(1989)
THE ONLY LIGHT WAS FROM AN OLD LAMP, AND THE GIRL watched them pace about in it. Lank figures the color of wax. The girl had been given a mixture of heroin and ketamine. Her clouded eyes rolling in their sockets. She lay on a spongy twin mattress on the floor and gripped the sheets as best she could. She had been dressed in a threadbare cotton shift that covered her body like skin about to be shed. The rain lashed on the wilted tar paper roof of the shack and where the roof was coming undone, plastic tarps, shredded to the point of strands of hair, attempted to restrain the water. The floors of the place were soaked. Outside, the mud, cut by tires, was deep as canyons. A black stain climbed the crumbling siding like ivy.
The shack was deep within the woods and just back from the banks of a river that ran wide and swift and milky from the mountains to the east. All manner of trash was snared in the thorns of blackberry. Shipping containers and rusted-out carcasses of cars and disfigured machinery lay hidden in the vines or half-sunk in the earth. Forgotten about and discarded just like the people who lived there.
The shack had no furniture. Only a couple metal folding chairs pilfered from the dump. Those in the living room lay stoned on pallets of moldy blankets and damp pillows. Some used needles. A blackened pipe. A couple of spoons. The kitchen was used not for food but cooking the trash and then cutting it at a round table under a single fluorescent bulb.
In her haze the girl watched them pace. Two of them. A man and a woman she knew very little about. Just two dopers the girl had been running with.
They were muttering to themselves. The girl thought she heard the woman say,
He should be here by now.
Fuck, the man said. This is all fucked.
They were harried looking in that wan light. The man kept pacing and picking at his face.
Where the fuck is he! the man shouted.
The girl slipped further and it could have been a minute or it could have been an hour when she saw a third come through the bedroom door. First as the shadow of a man and then as a silhouette against the malarial light. A towering figure filling the tiny room. His head seemingly reaching the ceiling. His movements were steady. He spoke in a low deep voice. The woman said,
We gave her the juice just like you said.
He came over to the mattress and squatted beside her and brushed away the dark hair from her forehead. Then he went to the corner of the room and knelt with the leather gladstone he’d come in with and took out a camera and a tripod and set them up. The camera’s red light began to blink. Then he went back to the mattress with a length of rope.
So you got it for us? the woman asked.
Her hands were shaking. The man had not stopped picking his face.
Shh, the big man said.
He tied the girl’s wrists together and then to an exposed stud so that her arms lay out above her. Again he brushed his hand over her forehead. He went back to the gladstone and from it produced a garish mask with antlers and a long, curved knife. The handle was made from some kind of bone. Polished stones inlaid in the grip.
What’s the knife for? the woman asked.
Stop asking questions, the big man said.
He put on the mask and stood facing the girl. The horrible sight of him terrified her and she expelled a drugged gasp and hauled against the stud she was bound to, and when she did, moving away as much as she could, he saw a dark stain of urine on the mattress. He knelt and touched the spot with the back of his fingers. It was cold.
How long has she been like this, the big man said.
They didn’t answer him.
He stood from the mattress.
I need to clean her, he said.
He removed the mask and laid it on the gladstone and left the room and stepped outside into the wet dark. He went to his car and opened the trunk. He removed a towel and went down to the river. The surface was boiling under the rain. At the shoreline he dipped the towel in the cold water, wetting half of it. Then he stood and looked up at the rain.
Back at his car he opened the trunk again. There was a duffel bag. Some jumper cables. A jerry can of gasoline. A brick of packed white powder and a pistol. The pistol he put in the waistband at the small of his back. He lifted a halo made of feathers and sticks. He carried this along with the wet towel into the shack. He stopped at the front door and looked inside. He didn’t remember leaving it open. He turned back, out into the rain and the dark, but there was nothing to be seen out there. He went in and closed the door behind him.
Inside an acid haze lingered like fog. He walked toward the bedroom, stepping over the clamor of figures strewn about the floor. The bedroom was empty. The rope tied to the stud was frayed where it had been cut, and the girl was gone. The big man stood there looking down at the mattress. Holding the halo at his side. Then he looked at the camera. The red light was still blinking.
The man and woman stumbled back into the room.
Where did the girl go? the big man asked.
She was just here, the woman said.
Yes. And now she is gone.
Did you see her go? the man asked.
Is that your question to me? the big man asked.
Where’s the wash, man? the man said. His tone was desperate.
The wash?
The stuff, man. The shit. You bring it or not?
You let her get away.
We had a deal, the woman said.
You are not very smart, the big man said. Are you?
Please, the woman said. Please.
She fell to her knees and began clawing at the big man’s belt. He grabbed her by the shoulders and stood her up.
We had a deal, Noon. The girl for the wash.
You let her get away.
Noon took a step back and regarded them. Then he went to the corner of the room and lifted the tripod and rearranged the camera. He looked through the viewfinder and focused the lens on the man and the woman. When he was satisfied, he stepped from behind the camera.
Take off your clothes.
What? the man said.
Take off your clothes.
Just do what he says, the woman said.
They undressed with reluctance and stood there swaying in their stupor like dead alder trees.
Get on the bed, Noon said.
He pointed at the woman.
I want you to have sex with him.
What? the man said.
The words seemed to cauterize something within him and he blinked with a sense of dire clarity.
The two of you are going to have sex, Noon said.
Just do what he says, the woman said.
The man lay down and the woman got on top of him. She began to move. She began to make sounds for some kind of effect.
Noon stepped forward a little. Cautious not to be in the shot. He said, Is he inside of you?
The woman shook her head.
Then keep going, Noon said. He went back to the camera. We are not going to fake this. He looked through the viewfinder. Said, This is the most honest thing you will ever do. This will live on forever.
A moment longer he asked her the same question.
This time she nodded and he pulled the pistol from his waistband and shot them each in the head. She collapsed onto his slatted chest and they lay there as if sleeping with the blood soaking into the mattress. He put on the antlered mask and walked over to them. Then he turned back to the camera. Said, Cut. He turned off the camera and put it and the tripod under one arm and lifted the gladstone and walked out of the room.
In the living room the others were passed out. He regarded them for a moment. He clicked his tongue in disapproval. He trained the gun at one of them but let it fall to his side. Instead, he stepped out of the shack and went to his car. He took out the can of gasoline from his trunk and went back to the shack and emptied it on the siding. Then he set the camera up again and pressed record and lit a match. He stood back as the heat grew.