Man Down (2 page)

  
 
3

Turner, kneeling, still gagging on the pistol barrel, tasting gun oil and his wife’s blood, looked across at Tanya who crouched on all fours, slack-jawed, gasping and was reminded of the Lamaze classes she’d obliged him to attend with her, where she and the other pregnant women had adopted this swaybacked pose, their distended bellies almost brushing the carpet as they panted like perverts.

The blood dripping from her face, striking the wooden floor of their Arizona living room in metronomic beats—loud in the sudden silence after the small man muted the baseball on TV—brought Turner back to the present as the gun filling his mouth was cocked with a sharp, ratcheting sound.

“Wait, Bone,” the small man said, “we’re still gonna need this cocksucker.”

The pistol barrel was withdrawn, a tendril of drool landing like a leech on Turner’s cheek. The man named Bone stood over him, the weapon in his gloved hand pointed at Turner’s head.

To distance himself from the reality of what was happening, to ring fence the fear that was causing a bitter sweat to rise from his body, Turner imagined that he was making a report to the police after all this was over, conjuring some wry, lanky lawman with a gray brush of a mustache and watery eyes that had seen every kind of evil the world could offer, demanding descriptions of the three masked invaders.

Bone was not a tall man but he was wide, as if the maximum amount of meanness had been compacted into his blocky frame. He was dressed in tight blue jeans, black workboots and a leather waistcoat over a gray T-shirt, a hard gut balanced on top of his Dixie belt buckle. A lacework of incongruously delicate tattoos covered his Popeye arms.

The man attending Tanya was towering and massively obese with one gimpy leg that gave him a broken walk. A pit latrine stench rose from his body as he scratched at the ocean of pale flesh that swelled through the partly unzipped top of his befouled canary yellow sweat suit. A wet, gap-toothed grin fringed by a beaver fuzz of hair was visible in the mouth hole of his mask, his breath coming in gusts.

The small man, the only one who had spoken—in a drawl that to Turner’s uneducated ear sounded vaguely Southern—was dressed all in black: Levis, Reeboks, T-shirt and windbreaker.

He tossed the TV remote onto the couch and, spying the BlackBerry on the dining room table, said, “Whose phone is this?”

“Mine,” Turner said, his voice unsteady.

The man looked across at Tanya. “Where’s yours?”

“On the counter in the kitchen.”

He jerked his head at the fat giant.

“Get it, Tard.”

“Yessir, Shorty,” the monster said, his voice a phlegmy slur.

While Tard fetched Tanya’s iPhone and shoved it into the pocket of his sweats, Shorty opened Turner’s BlackBerry, removed the battery, skimming it across the floor like a hockey puck, and then fished out the SIM card.

He produced a lighter from his jeans and set fire to the SIM, dropping the flaming plastic rectangle into an ashtray.

“No other phones on you?”

“No,” Turner said.

Tanya shook her head.

“You won’t mind if we check will you? Just to make sure you don’t butt-dial 911?”

While Bone frisked Turner, Tard, wheezing and giggling, ran his hands over Tanya who smacked out at him, cursing.

When the two men came up empty Shorty said, “Be advised that your landlines have been disabled at the pole in the street.”

Tanya tried to rise and Tard pushed her down.

“Let her stand,” Shorty said.

Tanya came upright, holding a hand to her bleeding cheek.

Cautiously Turner got to his feet, his knees uncertain.

“What the fuck do you want?” Tanya asked Shorty as blood flowed through her fingers, patterning her white cotton shirt.

“Whoa, that’s some mouth you got on you, little lady.”

“Just tell me. Do you want money?”

“Money?”

“Yes, is that what you want? Fucking money?”

“Oh, yeah, we want money.
And
we want fuckin.” He laughed through his mask, getting right up in her face. “So let’s just say that there
will
be pillaging. And there
will
be rape.”

4

You will be redeemed by the blood.

Bleeding, Tanya thought of those words, that fucking pronouncement or prophecy or whatever the fuck it was, and then she thought of the man—no, not a man, a
boy
, a fucking rancid, sleazy boy—who had said them to her and then she arrived, finally, at the realization that she’d been trying to avoid since she’d seen these animals with the guns coming into her house: she had done this.

She had done this to herself.

She was the author of her own destruction.

