FUNNY THE THINGS THAT WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO EAT. Since the fire, I hadn’t been able to keep down much more than a morsel, but after my meeting with the White Dragons I felt like I could eat a horse, the rider, and the saddle. Jeep was hungry, too, but if Jeep ever got carried away by a tornado he’d find a way to eat a four-course meal before he hit the ground. We drove northwest into Herrin and parked it at Hungry’s, a greasy spoon on South Park where the townies still gathered to shake out the latest gossip to see what would fly. Our waitress was an old woman with thick purple eyeliner and a large gold cross pinned to her frilly blouse, but when she arrived at our table with plates of perfectly fried hash browns and biscuits covered in milk gravy, we forgave her many sins and sang songs to her loveliness.
“Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeled thy beauty’s form in table of my heart,” Jeep said, taking the plates from her hands.
“Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine,” I said.
“You fancy shitbirds want anything else?” she said.
“A cholesterol workup,” Jeep said.
“And a life flight out of here, should it become necessary,” I said.
“Boys, Jesus hates an asshole.” She dropped our ticket and slipped off to see to the rest of her section.
“Better sip our coffee slowly,” Jeep said. “This is likely our last refill.”
But it wasn’t caffeine making my hands shake. I shoveled down some food and reached into my pocket for the paper Tibbs had given me, a long yellow slip stamped with a chain of numbers.
“Any idea what it means?” Jeep asked as he nibbled a sausage patty off the tines of his fork.
“Not sure, precisely,” I said. “Except that it looks like a ticket to something during the third shift at the Black #5 coal mine, B shaft.”
“In two days.”
“That’s what the man said, if indirectly.”
“I guess we know what it is, don’t we?”
“I guess we do,” I said, suddenly losing my appetite. The dog, the doggers, the coal mine. Goddamn, what a world.
“Want some company?”
I nodded. “Couldn’t hurt. Meantime, we’re going to go our separate ways, for a few hours, anyway. Think you and Opal can watch Anci for the rest of the day?”
He wanted to come with, but I finally talked him out of it and we parted company. Jeep headed toward Indian Vale, and I turned the Triumph toward Mockingbird Hills and the Harvel residence. My plan was to surveil and surmise. But all I really did was screw up.
Boy, did I screw up.
I espied the beat-up blue Honda Civic just outside of town, but when I swung into a Huck’s to refill my tank, the little car puttered in beside me, and a middle-aged guy with a friendly face and a silver-white beard stepped out. He even smiled at me and said hey when I held open the door for him, and I let down my guard entirely. When I turned back onto Highway 51, the blue car sped off in the opposite direction and I forgot about him altogether.
That was my first mistake. My second was not giving anyone a clearer idea where I was going, but since I didn’t figure to do much more than watch I didn’t give it a first thought, much less a second.
The Harvel spread was a huge cut of land and a tiny farmhouse five miles east of Union City. South was the puddle of Pleasant Valley Lake and a pretty good patch of woodland: high stands of oak and elm shot through with red mulberries and eastern white pines. But this was open land, gently rolling with moraines deposited sometime during the last ice age. No country for old men, and no place for sneaking.
No need for sneaking, either. The flatbed with the crazy yurt wasn’t anywhere in sight, nor was any other sign of the Cleaveses. Maybe they’d come and gone. Maybe they’d never really existed in the first place. If not for Lew Mandamus’s assurances, I really might have believed I’d imagined them all along. A man was raking grass clippings in the front yard. He seemed angry, the way he attacked those clippings, the strokes of his metal rake hard and fast. He was a little squirt, short but thick in the shoulders, and his mustache was like a daub of mustard beneath his fat nostrils. I wondered if he was a hireling or a Harvel, and I aimed to find out. I pulled up, side of the road, and stuck my head out the window.
“You a Harvel?” I asked.
“Don’t want none.”
“Ain’t selling none. Are you Arlis or Bundy?”
“Yup.”
“Well, which is it?”
He shrugged, and I gave it up.
“Sheldon or A. Evan around?” I asked.
“They don’t live here.”
“I know, but I heard they might be on a visit.”
“They come to visit time to time,” he said.
“This one of those times?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Might be on an errand, though.”
“Could I leave them a message?”
“What message?”
“Could I write a message down and leave it inside?” I asked.
Something moved around inside his mouth and cheek, a plug of tobacco or a tongue as thick as a wrist. The rake spun between his blocky hands.
“Guess so,” he said at last. “You said you ain’t selling nothing, right?”
“Just salvation, my son.”
“Don’t think anyone here’s in that market.” He waved a hand over his head as he turned toward the house. “Come on up anyway.”
