“Turn me loose, son,” Otis muttered.
“What’s he gonna do?” hissed Ben.
“Don’t know but I bet it gets worse the longer he’s kept waiting…”
He pushed and twisted, working not to hurt his son, and then sighed. He wrapped an arm around Ben’s shoulders and looked at the others for help. Fred met his gaze, noted the man’s eyes brimmed wet and reached out to take the boy by the forearms. Fred coaxed them apart, his strength as irresistible as the separation of continental plates, and whispered, “Come on, Ben. Come on over here and stand with me a while…”
Fred looked at Otis and found he could say no more. They nodded at each other briefly.
“Sometime today? Before my balls drag fucking ruts in the ground for advancing age?”
The others made a path for Otis, and he approached the front of the gathering. The distance to cover wasn’t a great amount; perhaps only fifteen feet. Otis had a sense of the situation, though, and each step felt to him a long mile. He stopped at arm’s length from his accuser, the duffel deposited in the dirt marking the midway point between them.
The two men regarded each other, and when Clay finally sighed and shook his head, Otis said, “Don’t you shake your head at me, you son of a bitch. You don’t get to be disgusted at me.”
Clay’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and the smile that crossed his lips was slow, tired, and sad. “Goddamned fool; you can’t even tell which way a sentiment’s directed.”
Confused, Otis asked, “How’s that?”
“Fuck it. This sack of copious fucking weaponry was discovered in your bus, Otis. Don’t bother denying it.”
“I won’t.”
“Well, thank Christ. I want to know how it came to be there. Specifically: who placed it?”
Otis turned his gaze away. He appeared to Clay to be looking toward the window of the Cabin’s front room. Clay stepped over the duffel bag, positioning himself scant inches away from the other, and growled, “You stonewalling me, Otis? Listen… this’ll avail you not a fucking thing. We’re having this out right now and not a goddamned thing you can do about it. Who put it there, Otis? Tell me.”
Otis said nothing.
“It was Jake, wasn’t it? He put the time of his absence to good use, didn’t he, rounding up all this fucking firepower? Deposited it where my boys were too goddamned stupid or lazy to look—and that’s another thing!” Clay raised his voice as he looked past Otis to the gathering, “Searches going forward from this point will be thorough and invasive! No more of this… passing-your-eyes-over-the-room shit and pronouncing it proper. You’re to run the bastard like a fucking proctologist digging for polyps!”
He returned his attention to Otis and said, “Come on, tell me I’m right. It was him, wasn’t it? Where is he, Otis? You know where he can be found; tell me and go back to the crowd. Go back to your son and be his father, only tell me now.”
“Clay…” Otis sighed, “kiss my black ass.”
Clay snorted and, detecting Pap advance a step from the corner of his eye, shook his head. Being keyed into his boss’s moods, Pap saw the signal and held off.
“Fucking Otis…” Clay muttered. He held out his hand, glanced down at it, and then shook it as though it had fallen asleep. He sighed and said, “Turn the fuck around, then, and face your people.”
When Otis complied, Clay kicked hard into his calf, sending the man down to his knees. Gasps and cries erupted from the gathering and Gibs, finally losing composure, surged forward at Clay with the whites of his eyes fully exposed around the irises like an enraged mustang. He nearly closed the gap between them, and the tips of his fingers actually brushed Clay’s shoulder before the full mass of Pap’s meaty fist collided with the side of his head and sent him sprawling. Clay looked down at Gibs’s crumpled form wearing an expression suggesting he’d been interrupted in idle conversation and said, “Wait your fucking turn, Jarhead, huh?”
Ben yanked and surged against Fred’s grip.
“People?” Clay called. “People. I’m… I’m fast running out of time and fucking patience, here. I’ve made every effort to treat fairly with you lot; more so in most cases, than the rational would have deemed advisable. I suppose a certain amount of horseshit’s to be expected in such scenarios, and I truly don’t begrudge you your own special brand, but the time for these fucking games is now expired.”
Clay pulled the pistol from its holster and pressed it to the back of Otis’s head, who closed his eyes and breathed a long, forlorn sigh. His lips began to move silently as though in a chant.
Clay screamed over their cries, “I will meet you sin for fucking sin; Wrath to your Stupidity! I propose to combine these evils before you now, and in so doing, transubstantiate the whole fucking mess toward a condition of Justice! Unless…!”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “Unless you people tell me what I want to know. How far will you take it? Otis’s time, like all of our time, dwindles…”
“Oh… God… Dad!” Ben shouted. He threw himself violently against Fred’s arms, which had gone slack in growing horror, and broke free. He pinwheeled several steps before going face-down into the soil, scrambled like a darting cat, and surged forward again at his father.
“Jesus fucking…” Clay muttered. He fell back a step as Ben threw his arms around his father’s neck, sobbing, and yelled, “Don’t you do it you leave my dad alone, motherfucker, you just leave him the hell alone!”
“Come get him, Fred!” Otis hollered. His voice cracked like fine plate glass.
Clay stepped forward again, eyes wide and darting. Fugitive’s eyes, ever searching for their pursuer, as he reapplied the barrel. The boy buried his face in the hollow of his father’s neck and wailed and sobbed and Clay found he couldn’t help but look down at the child at the smooth brown skin along the back of his neck, likely as unmarred as it would ever be, as likely as his soul was likely to ever be, insofar as such a thing might chance to exist in such a fucked up world, and he saw the clenching of the young man’s hands at his father’s shirt, saw his father’s hands balled to fists in the misery of refusal, refusing to take up his son for need of having him pulled away, bodies entwined together swaying over the dirt like dying trees.
“Get the fuck up here and grab him!” Clay choked, his words cracking apart like thin lies.
And Amanda, watching this, saw that Clay’s hand now shook and that he’d removed his finger from the trigger. She saw these things and resisted the urge to collapse in relief.
He was bluffing.
“I said get the fuck up here, and fucking grab him!” Clay yelled.
Fred rushed forward, now crying openly himself with fat tears tumbling down stubbled cheeks, and took the boy’s shoulders in his hands. “Come on, Ben!” he urged. “Turn him loose! Step away, son!”
“No! No, no, no, don’t let him! Pleeease!”
“You guh… You got ten fu… ucking… seconds!”
“You watch him, Fred! You take care-uh, my boy, now, hear!”
“Oh, Jesus, come on, Ben! Come away, goddamn it! Turn away, boy, please!”
Clay looked on in horror, struggled momentarily, and cleared his throat. It made a sound like the dying wheeze of a four-legged animal. He brushed a hand across his eyes and howled, “GET HIM THE FUCK AWAY, GOD DAMN YOU!”
Fred had to pry the fingers apart and lift the boy up from the ground bodily, all the while Ben thrashed in his arms as if possessed. Otis hung his head and shook it habitually, repeating the words, “Watch him, Fred! Raise him up, oh Jesus help me! You take care, my boy!”