Bad Chili

19

Along nightfall, when Brett was off to work, I drove home happy and satisfied. Feeling that, in spite of things, life was coming together. I went inside, and as I reached for the light switch the ceiling fell on me and the floor jumped up and hit me in the face. Next thing I knew there was pain in my side and I was rolling into more pain, then hands had me and I was pulled up and a big shadow came out of the greater shadows of the house and kneed me in the groin, dropped me to the ground. Then the knee found my chin and gave me a little merry-go-round trip. Someone behind me put his forearm around my neck and squeezed and lifted. I was as good as hung.

“Howdy,” said the big shadow.

All three shadows dragged me outside. They were not shadows in the pale moonlight, but men, and one of them was a very big man, the man in the video, the man who belonged to the feet that had made the tracks around Leonard’s back door. Had to be. Guy like that, you could take his shoe and a boat paddle and shoot the Colorado rapids. He was the man Leonard called Big Man Mountain, the professional wrestler.

The other two were economy-sized enough. They were not easy to see there in the moonlight, but one had a pale face that appeared to have exploded from the inside. The acne scars on his skin held the shadow, made the grooves in his flesh look like whiplashes.

The other was a stocky black man with close-cropped hair and a forehead that shone brightly in the light of the moon. He had breath as sweet as a bean fart.

Big Man Mountain pushed me down on my face, and the other two helped pull my arms behind me. They tied my wrists together with something that felt like wire, hauled me up and pulled me out back of my house.

There was a ’64 Chevy Impala parked there, probably black, but it was hard to tell in the dark. It might have been blue or green or any dark color.

I felt like a goddamn idiot. I had walked right into it. I hadn’t expected a thing. I had been too euphoric. They had driven over and parked their car behind my place, gone in through the back or broken out a window, and they had waited on either side of the door for me. The big guy, he had probably waited in the kitchen. I had walked straight into bad business, stupid as a duck flying over a blind.

The two smaller thugs put me in the backseat between them. The giant forced his frame behind the wheel, fired up the Chevy. A car passed us as we headed out of my driveway; its lights were bright and Big Man cussed them. We drove on down my little road, on out to a full-fledged four-lane, and away we rolled. Down the dark highway, away from town, out into deeper darkness where the highway lost its lanes and narrowed, where the trees hung thick like tar-baby fingers over the road.

Way on out we drove, heading toward Louisiana, which lay sixty miles away. I sat there and thought about what I could do, but it didn’t add up to much. My hands were behind my back and I was between two guys who looked as if the last sentimental thought they’d had was watching a puppy go under their car wheel and hoping the little motherfucker didn’t pop their expensive tires.

We rode on, the windows down, the wind blowing in cool and wet with the smell of swampy water. It ruffled our hair, dampened our faces. Cars passed us. Cars came up behind us. I wanted to stick my head out the window and yell, but I figured I did that, I was a goner for sure. I tried to stay alert, looking for possibilities. I had a feeling possibilities were somewhere other than Texas that night.

We went halfway to Louisiana, veered to the right down a red-clay byway, cruised into deeper darkness where the land turned swampy and the shadows grew great, and the head beams were the only light you could see.

Way out we drove. Way out.

“I don’t guess this is a surprise party?” I said.

“Oh,” said the black man on my left, “don’t know. Might call it that.”

“You surprised so far, ain’t you?” said the man with the pocks. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it and tossed the match out the window.

“We kinda good at surprises,” said the black guy. “Fact is, I thought you ’bout as surprised as anybody I ever surprised. And I surprised me a few.”

“Shut up,” Big Man Mountain said.

I wasn’t sure who he was talking to, me or the other guys, but we all went silent and the car cruised on and the wind was choked thick with the smell of damp earth. Sort that fills a grave.

Car lights swung in behind us, and for an instant they gave me an unreasonable hope. Then the lights moved to the side and the dark shape of the car passed us.

On we drove, into an even deeper wooded blackness where the trees dipped low and the vines hung loose, dripping down and scraping across the car like the wet hair of a drowned corpse, and finally there was just this little dirt driveway in a small clearing, and in the clearing was a shack. I reckoned it was some old hunting shack, probably abandoned, or owned by an out-of-towner, and Big Man and his buddies had taken it over. We parked and the two guys in the back helped me get out by encouraging me with a couple of sharp blows to the ribs.

