“Get your ass in there and swing, god damn it! Or all these fuckers are gonna eat you alive for we’re done with,” Bert was screaming.
The fighter nodded.
“You look like roadkill, Jake. God damn. Can you see at all?” He nodded again.
“Put your hands out.”
The fighter moved his hands from where they rested on his hips and held them out in front, between them, so they almost touched the other man’s chest. The hands were clean, for the most part. A little spattered with the fighter’s own blood, but, otherwise, clean.
“Now that’s a god damn shame. You’re just takin’ it. You call yourself a fighter?” Bert popped him on the side of the head.
The fighter said nothing. Some men behind them hollered something unintelligible that ended with “fucker.” Someone threw an empty beer can that hit the fighter’s shoulder. He didn’t move. Bert took the cigarette from his own lips and stuck it in the gashed mouth of the fighter, who dragged it a couple of times. As he did, the other man took the hands and rubbed them on his shirt, slipping a big D Duracell into his closed hand. The fighter seemed not to notice. Neither did anyone else.
“Now hit him, god damn it,” Bert said, blotting the fighter’s swollen eyes with a damp rag.
The fighter nodded again, the blood welling back into his eyes already. He headed back to the circle chalked inside of where the stacked hay bales bordered the chalked boxing ring in the broad metal pole barn. Someone slapped him as he found his way through the opening on his side. He seemed not to notice. He gazed out towards the man he’d suffered six rounds with already, not really looking at the man, but at the whole picture he was featured in. The man’s hands were wrapped in wet towels, washed with pink streaks of diluted blood. He was shirtless, almost hairless, his head and face shorn, tattoos covering his arms, a rolling American flag across his chest with a swastika in the middle of a circle of thirteen stars in the patch of blue. He was framed against the back of the barn. A steer skull hung above the door. A blue tractor was parked to one side, behind where the hay bales rounded out the other man’s side. His corner-man sat, chewing a cigar, his arms crossed. The loft and open space outside of the ring was filled in with denim-clad yokels in worn baseball caps and t-shirts. Their voices combined in a mocking static with the constant bark and growl of the caged dogs that would fight next.
The air felt tight and heavy with the earthy odors of men and shit, of sweat, blood, smoke, beer, and dogs. Jake breathed it deeply anyway. There was no alternative. He cocked his head as far towards each shoulder as he could, and it popped in both directions. He shook a little, wiped blood from his eyes with the back of an index finger, and spat more blood on the earthen floor. He stepped into the chalk circle and rung still more blood out of his beard with one hand. A jeering cheer went up with the fists that the onlookers rose and shook at no one in particular. He had promised Bert a win in the seventh round. It was time.
The other man shook the towels off his hands and stepped into the circle, as he blew his nose into the air, one nostril at a time. He wiped his hands on his bloodied denim cutoffs. The fat man seated on a bale on the perimeter of the circle, halfway between the fighters’ sides, hit a large metal skillet with a wooden spoon, and both men put their hands up and moved in.
The tattooed man hit Jake with a wide-slung right. Jake spun with it, and the man added a few shots to his ribs, and then kicked him down in the dirt. Jake got up, spit, and put his hands up again. The tattooed man worked the same combination once more, but this time the kick in the ass didn’t knock Jake down. He spun again but then righted himself and got his hands up. The other man, for a third time, reared back with his right, but it was already too late. Jake had come alive. He caught him hard, square, across the bridge of his nose with his battery hand. The nose cracked, burst open, and blood spurted. The tattooed man’s hands went to his face. Jake threw a hook that landed with a smack on the side of the bald head, kneed the man in the abdomen, and struck his throat with a winged-out elbow, before the man doubled over, hands still covering his face, blood flowing out between his bent fingers. The man gasped and roared out as Jake’s fists came down on him again and again: back of the neck, high ribs, kidneys. He was still standing somehow. The strange noises he made had silenced most of the crowd, who now looked on with hungry faces. Jake lifted the man’s head a little with one fist and knocked it down again with the other. He beat the man patiently, brutally, but without passion or anger, steadying him when he swayed. By the final shot, the tattooed man’s wounded hands hung limply at his sides, his head turned towards the ceiling and a little to one side, his face a massacre. He gurgled incoherently from somewhere deep down. Jake struck him again in the throat, kicked him in the balls, and the man just crumpled down and spilled out across the dirt like a slinky from the last stair. No one cheered. Someone retched near the tractor. The fat man hit the skillet with the spoon, and Jake’s breathing slowed to almost nothing.
