seemed to be trying to finish what he had started to say. He lifted one hand, as if to catch someone’s attention.
Priest took a frightened step back. “No!” he said.
Mario said: “Man …”
Priest felt possessed by panic. He lifted the wrench again. “Die, you motherfucker!” he screamed, and he hit Mario again.
This time the wrench sank in farther. Withdrawing it was like pulling something out of soft mud. Priest felt a surge of nausea when he saw the living gray matter smeared on the adjustable jaws of the tool. His stomach churned and he swallowed hard, feeling dizzy.
Mario fell slowly backward and lay slumped against the rear tire, motionless. His arms became limp and his jaw slack, but he stayed alive. His eyes locked with Priest’s. Blood gushed from his head and ran down his face and into the open neck of his checked shirt. His stare terrified Priest. “Die,” Priest pleaded. “For the love of God, Mario, please die.”
Nothing happened.
Priest backed off. Mario’s eyes seemed to be begging him to finish the job, but he could not hit him again. There was no logic to it; he just could not lift the wrench.
Then Mario moved. His mouth opened, his body became rigid, and a strangled scream of agony burst from his throat.
It pushed Priest over the edge. He, too, screamed; then he ran at Mario and hit him again and again, in the same place, hardly seeing his victim through the haze of terror that blurred his eyesight.
The screaming stopped and the fit passed.
Priest stepped back, dropping the wrench on the ground.
The corpse of Mario fell slowly sideways until the mess that had been his head hit the ground. His gray brains seeped into the dry soil.
Priest fell to his knees and closed his eyes. “Dear God almighty, forgive me,” he said.
He knelt there, shaking. He was afraid that if he opened his eyes, he might see Mario’s soul going up.
To quiet his brain he recited his mantra:
When he was chanting to himself, he often slipped from the mantra into the rhyme. It worked just as well.
As the familiar syllables soothed him, he thought about the way his breath entered his nostrils, went through his nasal passages into the back of his mouth, passed along his throat, and descended into his chest, finally penetrating the farthest branches of his lungs, before retracing the entire journey in reverse: lungs, throat, mouth, nose, nostrils, and back out into the open air. When he concentrated fully on the journey of the breath, nothing else came into his head — no visions, no nightmares, no memories.
A few minutes later he stood up, his heart cold, his face set in a determined expression. He had purged himself of emotion: he felt no regret or pity. The murder was in the past, and Mario was just a piece of garbage that he had to dispose of.
He picked up his cowboy hat, brushed off the dirt, and put it on his head.
He found the pickup’s tool kit behind the driving seat. He took a screwdriver and used it to detach the license plates, front and rear. He walked across the dump and buried them in a smoldering mass of garbage. Then he put the screwdriver back in the tool kit.
He bent over the body. With his right hand he grasped the belt of Mario’s jeans. With his left he took a fistful of the checked shirt. He lifted the body off the ground. He grunted as his back took the strain: Mario was heavy.
The door of the pickup stood open. Priest swung Mario back and forth a couple of times, building up a rhythm, then with one big heave he threw the body into the cabin. It lay over the bench seat, with the heels of the boots sticking out of the open door and the head hanging into the footwell on the passenger side. Blood dripped from the head.
He threw the wrench in after the body.
He wanted to siphon gas out of the pickup’s tank. For that he needed a long piece of narrow tubing.
He opened the hood, located the windshield washer fluid, and ripped out the flexible plastic pipe that led from the reservoir to the windshield nozzle. He picked up the half-gallon Coke bottle he had noticed earlier, then walked around to the side of the pickup and unscrewed the gas cap. He fed the tube into the fuel tank, sucked on it until he tasted gasoline, then inserted the end into the Coke bottle. Slowly it filled with gas.
Gas continued to spill on the ground while he walked to the door of the pickup and emptied the Coke bottle over the corpse of Mario.
He heard the sound of a car.
Priest looked at the dead body soaked in gasoline in the cab of the pickup. If someone came along right now, there was nothing he could say or do to conceal his guilt.
His rigid calm left him. He started to shake, the plastic bottle slipped from his fingers, and he crouched on the ground like a scared child. Trembling, he stared at the track that led to the road. Had an early riser come to get rid of an obsolete dishwasher, or the plastic playhouse the kids had grown out of, or the old-fashioned suits of a dead grandfather? The noise of the engine swelled as it came nearer, and Priest closed his eyes.
“Ley, tor, pur-doy-kor …”
The noise began to fade. The vehicle had passed the entrance and gone on down the road. It was just traffic.
He felt stupid. He stood up, regaining control. “Ley, tor, pur-doy-kor …”
But the scare made him hurry.
He filled the Coke bottle again and quickly doused the plastic bench seat and the entire interior of the cabin with gasoline. He used the remainder of the gas to lay a trail across the ground to the rear of the truck, then splashed the last of it onto the side near the fuel cap. He threw the bottle into the cabin and stepped back.
He noticed Mario’s Houston Astros cap on the ground. He picked it up and threw it into the cab with the body.
He took a book of matches from his jeans, struck one, and used it to light all the others; then he threw the blazing matchbook into the cab of the pickup and swiftly backed away.
There was a
A disgusting smell filled the air, almost like roasting meat. Priest swallowed hard and stood farther back.
After a few seconds the blaze became less intense. The tires, the seats, and the body of Mario continued to burn slowly.
Priest waited a couple of minutes, watching the flames; then he ventured closer, trying to breathe shallowly to keep the stench out of his nose. He looked inside the cabin of the pickup. The corpse and the seating had congealed together into one vile black mass of ash and melted plastic. When it cooled down, the vehicle would be just another piece of junk that some kids had set fire to.
He knew he had not got rid of all traces of Mario. A casual glance would reveal nothing, but if the cops ever examined the pickup, they would probably find Mario’s belt buckle, the fillings from his teeth, and maybe his charred
