Chapter 43
The black Lexus drove past Bret Ruchert legging it down the road shoulder. Henry backed up into Old Woods Road’s northbound lane, and watched the shiny car go past.
The car pulled up parallel to the railcars and the center of activity. Rolled up and stopped, not even trying to pull out of the southbound lane. The engine shut off and the front driver’s side door opened. Sipe kept looking at Clay. Clay kept his center of self aimed towards Tiffany, but his eyes had lost interest in the girl. Far too interested in this newest character and their vehicle.
Zeke got out, shut the driver side door and walked around the Lexus front bumper and down the slight declination onto the dirt and grass. He’d turned on the hazard lights. Just to cover that little bit of ground should a cop appear out of nowhere. Cops, Zeke knew, all about making sure the public dotted I’s and crossed T’s.
Smiling, checking out the sun through his sunglasses, looking back at the railcars, still walking, Zeke asked, “How we all doing this morning?” No answer. Zeke sighed, his shoulders drooped.
“That’s close enough,” said Clay. Zeke put up his hands and stopped. He looked right. Gravel clicked, the big boy in all black now stepping off the road shoulder, lumbering down the slope, then across the flat towards the railcars.
“Who’s Goliath?” asked Zeke.
“Bret Ruchert,” said Sipe.
“Friend or foe?”
“Clay’s friend.”
“Clay the one here playing Robin Hood?”
“Yeah.”
“Clay,” said Zeke, “you really need to be aiming an arrow at a little girl?”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m just asking. Most the time, in my experience, you have issues with someone, you deal with them directly. You deal with them directly you get results.”
Bret slowed down. Stopped behind Sipe and Tiffany, on the passenger side of the Honda. He looked down at the arrow, the mess from the shattered headlight. His face purpled from the exertion. The black suit not helping him out so much, but a big guy like that, moving like both knees were reconstructed, half metal and screws, he would ooze sweat even stripped down like a sumo wrestler.
“We can talk this out,” said Zeke. “People are angry, yes, I see that, but we can always negotiate.” Zeke kept an eye on Goliath. Goliath now rested his left hand on the Honda hood. Zeke swore the car suspension squeaked on each of the big man’s respirations. “We’re not at the point that there’s been a spill. The worms are in the can. That’s good. There’s still time to put the can back on the shelf. Leave it there. Talk. Peel back the layers and get to the real issues here. Talk is good. Talk is magic.”
“You done yet?” asked Clay. “You sound like a fucking commercial.”
“Sure. Tell me, what’s the problem?”
“Who the fuck are you, anyways?”
Not that Clay looked, but Zeke pointed at Sipe. “His boss.”
“He fucked my woman up. Bonnie. She’s in the hospital,” said Clay. “She’s pregnant. I got a baby in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry.”
“’Sorry’. He did it. So he’s got to pay. I take it out of him. Or I take it out of her. This little teenage twat.”
“She’s a girl, right? You see that? She’s not a body part.”
“Twat. Pussy. Cunt.” Clay spit. “Gash. Slit.”
“You want to keep going? Or did you run out of index cards there?”
Clay remained silent.
“Why not let her go?” asked Zeke.
“Naw. I’ve gotten used to her. I think she stays.”
“She hurt your friend? Bonnie? She hurt your baby?”
“She’s…”
“Why threaten her? This situation is going to be the same one way or the other. You can aim your bow and arrow at me if you want. I’ve known Sipe forever. Been plenty of times I could’ve let him die. Left him out to hang. I didn’t. I’m much more responsible for your situation then this girl could ever be. Just, let’s, let’s rearrange this. Why include her? Why threaten her?”
“Why not?”
“Look-“
“Hey. Nigger? Nigger-Morgan Freeman-fuck? Shut up. Shut up or you get to watch someone die. Then you can talk about that. Peel that back. Those layers. Peel that back all you want.”
“How’s Bonnie going to feel, even before she gets out of the hospital, and she already knows she’s got to raise the baby on her own?” asked Zeke.
“She’ll manage.”
“How about this, you hurt this girl? After we kill you, we kill Bonnie. Don’t even wait for the baby to be born. We shoot Bonnie in the gut. Let her bleed out. That way, while she’s dying, she’s got her blood, your baby’s blood all over her, on her hands and everything. Sometimes, people shot in the stomach, it lasts a long time. A long time.”
Tiffany looked at Zeke. He knew there wasn’t a thing he could ever do in this lifetime to erase this first impression. Goliath giving him a look, too.
Clay said, “I know what you’re doing.”
“Please. Tell me. What am I doing?”
“You ever sit in a stand?”
“No. Like deer hunting? No. Never.”
