The Scarred Man (11 page)

    "Does he touch you often?"

    "Not so much anymore."

    "Maybe Tiny had a few words with him."

    She sniffed. "It's like I told you. If you touched his hog, he'd have a fit-but me, he couldn't care less. Anyway, big as he is I know for a fact he don't want to mess with Soldier."

    "Why do you put up with it, Pearly? Why don't you get out of ah this?"

    Her eyes brightened. "You mean with you? To Wyoming?"

    "Well I like you, and if I were going to Wyoming with anybody it might very well be you. But I'm not, you see. I've got things to do here."

    She gave me a pert look and let her hair fall coquettishly over one eye. "What are you doing here anyway, Shaw?"

    "Like I told you. Just riding."

    She shook her head. "You're not like the rest of these apes. You could be… like gentle with a girl."

    "Don't waste your time thinking about me, Pearly."

    "Listen, did they beat up on you because I told them you were looking for Soldier?"

    "In a way."

    Her fingers came up to stroke my cheek. "Gee, I'm sorry about that."

    "It's okay. One thing, Tiny's nose will never be the same."

    She laughed. "You clobbered that gorilla?"

    "Sort of."

    "Oh man. He must be burning."

    "The last I saw of him, he was drowning his sorrows in booze."

    "What about Soldier? Was he the right one?"

    "He's the right one all right."

    "How about a little walk in the woods, Shaw? Let's get out of this scene before it gets real heavy. I mean, the way they're going, somebody is liable to get killed. We could like walk up into the pines and watch the moon come up. What about it?"

    "I wish I could, Pearly. I really do."

    "Oh, go fuck yourself, you snot-nosed bastard. What would I want with an old fart like you anyway. Hey, Magoo! Magoo! Wait for Pearly!"

    I watched her go. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Should be holding hands at a junior prom somewhere or a drive-in. What do you think this is, Shaw, a rerun of
Little Women
? It wasn't
Little Women
for Stacey, and it won't be for that poor little bitch Pearly.

    The thought of Stacey brought me back. Soldier is circulating. Find him and finish him. Probably never get a better chance. He already suspects something. He's a wanderer, a drifter. Once he leaves here, it will be like looking for spit in the ocean. This time, since I lacked a gun, there could be no final confrontation as there had been with Stud. Take him by surprise. My chain would do. But that would mean getting him alone somewhere. It was too complicated. And if it were to be done tonight, there was not enough time.

    The riot was in my favor. More than one might be killed before this night was over.

    I was swept along with the rest of them into the center of town. Cars were jammed up, and the cyclists were attacking them, ripping off antennae and smashing windows. The wiser drivers had fled on foot. Those who resisted were smashed into insensibility.

    Two girls came down the main street with half a dozen riders following them like dogs in heat. The girls wore tight shorts and sweaters. I recognized them as the daughters of Moore, the grocery store owner at the campground. I wondered how they had slipped away from him, and if they knew what they were in for. They had come into town to see the fun. If I was correct in my reading of the intentions of the men behind them, they would soon be getting more than they bargained for. There was not a damn thing I could do to help them. Suddenly the girls were separated. The knot of men split, surrounding one of the girls and driving the other into the back of an abandoned Plymouth. I heard her cry out for her sister, but it was hardly more than a muffled bleat. Two men had piled into the back of the car with her. The sweater was shoved up around her throat, her heavy breasts exposed. The other girl was being hustled toward the empty filling station where I had been roughed up by Soldier and Tiny.

    Sheriff Kranski stood in the town square. His hat and gunbelt were gone, and his pants had been lowered around his knees. He stood with his arms around one of the bandstand support posts, wrists shackled together with his own handcuffs. The mob flowed around him. His face was that of a man in hell.

    Soldier was not in sight.

    I was running out of time. It could not be long before reinforcements were brought in from the neighboring villages. When they came, the lid would be off the whole thing. The outlaws would scatter into the hills. On their fast machines they could be a hundred miles away in an hour or two. It might be months or years before I could catch up with Soldier again.

