The Savage(57)

“Not tonight. Tonight, me and my boy remunerate what you’ve stolen from us, as it was sacred.”

Manny pulled the trigger. The Ox’s right palm became a messy web.

“You son of a bitch!” the Ox screamed as he drew his hand toward his chest.

Manny had no more shots left. Threw the revolver out into the dark. The Ox’s face crimped with disgust, pain, and anger. Cotto came from behind Manny, lowered his pistol on the Ox’s head. The Ox’s eyes crimped. “Identify your shapes to me?” Manny kneeled into the Ox’s throat, heard a bit of give and pop, took the man’s .45 from the ground, stood up, and gestured with the pistol. “I answer to no man. Stand,” Manny told him. “To Raúl’s house. You have a debt to clear.”

Manny kept the .45 zeroed upon the rear of the Ox’s slicked-back locks. Cotto followed behind. Each entered into the house. Cotto went off to the right, watched Manny but kept his distance from the bleeding Ox. Raúl’s eyes bludgeoned wide with his damp complexion. “Ox, I … I had—”

Keeping his hand pressed to his chest, his shoulder a blossom of skin, tendon, and crimson, the Ox cut Raúl off, “—had everything to do with this, you pathetic maggot.”

Before another word was passed, Cotto’s father told the Ox, “Be like a good doggy and sit.” Then he smacked the butt of the pistol into the rear of the Ox’s skull like a sledge fashioning a railroad spike into a cresoled six-by-six. Knees unfastened. The Ox dropped to the floor. “Roll your body. Face me with your hands under your ass!”

Cotto stood beside Manny, watched the Ox struggle to sit on his ass. Pain from his wounded palm marbled his face. Manny spoke from the corner of his mouth to Cotto. “This is the worm who took your mother from us. The woman who birthed you. Fed you and showed you hope when you felt there was none, something I can never replace.”

The Ox’s right arm shuddered with the pain of his parted right hand. His left shoulder the same. The Ox shouted, “The female whose eyes I removed for fishing bait, she was of kin to you? My, she tasted so lovely. I killed her ’cause I did not want another to have the same pleasure as I. Raúl, he set it up. Told her to come early. Before you two. It was to be a surprise to her husband and son.”

Manny shook his head at Raúl, whose eyes were bugging. “No, se?or, he … he lies.”

“Useless outlines of flesh, the each of you,” Manny said to Raúl, and then told Cotto, “Tonight you become a man. Take the pistol in your grip. End this piece of excrement’s existence, quick or slow, it makes little difference, because now we hold their wrongs for our judgment.”

Cotto studied this man called the Ox. The scattered ink about his knotted muscle, the bony lady upon his unbuttoned shirt, revealing his chest’s center, knives and skeletons up and down his tensed, grisly forearms, and in that moment, Cotto thought of his mother. Of her loving touch, of her warmth. Of her giving soul. And he thought about losing that to this animal. A man who smirked for what he’d done to her. Smirked at him, at his father, and belittled her. And Manny said, “He’s the man who has forsaken her. Taken our happiness. Every second you consider his life is another breath of air he is offered but does not deserve.”

Manny went silent, then told Cotto, “Take a swig from the bottle. It will numb the butterflies in your gut.”

Cotto uncapped the bottle. Tilted it. Felt the alcohol heat and ignite a trail down his throat, lighting a fire in his belly. The Ox looked Cotto in the eye and told him, “You’re weak like the female who spit you from between her thighs. Like your mother, you’re a little bitch.” Then he broke out into laughter.

Eyes watered and Cotto lifted the bottle once more. Felt a numbness coat his thoughts. Brush his temperament into a deep anger. Raising the weighted pistol. Manny took the bottle from Cotto’s grip. “Use both hands. Just as I’ve taught you long before now.”

Hand over hand, Cotto thumbed the hammer. Pointed it at the Ox, who smiled. Ran his tongue over his lips. Cotto pulled the trigger.

After that first time, it came not easier, but there was an understanding, an acceptance that it was part of his and his father’s way of existing. How things in their world would be decided. With a gun. But now, staring at this young female, eighteen or nineteen, Sheldon. Locks of hair once golden, the strands spotted by the filth that each day of struggle delivered. Her face nicked, her clothing the same. Crimson ringing around her wrists from being restrained. Skin bruised and marred from fighting off the savages, the mercenaries. Cotto snorted black and white powder from a glass vial. His eyes two damp falling stars, he wiped his nostrils and studied her. Knew she held the answers to what had happened to his men. His fallen ranks. She knew who had slain the deer. Someone monikered Van Dorn. And she’d known how to find him, or at least where he laid his head.

But she had to be comforted first. Her fear needed to be replaced with a bridge of kindness. She needed to forget her loss. Even if only for a split second, she needed to feel safe.

“Would you like some water?” Cotto asked.

The Sheldon girl did not answer at first. She stared off into an unknown mass of nothing, with shrieking and outcries of the others she’d been caged with, the sounds shotgunning through her mind. Cotto filled another nostril with powder. Tasted the chemical and carbine dust drop down his throat. Watched her lip quiver. Her fingers shake. She searched for her center to pull everything together, just as her father had taught her. She inhaled the stale air of cinder within the building where spray-painted words and symbols rose, dropped, and spread out like hieroglyphics from an ancient time. It was the top floor of an abandoned lighthouse in Leavenworth, Indiana. A place where teens and older people had hung out over the years. Drunk booze. Smoked weed. Dropped acid. Fucked and scribed murals of pot leaves, UFOs, and any and all idea upon the cemented walls.