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  Brice looked in disbelief. “Come on. If somebody does you wrong, you…fuck their head?”

  “Don’t believe it if ya don’t want. Probably best that way anyhow. But do yerself a favor—don’t ask no one else ’bout that stuff. Town like Luntville likes to keep its dirty laundry in the hamper, if ya know what I mean.”

  Brice remained perplexed; what’s more he remained in an indefensible state of curiosity. “You can’t be serious, man. I know this is the boondocks but—”

  “I can tell ya don’t believe it, and there ain’t no reason ya should,” but then the man made a downcast smile. He lowered his voice. “Saw one git planted just today— dope dealer. If you really wanna know, I can prove it to ya, but it’s risky. I’d need ya ta lay a hundred on me.”

  Now Brice frowned. It had to be a con. “You’re pulling my leg. Forget it, man.”

  “S’right. And like I just said, it’s probably best ya do just that—forget it. My name’s Stoody, by the way, and thanks for the ten-spot. I’ll get’cha back.”

  “Name’s Brice. Take care.”

  Brice watched him disappear through the front door. Stoody, he thought. Yes, his tale sounded unbelievable but then Brice asked himself, Why on earth would he make something like that up? He asked for a hundred bucks but when I said no, he dropped it cold. The whole thing just sounded uncanny.

  Brice shrugged and went back into the bar.

  If anything, it was louder now, and more rowdy. His ears were ringing when he got back to the table, where Augie and Clark—now back from their shenanigans on the stage—had reseated themselves. Brice plopped down and immediately complained, “Hey, guys, this place is too loud, and to-to—”

  “Redneck?” Clark said behind a tipsy grin.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Glad you said that,” Augie commented. “Clark and I were thinking maybe we should split.”

  “I’m all for that!” Brice explained.

  “Yeah, bro. And you can come back tomorrow for your hot date with Sarah June—”

  “Sarah May.”

  “Whatever.”

  Brice started to get up. “Gimme a minute. I’m gonna say goodnight to her, then we’ll head back to the motel, have a couple more beers, and check ball scores.”

  “No, no, Brice,” Clark informed. “We meant we wanna go somewhere else. After all, it is our vacation.”

  Augie added, “Yeah, man, this place got old fast. We want something really down and dirty, ya know?”

  Brice was flabbergasted. He gestured around the entire premises. “This looks pretty down and dirty to me. We’ve got spittoons full to the brim, strippers sitting on guys’ faces. I got offered two blow jobs just trying to go to the bathroom.”

  Clark snickered. “Were the guys not cute enough for you?

  Brice flipped him off. “They were women, asshole. You could trip over a chair in this joint and end up in an orgy. What more could you possibly want?”

  Augie was resolute. “We wanna go to Backtown.”

  “Yeah, Brice,” Clark chimed in. “Couple of the dancers just gave us the scoop. According to them, Backtown makes this place look like Romper Room.”

  Brice winced. “Come on, it’s just a bunch of cock-fights, moonshine, and weathered whores!”

  Augie grinned. “Cool! I’ve always wanted to try some real backwoods corn liquor!”

  “And they’ve got card games out the yin-yang,” Clark continued. “I haven’t had a good poker fix in a while.”

  “You and your damn poker…”

  Augie nudged his brother. “Come on, Brice. Like I said, I want down and dirty, I want something different—”

  “Cock fighting?” Brice said, mouth agape.

  “Sure! Anything, man! Anything we can’t see in fuckin’ Manhattan. I’m so sick of Scores, the Mayflower cocktail lounge, and the Vault. I want action.”

  Clark leaned in, “Let’s give it a shot, Brice. If it sucks, we’ll leave.”

  Brice sputtered. He knew this was a losing battle. “Shit, all right. I can’t believe you guys. We’re pig-shit rich professionals from New York who graduated with honors from Harvard, and now we’re going to see cock-fights, for God’s sake.”

  “Yeah!” Augie celebrated, and high-fived Clark.

  Brice got up. “Meet me outside. I’ll pay up and say good night to—”

  “Mary July?”

  “Funny.” Brice had to squeeze through a phalanx of patrons milling about. When he finally made it to the bar, Sarah May was waiting on drinks from the barkeep.

  “Sarah May? We’ve got to leave, but it’s been a pleasure.”

