The Ravaged, page 8
Itch twists his head vigorously from left to right. “No. I’s three grand shy.”
Nugget and Hunter yell as one, “Three fucking grand?”
“Yeah. I—”
“Stop!” Hunter demands. Holding up a gloved hand to stop any more words from falling out of Itch’s mouth. “I don’t wanna know why. Seriously, I don’t wanna know.”
Nugget yells, “I’m sure it’s got to do with a fair-skinned, shit-stompin’ maiden named Dani.”
Dani. About five feet five inches. Toned and covered with more ink than the Sunday comics. Raven locks of hair all the way to a truly memorable ass. She doesn’t take any shit from man or beast. And if she wants what Itch has, she’ll just take it—leave him with the responsibility or else resolve to fix any problems that might arise from her actions. And she loves to fill her lungs with a long, luxurious drag of that wacky tobacky.
“We’ve wasted enough damn time,” Hunter yells over the two rumbling Harley engines. “Let’s get this debt settled before dark. I’d like to make it to Indiana.”
Wheeling the knuckle backward, pointing the front tire toward the highway, they roll out of the lot and onto the pavement.
Miles and miles down the road, immersed in the thick green of trees and ditch-weed hemp, he drinks in the smells of pine pollen and lupine blossoms that line the long driveway of patched gravel and potholed dirt. Opening up to a menagerie of white and tan goats, chickens, and stray hounds trotting about and barking as if to convince someone they’re earning their keep. The landscape is littered with broken-down swing sets, vehicles in varying states of decay and disrepair. A young woman with long brunette locks and impressive breasts is slouched comfortably in a rusted lawn chair. A sweating five-gallon bucket of ice and longneck beers sits beside her in easy reach. She wears a Pabst Blue Ribbon bikini, white on sunburn pink. Next to her sits a pale-skinned, potbellied male whose hair looks to have been bleached out with lemon juice. His do is all business on top and a party in the back—a full-on mullet—set off strangely with wraparound gangster-chic shades. To complete the ensemble, he wears a snakeskin-patterned Speedo and cowboy boots with a riding heel. Standing up from a wooden rocking chair that has seen better days, he waits for the boss lady to stand upright and approach her visitors.
Before the bikes are parked and throttled down, the three guys who took Itch’s bike emerge from a barn with an open front. A large motor hangs by a rusty log chain slung over a double six-by-six roof joist. A huge circle of grease and oil blackens the earth beneath the engine. All three men appear squirrelly and underfed. Their jeans are filthy with dirt, crankcase oil, and bearing grease. Heads buzzed down to a thin fuzz, beards decidedly not. Arms and necks stenciled with bad ink.
Hunter mumbles, “What the shit did you get us into, Itch?”
Two hounds with chocolate-and-white coats spiked up by mud and chicken shit muster the boldness to come bawling and nipping at Hunter’s and Nugget’s bike tires.
Nugget shakes his head. “Think somebody needs to feed these mutts.”
Sizing up his surroundings, Hunter takes in two weathered and dented trailers sitting off in the distance. With cardboarded windows and rotted decks painted by mint-green mold, they sit apart from an old farmhouse with flaking paint and a barnacled roof. All this is surrounded by maybe a square mile of mixed woods.
Planting her bare feet on the soil, the woman stands up on strong, shapely legs. The gallons of beer aside, she appears athletic. The skinny-fat man in the marble bag does not. He follows behind, all bony legs and arms, as she approaches Hunter, Itch, and Nugget. The man works a toothpick in a mouth beyond the help of modern dentistry. The woman, leading the way with a PBR longneck in her hand, stops a few feet from Hunter. Lifting the beer to her lips, she takes a long pull and swallows. Looks at Itch. Shakes her head with a shit-eating grin. “You best be here with my goddamned money, or we got jack shit to talk about, Itch. You and your little gang of scooter trash’ll be passing slang with my three boys and their colleagues Smith and Wesson.”
Confident, Hunter doesn’t let Itch talk, tells the lady, “Why we’re here—to clear up Itch’s payment, what he owes you. Get his bike back and get on down the line.”
Eyes stab like bayonets into Hunter’s sight and out the back of his skull. “Don’t recall talking to you.” Pausing, she makes a face as if she maybe ate some spoiled brussels sprouts. “Sorry, who the fuck are you? I didn’t get your name. Oh, wait, that’s because I wasn’t fucking talking to you!”
