Love You to a Pulp Read online

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Neil stepped into the emergency room still bleeding, ribs on fire, each breath stoking the coals that rattled in his chest. The nurse at the admissions desk handed him a stack of paper on a clipboard.

  “Can you fill these out or you need some help?” she asked. She avoided his busted face by staring at his throat.

  “I don’t need any of that,” Neil said. “I just need to talk to the medical examiner.”

  “You planning on dying? Want to tell him what happened ’fore he writes it up?”

  “Something like that. Now if you don’t mind?”

  “All right, shoot. Don’t get your titties all twisted.” The nurse kept her smile and got on the phone, dialed the extension. “Hey Al. Yeah, it’s me.” She blushed. “Oh you dog!”

  Neil turned around and looked at the people in waiting. There was an old man in a wheelchair staring up at the TV on the wall and a boy with his head tilted back, his mama holding a red-stained towel to his nose. There was a guy younger than himself holding onto an arm that looked like it had an extra joint between the elbow and wrist. Hoon sat in one of the padded vinyl seats, watching the TV with the old man, laughing so hard his whole head flapped at the bruised neck like one of those cartoon candy dispensers.

  “All right now Al,” the nurse said. “If yer done bein’ nasty I got someone here callin’ on you. Uh huh. Okay. Oh stop it now! I’m hanging up on you, you disgusting old thing! Al?” She looked at Neil, blushing, laughing lightly. “He hung up on me! Okay darlin’ you go on that way through the doors and hop on the service elevator. Take it down to the basement and follow the signs.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And tell him Maggie says he’s a pig.”

  “I’ll be sure to.”

  Neil pushed the swinging doors wide and stepped into the long hallway. It was quiet and his feet clapped and squeaked on the waxy floors. He hopped on the elevator and took it down to the basement. He turned around when the second set of doors opened behind him and stepped out in search of direction. He followed the arrows that pointed out the location of the M.E.’s office, taking each twist and turn deeper and deeper into the bowels of the hospital. Bowels was the right word. Hospital trash lined the halls in bags, left by the housekeeping staff for one big dumpster party at the end of the shift. The floors were gritty concrete, painted a faded maroon and sticky with dark spills. He entered the door marked M.E. and found himself at another staircase, dark and leading to some unknown subbasement level. Neil listened at the top of the staircase, wondered how the hell they brought the bodies down, imagined them dumped from the gurneys by jaded orderlies, tumbling down the steep staircase, heart attack victims written up as pedestrian hit and runs. Neil descended into the dark, knees popping, thinking back on the rock wash at Rogue’s Harbor. He could barely see the doors in front of him, tried to force his pupils wider to grab the small slit of light from the crack under the staircase door. He tried each of the knobs up and down the hall, each one locked until he reached the very last. Neil stepped inside, hit the light and saw the old man was missing a face, the remnants of which were painted on the wall, blood and skull puréed and sprayed over the mandatory hazardous material postings and glass cabinets of medical tools. Neil turned and caught a glimpse of the figure slip from behind the open door and head for the staircase. Neil ran after it and was leveled by a hard fist. He waited for more of the same but heard only the heavy feet attacking the staircase. Then he recognized the familiar silhouette at the top of the stairs.

  “Hey!” Neil yelled. “I know you!” He pulled himself up and took the steps three at a time. The figure in the doorway stepped back and the light became shadow as the door swung closed. The click of the deadbolt sounded home just as Neil hit the metal barrier.

  “Let me out, you bald bastard!” He waited for the words to take effect, nothing happened. He peeked under the ill-fitting door, stuck his fingers under to what purpose he wasn’t sure but he quickly regretted it when the boot came down hard on top of them, hard and heavy and grinding.

  “Ah! Ah! You dumb fucker!”

  On the opposite side of the door, Comb Over was smiling, tongue out and wild eyed as he drove the heel of his heavy motorcycle boot deeper and deeper into the bones, popping knuckles, separating important tissues from one another.

  “We told you to leave it be. We told you. And here you are again, stickin’ yer mitts where they don’t belong!”

