Wormfood (22 page)

“Shit,” Junior spat. “You think you’re dealing with some fresh pussy here?” He snorted. “Hard way. Don’t make me laugh. Ma’ll show you the hard way. She’ll fuck you up the ass with a chainsaw.”

“You wanna push it? You wanna find out?” Fat Ernst stepped forward, curling his hands into fists the size of footballs.

Junior only came up to about Fat Ernst’s sternum, but he didn’t back down, I’ll give him that. He just nodded slowly, saying, “If that’s the way you want it, then—”

Junior never did get to finish the sentence because Fat Ernst’s right fist lashed out and smashed into his taped nose. Junior’s head snapped back, and before he could either fall or take a step backward, Fat Ernst’s left fist swung up and popped his nose again. This time, Junior landed on the floor in front of Bert.

Bert looked down. “Hey, Junior, your nose is bleedin’ again.”

Fat Ernst stepped forward, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Yeah, you’re one tough customer all right. Told ya you weren’t gonna like it the hard way.”

Junior coughed wetly, made a gagging noise at the back of his throat, then spit blood onto the floor. He rolled over, trying to find his feet. Fat Ernst planted the sole of his boot on Junior’s butt and pushed him back to the floor. “Stay down, asshole. I want you to think about this for a while.”

Misty’s hand found mine and I squeezed it hard.

Ray chuckled and knelt next to Junior. “See what happens when you fuck with real men? Go home to your mommy, you little pansy.”

Junior swallowed. “Suck my dick,” he said in a thick voice.

Ray thumped the top of Junior’s head with his thumb and forefinger. “Don’t you got enough sense to know when you’re beat?”

Junior just grinned at Ray, and suddenly shot his head forward like a cobra, sinking his teeth into the meat of Ray’s calf. Ray screamed like a little girl, falling and kicking wildly. Junior hung on, shaking his head like a pit bull, refusing to unclamp those jaws. Ray kept screaming, “Mother … motherfucker …” in a high-pitched shriek.

Fat Ernst sighed and kicked Junior in the head. Junior’s body went slack, and he finally let go, a bloody scrap of Ray’s pants between his teeth. As Junior slumped against the floor on his back, I could see his eyes had rolled up white.

Ray scrabbled away from Junior, still shrieking, “Motherfucking motherfucker …” He clutched at his bleeding leg for a few seconds, then grabbed a table and pulled himself to his feet. He flailed at his holster. It took both hands to pull out that gigantic Redhawk.

“I’ll kill you!” Ray shrieked, forgetting all about his deep voice. He managed to shakily point his pistol at Junior, still lying on the floor. “Kill you fucking dead!”

“Do it,” Fat Ernst hissed in a low, urgent voice. “Shoot the motherfucker! Teach him a lesson.” I realized what Fat Ernst was doing. He was trying to get Ray to eliminate the competition. Ray would take the blame for killing Junior, and Fat Ernst would get the buckle all to himself. “Shoot him!” Fat Ernst commanded again.

Ray clicked the hammer back. I held my breath, wondering if Ray would really go through with it, would actually shoot Junior in thehead at point-blank range. That close, the bullet would simply dissolve Junior’s head. I couldn’t decide if I was scared or happy. But just then, out of the corner of my eye, through the window, I happened to catch Slim’s pickup swerving wildly down the highway toward the intersection.

At the last second, Slim roared off the asphalt and smashed right into Fat Ernst’s neon sign, going at least thirty miles an hour. The pickup bounced over the cement foundation in an explosion of sparks as the sign and the pole toppled over and hit the mud with a resounding crash.

Ray froze, pistol twitching.

Nobody else moved either, except Bert, who leaned over and looked out the other window. “Hey, I think Slim just hit your sign.”

Out in the parking lot, Slim’s tires were spinning in the mud, but the pickup must have been stuck on the jagged stump of the sign.

The phone rang, a heavy, black, blocky thing behind the bar.

Fat Ernst ignored it and yanked the front door open. “You fucking fuck! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he roared, stomping out to the wooden stairs.

Slim swung the driver’s door open and fell face first into the mud.

The phone rang again.

Ray finally let the pistol drop, ever so gently squeezing the trigger and easing the hammer down with his thumb. I didn’t think he had it in him to shoot someone in cold blood. “We’ll be picking this up later, I guarantee.” He slid the Redhawk into the holster and spit in Junior’s face. Junior didn’t react. Ray joined Fat Ernst out on the front steps.