And the destruction of her fucker of a husband, of course.

But fuck him.

Fuck
him.

He deserved all the shit that rained down onto on his useless, cuntstruck fucking head.

She, who had been running from this for twenty-five years, who had fled the savagery of Africa for a country she loathed, had been stupid enough to open a door and allow in that uniquely American brand of madness—the madness so beloved of the true crime TV shows that had become her secret pleasure, watched on the computer in her office or, pathetically, on her iPad in her fat assed SUV while parked in the middle of nowhere on one of her endless drives through this bleached desert city.

Tanya certain now that the creature she’d encountered on one of those drives on a molten afternoon a few weeks ago, after she’d left work early without apology or explanation, had brought this terror to her house.

Tanya’s sudden departure from the private college where she was an associate professor had come after a meeting of the law faculty. Until recently the faculty head had been another South African, the person who’d got her the job and mentored her.

But he’d returned home before Tanya had become eligible for tenure and the decision now rested with his successor, a chunky man in his fifties with a blunt East Coast accent.

Somehow the accent had lulled Tanya into believing that the professor’s politics were left of center and, at the meeting, she’d launched into a scathing critique of Arizona’s reactionary governor, the treatment of illegals and rounded off with a jibe at the number of executions in the state, comparing it to Iran.

It was only when she was too far into her diatribe to stop that she saw her superior wore a look of distaste.

After the meeting ended Tanya lurked in the corridor, hoping to talk to the professor and perhaps placate him, even though this went against her nature.

He walked out with a buxom woman, another associate professor, the kind of hot pants little blonde that Tanya was allergic to, and not wanting to speak in front of this bimbo she’d hung back, unseen by them.

The blonde, shaking her head, said, “The wit and wisdom of Tanya Turner.”

“Good God, that name,” the professor said, “like a third rate karaoke singer.”

The bimbo laughed a flirtatious laugh and nudged him with her hip and Tanya knew in that moment that they if they weren’t already fucking they soon would be.

“An unfortunate name for an unfortunate person,” the blonde said.

“Yes. She’s a . . .”

“Say it.”

“No.”

“Oh, go on. I know what you want to say.”

“You do?”

“Yes. So say it.”

“No.”

“Come on, don’t be so politically correct.”

“You say it.”

“Oh,
I’m
allowed to say it?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Because I have one?”

“Because you’re gender sanctioned to say it.”

“
Gender sanctioned
?”

“Yes.”

“Is that even a definition?”

“It is now.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s the world in which we live.”

“Okay. Tanya Turner is a cunt.”

“That she is.”

“You’re still not going to say it?”

“No. Now it would be redundant.”

They laughed and walked on and Tanya ditched her afternoon classes and got into her car and drove away, knowing that she would not be asked to return for the next semester.

She did what she so often did since arriving in this god-awful place where she was friendless and alienated: she cruised the freeways, stopping her car and pulling over to the roadside when the city gave way to the desert, staring out at nothing, part of her wanting to drive on into the endless expanse of sand and dust and become something or someone else.

But, like always, she started the car and turned it around.

Tanya fucking Turner.

Going nowhere.

But there was a place she was going: a place called crazy.

Jesus, now she was starting to think in country song lyrics.

Fucking America.

Country songs and jingles were eating her mind like the parasitic worm that had incubated in the brain of that Arizona woman who’d pigged out on pork tacos in Mexico.

Served her right.

Served her right for cramming slop into her face.

She was probably obese, too, like most of these fucking people.

Just as Tanya had this thought she saw the skinny boy standing at the side of the road. Not hitching. Just standing there, a hot breeze teasing his lank, greasy hair.

Tanya couldn’t help herself.

She had to stop.

It was that kind of a day.

She unlocked the passenger door of the Subaru and he climbed up next to her. He wore baggy jeans and a T-shirt and had pimples and blondish down on his face and smelled unwashed and she liked that.

“Where are you going?” Tanya asked.

“The city.”

She clicked the car into gear and drove.

“What were you doing out here?”

He shrugged. “Waiting for you.”

“What’s that? A pickup line?”

“No, you’ve already picked me up.”

“Oh, so you’re a comedian?”

“No. I’m a seer.”

“A seer?”

“Yeah.”

“Like a
sight
seer?”

