The brothers began talking over one another heatedly, each with his own theories. I sat quietly for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I felt like I had asthma. I needed a bellows shoved down my throat. We didn’t realize we could put the windows down until we were halfway to the brothers’ house. My shirt was soaked in sweat. It dawned on me I only had one of my crutches.
I wasn’t very vocal during the ride home. The brothers were doing enough talking. I was trying to wrap my head around what we’d just witnessed. A girl running around in her underwear next to the river. Sure, it was warm enough. So what about Cujo? More importantly, what about the guys who’d sicced him on the girl? The thought put a miserable taste in my mouth and I didn’t know how many drinks it would take to get it out. I wanted to take my throbbing foot and throw it out the window.
“Sorry about the fishing rod, guys.”
“Did the dog rip the throat out of that chick? What the hell do we do now?” Reggie was leaning forward, clutching the seat.
“I don’t know what all we can do. Call the cops, I guess.”
Maybe the body would still be there. Maybe both bodies.
“Do you think they got a good look at us?” Reggie asked.
“No shot in hell. No way. Not from all the way over there,” Denby said.
I thought briefly about how easy it was to run into somebody you didn’t want to see in Richmond. An asshole, an ex-girlfriend, a murderer. The city could be awfully small.
We turned into Oregon Hill. We’d been driving very fast up until then, but when we came to where the neighborhood started, Denby pulled it back to a crawl. I couldn’t make up my mind about whether this was the adrenaline leaving him or because he realized we were coming back into Oregon Hill. I would’ve felt safer driving around Richmond in the car or, even better, out of the city altogether, but I kept my mouth shut. It was very late by then. A few kids passed us on bicycles as we got out of the car. The bars were closed. We stood still until they rode off the block.
The living room held a large collection of DVDs and a flat screen on the wall. The television was a gift from their mother. Several framed posters of horror flicks hung on the walls. I sat on the leather sofa and took out a cigarette and lit it. It didn’t taste right in my mouth. I put it out in one of the empty beer cans on their glass coffee table. The room was cold, even in the summertime. Denby sat next to me on the sofa and Reggie took a seat in the corner of the room. We all stared at the floor or the wall or our shoelaces but avoided looking at each other. No one had anything to say, so we just sat there in the silence. Then we heard the kitchen door open. Reggie and I looked at Denby, as if it were his responsibility to lock the door. My eyes were all but bulging out.
Heels were clicking on the wood, followed by heavy boots. Ebone walked into the room. Her legs looked very nice in heels. Behind her was a black guy with a shaved head, a low-hanging gold chain, and wrists about as thick as my neck. He was only about seven feet tall.
“You really should lock your door, boys. I wouldn’t exactly rate this as a safe neighborhood,” she said. Her smile had as much venom as a King Cobra.
“This isn’t really the time, Ebone,” Denby started.
“I’m here to get that bag off of you, Denby. That’s why I brought Maurice here. I hate to get nasty but you know how I am when I don’t get what I want. I guess I’m spoiled.”
I stood up. “Now listen here, you crazy—”
Maurice took a step toward me. I sat back down. Ebone laughed.
“What the hell are you going to do? You don’t even have two crutches,” she sneered. “Tough guy on one foot.” She turned back to Denby. “So? Where is it?”
“Ebone, we already had this talk. I got nothing for you. If anybody should have anything for another body, it oughta be you. You swindled me, remember? Where do you get off?” I could tell he wanted to sound hard, but with the recent course of events and the present size of Maurice, his voice was strained and borderline soft. Though I wasn’t exactly in a position to judge.
She came up close to Denby and played with his ear. “You’re really gonna hold that against me, Denby? I thought we were friends?” she purred.
“Maybe if you make right.”
“I tried to do that earlier tonight. You didn’t seem to like my deal then.”
“Discounts are out, Eb.”
“Well...” She started walking away from him then. “I guess you and Maurice are going to have to play. I really think you’d have liked playing with me better though, Denby. We had fun once.”
Maurice walked further into the room. I grabbed my crutch, almost holding it as if it were a bat. It’s what I had a mind to use it as.
From behind Ebone we heard the door open again. Everyone froze and turned, looking toward the hallway leading into the kitchen.
Ebone started to back into the living room with us and came to stand next to Maurice. Two men walked into the room. One of them was very thin with a flat ugly nose and a trucker hat. The other was taller but had a beer belly that stuck out from under his white T-shirt and a full reddish beard. The thin one held a crutch he didn’t need that looked very familiar to me. The tall one had a gun in his hand.
“We havin’ us a party?” the thin one asked. He smiled and showed us his bad teeth. He raised the crutch. “I think you lost something.”
“Hey, neighbor, now isn’t exactly the best time...” Denby said.
No one seemed to care about Denby’s schedule.
“Normally, we don’t like to meddle, even if we do see folks we don’t particularly like to see in our neck of the woods, ain’t that right, Greg?”
“What, you mean niggers, Walt?” Greg, the taller one, replied.
“Precisely precise. And hell, we can even respect most anybody who enjoys the sport of fishing. I guess you boys just happened on a bad spot.”
“A little further up by the bridge ain’t bad fishin’,” Greg said.
“Who the hell are you hillbillies?” Ebone demanded. The sound of her voice made me wince. The timing was off too.
Greg motioned the gun at her and Walt barely had time to grab his wrist before it fired. It didn’t stop the shot but it did save her life. Instead, the bullet caught Maurice in the belly. His shirt began to show red quickly and he took a step forward. He made an awful sound. Greg fired two more times at the big man. Neither of these shots missed.
Maurice fell on his face and he was as heavy as he looked. The crash made almost as much noise as the gunshots.
“Jesus H, Greg! What’d you shoot for?”
“I didn’t mean to, but he looked like he was making a move, man!”
“Yeah, cause you shot him!”
“I thought we was gonna to shoot ’em anyway!”
“Yeah, but you was aimin’at her! Be a waste to pop her here. We can play the game with her. She ain’t a bad piece, even she is a nigger.”
I had a bad habit of talking before I thought better of it. Maybe two people getting murdered right in front of me made me act stupid. “Is that what you were doing down there? Playing a game? Siccing a dog on steroids to rip a girl apart? What kind of fucked-up country bastards are you?”
Greg’s face twisted up at that, but Walt just started showing us his teeth again.
“We love our dogs. They get bored just like we do. ’Cept they can’t drink no beer. Or at least they don’t like it all too much. And I do love to see a girl go for a run. Now, on your feet, gimpy. We gon’ take us a field trip.”
No one had been paying much attention to Reggie. It was a mistake not to pay attention to a man in an outdoorsman vest. No one had seen him unsheathe a machete in the corner of the room. Without a word, he swung it into Walt’s arm. There was a shrill scream, like an elementary school fire alarm. Greg pointed the gun at Reggie but I’d already consented to their previous command and gotten to my feet. I swung my remaining crutch into Greg’s face with all the muscle I had. The bolt I used to adjust the height of the crutch must have hit him right between the eyes. Blood spurted out everywhere and he fell to the floor, clutching his face, dropping his gun.