“Why don’t you do the honors?”
Donaldson couldn’t help but smile.
He cut the yellow tape with his knife.
“Careful now,” Orson said.
Donaldson drew his blade slowly across the box like an artist painting the finest line on virgin canvas. The top opened easily, and he withdrew a box constructed of some dark wood—walnut perhaps—with a masterfully-crafted ivory inlay.
Staring down at it made Donaldson feel both excited and a touch apprehensive.
He played his fingers across the top.
“No wonder you had it specially delivered. Ivory is illegal.”
“It gets better. Go on. Open it.”
Orson watched as Donaldson flipped the brass hasps and slowly opened the box.
Only when Donaldson’s eyes lit up, did he charge.
Five steps covered in the blink of an eye.
Driving his shoulders into the man’s stomach, scooping him up under his fat thighs, and slamming him to the desert floor.
Orson felt the breath rush out of Donaldson as he crushed the man’s knife hand under his knee, pinning it to the ground.
Then he grabbed his brand new toy from the velvet-lined interior of the walnut box.
The knife felt exquisite in his hand.
The ivory hilt was cool, and it fit perfectly to his grasp.
He touched the pristine, unblemished blade to Donaldson’s throat.
“Carbon steel. Three millimeters thick. I’m more than a little tempted to try it out on you, fat man. Ever heard a scream in the desert? The echo goes on forever. Should I show you?”
Donaldson grunted, his face pinched. “Sweet talk like that turns me on. How much was the blade?”
“Three hundred seventy-five dollars. Plus a very reasonable shipping fee.”
“Promise me something. If you let me live, let me know where you got it. I want one.”
Orson gazed down into the man’s eyes. There was fear there, sure, shining up through the chubby cheeks and the doughy fat. But something else, too. Something unexpected.
Excitement.
Maybe even arousal.
Orson sighed.
“What?” Donaldson asked. “Either shit or get off the pot, brother.”
“I don’t know, but this feels…wrong.”
“Wrong?” Donaldson shifted his bulk, giving Orson a bit of a bounce, reminding him, incongruously, of the first time he and Andy had ridden horses.
They’d been nine.
Sweet Andy. I still miss you, brother.
“Killing my own kind,” Orson finally said, “that’s what feels wrong.” But still he pushed the blade a few microns deeper into the flesh of Donaldson’s throat, imagined that last layer of skin beginning to split under the pressure of the blade. “How many like us do you think are wandering around out there?”
“More than you’d think.”
There was a snicking sound, metallic and unmistakable.
Orson felt something spear into his bare ribs.
He grinned.
“You had a second blade. Ankle holster?”
“Smaller than the one you have right now, but enough to puncture a lung. Ever seen a lung punctured?”
“Of course.”
Donaldson’s face softened. “I love that half-gasp, half-flapping sound.”
“I love the wet, gurgling noise of someone taking a deep breath while their lungs are filling up with blood.”
“I have an idea,” Donaldson said.
“Hit me.”
“We’re never gonna trust each other.”
“True.”
“And even if we become the best friends in the world, we’d probably always want to kill each other.”
“True.”
“Maybe it’s best we go our separate ways.”
Orson considered this. “Two lions passing each other in the dark?”
“Exactly. And we both live on to kill another day.”
“Or we could cut each other to shreds. Blaze of glory and all that.” Orson winced, feeling Donaldson’s blade nick his rib cage. “But separate ways sounds cool, too. I want to still be doing this when I’m seventy.”
A line of blood had begun to bead out across Donaldson’s throat, Orson wondering how much of the fat man’s head he’d be able to cut off before his lung collapsed, and if he could then make it into town to the hospital before he bled to death.
“Count of three,” Orson said. “And we disarm.”
“That didn’t work out so well the last time.”
“Second time’s a charm. One…two…three.”
Neither man so much as flinched.
“Why don’t you be the bigger man, Donaldson, and throw your knife away first? I am the customer, after all.”
“I’m not feeling that so much. How about you go first? As a gratuity for the one who carried your new toy so many miles to its new home.”
Dust swirled around them.
Out of the corner of his eye, Orson noticed a jackrabbit racing through the sagebrush.
“It gets awful cold out here when the sun drops,” Orson said. “Coyotes come out. Can I trust you?”
“Probably not. Be a helluva way to die, getting eaten by coyotes.”
Orson eased the pressure of the blade, just a hair. “Your turn. We’ll do this in baby steps.”
Orson felt Donaldson’s blade pull away from his ribs.
Orson lifted the blade completely from the surface of his neck.
Donaldson followed suit.
And then Orson rolled off the man onto the ground and jumped to his feet. “Need a hand up?”
“I can manage.”
Orson smiled, watching Donaldson struggle onto his feet like a bloated elephant. “That was graceful.”
“Nice takedown earlier.” Donaldson widened his stance. “Want to try it again?”
“If I want to take you down, you’ll be the last motherfucker to know about it. Look, I gotta get home, and if you want to be out of this desert before nightfall, you’d better hit the road.”
Orson backed away, moving toward his car.
“Hold it, asshole.”
Orson paused.
“The knife.” Donaldson pointed at Orson’s blade. “Where’d you buy it?”
“Custom knife maker in Montana. Works out of Bozeman. Last name’s Morrell.”
Donaldson nodded.
Then he folded up both of his knives, pocketed them, and backed away toward his sedan.
Out in the desert, a coyote mourned the sun as it slipped under the horizon.
The pair of buzzards had flown on, nowhere to be seen.
As Donaldson opened his car door, Orson called out, “So what’ll you do to blow off all this steam we just built up?”
Donaldson shrugged. “Probably take it out on a hitchhiker.”
“Just be sure and watch yourself,” Orson said. “Never know who you might pick up.”
A Brood of Hens
New England, 1992
“Historians typically delineate four manifestations of the Inquisition.”
He hated this class.
“The Medieval Inquisition.”
He hated the professor.
“The Spanish Inquisition.”
But more than anything…
“The Portuguese Inquisition.”
…he hated the subject.
“And the Roman Inquisition.”
Hated history. Hated looking back on things, hated dwelling on events long-since passed and people long-since dead.
“Can anyone tell me the purpose of the Inquisition? No takers? Okay, how about you?”
He was only twenty years old, but he’d made it his life’s work to live in the present. To occupy the moment.
“Excuse me…Mr. Kite?”
Shit.
Luther looked up from his desk on the back row of Room 107 in Howard Hall.
Professor Parker had stepped out from behind the lectern to stare a hole through him from across the room. The guy was young—couldn’t have been much older than thirty—but he dressed like a crusty old coot in a beige wool suit, red bow tie, and green suspenders. Parker probably hadn’t had a moment of fun in his entire life.
“Mr. Kite? Yoo-hoo! You with us? Terribly sorry to wrench you up out of your nap, but we’ve kind of got a class going here.”