The Ones That Got Away Read online

  Walter squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head no, but did it anyway: sat down across from Sandro again.

  “What I’m telling you, you shouldn’t be knowing yet, okay?”

  A smile ghosted the corners of Sandro’s mouth. He shrugged, leaned back in his chair.

  “Who am I going to tell? The rodeo police?’

  Walter stared at him, let the joke die.

  “Do you believe in the afterlife?” he said, finally. “That a man’s spirit can leave his body, go somewhere else?”

  Sandro shrugged.

  “Yes or no?” Walter said, slapping his hand on the table.

  “Okay,” Sandro said. “Sure. Yeah.”

  “Well then,” Walter said, flicking his eyes to the break room door, to be sure it was all the way shut. “Imagine this. 1946, right after the war. This one soldier, he comes back home but forgets to stop killing. Like he’s doing it for fun now. Just whoever, and hiding them in his daddy’s barn. Sick stuff, I mean. Even dragging people in from the graveyard. Pieces of them.”

  “I thought Billy Clay was a bull?”

  “Now this soldier, you can guess he’s not the only soldier to have come back, right? Only, when he went in, he was the only one in his town who signed up to beat a murder rap. He’d been doing it before the war too.”

  “My cousin went in the Army for breaking into this old lady’s—”

  “This isn’t about your cousin. This is about Billy Clay. Finally some of those other soldiers and their dads, they figured out what Billy was up to, and locked him in his barn, lit it all four corners. Only, they forgot to let the livestock out first. So the horses and cattle, when the smoke got too thick, they came busting through the door. The first few got shot, just from itchy triggers, but the rest just, bam, went, gone.”

  “Billy Clay?”

  “Burned to a crisp. Along with his kills. Except instead of burning alive, he’d hung himself from the hay loft, before the flames could even get to him.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Yeah. Nobody else did either. At first. But then a bull turned up on the rodeo circuit, its horns black from fire.”

  “It was one of the ones that got out.”

  “And crazier than all get-out, yeah. Good stock for bucking, I mean. Only, it turned out, too good. He stomped two dead just in the chute, then gored another, threw him back into the pens, and he couldn’t ever be put in the trailer with the other stock. He’d kill them too. But when everybody really knew was when there were some soldiers in the stands once, still in uniform. Billy Clay, that’s what everybody was calling him by then, he chucked his rider, only, instead of going after that cowboy like he usually did, or hooking a clown or two, he charged the stands, and got up in the middle of those soldier uniforms, and made them wish they’d never come back.”

  “So you’re saying—”

  “I’m not the one who said it. Everybody knew. Billy Clay’s spirit had left his body when he hung himself, and fell down into the stalls. Into a bull.”

  “But they killed him. That bull.”

  “Had to chase him clear through town, but yeah. Shot him down I don’t know how many times, just to be sure, then used a tractor to drag him off.”

  “This is all real, too?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You saw it or something?”

  Walter shook his head again, ran his fingers through his grey hair.

  “I just told you the story of it,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Sandro said, shrugging. “It was neat, too. Like Goldilocks or something.”

  Walter slammed his palm down on the table again, used it to help him stand, lean over Sandro.

  “Do you think I’d get Billy Clay tattooed on my shoulder if he wasn’t real?”

  “People do some stupid shit, I guess.”

  Walter spun around, went back to the sink, the cold water.

  “He’s real,” he said. “Don’t you worry about it.”

  “Was real, you mean,” Sandro said. “Right?”

  Walter leaned over, spit into the sink, watched it trail away down the drain.

  “Ever hear of C Bar T?” Walter said, buttoning his shirt back up.

  “Over in Allenville, that college kid bar?”

  “They’re a contractor,” Walter said, tucking in now. “For the rodeo. Their specialty is bulls.”

  “Good for them, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” Walter said. “Good for them. Their bulls, though, they’re not like the rest of them. Ever hear of Whirlwind Baby, or Run Amok?”

  “They were in that barn too or something?”

  “Or something, yeah.”