This chick is napalm. “Name’s Hunter, friend of Itch’s.” Swinging his leg over his bike, he steps toward her, offers a gloved hand. “And you are . . . ?”
Green eyes lined by thick, sweaty eyeliner glance from Hunter’s hand to his crotch, then her stare carves back through him. Smirking, she takes Hunter’s hand, shakes it. “I’m Malone. Ms. Marylin Malone. And this steaming-hot hunk of horseshit behind me is Oscar, my multitalented fiancé.”
Nodding, Hunter tells Ms. Malone, “Got Itch’s debt covered.” Reaches into his hip pocket. Malone’s men mirror him, reaching behind their backs and hauling out large-caliber handguns. Hammers click, and Malone says, “The hell you think you’re doing, reaching behind your back like that, Mr. Hunter?”
“Easy.” Hunter holds his left palm up as his right hand gingerly lifts out his chained leather wallet. Holds it up for everyone to see. “Like I said, got Itch’s payment covered. Just going in my wallet to get your money.”
Oscar laughs. “You ’bout got your ass lit up like a Roman candle, son.”
Hunter unsnaps his wallet. The three men in his peripheral vision keep their pistols trained on him. Not the Taliban this time, but maybe not so different.
Malone tells Hunter, “Just keep it slow and simple there, Mr. Hunter.”
“No need to go tribal. See?” Hunter says, pulling a wad of bills from his wallet. “It’s all Benjamin Franklin.”
Hunter counts out thirty of them. Slowly. Presses the wad of bills to Malone’s open palm. She takes the wad of cash, hands it over her shoulder to Oscar. “Be a dear and make sure the number’s correct this time, Oscar. Don’t wanna take any chances this go-around, seeing as Mr. Itch didn’t bother to mention that he was shorter’n a mosquito’s peter when last we crossed paths.”
Sliding his wallet back into his hip pocket. There is the feeling of discomfort that comes from having three pistols pointed at you. Hunter thinks of the 1911 Colt .45 tucked in his ruck. But it would do him little good at this juncture, with three good ol’ boys already sighting him up. Hunter feels a bit blindsided to find that Malone wears the pants in this operation. He had assumed that Itch was dealing with a male. A dude. Itch never mentioned otherwise. Regardless, it’s pretty visible that she’s a bigger swingin’ dick than any of the men she surrounds herself with. She’s the alpha broad. Hunter is sure of that. And he’s pretty sure Oscar can’t get a grip on the numbers, is maybe allergic to basic arithmetic, or maybe missed school the week they were learning how to count. He fiddles with the loose cash, has dropped several bills and picked them back up, as if they were burning his fingers. Hunter thinks about offering to recount it for him.
“You know, maybe I should just say fuck it! Start with you, Itch, right in your fucking head. Then Mr. Hunter and this other slab of chuck roast—sorry hon, what was your name? I didn’t catch it seeing as you weren’t rude enough to offer it.”
Not rising to the bait, Nugget says, “Nugget.”
“Nugget, like the McDonald’s Chicken Mc-type. I bet your family is proud of that moniker. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Nugget. Like I’s saying, after I shoot you, Mr. Hunter, I’ll shoot Mr. Nugget just for having the poor judgment to even be associated with Itch, just for tagging along. Have my boys take your asses out in my woods and find you a nice quiet plot of untrespassed soil.” Malone’s eyes bore right through Itch. Her guys come closer, looking jumpier than before. Nerves are taut and getting twitchy, waiting on a response.
Hunter’s “Oh, shit” radar starts blipping. He flashes to his father and how he was good at talking a bad situation into a good situation—had that gift of gab when shit wasn’t going so well. Hunter says, “Ms. Malone, I can see you’re dealing with a real shit sandwich, Itch skipping out and shorting you. And ol’ Oscar back there don’t seem to know his numbers too good—been fiddling with three grand like maybe it’s a foreign language he can’t comprehend. I can count it out for you, right here or wherever, have your guys watch. Regardless, I get it. The stress. Why I quit my job. Tired of dealing with less talented fucks.”
“And what was this that you did for a living?”
“Repaired and built and rebuilt motorcycles. Choppers. Harleys. You name it, I can fix or refabricate it. My boss was a total dickweed. And average with bikes. He just happened to be the guy with the reach, the connections, and the capital.”
