Slice

STOBAUGH COUNTY

By midafternoon they had reached Stobaugh, and they crossed over the county line. Chaingang was totally tuned out as the girl hummed and sang contentedly with the radio. He was physically as well as mentally in another time and place. He was back in Southeast Asia with Michael Hora.

What would Sissy have thought had she known the truth or even vestiges of it? Could she have begun to comprehend that this thing beside her with the deep voice and the huge girth and the strange mannerisms and the bandaged face—that this man was a true genius of sorts? A genius of assassination? He had been discovered on death row in Marion, most fearsome of our federal prisons. A security arm of the intelligence community, as it is laughingly called, had found him and in the sensitive early years of the war created a small, secret unit around this unlikely figure.

He had been tested, and a gamble was taken. He was sent to Vietnam along with other similar individuals, programmed—or so they hoped—to work in covert, counterinsurgency assassination teams. And he had performed his function better than they had ever dreamed. Bunkowski was a unique entity. Godzilla and the shark from Jaws or its human counterpart and the Pillsbury Doughboy all in one remarkable, bestial, freak mutation. A human being who truly lived for only one reason: to kill. A killing machine.

In Southeast Asia he killed the little people with a mad fury, both “good guys” and VC alike. In truth he saw no distinction. And there come a time when the security masters tried to terminate the members of the anomalous band that was fast becoming a dangerous potential liability. Chaingang and Michael Hora were two of the only survivors of this execution attempt, and they escaped.

They had not been close or even casual buddies. In fact, both of them were friendless, dangerous, self-contained killers who lived only for number one. Chaingang did not particularly respect Hora's abilities as a fighter, and Hora of course viewed Bunkowski as a monster or a total maniac, but they shared the common enemy and that had been enough for at least a begrudging relationship. During this time Daniel had learned of Hora's “place” south of Chicago. For a price, he was sometimes willing to shelter those on the run from the law. It was a piece of minutia to be filed away for possible future retrieval.

Now, these many years later, Chaingang Bunkowski looked at some old notes in the back of his “bible,” a ledger of escape plans he had worked on while in prison, and he saw the map of how to find Hora, assuming the man were still alive and the property still his. The thing that kept Bunkowski one step ahead of his adversaries made him feel confident Michael Hora would be there.

“Well, it won't be long now,” he told the girl, and presented her with an item from the trunk. She brightened when she saw the sack of magazines. “I think it's important for you to study for an hour or so. Read up on all these stars so you can learn their ways.” He handed her some of the schlock grocery-store tabloids and movie magazines.

“Sure. Great.” She was delighted and he knew she'd stay riveted to her important homework while he checked out the lay of the land.

“I should be back in an hour or less. But just wait here. You can sit over there"—he pointed—"or stay in the car. But stay nearby. Okay?"

She nodded.

He moved with the curious grace of the very heavy. That peculiar flat-footed, splayed, deceptively easy gliding movement that is somewhere between lumbering and waddling. From the distance his vast upper torso appeared to be propelled by the great tree-trunk legs, arms swinging slightly as he moved. Only when he was tired and his bad ankle could not fully support the bulk could you discern the slight limp.

The field ended with a tree line and he eased over some long-forgotten, rusting barbed-wire fence that had broken and been slowly crushed down by the unstoppable tide of vetch and poison ivy and creeper vine and pigweed and honeysuckle and multifloral rose and God only knows what kind of grass and weed and abomination of Mother Nature. And he was through the trees and weeds and in an overgrown parcel of pastureland that backed up to the property.

He moved steadily and on a perfectly straight line, thinking of nothing in particular but with the mixture of awareness that he carried right beneath his mental surface feeding his on-line terminals. Telling him the field was full of snakes. A few would be poisonous. There were cattle milling off somewhere in the wooded acreage to his right, and water nearby. And he knew there would be dogs. People. The taped tractor chain swung against his leg, the heavy weight a comforting presence.

The junk began before he had cleared the far edge of the pasture. He'd seldom seen anything like it. A panorama of blight. Huge, rust-encrusted mounds of everything imaginable. Filth-covered bedsprings and the guts from a hundred junked television sets. Ancient pumps and what was left from an old hay saw. Broken I-beams and cracked engine blocks and parts of tools and discarded appliances. Pieces of transient lives and memories and throwaways and investments gone bad and farms gone sour and marriages gone awry and a thousand broken, burst, busted, bummed-out vestiges of the American Dream left to mold and mildew and oxidize and collect weeds in the hot sun and cold winters of the great midwestern pastureland. All the white, gray, gunmetal, blue, silver, chrome, oilslick shades and hues and paint jobs had been worn and ground down to the same color—an ugly, ferruginous brownish shit red.

But this is not what he saw as he walked through the snaky weeds. He did not see broken dreams and bedsprings. He did not care about tanks, transmissions, trucks, clodbusters, cultivators, combines, planters, Plymouths, plows, rippers, rollers, refrigerators gutted to make pump houses and left to turn to rust. He saw hiding places, coffins, burial grounds, camouflage, ambush sites, killing zones, field expedient resupply, death and torture and escape and evasion.

He was Chaingang then, not Daniel, walking through the tall fescue and the creeper vine, the heavy chain swinging against a tree-trunk leg, and if you crossed him out here, out in all this overgrown world of desolate junk, you dropped. You disappeared. You bought it. Because this was a world he could relate to. The kind of things he gravitated toward. Junkyard dogs and snakes and lonely, frightening places with no one around to hear a cry for help. Nobody near to blunder onto a freshly dug grave. This was snuffie country.

