Donnybrook: A Novel (2 page)

Meadows spit the toothpick from his lips, down onto the John Doe’s Kingsford shape, asked, “Think someone was cooking that shit again?”

Whalen exhaled. “Seeing as it’s eat up most the county, I’d say so. We’ll know more after the toasted Does are ID’d. The caliber of the bullet is determined. State boys and fire marshal do their investigating into how the fire started. And you get your damn toothpick up off the victim. Regardless, this ain’t good.”

*   *   *

Blood had dried down the back of Dote’s neck. Phone line bound his hairy wrists behind his back. Cold concrete pressed against his cheek and forehead. He tried to breathe through the busted nose that had expanded into a potato turned black. Coughed. Jerked to sit Humpty-Dumpty-shaped upright, with a hammer-thumping migraine, among the stacked boxes of ammunition.

Sitting up, he found his environment was a tilt-a-whirl. Everything in the room appeared a quivered frost. The front door of the gun shop chirped behind him. Dote hollered, “Back here! Hey, help me!”

Shane rushed to the back. His right eye wandered in its socket like a fly being chased and swatted at, his left took in the worry that was Dote’s outline seated on the floor. He said, “They’s a mess out front. Blood and money all about the counter.”

Dote told him, “Just untie me. Get the marshal over here.”

Shane was the eldest of three brothers and four sisters. Traveled the back roads of Hazard by foot. He’d never owned a vehicle. Purchased a new pair of walking shoes every three months, keeping good arch support on his defined gate. He’d hair gray as the ash from the wood burnt in a Kentucky stove. Skin darker than most full-born Indians from walking in the summer sun.

“What the shit happened?”

“Been robbed and beat.”

“Wondered why you’s open so late. Seen the light on.”

“Time is it?”

“Well past sunset.”

Shane wasn’t one for using numerals to tell time but understood light from dark.

“Apparently you the only one thought it odd I’d be in here after dark.”

Shane flipped a Buck knife open from his front pocket. Dote heard the blade click.

“Careful with how you wield that. Don’t need my wrist slit.”

Shane parted the cord from Dote’s wrists. Sniffed. Wrinkled his face. “What smell like piss?”

Dote pulled his hands in front of him. Rubbed his wrists. “Don’t worry about it. Help me to my feet.”

The front door beeped again. Dote and Shane hollered, “Back here!” at the same time.

Town Marshal Pike Johnson stepped through the curtain. “Shit Dote, come to check on you. Your wife is kindly worried. Said she been calling for hours. The shit happened?”

“That fucking Jarhead Earl’s what happened. Come in looking to buy a shotgun. Must’ve brought ammo with him from home. You know I don’t keep these loaded. Robbed me of one thousand dollars.”

Pike wore Rustler jeans. White T-shirt over liver-spotted skin. A straw cowboy hat atop his aging mane. A .38 snub nose pushed down the back of his waist into a clip-on holster. He’d been the marshal for twenty-some years. Had his share of break-ins. Drunks. Domestic disputes. He looked around the room, raised a lip. “Smells like some sour son of a bitch drained his vein back here.”

Shane said, “Smell like piss, don’t it?”

Dote got blister-faced. Said, “Probably them bottles of Fritz’s Deer Lure. Spilt a few this morning.”

Shane said, “Naw, this smells a bit human.”

Dote huffed and spit. “Jarhead Earl robbed me, dammit! Didn’t piss on me.”

Shane pointed to Dote’s damp crotch. “Looks like you pissed yourself, Dote.”

Pike cleared his throat, asked, “You sure it was Jarhead?”

“The hell, did I stutter?”

“No need to get bitter-tongued. Just doing my job. Guess it could be expected. You all know that man his mama shacked up with wasn’t his real daddy.”

Shane said, “No shit?”

“No shit. His real daddy was a Vietnam vet. A marine. Was a combat engineer who did some recon, some say. Said to be a real mean sumbitch. Johnny’s mama left him high and dry in Indiana, says he spoke to the dead. He never come lookin’ for her either. But his mama nicknamed him Jarhead, seein’ his daddy was a marine.”

“Look, your job is keeping the peace. Not givin’ us tall tales on that scar-knuckled meathead and deciphering the scents of human piss. How about gettin’ my shotgun back along with the grand he stole?”

Pike nodded. “Kind of shotgun he steal?”

“Remington 1100. Why?”

“Looks like he left that for you. Just wanted the cash. Gun’s leaned over yonder agin’ the wall.”