The phone rang one more time, an insistent, authoritative sound. I couldn’t take it anymore and reached over the bar. I jerked the heavyreceiver up to my ear and said, “Fat Ernst’s Bar and Grill.” I turned back to the window. Slim had pulled himself out of the mud and was leaning back into his pickup.

Silence on the other end of the phone. I hoped it wasn’t Slim’s wife.

Then, “Arch, is that you?” Grandma’s voice shouted out at me as Slim turned away from his cab and I could see he was now holding a rifle.

“Get down!” I shouted at Misty and crouched between the bar stools, still holding the phone up to my ear.

Through the open door, I could see Slim brace his rifle in the window frame of the driver’s door. He flicked his wrist, chambered a round with the bolt action. I heard Fat Ernst yell, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Slim didn’t answer. Instead, he fired, sending a bullet through the front window. A cloud of glass burst into the restaurant next to Bert like a swarm of wasps as the television above the bar exploded. Misty dropped to the floor, crawling under a table. Bert stepped back, blinking furiously. He turned to Junior, brow knit in confusion. Tiny shards of glass stuck to his face. Dots of blood appeared, welling up as if by magic, then rolled down his cheeks, his chin, as if he were crying blood.

I felt kind of sorry for him.

Grandma hollered from the phone, “Arch? Arch?” She sounded out of breath.

“Dirty motherfucker,” Fat Ernst said as he scrambled back inside, followed closely by Ray. They hit the floor next to Junior, and Ray kicked the front door shut.

Grandma kept shouting, coughing to get the words out. I caught something that sounded like, “Watch yourself—the damn—,” but Slim fired again, and the receiver was yanked out of my hand. The phone popped off the bar above my head and bounced into the bottles behind the bar as the echoes of Slim’s shot slammed into the restaurant.

For a second, I thought Slim had hit the phone on purpose, to stop anybody from calling for help, but as I scuttled across the floor toward Misty and peered over the window ledge, I realized that Slim didn’t have much control over the rifle. He wasn’t aiming at all, just swaying back and forth on his feet, hanging onto the door frame for support. Blood ran freely out of his nose and mouth. He coughed, sending a fresh wave of blood down the front of his chest.

“Sonofabitch!” I heard him yell weakly. “Come on out … here …”

Misty curled up tight next to me, hanging onto my arm, and suddenly things didn’t seem quite so bad. Slim fired again, and as the window crashed down around us like a deadly waterfall, I changed my mind quick. Things were bad.

“Where’d you get it?” Slim hollered. He fired another round, and the mirror above the bar shattered. I brushed the broken glass from Misty’s back as best I could.

Fat Ernst grabbed Ray’s collar, shouting into his ear, “Shoot back!”

“But—I don’t know—,” Ray croaked, swallowing furiously. It was obvious he’d never fired a gun at anyone in his career as a deputy and had no idea what to do.

Fat Ernst slapped him. “Shoot him, you fucking moron! Shoot! Back!”

Junior raised himself to his knees, peering groggily at his bleeding brother.

Fat Ernst spoke slowly. “Ray. You pansy-assed fuck. Get that fucking pistol out and shoot that cocksucker or I’m gonna jam it so far up your ass you’ll blow your head off every time you brush your fucking teeth.”

Slim fired again.

Ray scooted over to the open window by the Sawyer brothers, yanked the revolver out of his holster, stuck it blindly out the shattered window frame, kept his head down, and pulled the trigger.

The report from the Redhawk sounded like a goddamn cannon had been fired inside the restaurant. Ray’s hand popped up from the recoil like he’d waved suddenly to a friend, then fired again. His eyes were shut tight. I knew he hadn’t hit anything and had just wasted four bucks on those two rounds, but I cautiously raised my head and looked anyway. Sure enough, Slim was still standing, loading more shells into his rifle.

Since Slim was busy reloading, I stuck my head up a little more, searching the highway. It was empty. No help there. I took another quick glance around the parking lot and found that Ray had, in fact, managed to hit something. A splintered hole about the size of an apple was now in the middle of the windshield of Fat Ernst’s Cadillac. I got pissed. “Nice shooting, Ray.”

Fat Ernst crawled over to Ray’s window. He stuck his head up and said, “You’re gonna pay for that, you stupid fuck.” He grabbed Ray’s pistol and lifted himself heavily to his feet, facing the window. Squeezing the pistol tightly in both fists, he raised it with straight arms and yelled at Slim, “Stand still, dammit!”