  She turned with a beaming smile. “Don’t forget about our—”

  He winked. “Tomorrow night, at ten,” and then he handed her a $100 bill. “Keep the change.”

  Her eyes widened, then she gave him a fervent kiss on the mouth. “Thank you so much, Brice! You got no idea how much that’ll help me!”

  “Have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He smiled and waved a final time, then headed down the bar toward the exit. What a beautiful, wonderful woman, he mused, his prior pessimism momentarily forgotten; he felt in a glittery fog.

  But the pleasant contemplation snapped like a matchstick when something on the bar top caught his eye. He stopped in his tracks, bent over and looked down close.

  Immediately, his brow furrowed.

  What the HELL?

  On the bar top, someone had knife-scratched a crude drawing into the wood: a male stick figure inserting its penis into the head of a female stick figure.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Full dark had arrived, and with it, a growing sense of disapproval in Brice. He drove while Augie rode shotgun and Clark sat in back. Augie and Clark were well on their way to drunkenness, laughing about the antics back at the strip joint as they swilled more beer. Jeez, these guys think they’re still freshmen in college, Brice thought as he took the SUV down a dark wooded road. A rind of moon followed them through gnarled trees.

  “Yeah, Augie, Dad would be real proud,” Brice continued to voice his disfavor. “He spent a fortune sending us to Harvard, made us successful by providing us with opportunities almost no one else gets, and here we are: on our way to a trailer park to watch rednecks shoot craps and bet on cock-fights.”

  Clark amended with excitement, “One of the ‘ho’s at the bar said they have dog-fighting, too!”

  “Oh, even better! You guys just keep climbing the rungs…”

  “Hey”, Augie jibed, “maybe my man Michael Vick’ll be there. Arm like a fuckin’ cannon, man.” But then he turned a stern glance to Brice. “And lemme tell you something, bro. Sure, Dad paid for Harvard, but he didn’t make us successful. We made ourselves successful, because we’re smart, and we’re motivated, and we’re simply better than the shitheels of the world.”

  “Thank you, Friedrich Nietzsche. And the sad thing is, you believe that.”

  Augie polished off his beer. “Damn right I do, Brice, because it’s true. All of us. We’re the cream of society’s crop, fellas, and everyone else…they’re the little people. You can’t tell me we couldn’t buy and sell these Luntville sister-fuckers a billion times over.”

  Clark was slurring his words a bit now. He’d never been much of a drinker. “Amen to that! Fuck ’em. We work hard, so we can play hard.”

  “Fine,” Brice resigned to it all. “You guys want to pick up whores, what was wrong with the whores in the bar we just left? Those girls were smokin’ hot.”

  Augie shook his head in some mysterious abstraction. “Yeah, and they were too smokin’ hot, ya know? Only difference between them and the strippers in New York, is these girls have redneck accents. I want hookers that are different, man. Groaty, low-class, foul-mouths, and shitty tattoos.”

  Brice had to belt out a laugh. “You have a shitty tattoo, Augie. So that means you’re low-class?”

  “What?” Clark exclaimed. “You’re shitting me. Augie has a tattoo?”

&n
bsp; “Show him, Augie,” Brice prodded, grinning. Show him, four-point-oh Harvard grad.”

  “Hey, I’m proud of my tattoo,” and then he pulled up his Tommy Bahama shirt, revealing a sizable and detailed rending of a shark with jaws wide, maw crammed with countless jagged teeth.

  “What the hell is that?” Clark asked, squinting over his glasses.

  “It’s a shark for fuck’s sake! What’s it look like?”

  “Why the hell would you have a shark tattooed on your chest?”

  “Initiation for my brokerage,” Augie explained, admiring the work in the visor mirror. “All floor traders get one. It’s, like, the team insignia. You know, the shark tank, eat or be eaten?”

  Brice laughed again.

  “What are you hee-hawwing about, bro?” Augie turned back to Clark. “Get this. Last year Brice got drunk at the Amber and was gonna get a heart tattoo with Marcie’s name on it—”

  “Shut up, Augie!”

  “—but I talked him out of it.”

  “You gotta be nuts to let some flunkie stranger stick ink-filled needles in your flesh. You can get all kinds of blood-borne diseases. Hep, HIV, tetanus, not to mention MRSA and staph.”

  “Leave it to the good doctor to spoil the party,” Augie said. “It’s just self-expression.”