“Well, this is my business,” Malone replied. “And when product goes out, cash must come back in. Got a daughter’s college tuition to pony up for. Employees to pay. Hell, ol’ Itch here must think I’m running a rental service, in which payments can be deferred. He just give us an envelope of cash like he always has, thinks things is all good, and cuts out. Turns out, he shorted me. Never done that before. Always been a square dude.”
“I am a square dude,” Itch says, and Hunter cuts in.
“He is a square dude. I think he got in a bit over his shoulders. Got a lady with a bad burn for primo bud on the home front, and she’s a strong-minded woman like yourself.”
“Mr. Hunter, I have two girls. One in high school, one in college. Both from the same weasel of a man that’s buried over on that hillside, right under a rosebush. Thing is, I’m thirty-seven years young, and I don’t put up with any malcontents. Man works for me, I give him product, he sells the product, returns what he earned in order to get compensated. And I give enough freebies of my product to those I employ to not be shorted.”
Hunter searches for something to latch on to. Sometimes flattery helps. “You don’t look like you’re a day over thirty.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hunter. It’s referred to as good genes—taken from my mama’s end of the pool. Regardless, our issue isn’t what age I look. I’m not some two-bit redneck, to be walked on and then roll over and piss on my belly. I’m a lady who believes respect is earned, not given, and I believe in second chances but never a third. I conduct my business in the same manner.” Malone inhales deep and exhales hard. Wearing a gruff face of lost patience, she asks, “Oscar, did Mr. Hunter give us a suitcase of Franklins, or just three fucking grand?”
Oscar stammers, “No-no, dear, no suitcase. It’s three grand.”
“What’s the holdup, then? Paint dries faster than you can count. We’re not even talking first-grade math here, Osc. This is just counting.”
Fiddling with the cash, Oscar tells Malone, “No, honey. Just used to using that machine that counts it for us, is all. Trying to take my time, make sure it’s all here.”
“Well?”
“We’re good, honey, we’re good.”
Malone waves a hand at her men, tells them, “You can put your hardware back up, boys. One of you make nice and bring Mr. Itch his bike.” She takes another swig of her beer. The men lower their pistols. One of them goes into the barn. Comes back wheeling Itch’s chromed-out shovelhead motorcycle with neon-jade flames down the tank. Coming from the rear of Hunter’s motorcycle, Itch approaches Malone’s guy, takes the weight of his bike from him. Straddles it. And Hunter asks, “Everyone square?”
Malone’s eyes pierce a chill through Hunter, and she tells him, “At this juncture, we’re square as a newly built home. You seem to be a good friend.” Looking to Itch, she tells him, “Get your bitch lined out at home, ’cause that was your second chance. There won’t be a next time”—pausing, looking back at Hunter and Nugget—“for any of you.”
JACK
Her words echo in Jack’s brain. I dreamed of a man. A tortured soul. Crazed and dancing in the streets to his own lunacy. Excusing himself now. Needing to piss. At his age, he is lucky he hadn’t pissed the bed. Getting up from the kitchen table, he walks to the bathroom. Jack is broken and weak. He unzips his pants, relieves himself, flushes, and turns on the faucet. His soft, uncalloused hands cup cold water, lather up, rinse. He splashes his face again, wanting to wash away whatever reality he had wandered into. There is the acrid smell of old sweat, of himself. Perspiration and dirt collected in transit, from his dream. And Jack feels beaten and worn, powerless. His hips, knees, and elbows are aching and bruised from the pummeling. He stands in Fabiola’s bathroom, taking in his surroundings: sink, toilet, chipped claw-foot tub. There is no large, spacious area, no marbled shower stall. No Jacuzzi tub, no bidet, no mirrored walls, and no sauna room. Here he stands, feeling a deep burn in his bones and gristle, a back spasm like a dagger, and something akin to judgment being cast upon him. He takes in his splotched face, pouches dark as an eggplant beneath his eyes. Deeply lost internally and searching for his center, he had found this woman, Fabiola, for a reason. An answer to an unknown query, but she is as crazed as he. He couldn’t sit at the table any longer, couldn’t be in the same room as Fabiola and her crazy talk about dreams. It was like being stuck in a modern-day episode of The Twilight Zone.