I stood out there in the night, the moon leaking weak light through the trees like spoiled cheese dripping through a grater, and took in the smell of everything: rich earth, the rankness of swampy water, the stench of dead fish. Frogs bleated. A night bird cried. I could hear my heartbeat.

I figured these were to be the last things I would ever smell or hear, so I did my best to enjoy them. In an odd way I felt extremely alive.

I wondered if my body would ever be found. I wondered how long Brett would miss me. I wondered if animals would gnaw my bones. I wondered if Leonard would discover who did it, and if so I wondered how horribly they would die. I sort of hoped Leonard didn’t find out. The idea of him spending the rest of his life in prison did not appeal to me.

Pock Face took the key from Big Man Mountain, opened the trunk of the car, took out a foam ice chest, and carried it toward the shack. Big Man Mountain pointed the beam of his flashlight at the door, and the black guy opened the door with a key and we went inside.

There was an old gas-powered generator in one corner of the room, and Big Man Mountain gave the flashlight to Pock Face and he held it while Big Man fired up the generator and turned on the light.

The light was a low-wattage bare bulb dangling on a frayed black wire, and in the light, dust motes rode about the starkness of the room like frenzied insects. Near the generator was a table, and on the table was a car battery, some cables, a stained brown pillow, and a large metal bowl. The windows were boarded over. The back door had a flap lock on it with a padlock through it.

Beneath the bulb was a wooden chair. They sat me in that and produced some cord and tied my ankles to the chair. From that position I could see there was a ball bat by the door, leaning against the frame. It was stained all over. I had an idea what with.

Big Man came over, squatted down in front of the chair, and took a long look at me. His beard was jet-black and well groomed. His brown eyes were almost friendly, reminded me of a puppy that wanted a pat on the head. His voice turned soft, almost feminine. He carefully unwrapped a breath mint and placed it gently on his tongue. “You got scared eyes,” he said.

“You bet,” I said. In fact, they were starting to water.

“You and your nigger, you got stuff stirred up,” he said.

I glanced at the black guy. No help there. He wasn’t outraged and ready to change sides. Nigger was just a word to him. Fact was, he seemed kind of bored, like this was a job he did a lot and didn’t have feelings about one way or another, long as the paycheck showed up.

I glanced at Pock Face. He had his finger in his nostril, chasing a wily snot ball.

“You shouldn’t go around askin’ questions like you’re askin’,” Big Man said. “It could make some people look bad, know what I’m sayin’?”

“King Arthur?” I said.

“Well, let’s just say it could make some people look bad,” he said.

“Could I just apologize?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Big Man said. “Know what’s in the ice chest?”

“Ice?”

“Right. But no beer. No soda pop. No fish. Just ice. Ever had your balls packed in ice, Collins?”

“No. It sounds kinky, but I’d really rather not. Especially if you’re doing the packing.”

Big Man turned to the black guy. “Get the chest over here, Booger.”

“I ain’t handling his bobs,” said Booger. “You want his meat packed, you pack it.”

“Get the ice chest, shithead,” Big Man said.

Shithead didn’t look happy about it, but he went over and got the ice chest and set it by the chair. He opened the lid. I glanced inside. Crushed ice.

Big Man said, “What I do here is I take the ice, put some in a metal bowl, and we drop your pants, and we set the bowl in the chair, and put your ass on that pillow over there, and we drop your oranges in that bowl, and guess what?”

“My balls get cold?”

“Real cold. That normally might even numb the pain. But the thing is, they also get wet. You take a little electricity, hit on them wet spots, and let me tell you – there ain’t nothing like it. Know where I learned this little trick?”

“Your mom?” I said.

He grinned at me. “Guess.”

“I don’t want to guess.”

“Yeah, but I want you to,” Big Man said. “Unless you’re ready to get started.”

“Charm school,” I said. “You learned it in charm school.”

Big Man shook his head. “Professional wrestling.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Listen,” I said, “I haven’t got anything against you. I don’t even know you, or these other gentlemen. You don’t even have to drive me home. Just let me go.”

