Yardwork (2 page)

“Fag-boy.”

He gave the
bottle another push making Tim flinch, then took it out. As he
crossed the kitchen, Kyle twisted the cap off and flicked it over
his shoulder. It hit Tim in the forehead and fell into the sink
with a plop. The muscles in Tim’s jaw bulged as his back teeth
ground together; a pulse beat at his temples.

He held his
tongue and finished the dishes.

***

The man’s eyes
didn’t show surprise when they finally opened to see Tim squatting
beside him, not at first, anyway. They appeared bleary, unfocused,
the eyes of a man with a monstrous hangover.

“What are you
doing here?”

Tim kept his
tone conversational if not friendly. No point in scaring the man:
not yet. The man’s cheeks bulged as he attempted to speak, unaware
of the gag across his mouth. This fact still didn’t seem to startle
him. He shrugged in reply instead.

“You don’t
belong here.”

The man looked
at him but made no move to comment. Tim reached around and pulled
out of his back pocket the pair of shears used for pruning small
branches. They normally sat on the shelf a couple of feet away and
he had no reason for them to be in his pocket, but he liked the
dramatic effect. The man strained to see what his captor held, head
wobbling on his neck like it weighed too much for him to hold. Tim
moved to show him. The sight of the shears cleared some of the
glazed look from his eyes.

“Should I let
you go?”

Tim released
the shear’s safety clasp and they popped open. He fit its jaws
around the rope, feigning an offer to cut it, to free the man.

“Would you
leave if I did? Would you go back where you came?”

The man nodded
and the action seemed to sap all his strength. His head sagged to
the floor, clunking against the concrete. His eyelids fluttered,
eyes spinning circles, searching to find focus. The teen leaned in
closer to allow their gazes to meet. It took a second for the man’s
to settle in. When it did, Tim saw some recognition of his
situation beginning to dawn; that realization brought the thrill
back to his stomach, bile to the back of his throat. His expression
transformed into a sneer.

“I don’t think
so.”

Tim moved the
sheers away from the rope and grabbed the man’s bound hands. With
his thumb and index finger, he wrestled one of the man’s pinkies
out of the pack of digits. The man watched, eyes wide and nostrils
flared, until the sharp edge brushed the skin of his finger, then
he thrashed away. His movement drew blood from his finger and an
exasperated sigh from Tim.

“Come on, now.
You didn’t think I was going to hurt you, did you?”

A muffled,
strangled sound like the lament of a distant fog horn caught behind
the duct tape covering the man’s mouth. He thrashed and wiggled,
his bound feet kicking against the side of the shed. If the noise
kept up long, Tim’s father would soon be drawn out of his chair to
seek out the cause of the racket.

“Be quiet, for
fuck’s sake.”

Tim leaned his
weight on the man’s legs, attempting to pin them, but fear must
have given him strength. Where seconds before he didn’t have enough
to support his head, now Tim couldn’t contain his thrashing. The
oft-repaired boots slammed against the wooden wall, the impact
echoing in the small structure, Tim expecting each sound to draw
his father one step further out of the after-dinner nap, then
eventually to his feet and finally out the door to the back
yard.

“Stop it.”

The flat side
of the sheers hit the man’s head hard enough to leave an impression
of the safety latch on his temple, though not hard enough to knock
him unconscious. It knocked the fight out of him, nonetheless.

“No more of
that,” Tim grunted reaching across the man to grasp the rope
fastening him to the wall. A thin line of blood trickled down the
man’s forehead toward his ear, its red path capturing Tim’s
attention. The teen stopped, reached a shaking hand out and touched
the small wound with the tip of his middle finger. The man
flinched.

“You’re
bleeding,” Tim said raising the blood-dabbed finger toward his
face. The urge to put the tip of his finger into his mouth, to
taste the man’s life, made him run his tongue across his parted
lips. He inched the finger toward his mouth, saliva flooding his
tongue in anticipation, but stopped. He didn’t know where this man
had been, no concept of his habits or what diseases he carried like
a sewer rat. Tim hastily wiped his finger on the man’s grubby coat:
likely not the first blood stain to grace its surface.