  Clark was rubbing his hands together. “The only one I want to express myself to tonight is a redneck prostitute!”

  “Oh, no diseases there!” Brice pointed out. “We’ll probably drive back to New York with your dick on ice in a cooler.”

  “Yeah,” Augie said, his cynical self. “These ‘ho’s have had more cum go through ’em than a sperm bank. I’ll bet if you took all the spunk just one of these girls has douched out of herself, it’d be enough to fill a fuckin’ bathtub.”

  Brice’s belly quivered. “A charming observation, Augie.”

  Clark grinned and unfurled a ribbon of condoms. “My friend Mr. Trojan will take care of all such potential hazards.”

  “You of all people should know rubbers won’t stop everything, doctor.”

  Clark scoffed. “I’ll shoot my payload and do an emergency scrub down with some high-grade bacteria killer. Not that over-the-counter stuff for rubes.”

  Augie laughed. “Sounds like you brought some douche to a gunfight.”

  “Oh, fuck off.” Clark jammed a middle finger between the seats. “When your dick turns into a flamethrower, don’t come crying to me.”

  Brice sighed. Relevant conversation now, he knew, was futile. When these two drank…they drank. “So how far is this place?”

  “One of the hosebags told us it wasn’t much more than a mile,” Clark informed. “Then turn left on…”

  “Tick Neck Road!” Augie blurted in glee. “Who needs Madison Avenue when you’ve got Tick Neck Road!” He slapped Brice on the back, a persistent and quite annoying habit. “I’ll tell ya, Brice. Down and dirty is what I need—”

  “Yeah, yeah. You keep saying that, down and dirty—”

  “I’m sick of fussy Upper West Side escorts and their phony smiles and their man-hating, money-grubbing ways. The bitches act like they’re doing us a favor by taking our cash.”

  “Yeah,” Clark added, “and when you get right down to it, the action’s nothing to rave about.”

  “Fuckin-A. But these jerkwater girls? Shit, they’ve been around the block times ten. They’ve had more dicks in their pussies than the Lincoln tunnel’s had cars.”

  “And they’ve chugged more cock than I’ve chugged Heineken,” Clark finished the round of misogyny.

  “Eloquently said, gentlemen,” Brice remarked. “You speak with the refinement of kings.”

  Augie feigned a redneck accent: “I say I’se gonna dump me a great big sloppy fuck inta some stanky wat trash puss-aaaaaaaaah!

  More laughter and high-fives from Augie and Clark. Brice just groaned and drove. It was looking like he was in store for a long night.

  ««—»»

  An onlooker who might errantly glance into the Larkins’ barn would likely see the most macabre event of his or her life: Beezy the meth hooker lying on her back, on a sturdy wooden table, her mouth open, her eyes unblinking as they stared dead into the high ceiling. A brawny hand and wrist blocked her ear and the side of her top head; hence, any onlooker would not actually be able to see what was happening in detail. However, the steady PAP! PAP! PAP! sounds coinciding with the action of a brawny man’s hips bumping the top of Beezy’s head might eventually lead said onlooker to a most ghastly revelation after enough time had passed for the image to sink in. Much the way the thruster was sinking into Beezy’s mind. She may have departed this mortal coil, but she still had dick on the brain.

  The “brawny man” was Horace Larkin, and he was currently engaged in a most uncommon manner of sexual intercourse. The humping action of his hips buffeting the top of Beezy’s head sped up, and so did the PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP!

  A stout, authoritative voice rose up and said, “Git it, son. Give that noggin a good fuckin’ like the dirty bitch deserve.” This voice, by the way, belonged to one Eamon Martin, the mayor of Luntville.

  “Yeah, Horace!” piped up Gut Larkin. “You go, guy! Whup her brain ta puddin’!”

  “Hump it, boy!” Eamon added. “Don’t pussy foot with it—hump it!”

  “Git yerself a big ole dick goober right up in ’nare!”

  “Hump that head, boy!” Eamon cracked. “I say HUMP it!”

  Horace, in the throes of imminent coital crisis, now gripped the sides of Beezy’s head hard as he could, to effect the most forceful thrust of his erection into her brain matter. His hips sped up, sped up, sped up…

  Horace’s belly heaved before him as his back arched and his teeth ground. “Aw, shee-it! I’se almost, I say I’se almost there!”

