Drought (5 page)

‘
Tyler
!' screamed Maria. ‘
Tyler, help me
!
Tyler
!'

The hoods immediately took up the cry. ‘
Oh,
Tyler
!' they shrieked, in a nightmarish chorus. ‘
Help me, Tyler
!
Come on Tyler you lily-livered chickenshit
!
Help me
!'

Tyler closed his eyes for a moment although he couldn't think of a prayer. Then he picked up the baseball bat that Maria's father had given him and stepped out of the office and into the main store, his sneakers crunching on broken glass and cereal.

The hoods were gathered around the front of the store, beside the counter. All that Tyler could see behind the counter was one upraised hand leaning against the wall and a feathery plume of blood that went almost up to the ceiling, spattering the face of the clock and a poster for Farmer John Bacon.

A green-and-blue plaid picnic blanket had been ripped out of its packaging and spread out on the floor, and Maria was lying spreadeagled in the middle of it. Four hoods were kneeling, one at each corner, gripping her wrists and her ankles. Some of them had now pulled back their hoods, and were openly leering at her, and Tyler could see them now for what they were. Not terrifying faceless demons, but ordinary pasty-faced teenagers with grade-one haircuts and wispy moustaches and splotches of bright red acne on their cheeks. Two or three of them he was sure he had seen before, at the Del Rosa bowling lanes.

One was much taller and bulkier than the rest, in a soiled gray hoodie. As Tyler cautiously made his way toward the front of the store, he was standing with his back to him, blocking the center aisle. But when as Tyler came closer Maria lifted up her head from the blanket and gasped out, ‘
Tyler
!' and it was then that the big, tall hoodie turned around and saw him.

He was Hispanic looking, with a broad flat nose speckled with blackheads and frog-like eyes, but even under his hood Tyler could see that his hair had been dyed a dark shade of ginger. Tyler approached him with his baseball bat raised.

‘Hey now, bro,
you
must be Tyler! The knight in shining armor, come to rescue the damsel in distress! What you aiming to do with that bat, bro? How about I stick it up your ass? How about I stick it up your ass
sideways
?'

Tyler lunged forward but the hoodie immediately seized the bat and wrenched it out of Tyler's hand. He tossed it to one side, and then he reached out and snatched at Tyler's T-shirt and pulled him in so close that Tyler could feel his spit on his face when he spoke.

‘You know what they call me? Big Puppet, that's what they call me. And you don't want to find out why.' Tyler could smell marijuana on his clothes and a strong, sour body odor.

Tyler twisted his head around and looked down at Maria and his heart thumped even harder. The hoods had pulled up her flowery cotton dress until it was bundled up under her neck, like a scarf. Then they had cut off her bra and tossed it to one side, and dragged her pink cotton panties down around her ankles. Her figure was boyish, tiny-breasted and narrow-hipped, with dark brown nipples like dates and a little black soul patch between her legs.

‘You can't do this,' said Tyler, although his throat was constricted with fear.

‘What do you mean, bro? We can do anything we like, and who going to stop us? Not her poppa. He dead. How about you?
You
going to try to stop us? I don't think you got it in you, bro!'

Big Puppet cackled in Tyler's ear,
hah-hah-hah-hah
! and then he shoved him away, so that Tyler stumbled and fell heavily against the shelving, bringing down a noisy cascade of aerosols and cans of polish and kitchen scouring pads. He managed to regain his balance, but as soon as he did so, his left sleeve was snatched by another hoodie, and yet another gripped his right shoulder, so that there was no chance of him getting away.

‘Do you see what we have here, brothers?' Big Puppet called out, stretching out both of his arms as if he were a preacher. ‘What we have here is a fine
piruja quinsenãnera
, and she's going to be good to us, aren't you, baby? You going to be good to
all
of us!'

‘Let go of her!' Tyler shouted at him, hoarsely. ‘She never did anything to you! Let go of her!'

‘You
so
right, bro,' said Big Puppet. ‘She never did nothing to me. But here today, with the situation being what it is, we can put that right, can't we? Now she can do something to me. Like give me a little
mamada
.'