With the
impulse passed, he returned his attention to the job of tightening
the ropes to keep the man’s noise-making to a minimum. The man
might get away if he untied him, so instead Tim took up the slack
by tying more knots, these ones of a type appearing in no boy scout
handbook: improvised, ungainly, but effective.

“There.”

Tim leaned back
on his haunches to examine his work. The man’s hands and feet were
bound directly together, making his body into the shape of a bow,
his appendages in turn tied tight against the wall allowing for no
movement. “That should hold you.”

The man stared,
his breath drawn in short, sharp bursts. Whatever substance brought
him here in the first place, then clouded his senses as it left his
system, was gone. Fear, anger, helplessness replaced it, all
showing plainly in his rheumy eyes. The birds and the squirrels and
the Albertsons’ dog didn’t show emotions like this and they brought
an excitement to Tim he’d never felt before. His hand shook as he
picked up the sheers, but not because of nerves. His breath
shortened, but not due to anxiety. A shiver ran up his spine, but
not in fear. They felt good -- all of them. And he liked it.

He reached for
the man’s pinkie again, but this time he clenched both hands into
fists. Tim couldn’t blame him: he’d have done the same thing. It
didn’t irk him in the least. He brought the handle of the sheers
down sharply on the man’s wrist and his fist popped open like an
expertly shucked oyster. Tim grabbed his little finger before it
went back into hiding.

“Don’t worry.”
Tim smiled in the comforting manner his father used on him when he
was about to lie to him. “This is going to hurt me a lot more than
it hurts you.”

Tim slid the
blades of the sheers around the finger. The man’s body stiffened
and he squirmed to get away, but the ropes held tight. Snot bubbled
out of his nose with the force of his breathing; his head banged
against the floor. Tim’s jaw tightened, ready for the effort of
cutting through flesh and tendon and bone as he squeezed the
handles of the sheers.

The finger came
off more easily than he’d expected.

***

Tim knelt down
at the edge of the flower garden, the dampness of the moist earth
at its edge soaking into the knees of his jeans. With his right
hand, he dug into the soil, dirt clogging the space under
fingernails in need of trimming a week ago. In his other hand he
held his prize tight in his fist. Luckily, the man lost
consciousness with the pain of having his finger amputated, so only
the chirp of crickets and the whoosh of his own pulse in his ears
interrupted the quiet night. Tim excavated a hole three inches wide
by five inches long and six inches deep: big enough to conceal his
trophy but an easy enough job to dig it up again should he want to
see what state it was in.

With the mini
trench complete, he rocked back, sitting on his feet, and held the
finger out in front of him, examining it as best the darkness
allowed. He studied the finger nail chewed ragged, the dirt-clogged
fingerprint, the wrinkles at the knuckles now caked with blood. He
spun it in his fingers, considering it from every angle the way a
prospector might have assessed a new-found nugget. He breathed deep
through his nose, caught the scent of the fresh-turned earth, of
decaying leaves and fresh cut lawn, and, he imagined, the coppery
scent of blood.

“Tim?”

His father’s
voice and its proximity so close behind him startled Tim into
dropping the finger. His eyes followed its path as if it tumbled to
the ground in slow motion, watching it come to rest on the small
pile of dirt beside his makeshift grave.

“What the fuck
are you doing out here? How long does it take to put away a goddamn
rake?”

“Nothing.”
Tim’s heart felt as though it had climbed into his throat, clogging
it. His eyes remained on the finger and he wondered if his father
saw it but didn’t realize what it was. “I... I found a bulb lying
around and I was planting it.”

“Yeah right. I
better not find out you been sneaking my magazines in the shed,
jerking off again.”

Anger flared in
Tim. Three years ago his father caught him with his dick in his
hand and a Hustler spread out on the floor of the shed and he
wouldn’t let him forget it. Women didn’t do it for Tim, he’d done
it because he thought teenage boys were supposed to do such things.
His true fantasies were far different than other boys’: bloodier,
more violent.

