Fistful of Feet (13 page)

   “Because that’s not fun, jack-ass. That’s too easy,” Lyons said. “Now get going with making sure this asshole can’t close his eyes.” He pointed to a lone cactus a dozen feet away. The other men walked over and got to work while he leaned against a rock. He couldn’t wait until he got back home and was able get back to playing with his sons. Life was good.

   Lyons smiled while the men stuck needles into Calamaro’s eyelids, making sure to stick them into the flesh right above the eyes so that he’d be unable to close them. Nix, especially, was finding pleasure in the task. He made sure to stick the needles in deep and felt his erection get harder every time he did so.

   Finally the job was done and they all stood around Calamaro.

   William Lyons bent down and grabbed a handful of hair. “I can’t promise you what you’re going to see but I can promise you that you’re not going to enjoy it.”

   Nix walked over to the wooden donkey and kicked it. “What’re we going to do with this?”

   Lyons shrugged.

   “I think it’d be nice if we hung it from a tree, know what I’m saying?” Nix grabbed the leather reins and started pulling it to one of the barren trees. Chaps helped him hoist it up so it would hang off one of the branches. After it was hung, William Lyons took the shovel and swung it at the donkey, creating a huge crack in the side of it. He dug his hand inside and pulled something out.

   Chaps said, “What the hell is that?”

   “It looks like a shoe,” Nix said, walking closer to Lyons.

   “It’s a woman’s shoe.” William Lyons held it up. “Why the hell would he be carrying this around?”

   “Stick it in his mouth, stick it in his mouth,” Ryan said. He cackled uncontrollably, watching in pleasure as Lyons did as he suggested. The heel of the shoe went right into Calamaro’s mouth.

   William Lyons said, “Suck on this.” Then he turned to Chaps. “You have your whip with you?”

   “Course I do,” Chaps said. He pulled out his bullwhip and cracked it. “You want me to rough him up a bit?”

   “Yeah, just a little,” Lyons said. He smiled. “Give him a haircut and a shave.”

   Chaps laughed. With a few cracks of his whip, he tore off patches of Calamaro’s hair which made both Ryan and Nix guffaw. “You got him good,” Ryan said. “He looks like shredded beef!”

   Then Chaps moved to the side and took off slices of flesh from underneath Calamaro’s chin. The sand became soaked with blood.

   “Seeing you with that whip reminds me why I keep you around,” Lyons said.

   Chaps laughed.

   Lyons looked around. “Hey. Where’s his gun?”

   Ryan said, “Who’s?”

   “What do you mean, who’s? Who the hell you think? Didn’t one of you assholes think to take his gun out of his holster before we buried him?”

   The three other men looked at each other but said nothing.

   “Fucking idiots,” Lyons said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He started walking away and Nix followed close behind. Chaps cracked his whip once more, this time an inch away from Calamaro’s eyes. Then he put his whip away and started pulling Ryan’s wagon.

   “Don’t be so rough!” Ryan said.

   Chaps smiled widely, showing his huge yellow teeth.

* * *

   Calamaro tried closing his eyes but couldn’t. He attempted to spit the shoe out of his mouth but that proved to be impossible, too. The high heel was practically down his throat. From the taste and texture of it, he knew which shoe it was.

   It was the one he had gotten off that woman in Philadelphia. She had not wanted to give him the shoe at first but after he used his charm as well as some money, the woman agreed. It was a nice shoe, Calamaro thought. It still had her sweat stains on it. He thought that if he wasn’t buried up to his neck with cactus needles stuck in his eyelids, he would’ve enjoyed having the shoe stuck in his mouth.

   What worried him was that he had swallowed whatever it was that Lyons had forced down his throat. It tasted sweet and gritty like fruit juice. Calamaro knew that it wasn’t an ordinary drink. His head tingled and he began seeing things, hearing things, and feeling things tickling his scalp.

   There were millions of scorpions gathered in front of him, organized in lines like soldiers. It reminded him of the war and how all those boys lined up with their weapons thinking it was some sort of game that they’d walk away from. Hadn’t they known that there was a better chance that they’d be killed where they stood? No, they didn’t even stop to think about that. That’s why he chose not to get involved. There was no honor or dignity in dying a soldier’s death.