  Neil pulled his piece. The gunshot exploded and the pressure on his hand released. He heard Comb Over’s muffled squeal through the door and Neil had to smile. If his aim was true, he figured he’d put a slug through the enforcer’s kneecap. Neil peeked under the door and saw a floored Comb Over scrambling to his feet, slipping in blood but escaping nonetheless. Neil unloaded on the doorknob then shouldered the door. Managed only to add another screaming joint to the mix. He let it quiet down and listened at the door, caught bits of action and light from the holes. Comb Over was gone, his shape painted red on the floor. Neil put a hand on the door, gave it a feeble push. His eyes locked on the hinges. He smiled and flipped his .45 in the air, grabbed the barrel and went to work pounding out the hinge pins. Soon he was kicking the door out of the frame and following Comb Over’s trail back through the twisting halls, back to the elevator, the doors closing as Neil approached and stabbed at the buttons like they were bright, bulging eyes begging to be poked. He looked left then right, found the entrance to the stairway. It was locked. He threw his shoulder into the doors, heard the elevator ding. He caught the door and entered the empty box, stepped in the pooled blood and pressed the button for the main floor.

  He stepped out and followed the blood again, back through the waiting area where no one seemed interested in anything but the telephone and the TV, certainly not in a limping man bleeding all over the place. Neil stepped out the automatic doors and the blood led him to the curb and there it stopped. At the opposite side of the lot, at the exit, Neil saw the car pull out. Neil knew the car. It was a restored GTO, orange, beautiful, and clean, but the interior would surely need a detail.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Neil didn’t see Rinthy at Rogue’s Harbor for nearly a week, and he had all but given up on her. He was shamed for the way he’d run, and that shame was mixed with the pain of cowardice and loss. He felt a certain relief every evening when the sun set and he could be sure she wouldn’t show up and remind him of the scene. But on day six she did show and her face looked bad. If the swollen mess was six days old, he knew why it had taken her this long to show. She smiled at him with purple lips and showed a gap where an incisor had been knocked clear out of her head. Her eyes were forced nearly shut like she was staring into the sun and her neck still showed finger-shaped bruises from someone attempting to choke the life out of her.

  “Jesus Rinthy!” He jumped out of the water, dropped his mussel sack onto the bank and ran to her. He held her close and she held him back, winced in his grip. He loosened but she didn’t back off, just held him tight as she could manage.

  “I’m sorry I ran off,” he said. “I should have helped.”

  “Weren’t nothing to be done,” she said. “He would have killed ye.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yer my only friend, Neil; I would have cared. I told you run because I knew he’d stop short of killing me, but not you.”

  Neil held the girl to him, feeling her ribs under the cotton, feeling her breasts on his belly. He stroked her and held his tears back so she could freely wet his shirt with her own.

  “He found my money,” she said. “From the mussels. That’s the only reason he let me come back. To get more. He wants it all and I’m never gonna get out of here now.”

  “I got money. You say the word and we’ll go. I got close to ten grand from daddy dying. It’s in a trust, but I turn eighteen in six months. We can get out of here. I’ll take care of you.”

  Rinthy looked up at him and Neil could practically see eve
ry bit of doubt and fear drain out of her bruised face. She jumped into his arms. She kissed him on the mouth and he knew it hurt her, but she pressed into him like she wanted to climb right inside him and hide forever. He tasted the raw socket where her tooth had been and knew he’d compare that kiss to any that came after. She pulled him by the neck down to the dirt and on top of her, grinded herself into him and he thought of those tall trees. She undid him and lifted her own dress and moved her white panties to the side, helped him fit. He looked down on her in the waning light hoping what he was doing was right by her. He’d never loved her till that moment, not more than a sister anyhow, but now he loved her like his own and he spilled quickly and completely and knew she caught it all, hips bucking him and her whispering: “Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh. It ain’t right. It ain’t, but it feels so good. Why for God does it feel so good if it ain’t?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Helen came to him that night, found him alone in his room, nose in a bottle of glue. She shook his shoulder, roused him from Rinthy.

