Multiplex Fandango (20 page)

“But why now?”

“Finally a good question.
You’re listening.
That’s a good start.
You ask why now?
Why not now?
The truth is that I had to let time pass.
I wanted to wait until you’d turned twenty-one before we met again.
I wanted you to finish becoming who you
were to become
, who I helped mold.”

Ronnie opened his mouth as if to argue, then closed it.
“Why did you change?” Ronnie finally asked.

“There are a hundred reasons.
We all have a
come to Jesus meeting
at least once in our lives.
Let’s just say that I had mine with some educated men several years ago and made a promise to them that I could make up for what I’d done.”

“Some things can’t be made up for.”

“Oh, Ronnie, you’d be surprised what can be made up for.
The human mind is a crazy animal.
Left to its own devices, it would create a universe within which to live.
It’s only through the glory of the five senses that you have any control at all over the synapses that are firing.
Be glad for that.”

“You’re afraid you’ll get caught.”

“By the police? Never.”

“Then by whom?”

Harry stared at Ronnie for a long time.

“Me?
You’re afraid of me?”
Ronnie laughed.

“Don’t laugh too hard.
If I were you, I’d reach that point in my life when I’d had enough and seek out the man who ruined my life.”

“You didn’t ruin my life.”

“The hell I didn’t.
When’s the last time you had a girlfriend?”

No answer.

“Do you sleep with the light on?”

No answer.

“Do you ever go out in the rain anymore?”

Still no answer.

Now, just tears.

“You’ve got to trust me, Ronnie.
This shit builds inside of you and when it becomes too much.
You have to act on it.
I want to make sure you act on it before you blow.”

“I’d never do something like—“

“Few people wake up in the morning knowing that they’re going to commit a mortal sin sometime during the day.
The opportunity just sneaks up on them mostly.
And with opportunity comes knocks.”

“Knocks?”

“You ever see the movie Paris Trout?” Harry asked.
“It starred Dennis Hopper in th
e title role.
He played a mean-
ass Southern cracker who was so scared of someone sneaking into his room while he was gone that he covered his entire floor in glass to capture the sweat stains of bare feet.
Can you imagine covering an entire bedroom floor with glass?”

Ronnie shook his head.

“Me neither.
But the more I thought of that movie, the better I thought the idea, and between you and me that idea is crazy!”

“But how can you be scared of me?
Look at me,” Ronnie said, glancing along his thin angular frame.
“I’m nothing.
I’m nobody.”

“Jeffrey Dahmer felt the same way until he ate his way to confidence.”

“I’m no cannibal.”

“Good thing.
Now let’s get back to it, Ronnie.
What is it you want to do?”

“To you?
For revenge?”

“Yes.”

“I never really thought about it.”

“Oh, Ronnie.”

“No really!”

“Who are you kidding, Ronnie?
I know you better than most people.
Remember those sixteen days I kept you in the box while your dad scrambled for the ransom?
There were four holes in the box.
Do you remember what each was for?”

Ronnie nodded.

“One was for food in,” Harry said.
“One was for talking.
One was for a drinking straw.
Do you remember what the last was for, Ronnie?”

“It was for my...“

“That’s right.
It was for your piss and shit and hate.
And do you remember what we did with the holes every morning?”

“We rotated them.”

“That’s right, Ronnie.
Good.
You do remember.”
Harry grinned like a proud parent on report card day.
“So tell me again that you never thought about getting back at me.”

Ronnie began to breathe deeply as if he were about to hyperventilate.
Finally he said, “I wanted to kill you.”

“There you go.
Kill me.
I certainly deserve it.
But killing is a little too permanent.
Let’s just say that you aren’t the only one I’m going to make this offer to and if you go and kill me straight off, then what will all the others do to me?”

“Others?”

“Do I detect a note of jealousy, Ronnie?”

“No, I just didn’t think there were any others.”

“You never do.
Neither will they.
You all think you’re alone in this world.”
Harry shook his head in mock sadness.
“So what’ll it be?
What do you have in mind for old Harry here?”

“You’re fucking nuts.”

“Do you know what I think, Ronnie?
I think that you’re still too much of a nice guy.
I think you can’t really think of something terrible to do.
Here I am giving you the opportunity to do absolutely anything to me that you want, and you can’t come up with anything.”

Ronnie glared back, the truth once again in the set of his jaw.

“Then let me help you.
Let me tell you all the things you might do.
First there’s the simple.”
Harry wedged the flashlight into his armpit so that he could count off the ways on his fingers.
“You could burn me.
You could break a bone.
You could run me over with a car.
You could bury me in one of these graves.
You could even give me biblical revenge and cut off the pinkie of my left hand.”

“You’d let me do these things?”

“Do them?
I’m looking forward to them.
Look, Ronnie.
You might just be finally getting it, but here I am, large as life and metaphorically gift wrapped for your revenging pleasure.”

Ronnie looked around.
“Where’s that Mexican?
This is a trick isn’t it?
You’re going to kidnap me again, aren’t you?”