   The scorpions flexed their tails, their stingers looking wet and sharp. He saw one huge scorpion in the crowd that had two tails. He thought that was strange. Whoever heard of a scorpion with two tails? Calamaro tried walking towards it but then remembered that his body was under the ground. There was no way he could move.

   Then the scorpion with two tails cracked open like an egg and a tiny woman crawled out.

   The woman was carrying an umbrella that rapidly changed colors. Calamaro wondered why the woman was carrying it since it wasn’t even raining. Then he remembered that sometimes women carried umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. But didn’t some women carry an umbrella so they could twirl it around and catch the eyes of men?

   The tiny woman stared at Calamaro and then started stabbing each and every scorpion with the sharp point of her umbrella. It was a slaughter. None of the scorpions fought back as if they were willing to die at the hand of that tiny woman who was birthed from the body of one of their brethren. Calamaro felt a tinge of sorrow for the things but knew that it was simply nature taking its course.

   When the tiny woman was finished killing all of the scorpions, she stood in front of Calamaro and spoke. Her voice was high pitched like the squeaking of a wheel.

   “I’ve never seen so many men wasted so badly,” she said.

   Calamaro tried to speak but the shoe prevented it.

   The tiny girl spoke again. “If you save your breath I feel a man like you can manage it. And if you don’t manage it, you’ll die. Only slowly, very slowly, old friend.”

    Night came quickly and disappeared just as fast. Calamaro wasn’t sure if it was the real moon or just imaginary but he watched it nonetheless. He watched as the moon became a green orb of flesh with the tiny girl sitting on top of it. Then a face appeared in the moon, the sullen face of a dying man. Its mouth opened and instead of teeth, it was filled with fiery hair. Calamaro moaned and felt as if he was about to meet his maker. Maybe God was just a giant mouth full of flaming hair underneath dying eyes and flaring nostrils. Maybe God was the one who trapped Calamaro like a living corpse in the desert as some way of praising the Holy Trinity. He remembered the preaching he had heard growing up, with all of the Amens and the Hallelujahs. All of those words floated through his mind like poisoned water.

   The tiny girl on top of the moon stood up and spoke. “Hallelujah,” she said. “Maybe they should call you Hallelujah.”

   Then she dissolved into a cloud of shimmering dust and Calamaro fell into a painful waking sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

   Rebecca was happy when she finally slipped into bed for the night. She had the feeling that Betty liked her and that black man Stacklee didn’t seem so bad after all. As those thoughts were on her mind, she drifted off to sleep.

   A noise woke her in the middle of the night.

   Her eyes opened and her body froze. It was probably just one of the other girls coming up from the bar. Then the sound came again, a light knock on the door.

   Rebecca said, “Who is it?” There was no answer. Was it just some drunken son of a bitch looking for a screw?

   “Who is it?”

   Someone whispered through the door. Rebecca could not make out what was being said so she got out of bed and tip-toed to the door. “Hello?”

   The whispering got louder. There was babbling that Rebecca couldn’t decipher and then the voice said, “Whore!”

   Rebecca was startled by the anger in the whispering and she still couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

   “Go away or I’m getting Stacklee.” she said. “Do you hear me? Go!”

   “Not until you die,” the voice said. “Whore!” There was a hard bang on the door.

   Rebecca jumped back and ran to her bed. The door was locked and there was no way that someone could do anything further without Stacklee or one of the other girls hearing. It was probably just some drunk. It had to be.

   “Go away!” she said, expecting another angry whisper in response but there was nothing. Faint footsteps ran away from her door.

   It took a while but Rebecca fell back asleep. She did so with the realization that she would probably have to get used to being harassed. Men were alike all over whether they were so-called holy men who wanted to rape young girls or the filthy cowhands who frequented the brothel. Maybe tomorrow she’d ask Stacklee for a pistol or at least a knife. After all, a lady needed some sort of protection. It was a dangerous world.

* * *

   After Mayor Douglas ejaculated on Ana’s breasts, he looked at her face and felt like slapping the shit out of it. Stupid Mexican bitch was nothing more than a whore even though she fancied herself a dignified woman. Hell, she even considered herself an American woman. What a joke that was.

