Dirtbags (21 page)

Calvin shot the man in the face and the girl was up, took to the woods. As Calvin chased after her, Rhonda heard his laughter above all. Over the screams, over the frantic flailing through the beds of rusty pine needles, over the rattling of beech leaves, she heard only her husband laughing. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended.

Calvin appeared at the ridge above them, the direction into which the girl had run. He dragged the naked carcass by the foot, it collecting every dead leaf and decades of rotted, fallen vegetation. He rolled her down the ravine, where she landed at Rhonda’s feet.

“Should we arrange them like we found them?” Calvin asked. “Or should we do something a little more . . . 
artistic?
”

Rhonda said she honestly did not know and found a place to sit while Calvin tended to his business. She took her time to notice the trees. Calvin looked at the bodies and harrumphed. “Do you think we need to find a gay couple next time?”

“What?” For the first time in quite a while, she looked him in the eyes.

“A gay couple.” He dropped the knife into the dirt and wiped his hands on his jeans. He stepped away from them and dropped to his haunches, resting his elbows on his thighs. “I mean, I don’t want to appear too political. This is our fifth heterosexual couple. I think it sends the wrong message.”

He rose and stood over them, as though admiring his handiwork. He closed one eye.

“Men or women?” Rhonda asked absently.

“I don’t think it matters,” Calvin said. He walked down to the river and cleaned his knife. His arms were Pollocked with blood.

“It does to me,” she said. “I’m the one that you expect to get them alone. I’d probably have a better go of things finding two gay women than I would two gay men. Or at least getting them off on their lonesome.”

Calvin dipped the knife into the waters and rubbed the blood free with his thumb and forefinger. “Don’t discount yourself,” he said. “You never know what you’re capable of until you try.”

Rhonda could be accused of many things, but never of not trying. Rhonda reckoned she would try everything there was to try. She figured she could try as hard as the day was long, but whether something came of it was a different issue altogether. She thought the thing she’d tried best of all was hook a fella before she’d gone grey and far be from her to judge what type of man that fella would turn out to be. Calvin Cantrell was the one that asked for her hand. From the looks of things, she would be leaving the dance with him.

For now, anyway.

Their marriage started out fine at first, all things considered. She worked late, he stayed up late. They both liked to sleep in. Neither of them was vegetarian or followed after any peculiar food fads. They had their rocky points, sure. He was oddly tidy, and the sex was a little strange, but overall, he beat several alternatives. Rhonda saw many relationships spiral out of control when dancers at the 809 took home a customer and tried to make a go of things. Calvin had managed to handle the situation rather well.

For one thing, he never came to the club. Guys came to the 809 all the time and raised a ruckus when a girl spent too long with any one fella or if some guy or another said or did something he shouldn’t. Bubba’s guy Big Jack had a way of dealing with those boyfriends. All Rhonda would say was nobody saw much of so-and-so after Big Jack put paws on him. She prayed to high heaven in the early days that Calvin wouldn’t take a liking to hanging around the strip club and reckoned something she said took hold, because he never showed an interest in it.

He didn’t even care to hear about what went on up there, to be honest. She would come home at all hours and find him there, sitting on the couch, reading a comic book or watching a horror flick, and she would start to tell him about her night. This guy, that girl . . . what Bubba said to this, that, or the other. Calvin didn’t care. He would keep reading, watching the TV, or whatever he was doing, and he would nod, as though half-interested until he’d finally raise a finger and say, “Honey, I love you, but I have too much on my mind right now for all that strip club blah, blah, blah.”

She had no idea what could so preoccupy a man without a job, but she’d quit the conversation right there and leave him to it.

But in time, she would forget and, every couple nights or so, when she got home, she would find Calvin on the couch and get to jabbering. One night, however, she came in around two or three or so and found him reading a comic—a
graphic novel
, he constantly reminded her—on the couch. She dropped two ice cubes into a plastic cup, added some of his shitty, cheap whiskey, and fell onto the couch beside him.

“Sinnamon’s on the shit again,” she said.

He nodded and didn’t look up from the book.

