Wolves (17 page)

Chapter 11

Lowell stumbles through to the back as the sound of men's voices and the angry belching of black powder fill his ears and tumble through his brain, lighting things on fire as they go, a mudslide unearthing things that seemed to have been buried for geological ages. For the first time in a long time he feels helpless, defenseless, small, infantile. He can only run, only hide, find the dark place, find the place that no one else could find. Stay there. Befriend the dark. Live at night. Embrace the fear like a hunted animal does, at no time able to close his eyes, always watching, always knowing that this might be the time that his life is suddenly snuffed out. The reality of the situation, the fact that it is everlasting, that there is no coming back from the place it puts you, no ghosts, no after, just a rotting patch of meat left on the desert floor, soon to desiccate and disappear.

He is spinning, rolling, caught in a current he can't get out of.

He finds the water closet with his hands, pulls himself inside and struggles with the door. The sliders are rusted and gummed up. The door is never closed, because the toilet is never used for its intended purpose—Father had to explain to him what it was for and Lowell had crinkled his brow, not quite getting it. Now the toilet bowl is filled with dirt and herbs are growing in it.

Lowell fumbles with the tiny latch that is used as a door handle. It clicks and clacks in his fingers as outside the metal hull of the trailer he can hear the sounds of fighting drawing closer. Finally the casters break free of the rusted tracks and the water closet door slams shut. Lowell backs up until he is sitting on the toilet seat, his rear end in the dirt, crushing the herbs. He is in complete darkness here. He smells mint and basil. The smells of Mother's cooking.

He is shaking uncontrollably. “Help me,” he whispers to no one in particular. “Help me.”

A gunshot, very close outside of the trailer. A man curses loudly, sounding like he is just on the other side.

In the darkness, a crease of light becomes apparent along the seam of the water closet door. Through the crack, Lowell can see his bed, the covers thrown over, the window above it pouring in blue moonlight. Lowell leans to his left, breathless and tense. The soft soil of the herb bed shifts underneath him. The skinny image that he can see through the door pans, little bit by little bit, until he can see Mother. He can see the back of her. Her elbow. Her hair swept back. Her ear. Once, she turns sharply to the sound of a noise outside the trailer, and Lowell can see her dark eyes, intense and fearful. Then she turns back again and faces the door. He can tell that she is standing in front of it, with the scattergun leveled, held at her side. Waiting.

Lowell wonders if she is shaking as much as he is.

Something hits the outside wall, just behind him.

Lowell jumps off his seat, puts his back up to the wall, sucking in herb-scented air. He cannot seem to breathe fast enough. Every time he gets a breath in his chest, it expels, almost against his will, and he has to take another. He has not felt this way since … since … 

There is a man on the other side of the wall.

Two men. Struggling.

Lowell hears their sounds of desperation. Grunts and groans. Noises like two wild animals locked in combat. One of them slams up against the trailer again. The sound of feet scuffling in the dirt outside. Curses strained out between clenched teeth. Something clatters, metal on metal.

One of them is Father.

And one of them is not.

There are words in the animal noises, but Lowell cannot make sense of them, as though they are spoken in a different language. He stares at the dark wall, seeing nothing, and seeing everything in his mind's eye. Seeing everything and more, his imagination creating horrible things that may or may not be real.

“Father,” he whimpers.

Outside, the inflection of a voice changes.

“Ah!” it is high-pitched, panicked. “No, no! Ah! Ah! Stop!”

The last noise is a high-pitched mewl. Something that does not sound like it should have come from a man. Something that should have come from an animal, a dog perhaps, a bitch with swollen teats lurking in the dark corner of a trailer, the sound that bitch would make when a wooden spear was thrust through her … 

No … no … please … 

Outside, a body drops.

Shuffling feet. Muffled curses.

Lowell just keeps picturing the bitch in his mind. He cannot stop seeing her in the darkness. Because now he knows how she must have felt. Hiding. Hoping that the intruders would go away. Hiding and hoping not to be found, hoping just to be left alone, to be allowed to live, to survive, for just another short time … 

The sound of the trailer door rattling.