  Walter cut his eyes to the break room door again.

  “What?” Sandro said.

  “Nothing. Break’s over.”

  “So you’re just going to leave it there, then? Isn’t this the part where you scare me?”

  “We’re not at a campfire, kid.”

  “Whatever. Thanks. Been a real education.”

  With that Sandro stood, looked away, at the sink again, maybe. It didn’t matter. Just away, long enough for Walter to step in, take him by the shirt front and slam him against the wall, so their mouths were now inches from each other.

  “In 1998, Run Amok killed three riders and one clown. Whirlwind bucked off four riders in the nationals, and two of them got carted off to the hospital. One didn’t come back.”

  By now Sandro had his hands around Walter’s wrists.

  “You’re spitting on me,” he said.

  “But Run Amok and Whirlwind Baby weren’t their real names, you know that?”

  “What?”

  “Their real names.”

  With that Walter pushed Sandro into the wall again and stepped back, breathing hard.

  “You knew them as Bill and Frank, I guess?” Sandro said. “Tom and Marty?”

  “0786388126 and 0438576399.”

  Now Sandro was just staring at Walter.

  “Prisoners?”

  Walter stared at him, turned his head to the side to rub his nose with his forearm.

  “Their names were Matley Knowles and Randall Perkins. Knowles killed six people on the outside, three in here that we knew about, maybe more. Perkins, he had a thing for eating people’s fingers. Didn’t really care if they lived or not, just so long as he got some good old finger meat.”

  “I don’t—” Sandro said, “what are you saying here?”

  “When they drug Billy Clay, the bull Billy Clay, when they drug him out to rot in the fields, that same night a man named Charlie Tinker, a butcher by trade, went out and carved him up. Put the meat on ice.”

  “Charlie Tinker. C Bar T.”

  “And here I thought you were stupid.”

  “So he’s been feeding it to his stock all these years?”

  Walter shook his head no, rubbed his nose again. When he talked, it was lower now, almost a whisper. “It doesn’t work like that, kid. No.”

  Sandro shrugged, waiting.

  “ ‘Then how does it work?’ ” Walter said, for Sandro.

  “It’s your bullshit story, man,” Sandro said back.

  “There’s been more, too,” Walter said. “Bulls, I mean. That nobody could ride. From here.”

  “Prisoners.”

  “Prisoners, yeah. Charlie Tinker found out they make the best ones. But they have to be in for a while first, to go the right kind of crazy. The patient kind. The saving-it-all-up-for-the-ride kind.”

  Sandro shook his head, laughed to himself, and put his hand to the door. “Got to make rounds,” he said. “Right?”

  “Red Eye, Sailor’s Moon, Caught in the Middle, Barn Burner.”

  Sandro stopped with his hand to the knob. Closed his eyes then opened them.

  “All from here, right?”

  “Thanks to me, yeah,” Walter said.

  Now Sandro looked up to Walter.

  Walter nodded.

  “I don’t understand,” Sandro said
.

  “You couldn’t. I know. Let him with the ears to hear, hear.”

  “What?”

  “Billy Clay,” Walter whispered, putting his hand over Sandro’s, on the door knob. Then he hooked his chin, for Sandro to follow him. They went to the freezer, to a package of frosted-over brussels sprouts way in the back. In the box under all the burned green was a glass tube with a cork in the end.

  Walter held it up, said it again: “Billy Clay.”

  In the tube was meat.

  “What do you mean?”

  “C Bar T,” Walter said. “They keep me supplied. The old man, Tinker, he figured it out somehow. What you have to do, what they pay me five grand a pop to do, is slip a bit of this into some prisoner’s grub. Then, after he gets shanked while we’re not looking, you just collect whatever he’s thrown back up, get it on ice, overnight it to them.”

  “And they feed that to—”

  “They feed them to the bulls, yeah. It’s the only way it works. The soul gets trapped in there, in the meat.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s just prisoners. Their chance to be famous. To escape, kill again, all that. They’d probably pay me to do it, if they knew.”

