The Unit (11 page)

“Look here,” he says. He puts his thumb on a switch on the left side of the gun. He pushes the switch to its top position. “This is safe.” He moves the switch to the middle position. “This is semi-auto.” He flicks the switch to its last position. “This is the burst setting. You get three rounds every time you pull the trigger. Don’t fire in burst mode unless you absolutely have no other choice.”

He puts the rifle on safe and hands it back to me. He nods. I set it against the front of the store. It’s mine now.

And then we’re only half awake, dragging bloodlines across the white concrete that surrounds the gas pumps. Dad checks out the gray shoes the kids are wearing. Maybe he knew about them all along. He searches the bodies for information. We turn out all their pockets, making a little pile of bubble gum and ammo and gold coins and rubbers. We peel back their layers of clothes and it turns out that the dudes are all wearing the same kind of shirt. It turns out that they were all big fans of the Shasta County Juvenile Detention Facility.

Dad looks at me, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. We stack the bodies in the gas station’s dried-out landscaped area. They smelled like shit when they were alive and dying didn’t make them smell any better. We face them all the same way, their heads away from the store. We do good work. After all this excitement, we still take pride in our work. We stack them with care, like we stacked our firewood back home. I’m not sure if we’re trying to show the world what good workers we are, or if we’re showing a tiny bit of respect for the dead. It’s not a very fun job, to tell the truth, but we’re very precise in our work and we make a neat stack, don’t ask me why.

We finish our chores. It’s getting dark. The American flag is still flying above its Chevron sign. We siphon some gas from a Suburban that will probably never run again. We soak the bodies and set them on fire and then we sweep up the mess inside our bullet-shredded store.

None of us can sleep, so we all stand watch together. The night is cold and hard under the funky clouds. Mom’s teeth start chattering, and Dad gives her more whiskey. It’s all he can do to treat her for shock. He gives us each a small shot and he takes one for himself.

They wait until dark. When they come again, they come through the storeroom door, in back. They pin us down with their fire. Glass breaking and the juices of shot-up stuff raining down on us. Bullets shred everything around us. One of them takes off the lobe of my right ear. A shooter starts popping off in the aisle I’m sitting in and the bullets are snapping just above my head. I’m trying to hide my whole body behind a box of minibag popcorn, and I’m somehow fitting behind it. I’m praying and making promises to the God that allowed this to happen, but what I really want is a chance to shoot back.

I see a pair of gray walking shoes. I bring my new rifle up but there’s a sound and my left hand is on fire, and I drop the rifle. The tip of my little finger is gone. It hurts like a bitch but I pick up the rifle and crawl forward. Mel screams. I crawl as fast as I can, and I see movement and I put my rifle sights on it, but all I see is Mel reaching out with her arms as the fuckers drag her by her legs out the back door. I crawl after her, but then a wall hits me. It’s an explosion moving through the wine section. Glass breaks and wine hangs free in the air, bottle-shaped.

We use three sticks of dynamite to blow the place on the way out and then I post a guard and gather the rest of men around the fire. The girl is at my feet. She’s duct-taped with her hands behind her back but her tits are naked and free and they look great in the firelight. The men circle and get eyefuls, and her green eyes are spitting fire and the men are laughing and pretending they’re falling in love.

Having a girl can be dangerous. It’s like having money or booze or drugs, and I need to set some rules so the men won’t be fighting too much. That, and the only other girl we managed to take alive didn’t last very long. It was my own fault because I didn’t make any rules about how they used her. If anybody needs rules, it’s these men, so I call for Luscious to bring me the guard duty list. I stand up straight and let the men babble for a while after their victory, but they know they can’t tear into the girl until I’ve had my say, so they quiet down.

“Here’s the deal,” I say.

I hold up the guard duty list. All our names are on it, including mine, because we all stand our turn at watch, no exceptions.

