So where you stayin, Tomahawk? I’ll drive back out to Cleburne tonight. Fuck that; yer a friend of DP’s so yer friend of ours; yer stayin with us out at the compound; no arguin. Considering what he now knew about Johnny, Hatchet wanted to argue but he didn’t. They hung around the bar a few more hours drinking whiskey and beer, wagering on every move Johnny made in his doomed attempt to land the pretty girl with the dimples who revealed herself a shrewd pre-law student amused at Johnny’s ineptitude. Then Hatchet followed the drunken path of Johnny’s Suburban northwest of the city. They left I-35 and crept across the dark rolling prairies through cattleguarded gates and low water crossings until finally he could see a sagging well lit three story home among a scattered group of barns and sheds. Each one appeared lost as if the spring tornadoes had found a hiding place for all those buildings they sucked into the sky. Hatchet rolled past the silhouette of a massive pile of cleared oak trees in the distance, their limbs twisted and curled in awkward embrace, resembling dead bloated beasts of burden with their legs extended into the air in wooden rigor mortis.
They spent the evening telling stories about Poole and other people from back home while shooting bottles off a fence with Johnny’s WWI era Mauser rifle. This weapon probly killed a whole slew of Doughboys, Johnny said, sending molten slugs of lead through a couple of green beer bottles. Hatchet’s drunken blood rushed at the feel and discharge of the rifle. The weapon’s potential to explode at any squeeze of the trigger was palpable. They sucked vaporized marijuana from a jerry-rigged turkey basting bag. Ricky grilled a meal of steaks and potatoes in the cool north breeze sidling over the hill behind the house. The crepuscular glow of the metroplex polluted with the lights of circling jets and police choppers floated like a dark halo on the edge of the Buckney’s land. Hatchet yearned for escape from all of it as he curled in his bag below the opposing hemispheres of fiery urban continuity and the deliverance of unhindered night.
Hatchet snapped awake in the bed of the truck. There was yelling from the house. He rose naked into the hanging moisture to find a new vehicle sitting in the morning chill and nebulous fog. From the cluster of pink and fuzzy items hanging from the rearview mirror, he assumed it belonged to a woman. The yelling persisted. He folded over to grab his jeans. When he raised up again, there stood the owner of the car with her key in the door, staring back at him.
Hi, he said in embarrassment, jostling the pants up his legs. She smiled a dark smile and waited until he had buttoned them closed before she worked the key, opened the door and tossed what he immediately recognized as his ragged bag containing the money and the egg into the car. Hatchet made the jump before he realized she was also holding a pistol. The thing popped twice and he scrambled with the inertia of his leap, reaching the opposite side of the vehicle in a crouch. He could hear her moving around the front of the car, the gravel of the drive scattering under her feet. In a vortex of degraded speed, everything but his instinct to defend himself slowed to a smear as he wrenched and opened the knife from his pocket and the girl appeared at the edge of the car, raising the weapon with a shaky hand, her deep coon-masked eyes struggling to find the sights just as the wooden screen door on the house clapped shut as Johnny prematurely pulled the trigger on the Mauser and the bullet ripped through the girl and shattered the passenger side window sending a bloom of shimmer into the wet air through which the girl fell, collapsing on Hatchet.
Hatchet could feel the hot blood pumping from her chest. He could smell the blood. He could smell the spent gunpowder. He could hear the sucking sound in the girl's throat. He heard Johnny scream like a child. He heard the bolt of the rifle and the sound of the shell hitting the planks on the porch. He somehow knew that Ricky Buckney was already dead somewhere in the house.
You sunuvabitch! Johnny screamed.
Hatchet rolled the girl’s body away, searching for her gun with a patting motion against the ground. Johnny lifted the rifle to his cheek and fired again. Hatchet stirred, spraying the blood wet gravel in every direction, the pistol now in his hand by the warm barrel like a hammer. Johnny caterwauled and moved closer. He racked another shell into the chamber of the antique as Hatchet rose to his knees and maneuvered the pistol. Hatchet unleashed a flurry of explosions across the porch in rapid succession as his finger pulsed the trigger until the slide locked open and smoking, his hand still pointing it in the direction of the porch. Hatchet’s chest heaved. Johnny lay on the creaking boards.
