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“Yeah!” Helton barked. “And we ain’t had a telephone in years!”

The jangling, unnatural din drew on and on as the three men pranced about in utter confusion, trying to locate the noise’s source. But it was Micky-Mack—whose younger aural facilities were perhaps better capable of identifying proximity—who swept upon the box that the DVD player had come in. He reached down as if into a snake-pit, then, with eyes abloom, withdrew…

“Look!” came Dumar’s hushed exclamation.

Helton stared with all intentness.

What Micky-Mack now held in his hand was a small rectangular object roughly five inches long and two wide. It was very slim. And there could be no doubt: that blaring, jangling, unnatural
ringing
was coming from the object.

“What the
fuck
is that?” Helton voiced.

“Unc Helton!” Micky-Mack shouted. “It were in the same box the machine come in and I think… I think it’s one’a them things they call…a
cellphone…
”

A cellphone,
thought Helton in all perplexion. He’d heard myths about such things: tiny telephones folks carried ’round in their pockets like a pack’a Luckys—
telephones
that mysteriously didn’t need no
wires!

It rang and rang. Micky-Mack, with a shaky hand, passed the cryptic device to his uncle.

“Guess ya should…
answer
it, Paw,” Dumar figured.

“How ya reckon I do that?” Miffed, he held the thing to his ear and said, “Hello?” but it just kept ringing. “Jesus! That noise is irkin’ me fierce! What I gotta do?”

Still amazed, Micky-Mack stammered, “I’se think ya…
open
it, Uncle Helton. I seen a fella once in Crick City with one, and he somehow
opened
it…”

Helton’s big, callused fingers fumbled with the Liliputian device, but eventually the top half lengthwise did indeed
open,
and the instant Helton achieved the feat…

A thin, depthless voice from nowhere could be heard squawking.

“Anyone there?” said the agitated caller in what was most likely a
Jersey
accent. “Jesus Christ, Argi, I don’t think these hayseeds even know how to answer a fuckin’ phone…”

“Put it back to yer ear, Unc,” Micky-Mack suggested.

Helton did so. “Huh-huh…hello?”

“It fuckin’ took ya long enough,” the voice cracked back. It seemed to emit—again, impossibly—from a
pinhole
at the top.

“You there, asshole?” the voice asked.

“I’se here…”

“Good. Now which goober is it I’m talkin’ to? Would it be
Doooo-mar
or
Helton
or
Micky-Mack—
” and then a tiny, etching laugh spilled from the hole. “Holy fuck, fella, where you rednecks
get
these names?”

“I-I’se Helton—”

“Well, good, fuckface. Now, you don’t know me but—”

“Ain’t no one else ya
can
be ‘cept
Paulie!”
Helton roared.

“That’s right, cracker, I’m Paulie, and it was me and my crew did the job on that snivelin’ little inbred kid of yours. You
did
see the movie, didn’t you?”

Helton gulped, trembling in place. “Yeah. We shore did.”

“Good. Fuck, I’ll bet it took you rubes three or four hours to figure out how to set it up—”

“It didn’t take but one hour, you evil, low-down bastard!”

Paulie laughed over the seemingly supernatural connection. “I’ll tell ya,
Helton,
we had a
blast
killin’ that kid! Man, it was
sweet!
Got all our dicks hard it was so sweet! Kid shittin’ and pissin’ himself, cryin’ for his daddy and his uncle, and we just kept tellin’ him ‘They don’t want you no more, ya little booger,’ and then we’d push his head in and pull it out, and push it in and pull it out—fuck, it was fun!”

“Who in blazes are ya!” Helton roared. “Why you do that devilish shit to my grandson!”

“Think about it, Gomer. I figure a rube like you ain’t got much of a brain from all that
white lightning
you all drink, so you think
hard.
And since I’m such a nice guy, you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna give you a hint…”

The cellphone felt like a burning ember against Helton’s ear. “Ya damn well better ’cos I know full well I don’t know who ya fuckin’ are! And if I don’t know who ya fuckin’ are, there ain’t nothin’ I could’a ever done to ya to deserve what I just seen on that evil machine!”

A pause. A chuckle. “Here’s the hint, Gomer—”

“And I don’t know no Gomer neither, so whys you keep callin’ me that!”

More tiny laughter
billowed
from the phone. “Man, you white-trash types are a
scream!
But anyway, dickface, here’s your hint.” Another pause, then the caller’s voice lowered and said, “Thibald Caudill sends his regards—”

The connection went dead.

Helton stood stock-still. It took a full minute to lower the wretched phone from his ear. Eventually he closed it, then calmly set it down.

“Was it him, Paw?” Dumar raged. “Was it the man kilt my poor baby boy!”

“Yeah, Unc Helton,” Micky-Mack quavered. “Was it this fella
Paulie?
”

Helton’s stern eyes addressed his kin. “It was and we ain’t got time fer me ta tell ya ’bout it right now. We got important things to do first—”

“But, Paw!”

“Quiet!” Helton ordered. “Both’a yas!” and the power of the command sent Dumar and Micky-Mack into attentive quietude.

“Both’a ya’s do as I say,” Helton continued. “Dumar, first ya go get the truck out the barn. Make sure there’s water in it’n gas and oil too,” and he pronounced “oil” as
ole.
“Then ya get the old fish-guttin’ table out’n ya put it in the back the truck, then ya get the proper tools and ya
bolt
that table down the middle’a the floor—”

Dumar and Micky-Mack looked duped. “The hail ya want me ta do that?”

