One sobering tempest brushed the idle multitude of soybean shoots spread out across a dying acre of dried brittle earth, an ethereal omen from Nature’s Song of darker things to come.
“Lucy Mae! Get yer piddlin’ ass in here.”
The woman’s shrill voice exploded through the screen door with a shockwave that stung the hands’ eardrums.
“Land sakes,” Gabe said. “What in God’s name is that?”
Gabe lay on his back, ankles crossed and hands clasped at the nape, head resting on the tight denim of a freshly-packed duffel—ready for a quick exit. He had a spanking new felt Clear Nurtia tipped wide over his forehead to cover his eyes from the bright late afternoon sun as he snoozed on the wooden floor of an empty unhitched flatbed.
Gabe lifted the rim of his Stetson with an index finger and shot one lazy blue eye through the gap at Lucinda, a barefoot scraggly young girl in a one-piece cotton rag of a dress. She mindlessly pinned laundry to a line fastened onto two weathered stakes. Her thick black hair was uncombed and knotted in places. Despite all that, Gabe and Rafe had agreed Lucinda still looked downright pretty for a girl of thirteen and would make a fairly decent wife in a year or three.
“Momma Beekes again,” Rafe said. “You know how she is, Gabe. Always howling that poor girl’s name, putting the blame on her for this or that thing she don’t know diddly-squat about, but Lucy always do seem to take it in stride.”
Rafe, Gabe’s itinerant companion since the Crash nearly seven years before, had perched himself lazily on a 2-stringer bale of hay. Hunched with his forearms as props, he steadily chewed on a half wasted plug of Red Man. On the ground between Rafe’s knees sat a battered leather rucksack, the cord pulled tight and secured with a slipknot, straps laced and clasped, containing all his worldly possessions, few though they are—equally prepared for a hasty retreat.
Gabe alternately fired the flint-wheel of a steel-case Zippo with his thumb and flipped the lid shut with a sharp metallic snap, snuffing the flame and igniting it again. Each time he inhaled the pungent tar-like fumes of burnt naphtha. It was his toy, a birthday gift from Gabe, one he had little occasion to actually need since he never smoked tobacco, only chewed it.
Lucinda tossed the damp white sheets into the dirt in a raging huff. She trampled the pile with her bare feet as she stomped away in long supple strides towards the front porch of her parents’ small rundown two-story lodge, her thick muscled thighs flexing with every fitful step.
“Darn it, momma, what you want with me now?”
“I know exactly how her momma is,” Gabe said. “And seem might be the right word for it, Rafe, ‘cause Lucy never really do look happy about things, and rightly so.”
Lucinda’s fists were clenched when she reached the foot of the steps, her arms taut and coiled at the sides. She halted her determined march and stood there for a moment facing the porch, breathing heavily. Lucinda turned her head and eyed the two ranch hands, Gabe in particular, lounging near the forage shed. Gabe nodded once and Lucinda nodded back. She then began her casual climb up those steps, snatching the swell knob of the log splitter leaning against a side rail as she ascended. Lucinda dangled it behind her legs as she opened the screen door and entered the lodge.
Gabe dropped his finger and the Stetson lowered, shielding his eyes again. He let out a big sigh and brought his hand back to its twin for a warm interlaced reunion behind his neck.
“Yep,” Rafe said. “I’m thinking you might be right about that, Gabe.”
“Sure am, Rafe. She got injun fire in her blood, as I hear tell it, and it seem to me Lucy about ripe to snap a crack in that jumping bean she call a head.”
“I told you to skin and wash the taters, Luci. Your daddy’ll be back in soon enough for supper. Best you mind me now if you don’t want him to skin your hide.”
Rafe aimed and spit the spent wad of leafy-green mush at the gaping mouth of a nearby basket of corn ears. He missed his target and it smacked the rim. The wet meaty clump grappled with the edge and lost its grip to an almost blood-like consistency. Rafe vacantly studied the steady stream of mulch and saliva stretch down the sides in long gooey strings.
“Yep,” Rafe said as he turned his attention to the lodge, his eyes now locked on the kitchen window. “Sooner than we thought, I expect. Maybe we should’ve laid off some til after we got paid.”
“What you doin’ with that axe, Luci Mae? Put it down, girl.”
Through the window, a sharp crack, the chopping blow of an axe splitting wood. Lucinda wound up for another swing as the dining room table halved and collapsed, parting for her like the Red Sea. She advanced on her mother with the axe held high above her shoulder. The cool March air sizzled with electric terror from the sorrowful sounds of Momma Beekes’ horrifying shrieks.
