“I buried her,” says John, suddenly not wanting Waylon ever again to cast his eyes on her. “I dug a hole up in the woods and put her in it. I can take you there.”
Waylon waves at him. “I don’t like corpses. They give me the creeps.” He frowns. “I’m just wondering, though, John, did you fuck her?”
“Did I what?”
“If you didn’t, you really missed out on something. That girl was three rolled into one.” He shakes his head. “Was ’bout all I could do to hold on her once she took to bucking.”
“Wrote in a letter how she loved you,” John angrily says.
“What?”
“Said you was going take her to Hawaii.”
Waylon glances curiously at him. His black, dilated pupils suggest oil splats in saucers of thick, heavy cream. “You read my Ingrid’s mail, John?”
“Was tryin’ to put a name to her. Was you gonna?”
“What?”
“Take her Hawaii?”
“Oh well, you know how women like to hear about sand and water, John. Now let me ask you—did you fuck her before or after you shot her?” He rolls his head exaggeratedly. “Or d’ya try her both ways?”
John rushes angrily forward. Waylon thrusts his pistol straight out. John comes to an abrupt halt three feet from the end of its barrel. “Come over here, John,” says Waylon. Moving a few feet sideways along the rail, he points at the spot he’s just vacated. John walks over to the spot and stops. Down on the pond, half a dozen ducks float motionless as decoys. Two oaks on the water’s far side cast dark shadows on half its surface. The air smells like tansy and wild violets. “Put your hand there on the rail, fingers spread.”
“What for?”
“If you don’t, I’m going to shoot the girl in both knees.”
“Ain’t we gon’ go get the money?”
“No. You’re going to go get the money. I’m going to stay here with the girl—what’s her name?”
“Abbie.”
“She and I are going to stay here for the two minutes you’re gone.”
“It’ll take more than that.”
“More than what?”
“Two minutes.”
“I’ll give you ten, then I’ll cut off one of her kneecaps.” He nods down at Abbie’s placid-looking face, which suggests she might be dreaming pleasantly. “Another five, another kneecap. A joint-to-joint thing, get it?”
John says, “I’ll go as fast as I can.”
“I know you will, John. Now, where exactly is it?”
“On the mountain side the trailer. Up in the woods.”
“You’ll point me there so that I can sit here with Abbie and watch you go up and come back.”
“You’ll have to move the far end the deck, past the trailer’s edge.”
“That’s not a problem. Now, John, where’s your truck? I’m told you have a truck.”
“Up there with it.”
“You’ll bring it down for me, won’t you? So that I can borrow it?”
“Yes.”
He reaches into the sheath with his free hand and pulls out the knife again. “I’m not like the Hen, John, who gets off on cutting people up, okay? I admit, I’m not at all pleased that you killed Ingrid—she was a sweet kid and a tremendous fuck—and because of it I don’t think you and I could ever be good friends, but you say it was an accident and that you gave her a proper burial and I accept that. So, about Ingrid, bygones are bygones.” He nods at the rail. “Fingers splayed, John, like I asked. Unless you’d prefer I take an eye. Would you rather I take an eye?”
John doesn’t say. Adrenaline and bile race into his stomach, so that for a few seconds he’s afraid he’s going to be sick. He glances at Abbie and wonders how long someone who’s had done to them whatever Waylon did to her stays unconscious. “How do I know you won’t hurt her once you got the money?”
“I’ve just explained to you, John, that was the Hen’s trip. Not mine. I’m a businessman. That’s all. Like every other employed slob in the world, I got people I got to answer to. I need my money back, John, or I’m the next one gets put in the ground. That’s how life works. Get paid, so you can pay. You think what I sold to the Hen was a gift to me? No. Life is a big wheel—somebody fucks with a cog like you did, John, and the whole wheel is shot. So, I’ve got to fix the wheel, okay? How am I going to do that? First you need to know that the girl will look like a totem pole if you’re not back with the money in ten minutes. Second, I need to know that while you’re up there in the outback that should you get to feeling like Davy Crockett and scrounge yourself up a musket and a lead ball, I can feel secure that the ball won’t end up in my brainpan. So what’s it to be, John? I take one of ten fingers, leaving you nine? Or one of two eyes, leaving you a cyclops? I know what I’d do.”
The focus of John’s thoughts is like a kitten curled up in the only sun-warmed corner of a dank, dark house: he won’t be responsible for another girl’s death. He stares into Waylon’s anvil-hard face, crisscrossed by pockmarks and tiny rivulets of sweat. “Did you think this son of a bitch was handsome?” his silent voice angrily asks Ingrid Banes. “Din’ ya see them eyes, colder than anything wild I ever hunted? Or was you just drunk with all his danger?” He lays an unwavering hand palm-down on the rail, then slowly spreads his fingers. Against searing pain, guilt will be his amulet.
“Nice try, John.”
“What?”
“I watched you open the door earlier, remember?”
John gazes blankly at him.
“You’re right-handed, are you not?”
John nods grudgingly.
“That’s the one needs altering, then.” Waylon smiles knowledgeably. His teeth appear well cared for and straight. His slicked-back hair is black as a beaver’s pelt. Momentarily sliding the knife beneath his gun arm, he reaches his free hand into his back pocket and pulls out a linen handkerchief. “You know, John, trigger finger.”
John takes his left hand from the rail and replaces it with his right. He spreads his fingers so that, of the five, his index finger is the closest to Waylon. He remembers his father once telling him about an old Iroquois trick whereby a captured brave, to divert pain inflicted by his torturers, would will the pain into the empty shell of a turtle. Waylon flaps the handkerchief in the air, then carefully lays it over the rail next to John’s hand. Still covering John with the pistol, he takes up the knife again. John empties his mind of everything but an orange-and-black box- turtle shell. Waylon quickly leans forward and, just above the lowest joint, deftly slices off John’s index finger.
John reaches out, grabs the handkerchief, and wraps it around the bleeding stub of his finger. He’s completely forgotten about the box-turtle shell. He pulls the mutilated limb into his chest and bends his knees with the pain, which is throbbing and deep. The white handkerchief is stained red. His breathing is shallow and fast. He hears his severed finger bounce off the deck floor and looks up in time to see it tumble into the grass below. “It’ll be there when you get back,” says Waylon. He wipes the knife blade on a napkin he’s picked up from the table, drops the napkin, and returns the knife to its sheath.
Doing semi-deep-knee bends, John applies pressure to the hand. Sweat pours from his brow. He swallows what tastes like the crest of vomit. He remembers, during his only attempt at factory work, seeing Burton Doomas lose two fingers in a machine that made bowling pins. One of the fingers had squirted blood like a bottle of hot Coke. The other had barely bled.
“Ten minutes,” says Waylon.
“Less’n I wrap somethin’ round this,” pants John, holding out his injured hand, “I won’t be able to lug the money.”
“Go in get a Band-Aid, whatever,” says Waylon. Aiming the pistol at John, he walks over to Abbie. “But if she wakes up and sees me, all bets are off.” He leans down next to Abbie and, with his non-gun hand, picks her up beneath the armpits and starts dragging her to the road side of the deck.
John turns and walks rapidly through the trailer to the bathroom. Feeling woozy, he removes the handkerchief. Blood oozes rather than spurts from the stump. John is briefly saddened by the look of his four-digit