Mother is whispering to herself, but Lowell cannot hear what she is saying.

The
zzz-hiss
of the scattergun's element being charged.

“Hey!” a man's voice, unfamiliar.

BOOM!

The scattergun shakes the walls.

Outside, men yelp and curse.

Inside, Mother weeps, her sobs suddenly wrenched loudly from her, the crashing of her gun the storm surge that broke her levies.

Through the crack in the door, Lowell watches as she upends the scattergun, homemade buttstock to the floor, and gropes around for her powder and another charge of ball bearings, or anything that will fit down the monstrous barrel that she might fire at the men outside of the trailer. That single shot has left a haze like a bank of fog crawling slowly through the room, and he watches Mother move through it.

“You
fuck
!” a monster's voice from outside, raspy and angry.

The crack of a pistol.

Lowell can actually hear the lead ball punching through the trailer, and then Mother screams out and falls to the ground. His heart seizes in his chest and he wants to tear through the door, but he finds that he cannot move. He can only wait, like that bitch dog and her whelps, hiding in that dark corner … 

Mother's body on the ground, thrashing around, clawing away from the door. And then the door bursts open, violently, with the sound of a boot smashing into the thin vinyl, and the hinges creaking wildly. Moonlight pours in, caught in the haze of gunpowder, and he can see the shadows of men that are not Father.

“You bitch!” the monster says, and he falls upon Mother as she tries to get away, screaming. “Did I get you? Did I fucking get you?”

Through the tiny crack, Lowell watches the scene unfold. Mother flailing her arms and legs as the man that had spoken grabs at her and pins her down. He yells obscenities to her and then language seems to flee him. Mother keeps pleading, but the man is not hearing. Lowell knows that Mother has been hit by a bullet, but he cannot see where. Maybe it's not bad. Maybe she won't die. Maybe she will live.

He realizes that he is crying only when the slit-image blurs. And he is almost thankful that it does, because he does not want to see, and yet he cannot stop himself from seeing. He cannot look away, or close his eyes. The image blurs and blurs and drips and becomes liquid, but the sounds are still so very real and tangible. The sound of heavy breathing. Mother saying repeatedly, “No! No! No, please!” The sound of clothes being rent. A harsh slap. And Mother's words become a slurry of pain and grief, and the breathing quickens.

This isn't happening. This isn't real.

It's real. It's so real. It's happening.

It's happening again.

Again.

You're cursed.

You ARE a curse.

Mother and Father are being killed because of you.

Time and terror swirl into incoherence. He blinks. Very slowly. Very deliberately. The watery image clears. He sees Mother. A dark shape atop her, wild blond dreadlocks tossing as it moves over her. He sees Mother's breasts, laid bare and pale in the moonlight, and her face, turned in his direction, looking right at him, right at Lowell, seeing him, though her eyes seem vacant, her face blank and empty.

“Mama,” Lowell says and he does not know why he calls her that, except that he has used that word before, not for this woman that he calls Mother, but for another, a long time ago. One that he had lost, much as he knows she will be lost as well. “Mama, I'm sorry.”

But Mother only stares on.

“I'm so sorry,” Lowell wretches the words out of himself. “So sorry, so sorry …”

The man on top of Mother stops his movement, and Mother's body lays still, no longer rocked to and fro. She lays there, limp and lifeless. In the sudden quiet, Lowell can hear the man's heavy breathing, how hard he has exerted himself, and Lowell can hear the blood rushing through his own veins, like it has all turned into a clatter of marbles. He stares at Mother's empty eyes and he looks at the still and unmoving shadow that is cast not only over her, but over the man that has taken her.

A horrible feeling unearths itself in him. The cataclysm of death rips the fault lines apart, and pounds the earth down low, and this jagged, ugly thing comes sprouting from the upturned soil of his mind, veined in dark and built of rage and fear, so much fear, and hate for everyone and everything that exists, the hate that makes him want to kill it all, but the fear always staying him, telling him to hide, hide,
stay in the dark!

She's dead! Mother's dead! Father's dead! They're all dead!

