way.”
I hugged my knees against my chest and thought about whether I could run fast enough to get around the side of the carport before he fired his gun. He caught me looking at the end of the house.
“No,” he said.
Five minutes later, Logan’s head moved. I glanced over at Butthole, but he only had eyes for his walkie-talkie, which he whittled at with a clasp knife. God knew what he’d do to Logan once he came to. But, Logan, being nothing if not determined to get his ass in trouble, opened his eyes. One, then the other. A few experimental blinks. When he saw me, he smiled sweetly. What could I do but send him one back?
“The man his self. Awake at last,” Butthole said, sounding downright happy to see it. Not mad at all. “You pack a hell of a wallop with a plastic bat. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to be feeling that one tomorrow.”
“You speak English?” Logan asked, his face the very picture of perplexed.
Oh, no, I thought, not this shit again.
“High school teachers might tell you different,” Butthole said, amused. No matter how many times I heard it, I could not get used to that high, wandering voice of his.
“Well,” Logan said, chewing this development over, “I guess you’d have to. Pretty good at it too. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were from Bulloch County. How’d you get all the way here from Iraq?”
“What kind of dumb shit are you?” Hayes chimed in.
“Oh, Mr. Hayes.” Butthole made tsk-tsk noises and rubbed one forefinger against the other. “It’s good to know some things don’t change much. You are still the same retard I remember.”
Hayes opened his mouth to say something to this, but my mom hushed him and yanked on his wrist by leaning back.
“At least your woman here knows when to shut up.” Butthole turned his attention back to Logan. “You, sir, are a genuine surprise.” He drew the vowels out in the word genuine. “A kink in the plan. A fly in the ointment. Nobody said nothing about a soldier. Fact is, you nearly got the drop on me. I know, I know, big of me to admit it, but it’s God’s own truth. I came to the door expecting a girl, a nurse, and one certified pudding head. What I got instead is you. Fatty in there will limp to his grave because of that balls up.”
Logan’s face crumpled into a look of deeper confusion.
“Wondering how I figured you, huh?”
“I thought you were here gunning for me.” Logan scooched himself backwards and up, so his spine ran straight along the clothesline pole.
“No doubt you pissed somebody off before I made the scene. But looks like I’m the one you’ll have to deal with. Landed yourself in something of a jackpot here, friend.”
“A soldier?” Hayes said. No one bothered to answer this.
My mom gave me one of her patented mom looks. Now I understand, it said, and I don’t like it one bit. We’ll be talking about this later. And I sent a look back that said, In the middle of this shit storm, you’re worried about something like this?
“Look, I just got to ask, ’cause you don’t look like the type that usually teams up with dumbass over here.” Butthole folded his knife shut, stuffed it in the front pocket of his pants, and stood, pinching the pleats to keep them sharp. “What in the hell are you doing mixed up in all this?”
“Is this a trick question?” Logan asked. The gash on the back of his head reopened. A small trickle of blood ran down his neck and into the sparse hair on his chest.
“Might well be a trick answer.” Butthole walked over and inspected him, nudging his leg with a shiny shoe.
Back in the house, Mr. Cannon let out a long, low groan. Then the yard went silent but for regular summer sounds. The box on the telephone pole beside the house gave off a high-pitched hum. Tree frogs barked. A breeze up at treetop level rattled the dry pine needles like stick pins in a jar.
“So?” Butthole rocked back and forth on his spiffy loafers.
“Name, Logan Loy. Rank, specialist. No, well, by now they’ve probably busted me down to, never mind. Serial number …” He shook his head. Droplets of blood flew. Butthole avoided them with a quick step back. Logan mumbled out a list of numbers.
“Son, do you even know where you are? I must of rung your bell pretty good.” Butthole dropped down into a squat. He poked at something on Logan’s chest with the walkie-talkie’s antenna. “Mmm, shrapnel, huh?” His voice strangely sympathetic now. “Got a couple of them myself.”
“He don’t have nothing to do with Hayes and his stupid trouble. He’s just my friend,” I said. My own voice was small and meaningless out there in the big, sticky dark.
Mom twisted her body so she could look over at me again, wondering about something. Her face was a jumble of hard lines and wrinkles in the porch light.
“That right, jellybean? Just a gentleman caller calling on the worst night in the world?” Butthole measured me again with a quick up-and-down of his eyes. For what, I didn’t know, but worried about it and wanted to fight it. He let out a large and dramatic sigh. “Up to me, I’d cut him loose, but I ain’t the boss of me in this …” He paused to smile toward the sky. “… this here endeavor. Only a paid employee.” He laughed at the idea, and this seemed to make those last few words into a lie. Somehow this reassured me. Not much, but some.
Logan grumbled at him. All I heard was the words “ass kicking.”
“I’d like nothing better than to see if you could manage it. Don’t mind the occasional challenge. But it ain’t to be, friend. I’m on the clock tonight.”
Butthole went back to the porch chair and sat. He took off his jacket to fuss with the tear that Logan’s weapon had made in the shoulder. I thought about the butter knife digging into my hip and what I might do with it and when. I wasn’t tied up yet, and that was something at least. Moths flew back and forth above the kitchen door, casting monster shadows on the patio. A mosquito nibbled at my ankle until I smashed it into goo. The time between the flashes of lightning and the rumbles of thunder got smaller and smaller. From eight seconds to seven, and then from seven to six. The first I heard of what would happen next was the barking of dogs.