Chaingang

He froze at the embankment and saw the man. He looked like one of the little people, waiting down in a tunnel, a cleverly designed hidey-hole. One of the ghost warriors. He waited.

If you could have ridden by on a log at that moment, letting the river current pull you, you'd have seen quite a sight up there on the bank. There was a little bite-size chunk, a gouge, in the bank, and sitting squarely in that hole was an old man. An old man in faded work clothes, who had a couple of lines out, bank-fishing for cat.

But above him and to the right as you floated by, you would have seen a huge, grinning fat man, carrying a massive load of some kind, looking down at the old man who was contentedly fishing.

The giant was not jolly, but he was green—part of him. He wore green-and-brown jungle fatigue pants—big as a wall flag—and down where they bloused out of gigantic, custom-made 15EEEEE boots, the trousers were duct-taped into the boots, sealed against leeches. (Old habits die hard.)

He had on a voluminous jacket of some kind, which was open, and a T-shirt underneath, and in his right hand, which was the size of a frying pan, he now held three feet or so of heavyweight tractor-strength chain. The cases and large duffel bag were on the ground.

Each big, hardball-size link had been carefully wrapped in black friction tape, as was the case with all his equipment, and it had been rendered as operationally silent as he could make it.

He would chain-snap this one, he thought, silently easing closer to his enemy.

Their underground was an incredible, vast spiderweb of interlocking tunnels and served as command and control, medevac triage, R & R center, whatever was needed by way of supply /resupply. It was all down there in the tiny tunnels where the little people hid by day, sometimes in groups as large as battalion strength, subsisting on diets of rice and a bit of rat meat, fish, and nuoc mam; tough, wiry, hard-core team players—man, woman, and child. Ghost warriors.

It pleasured him to watch them near the blue features where he found their hidey-holes; tiny ratholes he couldn't begin to get a massive tree trunk leg down in. He'd wait silently, watching for the ones who would come after nightfall, either to leave or enter from the tunnel mouth.

Many times he'd been given treats this way, a small, dark figure popping out of the hole beside the blue feature, gasping for air perhaps after an underwater swim. They liked to dig a shallow chamber first, below the water table, and this flooded chamber then acted as a protective perimeter float. But if you knew where the inner entrance was, you could hold your breath, dive, and pull yourself through the inner opening into breathable air, and you'd be safely inside the tunnel complex.

He liked to kill them when they first emerged from the water, quick and dark little people whom he frankly admired—as much as he could admire any human, admiring them for their tenacity and singular meanness of spirit.

The secondary effect of the drugs smashed him and he dropped the chain, stumbling and falling like a felled tree.

The old man heard a loud noise and turned, startled to see a huge figure on the ground up on the bank behind him. He scampered back to give a hand.

“You hurt yourself?” Chaingang looked up into the face of an old man who had his hands on him. Where was his fucking chain? “You took a heckuva spill there, feller. I was busy fishin', and I didn't even hear you a-comin', you know? I hear this loud crash—you really took a fall! Can ya’ get to your feet?'

“Nn.” Chaingang found he could not speak. It occurred to him he had not used his voice in some time. The lion coughed. It sounded far away inside his head. He fumbled around and got the canteen off his belt and took a swig.

The old man stayed next to him petting him like he was a huge dog.

“I'm worried about you, son. You ought to go to the hospital and let ‘em take a look at you. You might have something broken.'

Chaingang wanted to tell this idiot he was going to have his fucking neck broken if he didn't get his hands off him. He hated to be touched.

The old man continued to peer into his face. He had a dark stain from a chaw of tobacco that dribbled from one corner of his mouth. Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski, mass murderer, had never itched to destroy someone so much in his life. But when he started looking to see where he'd dropped his chain, it occurred to him that such an act would be wrong.

The old man watched him running his hands over his face. After a moment the immense figure managed to get back to his feet, and the old man stood. The giant towered over him by a couple of feet and probably outweighed him by over three hundred pounds. He stared up at the vision for a moment, shook his head in amazement, shrugged, and ambled on back to his hole, leaving Chaingang gaping after him.

“Guess you're okay.” The old man smiled. “Come on down here, big ‘un, and set a spell.” He patted the ground beside him and turned his back on Chaingang, who started down the bank. He'd fucking choke him to death and be done with it.

But when he got to the edge of the hole, he just stood there, looking down at the swiftly moving river.

“Hop on down here, big ‘un. There's plenty of room. I'll move over a little.” He did so, and Chaingang found himself sitting beside this fool, his brain feeling as if it had been encased in ice.

“What's your name, son? I'm John Oscar.” He was holding out his hand to shake hands. Chaingang blinked. The old man was not the least put off, he'd been around the retarded all his life. It wasn't a problem. They was just like anybody else. He patted the big leg of the giant wedged next to him. It was the second time a man had put hands on him like that in recent memory. The next time it happened, that offender would lose those digits.

“I don't know my own name sometimes, son. It's my age. I don't know for sure how old I am, but I'm old enough I can recall riding the rods in the Great Depression. You have no i-dee what I'm talking about, do ya, boy?” Daniel blinked again. Swallowed. Finally managed a monosyllabic grunt. “Don't worry none.'

“You ever fish below here? Slabtown? I use rank liver on big ol’ game-fish test. And look here, son. Homemade sinkers. You know what I make ‘em out of?” The big feller didn't seem to be interested, so he reached for his other pole. “Here.” He jabbed it at Chaingang. “Take this. Go on. Don't be afraid. Take holt of it real good.'

Daniel opened a fist, and his big fingers swallowed the end of the bamboo pole.

“That's it, big ‘un. Now, keep that end of the pole pointed up more,” he scolded. “That's right. Soon as that pulls, you hold on real tight and we'll catch us some fish. How's that sound?'

Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski, his mind in icy pieces, sat quietly, obediently, on the edge of Blue Feature Thirty-One, fishing with John Oscar. Happy as two peas in a pod.

11

WATERTON

Hawthorne's funky ride, a superannuated-looking Ranchero that appeared to have seen about twenty better years, was parked on an out-of-the-way side street off Waterworks Road. Half a block away, near a small convenience store, he whispered hoarsely into a pay phone.

“Thank you,” he said, hanging up the receiver. The phone rang shrilly and he snatched it off the cradle, but a female voice instructed him to deposit money. He'd forgotten about the operator. He dropped coins and listened to the pinging routine. Shortly thereafter Southwestern Bell delivered him into the waiting arms of AT&T.

Someone spoke into his ear from two hundred miles away, and he said what he hoped were the magic words: “I'd like to speak with someone about buying some insurance.” The connection was noisy and the man's voice sounded far away.

“Who's calling please?'

“This is a man who's insurance—” Jesus in Heaven! Suddenly his mind had gone completely blank. A hundred times they'd gone over this. The stupid fucking routine. “This is a man who's—” What? An insurance fraud? Insurance policy? Insurance poor! “—insurance poor!' he blurted out, as if he'd just won the bonus question on a game show.