He fired and put a fist-sized hole in the pickup’s front fender, almost three feet from Slim, who was bringing his rifle back up and didn’t seem to know or care where Fat Ernst’s bullet had gone.

Before Slim got the rifle barrel back through the pickup’s door, Fat Ernst fired again. The bullet punched through the driver’s door and hit Slim in the stomach, slamming him back against the cab as if a horse had just kicked him in the balls. The rifle landed in the mud next to him.

Ray stuck his head up, saw Slim go down, and whispered, “Shit-fire. Damn!”

“That’s how it’s fucking done.” Fat Ernst dropped the pistol in Ray’s lap, yanked the door open, and stomped down the stairs.

Ray twisted the pistol around his lap until the barrel pointed at his chest and fiddled with the cylinder. He finally popped it out, dumped all of the shells, both empty casings and loaded cartridges, and started reloading from scratch. I thought about mentioning that he was loading a gun aimed at his head but said to hell with it. The dumbshit would have to figure it out for himself.

“Oh, shit,” Misty whispered. Her face looked drained, eyes wide and unblinking. She pushed herself away from me, found her feet, and was out the door before I could stop her. I followed her out into the rain.

Fat Ernst waddled furiously through the mud over to his fallen sign and Slim’s pickup. Misty was right behind him, splashing straight through the puddles. Behind me, Ray came slowly down the wooden steps. “Is he dead?” he called out to Fat Ernst.

Fat Ernst stopped at Slim’s feet and put his hands on his hips. “Close enough,” he called back over his shoulder. Misty and I stopped behind Fat Ernst, neither of us saying anything. Ray stood nervously off to our right. He kept checking to make sure his pistol was back in the holster.

Slim, sitting with his back to the pickup, coughed weakly and blood splattered into the mud. There was a small hole in his stomach, a few inches above the waistband of his jeans. Blood had bloomed across his white shirt, encircled the pearl buttons, seeped down across his leather belt, and run down his jeans. It hurt just looking at him. He stared at his lap, apparently unable to lift his head. “I should …” Slim mumbled under his John Deere cap. “You sonofabitch …”

“Me? Fuck you.
You’re
the stupid sonofabitch who tried to shoot
me
. You can’t just go around shooting at people.”

“… Gonna put a bullet … right in your goddamn head …” Slim’s right arm fumbled for the rifle at his side, but he couldn’t move very well and his hand just slapped at the muddy stock.

“Don’t move, you fucking moron. You’ve been gut shot.”

“Please don’t move,” Misty begged. “Please. Just hold on. I’ll go get help.”

“No.” Slim coughed. “No. Don’t. There ain’t no point …”

A jackrabbit shot across the muddy expanse of the parking lot as if its tail were on fire and disappeared into the cornfield along the parking lot, the same one Slim had driven his own Cadillac into the day of the funeral.

Slim tried to push himself up using his rifle as a crutch, but his hands kept slipping in the mud. He coughed again. “Where’d … where’d you get that meat?”

Oh, shit
, I thought.

“I went … went up to the pit and counted …” Slim spat.

I heard something out in the east cornfield, a vast, rushing sound, almost like a wave. I turned to the field and saw another jackrabbit come bounding out from the tall green stalks and race past the restaurant.

Misty said, “Don’t try to talk, okay? Save your strength. We’ll get you some help.” She looked at Fat Ernst and said, “We have to get him to a hospital.”

Fat Ernst ignored her. He stared back at Slim. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he declared.

The rushing sound got closer and as I looked out across the field, toward the northeastern foothills; it looked like wind or something was tearing into the corn, making the stalks shudder and shake.

The front door slammed and Junior and Bert worked their way down the steps. Junior looked a little more awake now. He shouted over to us in a thick voice, “You fucked up! You fucked up real bad this time! We’re gonna go home and tell Ma! Then you just wait and see what happens.”

Ordinarily, the idea of a grown man threatening to go home and tell his mommy that someone had hurt him would have been funny, but since this was Junior, and he was talking about his mother, Pearl, it didn’t seem funny at all.

Nobody else was paying much attention, not with Slim lying in the mud bleeding to death. He kept talking, forcing the words out through mouthfuls of blood. “I counted ’em … there’s one missing. Goddamn you …” Misty bent down, tried to get close, to help him somehow, but Slim waved her away. “Get out of here … leave … can’t you see—I’ve got ’em inside …”