I’ll admit it, I peeked. Pearl was on her knees, staring up at Fat Ernst, right hand wrapped around his dick, giving him that lopsided smile.
“Fuck you, you ugly old bitch,” Fat Ernst said, spitting little flecks of blood into the air as he spoke. “I don’t care what the fuck you do, you ain’t getting jack shit outta me.”
Pearl froze.
Just for a second. Then she nodded. But the lopsided grin never left. She opened her mouth wide, and I suddenly feared that she was just gonna bite Fat Ernst’s dick right off. Instead, she said in a low voice, “Junior, get your ass over here.”
Junior stopped kneading Misty’s breasts. “But, Ma …” he whined. “I was just getting started.”
“You mind your mother,” Pearl snapped. “Less you want to sleep with the hogs again. Besides,” she said, not taking her eyes off of Fat Ernst. “We get that buckle, and I’ll let you take her home.”
“You mean it?”
“Of course. You can keep her as long as you want. This flood here, nobody’ll know what happened to her. If you’re careful, she’ll last weeks, maybe even months, if you’re extra damn careful.”
Junior licked at Misty’s eye and whispered, “You stay right here now. I’ll be back right quick.” He pushed her down into the booth and left the end of the leash on the table.
Misty gave him a smile I hoped was fake.
“Drag that goddamn deputy back in here. Find out if we caught anything,” Pearl said and let go of Fat Ernst’s dick. She put her hand on his thigh for support and pushed herself to her feet. “You don’t know what you’re missing.” She didn’t zip his pants back up, and that made me nervous.
Junior and Bert yanked on Ray’s cowboy boots and slid the body back inside. Once Ray’s head cleared the doorframe, Bert dropped the leg and sank into a nearby chair. His face had gone nearly totally white, and he kept scratching at the skin around the top of the cast, where his arm joined his shoulder.
“You got your knife?” Pearl demanded, leaning on her cane, still standing between Fat Ernst’s knees.
Bert nodded feebly, working his fingers under the top of the cast.
“Junior. Cut his head off.”
That got Fat Ernst’s attention. His eyes snapped open, jerking up to Pearl’s face. She grinned back down at him. “You had your chance,” was all she said. The muscles in Fat Ernst’s arms tensed, and fresh droplets of blood started rolling down his wrists, the backs of his hands, collecting in small puddles on the floor.
Misty methodically twisted and rotated her wrists, still bound in the extension cord. I kept staring at her, but she wouldn’t look up.
Junior bent over, plucked the huge Rambo knife out of Bert’s boot, and sank to his knees by Ray’s head. Ray’s legs were pointing toward me, and I couldn’t see much. Junior cocked his head for a moment, studying Ray’s long, crooked neck, readjusted his grip on the knife, then brought it down like he was pounding on a stubborn nail. He sawed the knife back and forth for a moment, and a dark pool of blood began to grow under Ray’s shoulders.
After a couple of seconds of sawing, Ray’s head rolled lazily away from his body and came to a stop, resting on the left cheek and ear.
“Bring it on over here,” Pearl said, waving Junior over.
Junior drove the tip of Bert’s knife into the table. Bert looked like he wanted to focus on the quivering handle, but his eyes wouldn’t work right. Junior picked up Ray’s head by the thinning hair, holding it out as if Ray wanted to keep an eye on the floor, and carried it over to Fat Ernst’s chair.
Ray’s eyes were closed. His mouth was open, fat tongue hanging limply between his teeth. His eyes had nearly disappeared inside his orbits, as if they had been pushed aside, driven deeper into the skull. The huge Adam’s apple had been raggedly severed in half.
“Well, well, well. Let’s see what we caught here,” Pearl said, taking Ray’s head by the hair. She dangled it in front of Fat Ernst’s face for a moment. The fingers on her ruined left hand stretched out, forcing Ray’s jaws open even farther. The thumb and forefinger slithered inside, pushing the tongue out of the way. She yanked the head away from her chest with her right arm, and there, pinched between the thumb and forefinger of her ruined hand, was a worm. Maybe three inches long, slick with blood and slime, squirming and twisting between Pearl’s two fingers.
Pearl flung Ray’s head at me. I flinched and jerked out of the way as it hit the bar and bounced into my lap. I bucked, kicked it down the bar, yelling something, and looked frantically down at my T-shirt. No worms, thank God. Nothing had crawled out of his head.
Pearl held the worm up to Fat Ernst’s nose. “I think he likes you,”she said, and laughed, a high, whistling, joyless sound that seemed to be more of a wheeze than an actual laugh. The worm contracted, drawing its tail up to its head until it was nearly a complete circle. It slapped its flat tail back against Pearl’s thumb, sliding sluggishly, urgently around the liver-spotted, leathery skin. “Told you, you had your chance,” she said, and without any kind of warning she dropped the worm onto Fat Ernst’s naked dick.
Fat Ernst started screaming then, a soul-shredding sound that filled the restaurant, inarticulate strangled gasps and sobs between each shriek of pain. His body bucked and jerked against the barbed wire, taking the chair on a shuddering dance around the dining room. Pearl leaned on her cane and watched. Finally, he tipped over backward and crashed into the wooden floor. I heard something crack.
Oh God, please let that be the chair, I thought. If I can just distract Pearl and Bert long enough for Fat Ernst to get loose, then we might get out of this alive. All Fat Ernst would have to do would be to roll over, crawl six or seven feet toward the jukebox and grab Ray’s Super Redhawk. I’d like to see the look on Pearl’s face then.
In the meantime, Bert clawed frantically at the skin around his shoulder. His motions were getting so frantic he was starting to draw blood.
Fat Ernst kept rolling and twitching, sliding the back of the chair around on the floor, his head whipping back and forth, and I got a blurred impression of his white face, mouth open in silent horror.
Hang in there, I thought. Just keep going. Don’t quit yet. I need you to snag that fucking revolver. The black and white slivers of his eyes found mine and glared at me accusingly.
Pearl clomped around to Fat Ernst’s head and gazed down at him. “We could have had something,” she said, almost sadly, and gently placed the sharp tip of her cane in the hollow of Fat Ernst’s right eye. He stopped shaking and started making sounds then, just gurgling moans really, but it was enough to let Pearl know that he felt the pressure on his eye. She leaned forward, putting all her weight on the top of thecane. I saw the tip of the cane slide into Fat Ernst’s eye about an inch and hold for a moment. Fat Ernst flopped and jerked against the wires, but they held firm.
“Fuck … all of you … Ahhhhhhhhh—shit …” Fat Ernst gasped.
Pearl put more weight on the cane, and something popped. The cane suddenly sank another four or five inches into Fat Ernst’s head. His body jerked and he farted, a deep, ripping noise that filled the restaurant with the pungent aroma of ripe shit. The smell made even Pearl wince.
Fat Ernst twitched once, twice, and that was it.
CHAPTER 30