Hell's Half Acre (31 page)

And then what?

Then John told Jude to cut my hair, to punish me. He told her to make me ugly.

What did Jude say?

Molly shivers. She didn’t want to do it but I think she’s afraid of John.

I think so, too. It worries the hell out of me but I don’t say so and
then I forget about it because Molly is aware of my erection. Her hand drifts down into my crotch to give me a squeeze. It seems like the wrong time for this but I groan and she unbuckles my belt and slips her hand into my pants. Molly kisses my ears and throat and chest but she avoids my face and mouth, as if she is reluctant to let me see her. She unbuttons my shirt without looking at me.

A ring of yellow hair on the floor.

Lost feathers, dead flowers.

I make love to Molly on her bare mattress and the sex between us is grim, tender, wordless.

M
OLLY SLEEPS BESIDE ME
, snoring softly. I’m wide awake and staring at nothing in muddy underwater light. The gloaming, baby. Panic attack, delirium tremens. Headache and shrinking vision. Blackbirds on the wing. I can’t tell the difference between panic and sickness but my body is begging for a drink. My arms and legs are numb, naked and tangled with Molly’s. The separation between us is vague. I slip out from under her and she mumbles nonsense at me but does not wake. I gather my clothes and creep into the hall to get dressed. The clock chimes four times and for a moment I have no idea whether it’s afternoon or morning.

Jude is in the kitchen, drinking coffee. She holds the cup with both hands and sits with her back very straight. She stares through me and says nothing. The mark on her face is purple and swollen. I take a bottle of vodka from the freezer, then fetch a glass and pour myself a generous shot over ice.

Happy hour? she says.

I grunt and light a cigarette.

Your hands are shaking, she says.

It’s a new feature. I don’t want to talk about it.

Jude sighs. You are dying before my eyes.

How’s your face?

It hurts. But it’s no one’s fault.

What about Miller?

What about him?

Molly said he forced himself on you.

Jude flinches, slightly. That’s not true.

What is the truth?

He wanted to make love to me, she says. I wasn’t interested.

I don’t understand.

What, she says. What don’t you understand?

I don’t understand why you don’t cut his wee willie off and feed it to him.

Jude takes a cigarette from my pack, fumbles with the matches.

Are you afraid of him?

Jude strikes a match and lets it burn down to her fingers without lighting her cigarette. She strikes another and watches it burn. I push the glass of vodka across the table but she shakes her head. I reach for her hand but she pulls it away and now Miller crashes into the room. He wears black jeans and a black military-style sweater with patches on the shoulders. He tosses my jacket at me.

On your horse, Poe. We’re out of here.

Where are we going?

Baseball game, he says. The Giants are playing the Reds.

Oh, yeah. Who’s going?

Miller winks at Jude. The boys, he says. Just the boys.

I finish my drink but make no move to get up.

Don’t tell me you’re not interested, says Miller. These are dream
seats, behind third base.

I look at Jude, who nods and lights another match.

Yeah. I’m interested.

Excellent choice, he says. I’ll meet you out by the truck.

Outside and the sun is fierce in a white sky. Jeremy and Huck wait beside the Range Rover and I have a sudden, surreal vision of the four of us at the ballpark. The crowd like an ocean around us, roaring. The smell of peanuts and big plastic cups of warm beer. Miller waving a big puffy hand. Huck grimly shoving fistfuls of cotton candy into his mouth. Jeremy flirting with a red-haired girl behind us. I can see it like it already happened but there’s a tracking problem and the back of my neck has gone cold. Huck sits on the hood of the truck, smoking one of Miller’s cigars. His hands are filthy and he looks tired. Jeremy crouches in the driveway, tossing pebbles at an empty wine bottle. His eyes are narrow and red and he regards me warily as I approach.

I crouch next to him and pick up a rock. I whip it at the bottle but miss.

What’s up, I say. You look like shit.

Jeremy shrugs. Nervous. I’m nervous.

Why?

You heard what the man said. I’m gonna be dead soon.

He’s fucking with you.

Oh, yeah? Why don’t you ask brother Huck what he’s been doing this afternoon.

I glance up at Huck. Well?

Digging, he says.

Digging what?

A very deep fucking hole.

It’s a grave, says Jeremy. The man had him digging my grave.

