Jack Ketchum - The Passenger

“She’s got fifty-nine. Makes sixty-six, seventy-eight. What about you, Billy?”

“Exactly twenty-five dollars. Exactly what I came out with-you and Emil being kind enough to entail me my drinks for free.”

“That’s ninety-one, seventy-eight. Shit. Not even a hundred bucks. Emil? Maria?”

“Marion.”

“Marion, sorry. What’ve you got?”

Emil pinched her nipple and she jumped and smiled, then reached over for her purse.

“Forty-three dollars, fifty-two cents, hon.”

“Okay, okay. Shit, forget the cents. Forty-three dollars. Forty-three dollars and… what?”

“I believe we were up to ninety-one, Ray. Ninety-one dollars, seventy-eight cents, when you bash your groupings,” said Billy.

“Forget the seventy-eight cents, all right? Forget the goddamn cents! That’s… one hundred thirty-four. Emil?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Huh? Don’t worry about it? Jesus, Emil! We’re asking them to get us outa state here, you know? And so far we haven’t got fifty bucks apiece!”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got plenty.”

“You got plenty. Fine. What’s plenty?”

“Your turn’s right here,” the lawyer said. “Road to your left, just ahead.”

“Goddammit, Emil,” Ray said. “ What the fuck’s plenty?”

She’d driven by one day, curious, but as an Officer of the Court and “Little” Harpe’s attorney of record, she’d been restricted from going any farther or seeing any more than she was seeing now-a wide dirt strip maybe twenty yards across cut through open, uncultivated fields on either side, rising up the slope of a mountain. No house in sight and no gate. No structures at all. But any approach observable from above.

They drove slowly and in silence until they crested the hill and that was when the first guard appeared along the side of the road, a big man almost comically dressed in nightfighter makeup and combat gear, his assault rifle held at port arms. There was nothing comic about the rifle.

“Slower, Billy,” said Emil. “Stop if he tells you to.” But he didn’t. He didn’t look interested in them at all. Didn’t even bother to wave them on.

Nor did the second guard a quarter-mile up, the field narrowing around them by then, gradually being swallowed by scrub and pine.

At the top of a rise, with dense forest pressing close now on either side, narrowing the road to a single lane funneling them up the mountain, she saw a third guard dressed in biker’s colors talking into his cell phone, saw him shove the phone into his utility belt and raise his automatic rifle. The guard checked their license plate but didn’t even glance at them.

It was eerie. As though they didn’t matter.

And maybe they didn’t.

The road narrowed even more. The woods drew closer.

At the top of another rise two more guards in military gear stood across from one another on either side of the road, one black man and one white. Each had a sleek black Doberman on a short leash.

“I hate those doggies,” said Billy. He pronounced it dawgies.

“Shut up,” said Emil. “Slow down.”

Because this time the guards were stepping toward them. The men stopped and turned their flashlights into the car and then the black guard on Billy’s side motioned them on.

“This is pretty fucking weird,” said Ray.

Nobody contradicted him.

The road sloped downward and narrowed yet further as though the woods were a fist closing in on them and at the bottom of the hill stood a tall bald black man in dark neatly pressed suit and tie with his hand raised and his assault rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. Billy stopped the car. The man walked over to his side, taking his time. He stooped and peered in, smiling.

“Welcome to Hole-in-the-Wall, gentlemen,” he said.

The man had no trace of an accent at all. The black man in the dark expensive suit was from Anywhere, U.S.A. Their welcoming committee. Very civilized. Uh- huh.

“Directly on top of the next hill there. Can’t miss it.

You can state your business to the gentleman at the bar. Have yourselves a pleasant evening.”

He stepped aside and watched them pass and Janet turned and looked back.

The man was following them on foot, his rifle slung over his shoulder, moving at a graceful, easy pace.

Marion thought, Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.

It was something about the tree, something about the huge ancient solitary oak tree in front of the house- the mansion, really, Hole-in-the-Wall was a three-story, gabled, corniced, fucking bay-windowed porched-in old mansion, some hole! some joke!-something about that tree and the tire hanging from the chain that depended from a limb, the skeleton of a big openmouthed dog or maybe a wolf, the wolf-dog grinning, arranged seated on the tire with hind legs dangling, another fine joke, the four thick nooses swaying in the wind hanging from another limb higher up, the nooses not so funny, something about the tree had put that stupid old nursery rhyme into her mind.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…

A marching song. A drum cadence. Her dad had been VFW all the way. Dat-da-dat-da-dat-dat-dat-dat…

As Marion herself marched along behind Emil, as l hey all did, past the hogs and pickups and Land Rovers and Jeeps and Mercedes and black stretch limos and Rollses. Marched up the stairs to the porch, the suited black guard with the rifle ambling along behind, dat -da- dat, to the dimly lit porch with heavy chains hanging from the eaves like a thick metal curtain, parting them, chains ringing in her ears like strange dull wind chimes and the scent of oil and metal on her hands as she touched them, stepping onto the porch hung with mobiles-inverted bone crosses and rusted knives and studded belts and weathered leather collars-where six wooden barrels filled with what looked like old automobile and motorbike parts stood in an orderly row to her left and a smashed-in Wurlitzer jukebox lay on its side to her right beside a broken plough propped up against the siding, its handles carved into knobbed human phalluses and flanked by two painted wooden signs- TREE FROG BEER and DWARF SNUFFING STATION NUMBER 103.

Somebody around here’s got a real strange sense of humor, she thought.

She saw Emil hesitate at the door and heard the black man behind them tell them to go on in, folks in his calm soft voice and so they did.

They walked into a fucking party is what they did.

She could feel her heart thud all of a sudden fast and heavy, making her tits tremble, was aware of her eyes going wide and her lips pulling up into a smile she had nothing to do with at all.

Daddy, she thought, if you could see your little girl now. You’d be fucking floored by this.

Beyond the heavy oak door was an enormous open space and the goddamn place was swarming. Motorbike headlights slung from the rafters handled the lighting, streaming down on them like spotlights. She saw bikers, skinheads, longhairs straight out of the goddamn Sixties, men in tuxes and women in gowns all mingling and laughing. She saw a male tattooed hand go to a female pearl-draped breast. She saw steroid freaks dressed for combat and guys naked and limp-dicked and emaciated all to hell. She saw martini glasses and Budweisers and joints and in the comer to her left, the sharp glitter of needles. She saw crude prison tattoos and elegant multiple piercings. They had weapons all over the place. Handguns in shoulder holsters. Shotguns and automatic rifles propped against the wall while their owners roamed and drank and did whatever the hell they were doing.