Slice

DARNELL'S FIELD

Each month, like clockwork, Daniel would wait until Michael Hora was outside and alone and he would walk up to him and hold out the money. A thousand dollars. This would usually constitute their conversation for the month. There was no contact whatsoever. The few times that Hora spoke to Bunkowski he discouraged any conversation. Chaingang became more and more paranoid as he stayed in one spot for such a long time. The thought had occurred to him that Hora, while probably on the run himself—if only from the U.S. military—might consider a few probes to see if there were any serious money on his head. On the other hand, Hora had established a counterculture reputation of sorts for his “farm.” It had become known as a place where runaways, wanted men, mercs, and similar rogue elephants might seek temporary shelter from the eyes of the law and government.

But time had a way of eating at security. The greatest hideout in the world was vulnerable to bad luck. And there was Chaingang's natural disinclination to have someone know his whereabouts. Another factor was the regularity of the payments. At what point would Hora decide a thousand a month wasn't up to the spiraling cost of living, and his old pal would have to sweeten the pot? Because he had the precognate's mind he anticipated such events, and they filled him with unrest, while stirring his natural desire to waste Hora. It was just a matter of time.

Sissy was well along in her pregnancy, and rather than become enraged by it and stomp both her and the fetus out with a monstrous bootprint, he was pleased by it. When he was ready he would go for the cop Eichord and inflict a payback on him beyond anything he'd be able to conceive in his most torturous nightmare, and what better cover than a pregnant wife or—better yet—a wife and a baby. It dimpled Daniel's pockmarked, doughy face in an immense grin—just the thought of his blade of vengeance slashing out at Jack. He would come with something quite delicious. Perhaps render the cop into a living stump, keeping him alive, one of those freaks you see in New York scurrying around on a skateboard. Or one of those pathetic creatures you find begging for handouts in places like Thailand and India. He'd love that. He'd turn Eichord into a freak and give him a tin cup and some pencils.

It was payday for his landlord again, and Hora saw the man lumbering over in his direction. The protuberance of his belly was nowhere near so obtrusive as it had been only a few weeks ago. Hora was amazed by the amount of work Chaingang, whom Hora secretly called Gangbang, had turned out. How he had leveled that eighty-acre piece of overgrown pastureland with a weed slinger was beyond anything imaginable to him.

“Hey,” he called out.

“Yeah.” Chaingang grunted and handed him ten filthy one-hundred dollar bills. Hora, none too fastidious himself, always had the urge to wash his hands whenever he'd had to touch something Chaingang had touched.

“Listen. Uh, you know that ole barn over ‘tween my ground and the Darnells’ field?” Chaingang said nothing. “It's up to you. But if you're lookin’ for somethin’ to do you can wreck it. Just as soon see it down, but I want the cypress logs and them shaker shingles. Okay?” The big man nodded. He took a double-bit ax and started off toward the field.

“You ain't gon’ to be able to chop her down. Need to get some crowbars and a sledgehammer ‘n a—” but Chaingang just kept waddling off so Michael Hora shrugged and muttered, “Fuck it then,” and went about his business.

The Bunkowski wrecking company had its own way of tearing down a barn. He went into the woods and felled a thirty-five-foot ash with the ax, chopping as fast as he could, moving around the base of the tree with little precise shuffle steps as he swung the sharp ax, watching the blade thwock down into the hard wood. After a few minutes he'd broken through to the center and he smacked it once more and stepped out from under the big falling tree.

He then chopped all the lower limbs off flush with the trunk and started working on chopping through the tree at about twenty-two or twenty-three feet from the base. Finally he had himself a 221/[2]-foot pole of stout ash, and he was in the wrecking business.

Hora and the slow wife and Sissy, each on a different part of the farm, could all hear Chaingang working. He was popping boards and shingles and ceiling timbers off the old barn. They'd hear a loud hammering noise and then a kind of fast-fire effect as the smashing sounds echoed from the Darnell place across the flat pasture. WHAP! as a timber broke loose. POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! Shingles flying from the roof of the barn and into the nearby field. Chaingang standing dead center in the middle of the filthy barn, a bandanna over his face and safety glasses over his eyes, standing in a rain of ancient sawdust, nails, dead bugs, rat shit, God knows what, as he pounded timbers and shingles out into space with a 221/[2]-foot ash battering ram, gripping it in a death grip with those extra-large leather work gloves and thinking about how pleasant it would be to tie the cop to a tree somewhere and work on him with the big pole. Breaking kneecaps and crushing the rib cage and the groin and pelvis and thinking these thoughts as nearly four hundred pounds of hell on the hoof smashed its weight up against the roof and timbers blasted loose and shaker shingles flew crazily into the cloudless sky WHAP! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! Smashing the pole into the man who had sought him out the way you'll seek out a human target in a firefight and dog the man and try to kill him. WHAP! Smashing those knees and pulverizing that arrogant face into scarlet pulp POW! POW! POW! hands that could squeeze a flashlight battery or rip a rib cage loose were ramming that big tree trunk up at the thought of this cop he'd come to hate.

Because of the unusual sound-carrying acoustical properties of the land they all heard it easily three hundred yards away. It sounded like somebody was blasting apart the barn with a machine gun. And by sundown there was no barn at all. Just piles of rotting debris.