The Savage(26)
Though Horace knew the story as told by the Widow, he questioned Bellmont, tried to shovel away more answers. “Why do you word it as you have?”
“’Cause everyone know’d of Alcorn’s distaste for his brother’s choosing to wed a stained-skin female. Then to inherit the family store. It left a taste of acidic ore upon Alcorn’s tongue, was the Widow’s truck that Alex drove the day he found his extinction.”
Dancing around information, Bellmont was offering too much knowledge. Speaking of a feud that Horace and Van Dorn had walked into unknowingly. There was a tension at the table that evening. It was as though the Widow had been waiting for Horace and Van Dorn to walk into her store at the right moment. Give an eye for an eye. From that evening on they came to acknowledge that they were the obstruction that kept the Widow alive. Kept Alcorn away from her, as though they were her guardians.
Sipping his bourbon, Horace asked, “You hold no ill ways toward the Widow?”
“No reason to. My ills are with fighters. I barter their skills and bleed them of their worth. Just as the Romans did to the gladiators. Promoters to boxers. Only I feel and know of their pain and struggles. My wife and I used to do it together. Traveling to the rural-area taverns and bars, watching the bare-knuckle fights, harvesting new blood to build my life’s dream, the Donnybrook, and we did, year after year. Watching it grow. Till her liver turned to rot from the tilt of too much booze combined with narcotics. Now I run the racket with my daughter. I’m savage to those that fail me. But kind to those that swim in the salvage and sacrifice of this land.”
“Savage how?” Horace asked as he lowered his gaze upon Bellmont, wondering if this was an indirect warning.
Bellmont thought for a moment, offered a smile that some offer just before pulling the trigger on a monster buck. “Could I interest you and your boy in a real-life example?”
He looked to Van Dorn. Could see what he felt, an unease. Same as what he felt after the back-and-forth of words, there was something untrustworthy about McGill.
“I think not.”
“Fine. Then I shall tell you. Have either of you ever seen the damage a hound can do to the skin of a man?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“It’s unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed with the eyes. More defined and brutal than a fist, knee, elbow, or head-butt. Depending on the canine’s dentitions. Sometimes pelting the flesh with kidney-bean-sized holes. And the blood, black and oozing. It’s how I created something called the hound round with my ole buddy Manny, to separate the men from the boys when a party decides to falsify my trust, declining my offering of a better existence through brutality.”
Van Dorn watched the intensity within Bellmont’s face. How it tightened and reddened with each discharge of word from his tongue. Watched Bellmont take a drink of his beer. Wipe the foam from his lips and say, “If ever you should cross a pack of wild or feral dogs, run for your fuckin’ lives. They’ll not stop till you’re an open stream of warm, collage the earth with your skin, then stain it with your insides.”
NOW
Scents of dank soil and outgrowth came in a hurried rush. Trouncing through the decay of tans, emeralds, and silvers. Trees fallen, uprooted from severe weather. Rotted and withered. Branches scraped and briars snagged Van Dorn’s skin and clothing and his lungs burned. Stopping to compose and catch his breath, he listened for the barks that now came like a solid pack of uncaged beasts from the south. An orchestra of bawls that rose up into the trees and rained down upon him, punching louder and louder.
Speeding his pace, Dorn noticed the ground in the distance. Imperfections in the land, how leaves laid lower in spots and so he jumped over, or maneuvered around them, knowing they were animal traps. He was unsure of who’d set them, his mind fogged by the events that had come quick. His stomach growling for food. Blood sugar low. All he could do was react. He’d traveled too far north, unable to calculate whose property he was trespassing through.
Now, behind him, twigs snapped and the terrain crunched with hound paws, closing the distance. About the earth before him, Van Dorn took in a large section where tree limbs lay crisscrossed and lightly camouflaged by plant and leaf that covered a massive pit. He leapt up and over the obstruction with all he had in his tank. Landed on the other side. Unbalanced, he felt his left ankle give and twist. Dirt smeared beneath his nails as he reached to balance and break his fall.
The sounds of falling paws over the land ceased. Turning, he watched the snap, give, and collapse of branch. The monstrous area of terrain that he leapt over gave, swallowed the hounds whole with the yap and growl that turned to whines, yelps, squeals, and then hush.
A sensation of burning crawled up Van Dorn’s leg. Trying to stand, he felt as though a dagger were scraping chips from the bone of his shin. A heave of pain came in his chest. Eyes winced. He dragged himself to the hole that’d been covered. A booby trap for trespassers like those from the jungles of Vietnam his grandfather had spoken of. Bit by bit he came closer. Seeing how the territory had snapped and given.
As he neared the earthy edge to glimpse the ruin and loss of canine, smells of shit, piss, and vital juices reeked from the large perforation. His eyes took in several short furred hips coming into view. Poking ribs with whittled spikes, puncturing through hide. Then more shapes crossed one another like a Celtic-patterned knot as he crawled past the edge to see, one, two, three, four, five dead dogs. Short-furred. Some white with spots of brown and black. Brindle. Walkers, if he had to guess. Starved, almost emaciated. Off in the corner he noticed a shoe and a boot and an action figure, a superhero or something. Odd, he thought.