Mungus: Book 1 (13 page)

             
Pitri shook his head.  His eyes danced around the room.  “I don’t know, sir.  You’re eating later than usual and I guess that it was just sitting out too…”

             
“I’m sorry that I’m eating later than usual,” screamed Glen, “I’m sorry that I work too much!  Is that what you want me to do, stop working?  I could stop working and you could lose your job!”

             
“Sir,” Pitri began.  He looked over at me and we caught eyes.  His look made me uncomfortable and I glanced away.

             
“You’re worthless,” Glen said.  “You are worth nothing.”  He was talking slow and his lips were even with the top of Pitri’s head.  “You should hate yourself.  God made a mistake when he made you.”

             
Pitri looked at the walls, at the table; he looked everywhere but into the tall man’s eyes.

             
“Pitri, look at me,” Glen said.

             
Pitri looked up into Glen’s eyes.

             
“I’m done having a charity case cooking for me.”

             
Glen hit Pitri in his protruding gut and then pushed him up against the wall.  Anger flashed in Pitri’s eyes and he charged Glen.  Glen pushed him back against the wall and hit him in his face.  A spray of blood came from Pitri’s nose and Glen then kneed him in the groin.  Pitri had nowhere to go.  He was cornered.  Against the ropes.  Glen towered over the little man and his shoulders flexed and bulged as he punched the cook.  In the teeth.  In the stomach.  In the eye.  On the jaw.  Again.  Again.  Again.  He recoiled and threw strikes with the quickness of a snake.  Glen grabbed Pitri’s hair and pounded his face.  The cook’s body went limp and he was being held up in between Glen’s fists and the walls.  Glen didn’t stop.  The only sounds in the dining room were the sounds of Glen’s breathing, his fists hitting flesh, and the toddler crying.  Pitri moaned and tried to push his boss away.  Glen didn’t stop.  His face was red with anger and his body seemed inexhaustible.  The cook’s head was puffy and leaking red blood onto the hardwood floors.  I was crying now, standing against the wall with my fists clenched.  Pitri’s eyes found mine again.  I wanted to help, but I felt so small.  I felt useless.

             
“Stop,” Lauren screamed.  She was crying and Glen turned around and smiled at her.  He charged and they both went tumbling down to the floor.  Glen’s fists found more flesh to pound and Lauren let out more screams.

             
It was all of it, I think.  The farm.  Putting the gun in Saul’s mouth.  “I had to kill one of them today.  It was a worker, big guy, too.”  Lauren’s screams.  Pitri’s limp head bleeding onto the floor.  Julia’s fever.  He ruined Saul’s baseball.

             
“Hey!” I hollered and Glen looked up from Lauren.

             
I looked down and saw, to my surprise, that Glen’s gun was in my hands.  I cocked it just as he had when he shot his gun at the ground near Saul.

             
Glen laughed.  “You don’t want to mess with me, Little Salyer,” and then he charged.  I didn’t aim, but just pulled the trigger.  The noise ricocheted around the tiny wooden room and sounded like a bomb went off.  Glen’s head exploded and his brains were blown onto the back wall and smeared across a painting if Abraham sacrificing Isaac.  His body took two more steps and knocked me over.

             
I pushed his dead body off of me and got to my feet.  I was crying, but something in my head was clicking along.  There was a calm about me that took over and it was as though I was in autopilot.  Something inside of me had been preparing for this.  I had daydreamed about killing him, on some level, and I had a plan.  Lauren grabbed Julia and held her.  I pointed the gun at Lauren.

             
She looked at me with scared eyes.  “What are you doing?”

             
“I’m not going to kill you,” I said.  “But I am going to lock you in the cellar.  Please forgive me.  Tomorrow, when they find Glen, they’re going to find you two in there and you tell them the truth.  I locked you in at gunpoint and there was nothing that you could have done.”

             
Lauren nodded and she walked without resistance to the potato cellar.  She went inside with her baby, got one last look at the boy who resembled her son, and I locked them inside.  I rested the gun against the wall and brushed my hands off.  I didn’t trust myself with something so dangerous and my hands felt dirty after handling it.