I came on up anyway. The house wasn’t as awful as the Cleaveses’, but if the Cleaveses really were staying with their cousins, they were doing it end-to-end. There were some beds and a couch and a television set I expected to see Eisenhower giving a speech on. But that was about it. The whole thing was as spacious as an ice-cube tray. There wasn’t any evidence to suggest that a female presence had ever inhabited it, something I might have asked about had I been in the mood for tragedy. There wasn’t a vase full of pretty flowers, or curtains in the windows, and the only book I saw was a ratty copy of Bloody Williamson. The little guy with the yellow mustache parked it in front of the TV while I checked the house, the backyard, and the barn.
“They’re not here,” I said when I got back.
“Told you.”
“Well, you didn’t exactly.”
“Back to that again?”
“Mind if I go ahead and leave that message?”
“Said I didn’t.”
I scratched down my number on a dry-erase board stuck to the refrigerator.
“Tell Sheldon the hired help came by,” I said. “And tell A. Evan I can’t wait to see him.”
“He’ll know what that means?”
“I hope he does.”
“Okay.” He shrugged and switched channels on the TV to show me how much he cared what I hoped.
I was a few miles down the road when I realized I hadn’t seen Shelby Ann around the Harvels’ house, or even anything that would suggest she’d ever been there in the first place. I thought about turning around and bugging the dude with the yellow mustache again, but then I figured he’d had enough hassles for one day, so instead I pulled off at a Shell station to take a leak. Too much morning coffee.
When I finished, I stepped back into the parking lot and spied the baby blue Civic, but it was already too late. The face with the white beard flashed into view as I felt an explosion at the back of my head and dropped onto the hard gravel chuck on both knees. The world went kaleidoscopic.
“Shee-it,” said a voice from somewhere far above.
“What’s the matter?” said another, this one to my right.
“Fucker’s got a head like a goddamn air conditioner.”
And like an air conditioner, I tried to stay cool, but just then something hit me again, harder this time, and I felt the fight ooze out of my arms and legs as the neurons stopped firing and my brain went slack. The twin gas pumps blurred and disappeared from sight as the world yawned blackness.
But even the void couldn’t keep me from recognizing A. Evan’s voice.
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I WAS OUT, BUT WHEN I WOKE UP from nightmares, my neck was so sore I yelped when I turned my head. White Beard and Blond Mustache were sitting nearby, idly flipping through issues of Guns & Ammo and American Bow Hunter. Arlis and Bundy, together at last, though I still had no idea which was which.
It took me three tries at sitting up to realize I was tied, spread-eagle, to a narrow metal table, kind of like you’d find in an ME’s lab. A nice touch, I thought, truly terrifying, though the effort felt like overkill, wasted effort on the part of the bad guys. Wasted rope, too. I couldn’t have stood up to save my life.
Speaking of which . . .
“He’s awake,” White Beard said.
“Hey, dumbshit,” Yellow Mustache said. Meaning me, I guess. I was the dumbshit. “You reckon you’ve got a concussion?”
I didn’t answer, but they weren’t expecting me to. They liked the idea of my concussion just fine. They were bad men, and to a bad man nothing brought more pleasure than the idea of other people’s suffering. They stood and stretched and chuckled a little to each other and went out of the room. I took the moment to try and figure out where I was.
The lights hanging overhead were as big as punch bowls, the air smelled strongly of manure, and even with my limited range of vision I could make out a disc harrow lurking in a corner. There was a breast plough and some daisy rakes and a two-pronged hayfork and other such instruments of a similarly sinister appearance. You could have led tourists from certain parts of country through it all and convinced them it was a torture chamber. I wasn’t any too happy about any of it myself. It wasn’t the barn on the Harvels’ property. I’d caught a pretty good glimpse of that one a few hours earlier, and this wasn’t it. So I was on some other property in southern Illinois or northern Kentucky, in some other barn. Course, that only narrowed the possibilities to a few thousand. I was still doing the math when White Beard reappeared.
“You’re Slim,” he said. His face wasn’t pleasant now. This was his true face. He was as ugly as a monkey’s ass and he had sour breath and a brain gone badly psychotic. Somewhere, a mother was filled with pride.
“Not sure,” I said. “I might be Slim. I might be Martin Van Buren. You want people to remember their names, you probably shouldn’t give them amnesia.”
“Naw, you’re no Martin Van Whatthefuck. You’re Slim. I heard of you, know ’bout your shenanigans. You may not realize it, but you’ve got some renown on you.”
“I give it back.”
“Bet you would, too,” he said. “Listen, though, you talked to a guy today in Marion.”
