The German (25 page)
The German whipped back around, shot out his hand, and grabbed Bum by the collar.
“So you come for a fight?” he asked. “Little boys playing soldier?”
“Leave him alone,” I shouted. “You get your hands off of him.”
“You come into my home and attack me?” he bellowed in Bum’s face. “Kill my birds? Ruin my fence?”
I didn’t know what he meant about the birds or his fence, but Bum squealed, trying to get out of the man’s grip, and seeing my friend so helpless affected me in an unexpected way. It felt as if a cascade of ice water fell over my head, leaving my skin and muscle numb in its wake. I walked to the German, and when he spun on me, I kicked him in the balls, the way he’d shown me. His eyes lit with surprise and the man dropped to his knees, his hand releasing Bum as it joined its match to cover his crotch. Then Ben Livingston strolled casually across the lawn and stepped in front of the German, cocking the board back like a baseball star. He swung and connected with the German’s forehead, splitting the board in the process. The tremendous concussion sounded like a gunshot to my ears. The German rocked back on his knees, and for a second he seemed to struggle to right himself, and then blood poured from the new wound on his brow, his eyes rolled up and he dropped face first onto the grass.
I stared at him, suddenly aware that the radio-drama scenarios I’d imagine were nothing more substantial than the signals they’d been delivered on. A man lay unconscious at my feet, bleeding from his head, and the night was only getting started.
“Get him inside,” Hugo called, climbing to his feet.
“Lord, you killed him,” Bum said.
“He’s not dead, yet,” Hugo said. “Now you just keep your mouth shut.”
“You killed him,” Bum repeated, backing up the stairs.
“Don’t be a baby,” I scolded. “This is man’s work, Bum. You keep your crying to yourself.”
“I don’t want any part of this,” Bum mumbled.
“Look,” Hugo said, “I don’t know what you’re doing here.” He shot me a glare. “But you’re part of this whether you like it or not, and if we don’t tie him up he’s going to kill you and the rest of us, so give us a hand.”
Bum muttered incoherently next to me, blubbering.
“Stop it,” I told him. “Just settle down.”
“I want to go home.”
“You’re not leaving,” Hugo said. “You’re not taking one fucking step out of this house. You think I’m going to have you shooting off your mouth about this? No, sir. You’re either with us or you’re against us and if you’re against us, I’ll have Ben find another fucking board.”
“But you killed him.”
“We saved your life. You saw the look in his eyes, like a wild animal. That’s how they are. So shut up and give us a hand.”
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Bum said.
“We’ll put him in the bedroom,” Hugo said.
“What if he wakes up before we tie him down?” Ben asked.
“We beat him til he’s sleeping again,” Austin said.
But the German didn’t wake up. We hauled him into the bedroom and dropped him on the bed. Then Ben left the bedroom, returning a minute later with a long coil of rope that they must have had hidden in the backyard. Hugo took it from his hands and immediately began cutting it into serviceable lengths. Ben took the strands and went to work, tying the unconscious German to the posts of his bed. It was done in no time, and Hugo walked around the bed, checking on the binds, nodding in approval at each station. He told us we had to get the German’s clothes off and Austin burst out laughing. Ben asked why, and Hugo told him that it was necessary without further explanation. Since none of us understood or made a move to follow Hugo’s order, he withdrew a buck knife from his belt and opened it and started cutting away the German’s shirt, tearing along the seams from the sleeve to the waist. When he finished he tried to pull the garment away, but the German’s weight secured the back of the shirt to the bed, so Hugo sliced it at the shoulders and tossed the rags into a corner. The pants took longer, but they came away clean. Bum stood just behind me crying, and I was too nervous myself to calm him down. Hugo insisted we should cover the German’s face with something in case he woke up and started screaming. Austin found an old brown blanket in the closet and he draped it over the German’s face, tucking corners in behind his head, giving the rough woolen fabric the shape of a hood, draping down about the German’s shoulders and chest.
