Crime Machine

22

LEMUR AND NIKKI WERE OUT ON another trail. They had been walking for about ten minutes in snow that was nearly up to the tops of their boots. At breakfast it had been decided to set this trap farther away from the house. It was a bear trap of the old-fashioned kind, with iron jaws that clamped shut.

“What if an animal steps in it?” Nikki said, puffing with the exertion of slogging through snow. “Won’t it break its leg?”

Lemur smiled, showing the gap in his front teeth. “You worry too much, kid.”

“Omigod, how many times do I have to tell you, you’re not old enough to call me kid.”

“The only animal heavy enough to set this thing off is a bear, and they’re all hibernating this time of year.”

“So what if a human steps in it?”

“The only human coming along this trail to the house is going to be someone we don’t want to see. They’ll get what’s coming to them. Family rules. All right, this looks good. We’ll remember where it is because of that tree.” He pointed to an evergreen with one large branch hanging down at a diagonal.

Nikki put the trap down and started kicking snow out of the way. Lemur leaned his sledgehammer against the tree and started fiddling with the mechanism of the trap.

“Are you going out again tonight?” Nikki said. “You know, like, to work?”

“Probably.”

“How come you have to do these jobs by yourself? Shouldn’t Jack or me be helping you?”

Lemur shrugged. “Jack’s above that kind of stuff now. And you’re not ready for it. We each have to carry our weight, so pulling these things is my job, that’s all.”

“Do you ever wonder about the people you’re robbing? How they feel?”

“A dollar of the enemy’s is worth twenty dollars of our own. That’s what Sun Tzu said.”

“Why are they our enemies?”

“Because they’re not us.” Lemur took up the sledgehammer and held it crossways. “It’s about survival too. It’s about K-OS. Civilization is going down and we’re gonna be the survivors. I don’t need to know every detail. And neither do you. Hold the stake.”

Nikki knelt in the snow and held the stake with both hands. The iron radiated cold through her mittens. If anyone had told her even three months ago that she would be wandering through the forest planting traps in the snow, she would have laughed. But she was beginning to like the outdoors. She was even beginning to like winter. The shafts of sunlight through the trees, the glitter of ice on the branches, the spears of light cast every which way. And the air, so dry and clean it made you feel transparent.

Lemur swung the sledgehammer, taking care to hit the spike dead-on. Each time, a loud clank ricocheted round the forest and a shudder went up Nikki’s arm bones.

“Get back to the house.” Jack’s voice, behind them. The master of Papa’s arts of stealth and survival, standing beside the broken tree, as if he had materialized out of the forest. “You heard me,” he said to Lemur. “I’ll show her how to set it.”

“I’ll show her in a second. We’re just fixing it in place, then I’m gonna show her. Papa asked me to do it,” Lemur said. “Asked me specifically.”

“Yesterday it took you the entire afternoon to rig up a simple rope trap. We need this done pronto and it’s near lunchtime. I’m going to show her. Now beat it.”

“You giving orders now?”

“It’s okay,” Nikki said to Lemur. “Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

Lemur kept his eyes on Jack. “You’re not the boss of this family. Nobody’s boss in this family. Everybody’s equal.”

Lemur was holding the sledgehammer across his body as if to ward off blows. Jack took a step toward him. Nikki was reminded of a nature program she had seen about apes, males posturing and spitting at each other. Jack was by far the taller of the two—a lot more muscular, too. He grabbed hold of the sledgehammer with one hand and with the other slapped Lemur across the face. The sound made Nikki jump. “Get back to the house,” Jack said.

Lemur stood motionless. His right cheek was an angry red, and tears trickled down from that eye. “I’ll go,” he said. “But not because I’m afraid of you. I’m going because of what Papa says—about loyalty and unity. I’m not gonna fight you.” He threw down the sledgehammer and it vanished in snow. He turned to Nikki. “Guess I’ll see you back at the house.”

“Okay,” Nikki said. “See you later.”

Lemur tramped back the way they had come, the snow swishing around his feet.

Jack rubbed his hands together and put on a smile that looked as fake as anything you might see on a billboard. “It’s you and me, kid. And we are going to set ourselves one hell of a trap.”

Lunch was over and Jack was carrying away the plates and putting the dishes into the dishwasher—not because anyone asked him to but because he was a neat freak. Liked things in their place. Also, Nikki figured, because he was none too comfortable sitting at the table just now and wanted to get away from Papa’s observant eye.

Papa had been telling them about how it was going to be up north. How they would have a whole fleet of Jeeps and snowmobiles, and how they would make a living trading them to people who had not had the foresight to prepare. He spoke about how they would love and respect each other and start an entirely different society based on that. And how, when the blacks and the Natives and the Muslims came looking for their help, they would be up and running and ready to steer the remainder of humanity into the new reality. There was more than a little of the poet in Papa when he got going on the subject.

Today the poetry wasn’t working so well, though, owing to what had transpired in the woods. Lemur was the only one responding, and Nikki didn’t feel like talking, thank you very much.

Lemur was all excited about Hudson’s Bay blankets. He’d been surfing the Internet on the subject of coloured wool blankets and finally figured out the name. He was all for laying in a huge supply.

Papa had a tiny little notebook he carried with him at all times. It had an elastic band around it and a little ribbon like they have in bibles so you can find your chapter and verse. He always made a note when someone had a good idea, and they all liked to see him take that little notebook out and write in it with the little stub of a pencil he carried with him for the purpose. Nikki figured he’d had that thing since like the eighties or something.

