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BEFORE I RETURNED TO my motel room, I walked around the town for two more hours. I wanted to get a good look at the nightlife. I stopped at a couple of dive bars. One was a country western bar. The band there played a few rock 'n' roll songs; only they made them sound like country. They weren’t too bad, some local band that I had never heard of and would most likely never hear of again. But it was fun.
The second bar was a juke joint filled with aging hipsters. Both bars were busy, not completely packed, not wall-to-wall people, but busy. I seized the opportunity to grab a beer and ordered a single at the hipsters’ bar—no shots, no hard liquor, just the one beer. I didn’t want to be inebriated.
After I left the bars, I walked down to the lake and gazed out over the calm water. I felt the breeze blow warm, soft air across my face and neck. Jarvis Lake was a man-made lake, and man-made lakes were generally calm. No reason for high wave activity. Across the lake, I saw various lights from the houses and cars. A few boats were peppered across the surface of the water. Tiny lights blinked, indicating their location and telling other boats that there was a boat in their path.
Nearby, a dock was loaded with plenty of nighttime fishermen. I heard voices and laughing in the distance. I looked to my left and saw the Eckhart Medical Center. I walked toward it, curious as to what went on there.
Black Rock was a relatively poor town. The buildings were old but taken care of and definitely used. Not too many of them were newer than ten years. Most of the newer businesses were probably operating out of old, remodeled buildings.
The Eckhart Medical Center was the one exception. The buildings were nice—and expensive. They were painted white—a fresh-looking paint job—and had closed green shutters on every window. None of this was really all that unusual, but the security was something that troubled me.
I walked closer to the perimeter of the complex. I got as close to it as I could without raising suspicion. It wasn’t that it had a posted guard or anything, but there was tall barbed wire fencing all around it except at the front. The only places where this security was lacking were the two entrances. One of them was a dark entrance with a small glass doorway and no visible markings or signs. Staff entrance, I guessed. The second entrance was an automatic double door with a flat, black rubber mat in front. The sign above the door read: 24-Hour Community Clinic. According to Hazel, the waitress, this was the town’s main source of health care.
Both Hank and Hazel had said that animal research went on here. That was the explanation for the extra security measures—animals. But what kind of animals required security cameras and a barbed wire fence? Maybe the security was more to keep activists out rather than keep the animals in.
Something else dawned on me, maybe because I had seen both the daytime people and the nighttime people. I hadn’t seen any minorities—not a single black person, no Asian people, no foreigners, and only one Hispanic. Black Rock was a small town, but there had to be a few thousand people living here. How could they all be white? This was 2014, not 1955, but Maria was the only minority I had seen. Every bar, diner, café, store, or street where I had walked so far, I had seen only white people. The South, especially Mississippi, had a bad reputation for being racist and segregated. That might’ve been the case forty or more years ago, but in my experience, Mississippi people were as tolerant as anyone anywhere now.
It was odd.
I shrugged off my curiosity about the Eckhart Medical Center and turned and headed back to the motel.
*****
BACK IN MY ROOM, I sat down on the bed and realized that I had forgotten to buy new clothes. Guess I was going to have to wear the same clothes tomorrow. I didn’t want to sleep in them again, and I didn’t want to wake up and wear dirty clothes. I decided to take them off and wash them in the sink. I’d never tried it before, but I figured it’d work as well as anything. For thousands of years, mankind, or more precisely womankind, had washed clothes in streams and rivers.
I washed my jeans first. I used shampoo out of the little bottle from the shower. I used nearly the whole bottle on the pants. I wasn’t sure if it would make a good detergent, but it had to be better than wearing them dirty.
I rolled the jeans in a towel to soak up some of the moisture and then tossed them over the shower rod and left them there to hang and dry. Next, I took off my shirt and rinsed it in the sink. I decided to use hand soap for the rest of my clothes and save the remaining shampoo for my hair. The shirt was much easier to wash than the jeans. The fabric was cotton and soaked up the soap faster than the jeans. I let the hot water run and lathered up both sides of the shirt with the soap. I rinsed it and then wrung it out and stretched the ends in opposite directions, so it didn’t wrinkle as it dried. I hung it up next to the jeans. Then I cleaned my socks and left them on the side of the tub.