             
With Lauren and Julia locked away I went into the dining room and looked over the carnage.  Glen laying face down with his head gone from the jaw up.  Pitri lay unconscious against the back wall.

             
Over the next hour, I searched the house for supplies.  My hands worked quickly and my ears stayed on alert the entire time.  I kept on saying to myself, “what has happened?”  I was worried that someone could have heard the gunshots and that they were coming to the house to check.  But time went on and no one came.  Inside Glen’s bedroom I found a leather satchel that I filled with things I found throughout the house-matches, canned food, binoculars, a knife, pieces of wrapped chicken, and three canteens of water.

             
The sun was going down and I was out at the well washing my body of Glen’s blood.  The water was cool and I rubbed it over my skin with shaking hands until I was clean.  When I was done I stood looking over the land and contemplating what to do next.  My mouth was dry and my eyes darted back and forth over the sea of green crops for answers.  I found none.  Glen was dead.  The guards would kill me if I were found.  Pitre was badly beaten and needed help.  Lauren and Julia were locked in the cellar.  I replayed what Glen had said about killing the servant in my mind.  He called him a ‘big guy.’  I fell to my knees and began to weep.  Saul was dead.  I was sure of it.  My body moaned and my hands shook and I couldn’t move.  My stomach hurt with the deep sadness and I wanted to be held.

             
Something else took hold and I stood up.  I needed to stop.  I wiped my face of tears.  I was only contemplating and if my brother was still alive I was doing him a great injustice by wasting so much time.  I shook the bad thoughts out of my head and, with my satchel crossed around my shoulder, I began to move.

             
As I walked towards my cabin Salyers, Beardsleys and Grecos were coming in from the farm.  I moved in between them and it was all that I could do to take the next step.  My body was in panic and I tried to calm it so that I did not give myself away.  If someone caught wind that something was wrong with me then I was going to be in the Cell when the sun rose the next day.  The satchel bounced against me with each step.  That was unnatural.  I didn’t know what I would say if anyone saw that I had Glen’s satchel.  My breathing was becoming too fast.  People were looking at me.  I must have been pale.

             
“Hey, Little Salyer,” Hank called out.

             
I froze.  Cold sweat came upon my forehead and my mouth was pulled of all of its moisture.  Hank came over to me, smiling.  He patted me on the back.  “How’s the new job?”

             
“Good,” I said.  The words came out too flat.  He’s going to know!

             
“I hear that you’re getting some pretty good food up there.  And that wife of Glen’s, I bet she’s fun to look at while you are working.”

             
“Yeah,” I said and my voice cracked.  I cleared my throat.  Hank looked from my face to the satchel.  From my face to the satchel again.  ‘I just killed someone!’ my head screamed, but my face had to pretend that all was calm underneath.  My heart rate shot up.  ‘Do I still have blood on me?’

             
“What’s with the purse?” Hank asked.

             
“It’s for carrying water.  I’m sick.”

             
Hank stepped back and laughed.  “Woah!  Stay away from me, little guy.  Carry on soldier.”  He gave me a wink, and with that, he left.

             
I walked the rest of the way to the cabin and my vision began to close in.  Those eyes, right before…  Those angry, angry eyes.  And poor Pitri on the floor.  I saw his face, chewing one of his last bites.  “I had to kill one of them today.  It was a worker, big guy, too.”  I began to walk faster.  People around me were staring, they knew something was wrong.  I had to see him.  Please be in there.  My legs were rubber but they kept on taking steps until I was inside of the cabin.

             
“Hello, Walt!” he said.

             
Saul was sitting on his cot, unaware that I thought that he was dead.  Unaware that anything but normal was happening.  I threw my satchel down and latched my arms around his thick neck.  I began to tremble.  “What happened?” he asked.  “Are you okay.”

             
I sat down on my cot and ran my fingers through my hair.  I talked in slow deliberate words.  “Saul.  Please, listen.  Have you eaten your dinner?”

