Caring Is Creepy (25 page)

“As if your mama don’t have enough shit to deal with, but you got to lay this on her. Couldn’t you of waited till—”

“Shut up, Hayes,” she said.

“You’re all in grave danger,” Logan told her. “As of—” He glanced down at his naked wrist and frowned. “As of a few minutes ago, a group of armed men surrounded this housing structure. I’m not sure of their intentions, but being as they’re hajjis, it ain’t a tea party.”

I flinched when he said “hajjis.”

My mom noticed. She glared at me until I looked away. “Who is this man, Lynn Marie, and what is he doing in my house?”

“He’s my friend.”

“I knew something weren’t right with this picture,” Hayes said, only now setting down his beer. His eyes were glassy and rimmed with pink. “This bozo’s wearing my pants. Ain’t enough wrong in the world but that you got to go and steal a man’s pants.”

Mom turned toward him and snapped her fingers four times. Hayes shut up.

She turned back to me. “What’s he doing in my sitting room
half naked at God-fucking-knows-what-hour of the morning?” Her voice rose with every word until she shouted out the last one.

“I …” There wasn’t a reasonable answer to this question. I opened my mouth but had no sounds to fill it.

“And wearing my Goddamned pants to boot.” Hayes attempted to stand and caught his knees on the coffee table.

Logan went to the window, lifted a corner of the blinds and peered out.

“My favorite ones,” Hayes said.

“What in the name of God is he doing now?” my mom asked me.

“He’s checking for—”

Logan held up a clenched fist, still monitoring his made-up men through the window, and hushed us. Amazingly, it worked. My mom worried her forehead into a maze of wrinkles but said nothing. Hayes drank what was left in the bottle Mom knocked over.

“Ma’am,” Logan said softly, moving to one side of the window. His movements were so precise and efficient, so professional, they demanded your attention. He might of been insane, but he didn’t look it. “I suggest you and your friend get behind the couch. This could get ugly fast.”

Something unsavory occurred to my mom. Her lips tightened.

“Now Logan—” I said, hoping to keep him from scaring her completely out of her wits.

Mom took a step forward. “What is it you think you’re doing over—”

“Yup,” Logan said, “here they are. Get ready.”

Someone knocked at the front door.

We all four of us went still. The silence afterward fairly screamed. First one side of Logan’s mouth curled up, and then the other, completing a satisfied smile. He nodded once and positioned himself at the end of the front hall. I tried to catch his eye.

Ten long seconds. The second set of knocks were much louder, more insistent. Me and my mom jerked at the sound. Logan made some sort of signal to us behind his back with a hand, but his attention never wavered from the door.

“Hello?” came a small voice from the other side.

“Is that …?” Mom whispered. She put a hand to her mouth.

“Please. I know it’s late, but I need to speak with you.” It was Mr. Cannon, our neighbor. Three more meaty thumps. Then a shoulder slam, like he meant to bust the door down. “Really, I must insist you answer your door. It’s urgent.”

“I thought he was out of town,” I said, as quietly as I could.

My mom shrugged, but it looked more like an involuntary muscle twitch.

“Is it locked?” Hayes asked. In the thick quiet, his voice seemed bullhorn loud.

“I can hear you in there. Please open the door. It’s a matter of life and death.”

Still nobody moved. We all listened to the door handle twist. But my mom had thrown the bolt when Hayes came.

Outside, Mr. Cannon began to sob. This sound roused something in me. The man was in trouble and here we sat on our hands, listening to him cry. Enough. Logan had them spooked, but I knew just how ridiculous this actually was. Before it could get any worse, I stepped around Logan and into the hall. Mr. Cannon made a wet noise that could of been the word please.

“
Lynn!
” Logan hissed.

I turned the bolt and yanked open the door. Mr. Cannon must of been leaning against it because he fell on top of me, knocking me to the floor and collapsing on my legs. The hall light was off, but even in the gloom I noticed Mr. Cannon was naked but for a short green robe made out of some shiny fabric. Blood ran from his ear to his chin.

“Hajji motherfucker,” Logan said, quiet but pissed off.