    The crash of glass as another store front gave. A woman screamed, the sound shrill and desperate, jangling my nerves. God help any reasonably attractive woman out on the streets this night. Stacey had screamed that way too, and it had not helped. These murdering bastards thrived on screaming. How little men had changed in all the thousands of years of so-called civilizing. Scratch the surface and the beast springs forth. It is only one small step from Dachau to Kildare.

    It has been said that the mark of the psychopath is his need for instant gratification. Even in the age of sexual permissiveness, he still finds it necessary to rape. Tonight the whole town of Kildare was being raped.

    Of course, the cyclists would claim later that the victims had asked for it. Why would a woman who did not want to be taken by force be out on the streets anyway? Moore's two girls had come into town looking for it. Poor little Pearly was looking for it. They knew damn well what would happen to them, and they came anyway, like bitches in heat.

    That was the way Stud had put it to me.

    With his back to the canal and the gun in his face, he had said, "What's rape anyway, man? I mean it's like you're only givin' the chick what she really wants. Most of them can't make it with one guy anyway. But
fifty
guys… like one time we had this chick come down from Palm Beach in a Caddy. Loaded. All the dough in the world. But what could them faggots up there do for her? She had this big mothering dog with her, a St. Bernard or something. She said she wanted to join the club, and we said okay, if she would blow the dog. At first she thought we was nuts, but then she said okay and went down on that dog with a thing on him like a mule. I'll never forget that night, man, we was all of us on speed and practically givin' off steam. By the time she finished with that dog, every guy in the club had his pants down. We kept her there for three days fucking till we could hardly stand. Then we put her back in the Caddy with her goddamn dog. We heard later she checked into a hospital someplace and told everybody she was in a car accident. Now, I mean what would you call that, man? Would you call that rape? The chicks
want
it, man. They all want it. Your wife… Wait, now! Wait! For Chrissake, don't shoot! Listen, it was all Soldier's idea anyway…"

    I found him at last. Tiny, towering above the mob, was my guidepost. They were astride their machines in front of the old wooden structure that had once been Kildare's train station. A space a few hundred yards long had been cleared for them. Two narrow lanes had been chalk-marked on the pavement. A knot of a hundred or more spectators, faces flushed with excitement, stood outside the lines. I elbowed my way through.

    "What's going on?"

    "Chicken, man. Soldier and Tiny."

    "A grudge?"

    "Nah, just for the hell of it. Them two crazy mothers are liable to kill each other."

    "Good," I said.

    Tiny and Soldier were now at opposite ends of the street, revving their machines. Tiny looked wild-eyed drunk. Soldier sat his hog like a chunk of ice. Pearly, close to the station wall, sat in Magoo's lap. His right hand was shoved up beneath her shirt. She shifted restlessly on his thighs, eyes burning with excitement. I wondered if the ladies at Camelot had worn the same bloodthirsty look when their knights entered the lists.

    A lanky rider wearing the colors of the Satan's Slaves on his leather-clad back walked to the middle of the street carrying a red bandanna. He looked first at Soldier. Soldier nodded and pulled down his black plastic visor. The man with the bandanna then turned to Tiny. Tiny wore no helmet or mask. His coarse red hair stood out like a mop. He was smoking a cigar. Dried blood from his smashed nose encrusted his upper lip. He removed the cigar, spat violently on the pavement, and nodded to the starter. The handkerchief dropped, and the starter scurried out of the way.

    Tiny did a wheel stand, rearing his bike like a nervous horse. Soldier did not bother with acrobatics, simply accelerating his Harley in one long screaming burst of power. They raced toward each other. It took them no more than ten seconds to complete the " course. Soldier's face was invisible behind the mask. Tiny, cigar clenched between his teeth, was grinning wildly. But it was Tiny who gave way. When they were hardly more than 25 feet apart and hitting a combined speed that certainly must, have totaled more than one hundred miles an hour, Tiny swerved violently to the left while Soldier shot by him with no more than a foot or two to spare.

    It was an interesting game. What made it particularly interesting was the knowledge that both of them might have turned out at the same moment in the same direction.

    They braked at opposite ends of the street and rode slowly back to the middle.