“What’s that on your arm?” Papa was looking down at his notebook, but there was no doubt whom he was talking to.

“You talking to me?” Jack said.

“There’s a mark on your left forearm.” Papa closed the little notebook and set the elastic band around it and put it in his pocket along with the pencil. “How’d it happen?”

“I don’t know. It’s nothing.”

“Jack, it’s a bite mark. How do you come to have a bite mark on your forearm?”

“It ain’t a bite mark. I took a tumble in the woods. Must have whanged it against something.”

“You tried to force yourself on Nikki, didn’t you?”

Nikki spoke up. “We were just wrestling. I was practising the moves you showed me. I guess I got carried away.”

Papa spoke so quietly she had to strain to hear. “You’re trying to protect him. Maybe you think that’s loyalty, but it isn’t. If someone is disloyal to the family and you take his side, you are being disloyal. Do you understand? I know you’re young, but you need to get this.”

“Okay.”

“Jack, you tried to have sex with your sister.”

“I didn’t have sex with her—and she’s not my sister in the first place. You had sex with Lemur right here in front of all of us.”

“Nikki is under the age of sixteen. That makes her a child. Also, what I did with Lemur was an exercise.”

“Yeah, well maybe the rest of us would like a little exercise once in a while. Child? Sister? She ain’t even worthy to be in this family. Were you not in the room when this so-called child told us she performed a record 75 blow jobs in one month? That girl has fuck—has had sex with 167 men and she didn’t even know who they were. She did it with a German shepherd while a bunch of drunk bastards cheered her on. And you think she’s too good to be with me? Where’s your loyalty? That’s what I’d like to know. Where’s your loyalty?”

“You come to this family, you get dignity,” Papa said. “All that matters is what we do now. How we treat each other now. You don’t get to ruin the family for the rest of us, Jack.”

“Not only are you taking sides with a whore against your so-called right-hand man, you fail to notice that this poor girl got a face would stop a Mack truck. She’s gotta be downright grateful anyone would want to touch her. When the hell else is anyone not afflicted with outright insanity gonna lay a hand on her? I mean, look at her.”

Back in the woods, Nikki had kicked him and punched him and finally, when he wouldn’t stop, bit him. That made him let go and she got away from him. What she couldn’t figure out was, why did his words hurt so much? She pressed her chin to her chest and would not cry, but she couldn’t speak either.

Papa’s tone changed entirely. “How are your new boots, Nikki?”

Nikki had nothing to say to that.

“I noticed you favouring your right leg. Are they pinching?”

“A little.” She kept her chin pressed down, but she had to keep sniffing back tears. They all knew she was crying anyway.

“Wait here,” Papa said. “Jack, I’ve finished now, but please, all of you, just indulge me.” He left the table and went into the kitchen and clattered around in the cupboards, one after another, looking for something. Jack sat back down, and Lemur just watched with a look on his face like WTF.

Papa filled a huge metal mixing bowl with hot water and brought it back to the table and set it down. He got Nikki to turn her chair sideways to the table and he knelt in front of her. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, just thick red socks. Papa took hold of one of her cuffs and rolled it up, slowly, with concentration, nearly to her knee. Then he did the same with her other cuff. He rolled off one sock. Then the other. Normally Nikki would have said WTF like Lemur was obviously thinking, but there was some kind of major pressure in her chest and she mistrusted her ability to say a single word.

Papa took her left foot in his hands. They were cool and dry and felt like a doctor’s, but more tender. He examined her foot this way and that, changing his grip. It tickled but felt good too. No one had ever handled her feet before, not that she could remember.

“Left one looks okay,” he said, and set it down gently before taking up her right foot. “Little tender there, I bet, huh?” He gripped her ankle where it was sore and she nodded. “And maybe here a little too?” The fat part by her big toe. She nodded again.

Papa stood up and got the bowl of hot water and set it down in front of her. He went over to the bathroom and got some soap and a big fat red towel. He put the towel on her lap and she could smell the Downy on it, a smell she loved. He knelt in front of her again and took her left foot in his hands. Sudden heat of the water as he placed her foot in the bowl. Then the right one.

Hearing her intake of breath, he said, “Too hot?”

Nikki shook her head.

Papa took a red face cloth and soaped it up. Strong scents of lemon and lavender wafting up between her knees. He washed her left foot, the sole, the arch, the ankle, in between the toes. A sexual tingle up the inside of her leg. When the foot was soapy enough, he gripped it with both hands and rubbed the sole with his thumbs, warm swirling circles that made her sleepy even while they tickled. He bent her toes back and rubbed each one, giving each a gentle tug.

Nikki fixed her eyes on the top of his head, the short hair much flecked with grey. She watched his capable hands that handled her feet with such tender firmness. She felt Lemur and Jack staring, but she didn’t want to see their faces. Neither said a word. Papa took her feet from the water, first the left, then the right, and dried them and rubbed them with some kind of cream that felt slippery and cool, and then he patted them with the towel.

“Feel better?” His eyes, deep blue, looking up at her.

She nodded and tried to say yes, but nothing came out.

Papa raised her left foot and cocked his head to plant a kiss on her instep. The pressure of his lips just so, then gone. He did the same with her right foot, holding the kiss just a moment longer.