   “I’m done,” he said, wiping his penis on her dress. He looked down at himself. The red tattoos had spread from his penis to his bulbous belly. What the hell was happening to him? He buttoned his pants and walked back to his desk. “You can go now. I’m going to have a drink. In about twenty minutes, send in Belladonna.”

   Ana stared at him.

   The mayor said, “You listening? That little cunt Belladonna Cardinale. Send her in.”

   “She’s dead.”

   Mayor Douglas slapped his palm down on his desk. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

   Ana pulled up her dress and said, “After I took her away, she passed out. Never woke up.”

   “The hell she did. I wasn’t that rough on her.”

   “Well, she’s dead.”

   “And what did you do with the body?”

   “I threw it in the crow-pit like you tell me to do with all the girls.”

   Mayor Douglas scratched his double chin. “Shit. I really wanted another go at her. Okay, then. Well, bring me some another girl. Tell my boys to go to Keoma and grab me one there. This time, tell them to get me a Chinese girl. I want something tight.”

   Ana ran her hands through her dark hair. “Whatever you say.” She left the room, cursing the mayor under her breath. It sickened Ana to feel his scum drying on her breasts but she was intent on enduring it until she got what she wanted. Ana wanted money. She wanted power. She wanted to see Mayor Douglas choke to death on his own raggedy balls. She wanted his gold.

   After Ana left the room, Mayor Douglas leaned back on his chair and puffed on a cigar. He was just about done with that Mexican bitch. As he sat there thinking about why he even took up with her in the first place, he heard footsteps outside the door. What the hell did the bitch want now? Didn’t he tell her to leave? But then he heard Ana’s voice coming from outside so it couldn’t have been her. He looked out the window and saw her in the moonlight, hitting one of his men with a cat o’ nine tails.

   Then who was outside his door?

   “What do you want?” Mayor Douglas said. There was no response, only the creak of the floorboards. He took a step and as he did so, a black envelope was shoved underneath the door.

   Footsteps quickly disappeared down the hallway and down the stairs.

   The mayor would’ve opened the door but he was afraid there might be a second person outside the door waiting for him. So he just bent down and picked up the black envelope.

   Inside of it was a photograph.

   Mayor Douglas didn’t consider himself a stranger to obscenities but what was shown in the picture shocked even him. His knees weakened and he stumbled to his chair. He brought the burning end of his cigar to the photograph. Burning it seemed like the right thing to do. He wanted to see it turn into a pile of ashes. No one else should have to lay eyes on it. But then he stopped. Though he was never superstitious, Mayor Douglas wondered if destroying the photograph would bring something even more atrocious.

   So instead of burning it, the mayor shoved it face down into his wooden box full of teeth and then poured himself a drink. He hoped drunkenness would get the memory of the photograph out of his mind.

* * *

   A loud phlegm-filled cough woke Bluford up from a sweet, sweet sleep. It was the sweetest, most comfortable sleep he had in a long time and he was genuinely pissed off that some asshole in the next room had to cough so loudly.

   Bluford saw that Lily wasn’t in the bed. He sat up and rubbed his eyes which were slowly adjusting to the darkness. He must’ve slept for hours and that would cost him. Stretching like a cat, Bluford sat on the edge of the bed. That’s when he saw it.

   A body.

   Lily’s body.

   Even in the darkness he could see that there was lots of blood. It surrounded Lily like a deep red rug. It couldn’t be real. It was a dream, it had to be.

   He slowly moved his head closer and saw her wounds. Her throat had been cut so deeply that she was practically decapitated. There was another cut from the top of her breasts all the way to her crotch. Her innards were halfway out of her body. Bluford thought he could see her heart. Or it could’ve been her liver. He never studied medicine so he wasn’t sure and he didn’t want to be.

   The urge to scream rose from the pit of his stomach up to his throat but he stopped it. What would people think if they caught him in the room with the corpse? There’s no way they’d believe that he slept through the murder even though that was the truth. He was a stranger in town and no matter how friendly he had been to everyone he’d met, the townspeople would still view him with suspicion.