“We might be pirates and outlaws, but we share and share alike. After each man stands his watch, he’ll get a turn with the girl.”

I wait and let the idea sink in. Some of them nod, and I go on.

“Just remember the rules. Rule number one: Hurt her so we can notice it, and you get twenty lashes. Not easy lashes either, but hard ones from Luscious. Rule number two: Kill the girl and the penalty is Hunt Club. No exceptions, no mercy, and only a five-minute head start. Rule number three: Every man gets one cum, and no more.”

Some of the men are nodding, the smarter ones that can think beyond the reach of their peckers. I know how I want my words to sound to their ears. I want to sound like a man they’d follow into hell.

“Other than that, boys, you can do whatever else you can think of.”

A cheer rises up from the ranks of them. It’s what they used to call a round of huzzahs, and it warms my heart.

“To get the ball rolling, we’ll start with the watch that just now ended.”

Little Donnie Darko lets out a holler because he just came in from his watch. Some of the men grumble something about why should that little peckerhead go first, but I hold up my hands.

“If anyone has a fairer way to do it, let me know right now.”

I watch them hard and they stop their grumbling. Biggus says that at least little Donnie won’t tear her up none, and he pities the man that gets a turn after he plows the field. They’re laughing then and grabbing their nuts.

“Okay. Stick to the rules. That’s the way it’s going to be.” I smile and even the smallest one of them smiles, too, because they all know they’ll have a turn. “There’s one more thing, though. We need a proper whorehouse. See to setting it up.”

They’re really hyperactive then, and they run over to the old junkyard office shack. They push everything outside, including the dog-chewed body of old Junkyard Jake, and they drag the girl in there and Donnie runs through the crowd and the men give him about a hundred high-fives and then he goes to the shack to claim his prize. The men surround the place. Some of them are carrying torches and it looks like a wedding in one of those places where people aren’t civilized.

Donnie Darko goes inside and closes the door. The men quiet down and listen for the sounds they’d like to be making themselves, but there aren’t any sounds. No screaming or ripping of clothes. No pounding or slopping around in paradise. Someone says that little Donnie is soooo romantic, and that gets a laugh, but after that the men get bored.

Donnie isn’t more than a half hour before he comes out smiling. The men cheer. He bows. “Best piece I ever had,” he says, and his buddy Stumpie says, “Yeah, because it was your first, not counting your hand,” and the men hoot and whistle and Donnie joins them and they lift him on their shoulders and carry him to the fire.

I grab Luscious and a Coleman lantern and we go into the shack. It has a garage door and I open it so the men can see that I’m not taking my turn early. The girl is on the floor face-up with her pants down. Her hands are still taped together behind her and her mouth is gagged and her jeans are pushed down to the tape around her ankles. Her legs had to have been closed when Donnie slipped it to her. Maybe Donnie didn’t do anything, but that’s between the two of them.

I take the cloth out of her mouth. It’s a sock with old blood and lots of miles on it, and I expect her to scream when I take it out, but she doesn’t.

“My name is Melanie,” she says. Her voice is low but strong, and I want her to last a while, so it makes me glad to see that she’s okay.

“Glad to meet you,” I say.

“You’re Bill Junior.”

“Yep.”

“Are you the person I talk to about getting a bath?”

She’s not happy, but she’s keeping her shit together. It kind of surprises me.

“I’m the person you talk to about getting
anything
.”

She doesn’t cuss me or break out crying. She looks right at me with her steady green eyes, not talking down to me or trying to kiss my ass. It’s like we just met in a park somewhere and we’re equal in every way and maybe we’ll get to know each other better and maybe we won’t. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or impressed with the girl.

“Well then, I could sure use a bath,” she says.

“Yeah? You don’t want to eat first?”

“No.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

She doesn’t thank me and it kind of pisses me off, but I let it go. As I walk away it comes to me that she didn’t ask about her family, and it says something about how smart she is. How in control of herself she is. I tell Luscious to keep someone watching her because people like that can be dangerous, don’t ask me how I know. People like that make plans and they keep the promises they swear to themselves.

