Now that the men at the bridges were dead, Willis and Harding were no longer concerned about further incursions, although they planned to stick to the outer road, just in case. Their thoughts had moved on to other matters. Like a number of Leehagen’s employees, Harding didn’t understand why they weren’t simply being allowed to deal with the other intruders themselves. He didn’t see the point in paying someone good money to do it for them. It never struck him that the man who would be arriving to kill them might have personal reasons for doing so.
He was distracted from his meditations by a single word from Willis.
“Look.”
Harding looked. An enormous 4x4 was parked on the right-hand side of the road, facing in their direction. On either side of the road, pine trees stretched away into the distance. There was a man sitting on a log close to the truck. He was chewing on a candy bar, his legs stretched out in front of him. Beside him was a carton of milk. He did not appear to have a care in the world. Willis and Harding both simultaneously decided that this would have to change.
“The hell is he doing?” said Willis.
“Let’s ask him.”
They pulled up about ten feet from the monster truck and climbed out of the cab, shotguns now cradled loosely in their arms. The man nodded amiably at them.
“How you boys doin’?” he said. “It’s a fine morning in God’s country.”
Willis and Harding considered this.
“This isn’t God’s country,” said Willis. “It’s Mr. Leehagen’s. Even God doesn’t come here without asking.”
“Is that so? I didn’t see no signs.”
“You ought to have looked closer. They’re out there, ‘Private Property’ printed clear as day on every one. Maybe you just don’t read so good.”
The man took another bite of his candy bar. “Aw,” he said, his mouth full of peanuts and caramel, “maybe they were there and I just missed them. Too busy watching the sky, I guess. It is beautiful.”
And it was, a series of oranges and yellows fighting against the dark clouds. It was the kind of morning sky that inspired poetry in the hearts of even the most tongue-tied of men, Willis and Harding excepted.
“You’d better move your truck,” said Harding, in his quietest, most menacing voice.
“Can’t do that, boys,” said the man.
Harding’s head turned slightly to one side, the way a bird’s might at the sight of a worm struggling beneath its claws.
“I don’t think I heard you right,” he said.
“Oh, that’s okay, I didn’t think I heard you right either,” said the man. “You talk kind of soft. You ought to speak up. Hard for a man to get another man’s attention if he goes around whispering all the time.” He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice rumbled up from deep in his chest. “You need to get some breath in your lungs, give the words something to float on.”
He finished his candy bar, then carefully tucked the wrapper into the pocket of his jacket. He reached for the carton of milk, but Harding kicked it over.
“Aw, I was looking forward to finishing that,” said the man. “I’d been saving it.”
“I said,” repeated Harding, “that you better move your truck.”
“And I told you that I can’t do it.”
Willis and Harding advanced. The man didn’t move. Willis swung the butt of his shotgun around and used it to break the right headlamp of the 4x4.
“Hey, now-” said the man.
Willis ignored him, proceeding to the left headlamp and shattering that, too.
“Move the truck,” said Harding.
“I’d love to, honest I would, but I really can’t oblige.”
Harding pumped a round into the chamber, placed the shotgun to his shoulder and fired. The windshield shattered, and the leather upholstery was pockmarked by shot and broken glass.
The man put his hands in the air. It wasn’t a gesture of surrender, merely one of disappointment and disbelief.
“Aw, fellas, fellas,” he said. “You know there was no need to do that, no need at all. That’s a nice truck. You don’t want to do things like that to a nice truck. It’s-” He struggled for the right words. “-a matter of aesthetics.”
“You’re not listening to us.”
“I am, but you’re not listening to me. I told you: I’d like to move it, but I can’t.”
Harding turned the shotgun on him. If anything, his voice grew softer as he spoke again.
“I’m telling you for the last time. Move. Your. Truck.”
“And I’m telling you for the last time that I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not my truck,” said the man, pointing behind Harding. “It’s their truck.”
Harding turned around. It was the second-last thing he ever did.
Dying was the last.
The Fulci brothers, Tony and Paulie, were not bad men. In fact, they had a very clearly developed, if simple, sense of right and wrong. Things that were definitely wrong included: hurting women and children; hurting any member of the Fulcis’ distinctly small circle of friends; hurting anyone who hadn’t done something to deserve it (which, admittedly, was open to differing interpretations, particularly on the part of those who had been on the receiving end of a pummeling from the Fulcis for what seemed, to the victims, like relatively minor infractions); and offending Louisa Fulci, their beloved mother, in any way whatsoever, which was a mortal sin and not open to discussion.
Things that were right included hurting anyone who broke the rules listed above and-well, that was about it. There were creatures swimming in ponds that had a more complicated moral outlook than the Fulcis.
They had come to Maine when they were in their early teens, after their father had been shot in a dispute over garbage collection routes in Irvington, New Jersey. Louisa Fulci wanted a better life for her sons than for them to be drawn inevitably into the criminality with which her late husband had been associated. Even at the ages of thirteen and fourteen respectively, Tony and Paulie looked like prime candidates for use as instruments of blunt force. They were then barely five feet four inches tall but each weighed as much as any two of his peers, and their body fat ratio was so low that a waif model would have wept for it.
Unfortunately, there are individuals whose physical appearance condemns them to a certain path in life. The Fulcis looked like criminals, and it seemed inevitable that criminals they would become. The possibility of their cheating fate was further hampered by their emotional and psychological makeup, which might charitably have been described as combustible. The Fulcis had fuses so short that they barely existed. As time went on, a great many medical professionals, including a number attached to prison welfare and probation services, attempted, unsuccessfully, to balance the Fulcis’ moods by pharmaceutical intervention. What they discovered in the process was quite fascinating, and interesting papers for professional and academic study might well have resulted had the Fulcis been willing to stay still long enough to cooperate in their formulation.
In most cases of psychological disorder, aberrant behavior could be moderated and controlled through the judicious application of a cocktail of assorted medications. It was simply a matter of finding the right combination of drugs and encouraging the subject to take them regularly and continually. Where the Fulcis were concerned, though, it was discovered that the drugs would only operate effectively for a short period of time once they had lodged in their system, frequently one month or less. After that, their effectiveness dwindled, and upping the dosages did not result in any corresponding decrease in psychotic behavior. The medical professionals would then return to the drawing board, come up with another potential winning combination of blue, red, and green pills, only to discover that, once again, the Fulcis’ natural inclinations appeared to reassert themselves. They were like organ recipients rejecting a donor kidney, or captive lab rats that, faced with an obstacle preventing them from reaching their food, gradually worked out a way to get around it.