The Big Ugly (13 page)

Then the driver pulled back onto the road.

"Where the fuck are we going?" I demanded.

Neither man said anything. Neither seemed to have heard what I said.

I had to drag the next breath out of my lungs.

I had started to curse myself and my goddamn stupid hubris when the cop slowed down. We were only a mile or two from where they'd pulled me over.

The cop turned off the road where a white unmarked moving van—maybe a ten-footer—idled in the grassy parking lot of some empty building for rent.

The cop with the soup stain turned around. He stared at me a moment, and then he said, "I'm going to come back there in a second and open your door. I'm going to handcuff you. If you cooperate, I'll cuff your hands in the front and I'll leave them a little loose. Won't hurt a bit. But if you make a fuss, me and my partner here will have to drop you on the hard ground out there, flip you over and handcuff you from behind. The whole process will be unpleasant, and at the end of it I can't promise that I won't be so damn agitated that I won't set the cuffs really tight."

The driver of the white van flashed his lights. The cop flashed his lights back.

The cop with the birthmark asked me, "So what do you think, lady?"

I noticed that the computer bolted to the dashboard wasn't on. Technical problems would have been reported, I bet. Something wrong with the system. No way to record the last few minutes. No record of them stopping me.

I took a deep breath and nodded curtly.

No use fighting them here. I wasn't going to lick a couple of cops and whoever the hell was sitting over there in the white van. I knew that the only one who could sick a couple of state troopers on me was Junius Kluge.

They got out of the car and opened my door. I stepped out and extended my hands. They cuffed me and led me to the van. A man sat behind the wheel, but I couldn't see him well because the headlights from the police cruiser smeared light across his windshield.

The cops took me to the back of the van. The driver of the van got out and came around the back.

Evan Hastings. Even in the dark, I could see his gashed chin and the scars on his forehead. Without saying anything, he took out a key and opened the padlock on the rolltop door. He pushed open the door, and the cops held my elbows as I climbed up into the van. Then, without a word, they closed the door.

It was as black and stuffy as a trunk. The driver clamped down the padlock, and I scooted back into a corner.

The truck rumbled to life. It jerked to the side and I slid against the wall. The ride smoothed out. Tires on pavement. We moved.

My time in that sweltering black womb was punctuated only by the occasional passing of another vehicle, the shift in momentum, the occasional stop accompanied by a red sliver of taillights beneath the door. The stops became less frequent the further we went, probably an indication that we were on the highway.

We drove for a long time. A few times, the van grunted and the floor inclined and I slid from my corner against the cab of the truck down to the door. We were climbing hills. I couldn't tell, but it seemed as if we were headed up into the mountains.

We rode for an hour or more. After a while, we slowed. We made a hard turn onto a rougher bit of road—not gravel, but narrow and uneven, with potholes biting at the wheels and tree branches scraping at the roof.

Then another hard turn, and the front of the truck plunged downward and I tumbled across the floor and slammed into the back wall.

We leveled out at the bottom of some hill and the truck crawled to a stop. It shifted and moved in reverse. The sound outside compressed, like we were backing into a building. Then we stopped.

The truck's engine cut off.

Stillness.

Quiet.

I pushed myself into the back corner. Hastings got out and walked away from the truck. I heard crickets and katydids somewhere in the distance. Aside from the insects, my own breathing. And nothing else.

Then footsteps came back toward the van. The lock clanked and the door ratcheted up to the ceiling.

Evan Hastings stood there, peering at me from beneath his slashed brow. His voice slid out in a thin drawl. "You got any mind to give me trouble, I got a mind to give it back."

I clenched my hands into fists, but I said, "No trouble."

"All right then. Come on out of there and I'll take you inside."

"Where inside?"

"You just said you wasn't going to give me no trouble."

"I just want to know where I'm going," I said.

He wasn't having it. His eyes settled on me without feeling. "You get your ass up out of there 'fore I come in there and drag you out by your hair."

I stood up and walked to the end of the truck and stepped out.

