Hot Property: A Joe Hunter Short Story Read online

  ‘Take whatever you want,’ Jerrod said. ‘Just don’t hurt my wife. Don’t you see she’s with child.’

  One of the others leaned in close, a bearded man with a faded tattoo on his right cheek. It was a star, the black ink now fading to blue. His stink washed over Jerrod. When he opened his mouth his teeth were the colour of caramel and his breath sickly sweet. Jerrod tried not to squint at the vile stink when the man spoke. ‘Ain’t she just a pretty one? Even with that fat belly she’s sweeter than any of the whores we got back home.’

  ‘Don’t touch her.’ Jerrod stared at the tattoo.

  ‘You’re in no position to give orders,’ said Tattoo.

  ‘I’ve some cash,’ Jerrod said.

  ‘I’ll take it thanks. But it ain’t gonna make no difference.’

  ‘My watch. Take it and leave.’

  One of the two behind him studied the old leather, pitted with scuff marks and sweat stains. ‘Piece of shit ain’t worth the trouble of taking it off your arm.’

  The fourth man, the one holding Trisha-Mae, hooked the gold necklace in his fat fingers. ‘Lookit what we got here, boys! This’ll look pretty hanging round the necka the next whore we fuck.’

  He pulled the necklace over Trisha-Mae’s head, yanking out strands of her long hair with it. Trisha-Mae wailed as the man dangled it before her. He slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. Trisha-Mae wailed louder.

  Jerrod looked at her, tried to import the need to stay calm. Give them a reason and he didn’t doubt the brutes would resort to violence. But Trisha-Mae was growing frantic. The man who’d stolen her necklace jammed his dirty hand over her mouth and forced her down. Trisha-Mae kicked and squirmed for air. The man laughed at her feeble attempts, and inserted a hand up the hem of her nightgown.

  ‘Get your fucking hands off her!’

  Jerrod could feel the blood in his skull. It pounded. His eyes bolted from their sockets.

  ‘Shut him up, why don’tcha?’ said Tattoo.

  Without warning, Jerrod was clubbed on the back of the head. Gun butt, or something else, he didn’t know. It was heavy, split his scalp and sent a wave of black through his vision. He blinked hard to stay awake.

  Squint Eye ducked down close to him.

  ‘You gonna keep your peace, boy, or am I gonna have to cut out your tongue?’

  Jerrod knew there was no way out of this. Shit! Why didn’t he fight before? He was hoping for a peaceful resolution, safety for Trisha-Mae and their baby, but now things had gone too far. The drug-fueled red necks weren’t going to leave them alone unmolested, or even alive.

  Jerrod got a foot under him and tried to rise.

  ‘Nuh-uhhh!’ said the second guy holding him. He was the clubber. He struck Jerrod a second time, right on the same sore spot and blood poured down Jerrod’s nape and over his collarbone. A fresh wave of nausea swept over Jerrod and he went back to his knees. Squint Eye grabbed him by an ear and twisted his head to the side.

  ‘You get to watch, but you do it in silence, boy.’

  He shoved Jerrod to the floor, using the twisted ear as a fulcrum. Jerrod fell on his chest and Squint Eye kneeled between his shoulders. Jerrod craned up, yelling furiously as the necklace thief ripped off Trisha-Mae’s panties.

  The blackness descended over him as Tattoo pushed aside his kinsman. ‘I ain’t taking no sloppy seconds.’

  ‘Where you off to, Bobbie?’ Squint Eye demanded of the man who’d split Jerrod’s scalp. ‘You leaving me sitting here like this all on my lonesome?’

  ‘You’ll get your chance soon enough,’ said the man called Bobbie. ‘Last in the queue as usual.’ He went to help the necklace thief hold Trisha-Mae down as Tattoo clambered between her thighs. The trio were on top of her like hyenas round a carcass, pushing and shoving, hooting and laughing, goading Tattoo to a quick finish.

  To Jerrod, Squint Eye said, ‘Motherfucker, you see the fun you’re making me miss?’

  In Jerrod’s vision all now was a scarlet mist.

