The Savage(19)

Bootheels hit Red’s ribs. He clomped through the stiff and scorched stalks toward the home. Trail of dust followed.

Dorn halted the mule. Stopped short of the concrete porch. Bore down on the girl and boy who stood staring at him. Appearing ghostly pale and angered. The other figure clawed at his neck, gurgled as his life slipped away with each drop of being that’d once circulated within, moistening the chiggered weeds.

The boy looked up to Dorn with a small gash at his skull’s peak. A rivulet of blood trickled down his forehead. A flaking rub decorated his plump lips. No tears dribbled from his brown eyes, which sunk into their orb holes. Cheeks appeared rashed and he smirked. “The hell are you?”

“Van Dorn. And you?”

“I’m Toby. This is my sister, Ann.”

Ann studied the mule. Her skin so deficient of pigmentation she looked like a species of cave fish that never knew light as she ran a tongue over her chaffed lips.

“Who are these that attacked you?” Dorn asked.

“Trailer trash like all you, that’s what our parents called them before they discovered their endings,” said Toby, as he glanced to Ann. Nodded his head. She reached to her pocket. Lifted her eyes to Van Dorn, who took in the measure of slick steel in Toby’s hand, and he smirked, said, “Or supper, as we’ve come to call it.”

Van Dorn glanced at the man in the rocker; his legs had been carved at the muscular regions. Then the two dogs in the yard. Cars that didn’t run. Appearing to be jumped. Van Dorn didn’t want to accept what he’d realized too late, what he’d interrupted.

Toby and Ann stepped to Dorn and his mule. Ann buried a curved surgical blade into the mule’s neck, tugged downward, parted its hide.

Red squealed. Blood steamed.

Toby dug his knife into the opposite side of Red, who kicked his front legs up into the air. Bucked Van Dorn from his saddled back. Wind was knocked from Van Dorn’s lungs when he hit the solid walk and a vibration moved from the rear of his skull and drove a loss of time from his mind.





THEN

Finding his way back to the Widow’s home, fast as a metallic element boring from a gun barrel, was Dillard and an unknown figure. A week had passed since Gutt’s GTO had been discovered at Tucker’s Lake. It’d been combed for evidence. Held no print, neither hair nor hide. Nothing to suspect foul play.

The unknown figure was not the type of man Dillard was known to hold commerce with, which was typically an Aryan-skinned local or paroled felon with sawed-off teeth and a scarred jawline. Instead, with him he brought a gaunt shape who’d a bourbon hide. Oreo hair and a maze of ink about his arms that gave headache to the eyes, trying to figure out where one faded carving began and the next stroke ended.

Before word had bled through the county with the finding of Gutt’s GTO, an offer had been put forward to Horace and Van Dorn. A place to lay their heads, begin their lives anew with the Widow. In return, the Widow asked for a hand around her place. Horace and Dorn accepted, as the killing and burial of Gutt had gilded a trust amongst the three.

It was after lunch when the sun stroked down upon Horace, Dorn, and the Widow. Netted beads of sweat from their tawny skin. They planted by the signs of the zodiac, meaning each day was branded by one of the twelve signs that appeared once a month, which lasted two or three days, then changed, guiding Horace and the Widow by the markings on a red-and-white calendar that hung in the Widow’s kitchen. Using the constellation that was to be foremost in the sky at the time of planting, the body part associated with the planet and its closest element, would yield the best time for seeding, knowing when it would be too hot, cold, wet, or dry.

Horace managed the flaking green plow that forked from hands, reined and harnessed to Red, the mule who pulled it up and down the dirt, the rusted curve of a triangular blade cutting rows through the soil. While Van Dorn hoed lines for sowing, and the Widow came behind, dropping seedlings and pushing the dirt over with bare feet. They marked the end of their rows with a single stick. The paper packet the seeds came in placed upon it. They had lines of corn, green beans, peas, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, and zucchini.

Dillard walked out into the loose soil, the unknown man following. The Widow stopped what she was doing and Dillard said, “Know you’ve heard they found Gutt’s car but no trace of Gutt.”

And the Widow replied, “Word is all around the county. Some say he’s run off. Others say he had an unpaid debt. Regardless, it concerns me none.”

Hulking over the Widow’s firm and shapely outline, Dillard raised his ink-collaged arm of bullets, blades, and swastikas, steered a finger to her face. “It concerns you plenty. I know he was to pay a visit to you. Now he’s vanished and you’re shacked up with these two hides. Think you’ve indulged in more than you’re letting on.”

Horace halted Red in the garden. Sensed the tension that was to be unleashed from Dillard. Turned and began to walk over the fresh cake-mix soil, boots imprinting the dirt, leaving a path of his tanned muscle that glistened within the heat while the knuckles of each hand bled the color of bone.

The Widow told Dillard, “Who I keep company with is no concern of yours. Done told you he never visited the store.”

“Awful coincidental that my brother vanishes when these two road rags roll into town.” Dillard looked to Horace and demanded, “Who the hell are you, simpleton?”