Through the curtain to the front of the store, Pike took in the situation. Money left on the counter. Specks of Dote’s blood. Hole in the wall from the 12-gauge. “Don’t make much sense.”

Dote smarted, said, “Makes perfect sense. Boy got more pecker than he do brains. Not enough money to feed those invalid mouths he seeded with that pill-head Tammy Charles. Thought he’d steal from me.”

Pike held a small spiraled notepad pulled from his rear pocket. Scribbled notes. Asked, “You say he made you count out an exact amount? Left the rest? He wanted to rob you blind, he could’ve made off like a goat in miles of clover. He didn’t.”

Dote pursed his lips. Said, “All I know is I want back what he stole. See his ass behind solid steel.”

Pike closed the notepad. Slid it back into his ass pocket. Said, “I’ll get an APB out. If he’s home or in these hills, he’ll get found.”

2

Still fuming from the previous night’s inferno of lost supplies and profits, Angus turned down a valley road devoid of houses for miles on either side. Cedar, oak, and birch trees lined and spread through fenced fields hot from the sun and wild with dandelions and daisies. Angus slowed to a stop when he saw a break in the fence line’s wire. A farmhouse with a barn behind it sat small, almost hidden, in the distance. His arm, branded by ink, hung out the rolled-down window of the idling Pinto. A Pall Mall added hints of gray to the clear blue above. His one clouded eye met Liz’s fierce stare. “What you think?”

Liz had left her ’63 Oldsmobile F-85 station wagon at the Stage Stop Camp Grounds, hitched with Angus in his Pinto. Searching the curving country back roads. Passing rotted houses and beat-down trailers. Tires hanging from trees. Children hanging from mothers anchored by out-of-work fathers, who lounged in metal gliders with cans of Bud or Miller in their hands. Empties surrounding their feet like the children they disregarded.

Malice had seeded Liz’s insides after what Angus had done. Bled through her pores. Formed armies down her buttermilk complexion. She answered him, “Think if you’d have not left Beatle and Flat alone to cook that last batch, we wouldn’t be looking for a third house to squat.”

Angus let off the brake. Squeaked down the hill. Pulled the coffin nail to his lips, the smoke into his lungs. Braked at the mailbox. His scarred face was etched stone, letting a ghost-white exhale escape with his words. “Open that box out yonder. See if there’s any mail inside.”

Liz turned to the once-silver box, now the shade of waste from years of weathering. Angus flipped his coffin nail onto the cracked pavement. Liz pulled the mailbox open. Looked into the empty space. Felt her dreads knot up at the roots. Her neck popped. The side of her face thrashed the Pinto’s dusted dash. She felt the heat of the day coming through the words in her ear, scented stronger than last night’s house fire. Angus’s eighty-grit grip released her dreads.

“Just ’cause you had a wet spot between your thighs for them two brothers don’t do a thing for me. Reason we’s looking for a new house to squat in is ’cause I listened to you.” Angus grabbed her lower lip between forefinger and thumb. “Lose the lip ’fore I rip it off.”

*   *   *

Liz rubbed the pulpy knot that had formed on the side of her face. All she wanted out of life was enough meth, cigarettes, and Budweiser to make it through each day. A stiff cock to satisfy her desire for companionship. But Angus had managed to ruin that.

Her anger kept her heated with thoughts of how or when she’d end his rituals of blame and abuse. Angus put the Pinto into park. Exited the car. Liz followed. Eyed Angus’s wide back. Kept her distance.

Walking up the cement steps, he glanced up at the barn. Not confined enough for cooking crank, in his opinion—too open and spread out—but worth taking a gander at later. Looking at the white paint flaking from the wood siding of the house, Angus said, “Looks dead as Beatle and Flat, don’t it?”

Liz swallowed hard. Remembered sticky nights passed with Beatle and Flat in the dark bedroom of an abandoned house. After batches were cooked and profited. Angus, gone for more supplies. Three bodies saturated with burnt chemicals. Liz crazed with endorphins. Now, the two had been left facedown. A single .45-caliber hollow-point to each skull. Men with identical last names. Connected by blood. She said, “Dead it is. Far from any eyes. No cars. No nothin’.”

Angus reached for the slick metal handle of the screen door with one hand, his compact-carry .45 Para Ordnance in the other hand.

Liz asked with spite, “The hell you got that out for?”

“Just in case they’s a surprise waiting in the house with a lip like yours,” Angus said.

