The Savage(84)
*
Angus sat staring at the nightfall out a busted window of glass to his right; before him a fire burned. The structure in which he sat was worn and whittled. The walls beset by rot, mold, and the gathering of bugs, some digging, others shelled.
The fireplace was constructed of barnacled stones. A greasy iron spit sat before the bouncing of orange flames with the turning of several shapes, meat once the color of beets that had been roasted to tan, dripping and sizzling.
Angus’s arms were bound behind him by wire, a leather dog collar had been placed around his neck. A chain attached to it. The other end of the chain connected to a crooked stud of the bare wall.
Glancing over to his left at Mick, who sat beside Hershal and Withers; each was mongrel in appearance with a shaggy beard, skinny, and a loam-smeared face. Each slurped and sucked on the game, cleaning it from its bone. Before Hershal lay an axe, before Withers lay a machete.
Off from them was an open door frame, two hounds sat gnawing on the bones of what appeared to be dead cattle. Their heads black and tan, their bodies ticked of white and blue-gray with legs of caramel and powdered sugar. Blue-tick coonhounds.
Hershal dug his hand into Mick’s mess of hair, jerked at him. “Quit pigging the damn shank of tender wounded fuck.”
“Fuck you, Hershal. I eat how I wanna eat.”
“Bastard, in a moral world you’d have manners.”
Angus shook his head. Felt idiotic for falling into such a situation. He needed to get into these mongrels’ heads. Light their fused tempers, get free of them, and find medicine for Fu. He’d been hidden within Fu’s cabin, upon his acres for years. Training and learning of Asian ways. He even carried out his purpose, his test, and yet here he sat facing another.
“Manners would entail pedigree, something none of you has ever known.”
Withers looked to Angus. “No one is speaking to you, ’loper. Lucky Alcorn told us to keep you restrained or I’d give you a beatin’ you wouldn’t soon forget like the others we’ve wrangled.”
It don’t take much to fester up an inbred, Angus thought; he’d hired and worked side by side with many when running his father’s logging company, then sold crank to them after he sunk the business.
“Release me, see how long it takes to have your brain tanned like the hare you’re slopping up. I’ll show you my pecking order.”
From the dark door opening came Alcorn, the collage of tattoos about his hands. “Withers. Leave the ’loper be. He’d kill you before you could unbuckle your denim and drop a deuce.”
“We can see about that.”
“No we cain’t. He’s bloodied one, he’ll be our ticket to more food, territory, and power for our race, our color of people, to rule within the madness that is plaguing this land.”
Withers slowed the chew of meat in his mouth. “You’ve offered these declarations to all us white skins before, said that about all of those that we’ve enslaved, ain’t one brought us anything other than a hot meal and embarrassment amongst the other rural clans and colors of people.”
Alcorn looked to Angus. Dug his dirty fingertips into his chin whiskers. “This one differs. Possesses real skill.” Pausing, he questioned Angus, “Are ye a Christian?”
Angus smirked to himself, thinking this was the brains behind the band of heathens.
“Of what does it matter?”
“In these times it matters plenty.”
Angus laughed. “I find doubt in your words.”
“Why do you laugh about such a question of the beliefs from the good book and the Almighty Himself?”
Fu had taught Angus more than how to use his body as a weapon. He’d trained him to use his mind. Fighting was ten percent physical and ninety percent mental.
“That book has brought rules to govern men and women, rules that none seem to heed except when they wanna curb those rules to meet their selfish gains. You’re either weak or strong. Run in the light or slither in the dark. Falter in the rain or prosper in the shine. Like life or death, they’re cycles of nature. Positive and negative forces, it’s not about a God or deity, every man fears death, all God does is coax man’s yearn for something he can’t explain, place an ease to his fear of dying and forgiveness to his weakness and sinning.”
“Remove your tongue, nonbeliever.”
“I was learned by a man who taught the elements. The positive and negative ways of being and living. How one can outweigh the other, disrupt the natural order of life. The book you speak of has been taken out of context, twisted to make others follow another so that one can absolve himself of wrongs and live a life of hypocrisy while man, woman, and child follow his doctrine of lies.”
Withers and Hershal came from the floor. One wielding the axe, the other the machete. Hershal barked first, pistols tucked down their fronts. “Tired of your tongue, ’loper, how about I remove your head that throaty gutter you keep spilling ill words of respect from?”
Angus grimaced. “That’d be an interesting thing to see you fail at after I take that axe from your grip and break it off in your anal cavity.”
Withers pointed the machete at Angus and accused him. “You’re a goddamned Antichrist, ain’t you? Come here to fill our heads full of jargon. Mislead and defy us of our beliefs so we’d fail.”