“Couple of ’em, in fact.”
“Maybe, but you know the one I mean. The one you talked to. What’d he say?”
“Don’t remember,” I said. “He wouldn’t let me write anything down.”
He shook his head. There was regret in his face, but it was false regret.
“That kind of talk ain’t going to get you nowhere,” he said. He held something in his hand just outside my range of vision. “You know what this is?”
“Flower bouquet and an apology pie?”
He grinned. His teeth had slash marks across them like they’d been cut with a knife. He raised whatever it was for me to see. I think he knew I couldn’t see it the first time. He was having a game at my expense. It was a pistol-shaped thing with a trigger and a curved metal loop extending from the base and handle. The end of the loop was hot and bright.
“Not a pie,” he said. “Not any kind of apology. Try again.”
“Ray gun?”
“Soldering gun.”
“I was only kidding about the ray gun. You like science-fiction stories?”
“Brother, you’re in one.”
“You fixing to do some metal work?”
He shook his head.
“What I’m fixing to do is ask a question. For the second time. I don’t like to repeat myself, neither, so I’m unhappy already.”
“Times a-wasting. Fields full of sheep to fuck, I guess.”
“You’re a tough guy, all right. They said you were tough.”
“I’m not tough,” I said. That was truthful. I didn’t feel tough. Toughness was something in my rearview mirror, and I was riding a rocket ship away from it. “Ask me your question.”
“First, I want to tell you what happens if you don’t answer.”
“Look, I really don’t need to hear it. I only got into this mess in the first place because I like dogs. I don’t care about Dennis Reach, not really, and I don’t care about you or the Cleaveses or the White Dragons. You want to run around like crazy people doing what it is you’re doing, why, that’s fine with me, too. What say you cut me loose and we just call it even?”
“Sorry, but it’s too late for that,” he said. I didn’t think he was sorry, though. Not really. “The boy in Marion, the one you spoke to today, what did he tell you?”
“He said he didn’t care Dennis Reach was dead. He quoted the Bible some. That’s pretty much it.”
“That’s it?” he said.
“That’s the gist of it, yeah.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t believe you,” he said. “And even if I did, we got to do this the right way.”
“You got a funny reckoning of right, you know that?”
“Maybe, but I got to be sure. I got to be so sure I can take what you’ve told me to my people and have them believe me beyond a shadow. Because if they don’t, and I tell them different, it comes back on me . . .” He leaned in a little closer. Our noses were nearly touching. “You understand?”
“Look . . .”
“What we’re going to do is this. Arlis is going to come back in here . . .”
“Aha!”
“What?”
“I didn’t know which of you was which. Now I know. You’re Bundy.”
He ignored this and said, “Arlis is going to come in here. He’s going to grease you up some. Not on you, you understand. He’s going to grease in you. Grease your nether. Then we insert the solder. Right down your mine shaft. The tip heats up, sizzles the oil, cooks you from the inside.”
“Seems like you might skip the oiling-up step. Feels like overkill to me.” Truth was, I could barely speak. My mouth had gone dry as powdered bone.
Bundy shrugged.
“To me, too. But Arlis likes it, and he has so little to make him happy.”
“He was my brother, I’d find that worrisome.”
“I’ll be honest, I do, sometimes. But you do what you do for family. So oil you up he will, and fry you shall.”
“Nothing to be done about it?”
“Lessin you can convince me you’re telling the truth. And you can’t do that lessin we use the solder.”
“Vicious circle.”
“It ain’t going to be your fondest memory, I’ll say that,” he said. “Look, Slim, time to get real. You ain’t walking out of here. Talk to us, don’t talk to us. It doesn’t make much difference, far as you’re concerned. You’re a dead man. See, you don’t mean anything to us, me or my people. You got into this thing kinda on a whim, and some things have gotten tangled since then.”
“You can say that again.”
He turned his head and hocked a loogie into the dust.
“But that boy in Marion, he’s something else. That one-handed motherfucker. Tibbs. He’s not something you can just push into a corner and forget about. He’s the real deal. Bottom line is, I got to know what he told you, and I got to be sure about it, and that’s all there is.”
“Look . . .” I said again, but it wasn’t any good.
Arlis came in, like he’d been waiting nearby the whole time, the little shit. He held a glass jug of oil in his arms, cradling it like an infant. The glass was frosted with age, and the oil was grimy and there were dead flies bobbing around in it. Arils set the jug on the table, and he and Bundy used carpet knives to cut me out of my clothes. They took turns working me over as they did. I struggled against the beating and the ropes—bungee cords, I guess they were—and one of them popped loose. I shrugged halfway off the table and hit Arlis so hard in the face he fell over and jarred the table and knocked off the jug. The glass broke, and the oil splashed all over the floor. Bundy hit me from behind and I lay down again.
