Donnybrook: A Novel (21 page)

A piece of wood hit Angus’s right arm. He shouted, “Inbred bastard!” And dug the fingers of his right hand into the onlooker’s eyes. Kicked him into the other onlookers and kept fighting.

Making it to the barn, Angus shouldered open the door. Jarhead was one step behind him. Purcell was last, keeping pressure on his wounded rib cage. He slammed and bolted the door, turned to Angus, and asked, “Where’s it at?”

Angus pointed to the rear of the barn, where aged two-by-sixes made up a closed door to another room. Light bounced beneath it. A female voice shushed other voices with a loud, “Quiet!” Shadows creaked the planked flooring on the other side of the door. The female voice called out, “Daddy McGill, that you? The hell’s going on out there?”

Angus pointed the handgun he’d pulled from Manny and splintered the gray wood with each pull of the trigger, the sound of the gunshots rattling Purcell and Jarhead. When the screams echoing from the room ended with the thud of bodies hitting the floor, Angus quit shooting.

Dried blood flaked from Angus’s sweaty forehead, and he acted fast, kick-stomping the door open. In the back room, he stood with his pistol smoking and smiled at the slabs of chip board overtop sawhorses, five-gallon buckets pushed beneath for chairs. Crumpled sacks lay on the floor. Fluorescent lighting overhead outlined the stacks of crumpled bills banded together on top of the makeshift table. It was McGill’s take from the ’Brook.

To the side, next to a rusted cast-iron wood stove, three men and a woman lay painting the slatted floor with themselves. The men were still alive. Goat had been shot in his right thigh. Walkup, in the ear. Lang in the gut. Scar lay motionless. Ragged blond hair clung to her face like strips of raw bacon, mascara in Alice Cooper–style circles around her eyes. Her chest lumped out a bloody Drive-By Truckers T-shirt with a cartoon picture of an old-timer carrying a pick.

Angus stepped toward the three bleeding men. One looked up at him and pleaded, “Please don’t shoot me no more. Take what you want. McGill’s Bronco is out that back door, keys is in it. Just don’t—”

Angus smiled and shot them without contrition.

Behind him, Jarhead’s and Purcell’s ears rang as they inhaled the fresh gunpowder and smoke that hovered in the air. Jarhead burst out with, “Didn’t have to shoot them. Already said to take what you want. Even told you McGill’s Bronco is out back.”

The barn walls shook under the crowd’s fists.

Angus looked at the three pulpy-faced men who lay limp on the floor, sizing up his options again, knowing he’d a way out. He said, “No, I didn’t need to, just like I don’t need to split McGill’s money with either of you.”

Angus spun around to Jarhead, his gun pointed at the lone figure.

But Jarhead’s fists were already coming at Angus tight as sledgehammers, ready to shatter the leathered barbarian’s skull. He planted a left hook into Angus’s right hand, knocked the gun from his grip. Threw a blinding right cross that caught Angus on the chin, knocked him back across the makeshift table of money that scattered across the floor like birdshot.

Angus blinked his eyes wide, saliva the shade of rosewood dribbling down his chin, and got out, “You punch like a mule. Let’s see if you take one like a man or a bitch.” And sprung forward with a right-shoulder feint.

Jarhead’s left hand pawed against his temple, anticipating the attack. He bobbed his head to the right, believing the feint was a punch to his left. Angus cut the air at ten o’clock, swung the bottom of his left fist down. A hammer fist depressed the cartilage of Jarhead’s nose, then a right vertical punch parted Jarhead’s left eyelid like hot asphalt.

Jarhead blinked red, tried to step back. Angus came with a low right roundhouse kick, frogged the muscle of Jarhead’s left thigh. For a split second, Jarhead’s leg turned to a bed of eight-penny nails. He shifted his balance to his right leg, slapped the air with his right hand, delivered a side-palm to Angus’s left temple, planted his left foot, and cut up the center of Angus’s body with a left uppercut to the throat. Angus stutter-stepped backward. Coughing and tearing up, he quipped, “Sneaky motherfucker.”

Jarhead’s left hand guarded his chin. His right hung loose in front of him. His sight was damped by moisture and blood. His lungs heaved. The air he pulled in felt like frosted straight razors etching new expressions of hurt beneath his rib cage. Angus was a black blur, his left and right arms spread like he was hugging a redwood. He slammed his palms against Jarhead’s ears and popped his eardrums.

