happened, I’d tell Tory-boy to take it all back—the money and the note. The way I reasoned it, everybody knew my rates, so I treated any note like it was the Law, trying to trap me.
People knew I had to have a sizable amount of drugs on hand to fill those orders, but even with all the junkies we have around here, none of them even thought about ripping off my stash.
Dope fiends risk their lives every time they stick a needle in their veins or snort something up their noses. A risk, not a certainty—they’re not the same thing. For all I know, risk is part of the jolt addicts are always chasing.
Trying to break into our place wouldn’t be a risk; there was no doubt about the outcome.
Our three pit bulls are brothers from the same litter. We got them from Donna Belle Parsons, down at the shelter. Some piece of trash had thrown a pit bull bitch out the window of a moving car. They probably figured she was all bred out.
Their stupidity is what saved our dogs. That bitch was not only pregnant when they dumped her, she was tough enough to stay alive almost six more weeks. Once she delivered, she closed her eyes and went to sleep, her last fight finally over.
Donna Belle Parsons wouldn’t have let most folks take more than one pup, especially those not even weaned. She harbored a deep, abiding hatred for dogfighters.
There’s a number of bunchers in these parts. That’s what they call men who go around grabbing dogs any way they can, so they can sell them to the dogfighters to use as training meat for their killers. Miss Parsons could smell a buncher at a hundred yards. If one came into her shelter, he was putting his life on the line.
That’s not talk, that’s fact. Donna Belle Parsons kept a pistol behind the counter. Tommy Joe Knowles still walks with a limp because he’d thought she wouldn’t use it.
I’ve noticed that men make that mistake about women all the time. Donna Belle Parsons was a tall, shapely woman, with a real pretty face and a sweet, soft voice. But the only reason Tommy Joe walks with a limp is because she hadn’t aimed that pistol of hers at his thick head.
’d shown Tory-boy how to hold the little bottle for the pups, and he got real good at it. Now they’re almost three years old. And if anybody or anything except me or Tory-boy came near our shack, they’d rip it apart, tearing off pieces like I’d seen those sharks do on TV.
It might be another pit who got loose from one of the dog-fighters’ pens, might be a cat who should have had more sense, might be a sheriff, might be a preacher—to our dogs, it wouldn’t make any difference. Cross their line and you’d end up a shredded corpse.
They didn’t act like that because they were mean—they were just doing their job. Tory-boy loved those dogs. He named them One, Two, and Three.
Tory-boy was always patting them and cuddling them like they were big toys. That was the original reason I wanted to get pit bulls: most people think they’re just plain vicious, like it’s in their blood. It’s true enough that people have been breeding them since forever to
You ever try and get near a dog that’s been hit by a car? Even though all you want is to help that dog, he’ll snap at you like a viper. Not a pit bull. If they were like that, how could people who fight them handle them down in the pit? How could they patch them up in the middle of a fight and send them right back to the scratch line?
Tory-boy didn’t know how strong he was. So, when he started begging me for a puppy, I was afraid that he’d break one in half just petting it. That’s why I got him pups that were real strong themselves. I’d seen other pit bulls around little kids. Watched the kids pull their tails, squeeze them hard enough to crack a rib, even poke them in the eye … but those dogs acted like they didn’t even feel it.
Turns out, I needn’t have bothered. Once I showed Tory-boy how, he hand-raised those pups. We fed them the best food, made sure they had all their shots, sheepskin blankets to sleep on, rawhide to gnaw on. Everything they wanted in life, it was me and Tory-boy who gave it to them. They reasoned it out the way animals do— anybody who threatened us was threatening them.
Our dogs weren’t the kind you want to threaten. A bully might be dangerous, but a protector is deadly.
We never locked our door. It was only plywood anyway. The dogs always let us know when anyone was near. Just a quiet little growling, deep in their throats, with the hair raised on the backs of their necks. Anytime they’d get like that, we’d all just sit and wait. Me, Tory-boy, and the dogs, all together in the dark.
But after a while, the dogs would lie down and make another little sound. A different one. Probably telling each other how disappointed they were.
t wasn’t only drugs that kept money coming in. Tory-boy just got stronger and stronger. He could work like two mules, so there was always some extra cash anytime we might need it.
And before long, I was doing work for certain people. After that, it was just a matter of building our money until we had all we needed to make my plans come true. All my plans, even the exit one.
ot a day passed but that I didn’t do some kind of work with Tory-boy, and he got pretty good at most things. As long as he didn’t speak up, people usually just took him for quiet. And when he was wheeling me around to see different people, I would do all the talking. Not to disguise anything—to teach Tory-boy more about the kind of answers you give to certain questions.
And manners. I was known for my manners; everyone said what a gentleman I was. I wanted them to say the same about Tory-boy, and I know he copied me every way he could think of.
By the time he was fifteen, Tory-boy was such an outright ox that the high-school football coach paid us a visit. That was right after I won a hundred dollars from Jasper Murdle when Tory-boy lifted the back end of Jasper’s old Chevy right off the ground like it was a box of cereal.
The coach told me not to worry about Tory-boy’s grades, never mind his IQ—all that kind of thing could be taken care of. He told me what Tory’s contribution to the team would mean to the whole town. I tried to stay polite, but the man made it more and more difficult.
He was so determined that I had to put in some real work to make him understand that there was no way to put Tory-boy out on a field with boys slamming into each other. Sooner or later, Tory-boy would cripple someone, or even kill them, and then the whole story would come out. Did the coach want to be the one to explain how a straight-A student couldn’t read or write?
was almost thirty-four when the State finally executed him. A lot of folks praised Jesus when they got the news. I may be no match for them in church attendance, but they were putting the credit where it didn’t belong. I was the one who had truly slain the Beast.
I was so proud that day. With him gone, I thought I’d made Tory-boy safe forever.
We’d had our own house for some time by then. Not a trailer, a for-real house, with a nice porch, a fine roof, and plenty of room. There was even a special bathroom built for me.
Our house sat on more than ten acres of ground, too. Most of it wasn’t cleared, and there wasn’t any fence around it that you could see. But anybody who stumbled across the first electrical barrier would see the flashing red lights and get their message.
That message spread. It got so we wouldn’t see that flash for months at a time.
Not many folks around here pay cash for a house, but they all gossip. I didn’t want extra attention, so I took out a mortgage, 10 percent down. Those payments came right out of the bank account, too, along with the property taxes and the insurance. Hardly made a dent.
e didn’t need the “our place” spell anymore. Tory-boy always felt safe now. The Beast would never come back, never torment him again.
They’d taken him away for killing Rory-Anne. The “guilty” verdict, that was expected. But it was the Beast’s own testimony that had brought it all the way up to Murder One.
When that happens, they hold another trial to decide what happens to the defendant. That’s how I knew all about that “penalty phase” thing before I ever faced it myself, so many years later.
Once it was a sure thing that the Beast was going to be caged for a long time—the lightest Murder One sentence here is life without parole—it seemed like half the people in town had some story to tell about him.