“I’d like to,” Big Man said. “I don’t like my work, but it is my work, and I’m good at it, and I made a vow a long time ago, once I start a job I finish it, and I do what I’m going to do as well as I can, even if I don’t like it.”

“Is this going to be like a warning?” I asked.

Big Man shook his head. “Not to you. To the nigger, yes. We’d have got him first, it would have been like a warning to you. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“Maybe you could get someone me and Leonard don’t even know and make it like a warning to the both of us,” I said.

“Very funny,” Big Man said. “It could be that woman you been bangin’.”

“You sonofabitch.”

“You want we should trade you for her?”

“Do your worst, asshole.”

“Oh, you don’t know my worst, gallant little man. Let me tell you, they put me out of professional wrestling ’cause I didn’t like to lose, even when I was supposed to. I liked to give people permanent injuries. Wrenched neck. Dislocated elbow. Knee. Rupture. Little mementoes. Got so no one wanted to wrestle Big Man Mountain.”

“It was probably the odor.”

“Trying to provoke me, aren’t you? You’re thinking maybe I’ll just finish you off. But no. You got to go the distance, you don’t tell me what I want to know. Back when I wrestled, had a little thing I did where I took a battery with a crank into the ring with me, hooked cables to my ears and pretended to fire myself up a bit. You know, crank it while it was hooked to my ears. One time, I fucked up. Battery was charged and I did it for real. Knocked me on my ass. I sort of liked it. A little jolt, it perks you up, you get used to it. Sort of like shock therapy. Which, by the way, I’ve had.”

“Get on with it,” Booger said.

“Shut up, Booger,” Big Man said. “I’m talking to Mr. Collins. You know, Collins, I know a lot about you. I been following you around. Having you followed. I know when you eat. When you shit. When you beat off. I know you’re throwing a pound of round to that little nurse. I’m thinkin’, all this gets through, you’re nothing but a greasy rag, I might could pay her a visit.”

“Leonard will kill you.”

“The nigger? I don’t think so, Collins. I think I will kill him.”

“Whatever,” Booger said.

“Mountain,” said Pock Face, “I ain’t ate yet. Can’t we get this shit over with? I want to grab a burger.”

“Get the ball bat,” Big Man said. “Warm up a little.”

Pock Face got the bat and started swinging it through the air. He banged it hard on the floor a couple of times, smashed it into the wall once. While this was going on, Big Man kept talking in that slow sweet voice of his.

“So, this shock business, if you’re used to it, you can take a little voltage. You’re not, hurts. I’m gonna hook your balls up, give you a few leaps to the meat, then I’m gonna ask some questions. Things about what you know and what you’ve done about it. Now I got to be honest here. You aren’t going to make it, Collins. Don’t try to imagine you are. You’re gonna die. The boys here, they’re good. They can make you suffer a long time. The faggot, Raul, you know about him. He made it hard on himself. I wouldn’t have thought it, you know. A fruit with balls, but he had them. Literally. They were big mothers when we put them in the ice.”

“Weren’t so big later,” Booger said.

“That’s right,” Big Man said. “That ice, the electricity. It doesn’t do a man’s cojones good, Collins. But you see, you tell us what we need to know, no voltage. Just a good shot to the bean with the bat. Puts you right out, if it don’t kill you. Couple more, gone for good. You only feel the first one. And not much ’cause you get nailed hard. No more worries. Try to be the tough guy, hold out, we got to give you some business. Hear what I’m tryin’ to tell you, Collins? Answer me, man.”

“I hear,” I said.

“Good. So we got no hearin’ problems here. Now here’s your first question, and I beg you to consider before you answer. Where’s the video?”

“What video?”

Big Man hung his head. “All right. Booger, take down his pants.”

“You take down his pants,” Booger said.

Big Man, who had been kneeling, came up suddenly and slapped Booger behind the head, pulling him into his other hand, which took hold of Booger’s throat.

“You big black dick!” Big Man said. “I told you to take down his pants. Now do it.”

