The Savage(52)
“No grave. How tall are you, six-one?”
“’Bout that.”
“Dig to shoulder level.”
“For?”
“Your head. Now quit speaking and dig so you can learn.”
Once the hole was deep enough, Angus asked, “Now what?”
“Now remove yourself of garment, get into the hole, keep upright.”
Undressed to nothing more than his boxers, Angus got into the hole. Looked up at Fu, who began shoveling soil back in around Angus until he’d gotten to Angus’s waist. “Raise your arms out away from your sides.” Angus raised his arms. Fu began filling the hole with soil once more.
Buried to his neck, Angus was immobile. “What if I gotta shit or piss?”
Fu smiled. “Nothing is obstructing you from doing so.”
For several days Angus was spooned liquid with herbs from a ceramic-fired bowl. First they were spit out. Then devoured and sipped with a gagging aftertaste. The execution of ingesting such an awful concoction eventually waned Angus’s ache. Rid his body and mind of the want for toxic abuse.
Soups and rice came. A ritual of curing Angus’s dope sickness. It lasted days. He was immobile, couldn’t move. Therefore he couldn’t hurt himself. Was left to sweat the ache and pain from his pores.
When Fu finally dug him out, Angus was ropy-lean, dirt-stained muscle with little to no body fat. Tattoos of the names of men he’d beaten in bare-knuckle brawls still scrolled over his frame. Fu dragged him to a chair. Seated him where he sipped herbal tea until he regained the circulation in his limbs.
Fu shaved Angus’s head smooth with a straight razor. Did the same to his bristled face. Let him shower and clean himself once the feeling of motor functions had returned to his frame. He drank in the water that beaded upon his body, washing away the sweat. The soil, the grit. The piss and the shit. He came to his cot, pulled the cedar trunk from beneath it, where he found boxers, socks, and black military fatigues; black T-shirts and black boots. All to Angus’s exact measurements.
Once he was dressed, he did not sit, he stood and waited for instruction.
When Fu entered the concrete room, he told Angus, “Everything you know must be relearned. But you must know. If you were to try and go back to your old ways of cooking crank, running dope, and double crosses. If you were to defy my trust that you must earn, you would become a hemorrhage, a lump of useless matter in my world, your own self would be splayed upon the ground that you trespass within minutes of being recognized for the murder of Bellmont McGill. This you must be aware of. Am I clear?”
“Why are you offering this to me?”
“Because now you are sober of the drugs that poisoned your inner chemistry. You could leave and function with clear thoughts. Though I doubt you’d live long with a massive bounty being offered by Scar McGill. But if you stay, you will only better yourself. I want you to know you’ve options. That this is not a prison.”
Angus stood thinking of Shogun Assassin. A film he’d watched at an early age with his father, about a rogue samurai who offers his son a choice between a sword and a ball. To choose the ball would mean death. To choose the sword would mean life. The son chose the sword, unknowing his fate regardless of his choosing. Angus looked to Fu. “Let’s get this goddamned betterment of self under way.”
From there he was shown stretches and postures. Bending and kneeling to awkward positions. Warming the stiff from his tendons, ligaments, and joints. Keeping his body aligned, holding the postures for minutes. Building toward hours of stiffness and numbness. Then came the practice of strikes. Punches executed at any and all angles, much like boxing, but much stricter, with reverse punches, vertical punches, uppercuts, hammerfists, and backfists. Followed by kicks thrown over and over. Side kicks, flip kicks, roundhouse kicks, front kicks, crescent kicks, back-leg traps, front-leg traps. All aimed from the waist to the ankles. Nothing high or flashy. The tendons and ligaments of Angus’s body heated until he felt as though they were putty being fired in a furnace. Going from soft to softer, burning until he could feel nothing but confetti dotting and flowing through his limbs.
*
A numb rang through his feelers and standers from the pain given by the saber-toothed beast. Angus flipped a generator switch in his brain. Found his second wind. Became wide-eyed. Twisted and brought his elbow into the man’s nape. His appendage throbbed with numb. He clubbed the missing link of man. Crimson poured from his arm till the man dropped in the slick puddles of wound.
Angus pointed the .45 down into the rear of the man’s scalp. Added to the mess on the floor.
Lungs heaved and Angus listened to the faint bellow of a female travel from downstairs. Twitching with electric rage, Angus wanted to leave, but stepped over the dead man. Glanced for a rag to tourniquet the flow of red from his arm.
Gathering his bearings, he held the pistol high, knowing what he must do, what he had to know. Holding the vision with the basement opening, nothing more than a dark void as he approached. Scents of decay and chemical swam into his inhale.
As he stood in the basement’s opening, wooden steps descended into an abyss with a faint glow at the bottom. Slurred speech begged, “Somebody … please … help me—”
The jar and pound in Angus’s ears from the rhythm in his chest made it hard to distinguish sound when coupled with the hurt within his arm, which worsened with each breath. The voice spoke again, “Please … help—”