  ***

  They were laid on the rickety dock. Here the Mississippi made a wide turn, the river broad and dark and mist hazed the distant shore. Less than a mile to the south the interstate spanned the river, but there was no traffic on the bridge at that early hour. Nobody nearby to hear their shouts for help. Jerrod was still bound. There was snot in his nostrils and the back of his mouth. Blood had poured across his cheek, pooling in an old shrapnel scar and directed to the corner of his right eye. The blood had congealed and matted his lashes. He tried to see Trisha-Mae with his one good eye, but his wife was lying down near his feet and she had turned her face away from him. Shame, or disgust at him, he wasn’t sure.

  All four of the men had taken their turn at her. Tattoo had done it twice, the violent rape of the woman by the other Cheighnier’s getting him up again. Then they’d ransacked the house for anything worth taking. They’d been high on the violence and had whooped and hollered, pushing and shoving in their exuberance. More than one of them had come to kick Jerrod where he lay. The necklace thief set the house on fire, and Jerrod hoped they’d leave, and he’d at least get an opportunity to get Trisha-Mae out of the house alive. He didn’t know what he could do for their unborn. But the Cheighnier’s had other plans. They dragged first Trisha-Mae, and then him, out of the house and across the front lot of their home to the levee. They hauled them down the far side to the river and threw them down on the warped and muddy planks of the old dock.

  Tattoo crouched down so Jerrod could see him. Jerrod focussed on the blue star on the man’s cheek. Seeing only through one eye, Jerrod thought the star jumped and shimmered.

  ‘I have the feeling that you’re a vengeful man,’ said Tattoo.

  Jerrod only looked.

  ‘Hmmm. I can’t afford to have no able man come looking for revenge, now can I?’

  Tattoo stood up and held out a hand.

  Bobbie handed over a large hunting knife, and the butt was still clotted with Jerrod’s blood and a tuft of short hair torn from his scalp.

  ‘The cops round here don’t need to find no DNA to bring ‘em to our door,’ Tattoo said. ‘Pretty sure them gators and snapping turtles in the river are as hungry for a pretty girl as we were.’

  Tattoo crouched and made a swiping motion.

  Jerrod screamed inside as he heard Trisha-Mae gag and the blood bubbling out of her.

  Two of the Cheighnier’s lugged Trisha-Mae away and there came a solid splash as she went in the river.

  ‘Give him a new mouth, too,’ Squint Eye encouraged, but Tattoo came back to crouch before Jerrod. He held the knife down by his side. It was so sharp it didn’t hold a bead of Trisha-Mae’s blood on its steel edge. Tattoo shook his head. ‘Nah, more fun if we watch this one drown.’

  The men manhandled Jerrod to his feet. He hadn’t the strength to stand. They lifted and shoved and pulled him to the edge of the dock. His wrists were still bound behind his back. Jerrod looked for his wife but she’d sunk without trace, but for a few dirty bubbles that popped at the surface of the river.

  ‘Who wants to make a bet on how long he can hold his breath?’ Tattoo asked to a round of laughter.

  Who kicked him in the river wasn’t important. Jerrod had already decided that they were all going to die.

  ***

  Jerrod saw bubbles. The river was so muddy that his vision was filled with brown froth, as he fought to get his feet beneath him. His bare feet slipped and twisted in the deep silt, and he could feel the mud pulling him down. He couldn’t swim, had never swum more than a couple of ungainly yards in his life. But strangely he didn’t panic. His overriding emotion was rage, and he fought the river as much as he demanded repayment from those who’d destroyed his life. He got his foot on something, and in some distant corner of his mind he knew that it was Trisha-Mae sunk into the silt. His reaction was to jerk away, but then he realised that it was his only way out of this. He had to accept his wife’s helping hand if
ever he was going to avenge her. He placed his foot squarely on her, got the other up. He closed his eyes when he realised he was standing on her swollen belly – their unborn babe demanded vengeance from him too – and pushed up.

  His head broke the surface and he sucked in lungful’s of air.

  Beneath him, Trisha-Mae was pressed deeper into the silt, and he felt himself dip under again. He pushed against her and found her knee and a more stable leverage point and threw himself for the bank.

