Savant (18 page)

The torpor thing was what tugged at him. It was interfering with his day-to-day business, and affecting decisions. Making him act weirdly in his own eyes. He was doing things that made no sense—giving Miss Roach two hundred dollars unnecessarily, for example. Why hadn't he simply buried Miss Roach and put her out of her misery? Very disturbing.

It wasn't torpor at all, when he thought about it. For one thing, he never seemed to be horny anymore. Not that he was such a randy goat to begin with—it's just that he had
normal
desires for sex, at least in his mind they were normal. Another thing he'd noticed besides his unusual celibacy was that he didn't seem to find killing so much fun anymore. Sure, it had been pleasant, doing the bikers in their clubhouse, but there had been no true exhilaration as he'd felt in the past, no genuine sense of satisfaction.

There was nothing good that would come of thinking along these lines, he decided, and jerked his mind off of the subject—or tried to. He saw a rib joint, decided he was hungry, and pulled in. But as he got out of the car he was quite shaken by the realization that the act of killing was not acting as a catharsis, if indeed it ever had. This knowledge did not keep the desire for revenge from rumbling inside his gut like physical hunger for food, but he knew it was a bad omen. He was tasting something he could never completely eat. Like a drug addict who gets off the first time like a skyrocket, and then spends his life searching again and again for the perfect high he experienced with his initial experiment. He'll never find it, and perhaps inside he knows he'll never recapture it—but addiction (if only to selfrewards) supersedes logic.

Was he condemned to go on killing and killing, forever searching for the big release that would bring him peace of mind? When he destroyed the bikers, would that give him relief? Was there satisfaction waiting for him in the steamy red geyser that would pump from Mrs. Nadine Garbella's severed neck? Or was the only satisfaction in slaking his bloodthirst and heart hunger?

The taste of an enemy's life force did sound good. In fact, the thought of sinking those shark teeth into the hot, coppery, salty meat of a nice fresh heart made him so hungry he felt positively lightheaded.

A waitress or hostess welcomed him, asked him if he wanted a table for one, and he had to nod—he couldn't speak, his mouth was salivating so badly.

"Would you like a menu?"

"No," he said, swallowing. "Bring me ribs. How many in a side?"

"A side is a dozen ribs."

"Bring me six sides."

"Right away, sir," she said with a smile, hurrying off in the direction of the kitchen.

Ribs, hot and mouth-watering, and smothered in famous Heart of America Barbecue Sauce, was what this place did. So for the folks who came in and ordered ribs and nothing else, who didn't sit schmoozing over appetizers or drinkies from the bar, there was almost no wait for the food. If you were a table of twelve drunks, or a table with a couple of crying kids, you really got fast service—they wanted you to eat and run. It was all of a minute and a half before Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski was presented with his six steaming sides of Heart of America barbecued beef ribs.

Picture the sight: Mavis Strayborn of the Olathe Strayhorns, seated at the south side of table station eight, facing her husband, Herbert, whose back is to the door. Their dear friends of many years, Dora Lee and Monte Brown (Monte works at the bank), are at the east and west sides of the table, so when Mavis sees the thing and her mouth drops open they all look—naturally—and the three of them see the beast come waddling over and flop down right there beside them, bold as you please, talking in a big loud voice and ordering six sides of ribs. My God!

Monte snickers and says something across the table, longways, to Dora Lee, and Mavis gets the giggles, and Herbert Strayhorn says, "What? What's so funny?" in that dry voice of his. Monte says something else and the four of them laugh, and Herbert kind of turns and tries to get a peek at this vision, which just about convulses Monte and Dora Lee, but which Mavis somehow manages to stifle. Pretty soon they go on about their business, and get back to eating their rib dinners.

The waitress who has his station hurries with the ribs, all seventy-two of them, a six-tier stack of delectable-smelling platters in hand, sits them on the table, and says, "Will there be anything else for you, sir?" But he can only shake his head slightly in response, or maybe that isn't even a shake-perhaps he is just moving that big head around in an involuntary physiological reaction to the smell of the barbecue. My God, he's
hungry
for
meat!
The waitress seems to sense danger and jerks her hands away the second the platters of ribs are on the table. She tears off a page from the pad she carries and places it surreptitiously at the far edge of the table, moving away from the station as quickly as she can, away from the implicit threat. Sharp teeth, brutal strength, fingers like steel cigars, knives that slice, forks with tines that pierce flesh—this table where the behemoth sits is like the dissecting table in a busy morgue.