“He spilled the oil,” Arlis said. I couldn’t see him, only hear him.
“I saw.”
“He broke my jug, too.”
“We’ll get you a new jug.”
“Not like that one. That was my good jug.”
“We’ll get you another good jug. Maybe even a better one. I know a place. Meantime, get some of that oil off the floor.”
Arlis got some oil off the floor. The next couple moments were unpleasant ones. Even more unpleasant, I mean. Arlis did his business. The greasing business. It was like an eel was sliding inside of me. I gritted my teeth. Then Bundy reappeared, hovering over the table.
“Last chance,” he said.
“Won’t matter what I say, will it?”
“Nope.”
“Let’s get it over with then.”
I think I said that last part. I’m not sure. There was a flash, and a scream like a herd of wild animals was crying out all at once because a redneck psychopath had stuck a hot soldering gun up their ass. The metal table jumped up and hit me in the back of the head and there was a sound like a hundred metal drums banging out some fearful cacophony. The room went away and came back and went away again in a flurry like the flurry of the wings of a green bottle fly. The last time it came back, Bundy was there again, smiling at me with his knife-slashed teeth.
“Give me your thoughts.”
I opened my mouth to speak but the only thing that came out was a gasp. Bundy thought it hilarious. Finally, I said, “It ain’t nothing I’m eager to do again.”
“I bet. But here’s the thing. That wasn’t even the full deal. Arlis likes to start off slow. That was just the edge of your bunghole. Not even really through the window. Think how bad it’ll hurt when he goes all in.”
“Why don’t you show me first?”
“The guy in Marion. The one-handed man.”
“I’ve never even been to Marion. Is that a town or a lady?”
He looked at me a moment.
“Have it your way. Arlis?”
I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him drawing nearer between my legs. I was about to die and I knew it. Die or go insane and then die. I said some prayers. I said some words to Anci and Peggy. I had some words with my dad. Not all of them kind, but words. I wished things had turned out different. I wished I’d taken that job filling potholes for the county. I wished Peggy and I had gotten married, had time to do that. Make our family together. But mostly I wished I’d never met Sheldon and A. Evan Cleaves. I lifted my head off the table. Best to see it coming, I thought. Look it in the eye. And that’s when I saw Jeep Mabry watching us through the window.
“Boys,” I said, “how’s your life insurance?”
The door slammed open so hard it came off its top hinge. Jeep came in like a devil harvesting sinners. There was an ax by the door and he grabbed it and swung hard as Bundy turned and rose from his place near the table with a cry of alarm. He was fast, but Jeep was faster. Twice as fast. The ax hit Bundy in the neck near the top of his right shoulder and damn near severed his head. Arlis screamed. He lunged at Jeep with the soldering gun, but he slipped a little in the puddle of spilled oil and lost his footing. Jeep kicked Bundy loose from the ax’s beard with a sickening crack and stepped forward smartly, almost casually. He might have been going for the last gallon of milk in the dairy aisle. Arlis tried to get up, but he was too slow. With a hard downward stroke, Jeep buried the ax in his brain. The boy spat some words you couldn’t quite make out and then died right there in his own mess of oil and dirt and dead flies.
Then Jeep was at my side, untying me.
“Hope you didn’t need one of them alive for anything,” he said.
“Now that you mention it,” I said, but truth was I wanted those monsters dead, too, so I didn’t pursue it further, or regret the leads we’d certainly just lost. “How the hell did you find me? Even I don’t know where I am.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “Anci did.”
I sat up. It was agony. Breathing was, too. I didn’t dare try to turn my head. The ribs on my left side were broken, and everything below my waist was on fire.
“Anci?”
“She put an app on your phone that lets her track you. Parents use them these days to keep tabs on their kids. Guess who’s the kid in this situation.”
“I’m getting a sense of it.”
“She’s scared you’ll be mad at her,” he said.
“Mad at her? I’m going to raise her allowance. By tomorrow morning, she’ll be bathing in orange soda.”
“You’re a good papa.”
“I know.”
He helped me off the table, slowly. There were some coveralls hanging from a nail near an empty horse stall, and he fetched them for me and helped me get dressed. They were absurdly big on me, and they smelled like shit, but they hid my shame good enough. I looked at the Harvels on the floor. They weren’t getting up anytime soon.
I felt Jeep leading me away from the sight.
“Doctor?” he said.
I nodded.
“Doctor.”