Slice (21 page)

There is a second before he goes into the chest for her heart while she is still aware and in that beat she has time to think of her little Jerry and that she never got to settle down and she'd just learned to run the alibi and wasn't it a shame to die so young, and unfair and, shit, all of that in the one heartbeat or so, proving that sometimes your life does in fact flash before your eyes at the moment of death.

J
ack Eichord dreams. He dreams of the icy depths of Sugar Lake. He is clad in rubber, a tight suit of black neoprene, and he spits into a visor, puts the mask on, and dives. There is nothing to see as he swims along through his own bubbles, circling the muddy bottom of the lake, swimming through the frigid underwater shadows. Diving down in the cold lake where the childhood bullies of his nightmares, Whortley Williams and Cabrey Brown, once held him under until he almost drowned. He forces himself to go down in the lake and relive it again.

But all he can see is a picture of his friend James Lee, telling him about how he took the money at Buckhead Mercantile, making Jack an accessory. And Eichord knows that Jimmie has forgotten something very important. He has forgotten the code of the street: you don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

He swims into the Kowloon dream. Swimming into clarity he first sees the crown colony of Hong Kong at the mouth of the Pearl River. He sees it as a teeming squall of life fighting for survival, then for economic superiority in the industrial renaissance—a tide of monkey humanity slowly melting in the cultural caldron. The edges of the races blurring with each new generation, the culture changing, amplifying as it resonates into the fuzzy space expander of high tech.

But he sees it as a colony of cluttering monkeys, yuppies, new-wave pirates, all in a mad race up the steep, sloping sides of a giant rice bowl. The Man in Kowloon does not belong to his world. He is an anachronism. He does not belong to this chittering, squalling, teeming time and place. He belongs in another century, alone and aloof in some mountain retreat, far from the crowd and the marketplace. He does not belong to a world where a woman will roll over onto a crying child to crush it and suffocate it because she has grown tired of finding baby-sitters to watch her babies while she goes out to take a lover. They are not of the same species.

The night is fire that always burns Eichord's eyes. The color is that of brilliant gemstones or broken glass. The smell is mass, fish, fear, electricity, mob smell. The sound is screaming, chanting, car-horn tympani. Cymbal crash. Oriental singsong lute mandarin samisen songbird fugue for panflute.

Then he is in the chamber with the drunken, chanting men. Lee's brother scowls fiercely into the face of his ancestors and picks up a short, gleaming sword. The flames from the torches flicker on the walls like dancing demons, ritual remnants of the antecedents who gave the clan its name. Light sparkles from the blade like sunlight on a golden Buddha. He takes his fingers and shapes them into a claw and oh God no don't let me dream this again don't let me see him pull his tongue out like that oh Jesus Christ oh please oh God don't let me see him start that sawing make that first sawing cut across that tongue that will prove so impossibly impossible to cut to sever to oh God don't make me see that first ridge of blood as he slices across his own AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

E
ach month, like clockwork, Daniel would wait until Michael Hora was outside and alone and he would walk up to him and hold out the money. A thousand dollars. This would usually constitute their conversation for the month. There was no contact whatsoever. The few times that Hora spoke to Bunkowski he discouraged any conversation. Chaingang became more and more paranoid as he stayed in one spot for such a long time. The thought had occurred to him that Hora, while probably on the run himself—if only from the U.S. military—might consider a few probes to see if there were any serious money on his head. On the other hand, Hora had established a counterculture reputation of sorts for his “farm.” It had become known as a place where runaways, wanted men, mercs, and similar rogue elephants might seek temporary shelter from the eyes of the law and government.

But time had a way of eating at security. The greatest hideout in the world was vulnerable to bad luck. And there was Chaingang's natural disinclination to have someone know his whereabouts. Another factor was the regularity of the payments. At what point would Hora decide a thousand a month wasn't up to the spiraling cost of living, and his old pal would have to sweeten the pot? Because he had the precognate's mind he anticipated such events, and they filled him with unrest, while stirring his natural desire to waste Hora. It was just a matter of time.