The beast has no awareness of the waitress or the people around him, not at this moment. He is too busy eating, chewing, swallowing, too occupied now to speak or even nod as she thanks him in a faraway, fading voice. A faint red mist rises from the smoking, pungent meat as the beast tears at the ribs in a feeding rampage. How many writers have swiped the phrase "feeding frenzy" from
Jaws
? But that is what one sees—Chaingang over the ribs, crunching tooth against hard bone, devouring the food with ugly misshapen teeth meant to gnaw at chunks of flesh, cleaning each rib bone like a shark hitting bloody meat, or a starving carnivore over its kill. Ripping every speck of meat, gristle, fat, then sucking the tiny bones held in those huge, viselike paws. Methodical. Orderly and mad at once. Eating each beef rib in the same way, in a grisly, ghastly, gross spectacle of bestiality.

Picture what Mavis Strayhorn sees: the mountain of hard blubber and ugly muscle holds the rib just so, an expression on his dimpled face like an animal with its prey, taking the four sides of each rib in order, sucking the bone in a quick, wet, nasty slurp, throwing it onto the platter. Five, six, eight ribs. Gnaw. Suck. Slurp. Swallow. Gnaw. Suck. Slurp. Swallow. Cleaning the ribs bare. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. The pile of bones beginning to resemble a carcass plucked by buzzards and stripped by maggots.

Not a scrap of edible food clings to a bone. The feeding machine is an efficient one and leaves nothing. Four fast ripping bites in each series, the loud sucking, the sound of the bone hitting the pile. The routine punctuated only by an occasional cracking sound as those sharp animal fangs penetrate bone.

Mavis and Dora Lee and Monte have stopped eating now. Herbert is still valiantly chewing away, their humble family platter sits between the four of them, untouched. Herbert keeps craning back to get a look at this palpably horrible thing that has brushed up against their orderly and clean lives of genteel normalcy.

The slob inhales the seventy-two Heart of America Barbecued ribs, "hickory smoked in our famous Heart of America Barbecue Sauce—hot or mild," and as he swallows the last of the meat wrested from the final naked rib he looses a gassy, wet, explosive belch that causes Mavis to begin to throw up—the nausea rises in her throat but she manages to catch it before it escapes and she swallows.

Herbert has turned and they're all watching this disgusting beast now, genuinely disturbed by his vomit-making presence. Grease and vestiges of sauce drip from his face as he languorously casts his eyes toward Mavis, appearing to notice the people beside him for the first time. He eyes Mavis's thigh, something pleasant to consider while dining. A lethargic, amusing consideration plays through his weird mind as he sucks a morsel from a tooth: belching again, wiping his greasy face, dropping the filthy napkin on the floor between them, standing heavily, shoving himself erect, undressing Mavis Strayhorn—not for sex—but for cooking. Imagining how she would taste, barbecued. Imagining the sweet taste of Barbecued Mavis, Heart of America style.

But now he was moving toward them, and for a second Mavis thought Herbert and Monte were going to stand up and try and
fight
with him, but the huge fat man smiled, an ear-to-ear parody of a human grin, and a deep basso profundo voice rumbled out of him, his eyes fixed on Mavis's chest.

"Look at the mouse," he said, pointing, almost touching her.

"Hey," Herbert said, his voice raspy and full of fear, "listen—"

There was a pin in the shape of a tiny gold mouse affixed to Mavis's sweater. His massive fingers were near her, and the smell of him was in her nose, rank and fearsome, like the scent of a cave animal cornered in its den, but he was doing the cornering. She looked down where the mouse pin had been. He was astonishingly dexterous with his big hands, he had a thief's touch, and he'd somehow removed the pin with the fingers of his right hand and was holding it for inspection.

"Say goodbye to the mouse," he said, and popped it in his mouth and swallowed the gold pin, turning and leaving in a swirl of poisonous body odor and barbecued meat smells.

"Somebody ought to call the police and report him, my God almighty—" Dora Lee Brown sputtered. Everyone sat there stunned, shaking their heads. Rooted to the spot.

What do you do in a circumstance such as this? Mavis Strayhorn of Olathe, Kansas, would be thirty-eight in September, and in all those years no one had ever eaten any of her jewelry before.