“Oh, Lucy Mae, please…”
She shuffled to the window, fumbled for the latch and caught sight of the ranch hands relaxing by the shed, only Rafe interested enough to watch—little more than a curious spectator of some cruel and bloody Coliseum sport. She managed to slide it up an inch before opening her mouth. Help me, boys! Dear lord, help mee-ugh—”
Lucinda swung the axe in a wide downward thrust. It landed somewhere in the middle of Mamma Beekes’ back. The impact of the blow shoved her body forward and her head smashed a jagged-toothed hole in the glass. Glistening shards sprinkled to the ground with a brief tinkle akin to the sweet sound of wind-chimes.
Gabe chortled under his Stetson. “Aw, heck. Alls I did was give Lucy some sound advice, and a good dose of self-esteem, Rafe, something Mamma Beekes and that good for nothing daddy of hers should’ve been giving her from the cradle.”
Momma Beekes’ agonized screams were cut off by a stiff meaty thud from wedged steel parting flesh and breaking bone. A hard throat-gurgling cough followed one short yelp.
Rafe’s eyes shifted towards the faint sounds of heavy panting, the rustling of cheat grass and running feet stomping through the field. “Well, speak of the Devil, Gabe. Here he come now.”
Daddy Beekes, a black-haired mountain of a man in muddy denim overalls and an untamed beard of grey wiry strands, came storming in from the field. He glanced at the hired hands as he passed by. “What the hell’s happening in there, boys?” Fear and confusion clouded his widened eyes. Gabe didn’t bother to lift his head and look, or even respond, and Rafe only shrugged indifferently. Daddy Beekes continued on in a rushed panic to the lodge. He scrambled up the steps and yanked open the screen door.
“Well, doing good like we is don’t put meat in my belly all by itself,” Rafe said. “We was hired on as hands by Daddy Beekes, you know. We gots to get paid, somehow, Gabe, and it don’t look like there’ll be anyone left to do the paying.”
Lucinda must have heard her father’s rapid climb up those steps, or maybe the creak of the springs in the screen door stopper when he swung it open, or the loud metallic rattle when it slammed shut behind him. Through the shattered kitchen window was a good view of Lucinda. She lifted the axe and marched into position only a few feet from the entranceway into the dining room. Her left hand gripped the handle low, just above the swell, and the other high beneath the lip as it cradled the heavy weight of the head now dripping with streams of blood—they spilled to the ground in lazy eights with every sway. Lucinda was prepared to greet her father sideways, rocking with one leg forward and the other back, knees bent, poised as a seasoned heavy hitter at the plate.
“My, oh, my, Gabe. That girl cocked and ready to hit a home run. Gehrig ain’t got nothing on her.”
“My God, Lucy Mae, what you do-ighhh—”
Lucinda swung the axe a moment before her father stepped through the entranceway. The adjacent wall blocked any view of him through the window, but proof the blow connected was satisfied by the sight of freshly-tapped blood whipped bullet fast in splatters against the splintered glass. The sound of Daddy Beekes’ burly form as it crumpled onto the floor with a hard thump was as clear and as sharp as the lonely cry of a canyon hawk. Lucinda took a step forward and swung the axe again—one—two—three more times until she seemed satisfied her task was done. She wiped her bloodied brow with a forearm and released her grip on the axe handle. It tipped over and met the hardwood with an echoing clap. Not a breeze was whispering, not bird or cricket chirping, only pure silence as Lucinda inspected her handiwork, her eyes as vast and wide open as the glorious heavens.
“Oh, we’ll get paid, Rafe, don’t you worry none about that. The Good Lord always gives to those who help themselves, as my sweet Granma Lulu always used to say.” Gabe’s Stetson joggled with every breathy word while Rafe’s eyes remained glued to that surreal rectangle-view through fragmented glass.
Lucinda crouched twice, once near the dining room entranceway and again by the ruined kitchen window. She glided back, surefooted, across the dining room floor and stepped over what must have been her father’s enormous body as she passed through the entranceway into the foyer. Her arms were slightly extended on either side, as if she were carrying two hefty objects gripped in each hand. A moment later she was in the doorway, exiting the foyer backwards with a quick half-spin as she pushed against the squeaking screen door with her small round behind. One more half-spin and she was through the doorway and on the porch. The screen door rattled behind her as she descended the steps with two melon-shaped objects dangling from each hand. They were dripping with a thick dark fluid that poured heavily onto the sooty cement steps in silent splats.
“Sweet Jesus,” Rafe said as Lucinda glided down the walkway.