  “You dumb shit. You’re gonna die before you find out what happened to Hoon.”

  Neil looked at her, tried to figure her out, her words were nothing but letters strung out and he rearranged them until they made some kind of sense. “How was I supposed to know she was part of it?”

  “What? I’m talking about you and all this glue you fuckin’ idgit! Don’t you know that people die from that sniffin’? Mostly kids. You need some weed or somethin’? I’ll git you some of that.” She threw down a handful of twenties, ATM crisp, and put her hand on his when it reached for them. “I’m serious Neil. I hired you, so you got a responsibility to me. You go and kill yourself all you want when you find out about Hoon, but until then, keep it together, understand.”

  “I want to ask you about Heidi.”

  “Heidi?”

  “Skaggs. How many Heidis you know?”

  “What about her.”

  “You two pretty close?”

  “Me and that old dike? She was Hoon’s ex-wife. What do you think?”

  “She speaks highly of you.”

  “I’ll bet she does. Bet she told you all kinds of stories about Hoon too. What a good daddy he was. How they was still friends.”

  “They weren’t?”

  “I tell you something, she hated sharin’ those kids with him. He fought her good though, one thing she couldn’t buy was those kids. He did everything to make sure he kept them part of the time.”

  “How would you say they got on, Heidi and Hoon?”

  “Like oil and oil, mix it up and start a fire. That’s why I had to bring the babies back and forth. Any time they got together was a chance for a fight. She was just trying to get at him, make him lose it and give them a reason to take the kids away. So I helped him.”

  “She liked you though?”

  “Heidi Skaggs don’t like no one but Heidi Skaggs. I didn’t talk to her much, just enough to get the kids or drop ’em off.”

  “Says she invited you to stay when you ran off.”

  “First I heard. Anyway, she just wants between my legs is all.”

  “How’d she know about your troubles with your daddy?”

  “Shit. What doesn’t that woman know? Got nothing but time to look into everybody’s business. Anyway. She probably heard it from Daddy.”

  “They friends?”

  “Friends? Nah. But he keeps her up to her gills in Oxys.”

  “Heidi Skaggs is a pill head? I don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t know what she does with them, but I know Daddy gets her a mess of them. And what do you mean you don’t believe it? Think most people believe you walk around with a head full of glue most the day? Think you’re the only one hiding something?”

  Neil opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t have one, not a good one anyway. All he had were meaningless words, lucid as they might seem, they meant nothing to anyone, not even him.

  “Who’s the guy at the motel? The one with the comb over?”

  “Terry? What about him?”

  “What’s his story?”

  “I don’t know. He’s like a badass or something. Works for Mr. Skaggs.”

  “Paul Skaggs?”

  “Well Neil,” Helen smiled and threw him a wink. “How many Mr. Skaggs you know?”

  Neil was taken by her loveliness. He understood how Jenkins could never want her out of his sight, not even for a minute, because a girl like her, she’s a valuable thing, and most people don’t know the value of a real treasure. They only know how to use something until there’s nothing of it left, nothing salvageable anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Neil sat on the bank, boots off, feet dipped in the Green. He was feeling happy for the day, glad to be part of it. The sun was just peeking up over the trees and the light was creeping over Rogue’s Harbor, creating a two-tone green on the land, drying the morning frost and throwing specks of gold like coins into the slow moving river. It was still cold, the kind of cold where the air bites at the exposed skin above the collar or at the ends of your sleeves, but the water felt warm by comparison and Neil’s feet and shins were making up for the rest of him. He felt the wad of cash in his pocket, close to five hundred dollars and a lot more in the satchel sitting in the waiting canoe. He watched it dance in the water, tethered to the shore with a piece of rope, trying hard to make its way down stream. Neil watched it, remained as still as possible while the small vessel acted out the anticipation his heart pumped through his veins.

  Rinthy came busting out of the deer trail like a doe being chased down by a coyote. Neil watched as she tripped over a cat briar and fell to her swollen belly. He got up and ran to her, feet dripping. She was back on her own feet and running again, bleeding from the mouth.