The Mauser rose and pointed at the sagging overhang of the porch as Johnny’s will dwindled in a weeping scream and the younger Buckney’s failing defiance pulled the trigger one last time and the ancient parts of the gun finally gave way, erupting into several pieces of wood and metal, destroying Johnny’s hand. Still on his knees, still pointing the empty pistol, Hatchet shivered as the high-pitched ring in his ears relented to the immutable silence of the fog. He had yet to realize the deep bleeding gouge in his shoulder. He dropped to his ass and glanced at the dead girl whose body had drained and appeared the color of old newspaper. Her bloody tongue was fat and dangling, her eyes blacker and dimmer than a pair of old bar room eight balls.
They spent the evening telling stories about Poole and other people from back home while shooting bottles off a fence with Johnny’s WWI era Mauser rifle. This weapon probly killed a whole slew of Doughboys, Johnny said, sending molten slugs of lead through a couple of green beer bottles. Hatchet’s drunken blood rushed at the feel and discharge of the rifle. The weapon’s potential to explode at any squeeze of the trigger was palpable. They sucked vaporized marijuana from a jerry-rigged turkey basting bag. Ricky grilled a meal of steaks and potatoes in the cool north breeze sidling over the hill behind the house. The crepuscular glow of the metroplex polluted with the lights of circling jets and police choppers floated like a dark halo on the edge of the Buckney’s land. Hatchet yearned for escape from all of it as he curled in his bag below the opposing hemispheres of fiery urban continuity and the deliverance of unhindered night.
Hatchet snapped awake in the bed of the truck. There was yelling from the house. He rose naked into the hanging moisture to find a new vehicle sitting in the morning chill and nebulous fog. From the cluster of pink and fuzzy items hanging from the rearview mirror, he assumed it belonged to a woman. The yelling persisted. He folded over to grab his jeans. When he raised up again, there stood the owner of the car with her key in the door, staring back at him.
Hi, he said in embarrassment, jostling the pants up his legs. She smiled a dark smile and waited until he had buttoned them closed before she worked the key, opened the door and tossed what he immediately recognized as his ragged bag containing the money and the egg into the car. Hatchet made the jump before he realized she was also holding a pistol. The thing popped twice and he scrambled with the inertia of his leap, reaching the opposite side of the vehicle in a crouch. He could hear her moving around the front of the car, the gravel of the drive scattering under her feet. In a vortex of degraded speed, everything but his instinct to defend himself slowed to a smear as he wrenched and opened the knife from his pocket and the girl appeared at the edge of the car, raising the weapon with a shaky hand, her deep coon-masked eyes struggling to find the sights just as the wooden screen door on the house clapped shut as Johnny prematurely pulled the trigger on the Mauser and the bullet ripped through the girl and shattered the passenger side window sending a bloom of shimmer into the wet air through which the girl fell, collapsing on Hatchet.
Hatchet could feel the hot blood pumping from her chest. He could smell the blood. He could smell the spent gunpowder. He could hear the sucking sound in the girl's throat. He heard Johnny scream like a child. He heard the bolt of the rifle and the sound of the shell hitting the planks on the porch. He somehow knew that Ricky Buckney was already dead somewhere in the house.
You sunuvabitch! Johnny screamed.
Hatchet rolled the girl’s body away, searching for her gun with a patting motion against the ground. Johnny lifted the rifle to his cheek and fired again. Hatchet stirred, spraying the blood wet gravel in every direction, the pistol now in his hand by the warm barrel like a hammer. Johnny caterwauled and moved closer. He racked another shell into the chamber of the antique as Hatchet rose to his knees and maneuvered the pistol. Hatchet unleashed a flurry of explosions across the porch in rapid succession as his finger pulsed the trigger until the slide locked open and smoking, his hand still pointing it in the direction of the porch. Hatchet’s chest heaved. Johnny lay on the creaking boards.
The Mauser rose and pointed at the sagging overhang of the porch as Johnny’s will dwindled in a weeping scream and the younger Buckney’s failing defiance pulled the trigger one last time and the ancient parts of the gun finally gave way, erupting into several pieces of wood and metal, destroying Johnny’s hand. Still on his knees, still pointing the empty pistol, Hatchet shivered as the high-pitched ring in his ears relented to the immutable silence of the fog. He had yet to realize the deep bleeding gouge in his shoulder. He dropped to his ass and glanced at the dead girl whose body had drained and appeared the color of old newspaper. Her bloody tongue was fat and dangling, her eyes blacker and dimmer than a pair of old bar room eight balls.
Edit 11.28.2018