Bradley glanced at the others before spreading his hands to his sides, and the expression on his face indicated he was struggling to understand how he might have given offense. “Why, Clay?”
“If we’re ever gonna come to terms with these people, it seems to me we’d better pass an olive branch, assuming they don’t fucking shoot at us aga- Amanda? There’s something on your mind?”
“No…”
Clay turned to look at her with both eyes. The answer “no” rang like fossilized bullshit to his refined ears. “You’re sure, now? All social admonishments against saying rude things aside…it looks to me as if you just swallowed a lump of something cold and slimy down the wrong fucking pipe.”
“No, it’s fine. Just bit my tongue.”
“Uh, no doubt fighting to keep your fucking enthusiasm buried beneath the thrashing waves of that charming fucking yap. Okay, Bradly, as I was saying, assuming her majesty isn’t overtaken with another spell of the fucking vapors, we’ll skin some people off and head ’em back down the hill, huh? It feels too much like a prison camp up here. Almost expect to see Steve Mc-fucking-Queen with a baseball mitt stacked up in a corner somewhere.”
He paused for a moment to draw breath, noted the dazed expressions on the faces of his men, and realized the reference hadn’t landed.
“None of you pricks knows who that is, do you?”
“Heard of Lightnin’ Mc—” one of them tried.
“Jesus Chri-never mind. Just never fucking mind. The point, you uncultured twats, is you can’t reconcile goals with a group of people if you stand around shoving guns up their asses all day, huh? Shit like that tends to breed resentment. So we’re gonna see about evening up the numbers around here on a trial fucking basis.”
Bradley looked at Amanda briefly but found no help in her exquisitely bland expression. “Evening up the numbers… meaning… you want some of us to go away…”
“Most of you to go away.”
“Most of us, okay. Back to town?”
“Easy. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Down the hill a bit, Bradley.”
“Okay, down the hill,” he nodded in confusion.
“On a trial fucking basis.”
Bradley nodded sagely at these words. He wanted desperately to appear for Clay as though he was back up to speed on the strategy, feeling even, so he’d been left miles behind, and ventured, “How, uh… how many of us?”
“We’ll figure all that out in a minute,” Clay rumbled, looking off to the tents. His hooded eyes roved over the tight cluster of men bustling around the morning cook fires. White plumes of smoke puffed from coal beds as well as small camping kettles, injecting into the crisp morning air a mélange of food smells, not all of which were wholesome. It was a scent that hinted at material potentially edible, undercut by a low, sweet corruption, such as oil left out in the sun longer than prudence allowed. “For now I think we’ll just spread the word, huh? Get the boys thinking about who might wanna stay and who might like to decamp. Oh… frame it as a fucking camping trip with no adult supervision, huh?”
“C-Clay…” Amanda blurted.
He turned to look at her in mild surprise. “My fucking lady?”
“We’ll… we’ll want to have another meeting tonight—wanted to let you know.”
His expression didn’t change but something in his eyes… adjusted. They darkened like the rotations of focusing camera lenses. His face remained deliberately static; lips still cracked in mid-pronouncement, eyebrows still hoisted up benevolently like he was a wizened senator deeply engaged in pontificous benediction—or a–filibuster, perhaps—but his eyes chilled, taking on the aspect of targeting lasers from within the tired caverns of their sockets.
“Why, Amanda,” he purred, “two Bible meetings in one week? You’ll get me convinced you’re a band of zealot cultists, you keep it up. And what is it you neglected to cover a couple of nights ago; you suddenly gotta get together now, huh? Outside of the potential sin in leaving a job half fucking finished?”
She broke eye contact with him and refocused her concentration, thinking furiously; recalculating. Her instincts told her that buried somewhere within these new developments was a path and at the end of that path a vicious ending. She thought she detected in the moment a chance to author that ending in her favor—in her peoples’ favor—but she had to tread so carefully. She must walk the knife edge for as long as possible, not jumping until she balanced at the tip like an angel on the head of a pin. She must move quickly and make no mistakes. Above all, there must be no mistakes.
“It’s… just… this is new, Clay. It’s a pretty big development, so, they’ll want to know what’s going on, you know? There’ll be a lot of questions…”
He continued to watch her for a solid five-count, blinking in his exhausted way. Amanda did not avert her eyes.
Finally, Clay grunted softly and said, “So, not a fucking Bible study, then.”
“Well, we might open with a—”
“Oh, take no offense, Ma’am, far be it from me to asperse anyone’s fucking invisible sky wizard; perish the thought, huh?”
She fell silent, hardly daring to breathe, and waited. There was the possibility that saying more might prove out toward securing the permission she required but… there was also the very real probability that whatever else she said could backfire. So she waited carefully, a fawn under a bush frozen at the passage of some nameless menace. She watched his eyes, waiting for the lenses to unwind, and thought about how Jake would have been able to talk this man into a lazy stupor, and silently cursed Jake for running out on them. Regardless of how sound the planning had been, she didn’t care; she cursed him for his absence and wished he was there. Furious at herself, she wished him never to return.
You don’t need him, the cold voice inside her whispered—that same voice that had once said, “Go ahead and unzip him, balls to throat, and let’s see what’s inside. Spill him out on the linoleum, examine his least parts, and you’ll see what the Boogie Man is all about; just a sack full of smaller sacks, some liquid. Nothing special, you’ll see…”
Amanda felt something internally—a subtle shifting of perspective—and thought to herself that the wrong person in this conversation was afraid. Her eyes dipped to the softness of Clay’s neck, and she focused on keeping her hands limp at her sides. Her breathing doled out smooth like a mantra.
Clay noted the dip of her eyes and mistook it for the due and proper amount of fucking timidity. Not fully convinced, he slowly said, “I think it’s a good enough idea, Amanda. And would you, were I to devise a few points of note, be willing to present them to your group for consideration?”
“I would.”
He nodded. “Uh. Have the gathering, then, and let’s see about maybe making a little progress.”
She said, “Thank you, Clay,” and impressed herself at her own sincerity. She turned to leave, not bothering to glance at the lackeys gathered around them, and traveled three steps before his voice stopped her.
“Still no ideas on where we might send an emissary to bring Jake in, I take it.”
“Emissary? I thought you planned to just kill him outright.”
“Well, maybe I don’t need to.”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Clay. I truly have no idea.”
“Yeah. Well, head out, then, Amanda. Maybe it comes to you in fucking prayer.”
He watched her retreating back silently, different corners of his mind pulling away from the center in varying directions. There was something there. He wasn’t yet sure what that something might be, but it was there, itching away like a hemorrhoid perched on the caldera of his anus.