He pushed Booger to the floor. Booger unfastened my belt and tugged at my pants and underwear, pulled them down to my knees. Pock Face handed him the pillow. Booger shoved me up and put it under my ass. He sat the bowl up next to me and scooped out a handful of ice with his hands and put it in the bowl and then he pushed the bowl under me so that my testicles hung into it. At first it was a cold jolt, but almost immediately I started to numb. I tried to shake myself loose, but Booger held the bowl. Pock Face came up behind me and slipped a rope over me and tied me more firmly to the chair.

Big Man said, “You aren’t gonna believe the kind of trip you’re gonna take. Over there into Pain City, my man. But, I’m gonna give you another chance to take the Ball Bat Highway on out of here. Last thing you’ll hear is the wind from that bat. Then it’s all over.”

“I swing it just right,” Pock Face said, “you won’t hardly hear that.”

“There you are,” Big Man said. “Now, once again. And I want you to come right at me with the answer when I ask this. Where is the video?”

“You’re supposed to know so fuckin’ much about me, why don’t you know where the video is?”

“Okay,” Big Man said. “Maybe I don’t know as much as I said. Maybe I know a lot less, but I’m here to learn, Collins. Where is it?”

“Go to hell.”

“Kinney,” Big Man said to Pock Face, “hook up the battery, bring it over here. Couple shots from Reddy Kilowatt, this fucker’s gonna sing like a mockingbird.”

Pock Face set to work.

“I ain’t gonna keep hold of this bowl now,” Booger said.

“’Course not, you moron,” Big Man said. “You done this before.”

“Naw, I did the bat last time,” Booger said. “I like the bat.”

“Everybody likes the bat,” Big Man said. “Except, of course, the man in this chair. There’s been a couple others in this chair, Collins, you know that?”

I wanted to say something smart, something strong. But I couldn’t.

“You look a little nervous, Collins. Want to say about the video?”

My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. “No.”

“Man, what’s the deal?” Big Man said. “It ain’t nothin’ to you. You’re gonna die anyway. We don’t get it from you, we got to go after the nigger. Maybe the nurse.”

“She doesn’t know anything,” I said.

“I got to be the judge of that, Collins. I think you’re an honest man. Really. I get those kind of vibes from you, but still, you see, I’m a professional. I might have to bring her out here. But I promise you this, Collins. I do, we’ll make it nice for her. And since she ain’t got no balls to drop in the ice, we might make it nice for her a lot of times. So many times it ain’t so nice. And maybe it’s not nice for her any time, but if it’s nice for us, we got to keep it up till maybe she tells us something.”

“She doesn’t know a goddamn thing.”

“Come on, Collins. Save her some trouble. Spare your nigger’s balls. Tell us about the video.”

“The police have it.”

Big Man shook his head. “No they don’t.”

“Yes they do.”

“Nope.”

“Yes.”

“Nope. They don’t have it, Collins. I know that. You have it, or you know where it is.”

Pock Face dropped two cables into the bowl. Booger let go of the bowl quick. Pock Face gripped the handle on the generator.

Big Man moved very close to me. He said. “We hit the crank, you get the juice, I can tell you now, you’re most likely gonna shit yourself. If not this shot, the next one. Save the humiliation. Take the bat. We’ll tidy you up a bit afterwards, pull your pants up, dump you in your nigger’s yard. That way, you don’t rot somewhere.”

“I don’t think you’d do that,” I said.

“Use the bat?”

“Clean me up and dump me where I’d be found.”

“You might be right,” Big Man said, “but you could go out without all that pain. All right, Collins. The moment of truth. One last time, then Kinney, he’s got to hit the crank, and then we got to start breakin’ some things too. Where is the video?”

“What video?”

“Hit it, Kinney.”

And Kinney did and the world went black and then white and then it threw colors all around and I felt my body jump like frog legs on a griddle, then I heard a scream, a loud, horrible scream, like a woman in fear, but the scream was mine. The room was blood-red, then black, and out of the blackness Big Man’s face floated and hung above me like a moon made of gangrene flesh surrounded by hair and the sweet smell of a breath mint.

“How was that?” Big Man asked.

It took a while for me to get my breath. “Invigorating,” I said.

“Oh,” Big Man said. “You liked that, huh?”

Again, some time passed. I said, “I prefer it as a one-time experience.”