The feeling expresses itself in a sound that rips out of his throat, completely without his control. He could not feel or hear the sound that he made, but it is short and sharp and filled with the ungodly things that he has been a witness to, both in this life and in the past.

The man who lays atop Mother's body comes up from the ground, fumbling to get himself back into his pants, fumbling for his weapon, and for the first time, Lowell can see his face. It is a pinched, weasel face. One that he knows because it has kept rattling around in his brain since the night at the spring, and now it flashes across the back of his eyelids like lightning and he falls off the toilet with a yelp of terror.

“Motherfucker …” the man with the weasel face starts to rise, but this time, through the narrow slit in the door, Lowell sees a shadow fall over the man. It is quick—one second sprawled across both the weasel-faced man and Mother, and then there is a hand, large, and a long arm, and it grabs a hold of the weasel-faced man's shoulder and shoves him roughly back to the ground.

A voice, thick with disgust. “You sit the fuck down. Focus on getting your pants back up.”

A body fills the crack in the doorway.

Lowell lifts his eyes, up and up, a very tall man, and he looks at a face shrouded in darkness, but just the barest of light reflecting off two wet, cold eyes as they look straight down at him.

Before Lowell can move, before he can even think to move, those long arms and strong hands punch through the crack and rip the flimsy watercloset door straight from its hinges. Lowell cries out and tries to back up more, but there is no place else to go. Just spilled soil and crushed herbs. But even as Lowell scrambles, the tall man outside of the door doesn't make another move toward him. Lowell has seen the revolver in the tall man's hands, held at the hip. But as Lowell screams and sobs and claws at the walls, the tall man simply lowers the revolver, then shoves it in his waistband.

“Aw, you gotta be fuckin' kidding me,” the weasel-faced man says. “The kid again?”

The tall man looks over at him sharply. “That's why you clear the place before you start …” the rest of the words trail off in a sound that is like a dog's growl.

The weasel-face man looks down at what he has done, as though he does not comprehend. As though only a great fool would consider his actions wrong. “What? Her? She fucking
shot
me. Stupid bitch. Grazed my arm.”

The tall man stares at the weasel-faced man a moment longer, then turns his gaze back on Lowell, but Lowell cannot stop crying now. It is coming out of him in big uncontrollable sobs. He keeps trying to ask what has happened to Father, what has happened to Mother, though he knows the answer to both questions. But no matter how hard he tries to force the words up his throat, they just come out in groans and bleats. He can hardly catch his breath.

The tall man's jaw clenches tightly. He looks down at the child in front of him and his nose twitches slightly, as though he's smelled something distasteful. “Calm down. Stop crying.”

Lowell tries, but only because he is afraid of being killed if he doesn't. He manages to close his mouth, but the sounds still go on behind his sealed lips, like an argument behind a slammed door.

The tall man reaches out with one hand, the one not resting on the butt of his pistol, and he grabs the boy by the chin, squeezing Lowell's cheeks hard and shocking the grief out of him at least for a moment. “Shut up. Just stop. You're alive. Be thankful.”

Lowell's chest hitches noisily.

The weasel-faced man starts toward them, hitching up his pants. “Here, let me …”

Lowell blinks and the revolver is no longer in the tall man's waistband. He has drawn it and it is leveled between the eyes of the weasel-faced man. The tall man holds it oddly, almost awkwardly, but the intent is not awkward. The intent leaves no room for discussion. It is cold and clear, like a winter night.

“You back off,” the tall man says. “And take the woman outside with you while you're at it. And don't do anything else. She's dead for God's sake.”

The weasel-faced man eyes the gun barrel, but he is already moving backward, his hands up. “Alright, alright. Christ Almighty. It ain't gotta be like that, Mr. Huxley.”

The tall man keeps the revolver pointed at weasel-face until he has slunk out of sight. Lowell looks past Mr. Huxley and can see Mother's hand, small and delicate in all this roughness, lying against the ground with the fingers so carefully curled, as though she is asleep. But her fingers are bloody, and her fingernails are torn away from clawing at the floor. And then there is the sound of the weasel-faced man's grumbling effort, and the sound of a weight being dragged, and Mother's hand disappears from sight.