I washed my face off in the sink and decided that I was beat. I wanted to sleep. I could take a shower in the morning and put on clean clothes, although they may not be completely dry.
I decided to discard my underwear. No reason to clean them, and I certainly didn’t want to wear them again. I took them off and threw them in a wastebasket in the bathroom.
Before I went to bed for the night, I looked in the mirror and smacked my head.
Great, Widow! You forgot to get a toothbrush!
Guess I had a lot to learn about the nomadic life. In the Navy, I’d just ask for it or go hit the commissary. I went to the bed, pulled the covers back, and slid in. I reached over and clicked the button on the lamp. The lights shut off.
*****
I WOKE UP AT 1:37 IN the morning. I knew this because I checked my cell phone before I got up and out of bed to see what all the noise was. That was when I met Dr. Chris Matlind and the three guys who wanted to do him bodily harm.
I heard voices and shouting and what sounded like roughhousing through the wall. Some of the dialects were so thick that they sounded like muffled cartoon voices.
I wasn’t sure what was going on at first.
I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and grabbed my pants. They were still pretty damp. With no source of heat to dry them, I didn’t expect them to be dry enough to wear yet, but I had to put something on. I couldn’t go over and confront my neighbors wearing no pants. I slipped the jeans on and buttoned and zipped them. No belt. No shoes. No shirt. I was getting too angry to bother putting them on. I didn’t even check to see if my shirt was dry.
I got a glance at myself in the mirror. I was still half asleep. My face looked groggy. My legs and thighs were now damp from the jeans. I had gone to bed with my hair down, so now it hung down across my face. I looked like something out of a nightmare. I looked like a caveman with one idea on his primal brain: kill. Not going to lie, I felt that way too.
I stormed out of my room, barefoot, and over to room thirteen, next door. The door was halfway open. As I approached it, I heard the voices more clearly. One guy spoke articulately, even sounded educated, a little bit like an elitist, only his voice was nasal like he was pinching his nose.
He said, “Please, don’t hit me again. You fractured my nasal bones.” Only his voice was filled with nasal sounds.
Another voice said, “You broke his nose, Daryl.” The tone was the opposite of compassion. It was pleasure.
A different voice, a deeper voice said, “I know what he meant, Jeb. Now grab his arms. This city boy is going in the truck.”
The nasal voice said, “I only want her back. Please don’t hit me again. Just give her back to me, and we’ll leave.”
A third voice, a new voice said, “Daryl, let me hit him with the bat.”
Daryl said, “No, Junior. I think Pa is gonna wanna talk to him without broken bones. ‘Sides, we ought to put him in the truck instead of carr’n’ him.”
Jeb said, “Yeah, Junior, he is cohop’ratin’. No reason to hit him with the bat. Not yet.”
The word is cooperating, I thought, reactively, like my fourth-grade English teacher.
Before I even opened the door, I heard the frustration from the guy I assumed to be Junior, an audible expression, like a loud sigh from an ungrateful child.
Then I kicked the bottom of the door with my left foot, not hard and not soft. Just enough to swing the door open slowly in a kind of dramatic scene like when the door in a haunted house creaks open, and the occupants stop and stare. A big part of dealing with potentially violent situations is using tactical strategy—not something I learned in the Navy, but my mom had beat into me, literally. She had taught me to always fight with my head first and then, after all, avenues of theatrics, diplomacy, and cerebral tactics had been exhausted, I always had the other way of handling a potentially violent situation.
The door creaked open. I hadn’t surveyed the scene as well as I should have because it wasn’t until the door was all the way open, and I was committed to the plan, that I realized these guys might have guns.
Stupid, Widow, I thought. Rookie mistake. Not a mistake that a SEAL-trained operative makes.