Abraham awoke with one deep gasp. He looked out the window and then jerked his head around to the driver.
“Bad dreams?” the priest said.
“I wish.”
They rode a black tar and gravel road that sloped down from the center. It seemed mostly tar now. The tires across it at forty-five miles per hour made a sound like tape being pulled off of an endless surface. Abraham figured he had only just dozed off a few minutes before. They were about to make their last turn before the campground, but they could already see the red and blue flashes that strobed against the dark. The priest made the right turn without signaling and, after a mile or so, another right into the campground entrance.
The gate was closed and a young sheriff’s deputy stood by his cruiser on the inside. The priest lowered the window as the deputy rounded the gate in the grass and approached.
“Sorry, folks,” the deputy said. “Park’s closed. Won’t be opened ’fore morning.”
“What is going on?” the priest asked.
“I’m not at liberty to say. Park’s closed. Come back tomorrow.”
The priest looked at Abraham, whose deadpanned gaze conveyed nothing. The priest shifted a little in his seat, pulling the seatbelt away from his neck. The deputy leaned down, placing his elbows on the open window, looking in.
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, father. Nobody told me you’s coming. You gentlemen go on through. They’re all the way around the circle. It’s the ice-cream truck.”
“Thanks, my son. I will just head for the flashing lights,” the priest said with a wink.
“Yes, sir, father.”
The young man struggled with the lock for a moment, finally giving up and kicking it a few times, and then pulled the gate free. He motioned officiously with one hand as he walked it open. The priest and Abraham watched his figure move through the headlights, red and blue pulsing out from the dark gravel circle beyond, where sudden images of men, cars, and campers flashed. The deputy disappeared for a moment when he tripped on the center-point where the gate anchored into a pipe cemented into the drive. They watched him resurrect himself, still motioning for them to move forward, and they finally did.
“Bad news if they are expecting a priest, no?”
“I’m afraid so,” Abraham said. He looked out the window on his side of the car and saw two pairs of animal eyes glowing back from the black woods beyond the picnic pavilion. “Turn left at the circle. It’s a one-way to the right, but no one cares.”
The priest did as Abraham said, and they pulled into the empty campsite that shared an electricity pole with the one the ice-cream truck was parked at. Abraham sighed and got out. The priest followed.
“No,” another cop said as he briskly made his way to them through the grass. He repeated the word a few times as he came, but he said it as if it were a question. “Who’s the driver?”
“That is me,” the priest said, raising his hand.
“I know it’s you.” The young cop stood with his hands on his hips. His right hand rested on the handle of his pistol.
“Why did you ask then?” the priest queried.
“You know that’s a one way. You saw the sign. It ain’t hard to read. It’s a big fuckin’ arrow.”
The priest looked at Abraham. “It looked clear. I did not think anyone would mind.”
The cop stepped in closer. “You queers? ’Cause there’s a lot of queers out here. Too many, if you ask me.” The cop stood working his mouth. He spit into the grass and stood dumb against the night.
Then Abraham touched the man’s shoulder, almost affectionately, and spoke, his voice husked in irritation, but only just so. “We didn’t ask. Not about your opinions on sexual mores, or about making a turn the wrong way on a drive, which sees about as much traffic as the strip of carpet that leads to your bedroom. Now that’s my truck, and there’s what looks like a bleeding bag hanging from that big oak next to it, and I don’t see my friends anywhere. So I want you to shut your fucking mouth and get me whoever’s in charge.”
The priest smirked. The cop’s shoulders fell. “Listen,” he started, “I’m real sorry—”
“Fuck you. Go tell the sheriff you’re fucking sorry. I’m certain it won’t come as a surprise.”
The cop stocked off silently, spoke to the sheriff, who was standing near the truck, pointed back to the two bearded men who stood smoking near the picnic table, then joined a small group of young cops who gazed up at the sack that was tethered to the tree, trying to guess what they would find inside.