We were backed up to a loading dock. I wasn't sure where we were, but the gray building seemed large and unpopulated. Beyond the parking lot, trees whispered and insects roared.

He took my elbow in his hand and led me into the building. In hobnail boots, he stood a few inches taller than me and wore a black T-shirt with a picture of a wolf howling at the moon. His jeans were dirty and he wore one of his knives clipped to his belt.

The building was cool and empty but not abandoned. A couple of long conveyer belts sat in the center of a long, wide open room. Empty metal crates stood against the wall, stacked all the way to the ceiling. Everything was gray concrete and stainless steel, and the only splash of color came from words painted in red, white, and blue along one wall: OZARK POULTRY.

Arkansas Chicken for America's Table

He pushed me through a door and down a hallway that stunk of coffee, chicken shit, and ammonia. Through windows I could see papers and cups and telephones on the desks of a darkened office. A calendar with the current month hung on a bulletin board in the hallway.

Finally, we came to a set of double doors labeled: EXSANGUINATION ROOM.

He nudged me inside.

Slick white vinyl covered the floor and walls and ceiling. Along one wall were four steel contraptions. Each machine stood five-feet tall, with a rotating head at the top made up of four cones. A large sign on the wall demonstrated how to lower a live chicken into each cone so that its head stuck out the bottom. Beneath the sign, a red rubber hose attached to a spigot in the wall.

At the center of this small, gleaming white space sat an empty wooden chair.

"Sit," he said.

I stared at the large drain under the chair.

With the tips of his fingers, he gave me a sarcastically gentle push. "Please, now. Do have a seat."

I walked over and sat down, facing him.

Two long fluorescent bulbs burned in the ceiling. My eyes burned from the ammonia stench of the room, but I read the sign scrawled in magic marker on the wall: REMEMBER TO CUT THE CHICKENS AND NOT YOURSELF!

I shut my eyes against the ammonia.

When I opened them, Evan stared down at me and said, "You got yourself in more trouble than you can handle, didn't you, sweetie?"

Footsteps in the hallway.

I swallowed. My ears ached. My sweaty fists hurt from clenching too hard.

The door opened and Vin Colfax walked in.

He wore a black suit with a blue silk tie and a white shirt. "Thanks, Evan," he said, unbuttoning his coat.

Evan said, "You sure you don't want me to stick around?"

Colfax took off his coat. "Naw, not for this part. You go on out back. I'll get you when I need you. Leave me the keys to the cuffs."

Evan handed him the keys, took a last look at me, and left.

As the door settled shut, Colfax walked over to the steel contraptions pushed against the wall. He hung his jacket on one of the cones and turned around.

He tossed the keys at me.

I tried to catch them, but they hit my chest and fell to the floor. I leaned down and picked them up.

He nodded at my handcuffs.

As I worked to free my hands, he said, "Eleanor Bennett."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't open my mouth.

"Ex-corrections officer. Ex-con. Liar and thief."

"Mr. Colfax, look-k"

"Mr. Colfax?" he said. "Mister? You're getting respectful now?" He worked a gold cufflink out of his sleeve. "You weren't too respectful when you told me and Junius that the girl went to Texas." He slipped the cufflink into a pocket. "Turns out she left town on the bus to Texas, but she got off in Texarkana. Some boy on the bus was sweet on her, I guess. When she didn't get back on the bus with everybody else he went to the driver and made a ruckus. They looked all over for her. But she and the little girl had up and disappeared. Lady at the ticket counter remembered it real well. Now, it's funny that Alexis would buy a ticket to Fort Worth and then disappear at the state line, ain't it?"

My sweaty fingers had trouble keeping the key straight. As I tried to steady my hands, I said, "I told you she—she went—she left town on the bus. And she did. But she might have gotten off and gone somewhere else. That's true. I might know where she went to."

He walked over and took the keys from me. Kneeling down like he was going to propose marriage, he unlocked first one brace and then the other. He pulled them from my wrists and tossed them aside. They clanged across the floor and hit the wall.

He stood up, his hips level with my face, and he said, "Now, you can help me."

"W-what?"

