Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [70]
“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head.”
“That woman hasn’t done anything to y’all. Why don’t you leave her alone?”
The tall man drove his fist into Cody’s stomach, burying it to his wrist. Cody doubled over, his breath exploding from his chest, his knees collapsing in the dirt. The tall man shoved him over with his boot, then stepped on the side of his face. “Who are you?”
“A guy who lives up in the cliffs.”
“Who’d you call?”
“Nobody. I didn’t call anybody. You cain’t get service out here.”
“You know a man name of Noie Barnum?” The tall man pushed his boot tighter into the side of Cody’s face.
“I’ve heard of him. I don’t know him.”
“Where did you hear about Barnum?”
“From a man name of Dowling. I thought that’s who y’all were.”
“What did you see here this morning?”
“Nothing,” Cody replied, his mouth mashed against his teeth.
“Sure about that?”
“I know better than to mess with the wrong folks.”
The tall man did not release his foot from Cody’s face. He seemed to be looking at a diminutive man in the background, perhaps waiting for instructions. Cody could feel the lugs and grit on the bottom of the tall man’s boot biting into his cheek and jawbone. He could smell the soiled odor of the man’s foot and sock and the oil that had been rubbed into the boot’s leather. The pressure on Cody’s skull and jaw was unrelenting, as though the tall man were on the edge of cracking Cody’s facial bones apart.
Cody was not seeing the tall man now. He saw two prison-farm gunbulls walking him from the trusty dormitory to the shed with the sawhorse standing under a bare lightbulb. They were both drunk and laughing, as though the three of them were only having fun, not unlike kids putting a friend through a harmless initiation ritual. Maybe at first that was all they had intended to do—just scare him and knock him around for sassing one of them that afternoon, what did they call it, making a Christian out of a hardhead? He knew the reality was otherwise. These were men for whom cruelty was as natural a part of their lives as eating breakfast. Their only task had been to hide their intentions from themselves, to set up the situation, then to simply follow their instincts, not unlike flinging gasoline on a fire and stepping back to watch the results. Cody would never forget the lustful cry of release in the throat of the first gunbull who mounted him. He would also never forgive himself for being their victim, accepting what they did to him as though somehow he had deserved his fate.
“I didn’t see anything here except six men tormenting a he’pless woman,” he said.
There was a pause. “You saw what?” the tall man asked, twisting the sole of his boot on Cody’s cheek.
“Saw a tall man that’s got so much chewing tobacco in his mouth, he cain’t swallow. Saw a li’l bitty fellow over yonder by the horse tank. Saw one man that’s bleeding through a hole in his mask, like somebody seriously fucked up his face. Saw a big gray truck with a diesel engine and a stack on it. Saw a bunch of men that dress like they been in the military. Saw a bunch of men that wouldn’t believe me when I said I called Sheriff Holland. I’m here to tell you the sheriff of this county is one mean motor scooter. He’ll flat kick a two-by-four up your ass. I know. I’ve been in his jailhouse.”
Cody thought the torque in his neck was going to snap his spinal cord. He could hear the windmill’s blades spinning, a loose door banging in the barn, the thunder in the clouds retreating in the hills. Through the dirt and sweat and rain mist in his eyes, he could see a pale band of cold light appear beyond the hills in the east, as though the season were winter rather than spring. He heard someone snapping his fingers, as though trying to get the attention of the tall man. Then the boot went away from Cody’s face.
“You’re a lucky fellow,” the tall man said, lifting Cody to his feet by his shirtfront. “But let me leave you this little reminder of what happens when you wise off to the wrong people.” He drove Cody’s head into the truck fender