“Good evenin’, gentlemen,” the sheriff said. “I’m Slocum.” Then to Abraham, “Richie says you’re the ice-cream man and maybe you’ve been in his house.” Slocum stood waiting for a reply, his thin frame folded in beneath his arms, his lips tight beneath a broad brown mustache.
Abraham said nothing.
“A misunderstanding,” the priest said.
Abraham dragged on his cigarette before he spoke. “That’s my truck. This is my campsite. And I still haven’t seen the men who are staying with me.” Abraham blew what smoke remained within him out to one side.
“So that makes you Mr. Abraham. Camperman told us about you. Says you’re real good people. Oddballs, now that’s his word, but Friends Creek has always welcomed all kinds. And who does that make you?” He took a small notepad out of his back pocket.
“I am Father Valentin Zamir Alejandro Rabinovich Mayakovsky.”
Slocum started writing but gave up. “You a priest then?”
“A monk-priest, yes.”
“Black…monk…priest…” he mumbled as he wrote.
“Okay, listen, you’re both involved.” Slocum paused and put his notepad away. “You’re both implicated in this someways. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re guilty of nothin’ or that you’re even suspects, ’cause you’re not. Not based on what’s been reported. What I mean is you’re part of whatever the hell is going on here. Like it or not, you’re a part of it. So am I. We been pulled in. Implicated. So I’m gonna speak freely with you ’cause we’s in the same boat, far as I see it. Now, Sheriff Smalley’s from Macon County, and he don’t deal the same way I do, but we’re working this together, so we don’t fuck it up. Cause if we do, we’re gonna end up with a bunch of big-city folks in here runnin’ things, and that ain’t gonna be good for nobody. Okay? So, Mr. Abraham, Mr. Priest: I’ll keep you informed as much as I can, but don’t blab it to no one. We’s all working together to sort this shit out.”
The men nodded.
“Now we ain’t seen a murder in Piatt since Sawlaw’s sheriff, before me some ways back, and none in Macon County since before that. And now we got what’s soon gonna be three in the same day. A girl in Piatt not too far from here, out at Hog Chute, on the other side of Cisco, ’tween there and Monticello, and two of your midget friends. We’ve got one bagged in the ambulance, stabbed and beat up, and we’re figurin’ on how to get what we think is the other one down from that tree. But given what’s been reported and that blood there, we can safely say three.”
“Christ!” the priest said.
Abraham was looking into the grass. “Who is still alive?”
“Little feller with a big head. He don’t talk none, but he’s pretty torn up by it. Grow-toe or Grim-toe, somethin’ like that, Camperman said.”
“Grotto.”
“That’s the one. He’s in your truck. Seems he got hisself hid in that stretch of prairie goes out to the road. We tried talkin’ to him but couldn’t get nowhere, so we let him go in there. We’ll have to take a look at the vehicle eventually, of course, but I thought it’d be better than stickin’ him in a cruiser or something. Thought that might make him nervous, and he already had hisself a fucked-up day.”
“Can I see him?”
“Yes, course. Plus, I need you to take a look around anyways and see if you’re missin’ anything. See if you can help us with a motive. Now it’s my thought that these murders gotta be related. I’s out the other scene ’fore comin’ here. Looks like same MO. Smalley’s there now, and he says coincidence. How the hell he figures that I do not know. A donkey and a horse make a mule, and this here’s a fuckin’ mule, if I ever seen one. My investigation’s assumin’ there’s some connection. We’ll have to get your statement, formally, at some point, so don’t take off or nothin’. Take a look, and see what you find. I’ll be around. Right now, I gotta fetch a dead midget from that oak tree.” He tipped his hat and walked off.
“I’m going to look in on Grotto,” Abraham said to the priest. “Why don’t you pick me up tomorrow, early. We’ll talk then. I can’t make any sense of this.”
“Can I help?”
“No. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Camperman was driving the campground’s mini-cherry-picker into Abraham’s campsite. The cops scattered slowly like grazing buffalo as he maneuvered it into position under the thigh-thick branch to which the sack was tied. Abraham watched, leaning against the front of the ice-cream truck.
