The Savage(20)

Dorn walked up till he stood near shoulder to shoulder with his father, just behind the Widow; he was almost the exact size and shape of Horace, only younger. Hair split-ended and stenciling over his eyes. Hoe in his right hand, ready to swing if needed, back up his father. Horace kept a straight face, sweat stinging his eyes, told Dillard, “None of your fucking concern, wannabe bigot.”

Dillard smirked and said, “When it concerns my brother, I make it my business.” Dillard leaned to his right and told the man beside him, “Think maybe his tongue needs adjusting. What do you think, Manny?”

The tatted man alongside Dillard smiled. Jutted his head up and down. His tone was broken and foreign as he sized up Horace and Dorn and the Widow. He said, “Think they all need calibrating.” Without warning, Manny stepped toward the Widow. Waved a slap to her face. Startled her as she tripped backward but didn’t fall. Dorn was behind her. Caught her weight.

Before Manny raised another motion, Horace laid skin down on him with a right fist. Chiseled an ovaled opening into his sight. Pinched his eye, stumbled Manny into Dillard. Horace circled Manny, kept him between him and Dillard. An obstruction. Quick, he tugged Manny’s ear, head-butted him. Then drove a fist into his throat.

Dorn had pulled the Widow away from the onslaught. Shielded her.

Arms and legs gave. Manny’s knees stumped into the soil as though two pieces of firewood waiting to be split. Hands spread to catch his balance. On all fours Manny heaved. Tried to find the wind that had been cinched. Horace had started to lay the tread of his boot to Manny’s complexion when Dillard raised a black Glock 19 handgun to the rear of his head.

“Enough, motherfucker.”

Seeing the Widow disrespected, pistol pointed at his father, Van Dorn grabbed the hoe. Circled it over his head with a whooping battle cry of “Ahhh!” Prepared to etch a split down on Dillard’s face.

Horace turned. Brought right and left hands to halt Dorn, took the hoe from him. Told him, “This is not your fight, son.” With lungs fast expanding, Horace turned back to Dillard and smirched, “Seems big men need to bring guns and a Spaniard to do their bidding against road rags.”

From the ground Manny wheezed, “Ain’t Spanish. I am Guatemalan. And if I’d my Mutts with me you and your spawn would not be breathing.”

Keeping the 19 on Horace, Dillard told him, “I need answers about what happened to Gutt.”

With a jawline bit by tears, the Widow told Dillard, “You’re barking up the wrong damn tree. Need to hunt somewheres else.”

Dillard lowered the Glock. “They’s something here but it ain’t tree’d. I believe it’s buried.”





NOW

He woke with a belt of pain to the rear of his skull. Hands bound. Wrist over wrist behind him. Laces removed from his boots. He was in a massive opening, devoid of furniture. His eyes adjusting to his surroundings. Shelves climbed to the ceiling with medical dictionaries, anatomy bindings, and surgical doctrines combined with philosophies by Jung and Freud, an A-to-Z encyclopedia on serial killers. Appeared as though he were in a museum of books that foretold deviant theories.

In the front room, a bay window appeared with the curtains drawn. Large rectangle of an oak door, closed. Poster-sized illustrations of the human form hung beside him. Some were of the backside. Others of the front. Some skeletal. Some muscular, tendon and organ. Body parts named and dissected. On shelves sat the bones of hands, feet, and skulls from human and animal.

As he tried to work his hands back and forth, to free himself, the waft of air within reeked of something putrid, like the chickens they sometimes found in the Widow’s henhouse. Dead from the unbearable humidity. Dorn thought he’d been taken to a lair for the broken and fragmented.

Strung over the floor before his feet were the interiors of his pack. Compass and boxes of ammunition. Somewhere behind him, the sound of words being whispered drifted from a room. He needed to figure out where he was. To distance himself from this juncture. Eyes followed the blood that smeared and tracked from the front of the room, continuing on past him. Looked as though someone’d had a mud bog using a person’s insides.

Everything about the home screamed grotesque. Footfalls traveled in an upward clomp. Growing in pitch till the feet were leveled beside him.

A callused nudge came to his right temple. Dorn looked up at Toby standing milky skinned and lean. Features depressed, arms casted with red, holding Dorn’s .30-30.

Studying the way Toby held the rifle, gripped it like a spear, no finger on the trigger, the safety on, Dorn questioned Toby’s understanding of the artillery, whether he knew how to shoulder, aim, flip the safety, and shoot.

“You near cost us our supper.”

“Supper?” Van Dorn questioned.

Behind Toby, a long hallway was lit by sunlight. Pictures of deformed men and women hung from the walls. “We’ve watched these bands of degenerates loping about as though a lost herd of goat. Such easy prey they are, of course they thought the same of us, I’m certain,” Toby said.

“Prey?”

“Prey. They’re not the first we’ve baited with our tactics of jostling back and forth, pretending to jump the cars, acting as though we’ve no idea they’re watching. Childish really, not much different than playing an Xbox game. Guiding them in, so to speak. It’s what we’ve grown accustomed to in order to procure nourishment.”