He held out his left wrist. "Cufflink number two."

I reached up and unclasped the cufflink and pushed it through the holes in his sleeve. He held out a palm and I placed the link in his hand. He dropped it in his pocket.

He asked, "What are you? Forty? A perfectly respectable-looking, forty-year-old woman. You have any children?"

"No."

"Well there you go. You managed to get to forty without some kid ruining your body."

"I can tell you where Alexis is."

He began to roll up a sleeve.

"I know," he said.

"I just want to tell you and be done with this. I made a terrible mistake, Mr. Colfax."

"Okay. So where is she?"

"Tennessee."

He rolled up the sleeve past his elbow. "Tennessee. That's vague. Kinda like saying she's in Texas."

"Pigeon Forge. She has a cousin there."

"Yeah." He rolled up the other sleeve. "You said she had kinfolk down in Texas. Seems like this story you're telling me now is just a variation on the story you told me and Junius this morning. Kind of seems like every word that comes out of your mouth is fucking bullshit."

He walked around me.

I slid off my shoes.

He stood behind me. "Where—"

I lunged for the door, and he slammed down on top of me. We crashed onto the floor. I tried to jerk free, but he put a knee in my back.

Grabbing a handful of my hair, he yanked my head back as far as he could.

I screamed.

He smashed my face into the floor.

I saw black and red spots as he dragged me back into the chair and said, "I want you to do what you got to do, okay? Scream, spit, and fight. I already decided I was going to ruin this suit before I walked in here."

He planted me in the chair, and I clutched my head to keep it from spinning. As I wiped the blood and tears out of my eyes, he unbuckled his belt.

"I'm going tell you a secret," he said. "You have to promise not tell anyone. Do you promise?"

I couldn't stop the room from tilting. I squeezed my eyes shut.

He leaned down by my ear. "Do you promise?" He stepped back and pulled his belt loose. "The secret is, I've been thinking about this since the first time I saw you. What you might look like in a situation like this one. And now here we are. I'm supposed to get this information out of you. I'm supposed to defend and protect my family. It's the getting it, though." He had the belt in his hands. "It's the getting it out of you. I'll admit that that's the part I've been thinking about—" he slid the belt around my neck "—since the first time I saw you."

I put my broken face in my hands, my vision blurred with tears and blood. Behind me, the belt tightened around my throat.

He leaned down again and whispered in my ear, "It's okay to cry, baby."

I threw back my head and caught him in the nose. Then with all my weight, I threw myself backward and the chair slammed down on his right knee.

He hit the floor yelping like a dog. I sprawled across his lap trying to get my feet under me as he cussed me and yanked up on the belt, crushing my throat. I dug my heels against the floor and when I had some leverage, I threw an elbow into his balls. He let go of the belt and put me in a choke hold. Squeezing hard with his right arm, he started to cut off my air.

Panic shot through me. I fought his arm with one hand and reached back, grabbing at his face with another. He jerked his head from side to side and kept crushing my air. I let go of his arm and reached back with both hands and grabbed his head.

I shoved my thumbs into his eyes.

He jerked his head away, but I sunk my left thumb deep into his eye socket. He jerked harder, but I gouged deeper.

His eye snapped out of his face. He screamed and let go of me, but as I gasped for breath and tried to get to my feet he kicked me in the ribs. I stumbled over the chair. He grabbed his bloody eye socket and staggered to a knee, but I grabbed the wooden chair, swung it wide and hit him as hard as I could.

The chair knocked him to the floor, and he sprawled there clawing at his bleeding socket with one hand and holding his balls with the other. "You better run, you fucking bitch," he screamed.

I didn't run. I raised the chair in the air again and smashed it across his head.

Bleeding and woozy, he twisted around on all fours and started calling weakly for Evan, but I jumped on the small of his back with all my hundred and thirty pounds and dropped him to the floor. I put a knee on his neck, and then I grabbed his silk tie and started pulling. I pulled and he kicked and squirmed, but at that point he wasn't strong enough to buck me off. I pulled on that tie as hard as I could. I pulled until he stopped moving.