Doug Allyn: The Best American Mystery Stories 1997

Benbow didn’t understand what R. L. meant as the doctor stirred beside him, releasing a thin, dry stench like a limestone cavern or an open grave. Benbow had heard that death supposedly hurl no more than having a tooth pulled and he wondered who had brought back that bit of information as the doctor hit him in the shoulder with a blunt needle, then he slipped uneasily into an enforced sleep like a small death.

When he woke again. Benbow found little changed but the light. Mona Sue still curled in her chair, sleeping now, below her husband’s hulk against the full dark sky. The doctor slept, too, leaning the fragile bones of his skull against Benbow’s sore arm. And Benbow’s leg was also asleep, locked in position by the giant cast resting on the coffee table. He sat very still for as long as he could, waiting for his mind to clear, willing his dead leg to awaken, and wondering why he wasn’t dead too.

“Don’t be gettin’ no ideas, son,” R. L. said without turning.

Of all the things Benbow had hated during the long Sundays shoveling pig shit or dealing cards for R. L. Dark — that was the trade he and the old man had made for Little R. L.’s football services — he hated the bastard calling him “son.”

“I’m not your son, you fucking old bastard.”

R. L. ignored him, didn’t even bother to turn. “How hot’s that there water?” he asked calmly as the doctor stirred.

Benbow answered without thinking. “Somewhere between ninety-eight and one-oh-two. Why?”

“How ’bout half a dose. Doc?” R. L. said, turning now. “And see bout makin’ that boy’s cast waterproof. I’m thinkin’ that hot water might take the edge off my rheumatism and I for sure want the coach there to keep me company...”

Once again Benbow found the warm, lazy path back to the darkness at the center of his life, half listening to the old man and Mona Sue squabble over the air conditioner.

After word of his bargain with R. L. Dark for the gridiron services of his baby son spread throughout every tuck and hollow of the county, Benbow could no longer stop after practice for even a single quiet beer at any one of the rank honky-tonks that surrounded the dry town without hearing snickers as he left. It seemed that whatever he might have gained in sympathy, he surely lost in respect. And the old man treated him worse than a farting joke.

On the Saturdays that first fall, when Benbow began his day’s exchanging his manual labor for Little R. L.’s rushing talents, the old man dogged him all around the hog farm on a small John Deere tractor, endlessly pointing out Benbow’s total ignorance of the details of trading bacon for bread and his general inability to perform hard work, complaining at great length, then cackling wildly and jacking the throttle on the tractor as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. Even knowing that Little R. L. was lying on the couch in front of the television and soothing his sore muscles with a pint jar of ’shine couldn’t make Benbow even begin to resent his bargain, and he never even bothered to look at the old man, knowing that this was his only escape.

Sundays, though, the old man left him alone. Sunday was Poker Day. Land-rich farmers, sly country lawyers with sharp eyes and soft hands, and small-town bankers with the souls of slave traders came from as far away as West Memphis. St. Louis, and Fort Smith to gather in R. L.’s double-wide for a table stakes hold ’em game, a game famous in at least four states, and occasionally in northern Mexico.

On the sabbath he was on his own, except for the surly, lurking presence of Little R. L., who seemed to blame his coach for every ache and pain, and the jittery passage of a slim, petulant teenage girl who slopped past him across the muddy farmyard in a shapeless feed-sack dress and oversized rubber boots, trailing odd, throaty laughter, the same laughter she had when one of the sows decided to dine on her litter. Benbow should have listened.

But these seemed minor difficulties when balanced against the fact that Little R. L. gained nearly a hundred yards a game his freshman year.

The next fall, the shit-shoveling and the old man’s attitude seemed easier to bear. Then when Benbow casually let slip that he had once dealt and played poker professionally, R. L.’s watery blue eyes suddenly glistened with greed, and the Sunday portion of Benbow’s bargain became both easier and more complicated. Not that the old man needed him to cheat. R. L. Dark always won. The only times the old man signaled him to deal seconds was to give hands to his competitors to keep them in the game so the old man could skin them even deeper.

The brutal and dangerous monotony of Benbow’s life continued, controlled and hopeful until the fall of Little R. L.’s junior year, when everything came apart. Then back together with a terrible rush. A break, a dislocation, and a connection.

On the Saturday afternoon after Little R. L. broke the state rushing record the night before, the teenage girl stopped chuckling long enough to ask a question. “How long you have to go to college, Coach, to figure out how to scoot pig shit off concrete with a fire hose?”

When she laughed, Benbow finally asked, “Who the fuck are you, honey?”

“Mrs. R. L. Dark. Senior,” she replied, the perfect arch of her nose in the air, “that’s who.” And Benbow looked at her for the first time, watched the thrust of her hard, marvelous body naked beneath the thin fabric of her cheap dress.

Then Benbow tried to make conversation with Mona Sue, made the mistake of asking Mona Sue why she wore rubber boots. “Hookworms,” she said, pointing at his sockless feet in old Nikes .Jesus, he thought. Then Jesus wept that night as he watched the white worms slither through his dark, bloody stool. Now he knew what the old man had been laughing about.

On Sunday a rich Mexican rancher tried to cover one of R. L.’s raises with a Rolex, then the old man insisted on buying the fifteen-thousand-dollar watch with five К cash, and when he opened the small safe set in the floor of the trailer’s kitchen, Benbow glimpsed the huge pile of banded stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills that filled the safe.

The next Friday night Little R. L. broke his own rushing record with more than a quarter left in the game, which was good because in the fourth quarter the turf gave way under his right foot, which then slid under a pursuing tackle. Benbow heard the pop all the way from the sidelines as the kid’s knee dislocated.

Explaining to R. L. that a bargain was a bargain, no matter what happened with the kid’s knee, the next day Benbow went about his chores just long enough to lure Mona Sue into a feed shed and out of her dress. But not her rubber boots. Benbow didn’t care. He just fucked her. The revenge he planned on R. L. Dark a frozen hell in his heart. But the soft hunger of her mouth and the touch of her astonishing body — diamond-hard nipples, fast-twitch cat muscle slithering under human skin, her cunt like a silken bag of rich, luminous seed pearls suspended in heavenly fucking fire — destroyed his hope of vengeance. Now he simply wanted her. No matter the cost.

Two months later, just as her pregnancy began to show, Benbow cracked the safe with a tablespoon of nitro, took all the money, and they ran.

Although he was sure Mona Sue still dreamed, she’d lost her audience. Except for the wrangler, who still watched her as if she were some heathen idol. But every time she tried to talk to the dark cowboy, the old man pinched her thigh with horny fingers so hard it left blood blisters.

Their mornings were much different now. They all went to the hot water. The doctor slept on a poolside bench behind Mona Sue, who sat on the side of the pool, her feet dangling in the water, her blotched thighs exposed, and her eyes as vacant as her half-smile. R. L. Dark, Curley, and Bald Bill, wearing cutoffs and cheap T-shirts, stood neck-deep in the steamy water, loosely surrounding Benbow, anchored by his plastic-shrouded cast, which loomed like a giant boulder under the heavy water.