Slice

STOBAUGH COUNTY

Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski's world was that strange and unexplainable twilight swamp in which there were moments of apparent normalcy. He was a madman, of course. Totally insane. But yet much of the time he functioned on what appeared to be a normal plane of existence. When he returned to the sharecropper's house, to get supplies from the hootch, he was still firmly planted in Southeast Asia and in the middle of a running mission. It was the high and tiny voice of his woman, the soft tones of Sissy Selkirk, now hugely pregnant, that pulled him back into the middle range between raving lunacy and what passed for humanity.

“What happened to you?” The voice somehow pierced the fog of murderous thoughts, pulling at his consciousness like a tugboat trying to move a battleship. She tried again, “You're hurt. Howdja get cut?"

“Eh?” He rumbled a monosyllabic grunt at her, then realized the battle dressing had come off and the wound was bleeding again. In just that second his twisted mind embraced three thoughts.

First, he realized how stupid he had been to inflict a wound on himself over here, even jokingly, because the severity of the bacteria problem was an ever-present danger in this environment and ... Second, he knew even as he thought the idea that “over here” was wrong, that he was flashing back again, that this was another time and place. And third, he must have her buy a car. Put it in his name, trade the Caprice immediately. Thinking this because he knew in just that moment she'd have to go before long, even as he answered her, his mind calculating what sort of a response this human expected, forming his lips around the B-sound of barbed wire, saying, “Barbed-wire cut. Just a scratch,” moving away from her before the red tide could wash over him and he'd kill her for the hell of it, drag her back to that place under the bridge, put her in the car and be done with it. He knew now that he would have to kill her soon.

“You want me to get some whatdya call it and put onnit?” the little voice said.

“Yeah,” he forced himself to say. He must not allow himself the great pleasure of exploding in a scarlet tide and stomping this cow and her unborn child out in one stomp of fifteen-quintuple-E bootprint. He had gone to all this trouble so he would be able to kill freely, and later so that he could safely approach the hated cop EICHORD and introduce him to the tearing and pulverizing delights of Chaingang's special world. He must not blow his cover now. At least wait until the idiot dropped her frog. Find the cop with a woman and baby as his shield.

“Okay,” she said, surprised and delighted that he would allow her such a privileged intimacy. She ran in to find something to put on his wound, which he noticed was beginning to coagulate again. She came running back out and he was gone. He had taken off back toward the big ditch and his nighttime business.

When he finally got back under the bridge that night, shining the underwater light on his grisly work, he was delighted to find that there was a mini-junkyard of rusting vehicles submerged under the bridge. At one time some back-yard tinkerer, or perhaps some thief in the spot-and-steal game, had used the bridge as a convenient dumping grounds for the stripped junkers that were not worth hauling off for their weight in iron. As he wired his three new friends in place as a precaution, then wiring the doors of the rusting enclosure itself, he decided that he'd come back and create a very special graveyard right here in what he'd think of as the final rusting place of the metal elephants.

For weeks he worked by day and killed by night. Each day quitting earlier and driving farther, ranging out more and more, but almost always bringing his victims back to be placed under his beloved wooden bridge. He was killing with a serious vengeance now, goaded by the annoying yet tolerable ambiguity of the girl's constant presence, an irritant he had himself caused to exist and that—for the time being—he could do nothing about.

He would see her only briefly. Occasionally at a mealtime, or when his biological needs would force him to notice her proximate presence and he'd summon her to her knees for a quick head job. Then he'd be out the door, slamming the thing in a rage, driving wherever his killer vibes took him. He'd come back after his night business, sometimes wet as if he'd sweated through his clothing, but back to her to sleep beside her in that placid, soothed state that always settled over him after he had slaked his angry hunger with a living human's heart.

Sissy thought he probably went out and “went into bars and got into fights,” as previous men in her life had done. She was beginning to find the last weeks of pregnancy unpleasant. It was hot in the sharecropper shack, and hotter still outside. Even in the shade she suffered. She had some swelling of her fingers and her ankles. The hotter it got, the more her ankles swelled. It was if she had literally traded with her man: the more weight he lost, the bigger her stomach got. The stronger his ankle, the weaker hers became.

One day she came waddling up to him while he was cutting weeds and said, “Sorry to bother ya.” He looked up at her. “But can you take me to see a doctor."

“You having it?"

“Huh uh. I don't feel so good. I feel like I'm gonna puke and my feet are killing me and I'm hurting here an'...” She started to go on with a whole catalog of problems. He sighed disgustedly and dropped the weed slinger, motioning for her to follow him as he headed for the car.