“Now what?” Ben asked.
And Hugo told him we waited for the German queer to wake up. He lit a cigarette and stared frowning at the naked man on the bed.
It was quiet for a time. The German lay sprawled, tied spread eagled with the brown blanket covering his face, and if it weren’t for the gentle rise of the fabric when he took a breath, I’d have thought he was dead.
“He’s going to scream,” Austin said. “When he wakes up, he’ll scream and the neighbors will hear.”
“The blanket will muffle the worst of it,” Hugo said. “Besides the next house isn’t that close, but we’ll probably need something for a gag when we take it off. Find some socks,” he said to no one in particular.
Ben responded quickly and attacked the chest of drawers by the door. He handed a rolled-up pair to Hugo, who dropped them on the bed beside the unconscious man.
“We need to keep the front of the house dark,” he said next. “We don’t want people to think he’s home, and someone has to stand guard up there in case his queer buddy comes back tonight.”
“We gonna question him, too?” Austin asked.
“No. We have enough on our hands with this one. He’ll go away if this one doesn’t answer. Ben, you go close all the curtains and turn all the lights off. Blackout conditions in every room but this one. We got a moon tonight so we’ll be able to see our way around once it gets dark.”
“Consider it done,” Ben said, scurrying out of the room.
“When you’re done with that, you go out back and find my daddy’s gun.”
“What are we going to do to him?” Austin asked.
“Whatever we have to,” Hugo replied. He took a drag off of his cigarette and glared at the bed. “Whatever it takes to get justice done.”
~ ~ ~
Dark settled hard outside. Ben had found the Colt, and Hugo shoved it into his waistband. Austin Chitwood discovered a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen and brought it into the bedroom. The older boys passed the bottle around and when Hugo offered it to me, I took a small sip of the burning liquid and held back a cough. Bum just shook his head. Then Austin disappeared again and returned with the German’s supper, eating the ham steak with the long fork my neighbor had used to push the meat around the skillet. The older boys kept passing the bottle between them, and I took a second and final sip. The whiskey was nearly gone when my neighbor began to stir.
The German muttered, his voice scarcely audible through the layers of wool covering his face. Then his body started to tremble. He shook so badly the bed clacked against the wall, and his attempts to move his arms became frantic. The ropes held. He shouted, but I didn’t understand his words as he was speaking German. Next to me, Austin Chitwood laughed as if he were watching the Marx Brothers from the balcony of the Palace Theatre, and Hugo remained calm, standing sentinel over the bed, watching his captive struggle. The shouts became dreadful, and at one point, the German said in English, “Where is this place?” His voice cracked, and he pissed himself, sending a stream down his thigh to pool on the mattress between his legs. Hugo took a step away from the bed, shaking his head slowly, and Austin guffawed, pointing at the stain, and Ben said, “Would you look at that?”
For a flicker of time, my chest tightened. I felt as if I was on the verge of tears, pitying my neighbor, except I didn’t want to pity him and I thought of those boys he’d killed – thought about my daddy – and my mercy evaporated. I checked on Bum in the corner and he looked ridiculous. Mouth open. Hands clapped over his ears. Eyes wide. He was near panic, and I knew he should have gone home and left this to us.
“Ben, take that blanket off his head. I’m going to start asking him questions.” Hugo delivered the order around the cigarette in his mouth. He once again pulled the knife from his pocket and opened it. Casually he walked to the head of the bed and drove the knife point into the post there.
Ben did as he was told and removed the old brown blanket. He dropped it on the floor, and the German quickly looked around the room. Blood from his brow had smeared over his scarred face, making his eyes seem impossibly white. Whatever the cause of his fear and desperation, though, it was not us. In fact, his face relaxed and I noted a twitch at the corners of his mouth as if he were trying not to smile.
“Shouldn’t you boys have given me kisses first?” he asked.
“Fuck you, queer,” Hugo said.
“And you, neighbor Tim?” the German asked, “What did Ernst ever do to you?”