He jumped past me and Mr. Cannon and swung his bat. Another silhouette lurked in the doorway, a tall man with a long, thin neck. He shouted as Logan’s makeshift club caught him on the shoulder. The hall flashed orange and the whole house shook with a noise so loud I almost couldn’t hear it. It rattled my teeth in their sockets. Something warm dripped off my earlobe. Mr. Cannon screamed until he choked, squirming against my feet. The air tasted bitter. In the doorway, Logan wrestled with the tall man. Sharp grunts and puffs of breath. My ears rang. Mom yelled my name in a muffled way, like her mouth was filled with cotton balls. Even in the dim light, I saw the flash of the butter knife as Logan pulled it from the waist of his pants. He lunged. Something happened to tip him off balance and the tall man swung the butt of his rifle into the back of Logan’s head. He went face-first onto the floor. For a long moment, nothing at all happened. Smoke drifted out the door. When Logan didn’t get up, the man felt his neck and then stepped over him, oddly careful not to tread on his body.

Mr. Cannon panted. Each time he exhaled, a small shrieking sound came with it. The tall man pulled Logan just far enough into the house to close the front door. Then he flicked on the hall light. With it came a flood of red. The wall beside me dripped with Mr. Cannon’s blood. My arms and shirt were splattered with it. Mr. Cannon took three quick breaths and screamed. I tried to slide out from under him, but I was trapped. My own breath came so hard and fast it made me dizzy.

“Now this,” the tall man said, “has got to stop.” His voice was high and nasal and the words came out slurred, but not like he was drunk. It sounded off somehow, more like when a person sings way out of tune.

Mr. Cannon’s head quivered and jerked.

“Please don’t kill him,” I said, still trying to squirm out from under his back.

“Not
please don’t kill me
?” The man laughed. He would of been handsome but for the mess somebody had made of his ear and the space around his temple. The skin appeared melted and shiny, like congealed cheese dip, and in the time since it’d cooled, hair had refused to grow there. His left ear was a collection of irritable red nubs. “What’s this sorry sack of dog mess to you?”

“Just don’t,” I said.

The man appraised me. His eyes were the chemical blue of drain cleaner. I watched him make a calculation. I was a column of numbers.

“You’re the girl, then.”

It wasn’t a question. I wouldn’t of answered it anyway.

“Shut him up,” he said, picking his way down the hall.

As soon as he walked into the other room, Hayes sputtered. An empty bottle fell over and rolled across the coffee table. The man laughed again, a joyless noise, cockeyed and scary as a bag of copperheads.

“Shit, Mr. Gibbs, I can explain,” Hayes said.

“That ain’t what I come for.”

Hayes said something about deals to be made.

“Don’t tell it to me. I ain’t the one pissed off at you.” Butthole Gibbs whistled and stepped back into the hall. “Hey, jellybean, wrap the fat man’s leg with this.” He tossed me a roll of duct tape and smiled when I caught it with one hand.

M
r. Cannon hushed when I told him the man would probably kill him if he didn’t shut up, but I honestly don’t think he knew what was happening to him anymore. The skin on his face had the blank, yellowish color of buttermilk, and he kept blinking his eyes and grinding his teeth. His leg was a gob of red mush below the knee, the foot turned nearly backwards. On first sight, my stomach rolled over. Bile seeped up to the back of my tongue. I didn’t know what all I could do about this with a roll of tape. Blood cooled in a puddle around him, stinking like burned metal. I did my best to stop him from bleeding anymore. Duct tape doesn’t work well with wet surfaces. It kept sliding away. Finally, I pulled out the belt from his dressing gown and tied off his leg above the knee. His boy business flopped about as I tried and tried to twist the tape around his ruined calf. I put as much pressure on the wound as I could. Bright yellow fat oozed out. Finally, I got the idea to tie the tape in a knot around his leg and then wrap it. When I yanked the tape tight, he moaned until his face went slack. Then he fell against the wall with a heavy thud. I would of thought him dead but for the vein twitching on his forehead. This was a small mercy for both of us.

In the living room, my mom said she was a nurse and asked if she could tend to Mr. Cannon. Nothing happened, so I guess the answer was no. Logan snored. His right hand flexed and relaxed. The butter knife lay a few feet away. I snatched it up and tucked it into the other side of my waistband from the phone.

“You about done with fatty?” The man appeared at the doorway to the living room half a beat after I smoothed my T-shirt down over the knife. The rifle rested in the crook of his elbow. His eyes moved about the hall. When they found my face, I wanted to run. They were bright and blank and terrible. He shook a fistful of shoelaces at me. “Time to move this show outside. Smells like shit in here.”