Sound was the needles pricking Jarhead’s mind as he felt for Angus’s wrists. Angus gripped each of Jarhead’s ears, sledged his cranium down onto Jarhead’s. The echo of blackness waved to the back of Jarhead’s skull, sent all those needles clacking down his spine. His knees buckled, his eyes did an undertow, and he swam into unconsciousness.

Purcell stepped to Angus with his pistol leveled, pulled the trigger, click-click-click. “Son of a bitch!”

Angus slapped the pistol from Purcell’s grip, knuckled his eye, knocked Purcell to the floor. He said, “Motherfucker, try to shoot me? You sit tight, old-timer. I’ll get to you after I bloody your boy a bit more.”

Angus straddled Jarhead’s limp form, laughed as he drove one fist after the next into Jarhead’s face.

The back barn door creaked opened.

Angus turned to the beat, cut, and pulpy outline. “How the shit—?”

Fu stepped into the barn, bent, and rolled sideways. His legs cartwheeled up into the air coming forward. Fu’s left foot came down on the barn floor, the shin of his right leg came down across the back of Angus’s neck. Knocked him facedown on top of Jarhead.

Purcell sat in awe, saying, “The hell, never had no reckoning of you.”

Angus tried to shake the cobwebs from his head, push himself up off of Jarhead.

Fu stepped on top of both men, pressed into Angus’s back, and twined his left arm over and under Angus’s left arm while his right arm came around Angus’s throat, cut off his air. Fu’s right hand gripped his left wrist atop Angus’s left shoulder, torquing hard. He said, “When next you wake, you will be in the needles of purgatory.” And Angus grunted, tried to struggle, but found the same darkness as Jarhead.

Purcell’s bones creaked as he made it to his feet and asked, “What’s your handle?”

Fu gripped Angus by his hair, pulled him off Jarhead, unbuckled Angus’s belt, pulled it, bloody and stinking, from his waist. He rolled Angus facedown, tugged and laced his wrists tight behind him. Scanned his eyes over the money scattered across the barn floor. Turned to Purcell and asked, “Handle?”

Purcell said, “Your name.”

“My name is Fu,” he replied. “I have been hunting this man who calls himself Angus. He owes many debts.”

Purcell pursed his lips, looked at the money on the floor, said, “Well, they’s plenty for the taking. Me and Jarhead ain’t a greedy bunch no ways, ’specially since you saved our asses.”

Fu bowed to Purcell. He collected twenty grand in fifties and hundreds and neatly piled the money into a sack. There was plenty left over—he’d barely made a dent. Fu rolled Angus over his shoulder. Then stood, turned, and started to walk out the way he’d entered.

Purcell said, “I think we might be seeing you again. Just don’t ask me what for.”

Fu said, “Very well.” Then disappeared.

The barn walls vibrated from the crowd’s pounding. Purcell kneeled down. His back popped as he lifted Jarhead from the floor. His wound pulsed with ache as he stood up, balanced Jarhead, and led him out to the Bronco. He laid him across the backseat.

The man mumbled cherry-sized bubbles from his lips, and Purcell said, “Save it. We’s two lucky sons a bitches. I gotta get some of McGill’s loot sacked up ’fore them people out yonder figure out they’s a rear end to this barn. They’s fixing to hobble or lynch the each of us. We gotta make some dust.”

PART IV

THE BEGINNING

22

Angus’s veins were burning with thorns. Sharp points dented the meridians of his body, taking away the strength to flex his limbs. Now he was a flaccid piece of chilled meat.

Opening his eyes, all he could see was dark. Inhaling, he smelt his own flesh, sweat, and soap.

He had turbulent flashes in his mind: water so cold his body felt more bare bone than flesh; bristles scrubbing the blood from him, ignoring the welts and bruises; a careful hand guiding a needle, pulling and meshing open wounds back together. Being placed into a glittering tomb molded to his form.

Angus tried to wiggle a finger or a toe but could not. He heard voices.

Outside the silver tomb, Fu stood in his basement attired in new glasses, black dress slacks, and a bright white T-shirt, scab-faced, with plum-tinted circles patching his complexion and arms. Three men stood in front of him. One Chinese. One black. One white. They wore black T-shirts tucked into black military slacks, shiny black combat boots. Each man had tattoos of his chosen discipline inked on his inner forearm. The Asian man showed a black tiger with gray stripes, the black man had a golden dragon engulfed by orange flames, and the white man had a golden snake surrounded by red flutes of bamboo. The man with the black tiger tattoo asked, “What’d you do with the cop?”

