They were off the main road, way off the main road. They traveled through a mile of barely traversable woods before they emerged onto a narrow strip of pasture large enough for a single-engine plane to land and take off. Two buildings, a barn and a small house, stood at one end of the strip of short grass while the other end was punctuated by a steep drop-off to a valley of farm country below.
Gunner roused himself out of a half-slumber and rubbed his eyes. He peered through the darkness at the two buildings. “Stop.”
Step did as instructed.
“Honk. Twice.”
Again, Step followed Gunner’s instructions.
A light on the front porch of the house blinked on and off three times.
“Honk three times back. Quick-like.”
Again, Step followed Gunner’s instructions.
The front porch light came on and stayed on.
“Go on, drive up to the house.”
Step felt his blood pumping through his veins a little faster as he shifted the truck into drive and rumbled toward the house. This was what he called his closeout rush. It was one of the reasons he did them. A man like him never felt so alive as when he was about to take a life. God help him, he didn’t want it to mean so much to him, but it did. He just couldn’t help himself.
He slowed to a stop and put the truck in park twenty feet from the front door to the house. Gunner opened his door. “You and the whore stay put. Gotta warm these backwoods fuckers up to you before you come inside,” he said just before slamming the door shut and making his way toward the house.
An old woman stepped outside before he could knock. They tossed a few terse words back and forth before the woman craned her neck past Gunner’s shoulder to get a good look at Step and Bones. She got out a couple more words before she disappeared back into the house.
Gunner made his way back to the truck and motioned for Step to roll down his window.
The window down, Step said sarcastically, “She looks pleased.”
“She’s pissed because we woke them up. These banjo-humpers go to bed as soon as the sun goes down.” He stretched out the kinks in his back. “Me and you can go in.”
“What about Bones?”
“She said she don’t want no unclean bitches in her house. Something about offending Jesus or some shit.”
Step raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? She think Jesus is pleased with the inventory they keep?”
“The inventory don’t come into the house.”
Step looked to the barn. “Why the fuck we even going into the house? Let’s just get to the barn and get this over with.”
“Inventory ain’t in the barn, neither,” Gunner said as he turned to the house. “Not exactly, anyways.”
Step exited the truck.
“We gotta go in and break bread with these hill-toppers before they let us do shit.”
“What for?”
“Because they’re crazy fuckers and Boss put them in charge of the inventory. Either we do things their way, or they won’t let us anywhere nears the inventory.” Gunner reached the door, but stopped short of opening it. Turning to Step he said, “Hand over your gun.”
Step’s heart raced. The thought of pulling his gun and planting a bullet in Gunner’s head crossed his mind, but that would alert the toppers inside that things had turned to shit, and he might not ever find the inventory.
“No one gets in the house with a gun,” Gunner said with his hand extended.
The skinny closeout king reluctantly pulled a gun out from under his jacket and handed it to Gunner. He felt his chances of saving the Campbell girl slip dramatically as Gunner turned away and knocked on the door.
It didn’t take long for the old lady to reappear holding out a rusty tin bucket. Gunner dropped two firearms inside the bucket and pushed his way past her as he moved inside.
Step moved to follow, but she stopped him. The woman with a dark, thick mustache and a wind-damaged face eyed the skinny closeout king suspiciously. “You believe in Jesus?”
Step hesitated and then nodded.
“You believe he loves you?”
More hesitation followed by a weak nod.
“You believe that if you love him back your soul is saved?”
He managed a nod so weak it barely registered.
She squinted her right eye. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say, ‘I believe Jesus loves me and that my love for him purifies and saves my soul.’ ”
Step looked to Gunner for help, but the fucker had already made his way into the kitchen.
“Can’t come in unless you proclaim your heart for Jesus, because you’re the devil if you don’t. Don’t want the devil in my house.”
“I ain’t the devil. That’s way above my pay grade.” He smiled to signal that he was trying to be charming.
“Only the devil would say such a thing, but you know what the devil would never say? The devil would never say that his love for Jesus purifies and saves his soul. He ain’t got the tongue for such a thing.”
Step sighed and proclaimed that his love for Jesus purified and saved his soul.
She still didn’t let him pass.
“I said it.”
“Waiting to see if you die from it. Don’t want no dead devil in my house.”
A few more seconds ticked by before she relented and let Step enter her home.
Once inside the house, Step felt an urge to bolt back outside. The walls were decorated with dozens of pictures of Jesus, deer heads, and a signed photo of some televangelist. The inscription read, Thanks for your donation. Jesus will bless your kindness with endless blessings in our Father’s kingdom.
A drooling, hunched-over old man sat in a wheelchair just beyond the small living room near the kitchen with a deeply unattractive woman in a housecoat standing next to him. Judging by her chin hair, Step pegged her as the daughter.
“Why you back so soon?” the daughter asked.
“Run into a situation,” Gunner said, grabbing a biscuit off a plate on the kitchen table. “Boss wants to close out the inventory.”
She crossed her arms and turned her mouth into a clownish frown. “What about Julio?”
“What about him?”
“Word’s been sent that he’s got a pickup. He’s due anytime. He comes all the way out here and there ain’t no inventory, he’s gonna go into one of his Mexican spins.”
“He ain’t Mexican,” the old woman said. “He gets mad as John the Baptist when you call him that. He’s from one of them countries way down south of here where they speak Mexican, but they ain’t Mexican.”
“If he speaks Mexican, he’s Mexican as far as I’m concerned,” the daughter said.
