“I’m over here, big boy! Still waiting for that spanking!”
His footsteps abruptly stopped. Dead quiet for thirty seconds, and then the footsteps started up again, heading in her general direction.
“Oh, no, please,” she moaned. “Don’t hurt me, Donaldson. I’m so afraid you’ll hurt me.”
He was close now, and she turned and started back toward the road, her hands out in front of her to prevent collision with a tree.
A glint of light up ahead—the Honda’s windshield catching a piece of moonlight.
Lucy emerged from the woods, her hands throbbing from circulation loss. She stumbled into the car and turned around to watch the treeline.
“Come on, big boy! I’m right here! You can make it!”
Donaldson staggered out of the woods holding a tire iron, and when the moon struck his eyes, they were already half-closed.
He froze.
He opened his mouth to say something, but fell over instead, dropping like an old, fat tree.
Donaldson opened his eyes and lifted his head. Dawn and freezing cold. He lay in weeds at the edge of the woods, his head resting in a padded helmet. His wrists had been cuffed, hands purple from lack of blood flow, and his ankles were similarly bound. He was naked and glazed with dew, and as the world came into focus, he saw that one of those carabiners from Lucy’s guitar case had been clipped to his ankle cuffs. A climbing rope ran from that carabiner to another carabiner, which was clipped to a chain which was wrapped around the trailer hitch of his Honda.
The driver-side door opened and Lucy got out, walked down through the weeds. She came over and sat on his chest, giving him a missing-toothed smile.
“Morning, Donaldson. You of all people will appreciate what’s about to happen.”
Donaldson yawned, then winked at her. “Aren’t you just the prettiest thing to wake up to?”
Lucy batted her eyelashes.
“Thank you. That’s sweet. Now, the helmet is so you don’t die too fast. Head injuries ruin the fun. We’ll go slow in the beginning. Barely walking speed. Then we’ll speed up a bit when we get you onto asphalt. The last ones screamed for five miles. They where skeletons when I finally pulled over. But you’re so heavy, I think you just might break that record.”
“I have some bleach spray in the trunk,” Donaldson said. “You might want to spritz me with that first, make it hurt even more.”
“I prefer lemon juice, but it’s no good until after the first half mile.”
Donaldson laughed.
“You think this is a joke?”
He shook his head. “No. But when you have the opportunity to kill, you should kill. Not talk.”
Donaldson sat up, quick for a man his size, and rammed his helmet into Lucy’s face. As she reeled back, he caught her shirt with his swollen hands and rolled on top of her, his bulk making her gasp.
“The keys,” he ordered. “Undo my hands, right now.”
Lucy tried to talk, but her lungs were crushed. Donaldson shifted and she gulped in some air.
“In...the...guitar case...”
“That’s a shame. That means you die right here. Personally, I think suffocation is the way to go. All that panic and struggle. Dragging some poor sap behind you? Where’s the fun in that? Hell, you can’t even see it without taking your eyes off the road, and that’s a dangerous way to drive, girl.”
Lucy’s eyes bulged, her face turning scarlet.
“Poc...ket.”
“Take your time. I’ll wait.”
Lucy managed to fish out the handcuff keys. Donaldson shifted again, giving her a fraction more room, and she unlocked a cuff from one of his wrists.
He winced, his face getting mean.
“Now let me tell you about the survival of the fittest, little lady. There’s a...”
The chain suddenly jerked, tugging Donaldson across the ground. He clutched Lucy.
“Where are the car keys, you stupid bitch?”
“In the ignition...”
“You didn’t set the parking brake! Give me the handcuff key!”
The car crept forward, beginning to pick up speed as it rolled quietly down the road.
The skin of Donaldson’s right leg tore against the ground, peeling off, and the girl pounded on him, fighting to get away.
“The key!” he howled, losing his grip on her. He clawed at her waist, her hips, and snagged her foot.
Lucy screamed when the cuff snicked tightly around her ankle.
“No! No no no!” She tried to sit up, to work the key into the lock, but they hit a hole and it bounced from her grasp.
They were dragged off the dirt and onto the road.
Lucy felt the pavement eating through her trench coat, Donaldson in hysterics as it chewed through the fat of his ass, and the car still accelerating down the five-percent grade.
At thirty miles per hour, the fibers of Lucy’s trench coat were sanded away, along with her camouflage panties, and just as she tugged a folding knife out of her pocket and began to hack at the flesh of her ankle, the rough county road began to grind through her coccyx.
She dropped the knife and they screamed together for two of the longest miles of their wretched lives, until the road curved and the Honda didn’t, and the car and Lucy and Donaldson all punched together through a guardrail and took the fastest route down the mountain.
An introduction to “The Newton Boys’ Last Photograph”
The introduction to this story will be longer than the story itself. That’s because “The Newton Boys’ Last Photograph” is an example of hint fiction, a term coined by writer Robert Swartwood, who edited the 2010 W.W. Norton anthology HINT FICTION, of which this story was a part.
Hint fiction is a story that hints at a larger work, a larger world. One of the most famous was Hemingway’s 6-word masterpiece: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.” You get the idea.
The idea for the 25-word story you’re about to read was originally encapsulated in a poem I wrote in college. When the opportunity to be a part of Mr. Swartwood’s anthology presented itself, my mind instantly returned to that poem, called “Whitewater.”
Glittering silver--
a shock of water
moves behind them
tearing down the
slender, gray-walled gorge
Three smiling
sun-burned faces
sunglasses reflecting
the burly, white-bearded hiker
holding their camera--
one last picture before putting in.
And they could not know
standing there
adrenaline showing
through their white teeth
arm in arm
shirtless
careless
that the faint grumbling
of distant thunder
hardly registered by their ears
above the screaming rapids
means a torrent of summer rain
miles upriver--
a body of living sky water
races towards them.
In Roger’s sunglasses
you can see the tail end
of the gear-laden raft--
a red cooler
a mildewed canvas tent
three fishing poles
and the enormous, waterproof
backpack they’ll find--
which will hold the camera
which holds the film
which holds this
beautiful eerie moment--
when the Fulton County
Sheriff’s Department dredges
the terminus of the
gray-walled gorge
for their bodies.
I like the poem, but it takes too long to get across the idea of how utterly oblivious we are when it comes to what our future holds. This anthology gave me the chance to revisit that idea, clarify it, and boil it down to its essence.
the newton boys’ last photograph