She took a sip from the cup. Tasted like burnt tree. “We all know she was on it for about three or four days now. Sure enough, like she always does when she’s on the shit, she didn’t come to work. Every time, she goes three days, then don’t show up for a week or two and Bubba goes apeshit. This time weren’t no different. Bubba went apeshit. He went apeshit and a half.”

Calvin nodded again. He turned the page.

“You want to know what he did?”

“Not particularly,” Calvin said.

Rhonda watched him read for a moment. She got bored quickly enough and pulled the dollar bills from her blue jeans. She counted them first to herself, then out loud. The sound of paper sliding against paper both times. Calvin looked over the top of the book as if to say something, but soon returned to the illustrations.

“Means more money for me,” she said. “It was a good night. I tell Bubba sometimes he ought to go with a girl less than he usually does. Like, when he has three girls, two would probably suffice. Tonight, I reckon I proved him right. Even if he ain’t going to say so.”

Calvin took the cup from her hand and drank from it. He didn’t offer it back, kept it on his leg furthest from her. She watched the cup as if she expected it to say something, or perhaps even start dancing.

“Sure enough, we go down a girl, and the night turns out to be a busy one,” she said. “Lots of people came in and, wouldn’t you believe it, in walks Tom London, drunk and trying to show off. Apparently, he got out of paying worker’s comp for somebody or something and was stepping out to celebrate. You remember him?”

“Who?”

“Tom London,” she said. “The steakhouse guy?”

Calvin nodded, turned the page.

London came into the 809 sporadically. He initially fancied the younger ones Bubba kept around for fellas that took to that. Call it an off night or something, but London waved her over, flashed some twenties, and asked Rhonda to the backroom for a private dance. Rhonda, who reckoned she had a knack for picking a winner, let him have his dance while an extra-long song played on the juke. She’d even let him get a bit grabby, which she knew would send Bubba over the moon if he found out. And she didn’t run to get Big Jack when she counted the cash and realized London had shorted her ten bucks on the dance. No, she kept her mouth shut, and London, who felt he could divine a good thing or two on his own, came calling after her every time.

“Anyhow,” Rhonda continued, “Tom comes in, and he’s pretty drunk. He starts asking me out to the parking lot. Maybe me and him should get it on in the back of his SUV, he tells me over and over. I tell him he needs to sleep it off. Maybe he should go home to his wife. I mean, he’s not a dick about it, but some of these men—”

For the first time, Calvin stared at her. She threw a hand to her mouth. Her breath left her and she realized she had no idea how Calvin would be when made jealous.

“Calvin, baby,” she said. “Are you okay? I didn’t go out there with him, you know.”

Calvin shrugged. “He’s the one, honey,” was all he said. He turned back to his comic and flipped the page.

“Wha—”

“He’s the one.”

She took the cup from his hand and found only sweet, liquored ice cubes. “The one for what?”

“He’s got a track record,” Calvin said. He finally set the book at his feet and turned to face her. “He’s the one that Lorie said she was banging when his first wife caught them, right? That waitress friend of yours?”

She nodded. “Yes, but that don’t mean—”

“You know Sandra, the girl who cuts hair at the fancy joint downtown?” he asked. When Rhonda nodded, he said, “She said she’s hooked up with him. On the sly. The lady he married the second time around is a barracuda. You know Dickie Simpson, the guy that does all the work on the buildings downtown? Tom London married his sister.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Calvin said. “She’d have his lunch if she found out he was screwing some stripper, wouldn’t she?”

“He ain’t screwing no stripper,” Rhonda snapped. “At least, he ain’t screwing me.”

“But he would, wouldn’t he?” Calvin’s grin stretched across his face, near as comic as his eyebrows arching sky-high. “And he’d pay plenty good money to make sure his shiny, new wife didn’t find out he was doing it, right?”

“I don’t think--”

He stood and pointed his finger to the ceiling. “This is it. This guy is our future. Whatever I become in life will be because of Tom London, you mark my words.”

