The Reapers

There were lights inside the house, and more smoke rose from the chimney. An old truck was parked at the back door, its bed a wooden cage. It reeked of animals’ excrement.

“How do you want to do this?” asked Angel, but the question was answered for him. The back door opened and a woman appeared on the sheltered porch. She looked as if she might have been in her forties, but her clothes were those of someone much older and there was too much gray in her hair for her years. Her face spoke of hard living, of disappointments, of hopes and dreams that had crumbled to dust in her hands.

She looked at the two men, taking in their weapons, and spoke.

“What do you want here?” she asked.

“Shelter, ma’am,” said Louis. “The use of a telephone. Some help.”

“You always come asking for help with guns in your hands?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You could say we’re victims of circumstance,” said Angel.

“Well, I can’t aid you. Go on now, you’d best be on your way.”

Louis had to admire her courage. There weren’t many women who’d tell two armed men to be about their business.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I just don’t think you understand what’s happening here.”

“We understand fine,” said a voice from behind him. Louis didn’t move. He knew what was coming. Seconds later, he felt the twin barrels nudge him from behind.

“You know what that was, son?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. Let your gun fall down now. Your friend can do the same.”

Louis did as he was told, allowing the Steyr to drop but letting his right hand drift toward the Glock at his waist. Small fingers appeared and snatched the Steyr away, then did the same with Angel’s weapon.

“Your hand moves another inch, son, and I guarantee that you won’t live to feel the next raindrop on your face.”

Louis’s hand froze. He was patted down hard, and the Glock was taken from him. The same voice asked Angel where his pistol was at, and Angel answered quickly and honestly. Glancing to his left, Louis saw a tall young man frisk Angel and take the gun from his waist. They were now completely unarmed.

He heard footsteps backing off behind him. Slowly, he turned. Angel was already looking at the two men who had emerged from behind the woodshed. One was probably in his sixties, wearing a wide-brimmed leather hat to protect him from the rain. The younger man, the one who had frisked them, was in his late twenties, and was bareheaded. His hair was close shaven, and the rainwater ran like tears down the cheeks of his intensely pale, blue-veined face. His left eye appeared to have no retina. It was entirely white, like his skin, as though something poisonous had seeped from the latter into the former, draining it of color. Both were armed, the older man with a shotgun, the younger with a varmint gun. Between them stood a little girl of no more than seven or eight who was dressed, incongruously, in a Mi

“You ought to have stayed back in New York,” said the older man.

“How do you know we’re from New York?” said Angel.

“Rumors. They were waiting for you to come. It was just a matter of when.”

“‘They’?”

“Mr. Leehagen and his men.”

“You work for Leehagen?”

“Everyone around here works for Mr. Leehagen, one way or another. If he don’t pay you directly, then you live by what he pays others.” He looked down at the little girl. “Go to your grandma, honey.”

The little girl ran behind the legs of the younger man and danced her way to the shelter of the house, splashing through the puddles that were forming on the uneven ground. She climbed the steps to the porch and stood beside her grandmother, who put a protective hand around her granddaughter’s shoulders. The girl smiled up at the older woman, then clapped her hands once with pleasure and excitement. Angel wondered who her father was. It didn’t seem to be the younger of the two men, the pale creature with the washed-out eye. She was too pretty to be his, too vibrant. He looked like a corpse that hadn’t yet realized it was dead.

“Thomas,” said the woman at the door to the older man. There was a note of what might almost have been pleading in her voice. It struck Angel that she wasn’t intervening out of any great concern for the two men who had trespassed onto the property. She just didn’t want her husband to get into trouble by spilling blood.

“Just take her inside,” said Thomas. “We’ll deal with this.”

The woman grabbed the girl by the hand and pulled her into the house. The girl didn’t seem happy to miss the show, and it took an extra yank on her arm before she crossed the threshold and the door closed behind them. Even then, Angel could see her staring yearningly back at him, disappointment creasing her features.

“We don’t want any trouble,” said Angel.

“Really?” said the man named Thomas. He sounded skeptical, and tired. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

“We just want to get out of here alive,” said Angel.

“I don’t doubt that, son. My guess is you’re going to have some problems on that score.”

“You could help us.”

“I could, that’s true. I could, but I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I’d die in your place, assuming you managed to get out of this mess you’re in, which I don’t think is going to happen. Mr. Leehagen places a high premium on loyalty.”

“Those men out there are going to kill us.”

“You reap what you sow. I’m sure that’s in the Bible, somewhere. My wife could tell you. She reads on it some, when the mood strikes her. Never spoke much to me.”

He shifted his grip on the shotgun, and Louis tensed. Angel could sense him getting ready to spring, and Thomas seemed to sense it, too. The twin mouths of the shotgun steadied themselves on Louis. The wind changed direction, bringing the stink of whatever animals Thomas had transported to their doom in his truck to Angel, the smell of their dying as they voided themselves in fear.

“No,” said Thomas, simply. “You do, and I’ll be feeding your body to the hogs before day’s end.”

Hogs. Now Angel could hear them snuffling and grunting somewhere behind the house.

“You helped them make their movie,” he said.

Thomas shifted uneasily. “I don’t know nothing about that.”

“How did they do it? A model? They get someone to lie in the mud and pretend to be eaten, fix it all up later in an editing suite. You tell us: how did they do it?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” said Thomas. “I got nothing against you personally, and I don’t want to have to kill you here. Mr. Leehagen wouldn’t like it. He’s got other plans for you, I guess. Go on, now. You get away from here, and you don’t come back. Your guns can stay with me. I don’t trust you to keep your word when I let you go.”

Louis spoke: “Without weapons, we don’t stand a chance.”

“You didn’t stand a chance anyway.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

The old man smiled. It wasn’t a malicious smile. Instead, there was a measure of pity in it.

“You came up here all primed to cause some hurt, and now the tables have been turned on you. What did you think would happen? That there’d be some old man in a big house and you’d kill him without anyone even raising a finger to stop you? You listen to me: I got no love for that sonofabitch, and I think the world would have been a better place if he’d never been born into it, but you made a mistake coming up here, and you’ll live or die by that mistake. Like I said, you’ll reap what you’ve sown.” He gestured with the shotgun, indicating the woods through which they had come. “That way lies the road, and maybe your way out of here. Don’t come back here. You do, and we’ll kill you. I have my family to consider, Leehagen or no Leehagen.”