Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

“Hell if it is.” Now Wes was yelling above the screams in the background. “You’re in animal control, ain’t you?”

“Yeah, but — ”

“No but’s about it. You get your ass out here.”

The walkie-talkie went dead. The whole thing made me a little nervous. So nervous that I took the .22 target pistol out of the glove compartment and gripped it like some kind of talisman.

Where I stood, it was real quiet.

I remembered that question, the one that used to drive me crazy in college.

If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to hear it…

I was in the middle of nowhere.

… does it make a sound?

Somewhere out there, someone was screaming.

But it didn’t matter how hard I listened.

I didn’t hear anything at all.

When I caught up with them, Wes and Rudy were already hard at work.

There were eight Mexicans. Three men — one of them old enough to have white hair — three women, one teenage girl, and one kid.

The younger men had been stripped and handcuffed. Wes held a gun on them, even so. The women and the kid and the old man huddled in a little patch of shade cast by the west wall of the arroyo.

The teenage girl was down on her hands and knees. Her faded blouse was torn and her jeans lay in a tired knot off to one side, along with a scuffed up pair of boots with holes in the soles. Rudy was behind her, his uniform pants halfway down, grunting away.

“Howdy, Roy.” Wes smiled. “Welcome to the party.”

My gut rolled. I couldn’t see the point of this. Like I said, there’s no reason to be cruel. But Wes and Rudy had obviously crossed that line a long time ago.

Wes didn’t trust me. That much was obvious. He forgot about the wetbacks and turned his attention to my face, just the way he had earlier, trying to gauge my reaction.

I know he didn’t expect the expression he got.

“Look out!” I yelled.

But the old man was already there. He’d come from behind when Wes turned to face me. He slashed at Wes with a switchblade. Wes whirled just in time to avoid the weapon, firing his pistol at the same time, and the old man tottered back as the bullets pitted his chest and he tripped over Rudy’s legs before Rudy knew what was going on.

Then it was like watching dominoes fall. The old man went down hard on top of Rudy, splashing the border guard with blood. Then Rudy went flat on top of the girl, who in turn collapsed face-first in the dirt.

For a second the three of them looked like some kind of Mexican sandwich smothered in bloody salsa. Then Rudy yelled, “Jesus Christ!” and slithered out from in between. The old man toppled over in the dirt and didn’t move as Rudy stumbled away, pulling up his pants with shaky hands.

The girl just lay there in the dirt. Wes didn’t look at her at all. He didn’t look at Rudy, either. What he did was stare down at the dead Mexican. “He wasn’t any good to us, anyway,” Wes said, the smoking pistol still fisted in his right hand. “He was too old and then some.”

“Drop it, gringo.”

The voice came from behind us, and above. I recognized the weird accent almost immediately. I turned and saw him standing there, the setting sun at his back, some kind of machine pistol in his hand.

The man from the solid-panel van.

Wes started talking, but it didn’t do any good. His voice trembled. All of it sounded like excuses, anyway.

“Shut up.” The guy aimed his weapon at Wes. “Like I said, drop it. I won’t ask you again.”

Wes tossed his gun in the dirt. Too fast for my taste. Even his mirrored sunglasses couldn’t hide his fear. Suddenly he looked fifty pounds lighter, as if someone had let the air out of him.

The stranger caught my eye and smiled. “I told you I had a radio, amigo. It’s a scanner, actually. The best money can buy. I picked up your conversation. Hope you don’t mind my dropping in.”

He was cool, all right. I’ll give him that.

Unfortunately, Rudy wasn’t cool. He stood close to the van, still holding onto his pants, still shaky from dancing the sex and death cha-cha. His eyes were focused on his gun belt, which lay on a rock a few feet away. The gun belt was on the other side of the border patrol van, cut off from the stranger’s view, and I could almost hear the wheels turning in Rudy’s head.

If he could get behind the van before the stranger opened fire, and if he could get his hands on his gun…

Rudy went for it. His pants didn’t.

Rudy belly-flopped in the dirt. The stranger opened up with the machine pistol. Bloody roses bloomed along Rudy’s spine as he pawed the ground. I watched him die in a couple seconds and didn’t move an inch.

I couldn’t. I was too scared.

Most of the Mexicans started running. Wes made a grab for his pistol. The raped girl was still flat on the ground, like she was living a couple minutes behind everyone else. Wes almost had his gun. Mexicans ran past me like I wasn’t there. A burst of gunfire chopped three fingers from Wes’ hand, and he screamed.

I blinked.

The raped girl was up now. She took off like a shot.

I sucked a breath between clenched teeth. I have to admit that I’ve never been so scared in all my life.

The girl ran my way. I clothes-lined her. As I took her down I pulled the target pistol from behind my back and jammed the barrel against her skull.

I knew that my gun hand was shaking. The girl whimpered and I put my other hand over her mouth, but that only made it worse because I could feel her frightened breaths washing my palm.

That’s when I really started to shake. Wes was screaming something awful. My grip tightened on the pistol. My index finger was coiled around the trigger, and I was afraid that I might pull it by accident.

I looked up at the stranger. “It’s up to you,” I said, and I was surprised to find that I didn’t sound nearly as nervous as I felt.

He dumped the machine pistol into the arroyo.

“Get down here,” I said.

Hands raised, the stranger started down. I moved away from the girl, keeping the pistol on him, moving slowly so I could grab his weapon before he made it to the bottom of the arroyo.

Wes was behind me now

So was the girl.

I heard her running, bare feet scrabbling over loose rock.

I didn’t do it to be cruel. You have to understand that.

But she didn’t give me any other choice.

She really didn’t.

The stranger had been a lot of trouble, so I made him strip and chained him to the bumper.

I wasn’t going to kill him. Wes and Rudy had already made that mistake once today. I planned to drive slow. We didn’t have far to go. Maybe three miles, tops.

I kicked some dirt over Wes’ severed fingers as I climbed into the van. Wes was riding shotgun. His uniform shirt was off, only now it wasn’t so crisp and clean because he had it wrapped around his shot-up hand.

I slipped off my belt and gave it to Wes, figuring he could use it as a tourniquet. “You sure you don’t want me to take you to town first?” I asked. “I could leave the Mex here while I dropped you at the doctor. It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“I ain’t no pussy,” Wes hissed, as if I’d insulted him. “I can hold out and then some.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just figured you might want to get to a doctor.”

“No way. I want to see how tough this boy is before I start worrying about me.”

“I can understand that.” I buckled up and keyed the engine. “Wait’ll you hear the guy’s story. That’ll make you feel better.”