He had about forty feet between him and the fire when the argument erupted into a fist-fight. Roughly a handful of Honda riders versus a seeming Hell’s Angels’ contingent. With his left hand William pulled out his walkie-talkie to alert the unit down the beach and with his right, the .45 Colt crowd disperser. A couple of well-placed shots above their heads was usually enough to bring all activity to a halt, and as he ran forward, holding back until the last minute, he didn’t know what else was about to happen.
And that was not a good thing.
One incredibly asinine and drunk non-participant in the fight decided on a little vengeance of his own. He grabbed the handlebars of one of the Hondas and rolled it over into the bonfire. He had about fifteen seconds to admire his handiwork before the gas tank exploded. Pieces of the unfortunate idiot and the bike became flying shrapnel.Robertson was on the fringe of the melee, when a guy standing next to him had his head caved in by a flying exhaust pipe, and Robertson lost his right hand, his gun hand, at the wrist by a serrated sliver of the tank which continued on and buried itself in the windshield of his cruiser. Another foot and he’d have been all right; another foot and Brady would still be alive today.
He was in the hospital for two months, on sick leave for another four. And then his badge went away like a dream in the morning. He received a nice dime from the State for being disabled in the line of duty, but what the hell did he need money for? He’d had plenty of that before he enrolled in the Academy. So he went home and locked himself away.
But the sonofabitch learned to shoot left-handed.
***
We were cruising through Alabama, entertaining a vague notion of heading to Florida for reasons pretty well lost to memory now; a lot of things stick, a lot of things don’t. Regardless, we couldn’t have known without somebody telling us that we were driving highways surrounded on both sides by mile upon mile of land owned by the craziest, motorcycle-hating motherfucker who ever walked the earth.
It’d been a long day and even though John knew about my money and wasn’t exactly broke himself, a motel was out of the question. He said he liked to sleep outside whenever possible, under the stars where “you could soak in the universe,” and after a few nights out I came under the same mind. It really wasn’t bad, all you needed was a can of OFF and a sleeping bag. Everything else took care of itself.
The weather had been nice for the last couple of days and there still wasn’t a sign of rain in the sky. Soybean fields stretched out to the left and right, seemingly endless fields. Every once in awhile a scarecrow or tractor would break the monotony of the landscape. I bet we didn’t pass a car for better than two hours at a stretch; like we were the last ones left on earth, and I gotta tell ya the feeling was not bad.
Not bad for a ghost, anyway.
Right about dusk John spotted the creek winding off to the left, pooling (it appeared) in a little decline near a small copse of trees. Not a goddamn fence in sight either. We pulled over to the side of the road, pondering how feasible a place it was for the night. I bet no more than two farm trucks, one loaded with chickens, the other with pigs, had passed us since noon. The weather was cool enough to keep all but the most persistent mosquitoes away and the little copse of woods would surely have enough fallen debris lying around to provide a nice campfire. It looked like just the spot.
What we didn’t know was right around the next bend, sitting alone in a mobile home where the power had been disconnected for almost three months, drinking straight gin from a Mason jar, sat a one-handed ex-sheriff itching to fuck somebody up. Just another one of life’s little surprises. And the sonofabitch must have had ears like a bat because we didn’t go screaming into the fallow field; we just rolled in real quiet, walking the bike in more or less with John’s size thirteen leather boots. I had supper in my backpack (Slim Jims and trail mix) and we were both pretty tired.
It was right before dark we heard the sound of the ATV. I remember looking down at the gooseflesh pimpling my arms as if a horde of mosquitoes had only recently abandoned ship. We had a small fire going, hardly enough to be seen from the road, and we really weren’t expecting any trouble. The day had been far too peaceful. And it wasn’t the first time we’d camped out wherever we got tired. Two other times we’d been discovered, once by the law and once by a landowner. Both had turned into lively discussions about traveling and bikes. No big deal. We told anyone who happened to ask we were father and son, and that was that. My hair was getting long and the beard had come along pretty well by that time too. I could pass for anywhere between seventeen and twenty-five. But no one ever seemed to care, or notice really. Just as if I were no more than a mere reflection in a mirror, caught briefly with a sidelong glance.