“Ease up on the paranoia, Ronnie.
You’re making Woody Allen look sane.
No one is here to kidnap you.
We’re past that.
And the Mexican is actually a Salvadoran, who doesn’t take kindly to being called such names.
Anyway, he is not my friend.
He actually hates me and would love for me to break my vow so that he could do to me what you can’t figure out to do.”

“So he’s out there?”

“With a high powered rifle pointed at me as we speak.”

“Do you swear?”

“Yep.”

“How do I know you aren’t lying?”

“Enrique?
Donde está usted
?”

“Mira,” came a voice from the dark.

Harry turned and
shined
his light on a short dusky man, a rifle in the pocket of his shoulder, an eye glaring through an immense scope with red-tinted lenses.

“It’s an infrared scope.
He can see me in the dark like he was Jesus.”

“Jesus never had a rifle,
Maricone
,” Enrique said.

“If he’d had one, Judas would never have got the drop on him now would he?”
Harry glared happily from Enrique to Ronnie and back.

“Watch your blasphemy.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” Ronnie said.

“Not as crazy as Enrique.
His cousins are all MS 13 gangbangers and even they’re scared of him.
You ain’t seen crazy until you seen Enrique mad.”

“And he’s on my side?”

“Enrique?”

“You do what you gotta do,
puto
and I’ll keep Harry from stopping you.”

Ronnie looked from the rifle-toting Salvadoran to Harry, his long lost kidnapper, and for the first time braved a smile.
It was a small one, but it carved the fear from his features as surely as a knife.

“So where were we?
Ah yes, the many ways to come to Jesus.”
Harry dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Isn’t it ironic that whenever we say there’s going to be a ‘Come to Jesus’ that it’s something bad?
You’d think that people would look forward to the savior of the universe not be in fear of him.”
He tapped his forehead.
“Just something to think about.”

“I hear that,” Enrique said.

“So where was I?” Harry asked.
He glanced down at his fingers and realized he’d lost count.

“You were talking about me cutting off your finger,” Ronnie said.

“That’s right.
I was.
Is that what you want?
Is that what will do it for you?”

Ronnie seemed to think for a moment, then mumbled something
un
intelligible.

“What was that?” Harry asked.

“Not enough.
I said that’s not enough.”

For the first time concern flashed through Harry’s eyes.
But he recovered quickly.
“So you want to go past the easy things.
I understand.
I put you through a lot of shit.”

Ronnie just stared at him.
The opaque squares now seemed menacing.

“You could always stake me to the ground near an anthill.
I hear the Indians used to rub honey over the bodies of their enemies and watch as they were eaten alive.”

Ronnie tilted his head as if contemplating the idea.

“But that would be too much, I think,” Harry said holding up a warning finger.
“You can hurt me.
You can do whatever you want to me, but you aren’t allowed
to
kill me.”

“So what then?”

“Tell him about Pancho Villa,” Enrique commanded from the dark.

The boy craned his head.
“What about him?”

Harry shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“Nothing really,” he said.
Then in a stage whisper, “Want to keep that shit to yourself,
puto
?”

“What about Pancho Villa?” Ronnie asked.

Harry sighed.
He pulled the light from under his armpit and walked back to the car.
He opened the door, briefly flooding the night with light.
A dinging sound brought an electronic surreality to the newly illuminated graveyard.
Harry snapped on the headlights bathing the Cooper family grave plot and those next to it in Cadillac radiance.

“There.
That’s better,” Harry said, slamming home the door.
He returned to where he’d been standing and addressed Ronnie who stood just outside the farthest beam.
“So you want to know about Pancho Villa.
Truth be told, I think it all started with Zapata.
You know all of them rode around here.
Pancho Villa probably stood on this very point of land.
This part of the world was famous with Pancho Villa, Black Jack Pershing, Emiliano Zapata and their kind, all stirring up a history that still hasn’t died down.

“But I think Villa is the most famous of them.
The Mexicans loved him like we love Robin Hood, although I doubt the green spandex-suited archer and his merry men would ever have conceived of a torture that included urging a plant to grow up someone’s ass.

“So it starts with a Maguey plant, although I haven’t seen any around here.”

“There’s a few back in the pauper’s section,” Enrique offered.

“Thanks,” Harry said.
“That detail helps a lot.”
He glared at the ground for a long moment, before he resumed.
“The story says that Villa would torture those who came and did harm to his people with this plant.
Now the Maguey is a perfect plant.
You can build homes from it.
You can make clothes from it.
You can eat it.
Even tequila comes from it.
Maguey is a type of agave, you see.
It grows wild and can reach monstrous proportions.
Well, what Villa and his crew used to do is strip some poor soul down to their Birthday suit and strap them to a wooden contraption over the plant.
They’d pile stones on the body and poor water on the parched plant.
These plants can grow six to ten inches a night and the combination of the weight of the stones and the stimulus of the plant with the water, made it so that man would intersect plant sometime around midnight after everyone was drunk.
And if they’d aimed the victim right, the Maguey would grow right up his ass.”