Oh, Jesus Christ. Don’t think about that. Concentrate. Keep your mind on what you’re doing. Nose forward, ears back.
I went on through the kitchen and around the counter and into the living room, then the smell hit me. It was the smell that had underlined the stench of Bill’s shit back at the double-wide, and suddenly I knew it was the stench Bill had described as coming from Cobra Man.
The smell was strong. Very strong. Stronger than at Arnold’s place. A primal fear went through me. The same as when you’re in the woods, along the riverbank, and the whiff of a water moccasin comes to you. Oh, they’ll tell you snakes have no odor, and perhaps they’re right, but the stuff they crawl in, that river bottom mess, the leaves, the dankness of the forest, it certainly has a smell, and on a snake it has a distinctive smell, no matter what the experts say, and many is the time I’ve smelled it and felt the fear go through me like an electric shock, and nearby, a big fat moccasin full of poisn fey craon would ooze out from beneath a log and cross my path.
I had the same sensation now and I turned quickly toward the hallway and brought the gun around and a shadow came loose from the darkness and hit my arm and slammed it against a book case and the gun went from my hand and a row of books came flying out and hit me in the face, and then the shadow came closer and the moonlight through the huge glass windows showed me a different moon, the moon of a tattooed face.
In that moment I saw the face was almost perfectly round and hairless and there was a great blue and gold cobra tattooed along the side of the neck and face and it rose up on the bald head as if to strike. It looked very real, and the man’s eyes were not too unlike the eyes of the tattooed snake. Dark and flat and emotionless. And then I saw more than the face. I saw all of him and he was very big and he was on me.
I came around with a left and hit the face and it went back into the shadows and bobbed back and I hit it again, but this time he slipped my punch and a hand like a robot claw grabbed me by the throat and picked me up and slammed me against the wall and he used his leg to sweep my feet from beneath me and drop me on my ass. Then he was crouching in front of me and I felt the sharp point of a knife poking at the hollow of my throat, opening a spring of blood that flowed down my neck and inside my shirt.
“You got to take it easy now,” said the Cobra Man. “You got to maintain some cool. You wake the little ones up… two of them ain’t there? You wake the little ones up, I got to do them like the dog. You seen the dog?”
He waited.
He actually wanted an answer.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Then you know I can cut, baby. I can cut. That dog, though, he bit me some. Look here.”
He showed me his knifeless hand. It was wrapped in a bloodstained white cloth. No. Not a cloth. It was a pair of Beverly’s panties.
“You just got lucky with the dog,” I said.
“Naw. I can’t always be lucky. I get lucky with you too? I don’t think so. I think I’m good, that’s what I think. That was a good punch though.”
He touched under his right eye with the bandaged hand. “I used to box and I been hit some. I can take a punch. But that was a good punch.”
The moonlight showed that where I hit him was puffy, but above that, over his eyebrow, was a nasty explosion of a wound; all pink and swollen, the lips of it peeled back as if ready to let out a flow of lava.
He knew what I was looking at.
“Ah, this,” he said, and touched it. “You’re not that good. Fish hook. That brother of yours. Or did Nephew Bill say he was a half brother? Real talker that nephew of yours. You stick your thumb under his balls and push up, he talked good. Come on. We got to see your wife. Fat Boy’s giving her a massage.”
I tried to jump him, but he jerked the knife from my throat and jabbed it under my chin and shoved it in slightly. I barked in pain, not only because of the cut, but beca cu hiuse he had driven it right into the nerve there. This guy knew what he was doing.
“Got to be quiet now,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to wake the children up. Though I really don’t mind. It’s Fat Boy minds. He’s got plans. I’ll wake anyone up. I don’t mind a little activity. You got a little girl, huh? What Bill said. I like a little girl. I’d oil her ass and spin her around on my dick. Slap her so hard it’d make her spin. I’d have me some fun, I’m tellin’ you.”
“You piece of shit,” I said.
He grinned at me. “You get up now and come quiet with ole piece of shit. Ole piece of shit whipped your ass, didn’t he?”
I got up carefully, the knife beneath my chin helping guide me to my feet. When I was standing, my back against the wall, he lifted the knife some more and brought me to my toes. I tried to think of something to do, but nothing seemed smart at the moment. I had to hope for a window of chance, and when I saw it, I had to take it.
“We got to go upstairs now, Hanky. See the wife and Fat Boy. He might want me to put some lotion on her. You get around there in front and I’ll take up the rear. You feel a little poking at your ass, don’t worry none. That won’t be the knife. I’ll keep that in your back. Got me, huh?”
He leaned his head toward me and put his lips to my ear. His smell made my stomach roll. The knife probed deeper and more painfully into the hollow beneath my chin. My eyes welled with tears. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out in pain this time. He liked that too much. It turned him on.
He said, “We get up there, see what kind of fun Fat Boy and the wife’s having, you might want to grease up for me. Let me get a little chocolate on my sausage. I ain’t queer, but I like to stick my dick in warm holes. Know what I mean?”
As I took position in front of him, he prodded me in the back with the knife and I went forward. I walked toward the stairs, my knees weak, my throat dry. My mind raced for some kind of plan, some solution, but I didn’t find any.
Cobra Man put a hand on my left shoulder, and with the other he poked the tip of the knife just behind and below my ear. His smell was overwhelming.
“What do you bathe in?” I said. “Piss?”
He pricked me with the knife, said, “I can make Ole Man Knife fit right here. Like a sheath. Believe me on that, Hanky. You don’t talk no more unless you’re talked to. Okay? You see the wife, and then we’ll see how you talk.”
We went upstairs. The bedroom door was open. A light clicked on at our arrival.
“On inside, my sweetie,” Cobra Man said. “We got to move things along.”
21
Inside the room the reading light behind the bed was on. The sheet and blankets had been pulled off the bed onto the floor. Beverly lay naked on the bare mattress. Her arms and legs were spread wide, as if to accept a lover. Her wrists and ankles were bound with white cotton rope and the rope on both sides extended beneath the bed. A red rubber ball was stuck in her mouth. A single sts trip of white adhesive tape went over that and around her cheeks and behind her head. Her eyes were wet with tears and the tears rolled off her face in what looked like slug tracks. Her liquid pools of fear had dampened the mattress on either side of her face. Her breasts, stomach, pubic hair and thighs glistened with baby oil.
Fat Boy had a chair pulled up next to the bed. He was sitting there with his legs crossed. He was dressed in a very old leisure suit. It had once been bright crimson, but was now a kind of mottled pink. It was frayed around the sleeves and ankles. He had on an emerald green shirt and a little black string tie. He wore white, low-top tennis shoes and white socks. He had a small bottle of baby oil in his left hand, which was resting on his crossed leg. His right held a. 45 automatic with a silencer. He had the. 45 extended so that the tip of it lay between Beverly’s legs, touching her vagina. The curtains on the big glass windows were pulled open behind him and in the distance I could see the bone-white filigree of occasional lighting.
“Howdy, howdy, howdy,” he said, and grinned at me. “A goddamned big howdy to you.”
Cobra Man brought the hilt of the knife up quick and clipped me behind the ear and knocked me to my knees. “Say howdy,” he said.
