“Leonard will kill you.”
“The nigger? I don’t think so, Collins. I think I will kill him.”
“Whatever,” Booger said.
“Mountain,” said Pock Face, “I ain’t ate yet. Can’t we get this shit over with? I want to grab a burger.”
“Get the ball bat,” Big Man said. “Warm up a little.”
Pock Face got the bat and started swinging it through the air. He banged it hard on the floor a couple of times, smashed it into the wall once. While this was going on, Big Man kept talking in that slow sweet voice of his.
“So, this shock business, if you’re used to it, you can take a little voltage. You’re not, hurts. I’m gonna hook your balls up, give you a few leaps to the meat, then I’m gonna ask some questions. Things about what you know and what you’ve done about it. Now I got to be honest here. You aren’t going to make it, Collins. Don’t try to imagine you are. You’re gonna die. The boys here, they’re good. They can make you suffer a long time. The faggot, Raul, you know about him. He made it hard on himself. I wouldn’t have thought it, you know. A fruit with balls, but he had them. Literally. They were big mothers when we put them in the ice.”
“Weren’t so big later,” Booger said.
“That’s right,” Big Man said. “That ice, the electricity. It doesn’t do a man’s cojones good, Collins. But you see, you tell us what we need to know, no voltage. Just a good shot to the bean with the bat. Puts you right out, if it don’t kill you. Couple more, gone for good. You only feel the first one. And not much ’cause you get nailed hard. No more worries. Try to be the tough guy, hold out, we got to give you some business. Hear what I’m tryin’ to tell you, Collins? Answer me, man.”
“I hear,” I said.
“Good. So we got no hearin’ problems here. Now here’s your first question, and I beg you to consider before you answer. Where’s the video?”
“What video?”
Big Man hung his head. “All right. Booger, take down his pants.”
“You take down his pants,” Booger said.
Big Man, who had been kneeling, came up suddenly and slapped Booger behind the head, pulling him into his other hand, which took hold of Booger’s throat.
“You big black dick!” Big Man said. “I told you to take down his pants. Now do it.”
He pushed Booger to the floor. Booger unfastened my belt and tugged at my pants and underwear, pulled them down to my knees. Pock Face handed him the pillow. Booger shoved me up and put it under my ass. He sat the bowl up next to me and scooped out a handful of ice with his hands and put it in the bowl and then he pushed the bowl under me so that my testicles hung into it. At first it was a cold jolt, but almost immediately I started to numb. I tried to shake myself loose, but Booger held the bowl. Pock Face came up behind me and slipped a rope over me and tied me more firmly to the chair.
Big Man said, “You aren’t gonna believe the kind of trip you’re gonna take. Over there into Pain City, my man. But, I’m gonna give you another chance to take the Ball Bat Highway on out of here. Last thing you’ll hear is the wind from that bat. Then it’s all over.”
“I swing it just right,” Pock Face said, “you won’t hardly hear that.”
“There you are,” Big Man said. “Now, once again. And I want you to come right at me with the answer when I ask this. Where is the video?”
“You’re supposed to know so fuckin’ much about me, why don’t you know where the video is?”
“Okay,” Big Man said. “Maybe I don’t know as much as I said. Maybe I know a lot less, but I’m here to learn, Collins. Where is it?”
“Go to hell.”
“Kinney,” Big Man said to Pock Face, “hook up the battery, bring it over here. Couple shots from Reddy Kilowatt, this fucker’s gonna sing like a mockingbird.”
Pock Face set to work.
“I ain’t gonna keep hold of this bowl now,” Booger said.
“’Course not, you moron,” Big Man said. “You done this before.”
“Naw, I did the bat last time,” Booger said. “I like the bat.”
“Everybody likes the bat,” Big Man said. “Except, of course, the man in this chair. There’s been a couple others in this chair, Collins, you know that?”
I wanted to say something smart, something strong. But I couldn’t.
“You look a little nervous, Collins. Want to say about the video?”
My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. “No.”
“Man, what’s the deal?” Big Man said. “It ain’t nothin’ to you. You’re gonna die anyway. We don’t get it from you, we got to go after the nigger. Maybe the nurse.”
“She doesn’t know anything,” I said.
“I got to be the judge of that, Collins. I think you’re an honest man. Really. I get those kind of vibes from you, but still, you see, I’m a professional. I might have to bring her out here. But I promise you this, Collins. I do, we’ll make it nice for her. And since she ain’t got no balls to drop in the ice, we might make it nice for her a lot of times. So many times it ain’t so nice. And maybe it’s not nice for her any time, but if it’s nice for us, we got to keep it up till maybe she tells us something.”
“She doesn’t know a goddamn thing.”
“Come on, Collins. Save her some trouble. Spare your nigger’s balls. Tell us about the video.”
“The police have it.”
Big Man shook his head. “No they don’t.”
“Yes they do.”
“Nope.”
“Yes.”
“Nope. They don’t have it, Collins. I know that. You have it, or you know where it is.”
Pock Face dropped two cables into the bowl. Booger let go of the bowl quick. Pock Face gripped the handle on the generator.
Big Man moved very close to me. He said. “We hit the crank, you get the juice, I can tell you now, you’re most likely gonna shit yourself. If not this shot, the next one. Save the humiliation. Take the bat. We’ll tidy you up a bit afterwards, pull your pants up, dump you in your nigger’s yard. That way, you don’t rot somewhere.”
“I don’t think you’d do that,” I said.
“Use the bat?”
“Clean me up and dump me where I’d be found.”
“You might be right,” Big Man said, “but you could go out without all that pain. All right, Collins. The moment of truth. One last time, then Kinney, he’s got to hit the crank, and then we got to start breakin’ some things too. Where is the video?”
“What video?”
“Hit it, Kinney.”
And Kinney did and the world went black and then white and then it threw colors all around and I felt my body jump like frog legs on a griddle, then I heard a scream, a loud, horrible scream, like a woman in fear, but the scream was mine. The room was blood-red, then black, and out of the blackness Big Man’s face floated and hung above me like a moon made of gangrene flesh surrounded by hair and the sweet smell of a breath mint.
“How was that?” Big Man asked.
It took a while for me to get my breath. “Invigorating,” I said.
“Oh,” Big Man said. “You liked that, huh?”
Again, some time passed. I said, “I prefer it as a one-time experience.”
“I bet. We got to do it again, Collins. Unless you want to tell me something I want to know. I’ll say this for you, you let a fart like the clap of creation, but you didn’t shit yourself. But let me tell you this. Booger, he knows better than to stand behind that chair. Shit has a way of flyin’ out from the back there and sprayin’. Those stains on the pillow, what you think that is?”
“Olive oil?”
“Shit. A little blood.”
“You might as well finish me,” I said. “You aren’t going to get anything from me, because I don’t know anything.”
“He might be tellin’ the truth,” Booger said.
“Yeah,” Big Man said. “He might. But things still got to come out the same. How’s about we give him another boost?”
I already felt as if I were going to pass out. I pulled up all my reserves, which were mostly AWOL, and steeled myself.
There was an explosion and the walls of the shack vibrated and the floor jumped and the lightbulb above me rocked and I realized it wasn’t my balls and brain dealing with electricity. It was a real explosion, outside the shack.