I didn’t notice the smell until he said it. Then I couldn’t smell anything else. At first I thought it might be coming from me, but no, Mr. Cannon had shit himself. Maybe when he passed out. His one remaining sock was smeared in it. The other foot had stayed bare and pink and clean.

“Come on, then. I got a chore for you.”

“Are you Butthole Gibbs?” The words came out at the same moment I shaped the thought.

Instead of shooting me, he laughed a new laugh. It sounded like someone balling up newspaper.

“Yeah.” He smiled. His left dogtooth was a bluish color. “But how about you call me Leon?”

B
utthole “Call me Leon” Gibbs watched as Hayes and my mom dragged Logan through the kitchen by his feet. I held up his head, so it wouldn’t thump against the doorjamb. Blood clotted in his hair. Outside in the dark, it looked black against the white of his neck. When we set him by the clothesline, my hands were speckled with dry shards of it.

First, Butthole told my mom and me to prop Logan up and tie his hands behind the metal pole that made up one end of the clothesline. Then he dragged me by the sleeve to the other end and showed me how he wanted the last three shoelaces looped around Hayes’s and my mom’s hands and feet. Butthole had them sit down face-to-face, so the pole sprouted up between the outstretched Vs of their legs. One shoelace for each pair of their feet, and the last one for their hands. He made certain I didn’t leave any slack and yanked the one around their hands so hard my mom cried out. Then he had me wrap their wrists together with duct tape.

“This way, you two can always see how the other one’s feeling,” he told them.

What about me? I wondered, but had sense enough not to say. Still, he somehow saw the question in my face.

“I ain’t got nothing special in mind for you, but don’t worry, darling, I happen to know there’s something been planned.” He pulled over a rusty porch chair and sat down. “There’s nothing left
to do but wait.” He pointed to a spot midway between Logan and my mom. “Stay there.”

I crouched in the damp grass and stared at his clothes. He wore a navy-blue blazer and gray slacks and a shiny pair of black penny loafers—a bright orange Lincoln head stuck into each one. Butthole reached inside his bulging side pocket and pulled out what looked like a purple plastic cordless phone with a smiling girl’s face on the back. A child’s walkie-talkie. He grimaced before putting it up to his good ear and telling it, “I got them all trussed up and ready for you, chief.”

A static-warped voice shouted, “Roger. We’re on our way.”

I hugged my knees against my chest and thought about whether I could run fast enough to get around the side of the carport before he fired his gun. He caught me looking at the end of the house.

“No,” he said.

Five minutes later, Logan’s head moved. I glanced over at Butthole, but he only had eyes for his walkie-talkie, which he whittled at with a clasp knife. God knew what he’d do to Logan once he came to. But, Logan, being nothing if not determined to get his ass in trouble, opened his eyes. One, then the other. A few experimental blinks. When he saw me, he smiled sweetly. What could I do but send him one back?

“The man his self. Awake at last,” Butthole said, sounding downright happy to see it. Not mad at all. “You pack a hell of a wallop with a plastic bat. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to be feeling that one tomorrow.”

“You speak English?” Logan asked, his face the very picture of perplexed.

Oh, no, I thought, not this shit again.

“High school teachers might tell you different,” Butthole said, amused. No matter how many times I heard it, I could not get used to that high, wandering voice of his.

“Well,” Logan said, chewing this development over, “I guess you’d have to. Pretty good at it too. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were from Bulloch County. How’d you get all the way here from Iraq?”

“What kind of dumb shit are you?” Hayes chimed in.

“Oh, Mr. Hayes.” Butthole made
tsk-tsk
noises and rubbed one forefinger against the other. “It’s good to know some things don’t change much. You are still the same retard I remember.”

Hayes opened his mouth to say something to this, but my mom hushed him and yanked on his wrist by leaning back.

“At least your woman here knows when to shut up.” Butthole turned his attention back to Logan. “You, sir, are a genuine surprise.” He drew the vowels out in the word genuine. “A kink in the plan. A fly in the ointment. Nobody said nothing about a soldier. Fact is, you nearly got the drop on me. I know, I know, big of me to admit it, but it’s God’s own truth. I came to the door expecting a girl, a nurse, and one certified pudding head. What I got instead is you. Fatty in there will limp to his grave because of that balls up.”