  Instead of saying anything, Sandro just studied Walter’s face. Finally Walter shrugged. “Next time, I’ll let you watch. Maybe put it in their food or something. Last meal them, on death row. It makes collection easier.”

  Now Sandro smiled a bit. “You don’t go to the rodeos anymore, do you?” he asked.

  “I read about it.”

  “Yeah, well. It’s changing, kimo. Regulations. Helmets, padded vests. Points. Celebrity announcers.”

  “You can still die, or worse.”

  “Or get barred.”

  Walter licked his lips, studied Sandro.

  “Barred?”

  “Like if your stock is too mean.”

  “But they’re supposed to be mean.”

  “Not killers, though. Not anymore. The television, they want mad, yeah. But more like athletic. Like the bull’s part of the performance. Like it understands, but just wants out, wants it to be over.”

  “The old man would have told me if he was looking for more docile prisoners, if he wanted . . . ”

  Sandro was trying not to smile was the thing.

  “What?” Walter said.

  “C Bar T, right?” Sandro said back.

  Walter shrugged, looked to the break room door again, like he expected a bull to come crashing through at any moment now. When he turned back to Sandro, Sandro had pulled his shirt to the side, to show the scar tissue from a brand that covered the right side of his chest: C—T.

  Walter backed up a step, into the counter.

  “He heard you were telling people about it, Walter. Getting tattoos about it.”

  “No, wait, I—”

  Before he could finish, Sandro stepped forward, slammed his fist hard into Walter’s stomach.

  The hamburgers came back up. The meat. It made Walter throw up more, and more, until there were red and black strings of it everywhere.

  Sandro held it in his hand, let some of the bloody vomit run down into one paper cup, then another.

  “They don’t call him Tinker for nothing,” Sandro said, and he folded a paper towel over the paper cups.

  Bleary-eyed now, Walter stared at the cups. They’d never be enough, he knew. You had to keep it fresh. If Sandro’d been doing this for half his life already, he might have at least the glimmer of a—a . . . but then Walter felt something collapsing inside him, and realized that whatever wet cavern had been holding his spirit for forty-six years, it was caving in now, taking him with it.

  “The old man figured out that you can pull the soul out without even knifing the guy first, yeah? Oh, and guess what else.”

  Walter coughed. Sandro kicked him in the side, so that Walter fell over.

  “Guess what else,” Sandro said.

  Walter looked up.

  “When you pull the soul like this, the host, whatever bull eats it, it remembers, man. Yeah. Everything. But it can’t say anything about it. Only in the ride, man. Eight seconds of pure expression . . . ”

  Walter fell to his knees, tried to hold himself up with the counter. Reach for Sandro, at the sink now, washing his hands. “Oh, and boss?” Sandro said.

  Walter opened his mouth but couldn’t get any breath out.

  “Thanks for the burgers, man,” Sandro said, and threw the balled-up paper towel at Walter’s face then swung wide around him, back into the real world, leaving Walter alone on the floor, his body already bucking and twisting, blood frothing at his nostrils.

  The cameras were going to love him.

  So Perfect

  The killers here are Tammy and Brianne. They’re seventeen. Well, Tammy’s seventeen, but Brianne always lies that she’s seventeen. They’re both juniors at the new Danforth High School, “Home of the Titans,” rah rah rah. As to where “Titans” comes from, none of the students really know. The complete name of the school is Susan B. Danforth High School. They’re not really sure who she is either. The suburb they live in isn’t old enough to have any history. The year Tammy and Brianne were born, the land their Geography class would someday sit on probably had a cow standing on it, if anything. No titans, anyway.

  As for Tammy and Brianne, you’ve seen them before, at all the malls and department stores. Here’s a typical Tammy/Brianne conversation:

  “And did you see her nametag?”

  “Don’t even start.”

  “Like I would be using somebody else’s credit card, though? Please.”

  “Shh, shh. She might be listening. Her dad’s got to be in prison or something, right? To let her work at a register like that?”