  The sluggish undercurrent had taken him a dozen yards from where he’d gone into the river. Already the family was a clot of shapeless silhouettes retreating over the levee to where they’d parked their truck. None of them looked back as Jerrod rolled onto his back, kicking with his feet until his shoulders butted onto the sloping embankment. He wedged himself in the mud there, breathing hard, sucking in life saving oxygen. He heard laughter and it made him madder than ever. He dug in with his heels and pushed himself further on to land. An engine growled and the truck peeled away, accompanied by hooting and hollering. The Cheighnier’s were pleased with their night’s fun.

  Finally in a position to sit up, Jerrod got his hands beneath him. He twisted and squirmed and the cord that had been looped around his left wrist felt slack. Squint Eye had tied it over his watchstrap, and now that it had slipped off it gave him and extra half inch of freedom. Jerrod twisted and pulled, and lost a bit of skin, but he yanked out his left hand. He pulled the remainder of the cord from his right. Then sat, staring at the river. Bubbles still popped and fizzed at the surface. Their house was now fully ablaze, and the glow from the furnace hot flames bathed the river. Jerrod thought the amber colour on the water the same as his favourite brand of beer.

  He should get Trisha-Mae out of the water, but didn’t know how.

  He turned and looked at the house, and then pushed to his feet.

  ‘I love you,’ he said towards the river then turned and trotted as best he could up the slope of the levee.

  The house was an inferno.

  But his car was parked on the bed of crushed oyster shells across the yard.

  He went to the car and popped the trunk.

  He was still in service, his furlough apt to be cut short at any time, and he had prepared for such an eventuality. He ‘d left a rucksack in the trunk packed with a spare set of clothing should he have to leave home in a hurry.

  He dressed in jeans and T-shirt and pulled on an old battered leather jacket. He settled an old ball cap on his head. His time in the water had washed off most of the blood, but the cap would do to hide the raw wound on his scalp. He laced up his spare boots. He smelled of the river, but that didn’t matter. In the glove compartment was a small roll of emergency money, which he pocketed. Pity he hadn’t thought to bring home a gun.

  He got in the car and started it, and pulled out, following the levee road south, after the Cheighnier family.

  As he drove his mind was numb to anything but vengeance.

  Up ahead he could see the taillights of the truck, but it was madness to try to push them from the road and take them on barehanded. He required weapons to go against their guns and knives.

  The Cheighnier truck pulled over at a gas station on the outskirts of Tallulah. Tattoo paid for the gas Squint Eye pumped with the cash stolen from Jerrod. Jerrod contemplated heading on in and striking a match and chucking it at the nozzle Squint Eye wielded. But he didn’t have a match. Nothing was dry about him. Except for maybe one thing.

  He checked his watch. Waterproof to thirty metres. Trisha-Mae had been right. It was a little after 7 a.m. None of the family had seen him dressed, and they certainly wouldn’t expect him to be the same man who went to a payphone on the corner of the gas station and called 911. Jerrod got the cops but didn’t tell them where he was. He asked them to go pull his wife and unborn child out of the river.

  ‘This some kind of nasty joke, son?’ asked the operator.

  ‘Do I sound like I’m fucking joking?’

  He hung up.

  Maybe he should have told the police where the Cheighnier’s were, but then he’d miss his opportunity for vengeance.

  “I can’t afford to have no able man come looking for revenge, now can I?”

  Tattoo had that right.

  Jerrod followed them south, through Tallulah and onwards. They took a left at Ferriday, crossed the Big Muddy at Natchez and took Route 62 towards Baton Rouge. When road markers indicated that St Francisville was only two miles ahead they left the main route and got onto a strip of crumbling asphalt leading to some other ass-end collection of dwellings, and another mile on the roadside bar. It was nearing ten in the morning, and it looked like the family was almost home. They were familiar enough with the bar to know it was open for service.

  ***

  Squint Eye had his back to Jerrod.

  Jerrod would have preferred to look him in the eye when he killed him, but he wouldn’t know which one to focus on anyhow.

  He smashed the Corona bottle upside Squint Eye’s head, then reversed the broken glass and jammed it deep in the man’s carotid artery.

  ‘Just think of all the fun you’re gonna miss now,’ Jerrod growled as he shoved over the dying man. Squint Eye hit the planks, grabbing at the bottle’s neck embedded in his throat. He made the mistake of pulling it out and blood spurted in the air.