Where?

It’s a sweet little spot, says Huck. Around the east side of the house. Jeremy’s going to be tucked in between a fig tree and a chunk of limestone.

I glance at the house. What the hell is Miller doing in there?

Fuck him, says Jeremy. Let’s take a look at my final resting place.

The three of us drift around to the side of the house and Huck’s hole indeed resembles a shallow grave. Four or five feet deep and the approximate length of a body. I drop down into the hole and lie down. The sky is white framed in black. The tops of trees. Huck and Jeremy peering over the edge.

It’s cold, I say.

Get out of there, says Jeremy. You’re giving me the creeps.

The two of them pull me out and we sit at the graveside, smoking.

Why are you guys doing this? I say.

I want the dough, says Huck. But I’m done. That little rape scene today was the end for me.

What do you mean? says Jeremy.

Huck shrugs. I’m gonna run. When we get to the ballpark, I’m gone. It might help if one of you wants to keep the psycho occupied.

Jeremy, I say. You should run, too.

No, he says. I want to do this.

Why?

Jeremy sighs. I don’t want to go into the whole tear jerking poor little orphan routine, but my life has not exactly been rosy, you know. Miller hooked me up with that doorman job and I feel like I owe him. Before that I was selling meth to college students and freaks on the
club scene. Before that I was sucking cocks for twenty bucks a throw in the Castro. And before that…did you know I was born in a halfway house. Did you know that? I was actually born in a fucking halfway house. My mom was sixteen, a junkie runaway. She was living in a shelter for teenage heroin addicts when she popped me out and she was gone before I could sit up. I’ve been in the system ever since. Foster homes, group homes, jail. I just want to be in the movies. I want to have a normal life.

There’s no such thing, says Huck. And nothing resembling it in California.

Jeremy scowls, stubborn. Well, anyway. I aim to find it.

You shouldn’t have done that scene, says Huck. That scene where you put Daphne’s head through the car window. All you did was aggravate him.

But I was good, says Jeremy. I was good wasn’t I?

Yeah, I say. You were good.

I had a funky dream last night, says Jeremy. I dreamed that I killed that monkey. I bashed his head in with a rock. I cut him open and there was a white bird where his guts were supposed to be and it just flew away, easy as you please. I felt its wings brush my face.

Blackbirds, I say. I always dream of blackbirds.

You guys are freaking me out, says Huck.

What do you think it means? says Jeremy.

I don’t know, I say. It seems to me the white bird is lucky.

The sky is changing colors and Huck says we should probably head back to the truck before Miller gets cranky.

That scene today, I say. In Molly’s room. He raped her?

Damn near, says Huck. Near enough.

And neither of you did anything?

Jude told us to back off, says Jeremy.

I wish to god she would just kill him, I say.

Jeremy exhales loudly. You don’t know shit, do you?

What do you mean?

He looks at me with eyes dead as coins. What god has joined, he says, let no man put asunder.

Yeah, I say. That’s right.

Miller is waiting by the truck. He holds an aluminum briefcase in one hand, a black flight bag in the other. He wears a black jacket and a black knit cap pulled tight on his skull. He doesn’t look like he’s going to a ballgame, but my head is full of noise and juice and I’ve got a monster headache on the periphery and so I don’t give his outfit too much thought. Miller tosses the keys at Huck and tells him to drive. Jeremy climbs into the front passenger seat. I get in the back with Miller, who lights a joint and passes me a silver thermos.

Have a martini, he says.

Thanks.

What were you doing in the woods with Heckle and Jeckle? he says.

Gathering flowers, I say.

Uh huh.

What time is the game? I say.

We aren’t going to the game.

I didn’t think so. Where are we going?

To get cigarettes, he says.

I have cigarettes, actually. I offer him my pack.

He shakes his head. I prefer a different brand.

The truck winds down out of the hills and Miller tells Huck to take a left. I am sitting with my back against the door, my feet up on the seat.

The thermos between my legs, unopened. I take the joint from Miller and allow myself one puff, to calm my nerves. I am watching him closely, every movement of his face. Every tick and flicker. The way his eyes go narrow and dark when he’s thinking. The way he licks his lips and the way his nostrils flare. I’m looking for a family resemblance and now I see it, now I don’t. The power of suggestion. I could ask him, I suppose. But I’m starting to hate him and I don’t want to see him smile at me.