“8, 10 hours a day. Dawn to dusk. Just waiting. Barely moving. You can go days without seeing, hearing anything. Out in the woods, surrounded by animals and none of them come on by. I sit so still sometimes frost forms on me. On my eyebrows. Up my nose sometimes. So go on. Go on, keep going, keep going, until you run out of your own fucking index cards. Keep telling me all the big bad things you might do. You ever hear someone try and swallow their own tongue? Hear them flopping around on a backseat behind you and you can’t move, and you can’t do anything, can’t even talk to them, just kind of groan at them? Try and scare me. Please-please-please. Pull all the worst you can come up with out of your guts. I want to see what you can come up with. Because whatever your worst ends up being, keep in mind, I’ve already got the bar set. I’ve got it set high.”
Talking, the tension relaxed on the bow. Shooting Clay in the head or neck, Zeke thought the very angry bald man would still apply the tension and send his arrow off before his lights were clipped. This close to Sipe and the girl the shaft would land where he wanted.
“Sipe,” said Zeke. “Behind.”
Sipe looked over his right shoulder, leaving his gun on Clay. Bret walked past Sipe. Not even looking at Sipe or Tiffany. Probably the way sharks encountered sperm whales, whatever the biggest whales were. Must be a different kind of life to be the kind of big where you didn’t have to acknowledge what everyone else out there considered a predator.
“Hey, bro,” said Clay. Bret not even nodding. Just turning, facing Sipe, and Tiff, and looking off to the right, considering Zeke, Bret nonplussed like some monk tending to his grapes and considering a shadow and then the cloud up above throwing the migratory dark spot down upon the earth.
“You got your piece?” Clay asked Bret.
“No.” Bret’s eyes so tiny. Sipe thought the kid ought to wear sunglasses. More of a Terminator vibe would work wonders.
“That’s ok. Don’t need it. We’re going to do this my way. You got it. You got it, Sipe? You got it, Mr. Peel Back The Layers? She’s coming with us. Blondie. We’re not going to do anything to her. We’re going to wait. Bonnie’s ok, my baby’s ok, then Blondie’ll be ok. If they’re not...”
“Clay.” Zeke got that far. Sipe raised his left hand. Telling him to stop. Shut the fuck up. Zeke down with that. Truthfully, he really didn’t know how to negotiate, not with bow and arrow folk.
Something moving in Zeke’s peripheral vision. The sunburned kid with glasses, the Kmart reaper’s scythe looking thing in his hand, walking off the asphalt onto the dried out flat. Soon enough, the whole town might be down here, thought Zeke. And when he’d woken this mor
ning up the biggest thing in front of him was whether or not he’d get fresh hash browns. God. Damn.
“Kid. Stay the fuck back.” Clay spit. “You want to see how your little girlfriend’s doing, she’s fine. But not if you get any closer. And put that fucking weed whacker down, Jesus H.”
“Henry.” Tiffany didn’t turn around. She kept looking right at the arrow aimed at her. “Just.” Nothing else came to mind.
Sipe kept watching Clay’s elbow. It moved, changing the tension on the bow. It went back. It moved forward. Back was bad. Back tiptoed about this vertical red line Sipe could see, a line of demarcation the bone knob didn’t penetrate. The moment it penetrated the red line, that moment Clay would shoot the arrow. Sipe would fire the moment that happened. Everything else around him attained a hollow, blurred consistency. He was addicted to the elbow, its laconic orbit. Sipe could put a bullet in both these boys in the time it took Clay to start to spit. He just had to do it in a miracle moment.
Zeke started yelling something. Not frantic. Just getting progressively louder like a teacher trying to calm down a classroom gone deaf.
One time, Sipe had tried to get this just fired kid, Woodley, off the Lake Washington property, and Woodley wasn’t complying. He was drunk, so? Not the first time. Poor Woodley had an old lady that was a real piece of work. About all they had in common was drinking and Woodley too dumb to catch onto that. The Old Man didn’t need a drinker on payroll. That morning, Woodley had knocked something off a table in the Old Man’s office, nothing broken, but the noise of it dropped the curtain over his employment. The Old Man told Sipe to get rid of Woodley, and Sipe walked Woodley to his car, and told him to go. Woodley started giving Sipe his life story, up to and including last night, banging some chick not his old lady and catching hell because back at the apartment she could smell the pussy on him, and right when Woodley seemed calmed down some, like he wouldn’t spin right on up into the atmosphere, Connie sprints across the driveway right up against Sipe, all 11 year old of him, gangly, braces, wanting to show off some toy Auntie Susan had bought him down at Pike Place the day before. A Hulk doll. The kid’s happiness like a thorn with multiple sharp little points, all jabbing Woodley right at the same time.
Henry walked in front of Sipe. Right in front of the gun. And then stopped, turned, planted himself, right in between Tiffany and Clay Boyle.
Clay laughed. The black bitters of chewing tobacco flecked across his bottom lip, on his teeth.
“Look at this little shit,” said Clay. “Little fucker. He’s got balls. He’s got the biggest balls of them all.”
“Henry,” said Tiffany.
Clay mimicked her voice, more like he split it, clothed himself in a keening high pitch and tried to pass it off as Tiff’s voice.
