The Reapers

There was movement at the edge of the woods to his south: two men. He rapped on the roof, alerting Qui

“What?” It was Benton.

“I see them.”

“Where?”

“Not far from the Brooker place, moving west.”

“I hate that old bastard, him and his wife and his freak son,” said Benton. “Mr. Leehagen ought to have run them off his land a long time ago.”

“The old man won’t have helped them,” said Curtis. “He knows better.” Although he wasn’t sure that was true. Mr. Brooker was ornery, and he kept himself and his family apart from the men who worked for Mr. Leehagen. Curtis wondered why Mr. Brooker didn’t just sell up and leave, but he figured that was part of being ornery, too.

“Yeah,” said Benton. “Old Brooker may be a pain in the ass, but he’s no fool.”

A hand emerged from the window. It held a bottle of homemade hooch and waved it at Curtis. This was Benton’s own concoction. Qui

Curtis took it and raised it to his mouth. The smell made his head spin and seemed instantly to exacerbate the pain in his skull, but he drank anyway. He was cold and wet. The hooch couldn’t make things worse. Unfortunately, it did. It was like swallowing hot fragments of glass that had spent too long in an old gasoline tank. He coughed most of it back up and spat it on the metal at his feet, where the rainwater did its best to dilute it and wash it away.

“Fuck this,” said Benton. The engine started up. “Get in here, Curtis.”

Curtis jumped down and opened the passenger door. Qui

“Hey, move over,” said Curtis. He climbed into the cab, expecting Qui

“Fuckyouthinkyoudoing?” said Qui

“I’m trying to get in the cab.”

“Sitinthedamnmiddlenotmovingsumbitchkickyourass.”

“Quit fooling, man,” said Benton. “Let the kid through.”

Qui

“Gotmeallwetmankickyourasskickyourassgood.”

“Sorry,” said Curtis.

“Betterbesorrymakeyousorrykickyourassman.”

Yeah, whatever, you whacko, thought Curtis. He briefly entertained visions of kicking Qui

“What are we going to do?” asked Curtis.

“What we should have done after we wrecked their car,” said Benton. “We’re going to take care of them.”

Curtis shivered. He recalled the sight of the dead woman, and the weight of her in his arms as he and Qui

“We were told not to get involved,” said Curtis. “There were orders, orders from Mr. Leehagen’s son.”

“Yeah, well, nobody told those two assholes out there. Suppose Brooker did help them, or let them use his phone? Suppose there are people on their way up here right now? Hell, they might even have killed the old man and his family, and that’d be a regular tragedy. They’re killers, ain’t they? That’s what these people do. While we wait around for some ghost to get here and do a job that we could have done for nothing, they’re ru

Curtis wasn’t sure that this was a good idea. He tended to take Mr. Leehagen at his word, even if that word usually came through his son now that Mr. Leehagen couldn’t get around so good anymore, and it had been made clear to them that they were to restrain themselves when it came to the two men for whom they had been waiting. Confrontations-fatal ones, at least-were to be avoided. They just had to sit tight and wait. After the men had entered the Leehagen lands, they were to be contained there, and nothing more. All told, fifteen men had been entrusted with the task of ensuring that, once they entered the trap, they did not escape. Now Benton wanted to bend the rules. His pride had been hurt by recent events, Curtis knew. He wanted to make amends to the Leehagens, and restore his own confidence along the way.

Benton drank some, it was true, but he was right more often than he was wrong, alcohol or no alcohol. The more Curtis thought about their situation, the more he saw Benton’s point about not waiting around for Bliss to take care of the two men. But then Curtis always had been swayed by the voice that was nearest and loudest. If a backbone could be said to have chameleonesque qualities, changing to suit its moral environment, then Curtis’s certainly qualified. His opinion could be swayed by a sneeze.

And so Qui

Their son, Luke, leaned against a wall, hardly blinking. Curtis didn’t know if he could see out of his milky eye. Maybe he could, and the world looked as though it had been overlaid with a sheet of muslin, its streets populated with ghosts. Curtis couldn’t ever recall hearing Mr. Brooker’s son speak. He had never gone to school, not to any regular school, and the only time Curtis ever saw him away from the Brooker place was when he went into town with his father and the old man treated them both to ice cream at Tasker’s ice cream parlor. As for the little girl, Curtis had no idea where she had come from. Maybe Luke had managed to get lucky, once upon a time, although it didn’t seem likely. Screwing Luke Brooker would be like screwing a zombie.

Mr. Brooker showed them the guns that he had taken from the two men, and Benton’s eyes lit up at the prospect of easy pickings. He slapped Brooker on the back and told him that he’d let Mr. Leehagen know how well he’d done.

When the three men had gone, Brooker sat silently at his kitchen table while his wife rolled dough behind him, and tried to ignore the waves of disapproval that were breaking upon his back.