Fu smiled. “I used a needle to remove his memory. Then I dropped him in front of the hospital.”

“And Mr. Zhong?”

“He is happy. His debt has been collected.”

“What about the redneck named Pete?”

“He will adjust. Every student has a learning curve.”

Black Tiger motioned toward the steel tomb, asked, “What happens if this man survives Si-Bok Lao’s training, wants to come back here some day, maybe find you, maybe find the cop?”

“Let him. I trained each of you just as Lao trained me and the ones that will train him. I am the one who offers a second chance. He is unique, just as I was. It would be a waste to not let him use what he knows best.”

Black Tiger said, “Fighting.”

Fu nodded his head. “Yes,
fighting
.”

Black Tiger observed, “
Sifu.
He must be one very dangerous individual, the way you treated him. I’ve never seen you use so many needles.”

Fu smiled. “One for every pressure point. He is helpless now. But without them, he is indeed dangerous. Menacing. He could one day be our equal.”

The three men bowed to their
sifu,
their teacher. Fu stepped back, watched each man grab a side of the man-sized case and lift it.

Inside the steel tomb, Angus felt his body fall backward, listened to footsteps bounce from the concrete floor, echo off the walls. He searched for something inside of himself to squeeze—be it be an organ, tendon, or muscle—but he could not find anything he could control. All he could do was wonder where these men were taking him.

Outside, the three men loaded Angus into the rear of a black Tahoe. Fu observed with his hands behind his back. When the rear hatch was closed, the three students turned to Fu and he said, “This Angus knows how to use pain for nourishment. The more he is conditioned, the stronger he will become. He will not be an easy man to break.”

Black Tiger asked, “We will see you soon?”

Fu said, “If he is alive in three months, yes. I look forward to it.”

The three men bowed to Fu. Got into their Tahoe, started the engine, and headed down the paved drive.

23

Their Chevys and Fords lined the blacktop lot, some parked along old 64, loaded with clothing, grills, and their remaining choices of booze or drugs, their bodies snaked into the brick structure of Swaren’s Funeral Home, each man and woman wanting a glimpse of the fallen, the person who’d been their center for so long, Bellmont McGill. Some tossing in things that held meaning to them—a pint of Beam, Turkey, or Old Granddad. Others gave double- and single-blade pocketknives passed down from long-gone kinfolk, or brass that had not been fired.

After the ceremony, the single file of cars that followed the hearse to the burial went for miles, all the way to where the Donnybrook had been held. Pallbearers came in worn denim, button-ups tucked, a few wore ties, some had hands bandaged and taped, eyes swollen, hair greased to the side or over the tops of heads. They stood in two formations, unloaded the dead, and trudged to the hole where McGill was to be lowered.

The blessing had been given and final respects were passed, the dirt shoveled down into the hole, over the coffin. Men, women, and fighters huddled in front of their beat, rusted, and scratched vehicles. And like the smoke that hung over the field from the barns that had been torched to chunks of rubble, an uncertainty remained on every patron’s mind: Would there ever be another Donnybrook?

A few dogs ran about the grounds that were littered with paper, cans, bottles, chicken, and fish bones. Snarling and growling for a final taste of what had been.

Bellmont’s stable of men stood like protectors brailled by ink, guns tucked into the hems of their waists. Knuckles nicked; eyes, noses, and lips botched and rent; their wounds flaking. All of them angered by the outcome but waiting for words of what would come next from Scar McGill. Thought to be dead, she was not, had only been pierced and riffled by bullets. She stood at the center of the unruly followers kneeling over the mound of dirt, knowing her father would be reunited with her mother, who’d been taken out by the booze that ruined her liver, then her life. But Scar, with her dirty-blond hair and oatmeal roots wavering in the breeze, a body full of ache and papered with bandage and bruise, she would pick up the pieces, bring a new generation of ideas and hell to the land and any person who lied about or hid the men she’d hunt, raising havoc along the highways and back roads until she found the ones who’d taken her father from her and the outlet he’d built for these people.

*   *   *

Tammy’s green eyes glossed with worry watching the lights grow, detailing the trees and power lines that ran alongside the road.

One child suctioned his legs around Tammy’s bony waist. The other was at her side, his tiny hand in her sweaty fist. Each child had chocolate milk hulling his lips, his hair parted in all directions.