“How’d you know he was Southern?” asked Curtis. It seemed like a reasonable question.
“A feeling I got,” said Benton. “A Negro don’t get into his trade unless he has a beef against someone from way back. That boy’s looking for a way to strike back against the white man.”
That sounded like bullshit to Curtis, but he didn’t disagree. Maybe Benton was right, but even if he wasn’t, it was good sense simply to nod along with him. Meanness ran through him like fat on marbled beef. It wouldn’t be beyond him just to leave Curtis out here in the rain, and with a broken nose-again-or some busted ribs as a reminder to him to keep his mouth shut in future.
“Come on,” said Benton, and led them back to the truck at a trot.
“Looks steep,” said Curtis, as Benton drove down the slope at a sharp angle.
“Four-liter V6,” said Benton. “Baby could do it on two wheels.”
Curtis didn’t reply. The Ranger was twelve years old, the treads were at 60 percent, and four liters didn’t make it a monster. Curtis braced himself against the dashboard.
The Ranger might have made the climb on dry ground, but Benton hadn’t reckoned with the rain that had soaked into the dirt at the bottom of the depression. It had turned the earth to mud, and when the Ranger hit bottom the wheels struggled to grip, even as they began to climb up the opposite side. Benton gunned the engine, and for a moment they lurched forward before stopping entirely, the wheels churning uselessly in the soft ground.
Quinn said something, from which Curtis could only rescue the words “shithead” and “eating dirt.” Benton fired the Ranger again, and this time it made two more feet before sliding backward and losing its rear wheels in mud.
Benton slapped the dashboard in frustration and opened the door to inspect the damage. They were mired deep, the gloop almost touching the alloy.
“Shit,” he said. “Well, I guess we go after them on foot.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” asked Curtis.
“They’re unarmed,” said Benton. “You scared of unarmed men?”
“No,” said Curtis, but he had the feeling that he had just lied to himself.
“Well, come on then. They ain’t going to kill themselves.”
Benton laughed at his own joke. Quinn joined in, contributing a combination of hyena sniggers interspersed with cuss words. Then they were off, their boots sinking into the mud as they climbed the slope.
With no other choice left to him, Curtis followed.
The barn loomed large against the dark sky, with the elevator on the left side of it. It was forty feet high, and not as modern as the one close to the cattle pens near Leehagen’s house. There would be no breather bags, no molten glass fused to the steel sheets to allow an easy slide for the grain and guard against acids from fermented feeds, no pressure venting. This was a simple storage bin, and nothing more.
Louis’s breath was coming in jagged rasps, and Angel was visibly struggling. They were both cold and wet, and they knew that they were running out of both strength and options. Louis took Angel by the arm and pulled him onward, looking behind him as he did so. The Ranger had not yet appeared over the lip of the slope. Both the incline and the decline had looked steep to him, perhaps too steep for the truck in this weather. A little time had been bought, but not much. The men would continue the pursuit on foot, and they were armed while he and Angel were not. If they caught them on the open ground, they could pick them off in their current tired state. Even if he and Angel got to the barn, their problems would not end. They would be trapped inside, and if the pursuers called in others then it would all be over.
But Louis was anticipating that they would not call others. If what the old man at the farm had told him was true, then Bliss was coming, and Bliss worked alone. The ones who were now after them were acting on their own initiative. If they thought that he and Angel were still armed, the pursuers might have been more cautious once they reached the grain store, and caution would have given them pause, but Louis guessed that they had spoken to the old man before commencing the hunt. They knew now that they were dealing with unarmed men.
But one of the first lessons Louis had learned in his long apprenticeship as a bringer of death was that in every room there is a weapon, even if that weapon was only oneself. It was simply a question of identifying it and using it. He hadn’t been in a grain store in many years, but his mind was already anticipating what lay within: tools, sacking, fire-fighting equipment…
His mind began making leaps.
Fire-fighting equipment.
Fire.
Grain.
He had the first of his weapons.
Quinn crested the rise ahead of the others, and thought that he saw one of the two men disappear behind the barn. There were two grain storage units on Leehagen’s property. The main one was over by the new pens, close by the feed mill, while this one was a relic from the days when the herd was in its infancy, and had originally been a silage silo. Now it was used to hold grain in reserve, just in case anything should happen to the main store, or if snows came and separated the cattle. In fact, one of Benton’s tasks, when he wasn’t hunting down living things or intimidating those smaller than him, had been to monitor the secondary grain store, checking for damp, rodents, or other infestations. Nobody else bothered with it much, which made it a useful place for Benton to pursue his various hobbies, among them screwing some of the young foreign women, willing or not, who were occasionally transported through the farm from Canada.
Benton and Curtis joined him.
“You see where they went?” asked Benton.
Quinn pointed at the barn with his shotgun.
“It’s empty fields beyond there,” said Benton. “Ain’t a tree for three, four hundred yards. If they try to run, we got ’em. If they stay put, we got ’em, too.”
Benton had advised Mr. Leehagen to have the barn and the silo demolished, but the slaughter of the herd (a rich man’s foolish indulgence from the start) had negated the need for any such action. The silo had been damaged by the fact that it was side-tapped for gravity unloading, causing one wall to collapse inward. A secondary outlet, created against Benton’s advice, fed directly into the barn itself, an emergency measure in case it became necessary to house and feed the cattle there in winter. Benton was grateful that they had never had to use it. It was just like old Leehagen to cut corners in this way. Now it looked as if the barn might serve a final useful purpose after all, by trapping the men that they were hunting.
He slapped Curtis hard on the back.
“Come on, boy. We’ll blood you yet!”
And, with his rifle held high, he led the three men toward the grain store.
The barn wasn’t locked. Louis figured that nobody was going to cross Leehagen by stealing from him, and even the cleverest rat hadn’t learned to open a door using the handle. He stepped inside. The barn was small, with makeshift cattle pens running parallel along its walls. It was lit through a trio of skylights in the ceiling, with a series of ventilation grills beneath them.
“Take a look around,” he told Angel. “See if you can find oil, white spirits, anything that burns.”
It was a small chance. While Angel searched, Louis examined the outlet that fed grain into the barn. It was little more than a metal pipe connecting the silo to the barn wall, with a valve at one end to release the grain. The outlet was ten feet off the ground, a portable metal chute to one side of it and a plastic storage bin beneath it. Louis climbed on to the bin and twisted the valve. It was slightly rusted, and he had to push hard against it to move it, but he watched with relief as grain began to pour onto the floor of the barn. He held some in his hands, rubbing it between his fingers. It was bone dry. He twisted the valve further, increasing the flow. Already, the air in the barn was filling with choking dust and grain particles.