But then I could see these guys completely and felt better. They didn’t have guns, and they didn’t have knives, at least not in their hands. If they’d had guns, I figured, they would have pulled them on me. And they would have pulled them on the poor guy whose nose was gushing blood. Right then and there. Why threaten him with fists and a baseball bat if they had a gun they could pull on him?
They stood still, frozen with fear. I knew the look of fear on a man’s face. I had frightened many opponents. Mostly, guys of equal stature or rank or mental fortitude, not like these guys. I had fought schoolyard bullies and rednecks before when I was a kid. These three most certainly would’ve fit into those two categories like a bad cliché.
They wore clothes that were practically interchangeable. Blue flannel. Green flannel. Sleeves torn off. One white, grease-stained T-shirt. One trucker hat. All wore work boots. All wore dirty, ripped jeans. These guys were rednecks, no doubt. Their smell could only be described as stink.
One of them, the one called Junior, held an ancient-looking Louisville slugger. It reminded me of a book I liked to read at sea—The Walking Dead. It was technically a graphic novel, but I’m not that fancy. There’s a bad guy in that series named Negan, with a baseball bat strapped with nails and wire. He called it Lucille. Good series.
The end of Junior’s Louisville slugger was stained and partially splintered. It had been used before.
On whom? I wondered.
I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I did know that it wasn’t going to get used on me. That was for damn sure.
The men looked alike except that one was missing all of his teeth, except for one that dangled in the front like it wouldn’t be much longer before he lost that one, too. One guy was fatter than the other two, but they all looked like they had won their fair share of hot dog eating contests.
The guy on the left-hand side was obviously the leader because the other two looked at him for direction. Maybe he was the oldest brother, Daryl, if they were brothers. They might’ve been cousins.
Small gene pool.
The guy in the second position was Junior, no doubt about that because he held the bat and had only the one tooth. He must have been the lesser brain, the Curly of the bunch.
The guy standing behind the victim had to be the one called Jeb.
The victim was a short, wiry guy. Short brown hair. Looked to be in decent shape but apparently not much of a fighter. He had that gym look like he worked out, but I doubted he had ever had a real fight in his life.
A pair of glasses lay on the floor near his feet. One of the lenses was shattered and cracked. I guessed that they had hit him hard in the face. Once to shatter his glasses and knock them off his face, and then again to break his nose or fracture it.
The three brothers or cousins or whatever they were stared at me. The jaw of the one behind the victim dropped.
Long, black strands of hair fell across my face. They could probably only see my eyes and no other facial features, just the darkness around my face.
I spoke first. I said, “Guys. I’m trying to sleep next door. You aren’t being very neighborly.”
The one called Junior spoke with a stutter in his voice. Maybe from fear. He said, “You should mind ya business. So...ju...just go back into ya own ro...ro...room, and we just forget we saw ya.”
The three guys paused like they were waiting for me to reply.
I didn’t.
The one called Daryl said, “Now you listen, fella. We don’t have a beef with you. You just go on back to your room, and we’ll forget like Junior here says.”
I sized the three of them up in less than a second. Then I spent five more seconds looking them up and down, making it obvious that I was doing it.
I said, “Fellas, it looks to me like you’re not wanted in this man’s room.”
I turned my head and looked briefly at the doorframe. It was splintered. One of them had kicked it in. Then I stared back at them, violent thoughts flashing in my eyes.
I said, “You broke into this man’s room. Attacked him. You’re trying to kidnap him. And all of that would have gone fine, but you made one fatal mistake, one colossal mistake.”
Finally, Jeb spoke up in a sarcastic, idiotic tone. He asked, “Yeah? What?”
I said, “You woke me. I don’t like to be woken up. Not by three inbred idiots like you.”
“What ya gonna dew ‘bout it?” Junior asked.
He started to step away from the others, lowering his bat. He was making room for a swing — their second mistake.
The room was small. I stood in the doorway. Not even all the way in. Just in the doorway. From Junior’s position, he would have to reach over with his left hand, grab the handle of the bat to reinforce the swing, and then pivot with his right foot and step forward with his left. Next, he’d have to swing the bat with full force and swing it high.
