The Savage(10)

What Van Dorn and his father hadn’t seen when they entered and passed by the beastly man was the matted black Wilson Combat .45 pistol in his right hand. The man had now turned his back to the entrance. Trained the barrel on Horace. With his left hand he pushed a nylon bag upon the lard-colored counter next to the carton of Camels.

“Pay no worry to this gun. After the half-breed cunt fills the sack and you lay your wallet on the counter, I’ll be a distant memory.”

The man’s yellow eyes twitched wide with a fluorescent glow.

Van Dorn’s father pursed his lips and said, “The lady won’t be filling the sack with cash and I sure as shit won’t be offering up my hard-earned efforts to nourish me and my son upon the counter.”

Holding the pistol at Horace’s chest, eyes bulged with anger, the man thumbed the hammer back, stared through Horace, told the lady without looking at her, “Empty that fucking machine of its worth, Widow.” And to Horace he demanded, “You drop the groceries. Lay your wallet to the counter or the floor gets a fresh shine of you and your boy.”

Horace looked to the lady behind the counter slowly and said, “Don’t give him a damn thing.”

With meanness the man said, “She shall.”

“She won’t.”

“Testing me? That it, stranger?” He glanced over to Horace’s left, leveled his sight at Van Dorn, who was near equal to the size of his father. Ran a tongue over his bottom lip. Demanded, “Come here, boy.”

“Don’t move, Dorn,” Horace said, then back to the man: “Place that shooter back down the hem of your denim. Walk out the same way you entered before I open you like a can of beans.”

The man found Horace’s words amusing. Chuckled. Van Dorn watched the man’s index finger rub the trigger. Size him up. He had maybe an inch or two on Horace but each held swells of muscle built from labor and hard living. The man shook his head. Repeated his request to the lady he called the Widow. “Tired of waiting to see who has the biggest dick. Empty that fucking machine or I give the boy a new breathing hole.”

The man’s words carved malice throughout Horace. Van Dorn could see the red that kindled the side of Horace’s face. Horace told the female behind the counter once more, “Don’t give him no currency.”

The man’s cheeks scorched like burners on a stove turned to high. “Clip your fuckin’—”

Behind the counter the Widow moved. Reached for something low. The man with the gun caught a glimpse of her movement. Glanced toward the female.

Fury edged and pushed through Horace’s insides. He came forward with the cans of food, released them, grabbed at the pistol with both hands. Pushed the gun hand up. Drove a left knee into the man’s rib cage. Kept himself between the beast and Van Dorn. Shielding him. Horace and the man stumbled back and forth. Struggled for control.

Horace angled the knuckles of his right fist into the side of the man’s complexion over and over. Drawing an ooze from the temple till the man slipped Horace’s grip. Brought the side of the pistol against Horace’s jaw. Knocked him against the counter. Standing with blood spewing down onto his shirt. Training the .45 on Horace, the man told him, “Might look Aryan by the shade of your pigment, but your actions speak otherwise.”

Horace came growling from the counter, followed by the eruption of gunfire.





NOW

Violence engulfed Dorn’s every reflection. Distancing himself from the memories of the food mart. The Sheldon girl’s face netted around his brain with darkly pigmented men covered in tattoos that Dorn’d slain and those that came upon the aftermath. Especially that outline of a figure with the crown of thorns.

Up the basement steps he came, exhausted from the memories. Pouch of venison slung over his shoulder. Jar of potatoes in hand. Outdoor Life magazine in his back pocket. Through the dining room and out the kitchen door. A crippling hunger pulsed in his organs. Unlike his thoughts, the night was clear overhead. Gas for the stove in the house had run out within the first month. Paper and leaves had been piled. Twigs were tepeed over them. Lit and then kindling stacked till the singe of coal came from the small log that smoked over the open flame of orange and yellow.

Meat browned in the small skillet that lay over the thick wire shelving Van Dorn had torn from the fridge after the fuel disappeared. Placed over the wall of limestone he’d picked and piled to construct the circular fire pit.

Next to the slices of loin, canned potatoes popped within the hog fat he’d spooned from a mason. Carried from the house and laid on the ground next to him. Upon the bank, Dorn sat with the .30-30 across his knees, watching the riverbed below. Inhaling the flavor from the pop and sizzle of fat. Thinking of his grandfather, who spoke of hogs being raised on chestnuts and slop. Of how it created the toothsomest meat but made the white lard cook into a black oil, scorching the flavor. So they incorporated a diet of corn for a month or better before butchering them. Causing the fat they yielded from the hog to stay white and not cook into a black burn.

On his grandfather’s farm, Dorn recalled the screams and squeals from hogs. Of them in the wooden pen, a floor concocted of shit and mud. Dorn stood waiting, watched his grandfather and father corner one after another, banding their fronts and hinds, held tight while Dorn sliced the swine’s balls off. Laid them on the wooden rail where they appeared like two fleshy baseballs. Then cut the hog loose, letting it run in the pen with its bloody fold of skin hanging that looked near a rotted cloth. Mountain oysters or lamb fries, his grandfather would joke. They’d castrate the hog to help fatten it before the butchering. Once the hogs were fattened, they loaded them in the rusted bed of his grandfather’s truck, metal bars welded, homemade, to jail the poor squealers for their travels to another farmer’s place to be processed.