Sissy was well along in her pregnancy, and rather than become enraged by it and stomp both her and the fetus out with a monstrous bootprint, he was pleased by it. When he was ready he would go for the cop Eichord and inflict a payback on him beyond anything he'd be able to conceive in his most torturous nightmare, and what better cover than a pregnant wife or—better yet—a wife and a baby. It dimpled Daniel's pockmarked, doughy face in an immense grin—just the thought of his blade of vengeance slashing out at Jack. He would come with something quite delicious. Perhaps render the cop into a living stump, keeping him alive, one of those freaks you see in New York scurrying around on a skateboard. Or one of those pathetic creatures you find begging for handouts in places like Thailand and India. He'd love that. He'd turn Eichord into a freak and give him a tin cup and some pencils.

It was payday for his landlord again, and Hora saw the man lumbering over in his direction. The protuberance of his belly was nowhere near so obtrusive as it had been only a few weeks ago. Hora was amazed by the amount of work Chaingang, whom Hora secretly called Gangbang, had turned out. How he had leveled that eighty-acre piece of overgrown pastureland with a weed slinger was beyond anything imaginable to him.

“Hey,” he called out.

“Yeah.” Chaingang grunted and handed him ten filthy one-hundred dollar bills. Hora, none too fastidious himself, always had the urge to wash his hands whenever he'd had to touch something Chaingang had touched.

“Listen. Uh, you know that ole barn over ‘tween my ground and the Darnells’ field?” Chaingang said nothing. “It's up to you. But if you're lookin’ for somethin’ to do you can wreck it. Just as soon see it down, but I want the cypress logs and them shaker shingles. Okay?” The big man nodded. He took a double-bit ax and started off toward the field.

“You ain't gon’ to be able to chop her down. Need to get some crowbars and a sledgehammer ‘n a—” but Chaingang just kept waddling off so Michael Hora shrugged and muttered, “Fuck it then,” and went about his business.

The Bunkowski wrecking company had its own way of tearing down a barn. He went into the woods and felled a thirty-five-foot ash with the ax, chopping as fast as he could, moving around the base of the tree with little precise shuffle steps as he swung the sharp ax, watching the blade
thwock
down into the hard wood. After a few minutes he'd broken through to the center and he smacked it once more and stepped out from under the big falling tree.

He then chopped all the lower limbs off flush with the trunk and started working on chopping through the tree at about twenty-two or twenty-three feet from the base. Finally he had himself a 221/[2]-foot pole of stout ash, and he was in the wrecking business.

Hora and the slow wife and Sissy, each on a different part of the farm, could all hear Chaingang working. He was popping boards and shingles and ceiling timbers off the old barn. They'd hear a loud hammering noise and then a kind of fast-fire effect as the smashing sounds echoed from the Darnell place across the flat pasture.
WHAP!
as a timber broke loose.
POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW!
Shingles flying from the roof of the barn and into the nearby field. Chaingang standing dead center in the middle of the filthy barn, a bandanna over his face and safety glasses over his eyes, standing in a rain of ancient sawdust, nails, dead bugs, rat shit, God knows what, as he pounded timbers and shingles out into space with a 221/[2]-foot ash battering ram, gripping it in a death grip with those extra-large leather work gloves and thinking about how pleasant it would be to tie the cop to a tree somewhere and work on him with the big pole. Breaking kneecaps and crushing the rib cage and the groin and pelvis and thinking these thoughts as nearly four hundred pounds of hell on the hoof smashed its weight up against the roof and timbers blasted loose and shaker shingles flew crazily into the cloudless sky
WHAP! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW!
Smashing the pole into the man who had sought him out the way you'll seek out a human target in a firefight and dog the man and try to kill him.
WHAP!
Smashing those knees and pulverizing that arrogant face into scarlet pulp
POW! POW! POW!
hands that could squeeze a flashlight battery or rip a rib cage loose were ramming that big tree trunk up at the thought of this cop he'd come to hate.

Because of the unusual sound-carrying acoustical properties of the land they all heard it easily three hundred yards away. It sounded like somebody was blasting apart the barn with a machine gun. And by sundown there was no barn at all. Just piles of rotting debris.