If he managed not to hit Daryl on the upswing, then I’d still have the three to four seconds it would take for him to execute the move correctly because he’d have to check back and make sure that Daryl was clear of the swing. Three to four seconds was a long time in a fight. It was time that I would take advantage of. In less than a second, all I had to do was step back and out of the doorway. Back into the night.
Not even a second after I processed the thought, Junior acted. His brother Daryl had seen what he was going to do. I saw him give Junior a nod, a signal that said, “Go for it!”
Junior reached over, grabbed the bat with both hands, pivoted, and swung. Daryl ducked back and fell onto the bed so that the swing would miss him, which it did.
In the last bit of the second that it took for Junior to swing his bat at my head, I stepped back. The bat collided with the inside of the doorframe. Hard. Two feet away, the window, set low on the wall, shattered. Cheap glass crumbled away like dust.
Imagine swinging a Louisville Slugger as hard as you can, without pausing or stopping, at a telephone pole. The force from the resistance of the thick telephone pole would ripple through the bat and fracture or even break the bones in your wrists and arms and fingers. And that was exactly what happened to Junior.
I heard the bones in his hands and wrists crack and shatter. He wouldn’t be swinging that bat for a long time. That was for damn sure.
His fingers dangled from his hands, and the bat fell to the ground.
Like a crazed killer, I stepped into the room.
Junior dropped to the floor and started wailing through his toothless mouth. He sounded like a dying animal. His right hand was better than his left. He reached over and cupped his left, crying like a baby.
Daryl looked up at me and reacted. He lunged at me, swinging a right hook my way, but I had long arms with a long reach. I swung a right uppercut. I was faster than him, and while he had to lunge at me, I could stand my ground and still reach him. My right fist caught him dead center in the nose, crushing it. His right hook grazed my left shoulder and did zero damage. It was like a mosquito bite. Less than a mosquito bite, and more like pocket lint.
I pulled my punch back and watched as he fell back onto the ground. He grabbed at his nose and screamed when he touched it. Blood gushed from his nostrils in a red, flowing river, and his nose was bent away from his face like a clock hand pointing to a quarter after the hour.
I wasn’t sure if the short, wiry guy they were attacking really had a broken nose, but Daryl’s nose was broken, that I knew for sure. He was lucky it was still attached to his face. He was lucky that shards of it hadn’t gone into his brain and killed him. Perhaps the only reason that hadn’t happened was because he had a tiny brain if he had one at all.
I stared back over at Jeb—the last man standing.
I grinned.
He held tight onto the short, wiry guy, using him as a human shield like I was pointing a gun at him.
I stepped closer.
“What do you say, Jeb? You want a shot at me?”
He started trembling. I knew this because the guy he held onto shook with him. Jeb peered over the guy’s shoulder at me. He begged, “Don’t hurt me, please!”
I said, “Here, Jeb. I’m going to give you a chance to make up for your boys.”
I knelt down and picked up the bat. I leaned it against my shoulder like a batter lining up for a home run swing.
Then I said, “I’d say that so far it looks like strike two for you.”
I pointed the bat down at Daryl. He and Junior were both rolling around on the floor, holding their broken appendages, but Junior did something stupid. Truly stupid. Like a dumb animal. He tried to get back up. He must’ve known that I could see him because I was staring right down at him.
I swung the bat in a quick backswing, not full force, not even close, but far from a light tap. I hit Junior square in the mouth as he was trying to get up on one knee. That was the moment when I knew how important that sole tooth had been to him because he screamed in agony when it came flying out of his mouth from the force of the blow. The bat hit him right in the mouth and broke that tooth off. His head whipped back, and he fell back on his ass, but the first thing that happened was his screaming.
Jeb looked on in horror. The screaming died down to a whimper, and then I pointed the bat back at Jeb. I flipped it in the air and caught the tip in my right hand. The handle stretched out to him.
I said, “Take it. Go for strike three.”
Jeb stared at the bat like it was a trap.
“I’m unarmed. You could be the hero.”