  Only seconds had passed, but already the tableau had changed. The other three Cheighnier’s had erupted out of their seats, but instead of going for their weapons they gawped at the living dead man standing on the opposite side of the table.

  ‘You?’ Tattoo gasped. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You should’ve made sure I was dead.’

  ‘We can change that now!’

  Tattoo was wedged between Bobbie and the necklace thief. They kind of squashed against him, maybe looking for protection from the Alpha dog.

  Tattoo pushed with his elbows, going for the gun in his waistband.

  Jerrod ignored him. He swung the cue ball in the cloth and smashed caramel chunks out of Tattoo’s mouth. The big man fell back in the booth and Jerrod turned on Bobbie. The man had slipped out his knife, the one that slit Trisha-Mae’s throat. Jerrod swung the cue ball and smashed the hand holding the blade. The same hand that had pawed at Trisha-Mae, held her while the others had their way with her. The hand that he’d used to invade her when checking she was wet enough to accommodate him.

  Jerrod whipped the cue ball into Bobbie’s head, and it left a deep dent. Bobbie fell over the table. His weight broke the legs and it crashed down with him on top. Jerrod stamped on the back of his neck for good measure.

  The necklace thief apparently had no weapon to speak of. But he came for Jerrod with his clawing hands, perhaps hoping to throttle him. Jerrod back swiped the cue ball into his right elbow, then the left and the thief made a pitiful sound as his clawing hands folded towards his chest.

  ‘You broke my arms,’ he moaned.

  ‘I broke your elbows. Your hands still work just fine.’ Jerrod snapped the fingers of his left hand. ‘You have something belonging my wife. Give it to me.’

  The thief tentatively dipped his hand in his pocket, wincing and moaning at the agony, but he pulled out Trisha-Mae’s necklace. The solitaire diamond winked and it was all the approval Jerrod needed. He snatched the necklace from the thief then brought the cue ball back over his shoulder and down, and battered it between the thief’s eyes. Eye sockets and nose collapsed, and the shards drove in deep enough to make liver pâté of his brain.

  Jerrod had not yet taken a step back. Once committed a Ranger always moved forward. He stepped over Bobbie, and looked down at Tattoo. He concentrated on the blue star on the man’s cheek, while he took out his wedding ring and placed it on the gold chain next to the diamond. Deliberately he fed the chain in his jeans pocket for safekeeping.

  Tattoo had both hands over his mouth. Blood poured down his chin, collecting in his beard
, making his dull shirt even dirtier. His eyes went to the cue ball in the cloth.

  Jerrod knew what he was thinking: could he get to the gun in his jeans before that ball smashed his head to pulp?

  The answer was no.

  He didn’t resist as Jerrod leaned in and yanked free the revolver.

  Jerrod could tell by weight alone that there were no rounds in the chambers. Why else had Tattoo used Bobbie’s knife to murder Trisha-Mae? In the dark, in the confusion of strangers invading his home, and his fear that a stray round could hit Trisha-Mae, Jerrod couldn’t know the gun was empty. If only he’d known then…

  ‘You asked me if I was a vengeful man.’ Jerrod eyed Tattoo. ‘Stand up.’

  ‘What you gonna do?’ Tattoo’s voice was wet with blood and mucus.

  ‘Something you should’ve done.’

  ***

  Jerrod stood behind Tattoo at the edge of a bayou. He’d walked the man there, having noted it a few hundred yards west of the roadhouse on the way here.

  He’d secured Tattoo’s wrists behind his back.

  A small gathering had come out to watch. The two old men and the bartender. Even the twins had stuck around, wanting to know the outcome of what was going down in the bar. Only the crackhead couple had gone off elsewhere, seeking their next fix.

  The small group didn’t interfere. Maybe they’d been waiting a long time for Tattoo and his family to bite off more than they could chew.

  ‘Please, mistuh,’ Tattoo begged. ‘Don’t do this to me.’

  Jerrod said, ‘Your pleading is falling on deaf ears. The way mine did when I begged you not to harm my wife. Do you remember Trisha-Mae? She was the pregnant lady you and your scumbag family raped and murdered.’

  ‘Jesus freakin’ Christ! You’ve killed three of my brothers already. How much vengeance does one man need?’