He was aware of Michael Hora's presence then. Not that be thought Hora was watching him through a scope or anything. It was just a subliminal feeling that there was a dangerous man somewhere nearby. He was close now. And as he walked, guided by that inexplicable compass inside him, never hesitating for even that fraction of a fleeting second, one saw what Chaingang saw as he moved toward his destination, homing in on human heartbeat.

He saw the shape of Stobaugh County the way it fit between the four adjacent, touching land masses, and the surrounding and interlocking blue features, and the way the fishhook looked. This was his name for the part of the state he was now in, and he had looked at it for a long time, then redrawn a portion of it to scale on a page of the ledger, making clean, ultra-precise lines with a draftsman's hand, and the eye of an artist. Very close to true scale he had drawn what he called the fishhook shape of this land mass, bisecting it with the Sandy Road and Lingo Road, and Talbot's Mill Run, and Johnson's and Hunter's Ferry Road and the old Althea School road, crisscrossing the fishhook and neatly printing the names that were still only names to him.

But he had memorized the placement of Hora's to the Big Pasture, and the surrounding Rowe's Field, and South Spur, and Dutch Barrow, and Fast's, and Kerr's Store, and Bayou Landing, and he would know in an emergency situation how to get to Indian Nose and Hurricane Lamp, or where Thurman's property line was, or Texas Corners or the McDermott Cemetery. He'd been there for half an hour but he retained in his memory the place-names and roads and routes and geographic locations of the area better than some old-timers who'd been there for fifteen years.

Because his life might depend on his being able to make it through Lightfoot Swamp to Breen's Hole. He might have to find the burial mound south of Clearmont Church in a hurry, and he wouldn't have the luxury of calling Triple A or stopping a friendly stranger and asking directions. He might have to negotiate the twists and turns and surprises of County 530 in the pitch-black night, escaping with his life up through Dogleg and Hibbler to Whitetail Island, or Number 22, and when the time came it was all filed away inside his computer, the lay of the land and the escape routes. He believed that if you planned hard you won.

He smelled humans now and it was the scent of people nearby. He walked around vehicles, and a barking dog on a chain penetrated his faraway thoughts as he came around part of a rusting pickup and saw a heavy young woman sitting on the porch of a decrepit, tar-paper-covered house.

“Howdy,” he called out from a distance, beaming a smile in the woman's direction.

“Where'd jew come from?” she asked without interest, her mouth not unlike his, a small slit that opened in a shapeless mass of dough.

“This way.” He gestured vaguely, stepping around toward the front of the house but not going up on the porch. “Michael around?"

“Michael?"

“Yeah."

“Michael who?” she asked with a smart tone.

He thought how easily he could snuff her out. Go up on the porch, chain-snap her once, and butcher the fresh hog.

“Tell Michael Hora it's somebody used to work with him,” he said in a voice loud enough to carry to the surrounding buildings. He felt eyes on him for just a second or two before he heard the flat voice to his left and to the rear, “Bunkowski? Chaingang? Jesus!” he said as Chaingang turned and saw the man standing there. He bad not heard him come out of the building. “Whatchew doin’ here?” He didn't seem that happy at the prospect of a reunion.

“I gotta proposition for ya."

“I ain't in that line no more."

“No. Not that."

“Okay. What?"

“Need to go someplace we can talk in private."

“She don't hear nothin'."

“Uh huh."

“Go on. Speak your piece."

“I need a place to stay."

“So?"

“Someplace where people don't get too curious."

“You're hot then, are ya?"

“Oddly enough—no. But I need time to myself."

“Umm."

“I remembered you had a big place down here. I thought we might work out some kind of a deal."

“Howzzat?"

“I need to have something to do to occupy my time. I plan to go on a, uh, training regimen that will include a diet and lots of hard work."

“Diet. Work.” He repeated the words like they were foreign phrases he'd never heard before.

“Right. And you have work that can be done, right?"

“I cain't afford to pay for no work right now."

“No. You don't understand. I'll pay you. Also I'll do some of the work. Whatever fits into my schedule.” They talked some more and Chaingang pulled out a thousand dollars in cash. “For a month in advance?” Hora walked over and reached for the money. “Oh, and I have a woman with me."

“Where?” Hora looked around as if she might be standing in back of him.

“Back in my vehicle."

“You two ain't runnin'?"

“She knows nothing."

“Umm."

“A thousand a month up front. Anybody asks, I'm help you've hired to do the heavy work."

“Heavy work.” More new vocabulary. “We can try it for a month, I reckon.” He eyed the money. “Jus’ don't bring down no heat on me."

“No way,” Chaingang said.

“Reckon you can use the ole sharecropper shack. It's over yonder"—he gestured—"'tween here ‘n the ditch."

“What work is there now?"

“Say what?"

“What kinda work needs doin'?"

“Shit.” He laughed. “I dunno. Gotta unload these ties.” He gestured at a huge pile of railroad ties. “'N these here timbers.” A flatbed truck was piled with landscape timbers. “Always somethin'. Weeds need a cuttin'. Shit like that.” He shrugged. “Do whatever feels good.” He laughed again.

“Okay.” Chaingang turned to waddle off in the direction of the pastureland.

“I didn't hear the bell go off.” It was a word they used for a certain kind of alarm device they had used to safeguard their nighttime defensive perimeters. Nothing to do with a bell at all.

“I didn't ring it,” Chaingang said without turning. He added as he lumbered off, “Stepped over the trip wire."

Hora looked at the huge fat man's back and said nothing.