The sound of
his father’s feet moving in the grass flushed the anger out of him,
replaced it with panic at the surety he would check inside the shed
to see if any of his magazines were ruined with his sons
ejaculate.

“No, Dad. I
swear. I haven’t touched your mags.”

“Better fucking
not.”

The steps
halted and Tim noticed the slur in his father’s voice. Drunkenness
made him lazier then usual: he wouldn’t waste the time going into
the shed when more beer awaited him inside the house. Tim let out
his breath and looked over his shoulder at his father, reassuring
him he hadn’t been masturbating, but the flat of the man’s hand
catching him in the side of the head, setting his ear ringing,
stopped him.

“Get your ass
inside.”

His father’s
footsteps retreated across the lawn and Tim knelt by the garden
choked with rage and grief. Once more, the asshole ruined one of
the great moments of his life.

He plucked the
finger out of the pile, dropped it in the hole, and unceremoniously
covered it with dirt.

***

The next day,
the temperature dropped another degree toward winter but the sun
still shone. Tim stood in the middle of the back lawn with the blue
plastic tarpaulin folded into a two by two square tucked under his
arm. His father left for work hours ago, his mother likely went
down the street to see Mr. Perry where she disappeared a couple of
times a week: everyone pretended they didn’t know about her visits,
but sometimes cheeks are turned to preserve the status quo. Kyle
was at school, where Tim should have been at ten-thirty in the
morning on a Monday, but the anticipation, all those hours of
listening to teachers he hated while he fidgeted in his chair,
fantasizing about taking the nameless man apart, would have been
too much for him. He strode across the lawn, noticing a few leaves
from the neighbours maple had made their way into their backyard.
His father would complain about them later, cursing the bastards
who lived next door, then make Tim rake again.

At the shed
door, he stopped, stared at the flaking paint as though he might
look hard enough to see through it at the man inside, spy on him
without his knowledge. He shifted one foot to the other, the tarp
crinkling under his arm with the movement. Removing the man’s
finger produced more blood than expected, so he needed to take
precautions to keep from making too much mess this time.

This time, he
planned to remove more than a finger.

He breathed
deep to settle the tickle of excitement and nausea brewing in the
bottom of his gut and wondered if a surgeon felt similarly before
carving into a patient. He closed his eyes and let the breeze which
would deposit more leaves in his yard, bringing with them more yard
work, play across his face, calming him, bringing him the peace he
needed to do his work. When he’d settled it to a dull ache, he
opened his eyes again, reached out and pushed the door open. The
squeak of the hinges and the sun flooding the small building made
the man lying bound on the floor tense, his body going rigid. He
writhed, struggling to look over his shoulder. Tim caught the man’s
eye, saw his wild look of desperation and stepped through the door.
The shed smelled worse than before, multiplied by more excrement
and hours of fermentation.

“Good morning,”
Tim said conversationally. He tasted the shit on his tongue. “We
don’t have too much time. Shall we get started?”

The bound man’s
cheeks bulged against the duct tape across his mouth; the hinges
screamed for him as Tim kicked the door shut.

***

It was close to
one-thirty by the time Tim returned with his newly purchased spade.
The dismemberment took longer than expected -- the human body
proved tougher to dismantle in some spots than had been the finger,
even using an axe and saw after the shears did their work -- and
he’d needed to shower off the blood and rinse out the tub before
going to make his purchase. He looked at his watch again as the key
slid into the lock on the front door.

He’d have to
hurry, but he should still have time before Mom finished fucking
Mr. Perry. They liked to take their time about it, lay in bed
together and act like a happily married couple; in love instead of
trapped in shitty relationships and desperate for attention. Tim
knew they did this because he’d watched them before: Mr. Perry’s
bedroom was on the ground floor.

“Hi, Mom. I’m
home,” he called, just-in-case. “School let out early today.”

He peeked
around the corner into the living room: empty. No sounds anywhere
in the house, so he took a couple of steps down the hallway, spade
held behind him.

“Mom?”

No answer.

Good.