I was on the couch, sitting. My feet were tied with a twisted coat hanger and my wrists were bound behind my back with what I figured was the same. At my back the wind and small pellets of ice whirled through the broken glass and smacked the back of my head, neck, and shoulders. The couch was soaked with cold rain.
Big Man had pulled a chair up in front of the couch and he was looking at me. To his right he had placed another chair. On the chair, from my cabinets and closets, were a variety of items. Straightened coat hangers, a butcher knife, a corkscrew, pliers, and an ice pick. There was also a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin.
Big Man had taken his shirt off, and he was a massive hunk, with a big solid belly and a hairy chest and arms that looked like knotted ship cables. On his right lower arm was a large festered wound. His face was oily and covered with sweat beads the size of his own knuckles, which were considerably larger than diesel truck lug bolts. He was holding his head up with difficulty. His breathing was bad. His face had gone from pale to blue, but not as blue as his lips. His eyes were scummy around the edges and the whites were no longer whites, but reds. In his left hand he held a Swiss Army knife open to the spoon.
“I was thinking of your eyes,” he said. “I thought they might be a good place to start. But I’m having second thoughts. I say let you see what there is to see until the very last.”
“There’s no reason to do this, Big Man,” I said. “It’s all over. You did Pierre in yourself. What’s the point?”
Big Man smiled at me. His teeth appeared not to have been cleaned in ages. They were yellow, with brown roots that were probably from chewing tobacco.
“The point is completion, ” Big Man said. “No one believes in completion anymore. I do. I finish what I start. I was paid to do you in, get a video and a book, and now I’m here to do just that. I could have done the nigger, but you worked out better. I been hiding in the woods. You’re easier to get to here. You, the nigger, the cunt, it don’t matter, long as I come up with what I set out to come up with. The book. The video.”
“It’s over, Big Man.”
Big Man shook his head. “No. The other night was left undone, Mr. Collins, but as you can see, here we are again.”
“You did your job, man. Pierre isn’t here to pay you anymore. You’re not obligated.”
“He hired me. He didn’t pay me. I had to extract some vengeance for that. I took a little money from him, a few items I could sell. Nothing that drastically exceeded what was owed me for the job I had done so far. He wanted to not pay me because I didn’t get the video and the book. He wasn’t giving me enough time. Jesus, you know, Collins, I feel like shit.”
“Big Man. Listen. The notebook, the videos. The cops have them.”
“You said that before.”
“And I lied, but this time it’s true. It’s all over. I wasn’t trying to blackmail anyone. That wasn’t my purpose.”
“Shut up. I got a headache. I’ll do the talkin’.”
“That looks like a bite,” I said, nodding toward the wound on his arm.
“Fox. I was campin’. Livin’ in the woods in Pierre’s Mercedes. I got out to take a piss. Fox came at me. Leaped at me. Bit me. I strangled it. I never seen one do like that before.”
“It was rabid, Big Man. You’ve been bitten by a rabid fox.”
“No.”
“Yes. A rabid squirrel bit me, so I should know!”
Big Man burst out laughing. “A rabid squirrel! What’s your game, Mr. Collins?”
“Big Man, I don’t have the video or the notebook. Your job is over.”
“It’s over when I say it’s over. And if you don’t have the video or the notebook, well, I’ll know for sure after we try out a few of these instruments. A corkscrew twisted into the knee, just above the knee joint. You wouldn’t believe-”
“Yes, I would.”
“Oh, no. Experiencing it is the only way to believe it. I’ve tried it on myself. It really hurts. Of course, I didn’t go as deep into my flesh as I’m going to go into yours. I’m going to screw it right into your leg and through the muscle and nerves and into the bone. Then I’m going to do your triceps tendons. Now there’s some pain, my man.”
The house rattled. The rain slammed harder and harder.
Big Man took the aspirin bottle and unscrewed it and shook several aspirin into his mouth. He picked up the glass of water, tried to sip it. He tossed it across the room, spat the aspirin in my lap.
“I can’t swallow,” he said. “Hell of a cold.”
“It’s the water. Hydrophobia. You have rabies, Big Man. You need a doctor. It may not be too late.”
Big Man stood up violently, causing the chair he had been sitting in to fall backwards to the floor. “I do not have rabies. I startled a fox, that’s all. You’re not going to frighten me.”
“I got bit by the squirrel, doctor told me a story about a boy got bit and died screaming in bed, gnashing his teeth. Finally his father smothered him. Whatever you do to me, it won’t be half of what’s going to happen to you. Call the doctor, Big Man. Get some help. This rabies stuff, it’s got you half out of your mind. Maybe more.”
“Oh, you think you’re clever. Well, you aren’t. I’m gonna start with the coat hanger.” Big Man closed up the Swiss Army knife and jammed it in his pants pocket. He grabbed the straightened wire hanger off the chair. “What we’re gonna do is, I’m gonna pull down your pants, Collins, then I’m going to insert this up your asshole slowly, twisting, pushing, and you are gonna talk like a sonofabitch. You’re gonna-”
The front door came open suddenly, and standing in the doorway, soaked to the skin, was Brett. Water was running out of her hair and into her eyes, and she was scared-looking and talking as the door came open. “Truck ran off in a ditch. I-”
Then she saw Big Man.
“Come on in, honey,” Big Man said. “You’re just in time to see me screw this up your lover’s ass. Maybe up the pee-hole in his dick. Fact is, that sounds better. I haven’t tried that.”
Brett’s face went slack and her right hand smoothed the side of her thigh and dropped lower and took the hem of her dress. She lifted it, and I could see her panties, all wet and sticking to her like cobwebs, and I could see her beautiful legs. One of them had a belt around it with a holster strapped to it and a. 38 in the holster. I had forgotten about that. She didn’t go anywhere without it anymore.
She came up with the. 38 and fired three times, so goddamn quick it was almost like one shot.
Big Man looked down at his chest. Three small red spots appeared on his filthy T-shirt. He looked at Brett, said, “You’re first, split tail. Right up the cunt.”
He stepped toward her, holding the coat hanger, which wobbled like a giant insect antennae. Brett fired twice more.
Big Man paused, as if he had been strolling and decided not to cross at a certain traffic light, but to go the other way. He stepped back once, turned around, started walking toward the back door. He fell and grabbed the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen and held himself up. Brett fired again, and Big Man reached behind him, fanned at his spine like he was trying to swat a wasp.
He kept his feet, went out the back door walking briskly, but not running.
“Brett,” I said. “You all right?”
“I guess so,” Brett said, stepping out of the doorway and into the house.
“There’s pliers on the chair here. Get them, undo these coat hangers.”
Brett got the pliers and started twisting my ankles and wrists free.
“That must have been Big Man,” she said.
“In the flesh,” I said. When I was free I rushed to the bedroom, came back with my shotgun, a flashlight, and my. 38. I gave Brett the shotgun. “He comes back, cut down on him with this.”
“You bet,” she said. I kissed her. Her lips trembled, and so did mine.
I took my. 38, went out the back way, into the rain and the dark and wind so stout it could have blown Jesus off the cross.