Gabe lifted his hat again at the sound of Rafe’s surprise. Lucinda neared the hired hands and the melons transformed into her parents’ decapitated heads which she carried by two clumps of hair clenched between her fingers. The bodiless heads were more visible now in all their profound significance. Between their half-puckered lips were bloated speckled tongues the size of ripe red plums. Their petrified eyes were rolled-up to that infinite nothingness beyond, four glazed orbs of frozen sight forever mesmerized by the eternal Face of Death. Rafe and Gabe seemed entranced by the sight of this young girl who now represented the dark embodiment of wild savage beauty. She possessed the flowering face of a pagan goddess newly ripened within a cosmic baptism of liberating blood few will ever see in a thousand lifetimes, in a hundred thousand. Her blood-wet cotton dress clung close to her skin and revealed the budding nubile body of early womanhood. Lucinda Mae Beekes, now drenched in life’s crimson nectar, forever bathed in absolute freedom from fear or want or need. She shimmered with the ancient spirits of her native ancestors.
Lucinda turned and headed for the field in quick delicate strides. Still lying on the flatbed, Gabe propped his shoulders with both forearms and elbows for a better look. His leaned his head back and peered at her below the curved edge of his Stetson’s felt rim, through cold blue eyes aimed along a sloping downward angle.
“Lucy,” Gabe said. “Where you headed, girl?” Rafe chuckled at the question.
Lucinda stopped to face the hands. The swaying heads beat against her thighs when she turned. Elastic tentacles of crimson, lymphatic pulp spilled over the pale skin of her legs and down onto her tiny bare feet. Her marble black eyes were wide and shone with reflected sunlight. A subtle, almost angelic Mona Lisa smile gleamed with universal Madonna-like perfection. The sunlight glistened on her blood-caked skin, hundreds of thousands of twinkling miniature red stars sprinkled over her by some ungodly angel, and her unkempt black hair was now beautifully thickened with a drying bloody mousse.
“Down to the river,” Lucinda said with childlike enthusiasm as heartbreakingly innocent as the coo of sweet Baby Jesus. “Mamma says I gots to peel and wash the taters, Gabe. And that’s exactly what I’m goin’ do in the shallows ‘neath the bridge.”
Gabe cracked a wide, yellow-toothed grin. “Honor thy father and thy mother. The fifth commandment, Luci. Go on now, honey. Do what you need to do.”
She beamed reverently with swells of gathered tears delicately balanced at the brims. “Thank you, Gabe.”
“Bless you, child,” Gabe said. “And God be with you.”
Lucinda Mae Beekes resumed her passage through the field to meet her long-awaited destiny.
Gabe’s smile widened as she disappeared into the dense foliage of the darkened woods beyond. “Sweet girl, that Lucy.”
“Yep,” Rafe said. “Sure is.”
Gabe eyeballed the lodge and tipped his Stetson way back as he sat up. “Well, this stead’s been wiped clean of unholy sin and devilish pride, praise God. Let’s head on in and get paid. Pickin’s free, only don’t slip on the blood, Rafe. There’s going be a lot of it.” Gabe stood from the flatbed and grabbed his makeshift pillow, the duffel. He ran his arm through the loop and hung the strap over his shoulder in one swift, coordinated movement. Rafe, too, rose from the bale he was seated on and threw his own rucksack over a shoulder. They glanced at each other before commencing their trek to the lodge.
“Yes, Gabe. I will surely watch my step.”
They then began their slow, carefree amble up the walkway.
“Gabe,” Rafe said as he scanned the sterile dry earth rolling beneath the cap toes of his scuffed oxfords. “Tell me again why it is we stir up the pot and boil it over like we do.
Gabe shook his head with a tolerant fatherly smirk. “I must’ve explained it to you a thousand times already, Rafe.”
“I just like to hear you say it, Gabe. Sounds darn right beautiful when you say it.”
Gabe wrapped an arm around Rafe and clasped a firm hand on his shoulder, pulling him in with a few short embraces as they strolled towards the lodge. He lifted his head to the skies and loudly preached to a huge congregation of thick cumulus clouds.
“The world is choked full of pain and misery cut into the spirits of every man, woman and child by the people who’re supposed to love them most, Rafe. My Mamma always said I had the touch, just like my Pa and his Pa before him, and every Pa before him in the Weir Clan, a line that begun long before roads were first built up to them sandy steppes and deep into the black jungle of the Dark Isles that were my kindred home. I always knowed people to the bone, Rafe, what they think and how they feel, and what to say to make them bend. Never thought I’d ever find my calling, Rafe, but here I am standing before you, the whetstone of truth heating up steel and splitting the godly sharp edge of bloody justice like a flaming sword a girl of thirteen could swing as mighty and courageous as the Archangel Michael himself, even. Yessiree, Rafe. We’re doing God’s work.”
“Hallelujah,” Rafe said.
“Praise the Lord,” Gabe said. And together, “Amen.
ojoblacke 