“It only holds one,” Camperman said. Then he looked down at the basket, turning his head to one side, apparently considering the matter for a moment. “Or two. But only if they’re real skinny.” After a little more consideration, during which he sized up the job, looking up into the tree and back down at the ground and then back up again, he concluded, “I can operate her and bring him down.” Camperman’s voice was deep and warm, his words clipped and staccato, as if he had been a Northeasterner, but one whose words had been rounded by years in the country.
“Now, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Slocum said. “We’re not sure what shape he’s in. Could be pretty grisly.”
“I was a state trooper for twenty years, Slocum. It was the service before that. ’Nam. I’ve seen some things.” He looked down at Slocum over his glasses, raising his upper lip a little, pulling back the corners of his mouth, as if he’d smelled something rotten. “I’ll keep the bag closed if it makes you feel better.”
“That’d be good, Camperman. Just get him down for Christ’s sakes.”
They trained the floods on the branch, some forty feet up from the grass, where the bag was tied with thick brown rope. The bag swayed in the wind, and Camperman ascended slowly and steadily towards it. Abraham watched him edge up and in, his hands on the controls. The man unsheathed his hunting knife and sawed at the rope, delicately holding his tongue between his teeth as he did. The bag lumped into the floor of the basket. He cautiously lowered himself and the oozing bag back down and turned the key to kill the engine.
“I still don’t know how they got him up there,” Camperman said.
“We’ll work on it. Can you hand him down?”
Camperman lifted the bag by a corner up and over the railing to Slocum.
“Poor little feller can’t be no bigger than a Jack Russell,” Slocum said as he took the bag. He put it gently on the ground. “Now, you young fellers get away if you can’t act like men. Miss Jolly says they done this boy real bad with a pipe and their hands ’fore that, so go on if you need to. I can’t hold your hand. This ain’t about you. Alright?”
One or two removed themselves to the shadows beyond, but most looked on. Slocum lifted the opening of the bag and stuck his arm in and cut the rough brown fabric back up to where the rope had tied it shut. He peeled the now-loose sides of the bag back like a surgeon clamping back skin around a wound.
“Ah…” he moaned. His eyes flared, and he looked around, like he’d lost something in the sky. His face was screwed up on one side. He suddenly seemed like a much older man, senile or stroking out. “Ah, hell.” His mustache rounded as his lips contracted and he fought back a sob. He looked into the grass and then, after a moment, back again into the torn sack. “Hell.” And this time he gave up and a couple sobs came. He looked around, but all of his men had gone. There was only Abraham, a few paces off. He held Abraham’s gaze, tears puddled in his eyes, and said, in a high whisper, careful that his voice didn’t break, “What’d they leave?” It seemed like he was really asking. Slocum removed his hat as Abraham stepped forward. He squatted next the sheriff, taking his black hat from his head and placing it on his knee, and gazed at what remained.
Whatever it was they left behind in the bag, it wasn’t Eco. They left only meat and hair and blood and bones. They left only a testament to their brutality. They left only the texture of their violence.
Abraham felt something warm run down his face into his mustache. He thought it might be a tear. He wiped it with his palm. It was blood. The knot on his forehead had opened.
The cops were still milling about. Abraham had helped Slocum zip Eco into an oversized black plastic bag and set him next to No-no in the ambulance before returning to the truck to look in on Grotto. He opened the back door of the ice-cream truck and found the man sitting shirtless on his cot. His eyes were closed, though his mouth hung slack as usual. Abraham switched on a dim light that was velcroed to the ceiling. Grotto slitted an eye that seemed to recognize Abraham. In the dirty yellow of the camper light, the small man’s twists and creases made him seem ancient, a relic from another world, lost in time. It occurred to Abraham that Grotto was quite old, and he marveled that he had never noticed it before. They stayed like that for a moment. Abraham did not know what to say, so he said nothing. The one eye squinted on. Abraham’s dead gaze looked back.
“La luce,” Grotto rasped after another moment.
“Alright,” Abraham sighed. He realized that that was the first time in their years together that he had heard the man speak. He switched off the light and stood in the silence staring in. Grotto sat still, only hints of his face left in the dark, his deep-set eyes and open mouth black against the faint light coming through the windshield. Washed in that light, what remained of his face looked like a skull.