Cindy Hildebrande lived in a cheap tract house, in a neighborhood full of identical, tiny frame homes, all packed shoulder to shoulder in a blue-collar section of the city. She was no housekeeper. Bobby could see that right away. Stuff was strewn around, dishes were in a sink, and it was not the best smelling home he'd ever been in either.

Bobby Price was fastidious and the way she'd come on to him in the bar, the ride over, and now—the crummy home—had made him sort of nervous and jumpy. He wasn't sure about this deal anymore. But she soon turned him back around.

"Just stand there, pretty cowboy," she told him, "while I slip into something less comfortable." She went into a nearby room while he stood there, trying to keep from inhaling any more than necessary. He could hear her rummaging around in a closet, and when she came out she was wearing these fabulous boots, slick-looking thigh-high boots with spike heels, and she was carrying something.

"I'm ready to ride the range now, Bobby." She laughed, tossing her bleached blond hairdo around a little and making a face at him. Something about her was very sexy. She had a great way about her, he decided, tremendous style. "Know what this is, cowboy?"

"A quirt," he said.

"This is in case you're a bad boy to Mama. You're gonna behave, aren't you?" She brandished the thing like a large riding crop with a leather flail.

"Yeah. You bet."

"Take your clothes off." She towered over him with those big stiletto-heeled boots on. "You can leave your jock on—if you're wearing one."

"Sure." He smiled, pulling his sweater off. Eager to obey. "Aren't you going—" He started to ask her a question and she whipped him hard with the quirt—hard.

"
Jesus
Chr—" He rubbed himself where she'd caught him on the hip. This was no fun at all. She was a fucking nut case.

"I told you to talk when I ask you to talk and not before. Now get those little pants off, cowboy."

He obeyed in silence, his hip and leg burning like fire. She'd really let him have a stinging slap with the thing.

"Nice. You're a pretty one." She came over and played with his nipples and pulled his head to her and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then she backed away and looked him over as if he were a piece of meat, standing there in his briefs with a reddening welt on the side of his hip where she'd whipped him. "You got a cute set of buns, Bobby. Come on in here for Mama," she said, taking his hard, muscled arm and pulling him down the hallway. But instead of taking him into the bedroom, she brought him into her tiny, filthy bathroom. He thought about just turning around and using his fist on this old bitch a few times. But something stopped him.

"This toilet of mine is so dirty I don't even want to shit in it," she said, roughly. "You understand me?"

"Yeah," he said. She got a toothbrush out from under the sink and handed it to him.

"You get down and clean this thing for me, cowboy. Make it real pretty for Mama—you do that?"

"Um." He didn't know what he wanted to do. He could just go pull his pants on and book, for one thing. But something made him want to see what she had in mind. He knelt down in front of the commode and started scrubbing with the toothbrush.

"Oh, shit. Yeah! That's it," she said softly in an urgent tone. "Go to it, you bitch. Clean my fucking toilet. Oh, do it." She was touching herself. "Don't look at me, you little whore!" she yelled at him, and he concentrated on cleaning the stained porcelain. "That's better, you sweet, sexy little cowboy bitch. You fuckin'…oh, uh-huh—yeah!" She was really getting off watching him scrub her potty. After a bit, she let him get up and they kissed, and she told him to lay the toothbrush down and wash his hands, and then come in to bed.

He didn't even want to touch the corroded faucets, or the nasty looking soap bar, or the scummy towels. Even the water from the tap looked dirty. He obeyed, however, and padded into the bedroom to find her seated in bed.

"Get over here," she commanded, spreading her legs a little. He tried to crawl between her legs and she shoved him away. "Not like that, Bobby. Get on your tummy for Mama." He moved. "Yeah. Right alongside me here. Umhmm." He jumped when she touched him. He felt the briefs ripping. "There! Now I can see that pretty boy butt of yours." He felt the bedsprings move with her as she got something.

"See?" She held a box under his face and opened it. "Those are Ben Wa balls." Balls on a string. So? "From where you were stationed—eh?" He thought of the Ben Hoa airstrip where the spike team had once gone during a mission. He couldn't remember anything about the place but grunts, choppers, and fucking gooks. Too many moons ago. Everything was all mixed up now. Spike teams and spiked heels, Ben Hoa and Ben Wa balls. Too much that was weird.