Эд Горман - Blood Moon

Because it’s crap and you know they know it’s crap and that’s half the fun.

Other thing is, tell only stories that reflect well on you.

For instance, to a con, blowing up somebody’s house can be a pretty cool thing.

That reflects well on you.

But plugging your own daughter?

Or even having the thought?

Bastard’s worse than a child molester.

“I don’t want to be in here no more,” Dodsworth says to the counselor. “Spence knows damn good and well I never touched Bonnie. I wouldn’t do nothin’ like that.”

“That ain’t what you said couple weeks ago,” Spence says. And winks. And everybody laughs again. “Maybe since Bonnie ain’t around you’d like to put the pork to one of us. Lesee now — who’d ole Dodsworth like to put the pork to—”

Another wink.

“Why, Mr. Haines!”

Haines is the counselor.

“I bet that’s who Dodsworth has the hots for. Mr. Haines!”

Lots of laughter now. Mr. Haines and Dodsworth both blushing.

Spence is a mean but very clever guy. You might not think so him being such a grungy fat-ass with enough faded tattoos to start an art gallery. But he’s got great cunning, Spence does, no brains, no power — but cunning. And that’s what it takes to be important in here.

He tunes out.

Sits there seeing it all but not seeing anything, hearing it all but not hearing.

And has the thought for the second time: I need to escape. I’ve been here too long.

Couple days later, on the yard, he gets his protector Servic alone and says, “You ever think about just walking out of here some time?”

“You gettin’ a little crazy.”

“Yeah, I guess so, anyway.”

“It comes and goes, kid. You just gotta ride it is all.”

“So you never thought about it?”

“Sure I thought about it. Who ain’t thought about it? But see those guys?”

He points to the towers located at either end of the yard. The guards in them are armed with rifles and legend has it that they’re damned good shots.

“You figure out a way to get past them guards, kid, you let me know.”

“Maybe there’s another way.”

“Maybe. But if there is, I ain’t never heard of it.” He pauses, looks at him. “Somethin’ happen?”

“Just all the crap. I got this group therapy session every week with Spence and—”

“Spence. Screw Spence. Don’t let him get you down, kid. He’s just mad ’cause his old lady’s sleepin’ with some coon back in Milwaukee.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder, then.”

“Bein’ mean’s the only thing he’s got left.”

Servic, who’s been a lot nicer of late, looks up at the guard towers again. “You ever figure out how to get past them towers, kid, you let me know.”

He laughs. “I will. I promise.”

They walk back to the rest of the cons.

There was a muffled cry and the scrape of furniture legs across a hardwood floor following my knock. Then there was just silence.

I stood on the McNallys’ front porch watching a cardinal perched on a bird feeder in a nearby oak tree. He bobbed and pecked relentlessly, red and vivid and sleek in this afternoon of graceful white butterflies and cute quick squirrels bouncing across the side lawn. It was springtime, and I wanted to be up on the Iowa River, standing in my waders and casting my line.

I knocked again.

Half a minute later, Eve McNally came to the door. Her forehead and left cheek showed red from where something had slammed hard against her — a fist, most likely. She wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a pair of red shorts. Her legs were shaped nicely, but she was already having problems with varicose veins.

“I didn’t invite you here,” she said. “Go away.”

“I want to talk to your husband.”

“He’s not here.”

“He’s inside, Eve, and I know it.”

“He don’t want to talk to you.”

“You haven’t got your daughter back yet, have you?”

She glanced over her shoulder. If I hadn’t known for sure that her husband was home, I knew now.

He appeared in the doorway, a big beefy man with hair so black it looked dyed, a blue panther tattoo running down the meaty biceps of his right arm. He wore a white sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of dungarees that hung precariously on the slope of his considerable belly. The panther looked angry, on the prowl. Presumably that’s how his master looked most of the time, too.

“What do you want?”

“I want to help you get your daughter back.”

“You get off my property,” he said. I thought of angry Sam throwing me off his property a little earlier today. This wasn’t my day for making friends.

“Tell him I’m trying to help you,” I said to Eve.

“He don’t listen to me.”

“Out,” he said. And suddenly he was out the door and pushing me backward off his porch.

“Don’t hurt him,” Eve said. “He’s tryin’ to help us.”

I grabbed the railing to keep from falling down the four steps. I had just managed to get a grip on it when he hit me with a hard roundhouse right.

I suppose tough guys don’t mind much getting hit but personally I’ve never cared for it a whole lot. For one thing, it almost invariably hurts. For another, it oftentimes inhibits your vision. And, for a final thing, it makes you feel like a helpless child.

Unless, of course, you hit back.

He was still p’d, meaning he wanted to hit me some more despite his wife’s screams.

I stumbled down the final three stairs, losing my grip on the railing. But by then I knew just what I wanted to do.

And I did it.

When he was on the bottom step, I kicked him directly in the crotch. He made a lot of frightening noise, but then he did what I’d hoped he would do: sort of crumpled into himself, holding his crotch as he did so.

I hit him three times in the side of the head, hard. I wanted to hit him a fourth time, but my knuckles were starting to hurt.

I grabbed him by his nice black hair and half-dragged him back up the stairs and inside. He took a swing at me once, but missed. I returned the favor by slamming home an especially vicious kidney shot. I didn’t miss.

In the living room, I pushed him on to the couch and stood over him. I had my Ruger out and was pointing it in his face.

“Oh, God, mister, don’t shoot him.”

“I just want to talk to him without him trying to hit me.”

“You sonofabitch, I won’t just hit you, I’ll kill you.”

“You were out at the Brindle farm this afternoon. Why?”

He looked surprised, fear and curiosity blooming in his beady little gaze. He composed himself before speaking, sitting up straighter on the couch, tugging his T-shirt down over his little middle-aged male titties.

A grandfather clock tocked peacefully, measuring out the centuries in the sudden peaceful silence, and in the kitchen the refrigerator motor thrummed on. It was a nice modest home, this, a home where husband and wife should live happily ever after and children should be raised in safety and love and not get kidnapped — no, never get kidnapped at all. Nor should two grown men, both with blood on their mouths, be in the living room sweaty and enraged and wanting to kill each other.

“You dumb bastard, even if you don’t believe me or your wife, I am trying to help you find your daughter.”

But he was scared. His eyes kept blinking, and he kept licking his lips. He daubed blood from his lower lip with the back of his hand. “What’s my daughter to you?”