D
onna and Jack Eichord and Tuffy were playing on the living-room floor of their house. That is, Donna and Jack were laughing; Tuffy was doing the playing. He had a little crumpled ball of paper that was his favorite toy of the moment.

“A month ago,” Eichord said when he got control again, “somebody says, You're gonna be buying cat toys, I woulda found it a little hard to swallow.” He'd just gone into a store and purchased a fake mouse.

“I know. But the little guy is so much fun to watch. What a mess,” as if Tuffy had heard her he attacked the paper with renewed ferocity, and as it skittered away across the rug, he went with it, end over end in a mad scramble. “Look at him!"

“Tuffy, you're gonna kill yourself."

“If you live that long."

“That's why I named him that. When I saw him playing in that cardboard box Shari brought down to work, he was running at the walls like a kamikaze pilot. He looked like a daredevil cat to me."

“I hate that word."

“Cat?"

“I hate words like ‘daredevil.’ I don't even like the guy's name—Mr. Kuhneeval. The first name. I don't like that word."

“Yeah?"

“I don't like spooky words. Tuffy doesn't like ‘em either. However, we DO like the word ‘spooky.’”

“Good name for a little black cat.” Eichord looked the way he did when he was only there with the surface of his mind. “I know what you mean, though, about words. I have some words I don't like to hear either.” His face grew serious. “A few proper nouns I'd just as soon never hear again.” He had that look in his eyes she'd learned to recognize in Dallas, and she smiled and quickly changed the subject.

“Hey."

“Yeah?"

“Sex aside,” she said, snuggling close as Tuffy watched them, his tiny pink tongue hanging out after all the rambunctious activity, “I want to know which of your official birthday goodies you liked the best. Tell me."

“Sex aside, you say?” he said, snuggling next to her. “Well, that's number one shot down. I guess my favorite was the quick game of catch. I thought you were dynamite in that shirt and cap. Cute stuff."

“You liked ole Dad, did you?"

“Posilutely."

“You liked burnin’ ‘em in to old Dad?"

“A regular Bob Feller."

“Who's Bob Feller?"

“Who is BOB FELLER? You jest, surely.” She shook her head no. “Even a youngster like you shoulda heard of Bob Feller. Hmmm. Well. Bob Feller. He was a pitcher. They used to say Feller only had three pitches, a fast ball, a burner, and a high hard one."

“That's all any man needs."

“Yeah?"

“Sure. You guys can do just fine as long as you got a couple of balls and a hard one.” She said it very seriously.

“Uh huh."

“Be right back,” she said, getting up off the floor. “Don't you two go away."

“We won't,” he promised.

“I'll be right back,” she repeated as she bounced off down the hall. A few moments later she reappeared. The sweatshirt and jeans were gone. She had on his shirt again, and the Mets cap.

“Hello there,” he said, checking her out. “That was a quick costume change."

“Like you always say, I aims to please."

“Uh."

She was bare legged and wore no shoes. And the shirt was open in front and he could see the beautiful swells of those proud twin globes. She pulled the shirt apart a little farther and said, “You wanna come inside and play?"

“Right,” he said hoarsely. He got up and followed her down the hall toward the bedroom to inspect her fast-breaking curves.

Tuffy was busily batting his crumpled ball of paper all over the living room, his little fur ball of a body flying at top speed until he chased left when he should have chased right and ran right smack dab into a wall. The little kitten got back up, dazed, shook it off, and looked around.

Where the heck did everybody go?

When Jack snuggled against her something was changed. She could tell immediately, even as he was touching her, that her husband was just going through the motions, and to Donna Eichord it was a confusing irritation. This time she couldn't hold her tongue and said, “I can tell I'm driving you insane with desire,” in a tone that made him draw back from her and he smiled a little and kept touching her but he didn't try to fake a response.

“It isn't you, love."

“That's good news,” she said.

“Come on,” he said very softly, feeling her draw away from his touch. “You know better."

“I thought I did, but...” She knew how she must sound. She let it trail off into space.

“Really,” Jack said, sighing, “it's work. You know. Sometimes it just doesn't shake off at the front door."