Anyway, when we heard it John stood up and squinted in that direction. He didn’t say anything but I could tell he was uneasy, immediately on alert. He pulled his long hair back into a pony-tail while the noise grew. The other times people had come from the road; this one came from a clump of woods about a half-mile off.
As the noise got louder we began to make out a bobbing Q-beam of light cutting through what must have been a very rough trail through the woods. And the sound was large, throaty, one of the bigger ATV’s; one of those bastards that could haul a bear out of the deepest woods. Or a man. I shivered as the thought washed over me, thinking back about that dark mansion and the dead girl in the ice chest.
Brady continued squinting into the darkness, completely motionless, watching the bob of light grow. He turned to me just before it broke free of the tree line. By the way it throttled up it wouldn’t take long to cross the remaining four or five hundred yards of open field. John didn’t look scared but his eyes were wary. “Be cool, kid. Anything goes down, you just be cool.” I nodded for answer, watching as he hitched up his pant leg over the top of his right boot, the one where he kept the knife. I’d never seen him do that before. The gooseflesh rippled along my legs too, underneath the jeans. It seemed like it got suddenly colder. The lights were no more than two hundred yards away, coming fast.
My first thought when I saw the man riding the ATV was, ‘What’s a guy like him doing on that?’ The machine was remarkable, didn’t look more than two or three months old, and it was a big one, deer rack on the back, huge grill on the front in case you needed to really get serious and run over, say, a ten or twelve year old tree. But the thing sitting in the seat holding on with one hand, was more apparition than man. A ghoul. Then he was upon us, dragging a dust cloud behind him that rolled across us as he idled loudly ten feet away. The first thing I noticed were the house slippers, old ragged pieces of shit it looked like he pulled out of a Dollar General dumpster. They were stained in what looked like either shit or puke. Maybe both. He didn’t have on a shirt and his jeans must have come from the same dumpster. His ponderous belly was fish-white and speckled with what looked like tobacco juice and cigarette ashes. His face and head were cleanly shaven, his eyes little crystals of insanity. His cheek puffed out on one side like a balloon and right before he spoke he spit a great wad of tobacco juice into the dust not far from the toe of John’s boot. The rest went down to spackle the huge belly.
“Wha’da fuck you boys doin?” he said, and I could smell the alcohol from where I stood. John moved over a couple steps to get between me and the nut on the ATV. He tried to sound good-natured, though I could hear the line of tension thrumming in his voice. He wasn’t the kind of guy who took being cursed at well. Especially not from some slovenly mutant like this one.
“Just resting for the night,” he attempted and the man spat again. John shut his mouth.
“Restin, huh? Know you restin on private prop’ty?” The fat man’s eyes glinted like a coal-stoking demon’s in the light from the campfire.
John put his hands on his hips. “Didn’t see any Trespassing signs and didn’t plan on staying long, mister. Just pulled in with the boy to rest for the night until we get on toward Florida in the morning.”
I??
?d moved over enough to get a bead on the drunk and I could tell he wasn’t looking at John at all, but at the bike parked over by the fire. John said something else I didn’t hear, and the man spat again, a little closer to the boot this time. John didn’t move and I held my breath.
The fat guy’s mouth drew up in a tight circle around the huge chunk of tobacco and he turned his attention back to John. “That your bike, big man?”
This time John didn’t reply. He grunted.
And that’s when the fat bastard pulled a gun from a sack he had strapped near the gas tank. A big, shiny one that caught the color of the flames from our fire along its deadly black length. He went to wipe his sweaty, bald forehead and I saw he had no hand on that side. Just a mottled stump.
“Fuckin hate bikes,” the lunatic spat.
John stepped up instead of back. I noticed his foot came down squarely where the wad of tobacco juice had just landed. “That so?” he said.