             
He nodded his head.

             
“Do you trust me?”

             
“Yes, Walt.”  His eyes were so honest.

             
“Okay.”  I paused as I looked him over.  He did trust me, but how much should I tell him?  I remembered when he heard that our dad had died.  He fell down and flailed on the ground like a fish out of water.  He cried and blubbered and no one could make him stop for hours.  He wasn’t a normal person and he could be unpredictable.  I decided that I would tell him as little as possible.  “I’m going to try to escape…”

             
Saul gasped and I had to put a hand on his knee to calm him down.

             
“Can you be quiet?  Can you be helpful, Saul?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“Good.  Then listen.  The people here are bad.  Very bad.  You remember how Glen told you that it was strike two?”

             
Saul nodded.  He was on the verge of tears.

             
“How did that make you feel?”

             
“Scared.”

             
“I’m scared too, Saul.  Very Scared.  It isn’t safe here, so I’m going to leave.  You have a choice.  You can either follow me or you can stay here.”

             
Saul considered this.  I said that he had a choice, but did he?  I thought about that day on the ship when we were scrubbing the floors.  I left to go see President Strunk’s speech and Saul followed.  He’s scared of things that are foreign to him.  And not being with his brother is foreign to him.

             
“How are we going to get out?”

             
I told him my plan.

             
“I’ll go with you.”

             
When the Salyer guard came by to lock us into our cabins for the night, both Saul and I were lying on our cots and facing the back wall.  He shut the door and locked it and after a few moments or waiting I sat up.  Saul stirred.  “Are we going?”

             
“No.  Not for a while.”

             
“Okay.”

             
I went through the leather suitcase that we took down from the ship with us and transferred changes of clothes and other things into the leather satchel that I had taken from Glen’s.  The last thing that I took was the turtle necklace that my dad had made me.  I felt the fine metal in my fingers.  It was beautiful craftsmanship.  I missed them.  I put it around my neck for good luck.

             
Hours passed.  The moon rose high and an owl hooted somewhere on the farm.  “It’s time,” I said to Walt, and we both stood up.

             
I got down on my hands and knees and dug in the soft earth.  Saul did the same beside me and soon there was a big hole behind our back wall.  “I’ll go first,” I said.  I got down on my belly, and like I had so many nights before, slithered bellow the wall and out into the cool air.  “Hand me the satchel,” I whispered, and it popped out of the hole.

             
Saul came next.  His big frame had a hard time fitting.  He grunted and struggled and I told him to be quiet.  After much effort, he was through and we were both standing on the other side of the fence.  “What now?” he asked.

             
“This way,” I said, and we walked into the fields of cotton.  We heard a noise behind us and turned.  Three Salyer guards on horses were walking through the rows of cabins.  It was midnight and this confused me.  “What are they doing here?”
              Saul stood up tall and looked over the crop.  “There are a lot of lights on around that house up there,” he said.

             
“We need to hurry.”  I grabbed his arm and soon we were flying in between rows of cottons.  I didn’t know how the guards had figured it out, but they had.  Saul and I kept a steady pace and after minutes of running I led him up to one of the dog fences.  We came to a spot in the enclosure where there was a separation fence in between two groups of dogs.  The dogs barked and snapped and rattled in the corners of the chain link fence.  Surely their barks would alert the guards and I knew that we didn’t have much time.  I took the knife out of my bag and the raw chicken wrapped in paper.  I tore one of the pieces of chicken into two and threw one over each side of the fence.  On each side, one dog went for the bait.  That left two snarling and biting and snapping.  I looked behind me and could see distant lights of Salyer guards riding on horses and carrying lanterns.  I had promised Saul to keep him alive.  I took the knife firmly in my right hand and as the dogs came up and snapped and bit at the fence with their muzzles I stabbed them in the face with the knife.  They whimpered and hollered and eventually retreated to avoid further injury.  I handed Saul the knife and told him to do the same and then I began to climb the fifteen foot wall of metal fencing until I reached the barbed wire.