He stepped over all the cans and packages that littered the floor until he was standing right over her. She stared up at him, wide-eyed. ‘
Tyler
,' she whispered, but both of them knew that Tyler was powerless to help her. Big Puppet unfastened his belt-buckle and then popped open the fly buttons of his low-slung jeans. He scooped out his brown, half-erect penis and lasciviously rubbed himself, swaying his hips from side to side as he did so.

Tyler struggled and pulled and tried to tug himself free, but the two hoods were holding him too tight, and the one who was gripping his shoulder punched him hard in the side, right under the ribs, bruising his liver. He had never known anything hurt so much, ever, and his mouth was flooded with bile and half-digested cereal.

Big Puppet pulled his jeans halfway down his thighs, and then he sank to his knees next to Maria and held out his stiffened penis. She shut her eyes and closed her mouth tight and turned her face away, but one of the hoods who was holding her down took hold of her head and forced her to turn back toward him. Big Puppet grinned at her wolfishly and then he pressed the dark purple head of his penis right up against her lips. She stared up at him in fear and disgust and fury, and still kept her mouth resolutely closed, but he reached down and pinched her nostrils between finger and thumb.

‘Let her go, you fucking
animals
!' Tyler shrilled at them, almost choking on his own sick. ‘Let her go!' But the hoodie punched him in the liver again, and this time he doubled over in pain, with tiny white sparks floating in front of his eyes.

Maria held her breath for as long as she could, but her eyes were bulging and it was obvious that she couldn't keep her mouth closed any longer. She arched her back in desperation and tried to turn away, but the hoodie who was keeping her head still had his fingers dug deep into her scalp, and she couldn't move without tearing her own hair out. She opened her mouth and screamed for air, and as she did so Big Puppet forced the side of his left hand between her teeth.

He leaned forward and stared her directly in the eyes. ‘You listen to me, baby. You going to be good to me and you ain't going to bite. You understand me? I feel your teeth in my
pirula
just once and I'm going to cut off your teentsy little tits and take them home and feed them to my pet piranha.'

There was a howl of laughter from the rest of the hoods but Big Puppet's expression was deadly serious. Tyler could see Maria staring back at him, and she didn't blink once.

‘Just give me one nod for yes,' Big Puppet told her.

There was a long pause, and then Maria nodded. Big Puppet took his hand out of her mouth and patted her cheek and smiled. He turned around and grinned at all of his fellow hoods and held up both of his thumbs. ‘In the war of man versus spitch, man won!'

He knelt over her, with his knees in her armpits. She closed her eyes and reluctantly parted her lips but then he gripped her jaw between finger and thumb and pulled it downward, opening her mouth wide.

‘
Gaaaaaggh
!' she choked, as he lifted his hips and forced his penis as far down her throat as he could. She retched, and bucked up and down, but the four hoods who were holding her wrists and ankles kept her pinned to the blanket, and Big Puppet relentlessly thrust himself in and out of her mouth, grunting as he did so.

Tyler looked away, his chin still smothered with bile and bits of breakfast and his eyes so crowded with tears that he was almost blind. He had never felt so powerless, or so weak. The hoodie who was gripping his shoulder said, ‘Hey, dude! You're missing all the action! Look at that baby
suck,
dude! It's like she's swallowing his whole fucking
pitote
! Hey! I got to get me some of this!'

With that, he released his grip on Tyler's shoulder and started to unbuckle his belt. He pulled down his jeans and stepped out of them, and then pulled down purple spotted shorts. He stripped off his hoodie so that he was wearing only a black T-shirt and sneakers, and then he dropped on to his knees on the blanket, in between Maria's thighs.

Big Puppet turned his head around and said, ‘What the fuck you doing, K-Bomb?'

‘Riding the bitch seat!' K-Bomb retorted, and the two of them whooped and high-fived each other.

The two hoods who were holding Maria's ankles levered her legs even wider apart, and K-Bomb pushed himself into her, his T-shirt riding up at the back, his narrow white buttocks jerking up and down like a dancing marionette. Tyler tried not to look, but if he turned his face away it was just as bad, because he could still hear Maria gagging and the hoods panting and ‘oh-yessing!' and saying ‘here it comes, baby! Ready for this, spitch?'