“Gotdamn right, that’s so. An the only thing worse ‘an bikes is gotdamn bikers.” He wasn’t pointing the gun yet but I could tell he wanted to. The situation was about to erupt and I leaped in to try and diffuse it.
“John,” I pleaded. “Let’s just go.” I looked over at the lunatic. “We don’t want trouble, mister. We’ll put out the fire and leave.”
He just smiled and spit again. This time it hit John’s boot and the gun leveled on my friend. The lunatic shook his head. “Doan think so, lil man. See, trespassin’s a crime ‘round hea. This hea is my land you goddamn tramps are burnin up!”
It appeared from the look on John’s face he was through talking. The gun wasn’t leaving his chest either. I wiped a sweating hand across my mouth. “Like I said,” I began, holding my hands out to placate the bastard. “We’re not looking for trouble. We didn’t know. You don’t like it, we’ll get the hell out!”
The lunatic laughed this time, a sound that broke the night like a stick over a dog’s back. He turned his eyes back to John. “This your lil faggot?” he asked. John said nothing. “Lil faggot for a wild biker fucker? That it?” Again no answer. I heard as the hammer of the .45 was pulled back. John wasn’t moving, wasn’t talking. The only thing I could see was the back of his head.
I made a final play. “Look mister. We ain’t faggots and we ain’t here to fuck with your land! You don’t want us here, we’ll leave! There’s no sense in this getting out of hand!” He smirked and spat again on John’s other boot and I wondered morbidly if the fucker was half as accurate with the handgun. Not that he really had to be; it couldn’t have been more than ten feet separating the two.
“Naw, naw, naw!” he barked and laughed that eerie laugh again. “It ain’t always that people gets what they wants.” He held up his stump of a hand so we could get a good look. “I din’t ask for this, but Ah gotdamn well got it!” The gun wasn’t coming down and it wasn’t shaking. “Le me tell ya how ya go ‘bout getting shit ya doan want!”
And for the next ten minutes he rattled off the story of the bonfire, the bikers, the explosion. Every word is as fresh in my head today as it was the night I stood listening to it under that humid, cloudy sky. And the whole time he rambled on the gun never left the circle he’d described on John’s chest.
When he finished he got quiet for a moment. I didn’t see any chance of honest escape. Of course I could’ve made a break for the pond but that wouldn’t have done John a damn bit of good. In fact that was probably what the crazy fucker wanted me to do all along. He was itching to squeeze that trigger, just looking for an excuse, tiny as that might be. He spit again and his aim was a little off; it went directly between John’s legs.
“So now ya know why I doan like fuckin bikin tresspassin assholes on my fuckin land,” he growled like a rabid dog. I didn’t say a damn thing; it was useless. I just waited for the bomb to go off. John provided the fuse.
He said, “Okay, mister. I get your point, but I really don’t give a flying fuck what some one-handed shit-for-brains has to say.”
That’s when I hit the dirt.
I didn’t see the first shot but I damn sure heard it. The gun was a cannon. Some images raced past but others dragged along at a snail’s pace. I know it doesn’t sound right, but that’s the best way I can describe it. And lots of things go the same way. Sometimes I’ll think back to a particular moment and it really doesn’t seem like it took place that long ago, but then all the things that have happened since start rolling through my head and it’s almost like that one thing should have taken place much longer ago than it actually had. Time has a strange way of fucking with you: December takes nine months to pass when you’re a kid waiting for Santa Claus, but the older you get, it keeps peeking around the corner every month or so. I guess it’s all just a matter of perspective.
And the perspective I had that night came with my nose pressed flat to the ground. God knows how long that fucker had been waiting to really go off and we’d walked right into it like mice going after a hunk of cheese.
For a tall, gangling guy John was no slouch when it came to moving fast. I guess looking like he did he was used to sensing trouble and then reacting, and I don’t really think it would have set good with him for some washed-out, one-handed drunk to get the best of him without a hell of a fight.
He wouldn’t have gotten up from that first shot if not.
