The Savage(93)
And the Sheldon girl engulfed huge rungs of air through her nostrils, told him, “That it is, but they’s much noise and scents of nourishment that I’m digesting.”
“Let’s take a gander at what we may or may not wanna cross.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Lead the way.”
*
When he was training in his past, Angus’s arms were marbled with purple bruises, knuckles swelled and flat. Until Fu brought him lemons. Cut them in halves, had Angus press and rub the pulp and juice over his hurt, letting it dry and tighten and heal the flesh each night during sleep.
All of it was repetition. Building one’s strength through external training in order to discover the internal. But these who surrounded him now had no idea what he was capable of. All he could think of was Fu. If he’d live long enough, if he’d be able to maintain until Angus’s return.
The boys sat pressing their hatchet edges and knife blades to oiled stones. Scraping and working one side, then the next. Honing their weapons of weight to fine tools for cutting, chopping, and splitting. Some sat behind Alcorn, Hershal, and Withers. Others stood beside the Methodist. Several boys cut healthy portions from the monstrous tarnished silver plate of pork meat that lay upon a scathed wooden table in the room’s center with jacketed potatoes and carrots. Masons were being passed with a ruby-colored wine and the Methodist spoke: “Angus beat my best. Nearly twenty hides of men he battered and carved.”
Molded around the heat of wood flaming within an open-faced woodstove, Angus was leashed, sweating, with hands bound before him, chain anchored from hardwood floor to his neck. He ate and listened to the foolish words of a man acting as a prophet but nothing more than a rural grift.
Chewing the fatty meat, the Aryan replied to the Methodist, “That he did.”
Hershal and Withers sat slurping food. Grease smacking from their lips about the mushy carrots and meat while the pale-faced boys watched. Unsmiling; their fingers were stained by oil and stone sharpenings. Their vision was unclasped walls of madness and twitch.
The Methodist took a sip of wine and told Alcorn, “I can’t let you keep Angus. I will barter you provisions for his skills. Can keep shelter with me and the congregation, have your ten acres of territory to do as you wish. Maybe capture another fighter. Win more territory.”
Alcorn and Hershal looked up, each with food pieces about his lips. Chewed piece of potato fell from Alcorn’s lips and he said, “Horseshit!”
The Methodist shook his head. “This is not a query nor a plea, it’s a direct telling of what you will do.”
Withers came from sitting, was about halfway erect when the Methodist nodded. His boys restrained Alcorn. Slapped and pounded Hershal and Withers while Alcorn was forced to watch the swift onslaught of what took place quicker than a lost breath, as six young men dropped their sharpening stones. Cut the air. Testing their edges. Driving them into limbs, backs of legs, sections of back, beating and creating fault-line cracks that spit blood from skulls. The boys did not waver nor stop until Alcorn’s men were thuds on the floor in a mess that appeared like spilt paint, but it was human fluid and scalp, teeth, and death.
The only sound heard was Angus’s jaw moving with the swoosh of tater. The Methodist broke the silence with “Never say I didn’t offer. Remove the slugs from my sight. You now align me, Alcorn.”
The boys were outlined by their red-specked cheeks and cottas. Arms and hands moist. They dragged Hershal and Wither’s battered and bleeding bodies from the room. Angus kept eating the meat, carrots, and potatoes with the Methodist eyeing him.
“Do right by me, you’ll have food and women at your leisure. Used to be the Pentecost was more willing to share the offerings of his daughters until he found his last breath from a man believed to be one Cotto Ramos.”
Alcorn was stricken with silence. Angus set his plate down before him. Swallowed his food. Forearmed his mouth to remove particles of nourishment from his lips. “I’ve little use for females as they’ve no loyalty. And food, I’ve had plenty. What I desire is medicine for a friend who fell to illness.” Angus paused, chose his words carefully. “There’s nothing to be gained from this. Eventually someone smarter and stronger will arrive. All you’re doing is waiting to have that torch taken and turned into a gavel.”
“I do God’s bidding. Like others, I’m building something to take the torch from another and then another and another. I fear no man.”
“I get it, whoever has the most toys wins.”
“No, it’s the survivalists. Those who’ve lost everything have nothing more to lose. As of now, whoever has the most followers can amass an army to protect his territory, create new laws, a new regime to fight this rumor of a man called Cotto, a foreigner who’s killing men, enslaving our women and children.”
“And why would a person of foreign means have an interest in slaughtering men in the Midwest?” Angus asked. “What would he have to gain?”
“What does any man have to gain by invading another’s territory? When there are no more rules to be enforced, fear delivers power, things turn tribal, much like those in prison. It’s not the government who runs the prison, it’s the prisoners, the government is only sheltering the weak from the barbaric. But to answer your question, rumor in the whisper mill of derelicts and other congregations says Cotto’s reaping vengeance to rule the land, for what, power, because you murdered his father, Manny, or because he can.”