Strangers (21 page)

“Now,
you see, is when Jan said I might tell you,” Vern interrupted. “Jan is our leader, Michael. He’ll lead those who are worthy when it is our time. Trust Jan, Michael.”

Michael suddenly felt himself a child again, or at least the “pretend” child he had once had to be. He remembered the Jan who had sought him out, who had given him a baptism in blood, who had told him what he was and what he was meant to be. Yes, he trusted Jan Pretre.

And he trusted Vern Engelking.

Strangers!
They—were Strangers, and all his questions were answered with that realization and joyous acknowledgement.

Damn, there was someone knocking on the front door of the double-width mobile home and Herb Cantlon didn’t want to be disturbed, not now.

He slipped a plaid robe over his shorts and undershirt. “Keep it hot and juicy for me,” he said to Gretchen Waller, the nineteen-year-old woman who lay under the sheet. She was a dishwater blond, with a thin face and sad
eyes
; whenever she wasn’t chewing gum, her expression seemed somehow unnatural. “I’ll be right back, hon.” He waddled to the living room on legs surprisingly thin for such a corpulent man.

He had good reason to be annoyed at the interruption. Wednesday night was
(heh-heh-heh)
Herb’s night for nooky, to get the ashes hauled and the sap off his back—and yeah, there was nothing better than tender young poon-tang to keep a guy feeling like the
(heh-heh-heh)
cock of the walk. His mobile home set-up here at Lake Claron, just a few miles from town, was perfect. It was where he brought the wife and the kids for summer vacations and getaway weekends and where he’d been getting it on with Gretchen once a week for the past six months or so. He had privacy, not another house for nearly a mile, and a good supply of booze, a TV, and a stereo and Gretchen who could get
(heh-heh-heh)
pretty (
Whoo-oo!)
wild in the sack.

Oh, sure, the wife knew, but she acted like she wasn’t on to doodley-squat and Herb figured she’d keep on the way as long as he kept her happy with a fur coat or a microwave or a string of pearls or whatever the hell she wanted. And so what that the whole town was aware of his getting some tail? You could
damned
well bet that Herb Cantlon wasn’t the
only
married man who messed around; you don’t throw stones at the next guy ‘cause somebody might bounce one off your bean too.

Herb opened the door. The man who stood on the wooden deck wore a faded, long-sleeved flannel shirt, jeans, and heavy hiking boots. He was holding a.357 Magnum with a ribbed nine-inch barrel and he pushed the gun into Herb’s stomach.

“Don’t say word one,” Eddie Markell ordered quietly. “Back your lard ass in.”

Herb felt the precise octagonal shape of the end of the barrel pressing into his spongy flesh.
Oh God,
be thought.
Oh Christ Jesus!
He was going to die. Sure, he’d considered death before now, the sensible, inevitable death that had to occur someday. He had hefty life insurance, a legal will, even “his and hers” funeral plots for himself and the missus. But it had never really struck him, though, that he could die…
now.

And oh,
Oh goddamnit, oh shit, oh goddamnit!
he
did not
want
to die now. He tried to step back, to lift his foot, but he couldn’t move; then his stomach rumbled. He felt the intestinal fluttering and the gun and he couldn’t help it, he giggled, and stepped back.

Eddie Markell closed the door behind him. “All right, fat boy, let’s go say hello to your chick. Lead the way.”

Sweating and freezing, Herb nodded. He took Eddie into the bedroom.

“What is it? What is it?” Gretchen Waller kept saying, gaping at the gun, at Herb’s sweat-gleaming, porcine face, at Eddie Markell’s grin and bloodshot eyes—and gun, the gun… She lay stiffly in bed, holding the sheet to her throat, like a hospitalized child watching a hypodermic-bearing nurse approach.

“It’s your ass and everything connected to it if you give me any trouble. Get out of bed.”

“I…I don’t have any clothes on,” Gretchen said. She blushed.

Do
it,
Herb Cantlon silently begged her.
Don’t argue. Don’t say anything. Do what he says…

“Don’t worry,” Eddie sneered, “you won’t catch cold. Move.”

Gretchen tossed back the sheet. Her eyes were huge. She stood up. Her breasts were small and her ribs and
hip bones
sharply outlined beneath childishly pink skin.

“Little tits, baby,” Eddie said. He rapped Herb on the shoulder with the barrel of the revolver. “Thought you country clodhoppers liked ’em big-boobed, Herb.”

Herb said nothing.

“Going to give me the old line, lard ass? Tell me ‘More than a mouthful is pure waste?’”

Gretchen bleated, “Please, mister, whoever you are, don’t hurt us.”

Shut up, Gretchen!
Herb wanted to scream. Don’t say a word and we can live…

“Into the living room, folks,” Eddie ordered. When Gretchen didn’t move quickly enough to suit him, he gave her a sharp slap across the buttocks.

She yiped. Eddie laughed. “Skinny tits, skinny ass. Herb, putting it to her must be like doing it with a barbed wire scarecrow.”

In the living room, Eddie told Herb and Gretchen to sit on the sofa. Eddie stepped across the room to the padded rollaway bar. Casually putting the pistol on the bartop as though he were sure they dared not attempt anything, he found a bottle of vodka, turned the cap, cracked the seal, and drank from the bottle.

“Thanks for the drink, Herb. You’re a fine fucking host,” Eddie said.

Herb Cantlon swallowed hard. “Whatever …whatever you want. I…I have some money…”

“Turn it off, lard ass,” Eddie said. “You just sit there with your chick and keep your mouth closed.”