Months later, she remembered that moment and shook her head. Calvin never struck her as the type to fulfill prophecy, but here he was, doing exactly what he said he would do. She watched him patiently and thought about that night, about the many paths they’d taken since she’d directed Tom London into their lives.

“Where are we going to go?” Rhonda asked him.

“I don’t think we should go anywhere.” As if they were still on the couch, he went about his business as if she weren’t there. He dragged the dead woman closer to her boyfriend. He toyed with their bodies—draping his arm over her, arranging them in a post-coitus charade, sitting them upright—until finally he stood back, arms crossed, shook his head, and then left them where they lay. He stared for a moment before turning his gaze to the treetops.

“We can’t stay here,” she said. “After the last two . . . Once they find this couple they are going to have folks coming all the way from Richmond and beyond to catch you.”

“Let them come.”

She stayed firm. “Folks are getting antsy with all this killing. We should get while the getting still resembles something good.”

“Where would we go, Rhonda?” He lowered his gaze from the heavens and stood face-to-face with her. “Huh? Answer me that. Where would we go? It would be different if we had some money. But your friend Tom London never paid what he owed me, and none of these people carry enough in their damned pockets.”

The tone in his voice was not imagined. She hung her head at the implication.

“This isn’t my fault,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“It certainly ain’t mine,” he said. “The plan couldn’t have been more simple. We stood to make quite a bit of money off that fella. But right smack in the middle of a perfectly good blackmail scheme, you go and offer yourself up as his alibi. What were you thinking?”

“What were you thinking when you took a job to kill his ex-wife? You don’t think traipsing off across the country to knock off a junkie for the man we was blackmailing was screwing up the plan any?”

The muscles in Calvin’s face stretched taut. His eyes raged. Rhonda took a step back. She no longer knew what to expect from her husband. She had no idea where he drew the line these days or if he even drew it anymore at all.

“What was I thinking?” He appeared exasperated. “I’ll tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking about getting us some cash. I was thinking about getting us out of that damned trailer. I was thinking about getting us out of this damned town. But what were you thinking? That’s what I’d like to know.”

He arched his eyebrows, then turned back to the bodies. What he’d insinuated was clear. She stood and turned him about to face her.

“Listen,” she said. “I never lost focus. I hated every minute of it.”

“Fat chance.”

“No, I did.” She looked him dead in the eye. He’d always had trouble with that level of honesty and looked away. Looked away, but stayed where he was. “He was gross,” she said. “Out of shape, dirty. I hated every inch of it, but I did it. For us.” She turned his face towards hers again. “Our plan was to blackmail him. Not get wanted for murder. And now we got nothing.”

He took a breath. “It’s not nothing,” he said. He put his hands on her shoulders. A little too close to her neck for her comfort. “This is how it all starts.”

“How what starts?”

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “I’m getting my name out there. I keep doing these jobs, and people will begin to take notice.”

“I reckon people are taking plenty notice as it is.”

He smiled. He removed his hands from her shoulders. “Everybody at one time or another is looking to have somebody killed,” he said. “I figure if I get a little experience, I can make a name for myself. Think about the opportunities if I got good at this.”

“Opportunities?”

“Yeah. A man for hire, a job with the mob . . . working for people who have people killed. Go pro.”

Rhonda kept expecting him to erupt in laughter, to tell her the joke was over. He did neither.

“They’re looking for us, Calvin.”

“Of course they are,” he said. “And what better advertisement? Everybody knows the name Calvin Cantrell. Thanks to what we’ve done here, everyone is scared at the very mention of my name.”

“And is that a good thing?”

He shrugged and stared up the trail heading back out to the park entrance. “What I know is that, all my life, I’ve been getting ready for this. And now, I can do what I want.” Behind him, squirrels raised a ruckus, crunching this way and that through the dead leaves. “I’ve gotten pretty good at this. If we leave town, for all we know, we’ll have to start all over. You don’t want that, do you?”

No, she thought to herself, she certainly didn’t.

“So, what’s next?” she asked.

“Next?” He held out his hand. She took it and he led her down the trail and, for the first time, she noticed the buckeyes returning to life. “Next we find someone in need of my services.”