He sniggered. “Sure, I see the sights. But I see other stuff too.”

“Like what? What do you see?”

“I see you don’t belong here,” he said.

“I think you’re confusing your senses.”

“Huh?”

“I think you
hear
that I don’t belong here.”

“Oh, the accent thing?”

“Yes, the
accent thing
. That would be a serious fucking clue.”

“It would if I were talking about your nationality.”

“But you’re not?”

“No, I’m not.”

They came to a light and she stopped, aware that he was staring at her. He had one eye that was blue and one eye that was brown (heterochromia iridium, it was called, she remembered from where she did not know) and she was relieved when the light changed and she could look away and drive on.

“Then what are you talking about?” she said.

He shrugged. “You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t.”

But he said nothing and stared out the window at the unlovely smear of strip malls and used car lots that heralded the beginning of the city.

“Oh, I get it,” Tanya said.

“You get what?”

“You want money. The way to unlock this
gift
of yours is for me to give you fucking money?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t want your money.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, then it’s your lucky day.”

“I just don’t want to scare you.”

“Scare me?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t scare.”

“Okay.”

“So tell me.”

He was silent for a long time before he said, “You will be redeemed by the blood.”

“What? Is that some Christian thing? Are you some kind of a fucking Christian?”

“No, I’m not a Christian. I’m not anything.”

“So what does that even mean?”

“Just stop the car.”

“No.”

“Stop the car.”

He reached for the handle and cracked the door and she slowed and stopped.

“You can’t just say something like that to somebody and then disappear,” Tanya said.

“See. You’re scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

“What are you then?”

“I’m curious.

He had the door open but he stayed in the car, looking out at the seared landscape.

“Talk to me,” she said.

“We can’t talk here.”

“Then where can we talk?”

“At my place.”

“You have a place?”

“Yes, I have a place. I don’t live in a hole in the ground.”

“Where is this place?”

“On the south side.”

She hesitated and then she said, “Okay. Close the door.”

He lived across from the railroad tracks on the second floor of a run down apartment building that shook when the freight trains thundered by.

One room. A mattress on the floor. A blanket for a curtain. The smell of unwashed clothes and junk food on the turn.

It reminded her of how Johnny had lived back in Johannesburg when she’d first met him.

“So this isn’t a hole in the ground?” Tanya said, standing near the door, folding her arms.

“No, it’s more like a hole in the wall.”

“Funny.”

He shrugged.

“So, tell me,” she said.

“I wasn’t kidding. I was waiting for you. I saw you coming.”

“That’s a kind of clever-clever Americanism isn’t it? Like, I’m a dumb sucker and you had my number?”

“No, it means that maybe an hour before you picked me up out there I saw you coming. I saw your car. I knew you’d stop. All I had to do was wait.”

“And this blood thing?”

“I don’t know. It just came into my head the moment I saw you.”

“Saw me in your head or saw me in the car?”

“Saw you in the car.”

“And what? It’s like some psychic bumper sticker?”

“Something like that.”

“And you can’t tell me more?”

“No.”

“So why did you bring me here?”

He looked at her.

“Okay. There is more,” he said.

“There always is, isn’t there?”

“No, not always.”

“I’m listening.”

“Was there bloodshed? In your past?”

She thought about this for a while before she answered.

“Yes, there was bloodshed.”

“Well, there is going to be more in your future. A lot.”

“A lot?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

“Most people would want to run from it.”

“From this bloodshed?”

“Yes. From this bloodshed.”

“But?”

“But you should embrace it.”

“Embrace it?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “And you will be redeemed by the blood.

“I still don’t know what that means.”

“You don’t know now. But you will. Soon.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No.”

“You are going to let me walk out of here, aren’t you?”

“Yes. But you don’t want to. Not yet.”

“Oh?

“Yeah. You want to suck my cock.”

“What? You
see
this too?”

“No. I just know it.”

“And this
calling
of yours doesn’t preclude you having your cock sucked?”

“It’s not a calling.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know, but a calling would imply that at one point it was outside of me and that I made a choice to let it in. But it’s always been there as long as I can remember.”

“Okay, you can shut the fuck up now,” she said, kneeling, unbuttoning his jeans.

After it was done Tanya found a Kleenex in her bag, wiping her mouth as she left the apartment and went out into the corridor.