Sturm appeared in the church doorway, holding the chainsaw. “Damn thing’s sunk into the wall. They sure as hell knew how to build ’em back in the old days. I’d need a goddamn tow truck to get it out.”
“We can get you one,” Chuck called out, wanting to make up for pissing on the church.
“Nah. Ain’t worth it. I got a better idea. Watch your heads.” He ducked back into the darkness.
Everyone turned back to Frank.
“Still,” Pine pointed out. “What makes you so special?” He looked around the group. “I mean, it ain’t like he’s done anything half the fellas in town haven’t done. So why were you invited…and we weren’t?”
“Yeah, what is it makes you so special?” Jack asked.
The clowns clustered around Frank, pinning him against the church steps, watching his smile close, his eyes closer. The anger was back, stronger now, the waves nearly knocking Frank off his feet. The practiced smile wasn’t going to hold them off this time.
Again, instead of fear, Frank felt his own anger rise and crash into the waves like a clenched fist. He shrugged, one final time. “I dunno. All I can say is, she must of liked how I tasted. Well, that…and I made her come.”
“Whoa.” Jack’s voice had become the temperature of morgue steel. “You’re saying…you’re saying you touched her.”
The whiskey in Frank’s head said, “Yeah.”
A cracking, splintering noise made them all look up at the steeple. Sturm kicked out one of the louvered shutters and climbed out onto the roof, dragging the chainsaw behind him. “Anybody got any rope?” he shouted.
They shook their heads.
“We can go get some,” Chuck shouted.
“Hell with it,” Sturm yelled back. “Stand back.” He inched his way up the steep roof to the cross, fired up the chainsaw, and without hesitation, sank the spinning teeth deep into the wood. He sawed into the base horizontally, cutting about two-thirds of the way through, then again with a downward angle. He knocked out the pie shaped piece, then went at it from the other side. The immense cross shuddered and slowly toppled over to the right. It hit the steep roof, slid down it like an icicle, sliced off the edge of the roof, and soared off into empty space, arcing through the air upside down, until it hit the dead lawn with deep crack that the clowns felt in their bones. The bottom crashed down in an explosion of dry grass and dust.
“Good enough. We’ll bolt that sonofabitch back together,” Sturm hollered.
They waited until Sturm and Theo got back downstairs. It took all six of them to carry the cross.
* * * * *
Sturm tore open the bag of quick dry cement with his teeth and dumped the gray powder into the wheelbarrow. Frank grasped the handles of the wheelbarrow and jogged with Sturm along the walkway between the house and garden out into the back yard to the bare patch of dirt.
Jack unspooled the hose from the garden and started to gingerly spray the soft gray powder but Sturm snatched the hose away and sent a river of water full blast at the cement, working it up and down, giving the cement a quick soak, but not overdoing it.
Jack pushed Frank out of the way and attacked the cement with a long handled hoe, only this blade had two circles cut away in the middle, allowing the now liquid cement to seep through the holes. He swept the hoe back to him and shoved it way, over and over, as if trying to rip long jagged strips out of a pool table.
Sturm barked out something that sounded like he approved, but it was lost in the scraping of Jack’s hoe along the bottom of the wheelbarrow. Sturm turned the hose towards the grave and started soaking the ground. Frank found a shovel, the same one that Sturm had killed Fairfax with, and started digging as headlights appeared from around the house. Pine and Chuck carried the keg out to the grave.
The hole was four feet deep when Frank hit something soft. Black liquid dripped off the shovel blade in the flashlights. Frank figured that was deep enough and stopped digging.
Again, it took all of them to carry the cross out to the back yard and drop the bottom into the hole. Theo came out of the barn with several long two-by-fours, and used these to brace the cross upright while the men held it in place. Sturm feverishly shoveled wet cement into the hole.
One by one, they gradually let go of the cross, letting the two-by-fours maintain the balance. Sturm emptied the wheelbarrow, then got on his hands and knees and swept his palms over the wet, sticky cement, smoothing it out like with the dirt in the barn before. Frank saw a tear hang from Sturm’s nose for a brief second before splashing down into the cement. Frank turned away, giving the man some privacy.
He sank onto the steps of the deck, and surveyed the back yard. The cross dominated the landscape, overpowering everything. It was simply too big, like a walnut tree in a field of dwarf pines. But Sturm seemed satisfied. It showed true respect for his dog.
Frank yawned, shook his head. “Well, gentlemen. I gotta get back and feed everyone.” That, and finish the bottle of rum stashed under his cot. The bottle of Jack Daniels in Jack’s truck could wait until tomorrow. He stood. Jack, Pine, and Chuck watched him with blank, dull gazes.
“Hold on. Want you to take a look at something.” Sturm said in a thick voice. He led Frank through the garden again and back into the barn. But this time, he went straight down the aisle, past Sarah, and opened the back door.
* * * * *
Frank stepped out into a large, irregularly shaped cage. The ground was bare dirt, packed hard. A few bald tires were tossed in the corner; in the other corner was a crumpled, stained mattress. The sides of the cage were constructed of two layers of chicken wire, buried deep, bolted to steel anchors. The wire was stretched tight over a curiously curving and bulging framework. It took Frank a while for realize the bars were actually the bones of old playground equipment, lashed together with chains and padlocks. The whole thing was interlaced with razor wire. Frank figured out they must have raided both the hardware store and the elementary school.
“Boys worked hard on this, I tell you that.”
“Yeah. Looks like they locked this down tight.”
“Think it’ll hold?”
“Hold what?”
“Them two lionesses, back at your office.”
“I thought they were for the hunts tomorrow.”
Sturm laughed. “Shit, I got plans for them girls. Yessir. I would have shot them long time ago otherwise.”
“I thought, well, thought that they were gonna be shot out in the fields. The clients were gonna—”
“No rich peckerhead dipshit is gonna shoot my girls. Not while I’m around. Fuck no. The clients’ll have fun, don’t you worry. They won’t be complaining. They’ve got plenty to shoot at.” Sturm grabbed hold of one of the curved bars and shook it. “No. What I need to know is, is this going to hold ’em? Those cats. They’re not for the hunts. No sir. Those are my pets.”
DAY TWENTY-TWO
The morning sun undulated into a white sky, sending temperatures into triple digits when Frank finally slipped away. He wheeled the long black car away from Sturm’s ranch, hunched over the wheel, joints in his neck and shoulders full of ground glass, everything coming through the tinted windows bleached and cracked, like bones picked clean and left to lie in the sun. When he realized he’d just blown straight through the highway intersection without stopping, without even slowing down, he decided he needed someplace to park.
He pulled off the road straight into an overgrown almond orchard, plowing silently through the three-foot grass into the center. Branches bursting with dry leaves and clusters of brittle almonds scraped the roof of the car. He killed the engine but left the keys in the ignition and slid down, relaxing into the corner of the seat and door, so that he could just see above the dashboard. He slipped into fitful sleep, too tired to even look for the bottle of rum under the seat. The shadows in the orchard were deep and dark and cool and Frank slept for six hours straight.