  Eamon nodded approval from the wedges of shadow in the barn, an approval like, say, that of a father rooting for his son in a little league baseball game. Eamon clapped a few times. “Fill her junkie-whore head up son! Let her know what a real man is.”

  And Gut added, “Give ’er yer cock-cream, brother! Some good ole pecker-syrup!””

  The moment seemed at hand. Horace stiffened, vibrated in place as his hips pounded onward. “Uh - uh - uh…aw, fuck, I think I’se…yeah boy! Ooo! Yes sir! I’se a comin’! I’se a comin’!”

  In the “afterglow,” Horace’s 300-plus-pound frame nearly collapsed. The finishing thrusts slowed then stopped, just as did the jolting jiggles of the dead woman’s bare breasts. Eamon and Gut gave some finishing applause to the performance; Horace, with a gushing fat grin, pulled up his overalls.

  “Way ta go, Horace!” said his brother. “That’s treatin’ a gal the way she wanna be treated!”

  Eamon added, in his natural deadpan expression, “Yeah, real romantic-like and gentlemanly. Don’t’cha ferget to bring her some roses and a box of chocolates.”

  Horace and Gut burst out laughing and popped open some beers.

  Eamon shuffled to the table, pinched the dead girl’s cheeks, looked at her teeth, then gave her breasts a squeeze like a housewife testing melons in the grocery store. All poor Beezy could do now was stare upward, agape-mouthed and cross-eyed.

  “Yeah, boys, I’d say we done pumped enough cum in this ’un’s head fer one night, huh?”

  “Yes sir, Mayor!” Gut replied. “We shore did!”

  “Won’t be no more drug-selling from her. Kids these days. They know right from wrong, but choose wrong ever time.” The mayor tsked. He grabbed a shank of Beezy’s hair, lifted her head up, and looked with calm curiosity into the three-inch-wide hole at the top of her cranium. “Tarnations, boys. I say this bitch’s brain looks just like the cheesecake Karla Croner sell ever Sunday at the street market.”

  Horace took a peek. “Aw, yeah, Mayor. The cheese cake with them neat cherry swirls!”

  “Um-hmm. Looks like it but I don’t reckon it taste like it,” then Eamon released her hair; her head fell back with a clump.


  Gut and Horace roared more laughter.

  The barn doors banged open, and in walked Tucker and Clyde, drinking beers and hamming it up.

  “There they is,” Eamon addressed. “You boys find any more dope dealers out there?”

  “No sir, we shore didn’t,” Tucker answered. “And it was high’n low we looked.”

  Clyde, admiring Beezy’s nude corpse, said, “Wish we could find another one looks like this. Umm-mmmmm!”

  “Hail of a body on this ‘un,” Tucker joined in on the appraisal, “and tits like ta make ya howl at the blammed moon.” Then he squeezed a lifeless breast. “Cain’t really reckon if she got them implants like that blondie splittail last time.”

  “Didn’t much think on it,” Horace reflected. “A’course, only one way ta find out.”

  “Yes sir!” Tucker whipped out his buck knife and, with no more deliberation than cutting a butter-slot in a big dinner roll, slid the razor-sharp blade through the left breast’s girth. There was no gush of saline, as was half expected, only a sluggish trickle of darkened blood.

  “Natrull!” Tucker concluded.

  Eamon nodded. “She’s still warm. You fellas can go ahead’n take a poke if’n ya like, or’se we got a fresh one over here, still kickin’,” and his hand gestured to another table on which lay one very bound, gagged, and shit-scared fellow named Dutch. He squirmed in his bonds.

  “Aw, yeah,” Tucker recalled. “That swamp scum fucker we’se caught sellin’ the meth ‘hind Crossroads.”

  “Yeah, boy,” Eamon said. “We wanted ta save him till yawl got back.”

  Tucker cocked a brow and rubbed his crotch at the speculation. “Well, shee-it, Mayor. I’se had me a fine nut last night but I shore could go fer another.”

  “Me’s too, Mayor,” Clyde chuckled. “My peter’s riled and fit ta spit, it is.”

  “He don’t seem too bright ‘tween the ears anyhow, so I reckon we’d be doin’ him a favor spunkin’ up his brain fer him.”

  “‘Nature does abhor a vacuum,’” Eamon noted sagely.

  Horace projected, “But we’se gonna muss him up first, ain’t we, Mayor?”