“Sono cresciuto stanco,” a voice whispered from the truck.
Abraham was not sure what it meant. He nodded formally and closed the door.
Later, when he took a cursory scan of the contents of the ice-cream truck, Grotto was sleeping, hugging his misfit legs together, like a fetus locked safely away in the dark of the womb. He breathed in deep, even measures. Nothing had been disturbed.
“Mr. Abraham?”
Abraham came awake slowly, pushed his hat back from his eyes, and leaned forward. His fire had gone out, but some coals still smoldered and glowed against the eerie haze of dawn coming on. He rubbed his eyes.
“Mr. Abraham?”
He saw a mug of coffee held out to him by a woman’s hand. He took it. Miss Jolly pulled a lawn chair close and worked for a few seconds to stuff herself into it and then leaned against the back, resting her own mug on the mound of her that stuck up past her breasts. Slocum was the only cop who remained. Abraham watched him snap shut his little notebook with some degree of finality and head toward the fire.
“Mr. Abraham?” Miss Jolly said again.
“Yes?”
“Who’s Fagin? Little bit ago you said something about scissors and Mr. Fagin. I guess you wasn’t woke up all the way.”
“What’s that, Miss Jolly?” Slocum said as he teepeed a couple small logs over the coals.
“Mr. Abraham. I’s waking him up, and he said, ‘I’ve got no scissors to sharpen, Mr. Fagin.’ I think it was them words exactly.” She sipped loudly at her coffee. “Must’ve been dreaming.”
“I suppose so,” Abraham answered.
Slocum poked at the fire with a stick that Abraham had set aside for that purpose. He let it rest in the coals while he found himself a cigarette. When the stick caught fire, he lit up then offered it to Abraham. He did the same. Slocum blew his smoke into the plume that rose from the burgeoning fire and watched it rise together.
“Now that’s a curiosity,” Slocum said finally. “Used to be a feller named Fagin, Declan Fagin, Irishman. They say in the days my grandfather was young, Declan Fagin. Most people called him Pat for some reason or other, probably ’cause he’s Irish. Pat Fagin, the tinker, they called him. He would come through when it warmed up in the spring and then again in the fall, ’fore it got too cold. My Pawpaw use to talk about him some. Said he told the boys dirty jokes and taught ’em limericks. He’d tease their moms and such, sharpen knives and shears, do up their pots and pans. And then he’d disappear. One year he just didn’t come back. Some said got too friendly with the wrong woman. Others said it was the boys. Never know, I guess.”
“That is curious,” Miss Jolly said as she wiggled with interest in the chair she wore.
They looked at Abraham, as if waiting for the details of his dream. Abraham smoked and sipped his coffee. They were all silent for a few moments, until it seemed clear that Abraham had nothing more to say.
“So, the other little feller, Abraham. How’d he fare last night?” Slocum said.
“Alright, I suppose. Considering.”
“Yes, yes. I guess he lost about all the friends he had in the world, huh? Besides you anyways. You all been travelling together long?”
“Almost three years.” Then after a moment, “What do we know at this point, Sheriff?”
“Well, Miss Jolly’s the only one who saw anything. She’s the one called us, but they scared her off. Camperman was out mowing on the far side of the trails, across the way there, out by the old school house. She can tell it better’n I can.”
As he looked at her, Abraham pondered for an instant whether “Jolly” was a first name, a last name, or something else altogether.
“I can only say what I seen at first, before they fired that big shotgun at me. You can see the holes in our camper where they hit.”
She stretched her arm and pointed to her campsite without looking at it. Abraham looked while she spoke and saw the dots that covered the side of the camper.
“They wasn’t fooling around. I heard a shot whizzing by, so I got in fast as I could, but the lady on the phone said to try and watch from someplace safe, so I got up in the bed and watched them through the crack in the curtain there. They was all in black. Had t-shirts tied on their heads, you know, like ninja masks or something. They must of come out from through the woods, ’cause that’s the way they went when they was done.”
“Three of ’em,” Slocum added.
“Yes. It was three big men in all black with t-shirt karate masks. And they come in daylight.”
“Little before six. That’s when she called.”