Helton’s finger pointed, and he shouted, “Ya want your proper revenge or don’t’cha, boy!”

“I want it, Paw! More’n
anything!
”

“Then ever-thang I say, you
do,
and without no questionin’ or backtalk, ya hear?”

“Yes, sir, Paw, yes, sir, I shorely do,” and then Dumar rushed out the back door to embark on his unreckonable duties.

“Same goes fer you,” Helton told Micky-Mack.

“Yes, sir!”

“We’se goin’ on a road-trip. Collect up three sleepin’ bags and extra clothes.”

“Right away, Uncle Helton,” but then the boy paused. “But…how many changes’a clothes should I fetch?”

“Don’t rightly know how long we’ll be but I reckon it could be as much as a month—”

“A month?”

“—so’s ya better bring
two
changes’a clothes fer each of us.”

“Right away, Uncle!”

“Not so fast— After ya done that, I want ya to go up in the attic, and I want ya to tear that place inside-out till ya find a
cigar box
”—Helton pronounced “cigar” as
see-gar
. “You know what a cigar box is, boy?”

“Uh, yeah, Unc, I’m pretty sure I do.”

“Well, I know ya can read a bit and this box, it say
King Edward
on it, and’s got a picture of a fella from olden times with a beard kind’a like a toilet brush. You find that box, son, and you bring it to me.”

“But, Uncle Helton. You don’t smoke cigars.”

“No, I’se don’t but, see, there ain’t no cigars
in
this box. There’s somethin’ else. Now, the box is tied with twine, and it better
still
be tied with twine when you bring it to me. Don’t’cha be
lookin’
in the box ’cos if’n ya do…I’ll give ya a whuppin’ worse’n the time I caught ya stealin’ watermelons from Bill Sodder’s field. You understand?”

Micky-Mack gulped and nodded.

“Now git!”

Micky-Mack sprinted away with the determination and zeal that came with blessed youth.

However, Helton remained stock-still in the middle of the room…

He’d asked God to help him get a fix on this devil-lovin’ fiend named Paulie and shore as
hail
God had answered his prayer, because when the voice on that blasted cellphone had said
Thibald Caudill sends his regards,
Helton knew in the space of half-an-instant who Paulie really was and why he had murdered young Crory Tuckton so horribly.

And for those on the edges of their seats wondering what the sinister King Edward cigar box contained, the author will completely ruin the element of suspense by making that revelation now.

It contained several rusty and quite well-used 3 1/4-inch hole-saw blades.

— | — | —

Chapter 4

(I)

The crowd had gathered at the crime scene. “Step on back, folks,” Deputy Chief Dood Malone ordered once he’d disembarked from the patrol car. “Make way.” The crowd parted, the act of which led Malone through a fidgeting and enraged aisle of human bodies. It was one of the southside houses—the bad blocks—that the crowd congregated before, after Mitzy Crooker had spied the atrocity while walking her dog. She’d immediately run home and called the police, then subsequently blabbed her discovery to the entire neighborhood.

Well holy jumpin’ FUCK,
Malone thought, spinning the tips of his handlebar mustache when he saw the puppy’s head on the stake.

One other county car sat parked right up in the yard; from the house, meanwhile, emerged Malone’s day-shift sergeant, a lanky, stoop-shouldered man with an overly large adam’s apple: Sergeant Boover.

“Shit, Boover. Another one?”

“Another one, Chief,” the younger man said and wiped his brow in spite of the chill. “Another dog head and another smack house. Place done full up with stolen insulin needles, spoons, candles, and empty baggies.”

“But the house is clear?”

“It is now. Must’ve been more cowboys just moved in, so Vinchetti’s bagmen sent ’em this warning. Then they took off.”

Fuckin’ Vinchetti,
Malone thought. The oddest thing. DEA had sent Malone the tip sheet: Paul Vinchetti III, big-time heroin and underground porn dealer from New Jersey. Mafia. But the guy was so insulated, no one could touch him. No evidence.

Boover spat some chaw juice. “Just hard to figure, you know, Chief? Little town like Pulaski and we got a
Mafia
drug lord working the turf.”

“That’s the way they do it now. They’re movin’ out of the big cities to set up shop in little burgs like this ’cos the law-enforcement budgets are so piss-ant. Kind’a makes sense. I mean, look at Pulaski. Sleepy little town, sure, but it’s sittin’ right in the middle of the bigger towns like Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford; then we got the cities like Roanoke, Richmond, Lexington, Charleston easy drivin’ distances. Shit, twice last month we caught middle-class white kids drivin’ all the way from
Manassas
to buy smack in
Pulaski.
Why? ’cos there’s no heat. DEA’s got their hands full just with crack and State’s neck-deep with meth. Meanwhile, smack slips back in between the cracks and grows and grows—it’s all the rage now, movin’ out the urban ghettos.” Malone nodded in angst. “Fuckin’ Vinchetti’s pretty damn smart. He’s gettin’ over on everyone, and even though we know he’s the guy, we got nothin’ on him. Every time the feds get close, Vinchetti cuts loose a bunch of lawyers like those guys who got O.J. off.”