Blood of Cain

3

I thought about my Glock. Thought about how I’d left it in the house after cleaning and oiling the pistol when I took it out of the Jeep two days ago. I glanced down at Max. Since she couldn’t see over the dashboard, she followed the movement of the truck with her head and ears.

And then she growled. Another bad sign.

The truck slowly backed up, coming parallel to my Jeep. Two men inside. There was enough light from their dashboard and the ambient glow from my Jeep to see their faces. Both wore cut-off black T-shirts. Tats on beefy forearms. Hard faces with a week’s growth of whiskers. The man on the passenger side had hooded, red-rimmed eyes that didn't blink, like a drunk at a bar staring at condensation rolling down his beer bottle. He wore a baseball hat turned backwards. The driver locked his thin lips on a bottle of Crown Royal in a wrinkled paper bag, turned it up, and took one long gulp, his face shining from sweat, cheeks blooming a shade of crimson. He stared at me through moist eyes and said, “Ya'll look like you need some help.”

I could smell diesel fumes mixed with burning weed. I said, “Thanks for stopping. Everything's okay. She just got a carsick. She wanted to get some fresh air.”

The man closest to me said, “Ya'll got all your windows down. Plenty of air in a Jeep. Maybe you and your girlfriend got into a ruckus. Maybe she don't want you no more and she's lookin' to hitch a ride.”

I said nothing. Max growled again.

The man looked at Max, grinned, and turned to the driver. “He's got a fuckin' muskrat on the seat next to him. One of 'em wiener dogs.”

“No wonder the bitch walked.” They laughed and then the guy on the passenger side gazed at the girl, like he was seeing her for the first time. He said, “Hey, sweet thing. That right? This dude botherin' you? We can make him go away. You just say the word. C'mon darlin,' get in the truck and we'll take you home.”

The girl said, “No thanks.”

The man sneered and touched the tip of his nose with a thick finger. The driver gunned the truck and quickly pulled off the road in front of my Jeep. “Get in!” I yelled to the girl. She hesitated a moment and then reached for the door handle.

Too late. The man on the passenger side moved fast, not even waiting for the truck to stop before flinging open the door and running toward the girl. He grabbed her by the forearm.

“Don't touch me!” she shouted. The man laughed and wrapped his arms, fur, ink, and muscle around her.

“She's a fighter!” he shouted, dragging her toward the truck. “This bitch got some spunk. She's gonna be real good.”

The driver, carrying a Billy club, approached me. I got out of the Jeep. He grinned, slapped the wood in the palm of his big bear paw hand and said, “Weiner dog dude, you ready for the whoppin' your daddy shoulda done years ago?” His belly hung over a belt that I couldn't see because of the girth. I guessed he was more than 290 pounds of muscles and fat, mostly fat. Plus he was stoned, very stoned. Each body movement was telegraphed before it happened.

I waited for him, never taking my eyes off of his. He raised his huge right arm and swung at my head. I easily dodged it, the Billy club missing my forehead by a few inches. The kinetic energy, the torque of the swing, threw him off balance for a half second. That's all the time I needed. I grabbed his right wrist, pulling his arm behind his back and forcing his hand up to his neck. The pop of tendons and bones separating was like the sound of eggs cracking. He screamed and went down on his knees the same time I brought up my knee hard into his nose. He fell backwards, out cold.

The other man had abandoned the girl and was reaching for a shotgun cradled in the window behind the truck seats. His hand was touching the stock when I slammed the truck's door into his legs. He yelled louder than his sleeping partner had screamed, and he tried to turn around — again an opponent losing equilibrium. It gave me a moment to draw far back and deliver a hard hit with my fist into the center of his mouth. I felt my knuckles plow through lips, front teeth and nose. I knew his jaw had dislocated. He stared at me through incredulous dull eyes, now glazed and rolling upward in his small skull. His lips were macerated, blood pouring from what was left of his mouth and nose. He smelled of weed, sour beer, and bacon fat. He tumbled forward, falling into the undergrowth, less than five feet from a canal.

I looked in the truck and lifted a cell phone from the seat and punched three digits.

The dispatcher said, “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“Looks like two men got in a fight. Severe injuries. County road 314. About halfway into the Ocala National Forest. Their Ford pickup is pulled over on the side of the road. Send an ambulance.”

“Are the men breathing?”

“Yes.”

“What is your name, sir?”

I disconnected and threw the phone into the center of the canal.

Then I looked for the girl, the fog growing thicker, rising through the light from the Jeep's headlights, the bellow of bullfrogs coming from the canal. “Are you okay?” I called out to the girl, hoping she would be standing in the shadows. “Courtney!” I felt fatigue growing behind my eyes as I walked back to my Jeep. Little Max stuck her head out the side window and made a slight whimpering sound. “She ran away, Max. The girl's gone.”