“Yes. I was getting ready to make Dale some dinner.”
“Dale is Camperman. Only she calls him Dale.”
“Yes. Dale was mowing, and in the summer he works till seven sometimes. You come and borrowed my bike a bit after lunchtime, and that ornery midget come a couple hours later wanting to borrow some spices for some chicken or something. I think they might have stole one of the Hendrix’s chickens down the road. I give him some garlic and Italian seasoning, and that sweet little one waved to me. Then I went and laid down. Next thing I know I hear that ornery one raising a ruckus. I figured he’d just been drinking again, but I heard him say English, and I ain’t heard English from him yet. He was yelling all manner of curses and saying he’s gonna cut throats out and balls off. And that’s when I come out and saw. This one here—”
“Grow-toe,” Slocum said.
“Yes. He was nowhere to be seen. And one of them had stuck the sweet one in a burlap sack or a grain sack or something, and the other midget had a butcher knife on the other two. I yelled out for them to cut it out. That’s when they shot at me. Near scared me to death. By the time I could see from the bed, they’d tied that sweet one to the tree, only he was lower then, and they was taking turns at him like he’s a punching bag. Then they started in with pipes, and beat the poor thing ’til that sack was good and red and dripping out everywhere. The other one, No-no, that’s it: he was splayed out on the picnic table, knife still in him.”
“Then they went off into the woods,” Slocum prompted.
“Just like it was nothing to them. It was still light out for a bit when they was gone. I waited for a bit, just to make sure, then when the Richie got here, I finally come out. By then that Grotto was sitting in the grass, facing that stretch of prairie, rocking back and forth, like this.”
She rocked back and forth, though the lawn chair protested.
“And he was talking his Italian about his wife or something.”
“What?” Slocum asked.
“He kept talking about Maria something. Last name with a G. I thought he’d gone crazy.”
“Ave Maria gratia plena,” Abraham said quietly.
“Yes. That’s it!”
“It’s Latin. He was praying.”
Abraham saw the priest pull into the gravel drive. He waved out the window, and Miss Jolly and Slocum waved back. Abraham watched the black car turn right and make the long circle around the campground.
“So you know nothing else, Sheriff? Who or why?”
“Mr. Abraham, we’re working on it. We’ve got people strung out on that meth shit wanderin’ around. We’ve got some kids thinkin’ they’s doin’ Devil worship in graveyards at night, crucifyin’ cats. Had some boys burn down that black feller’s barn that moved in out there on Monticello Road. Could be somethin’ like that. Could be what they call freak-hunters—had a case of some fellers last year beat the shit out of some clown juggler that come through for Sage City Day. I ask ’em why they done it, and they say freak-huntin’. There’s just no tellin’.”
Abraham nodded as he walked to the truck to look in on Grotto.
“Grotto? You want breakfast? I’m going into town,” he said from the driver-side door.
“La luce,” rasped the voice within.
“I’ll be back in a bit.” Then to Slocum, “So should I clear out?”
“I don’t think they’re comin’ back.”
Abraham made his way to the priest’s car.
“Hey! Mr. Abraham.” It was Slocum. “You got a gun?” he hollered from the fire.
Abraham paused by the open door and shook his head no.
“Might not hurt if you did.”
Abraham gave him a little wave and got in.
“Let’s go,” he said to the priest.
Miss Jolly waved back casually with her fingers. As they drove past the empty playground on the way out of the campground, Abraham realized he was still holding the coffee Miss Jolly had given him and shuddered at the realization that he would have to talk to her again. He set the mug on his knee and dug out a cigarette. He cupped his hands to light it just as the priest braked the car as they approached the shotgunned stop sign on their way out of Friends Creek, and the cup rolled off his leg, hitting the dash. The priest said something about being sorry for his loss. Abraham stared down at the jagged pieces in the floorboard between his big black boots as he blew smoke out the open window.
“It is no problem,” the priest said with a dismissive wave of a hand. “You fill them all you like, but cups want to be empty again.”
Abraham saw half his face in the passenger-side mirror, smoke trailing from his nostrils, his eyes half-shut, carrying crescent-shaped shadow-bags beneath. He thought he looked like a demon, but he recognized himself.