  “You’re making excuses for her.”

  “No. I just don’t want my car to get keyed. You know how these people—”

  The girl they’re talking about here is Joy Kane, known in the halls of Danforth as “Candy Cane” because of the red-and-white striped stockings she wears every day. Her job is adding tax to the purchases of her classmates, and checking identification. And her father isn’t in prison; he’s dead.

  But Joy will be up soon enough. Right now it’s Tammy and Brianne. They’re taking the long way out of the mall, to swing by the display window of the pet shop. Not because they want to hold the puppies or kittens, and especially not the birds or lizards, but so—this is a game they play—they can bend over at the waist to tickle the glass, like all they can think about are these cute little adorable animals.

  The reason they do this is so they can waggle their peel-off lumbar tattoos. Today Tammy has the typical blue curlicues, Brianna a baseball with the word FOCUS as the brand, but they’ve also tried the IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU’RE TOO CLOSE one, to great effect.

  On a good day they can fill the sitting area behind them in fifteen minutes, and then pretend to be oblivious, shake their way out to the parking lot to laugh and laugh in Tammy’s car.

  On a bad day, though, all they’ll attract is the junior high crowd.

  Today is a bad day.

  After the pet shop they glide through their favorite purse store, study themselves in the three-way mirror for an explanation.

  “What’d you have for lunch?” Tammy asks Brianne.

  This is also a typical conversation for them.

  “Just coffee.”

  “You’re lying. It had whipped cream on it.”

  “Pig.”

  “Slut.”

  “You wish.”

  Still, they leave together.

  As for Joy, her shift goes over four hours later, and, walking to the corner where her mom will pick her up when she gets off, she doesn’t key anybody’s car, has forgotten all about Tammy and Brianne, really.

  Two days later is a Friday. Tammy and Brianne are having a tanning contest on Brianne’s back porch. Her dad, home early from work, is washing the Irish setter. The dog’s name is Frederick.

&
nbsp; Because it’s funny to her, Tammy keeps arranging her bikini so as to make Brianne’s dad have to look somewhere else.

  “Did you see her today?” Brianne says, her voice bored and hot.

  “Who?”

  “Candy Cane.”

  “From the other day?”

  “She remembered you, I think.”

  “Probably wanted to see my driver’s license.”

  Brianne laughs about this, adds, “Like she doesn’t know that horizontal stripes aren’t really helping those tree trunks she calls legs?”

  “They’re probably supposed to distract from that sweater she always wears.”

  “Distract whom?” Brianne says, turning herself over on the chair, her skin glistening.

  After that they just watch Brianne’s dad wrestle with Frederick. It’s the best kind of comedy, as it pretty much confirms everything they think about the class of people he represents.

  “What’s he doing now?” Tammy asks after about twenty minutes.

  “He’s not supposed to do it while the hair’s still wet.”

  “Perfume?”

  “It’s for, like, ticks, I think.”

  Tammy sits up, lowers her glasses. “It keeps them off, you mean?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Just from that part of Fred’s neck?”

  “It goes everywhere, I don’t know. He’s not supposed to do it while the hair’s wet, though,” Brianne repeats louder, for her dad’s benefit. “It waters it down or something.”

  Tammy keeps her sunglasses tilted to watch. She’s never seen anything like this—shouldn’t the gardener be doing it, maybe? It is entertaining, though, Frederick squirming out again and again, his eyeballs white and desperate against all that shiny bronze fur.

  But then Tammy has to turn over. Brianne follows. Now they’re both staring through the plastic slat of their lounge chairs, into the grass.

  “I’ve petted Fred, though,” Tammy finally says.

  “What? No, it doesn’t—you can’t get it on you. It says so on the package, I think. Safe for children.”

  “You’ve done it . . . applied it or whatever?”

  “Of course not. He keeps the box in the garage, by my mom’s extra keys.”

  “Beamer or Volvo?”

  “They’re in the same place.”

  “But—you . . . he wouldn’t need to put that on Fred if there wasn’t a problem, right?”