Jeb walked slowly backward, trying to retreat, only there was nowhere for him to go. I blocked the only exit.
I stepped forward and over Daryl.
Jeb said, “No. No. I don’t want to. Please just go.”
“Take the bat.”
He stayed quiet. He looked down at Daryl. I knew that Daryl, who was behind me now, was trying to get up.
These guys just don’t learn, I thought.
I flipped the bat in the air again and caught the handle, and then I pivoted around like I was taking a golf swing and clubbed Daryl right in the nose with the thick end of the bat.
I didn’t do it like I was hitting a long drive, and I didn’t do it like hitting a baseball. I hit him like I was putting, hard enough to break whatever cartilage and bone remained in his nose but not enough to kill him. I didn’t want to have to drag a dead body out of there.
He screamed almost like no other scream that I had heard before. Almost.
In the same fluid motion, I spun back around and faced Jeb and his hostage.
I pointed the bat at him again.
I said, “No one is going to help you. Let this guy go and drag your boys out of here, or I’ll take this bat and make it strike three. Okay, Jeb?” His attention came sharply into focus when I said his name. So I said it again, “Jeb if you choose option B, I will hurt you worse than I did them. Much worse. What’s it going to be?”
He shook his head violently. He said, “Let me go. I promise we’ll get out of here.”
“Good choice. I knew you were the smart one.”
*****
IT TOOK JEB ABOUT THREE minutes to help his two fallen comrades back to their truck. Not bad.
I watched as they piled into a brand-new F-150. They fired up the engine and sped away, leaving a cloud of dust behind them.
The truck had a large, transparent decal of the Confederate flag covering the rear window. It was one of the trucks from the redneck compound with the mobile homes and that giant flagpole I had seen earlier. The taillights faded away.
I walked back into the motel room and stared at the short, wiry guy they had beaten up.
I asked, “Are you okay?
The guy had stuffed tissue into his nostrils and was looking at himself in the bathroom mirror.
Without looking at me, he said, “Thank you.”
“You should go to the clinic. Get that nose looked at. You might need a doctor.”
He looked at me and smiled. Then he said, “It’s only a nasal fracture with some profuse bleeding. Not a big deal. I’m a doctor.”
I nodded. Stayed quiet.
He walked over to me, kept his head tilted back to stop the bleeding, and then reached his hand out, offering me a handshake.
Even though his head was tilted back, he still could look straight up and see me. He was about 5’9” tall. I towered over him.
I reached out and took his hand and shook it.
He said, “My name is Chris Matlind.”
I could clearly see that the guy was still shaken up, now that I had the chance to really look him over. Worse than shaken up—he looked terrible. His face was unshaven and unkempt. His hair was unwashed, and he smelled. It wasn’t as bad as the stink of the greasy rednecks or Hank’s musty smell, but it was far from a pleasant scent.
The room was cluttered. Dirty clothes were piled in one of the corners. There were two big suitcases, one black and wide open. It was almost empty of clothes. The second one was still neatly closed in the far corner. It was pink with a green flower pattern. I had never seen a more girlie-looking suitcase and was surprised that a man would have such a thing.
I said, “My name is Widow.”
He asked, “Did you mean what you told those guys? I mean you made it seem like you were only intervening because they had disturbed you.”
“They did wake me. But I wasn’t going to let them take you.”
He nodded.
I stayed quiet.
Then he asked, “Aren’t you going to ask what’s going on?”
I said, “Nope. None of my business.”
A defeated look came over his face like he needed me to be interested, desperately. I shrugged and asked, “What exactly is going on? Why were those guys trying to take you out of here? You must’ve done something pretty bad for a few fat rednecks to break down your door and try to kidnap you. Do you owe them money or something?”
“I don’t owe them money.”
He stopped talking. A look came over his face, a look like he wasn’t sure if he could trust me. Then his eyes welled up, and he seemed to be about to burst into tears. I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. His T-shirt was soaked in blood from his nosebleed. I tried not to touch that part of his shirt.
I said, “It’s okay. You can trust me.”
He said, “They have my wife...she’s a hostage.”