    Tiny had lost his cigar and his ruddy complexion at the same moment. He was visibly shaken. His face had gone white, and his lips were trembling. Soldier pushed up his visor. He was smiling, but his eyes were as expressionless as before.

    "Are you nuts?" Tiny bellowed. "You could of killed both of us!"

    "Sure. That's where it's at. I knew you'd turn out. You're nothin' but a big slob, Tiny. No guts. Let's have the fifty."

    Tiny reached into his pocket and withdrew a wad of bills. He counted out fifty. His hands were shaking.

    "Anybody else?" Soldier said. "Any one of you mothers think you can stay with me? We can make it a hundred this time, if any of you mothers think you have the balls for it."

    There were no offers.

    "I'll go a round with you," I said.

    "What?"

    "You heard me."

    "You want a round of chicken?"

    "That seems to be the general idea."

    Behind me Pearly shouted, "Don't do it, Shaw. He'll kill you!"

    "You shut up," Tiny growled at her.

    "For how much?" Soldier said.

    "You name it."

    "A hundred."

    "Okay."

    "Let's see the dough."

    I showed it to him.

    "It's your funeral. You know the rules?"

    "First one to turn out loses."

    "Yeah, but if you turn out before the hundred foot mark, you pay double. That's the mark there."

    "Let's go."

    "Are you stoned, man?"

    "What's the difference?"

    His eyes were no longer so cold. There was a light in them that might have been dawning recognition. "Where do I know you from?"

    "Quit stalling."

    "Wait a minute. Where'd you get that scar? That's a chain scar."

    "Come on, you gutless sonofabitch. Let's ride."

    "Now wait… wait. Goddammit, there's something about you…"

    "What there is about me is that I'm calling you a chicken-hearted, gutless, murdering bastard. I'm saying it loud and clear in front of this whole mob. Now will you ride against me or won't you?"

    The crowd was beginning to turn against him. I heard Tiny mutter, "What the hell's the matter with you, Soldier? This mother can't ride. Take him!"

    "I just want to know where I seen him before."

    "What the fuck difference does it make?"

    "Why did he go lookin' for Stud first and now me? What the hell is he after anyway?"

    "You'll have ten seconds to figure it out," I said. "Now get on your machine and ride, you yellow sonofabitch!"

    "You ride now or you're finished, Soldier," Tiny said. "You challenged, and he took you up on it. You ride against him now, or you ride alone from here on in."

    Soldier glared at me. "I'm gonna kill you, Shaw."

    "No, you won't. The only killing you can do is on women. And even then you've got to have two other guys holding her down."

    I walked away from him, mounted my bike, kicked it into life, and wheeled down to the end of the street where I turned to face him. Although the night was warm I felt cold. I was about to die, but I would take him with me. If I had any real regret, it was only that I would never get the third man. I tossed my helmet away. What difference would a helmet make to me now? Somewhere behind me I heard sirens and the sound of gunfire. The law was at last coming to Kildare.

    Soldier had ripped off his shirt. He pulled down his visor and sat gunning his machine. His chopped Harley was certainly faster than mine, and I estimated that we would meet head-on when I had traveled approximately one-third of the course. Our combined speeds at that point would probably total somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 miles an hour. It never occurred to me that either of us would turn away.

    Tiny was the starter. I narrowed my concentration to the handkerchief he held. Nothing else mattered. In the fraction of a second before it fell, Soldier switched on his headlight. The powerful beam flashed straight into my eyes, blinding me almost completely as I gave the bike full throttle and surged forward.

    The bike screamed. There was the roar of wind in my face and the stink of burning oil. The ribbon of pavement fled away beneath me. Because of the light in my eyes, I never saw the dog. It must have come through the feet of the crowd like a little black and white puff of smoke, exploding across Soldier's line of vision. The dog's body was tossed high, and I did see the arc it made; and then the light wavered as Soldier hit the curb at seventy miles an hour. Bombed, twisted, the cycle burst flaming through the crowd. Soldier's body, torn from the saddle and hurled through the air, followed almost exactly the arc made by the dog.