He didn't know how long it went on. It seemed like hours. All he knew for sure was that the shadows slowly moved across the floor, and that each one of the hoods took Maria in turn, and some of them twice. She lay on the blanket as if she were dead, her body jiggling from side to side only because one of the hoods was thrusting himself into her. They no longer had to hold her down, because she made no more attempts to struggle or turn away. She simply stared at the ceiling, her arms and her legs spread wide.

They no longer had to hold Tyler, either. He knelt between the shelves, his head lowered, numb with shock and overwhelmed with his own helplessness.

‘That's it, bro, time we split,' said Big Puppet, at last. ‘K-Bomb, you want to take all them bottles of water out to the truck? And all them smokes, and all them six-packs, and all those bottles of liquor. And grab some of them Hungry Man dinners, and some of them pizzas, but none of them fucking pineapple ones.'

He approached Tyler and stood over him, his fly buttons still undone. ‘Pretty girl that, bro. She your girlfriend or something? You want to take better care of her, know what I mean? You wouldn't want eleven other guys fucking her, would you? I wouldn't let that happen to
my
girlfriend, no way.'

Tyler lifted his head and looked up at him. He would never have imagined it possible to hate another human being as much as this. He was trembling uncontrollably, right on the verge of jumping up and trying to tear the hoods to shreds with his bare hands. He knew, however, that he didn't stand a chance against them, and that they would almost certainly kill him, if they weren't going to kill him anyhow. He stayed where he was, kneeling on the floor, saying nothing.

Big Puppet turned away, but almost immediately he turned back again and pointed at Tyler and said, ‘You know something? We ain't been fair to you, bro.'

Tyler didn't answer. Whatever Big Puppet was talking about, he didn't like the sound of it.

‘No, we ain't been fair you at all! K-Bomb! Joker! Buzzy! We ain't been fair to this poor guy! We all been taking a piece of his girlfriend and never let him have none! Like disrespectful or what?'

Tyler opened and closed his mouth. His throat was so dry that he could barely speak. He swallowed twice, and then he managed to croak out, ‘She's not my girlfriend.'

‘That's not the point, bro! Like, she ain't
our
girlfriend neither! But there we all was, taking a piece of her like, and you didn't get nothing! That's just not respectful! We got to put that right, bro!'

‘What – what do you mean?'

Big Puppet beckoned to K-Bomb and between them they took hold of Tyler's arms and heaved him up from the floor. He could barely stand, and his knees kept giving way, but they kept him on his feet while the hoodie called Buzzy came forward, grinning, and unfastened his belt. Tyler tried to collapse on to the floor, but Big Puppet and K-Bomb wouldn't let him drop. Buzzy levered off his sneakers, and then he dragged off his jeans and pulled down his white Calvin Kleins.

‘Come on, bro!' Big Puppet urged him. ‘It's your turn now!'

Big Puppet and K-Bomb manhandled him into a kneeling position between Maria's wide-apart thighs. He could see Maria staring at him dully, but all he could do was stare back at her. To his shame, his penis was sticking up erect. He couldn't imagine why, unless he had been aroused by fear and humiliation and embarrassment.

‘Don't mind a little cream pie, do you, bro?' Big Puppet asked him. ‘Come on, now, get in there, my man, have a little
chon chon
, enjoy yourself !'

Tyler tried to twist himself free, but K-Bomb wrestled him back down on his knees. Big Puppet said, ‘Hey,
güey
, don't tell me you're refusing this fine young lady I'm handing you on a plate right here? If you're refusing her, maybe you think she ain't good enough for you, and if she ain't good enough for you, then maybe we should just dispose of her. Joker – go find that shotgun. I saw some shells there, too, right under the register.'

Joker went around the counter and came back with Mr Alvarez's sawn-off shotgun and a cardboard box with three or four pink shotgun cartridges in it. Big Puppet said, ‘Load it,' and Joker ejected the two spent cartridges and pushed in two fresh ones.

‘Now, take her out,' said Big Puppet.

Joker pointed the shotgun at Maria's head. Maria turned her head away and closed her eyes tight, but she didn't utter a sound.

‘Look at her,' said Big Puppet. ‘I think she even knows what a worthless spitch she is.'

‘Stop it!' said Tyler. ‘Please! Stop it! I'll do it!'