CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

TWO MEN PLEAD WITH VOICES DIMINISHED BY PAIN.

Three crosses. The middle one on the zenith of the mound empty.

Jack locks the abomination to a tree, captive like a country dog. He sits and then points and laughs. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they, like some fucking Renaissance painting.”

Ropes bind their wrists and feet to the wood. Their skin bleeds rust from their palms and ankles, the limbs swollen, distended, and blue. Their mouths jabber little words Jack can’t hear.

“Got glue in your mouth?” Jack taunts.

“Asshole.” The word comes from behind.

He points the rifle at Stephen. “Shut up and watch.”

He goes to the dark, long-haired man on the left and swivels the head on the wood. The man tenses and little bubbles of saliva froth on his lips.

“Don’t touch him,” the other says.

He leaves the first and turns to the man on the right with the close-cropped brown hair. He stands beside him and runs his hands over the hairy abdomen, down the torso to the cleft in the legs and lifts the drooping penis.

“This is what causes all our pain,” Jack says. “So we get rid of it.” He draws a knife from his right pocket and flips it open. He stretches the penis taut until the man screams and bucks on the cross. Jack raises the knife.

“Let them go. You wanted me.” The voice behind him. Stephen strains against the collar and pushes his feet into the dirt. The chain holds against the tree.

“You are so kind, so noble…but think again.”

Jack raises the knife and cuts a tuft of hair from the man’s chest. He walks to Stephen and sprinkles it over him. Stephen is breaking, Jack thinks.

In a second, Jack is at the cross, flashing the knife, carving a swastika into the rigid leg of the long-haired man. The blood forms a runny square from the wound. They are both screaming now and he must shut them up. Jack smashes the rifle butt into their throats, one then the other. The men choke and gag and their heads loll on the crosses. Then he is in Stephen’s face, shouting, “You think I won’t do it? You think I won’t kill them? I have nothing to lose.”

The years evaporate. The rage. His brother’s blood. A red bomb explodes in his head and he is filled with a prickly numbness like a million little pins pushing from the inside to get out through his skin. “They’re dead. Fucking teach you to be queers!”

He draws in violent breaths and clutches his head, as if to seek asylum from the demons that plague him. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

The footsteps come closer. The door opens. “I’ll teach you, you little faggots!”

He stumbles to the mound and buries his face against the black earth, the rifle at his side.

***

When he opens his eyes, the sun is lower, the air cooler.

Jack jerks his head. His prisoner curls against the rough bark of a pine. He looks at the men on the crosses and believes they are dead.

“Money for your hide,” he shouts to Stephen. “Carl will be proud.”

Stephen is silent against the tree.

“Did you hear me? Carl will be proud!”

His prisoner is hunkering, fetal.

He brushes the dirt from his face and walks to Stephen. He bends to touch him with a brush of his fingers against the shoulder.

The prisoner pulls away violently.

“He’d better be damn proud of me,” Jack says, “after what I’ve done for him. I’ve done all I can to make it up to him. I’ve done my duty.” Jack’s insides shake. He wonders what will happen if he can’t talk with Carl—if he rejects him as a son—can’t bear to look upon him, can’t stand the sound of his voice. Rejection and loneliness are far worse than hate. He unlocks the chain from the tree and pulls it tight against Stephen’s neck. Stephen rolls on his back.

Fury dives into Jack’s hands and he shakes the chain until it snaps like a whip. Stupid queer, stupid faggot. Jack looks into Stephen’s bloody eye sockets and tries to scrape the pine needles from the tissue. The blank red eyes stare at him.

Stephen howls in wolfish laughter. “Let me have the rifle now,” he taunts.

Jack pulls Stephen to his feet and presses him flat against his body. He forces Stephen’s right hand to the trigger, aims the rifle and squeezes Stephen’s finger.

One shot. Cartridge ejected. Reload. A second shot. Soft thwacks into flesh. A moan drifts across the clearing. From the trees?

Stephen wrenches the rifle away, whirls, and pulls the trigger. It clicks.

“No bullet in the chamber, pervert.”

Stephen swings it in a wide circle, but doesn’t hit Jack. The stock whizzes past him in the air.

Jack whips the chain and his prisoner collapses on the ground from the snap. The rifle falls to earth.

Jack sits, disgusted and out of patience. He spits on Stephen and then tugs on the chain. He will take the prisoner back to the cabin.

Carl will come tonight and life will be easier.