“Let him go,” Bum said at my back. “Please, he didn’t do anything.”
“Shut your goddamned mouth, Craddick. You think this queer gives a shit about you? If the rest of us weren’t here, he’d already have you bent over this bed, and then he’d slit your throat.”
“No, he is too smooth and soft,” the German said. “Like a woman. Like all of you.”
Hugo leaned forward and punched the man in the mouth – three quick blows that sounded like a blade chopping ice.
“Think a woman could do that?”
The German spat a wad of blood on the mattress. “Nuh, a woman’s fist might hurt,” he taunted, though he was obviously dazed.
Hugo yanked the knife out of the bedpost and placed it against the meat high on the German’s arm. Then he pressed, slicing into the skin. Next to me Bum gasped. The German just gritted his teeth and breathed deeply through his nose fighting back a scream. After Hugo finished the cut, the German spat out another wad of bloody phlegm that hit the edge of the mattress.
“You see your leader?” the German said. “He is a coward. He is no man.”
Hugo made a second cut in the arm, this time applying more force and digging deep into the flesh. I turned away when I saw the blood welling up around the blade.
“They’re going to kill him,” Bum whispered.
“If I have to,” Hugo said. “This is war. Do you understand? War? You just going to let these fuckers come to our country and murder us in our sleep?”
“We don’t know if he did anything,” Bum protested.
“You saw him,” Hugo shouted. “You saw it as clear as day.”
“We didn’t see him kill anyone. He was just….”
“Bum, stop it,” I said.
“Don’t matter. He’s a fucking pervert. Who else is going to cut up a kid but a pervert? He’s a freak and he’s going to confess or I’m going to bleed him out like a pig.”
“I did not kill those children,” the German said. “The sheriff knows this.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a shitheel,” Hugo says. “He wouldn’t know his dick from a rattler. You killed Harold and David and Lenny, and you’re going to tell us you did it. You’re going to tell us how you snatched them and fucked them and hollowed ’em out like deer. Then we’re gonna get the sheriff and you’re going to fry for it.”
“You have made a mistake,” the German said.
“No, Kraut, you’re the one that made a mistake. You come here and think we’re just going to let you kill us? Let you fuck us and then kill us?”
“Is that what you want?” he shouted at Hugo. The outburst took all of us off guard, and I recoiled, startled. “You want Ernst to fuck you? Is that why you have me tied up so you can sit on my cock when your friends aren’t looking?”
Hugo brought the knife high, positioning it over the German’s chest. Bum stumbled back into the door, causing a racket. He shrieked and fled the room. Looking at Hugo again, I saw that his position hadn’t changed; he remained frozen with the knife poised for a killing blow.
“Go get him,” Hugo growled, without turning away from his victim. “You want him to tell everyone in the city?”
Austin headed for the door, but I beat him to it, running as fast as I could down the hall, afraid he might hurt the boy I’d dragged into this business. Bum shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and I wasn’t going to let him get hurt just because he’d been worried about me. I burst into the living room but Bum was gone. The front door had been thrown open. I hurried to the threshold and the porch beyond, and saw my friend running to the end of the block as if monsters nipped at his heels. Austin grabbed me by the collar and dragged me off the porch, through the living room, and into the hall.
“The fat boy got away,” Austin said, shoving me back into the room.
“Then we’d better make this quick,” Hugo replied.
He drew deeply on his cigarette, making the end glow orange in the gloom. Then he pressed the hot end of the smoke into the German’s leg. Tears streamed down the sides of my neighbor’s face. His body quaked and sent the bed against the wall again, wood rapping wood in a horrible syncopation, but he refused to give Hugo any greater satisfaction, refused to scream.
Hugo finished with his cigarette. He ground the butt into the German’s bedroom rug and took up his knife. Then he grabbed the German’s left hand and wrapped his hand around one of the fingers.
“In those chink Fu-Manchu movies, they use bamboo,” he mused. “You got any bamboo around here?”