“This your old woman, Poindexter? No? Not going to say anything? Man, you got balls kid. It’s too bad, too. You line up with the right folks, those kind of balls would get you somewhere, isn’t that right, Bret? But no. You choose Grandpa here. And Mr. Nigger Out In The Sticks. And this cunt. This fat little bitch.”
Henry threw the Lawn Buddy at Clay. Threw it. Didn’t hold onto it and take a whack at him like he was a weed or a small tree. Reared back like a pitcher and chucked it. Clay skittered back. Tilted the bow and pulled it back against his chest and shuffled, avoiding the Lawn Buddy’s flight, petrochemicals and metal slinging through the space between Clay and Bret. It bounced off the Jeep and landed on the ground. Clay stared at the Lawn Buddy.
“Goddamnit!” Announcing his conclusion and resuming his archer’s pose, his face flushed with blood. The elbow tripped the vertical line. Sipe sucked in a breath. Ready to breathe out and pull the trigger.
A hand breached through the vertical line. The rest of Bret followed.
He grabbed Clay and the bow, the two big men struggled for possession of the weapon. The arrow shot, pegged off the railcar and dropped to the ground. Clay yelled. It sounded like Bret was tugging on the zipper keeping Clay’s soul in one piece. Sipe thought of cats screaming at night. Woken by the sounds, Roxanne already in his room, at the window, mimic-screaming back at the feral cats, telling Sipe the only way they’d shut up is if she fed them freshly sliced pieces of little boy. Bret ripped the bow out of Clay’s hands. Threw it back behind him. It rolled half of a roll and flopped to the ground, almost on top of the Lawn Buddy. Clay lunged after his bow. Bret caught him from behind, dragged him, and hooked his arm under Clay’s chin, and put his other arm around Clay’s forehead. Clay’s head turning a dark red, purple. Spitting, no longer brown, no longer tobacco infused, just foam. Clay’s hands reached out, fingers exercising on the knuckles like robotics under test in a lab, describing the amount of tension necessary to flatten an inflated ball.
Sipe couldn’t tell if Clay was passed out or dead or just out of juice. His eyelids still partially open. His limbs loose. Bret knelt, pulled Clay down with him, and when Bret loosened his grip, Clay slumped.
Sipe lowered his arm. The gun. Bret sat down on the ground. He looked at Clay and at the dirt and grass and the nearest railcar and when he looked up and made eye contact with Sipe, there was something to it that betrayed weakness, like Bret realized for all his just now displayed power he’d need assistance getting back up.
Some sort of snuffle sounded off from Sipe’s right. The kids were hugging. It was a thing, this morning, everyone out at the railcars breaching personal bubbles. Sipe and Zeke would be next.
Head tilted, Tiff looked at Sipe from over Henry’s right shoulder, hair down into her eyes. Sipe couldn’t gauge the thoughts behind the eyes. Tired. Freaked out. In love, maybe.
“We got to go,” said Zeke. “Now. I wanted to make a stop, but that isn’t going to happen.”
“Stop for what?”
“Beepers. I mean I got some. All right. Stole ‘em, but I left some money in the motel room. Guess I can order more on-line.”
Sipe wondered if Zeke’s Beepers were in the trunk or in the backseat. Wondered if one of them might not be a carbon copy of the lipless one from Bug’s bathroom.
Tiffany sniffled. Henry stood near her, but they were giving the hugging thing a break. Henry’s cheeks were wet.
“You’re going?” she asked.
“We’re going,” said Zeke. “We need to. We need to be gone already. Hey. Sipe. Let’s shake a leg, you know?” Zeke pointed back towards Little Creek. “I don’t know for sure, but something like this, all of this, even early in the morning, I feel ears and eyes all over us.”
“Yeah.”
The girl stepped towards Sipe.
“You don’t, you don’t text, do you?” asked Tiffany.
“Not so much.”
“What about email?”
“No.”
“Can I call you?”
“I’m going to ditch this phone.”
“Right. But your phone. You have a real one, right?”
“Even if…Look. If I got, if I ever got, you know, cops, if they ever got interested in me, they’d be interested in any number I’d called, been calling me.”
“Right.”
Sipe dug the Honda keys out from his pocket and handed them to Henry. The little girl looked sad. The boy looked pale, like he might shiver later on, realizing what he’d done here this morning. What had almost happened. He stared at the Jeep, stared, not blinking, holding the Honda keys in hand.
Sipe stared at the big boys, two piles of flesh on the ground. Bret seemed to be considering whether or not to employ the Lawn Buddy as a kind of crutch to get him back up on two feet.
Reaching out, knowing he needed to shake Sipe out of the reverie, Zeke looked past Sipe. Zeke grunted. Head tilted, he flicked his hand at the railcar.
“Sipe. The fuck does that mean anyways?” asked Zeke. “’Hopf’? The hell is ‘Hopf’?”
THE END
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