The Backwoods

he and Ricky both were hoping the man would want more work.

There was one more letter in the pile, but . . . Don’t look like no bill, at least. It was addressed specifically to Junior, in scratchy handwritten scrawl.

There was no return address.

(II)

It was dirty work, but that was what Ricky Caudill was cut out for. He didn’t like to be bored. His brother had done a good job last night, real down and dirty, and the effect was exactly what they’d been hired for. Junior had killed the Hilds in grand style, and Trey had flaked their room at the Stanherd house. So . . .

Tonight’s my turn.

It should be a fast, easy job. Those first dozen or so disappearances hadn’t done the trick. No dice, Ricky thought. As it turned out, only a handful of Squatters had left. So Felps had this new idea, something on a bigger scale. If the state cops thought the Squatters were running an extensive meth operation, they’d roust them big-time, and Judy would just say to hell with it, and sell the land out from under them anyway. Then . . .

Problem solved.

The moon hung low beneath reefs of clouds. Ricky slipped through the woods along a barely visible trail. He didn’t hear many cicadas tonight; their season would be ending soon. Ricky felt totally alone and totally at peace. Another hundred yards or so and he’d be at the tree line around the Point.

In one hand he carried his bag of “supplies”: two bottles of denatured alcohol, some Breathe-Free sinus medication, a smaller bottle of acetone, matchbooks, and a couple of grams of crystal meth. Most of it would be destroyed in the fire, but there’d still be enough traces left over to convince the police and fire department what had happened. The plan sounded perfectly plausible; all the time you’d hear how meth-heads would accidentally spill a little solvent on their stove elements, and next thing they knew, their trailer was burning down. That was what was going to happen tonight.

In his other hand, he carried a hubcap mallet.

Almost there, Ricky thought. At the wood line, he slowed. The only trick was getting in and out without being seen. He’d already had the place picked out; some Squatter named David Something-or-other had himself a small wooden shack at the western edge of the woods, fairly far away from most of the others.

He crept up, careful not to let the bag crinkle. Moonlight painted one side of the shack luminous white. Shit . . . He slipped by quickly, then plunged into the darkness of the shack’s front side. No lights could be detected from the makeshift windows, but he did hear snoring—a good thing.

And another good thing: out here in the quiet, peaceful boondocks, nobody ever locked their doors. Hell, most of these Squatter shacks didn’t even have doors, just curtains or hinged planks, or sheet plastic, like this guy had.

Ricky ever so quietly set the bag of incriminating supplies down on the front stoop; then he stepped through the sheet plastic.

He’d seen David Something-or-other on the docks and around town in the past. Didn’t know the guy, but then Ricky didn’t associate with Squatters, except maybe some of the trashier girls for twenty-dollar tricks, but there weren’t many who did that. This guy was in his thirties, it looked like, short like all the Squatters, but built up pretty well from working his ass off all his life hauling crab bushels. Ricky, on the other hand, was more fat than muscle, and without some backup or a knife—or, in this case, a big hard-rubber hubcap mallet—he probably wouldn’t stand a chance against this David cracker.

Except when he’s asleep, Ricky thought, smiling in the dark.

He supposed about the only thing more despicable than shooting a man in the back was cracking him in the head with a hubcap mallet while he slept like a baby in his own home. This was Ricky’s speed.

When he’d slipped through the facsimile of a front door, he plunged into more darkness. Bars of moonlight fell in wedges across the floor. Upon entering, he’d rustled the plastic a little—not much of a sound under regular circumstances, but loud as holy hell when you were trying to kill a man. Ricky gritted his brown teeth at the rustle, then stepped quickly aside so that no moonlight might give him away. He stood dark as a shadow himself.

He let his eyes adjust, roving. A cheap, shitty little place like most of them, but it looked clean, much cleaner, in fact, than the cheap, shitty little house he shared with his even more demented brother.

He spotted some bookshelves and some cabinets, and a cubby of a kitchen with what looked like a thirty- year-old refrigerator. There was also one of those mini stove/oven combos that folks had in efficiency apartments. Perfect, he thought. His instructions were explicit: drop some of the allergy pills in the bottom of the saucepan and leave it on the stove. It would look to the fire marshal and cops like good ol’ David Something-or-other had been cooking the shit down with denatured alcohol, the stuff had ignited, and then . the whole joint burned down. He’d leave the other stuff lying around, too, and drag David’s dead or unconscious body out of his bed and let him burn up with everything else. If Ricky did it right, the hubcap ’ mallet wouldn’t crack the skull, so it wouldn’t look like murder.

But . . . where is the guy? Ricky wondered.

He could hear him snoring. He strained his vision, then let more things become visible in the room.

There’s the cracker.

It was just an old spring cot the guy slept on. Ricky could make out the form of his body, and the short ink- black hair that almost looked darker than the darkness.

Time to rock, he thought, hefting the mallet’s weight in his hand. He moved forward in short, silent steps. When he got closer he noticed a roughly cut stone of some kind hanging over the guy’s bed; Ricky wouldn’t know in a million years that it was specifically a chrysolite stone, said to bid good dreams and protect one’s home from evil. The stone wasn’t exactly doing a great job tonight.

Another few steps and he was at the head of the cot, looking right down at the stupid rube. The mallet froze high over his head, and in that moment Ricky could see his own shadow thrown against one wall: a shadow of death, a haunter of the dark.

At that single image he smiled, his heart beating faster, because he looked bigger now than he ever had.

“Who the—”

The Squatter’s eyes glimmered in the moonlight, wide open. A hand shot upward, but—

Thud!

—too late.

One whack with the mallet was all it took. Ricky patted the top of the guy’s head, felt no fractures. Good job. Didn’t matter if he was dead or not, because he’d surely die in the fire that Ricky would start in a few minutes. David Something-or-other’s lights were out for good.

A macabre realization occurred to him then. The last thing this weirdo hillbilly saw in his life . . . was me.

Ricky liked that.

He went back out and grabbed the bag. It didn’t take long to put the matchbooks up in a cupboard, along with the acetone and the first bottle of denatured alcohol. Next he pulled a small boiling pot off the wall, set it on the stove, and dropped in a handful of allergy pills.

Now all I gotta do is drag the cracker out of his bed, empty the other bottle of alcohol around the joint . . . and light ’er up.

Ricky liked fires. He’d liked to look at them since he was a kid-when he’d burned his mother and stepfather’s house down with them in it. Bitch had it comin ‘fer lettin’ her old man make me ‘n’ Junior . . . He didn’t finish the thought, but it would suffice to say that fires made him feel like a success. They made him feel transcendental . . . not that he had any clue what that meant.

With some huffing, he dragged the Squatter out of the cot and left him to lie across the floor. Ricky didn’t notice his chest moving up and down, so he guessed he was dead. Burning the fucker up alive had more kick to it, but that was the way the cards fell sometimes.