“I bet. We got to do it again, Collins. Unless you want to tell me something I want to know. I’ll say this for you, you let a fart like the clap of creation, but you didn’t shit yourself. But let me tell you this. Booger, he knows better than to stand behind that chair. Shit has a way of flyin’ out from the back there and sprayin’. Those stains on the pillow, what you think that is?”

“Olive oil?”

“Shit. A little blood.”

“You might as well finish me,” I said. “You aren’t going to get anything from me, because I don’t know anything.”

“He might be tellin’ the truth,” Booger said.

“Yeah,” Big Man said. “He might. But things still got to come out the same. How’s about we give him another boost?”

I already felt as if I were going to pass out. I pulled up all my reserves, which were mostly AWOL, and steeled myself.

There was an explosion and the walls of the shack vibrated and the floor jumped and the lightbulb above me rocked and I realized it wasn’t my balls and brain dealing with electricity. It was a real explosion, outside the shack.

Big Man bent down, snapped a revolver out of an ankle holster, leaped for the door, jerked it open. The night was bright orange and yellow with flecks of red. I could see the ’64 Impala. It was blazing, sending up gasoline and oil to the great motor gods of the heavens.

A sound behind me. A wham! Followed by another. Then another. Booger leaped and got hold of the ball bat, and Pock Face jerked back from where he was kneeling. The wires on the battery jumped out of the bowl, and the bowl turned over and the ice ran under my ass. Pock Face bumped my chair and I went over sideways. Pock’s head knocked against the lightbulb, sent it swinging.

Then it all happened in the alternating light and shadow of the swaying bulb.

Big Man popped a shot from his little ankle gun. It made a bright burst in the shadows. The bulb swung back and there was a blast from a shotgun.

Pock Face, a.k.a. Kinney, hurtled over my chair, crashed to the floor next to me. Some of the dark jelly that was now his face slapped against my cheek and chin. The blood was so hot it stung.

Big Man bellowed, bolted through the open door as another blast from the shotgun ripped into the air where he had been standing. Fragments of the wall and door frame leaped toward me.

Shadow.

A tall man, the one with the shotgun, stumped past me, and as the light swung back and finally came to rest, I saw his shotgun stock swing out, catch Booger upside the head with a sound like someone popping loose the vacuum-packed lid of a jar.

Booger took the blow with a grunt and a spray of teeth. He swung the bat, but the man holding the shotgun used his weapon to block it, brought the barrel around in a short arc and hit Booger in the face. Booger did a kind of backwards hop, hit the table, knocked it flat, fell down on top of it.

The man with the shotgun kicked his boot into Booger’s balls. Booger screamed and the man fit the shotgun into Booger’s mouth. He said, “Good night, ass-lick,” and fired.

Booger’s head sort of went away.

I lay very still. The man with the shotgun squatted down and looked at me. He was a lean-faced dude wearing a stained white cowboy hat, old boots, blue jeans, and a faded western shirt decorated with little green flowers. I realized the face belonged to the man in the yellow Pontiac.

“Your ass is hangin’ out, friend,” he said.

“I’m also tied to a chair.”

“I see that.”

“You planning on shooting me, too?”

“Well, you are kinda gift-wrapped… But no.”

The cowboy took a large knife from his jeans pocket, cut the cord on my feet and around my chest, then he got behind me and went to work on the wire, twisting it free.

I wobbled as I tried to stand. The cowboy put the knife away with one quick movement, took my arm and helped me. I pulled up my pants and fastened them. I said, “Man, I don’t know what to say… Did you have to kill them?”

“How about ‘Howdy’? And yeah, I guess I did. I started to just yell time-out, but decided that wasn’t a good idea. I’m Jim Bob Luke.”

“Hap Collins,” I said.

“I know who you are,” he said. “I followed them out here, then drove past, you know, to stay cool, so they wouldn’t know I was following them, but the sonofabitches sort of lost me for a time or I’d have been here sooner.”

“I’m just glad you showed up. Not that I understand why. What about Big Man?”

“Oh, I ain’t worried. I been watchin’ the doors.”

“Confident, aren’t you?”

“I invented the goddamn word. Now, why don’t you use your shirtsleeve and wipe them brains off your face, and let’s skedaddle before ole big un comes back.”

“I thought you were confident.”

“I am. But I ain’t stupid.”