In town the doctor said to them, “This here,” he was talking about her sickness, “is prob'ly just, uh"—he started to say psychosomatic but caught himself in time—"nothin’ to worry over. Step on the scales here."

“Okay.” She obliged.

“Yeah.” He marked something on a chart. “Step down.” She did so with an effort—each movement was a massive expenditure of energy. “You've gained about six and a half pounds, maybe seven. Perfectly normal. Your blood pressure is only slightly elevated. The diastolic, uh, lower reading is ninety. I wouldn't worry, really. You're doin’ fine."

“I'm so hot alla time I feel like I'm gonna faint."

“Just git a lot of rest,” be told her with a chuckle. “Remember, you wanna keep eatin’ good. You're eating for two.” He'd only said that two thousand times.

“Come on,” Daniel told the girl as she waddled back out to the car, “we'll go get you some pizza and have a picnic.” He beamed in a vocal tone so solicitous and warm that she looked over at him.

“Yeah,” she said, beginning to cheer up with his tender, loving offer, “that sounds good.” And she settled back beside him, Chaingang's baby inside her like a seven-pound basketball.

Without exception, each week of his prolonged agony and self-imposed starvation on the fat farm, Daniel had allowed himself one meal as a reward. He would often take Sissy with him and they'd drive in and feast on cheeseburgers, nachos, fish platters, whatever fast-food place caught his eye first would find him as a customer. They gravitated toward places with drive-in windows, as the size and appearance of “that there new man works for Hora” was already a topic of discussion within the tiny agricommunity.

It was close to his weekly treat time and he pulled up at the busy drive-in window of a Pizza Palace. He'd phoned ahead while Sissy was at the doctor's.

“Yes, sir. Welcome to Pizza Palace. May we take your order?” the squawking intercom asked him.

“We called in an order. Name's Selkirk,” he told the box.

“Yes, sir. It's ready. That'll be $18.90, please drive to the window.” He drove the Caprice up and pulled out a fistful of disreputable-looking crumpled bills, counting off nineteen in fives and ones. His massive sunburned arm shoved the money up into the window. Sissy loved to touch him on the arms and back and he sometimes let her. His muscles were rock-hard. His arms, legs, back, neck—all looked as if they'd been carved from solid hardwood. There was not an ounce of fat anywhere except on his belly, chest, and haunches.

They drove away and stopped on the way back to Hora's at a favorite spot for their “picnic feasts,” a spot where Chaingang had once buried a kill. It amused him to bring the pregnant woman there.

“Ummm,” she said, a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni not yet swallowed as she spoke, “this is good.” She ate two pieces from the two giant-size pizzas as usual. She was always amazed at the amount of food he would eat, but she said nothing. “Ain't you hungry?” she asked him now. He said nothing. He had eaten only eight slices of pizza and, to his great amazement, he was full. It actually worried him momentarily, until he realized that he had shrunk to that extent.

“Watch,” he told her, and in something so alien and uncharacteristic for him Daniel stood up and, sucking in his gut slightly, pulled the belt in, cinching it in as hard as he could. The pants he'd just bought two months before to replace the ones that had been falling off were already too big, and he pulled the cow-long belt in nearly a foot. He'd already cut a good foot of leather off the belt.

“God! You're gettin’ skinny.” She smiled. This was her idea of clever wit.

He beamed back and nodded. But the only thought going through his mind as he rebuckled the belt was, he would like to say to her, Do you know where you're sitting? And when she said, No, she didn't, he'd tell her she was having a picnic on a grave. And then he'd ask her if she would like to see what was in it. He thought what great pleasure it would bring him when he removed both her and her mound of a gut from his presence. He allowed himself the barking cough of a laugh.

“That's me,” he told her, “skinny.” This was the longest conversation they'd had in months and she wished she could put her arms around him and hug him, but she was afraid if she tried to move she'd puke the pizza up.

“Could we buy a fan?” she asked him.

“I don't see why not,” he told her, again surprising both of them. “After all, we want you to have a healthy kid, eh?” He wondered, idly, what the kid would look like if he took his bowie and sliced her watermelon open, and took it out of the oven a little early.

“Right here,” he rumbled to her and patted her stomach, where his child was being carried. That's where I'll make the cut, he thought. He traced a line across her swollen belly with a steel finger like a knife point. “This is where a baby is."

That's right,” she said. “Feel your son in there."

And he did.