Be quiet!
Herb told himself.
Not a word, not a sound. Be quiet and live, live, live!

“We’ve got to wait awhile, folks,” Eddie said. He had another long pull from the vodka bottle. “Some friends of ours are coming over for a party.”

Some friends of… ours?
Herb didn’t understand. He wasn’t even attempting to comprehend what the man had said. He knew he wanted to live and that was all that mattered.

“ ‘Course, there’s no reason we can’t have some fun and games on our own until they get here.” Eddie snapped his fingers and pointed at Gretchen. She started. “Come here, chicky.”

Gretchen didn’t move
Get up! Go on over there!
Herb mentally pleaded.

“Now, bitch!” Eddie said. He leaned back, his elbows on the bartop’s padding. His right hand lay on the butt of the .357.

As though drugged, Gretchen staggered over to him. “On your knees, bitch,” Eddie said. She knelt before him. He held the pistol to her temple. “Do it nice, some good head. You make it bad head and you get bad head, too. I’ll splatter your fucking brains all over the room.” Eddie grinned at Herb. “How about it, lard ass? Okay with you if your lady cleans my pipes?”

There was the hot sting of tears in Herb Cantlon’s eyes. He was helpless, shattered, and
Oh
shit!
he
didn’t care, didn’t care what happened to Gretchen or to anyone except Herb Cantlon.

Time that was timeless passed, nearly three hours. The level in the vodka bottle was under half. The console stereo was playing, side one of a Kenny Rogers album repeating again and again; now it was “The Gambler,” the smoothly rasped advice “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,” filling the room. Gretchen was on the couch, head down,
hair
in her face, silently sobbing. And Herb Cantlon was still alive and that was all he knew or cared about.

There was a soft knock at the door. Eddie called. “Come in.”

Herb Cantlon didn’t believe what he was seeing. Vern Engelking and Michael Louden, the boss and the national sales manager… Then again, he wasn’t sure he believed
anything
that had happened this night, anything except the stranger with the gun and the tangible reality of death.

Herb had a curious, light-headed feeling of relief. He knew Mr. Engelking and Mr. Louden—he worked for them, for Superior Chemical, for God’s sake!

Michael Louden was grinning as he set a duffel bag alongside the bar. “Good evening, Herbert,” Vern Engelking said. “I do trust you’ll pardon the intrusion!”

“Aw shucks, aw shoot, aw shit,” Michael drawled. “See, we all jes’ figgered long as we were in this here neck of the woods to drop in on you-all. You glad to see us, Herby? You gladder than hammered shit?”

“Herb, what is it? What’s going on? I don’t understand,” Gretchen Waller spoke in a monotone as though all emotion had been leached from her.

“Herb,” Vern Engelking said, grinning broadly, “You’ve always had a delightful sense of humor. Indeed, so many of Superior Chemical’s clients have commented on your vast fund of jokes.”

“You’re a goddamn million laughs, Herby,” Michael said.

“Come here, Herbert.” Vern Engelking beckoned him with a crooked finger and a pleasant tone. “I have a joke for you.”

There was a crooked, dazed smile on his face as Herb walked toward Vern Engelking.

Vern said, “So a man came up to me and said he hadn’t had a bite in three days. You know what I did?”

It was weird, it was crazy, and nothing made sense anymore, but the boss—The Boss—was expecting him to answer, so Herb Cantlon, smiling, said, “So you bit him?”

“No,” Vern Engelking said. “I smartly kicked him in the testicles.” Engelking’s shoe slammed into Herb Cantlon’s crotch.

“Whuu…” Herb Cantlon grunted, and then the full force of the pain exploded up from his groin, speared his guts and lungs. He dropped to his
knees,
hugging himself, eyes bulging, tongue protruding moronically.

Michael stepped alongside him. He sharply pinched his earlobe, twisting it. The sharp needle-like hurt of Michael’s fingers kept Herb
conscious,
prevented his being washed under the heavy ocean of pain from Vern’s kick. Herb felt himself rising to his feet like a day old helium balloon slowly drifting upward.

He was making wet, peeping sounds of pain. Michael said, “You fat sonofabitch. Skimming some off the top from Superior, huh? Probably bought yourself this hideaway shithouse with what you stole.”

“Oh no, oh no…” Herb whimpered, throat tight, squeaking like a mouse in a trap. “Oh.”

“I am truly sorry, Herbert,” Vern Engelking said, “but we must reprimand you.”

“Don’t kill me!” Herb peeped.

“Don’t kill us!” Gretchen Waller echoed.

They went to the bedroom, Eddie holding the gun, Michael with a butcher knife that he had taken from the duffel bag. Herb was ordered to undress. Sobbing, his belly a rippling white mound, he lay on his back on the bed.

“Give him some head, bitch!” Eddie Markell said, pushing Gretchen toward the bed. “Get him hard.”

On her knees at Herb’s side, Gretchen leaned forward, blindly obedient. This was not happening, Herb told himself. He was dreaming, dreaming it all. That was it! Listen to the way Mr. Engelking was joking—“I do regret any damage my Florsheim might have done your manhood, Herbert”—and look at how Michael Louden was smiling as though he were at a sales convention and, hey! Out there in the living room, that was Kenny Rogers on the stereo! Kenny Rogers for crying out loud…
So
put it all together and it just wasn’t real.

“Get with it, Herby,” Michael said. “You’ve been humping the lady for a long time. Now get it up so you can have one more good one!”