Overcome by emotion, he remembers his father calling him “useless” when he was a kid. Jack grits his teeth, recalling the endless put-downs telling him he would never amount to shit. And that only incited him to become something, to make good grades, get into a good college, and earn a living that created a cushion for life. He never saw what was happening around him unless it involved work, unless it involved growth for earning more money. Board meetings, pie charts, Excel spreadsheets, market reports, think tanks—these were his everyday lingo of life for all those years. What he never realized then was the slow crumbling of lives—the dominoes that lined up around him, that would tip and fall, one into the next. He never planned for the sickness, the death, the fear. This unraveling is haunting him.
Dry air warms the home as daylight brings heat. Drying sweat has left a faint white dusting of salt on his skin. There is no smell of wood smoke, no fumes. Only his unbathed body—something he’s unaccustomed to. Till now, he seldom went more than twelve hours without a bath. He fights back tears. He fights back at how weak he feels after being stripped of all the things in his life that made him him.
Maybe Fabiola was right: he isn’t accustomed to things he can’t control.
Back in the kitchen, Fabiola sits at the table, looks in his eyes. She’s hard, unlike Jack. She smiles. Jack wonders if this is what simple folk do to pass the time: sit and stare at one another until a thought crosses their mind to start a conversation. Running her palm over the table, Fabiola tells him, “My husband crafted this table with his own two hands.”
Jack’s own two hands have never built anything. Almost never held a hammer. A screwdriver. He hasn’t mowed his own lawn or changed a tire. Hasn’t known labor since he was a kid. And even back then he wasn’t skilled at any of it. He paid people to do such things for him. Inside, he is going crazy with questions. It may be that Fabiola is crazy too. Maybe she is rubbing off on him. He thinks something is off about her. Saying she saw him in a dream. Maybe this is what loss does to a person. Regardless of social status, of money. It drives everyone to the brink. Over the edge. It breaks them. And Jack tries like hell to be polite, to gather his wits, get his bearings. Trying to be polite, he asks her, “Where did he acquire the lumber to build the table?”
“He ordered it. Then sawed and planed and smoothed it himself. He had a shop out back of the house.”
Running his palm over the table. Jack feels as if someone had beat his skull with a shovel. The coffee seemed to help at first. Now, well, Jack is having second thoughts.
“Where did your husband hone such a craft, a skill?”
“His father. He wanted him to be a carpintero, or what you Americans call a woodworker.”
Jack’s father never taught him anything. From the brief moments Jack was allowed to be around him, to be his son, he recalls a vile, unhappy man. Cursing and belittling his mother and him. With such a lacking fatherly example, it’s no wonder that Jack never really taught his own kids anything. He was always working. Any time he spent with them, he spent thinking about work. The teaching and sharing he left to his wife, Sarah.
Unable to take it any longer, at the mercy of all these thoughts and memories, Jack wants out of here. He has to get moving. And he tells her, “I really appreciate all your kindness, Fabiola—especially your taking me in and offering me a place to sleep, listening to my ramblings. But I need to get back on the road. I need to move forward.”
“I’ve packed you some bread and cheese. It’s all I have. And I’ve filled your bottles with water.”
In placing someone else’s needs before her own, she is like Sarah. Jack tells her, “I deeply appreciate that. You are way too considerate. You really should not give me all your food.”
“You will be hungry. You will need it more than I.”
Fabiola brings Jack his boots. Watches him put them on. Tie them.
Shaking her hand. It’s rough and hard, unlike Jack’s. He offers her a feeble smile and a baby-soft hand. Fabiola smiles back. Wishes him a safe journey and waves to him as he steps out the door.
The heat of the day beats down on Jack like Dempsey pounding on Jess Willard. Placing one foot in front of the next, the pack already tugging on his shoulders, bottles of water slosh behind him, and the phantom axe keeps digging into his lower back, a little deeper with every mile of progress.
The map says twenty hours by foot to Calama, but a little over an hour by vehicle. Taking in the mountainous outcrops and clumps of clay and rock in the wide and treeless expanse, Jack thinks this must be what it’s like on Mars. With each step, he listens for a vehicle. A truck or semi. He hitched to San Pedro from Argentina. There was no shortage of vehicles, of people offering the kindness of a lift. Today, he won’t be so fortunate.