After a beat, Miller instructs Huck to pull into the parking lot of a 7-11 that squats on the edge of a ravine. Huck obediently kills the engine and the four of us sit there, eyeballing each other.

Jesus, says Jeremy. Pass me that joint before I scream.

Miller gives it to him and he sucks at it with almost sexual intensity. I look out the window and watch as a guy and a girl get out of a red Toyota and go into the store. There are two other cars parked in front, but I can’t see more than three people inside. The sun has not yet gone down but the fluorescent lights have come up in the parking lot and the result is a bright haze that hovers over the 7-Eleven like a solar cloud. Miller opens the flight bag and removes four rubber masks. The shriveled faces of dead celebrities. John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, and Alfred Hitchcock. Woody Allen, who is perhaps not actually dead. He gives the John Wayne mask to Huck and tells him to put it on. He gives me the Marilyn Monroe mask, then smiles and apparently changes his mind and gives Marilyn to Jeremy. He takes Hitchcock for himself and gives me the Woody mask. The rubber is cold. I hold it in my lap like a dead fish. In the front seat, Jeremy and Huck are doing startlingly accurate impersonations of John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe.

What are we doing?

We are shooting an action sequence, says Miller.

I shake my head. Tell me we’re not going to rob the store.

Ah, well. I need cigarettes, like I said.

This is unwise, I say.

Nonsense.

It’s a pointless risk.

You are just like my wife, he says. Always worrying.

Oh. Do you want to talk about your wife?

Miller pushes the mask up over his eyes so that it looks like a deflated Alfred Hitchcock is chewing at his hair. He grins at Jeremy. What have you been telling him? he says.

Nothing, says Jeremy. I don’t know anything.

Miller, I say. This is stupid.

Do you know why the boy is sick? he says.

Why.

It’s not the chocolate milk, he says.

I close my eyes and I can see Miller naked and grunting on top of Jude. It was an image I could live with this morning and now it’s all I can do to stay calm because I want to gouge out his eyes with my thumbs and eat them. I can taste them already, warm and salty as sheep testicles. I keep my voice low, my teeth together.

What are you doing to him? I say.

I need cigarettes, he says. Then perhaps we can discuss the boy.

Have you contacted Cody yet, about the ransom? I say.

No, he says. And I’m not going to.

What?

Miller grins.

Don’t smile at me, motherfucker.

Hear me, says Miller. Jude can do whatever she wants with that kid, but she is kidding herself if she thinks I’m gonna hand her Senator Cody on a plate.

For thirty ticks that stretch and pop like dry wood in a fire, Miller and I are alone in a bubble, and I understand that he has the power. And he is abusing it. He is playing Jude like a kid’s guitar, something I would have thought impossible. I think it’s time for me to do something. I pull the mask over my head and I’m Woody Allen. Miller removes a small digital camera from the flight bag and gives it to Huck, who receives it reluctantly.

Oh and by the way, says Miller. Don’t try to run.

No, says Huck. Why would I do that?

I don’t know, says Miller. I really don’t. But I would be more comfortable if you let me hold onto the car keys.

Huck hands over the keys, which Miller deposits in the breast pocket of his jacket. He now opens the briefcase and takes out three identical handguns. He gives one to Jeremy and one to me, and keeps one for himself, selecting them seemingly at random. Huck does not get one, apparently. I examine my gun, which is a .40 caliber Sig Sauer Pro, matte black, a nice gun. I feel fairly certain mine and Jeremy’s are loaded with blanks, if at all. But I refrain from checking the magazine. Finally, he passes out latex gloves.

Now, he says. Let’s play.

The four of us cross the parking lot slowly under a pale electric haze, walking abreast as if we’re going to a gunfight. Miller is a step or two ahead of me and I point my gun at the back of his head.

Pow, I say.

Miller reaches the door and hesitates, his breath ragged through Hitchcock’s mouth. The plan is simple enough. Jeremy will hold a gun on the clerk. I will control the customers and watch the door. Miller will roam the store, amusing himself. And Huck will get it all
on film. He throws the door open and I go in first, thinking that if I’m careful, I can stop him from killing anyone.