Gunner chewed on the dry biscuit. “I don’t give a shit if he’s Martian. Boss wants the inventory closed out, so the inventory is gonna get closed out. Julio can suck a pecker. He ain’t my problem.”
The old woman moved faster than seemed possible and planted a slap across Gunner’s face. “Don’t you say such a vile thing in front of Jesus.”
Gunner rubbed his cheek and grimaced. “Didn’t know Jesus was here.”
She thumped her chest. “Jesus is in my heart. Wherever I am, he is.”
Gunner was tempted to break the old woman’s neck, but he composed himself and turned to the daughter. “We gotta get on this. Boss is in a hurry.”
The daughter put her hands on her hips. “We ain’t doing shit until Julio gets here.”
“Fuck Julio.”
The daughter stepped forward and got nose to nose with Gunner. “I ain’t gonna be left to explain to Julio what Boss wants. You’re gonna tell it to him your own self. Once he’s got the idea it ain’t our fault, you can close out your precious inventory.”
Gunner growled. “Why they hell you give a shit what that Mexican thinks, anyhow?”
She blushed. “Done business with him a good many years. We got a good understanding of one another. I’m just trying to be professional.”
Gunner snickered. “You and the Mexican fuck-buddies?” He pointed at the old woman as she stepped toward him with her hand raised. “You slap me again, Ima forget how nice I’m supposed to be to you.”
The daughter’s cheeks turned bright red as she refused to answer his question.
Gunner laughed harder. “Bound to happen, I suppose. Man flies all the way up here from God knows where three or four times a year, has to arrive horny some time or another.”
“Don’t be vulgar in my house,” the old woman cried, pointing to the various pictures of Jesus.
Gunner rolled his eyes. “Ima have to override you people on this. Boss needs this done sooner rather than later. We’ll just close out the girl, and I’ll leave Step over there behind so he can make things right with Julio.”
Step became fidgety. The house, the toppers, the pictures of Jesus staring holes in him…it all put him on edge. On edge was not a good place for the closeout king to be. He did a lot of stupid things when he was on edge.
“He’s a stranger. Don’t want no stranger hanging about longer than necessary…”
“Well, that’s the point, old lady. This is all very fucking necessary.”
The bucket entered Step’s peripheral vision as he turned slightly to get a lay of the house. It would take him three seconds to run to it and retrieve his gun. He’d shoot the old lady first just for being an annoying old hag. Then he’d take out the old man in the wheelchair for no other reason than to put the poor old drooling fucker out of his misery. Then he’d shoot Gunner right between the eyes.
The daughter he needed, but once she showed him where the girl was, she’d be just as dead as the others.
He managed only a half turn toward the bucket when he heard the cock of a gun. A quick glance to his left revealed a shotgun trained on him from the old man’s lap.
“I thought you didn’t allow no guns in your house,” Step said.
“Only champions of Jesus can have them in this house,” the old woman said. “Papa Paul beholds Christ in his heart like no one I’ve ever seen.”
Step stared at the drooling old man, trying to determine if he possessed the ability to actually aim the gun at a moving target.
“You got it in your mind to go after that bucket, you best get that notion out of there because Papa Paul will blow your guts out your asshole for trying such a thing. He may be crippled up and old as Methuselah, but he’s still quick on the trigger and shoots true as a man seventy years his junior, I can promise you that,” the old lady said with a proud grin.
The skinny closeout king gave the matter some thought. He had his doubts Papa Paul could do what the old lady claimed, but the house was too small to run out of the way of a shotgun blast. His mind shifted through idea after idea until he settled on one. “You folks hiding something?”
All eyes turned to him with a curious glare, including Gunner’s.
“What’s that you say?” the daughter asked. Her chin hair seemingly bristled at Step’s suggestion.
“It’s just curious. Y’all seem dead set on keeping me and Gunner from seeing the girl. Like there might be something wrong.”
“Wrong?” the old lady asked.
“Yeah. Wrong, like she’s dead.”
The daughter nearly growled in protest. “Mister, you questioning our caretaking abilities? We ain’t lost but one girl in all these years, and that one come to us half dead in her mind, so her passing can’t be pegged on us. As a matter of verified fact, most the girls leave here in better shape than when they arrive. Don’t nobody want to buy busted-up inventory, and we ain’t never lost but one sale.” Turning to Gunner she said, “Tell him.”
Gunner hesitated. He studied Step’s angular face and then shrugged. “You fucked up once. You can fuck up again.” He had no idea where Step was headed, but he’d play along if it meant he didn’t have to spend any more time with the hill-toppers than he had to.
The daughter’s cheeks turned red as fast as a flick of a switch. “Oughta let Papa Paul shoot you, is what I oughta do.”
Step snickered. “That’s what I thought. Let’s get on, Gunner. Boss needs to know the girl was closed out before we got here.”
Gunner returned the snicker.
“The girl ain’t closed out,” the daughter insisted, placing her hands on her broad hips. She glanced at her mother and then sighed. “Suppose there won’t be no harm in giving you a look, but by God, ain’t nothing to be done to her until Julio gets here. Understand me?” She moved to the short hallway and disappeared into the first room on the right, emerging shortly after with a brown duster covering her ratty old nightgown.
Gunner grunted out a laugh. “You look as pretty as an old cowhand after a hard day’s work.”
The sturdy woman threw her brawny shoulder into him as she made her way through the kitchen.
Step smiled as she passed him and almost pleasantly invited him to follow her out the door. His closeout rush was back with a vengeance.