  “He’s comin’! He knows!” She screamed as she ran for Neil and he got up, ran past her, to meet the predator as it emerged from the wood, panting like the dog he was, unable to sweat and cooling himself with a wild tongue thrust out like fire.

  “Rinthy!” Davey screamed. “You get back here!” Neil met him halfway between the river and the tree line, dove into the man, throwing a shoulder into his gut and taking him to the ground. Neil threw hands like a wild thing, some forgotten skunk ape that lived among the trees, and for a moment it seemed he had the best of Davey. The rock came up from the left and knocked Neil off the man with a flash of white light that sang a deafening pitch in his ears. He waited for the kicks and stomps, but Davey was after Rinthy, his true quarry, as she tried to untie the canoe. He reached her, lifted her by the hair and tossed her back between Neil and himself. She got up and charged him, but he caught her full force with a fist in her chest, sent her straight back and to the ground again where she wheezed, hands on her chest, gulping for breath like she was a fish pulled from the green. Neil charged but Davey wasn’t taken off guard again, he sidestepped the bull and brought down a fist like a mallet on Neil’s back, knocking him to the ground. Then he delivered the kicks Neil had been waiting for, stomping boot soles finding purchase on Neil’s face and torso.

  “You leave him be god dammit!” Rinthy jumped on Davey and clawed at his eyes. He peeled the girl off like a clinging piece of wet clothing and threw her to the ground again. Neil jumped on Davey’s back, put his arm around his neck and choked him with everything he had, drawing up the strength of the earth itself. He felt the man stagger and squeezed like time itself, then Davey, with the last reserve of his bones, jumped up and back, landing on Neil with all his weight and breaking the hold. Davey rolled away, the flush of blood leaving his face except for his cheeks. He booted Neil again and scanned the clearing.

  “Rinthy! Rinthy!” Davey yelled. He spun, looking for any trace of the girl. He sniffed the air like a dog, started off in several directions before the frustration brought angry tears and he came back to Neil, kicked him again as he tried to stand.

  “She ain’t yers! And ye ain’t taking her!” Davey booted him again. “She’s my kin
, god dammit!”

  Neil rolled from his stomach to his back, spit blood onto the grass. He reached a hand out to Davey’s ankle as the man passed, collected a feeble handful of leg Davey barely had to shake free from. Neil watched Davey step into the green, watched him collect the satchel from the canoe. The man pulled his knife and sawed the tie, sent the canoe down the river to follow the twist and turns down that crooked smile of green water. Davey stepped out of the river and stood over Neil, dripping water like strands of ribbon set loose from the hair of sweet Rinthy.

  “Get her back home. She comes back and ye bring her to me. Or I’ll kill you. I promise ye, cunt rag. I’ll get ye.” He left with a final kick, a final taste of the future. And he was gone. Footsteps crunching through last year’s death before receding to nothing in the wind. Neil listened. He called out for Rinthy and got no answer but for the whippoorwills in the trees.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Neil parked his car in the motel lot and waited until dark. He saw no Helen, just the normal flow of activity, the motel attracting the moths and creeping things come dark, no law and order, just a free place for the dirt to blow in, collect in corners and fester, decay to dust and filth before being lifted off by the wind again, back into the world to taint everything.

  Neil got out of the car and stuck his hand through the open window. He laid on the horn, watching the office door, saw the ghost faces appear in blue lit windows down the length of the motel. Finally the office door swung open and Comb Over hobbled out, flanked by his two testicles. Comb Over wore a brace from his shin to his pelvis, used a cane to balance. He moved swiftly for someone with a blown-out knee cap and walked with such icy focus he didn’t even flinch when a car pulled into the lot fast and slammed on the brakes, stopping just short of the trio. The nut on Comb Over’s left slammed a fist down on the hood of the stopped vehicle before ripping the driver from the car through the window. The empty idling car moved on through the lot while the driver got a quick but thorough stomping. The car veered right and crashed with weak authority into the front of one of the rooms, busting open the door and revealing a naked and confused post coital negotiation.