It took him in the shoulder, sprayed the whole area with blood and bone. Something nicked me hard in the forehead and I guess that was a piece of him. I didn’t even notice until later when I was far away but I remembered. So many things I remember… It took him completely off his feet and threw him backwards, sending him down like a tree in a storm. He rolled just as another bolt of lightning flew out of the end of that goddamn cannon. And that’s the part that went fast.
This is what went slow. I stared across the lingering dust at the lunatic straddling the ATV as he cocked the hammer back one more time. I’m sure he could have simply pulled the trigger and finished John off, but he’d waited for this moment a while from the look in his eyes. He wanted to make a game of it, to savor every second. And in the meantime the sonofabitch had completely forgotten about me.
I fanned my hand through the dust, almost knowing I’d find the stone there in front of me before actually finding it. It was a little bit bigger than a golf ball but not nearly as smooth. I’d never thrown anything except a football a couple of times in my life when I went up on one knee and let that damn thing go. The chances I had of hitting the tobacco-chewing maniac couldn’t have been better than one-in-a-thousand, and the chances of hitting him in the head higher than that. But that’s exactly where I hit the sonofabitch.
His next shot went wild, but not by much. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it kick up a big chunk of dirt not a foot away from John’s right kneecap at the same instant the monster ATV reared up on its back two wheels like a renegade horse throwing a cowboy. I guess the fucker had kept his stump on the accelerator. It kicked him off the back and rolled a few yards ahead, coming to a rumbling stop like it had a mind of its own and pissed off about not being able to finish business. The fat guy landed on his back hard, but not hard enough.
He decided right about then he’d better deal with me too. I subsequently froze like a dumbass and it’d been the end for sure if John hadn’t pulled through. His left arm was hanging like a loosely-attached strip of cowhide in his blazing red shirt, but the knife was in his right hand. And as the .45 swung around to find me, he leapt after the bastard who’d just shot him.
John hit him high and I watched the gun do a lazy circle in the air before coming down a few feet away from the scrabbling pair. The lunatic may have had only one hand but his madness made up for the handicap. It looked like two devils fighting over a yard of hell and I saw the knife flash in the campfire light exactly twice before burying in the lunatic’s chest. His eyes never even registered; he just kept swinging and cursing and John twisted the knife and pinned him down with the little strength he had left. r />
It wasn’t quite enough. The lunatic threw one massive roundhouse to the side of John’s head and my friend went over on his side, his eyes rolling to the top of his head. Blood poured in a fountain from what was left of his shoulder. Then the lunatic struggled to his feet.
His eyes were wild and lost now as he pulled the Bowie knife out of his chest. A great gush of dark blood spilled out like a plug had been pulled from a drain and I thought he was gonna go down but he didn’t. He coughed up something that could have either been tobacco juice or blood and I started for the gun. There was no doubt that he fully intended to kill me.
It was the only purpose he had left.
Time sped up again and I scrambled across the dusty ground trying to get the .45 before the lunatic spotted it. I dove for it like sliding into second base and spun around, trying to find the trigger well before the knife sunk between my shoulder blades.
He was no more than five feet away, swaying on his feet. My hands were shaking so badly the gun fell to the ground and my knee twisted behind me. I went down hard on my ass and looked up waiting for it to come.
The lunatic fought through another violent rack of coughing and his eyes started to glaze over. It looked just like somebody drawing the blinds in a darkened house. He tried to take another step forward and lost his balance, spilling in a heavy thump, the knife coming down hard in his hand, sinking into the ground inches away from my left foot. His stump beat at the ground as if demanding a last rage and he did manage to roll over to his back. He breathed deeply once, his eyes still open as the blood boiled out of his mouth, but I knew he was done.
I immediately rushed over to John, lying ten feet away in a lake of blood. He was still breathing but his eyes were lost. That’s the thing I remember most vividly. There was no pain or fear in those eyes, just a vast aching exhaustion. He tried to speak but couldn’t. I already knew the artery was severed but there was very little pressure left. The blood only welled out in short, weak little burps. And no way to tie it off.