The inside smelt of must. Paths of burgundy fluid from a human paved the linoleum and cedar floors of the house as though a person or persons had been murdered. Boards creaked beneath their footing. The burgundy thickened in the bathroom. Was blotted and smeared on the sink, the claw-footed tub, the toilet seat. Curled hairs grew from a green sludge that had once been water. Angus twisted the faucet. A brown goo plopped thick then thin. Became clear as glass. He muttered, “Must have a well or a cistern.”

In the dining room, Liz fingered burgundy prints that spotted a skin-tone rotary phone dangling from a curled cord. She thought about Beatle and Flat. Held the quiver of damp in her eye.

Angus pushed the .45 into his waistband. Ran a hand over the head of jet-black locks that intertwined down his spine in a braid. Eyed the water-stained ceiling and peeling walls. “Some kind of awful haunts this place.”

Liz’s body quaked from her hate-fueled high. She told herself this’d be a good place for Angus to meet his end after he cooked more crank. Turned to him, blank-faced. “Looks okay to me. Time to pay Eldon a visit.”

*   *   *

A slanted figure stood in the barn. Metal traps in the small left hand. Rabbits stripped of fur, gutted, with their muscles stretched, were clutched in the big right hand. His one eye twitched from Bell’s palsy, a paralysis that had struck him like his father had that day, the day he saw his father doing what he’d done. His face had drooped for months, after. Then slowly tightened back.

He heard the crunch of tires coming down the hole-worn drive. Peeked into the daylight, between planks of barn wood. Watched the green car pull to a stop. Door opened. A man with raven hair running down his back got out. Slammed the door shut. Then a female with hair hanging like matted red buds of dried marijuana. They walked up to the old house. The man pulled out a pistol, and they went inside.

The figure shook his head. Started to pace across the barn’s hay-strewn floor. He’d lived alone, unbothered on the farm, for years. Now he’d trespassers. One with a gun. He grunted a whine. He hated guns. Wondered why these people were here, if they’d stay. He stepped to a back corner, hung the traps from a rusted spike. Pushed the straw and dust away from the wooden slats next to the table. Reached down for the iron handle. Opened the floor. Followed the stringer of steps into the hidden opening beneath the earth.

3

Eldon McClanahan was an alcoholic pharmacist who gambled his money away on horse races, ball games, and high-stakes poker. Would wager a buck on almost anything. He’d be willing to dig up and sell his mother’s and father’s shriveled formaldehyded corpses if it’d get him enough dough to gamble with. The man had no shame.

His wagering had won him overwhelming debt to a grain of characters running within the darker crevices of Harrison County. Word of his dilemma had reached the ears of Liz and Angus while they’d been slinging bourbon and beer at a late-night tavern. Discovered Eldon was desperate to turn coin to pay his debt and to keep on wagering. Scoped him out to use on a money project of their own devising.

A few nights later, Angus made sure Eldon met Liz in the E & R tavern over a few drinks. Eldon took her back to his ranch-style home out in the woods of Harrison County, where she threw a powerful fuck on him. Had him sitting down to piss for a week. Made him dread waking up with morning wood since Liz’d rode him raw.

After that night, Eldon would do most anything for Liz. Most especially he would happily skim tablets of Allegra-D from the pharmacy to front the ephedrine for her and Angus’s meth-manufacturing scheme.

Now, having been profitable business partners for months, Liz and Angus stood on one side of the bar in Eldon’s kitchen. Angus pulled on a coffin nail. Blew smoke and told Eldon, “We done got another place. Just need more them pills you been getting us.”

Eldon stood on the other side. Leaned back against a stainless steel sink. Holding a glass of Knob Creek and Coke. “You still owe me for the last batch.”

Angus laughed. “Done told you they ain’t no last batch ’cause of the damn fire.”

Eldon sipped his drink. Swallowed. Said, “Look, no money no pills. I got people I owe.”

Eldon owed a certain bookie who had a collector he didn’t want to meet. Had heard the stories. The collector’d pay you a visit. Paralyze your body with several needles. Do things to you. You’d pay him back in lessons of unheard-of pain.

Eldon took another drink. Liz smiled at him. His eyes fell to her faded Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt that held two firm breasts without a bra. Goddamn she knew how to fill a concert T-shirt. He knew how shapely those breasts were. Remembered how they’d bounced that night she rode him. Jutting up into the darkness of his bedroom when she raised. Slapping her sweaty flat stomach when her hard ass dropped onto his bony legs. Turned his white five-hundred-thread-count sheets a sweaty pink.