The men drag the girl over by the fire and then they get to work sprucing up the whorehouse. I doubt if any of us has ever been to a real whorehouse, so they only have television to go on for inspiration, but they do a good job of it. They line the walls with leather cut from the upholstery of cars and they lay down a carpet of optional floor mats from Toyotas and Nissans and domestic, made-in-America what-all.

While they’re making their love fort, I send Luscious to see about heating up water for a bath. It’s high time we all had one, to tell the truth.

Dear God, protect and keep us. Keep us breathing, every breath a prayer, every heartbeat an oath. Susan is shaking my shoulder and saying it’s time to get up. The new explosion mixes with my memory of the explosions I heard in Beirut.

I sit up and only Susan is here, her lips moving, her arm in a sling. I don’t know where the children are, and then it’s worse than just another bad day. I come out of it in stages. My legs are rubber, but I get to my feet. No telling how long I’ve been out. The sun seems to be no lower in the sky. I can hear only a solid tone—the sound the television used to make at night, back when television stations went off the air.

I unwrap my face so I can see better. The blood flows again, and I let it. The roof is down in the back of the store. Scotty is alive but unconscious. His pulse is strong and he’s breathing okay. I drag him behind the checkout counter. Susan starts in on him, cleaning and bandaging the ear, wrapping what’s left of his little finger, finding a pair of tweezers and pulling the glass from his face.

I call for Melanie, but there’s no answer. Susan gives me the look. I find a length of two-by-four and I pry up layers of tarred roof and sheetrock and snapped framing and blasted merchandise, but I don’t find her. She’s gone. They must have her. I pick up my rifle and start after her. I get outside and work my way almost to the gate of the junkyard but then I stop. No. The horrible logic of it. I can’t afford to waste my life, no matter how badly I want to pour fire into the bastards.

So I go back to the store and stand watch over Scotty. His face is red meat, and I cry like I did on the day I pulled Marine bodies from that barracks in Beirut. I cry in the same way I cried then—praying for God to allow me to get some payback. I hold Scotty’s head up and pour a bottle of distilled water over his face to clear away the grime. He coughs but he’s not coughing blood. He’s alive and I’m here for him, but our Melanie is gone and I can’t live with that.

A flash from another life comes to me, Melanie the four-year-old running on the beach. Square little feet. Tiny toes. Huge smile. The sun going red, the same color as her hair. Her bangs cut straight across the front in a pixie cut that sways back and forth when she moves. Perfect rollers are coming in from the Pacific. It’s a good day. Perhaps it was the best day of family we’ve ever had. The day after I was promoted to VP. Money was no longer a problem. Scotty was there, too, and he was walking and flopping down on the soft sand and laughing his baby laugh. He hugged my legs and looked up at me and beamed pure joy. I can still hear the recorded-voice sound of toddler happiness and his sister Melanie saying, “Put me on your shoulders, Daddy,” and me lifting her high and running fast on the wet sand and Melanie laughing nonstop in my memory from that time until just right now.

Jerry and I are crying. Scott sits up and then he lies back down.

“Can you see me?” I ask.

“Everything’s blurry,” he says.

“Oh no.”

“Shit,” he says.

“Please.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“That’s okay.”

“I’ve been telling myself I could take whatever happened.”

“It’s a shitty thing,” I say. “It’s a damned shitty thing.”

The old words feel clumsy in my mouth. I don’t tell him about Melanie. He reaches for my good hand and gives it a squeeze.

“Pray with me?” he says.

“I thought you didn’t do that anymore.”

“Well, maybe now’s a good time to start.”

There’s something in his voice. I know he’s doing it for me. He doesn’t really want to pray. He wants
me
to feel good about something. He wants to give me hope, and I’m proud of his nobility. My tears stop flowing.