"I don't need anybody to see that I do what I'm supposed to do."
They drove past a lot of boats pulled up to a dock. They drove into a small town called Wilborn. They turned a corner at Catlow Street.
"It's down here a ways," Kelly said. "You got your knife? You left your knife and brought your comb, I'm gonna whack you.
Bower got the knife out of his pocket. "Thing's got a lot of blades, some utility stuff. Even a comb."
"Christ, you're gonna do it with a Boy Scout knife?"
"Utility knife. The blade I want is plenty sharp, you'll see. Why couldn't we use a gun? That wouldn't be as messy. A lot easier."
"Boss wants it messy. He wants the chink to think about it some. He wants them to pack their stuff on their boats and sail back to chink land. Either that, or they can pay their percentages like everyone else. He lets the chinks get away with things, everyone'll want to get away with things."
They pulled over to the curb. Down the street was a school. Bower looked at his watch.
"Maybe if it was a nigger," Bower said.
"Chink, nigger, what's the difference?"
They could hear a bell ringing. After five minutes they saw kids going out to the curb to get on the buses parked there. A few kids came down the sidewalk toward them. One of them was a Vietnamese girl about eight years old. The left side of her face was scarred.
"Won't they remember me?" Bower said.
"Kids? Naw. Nobody knows you around here. Get rid of that Elvis look and you'll be okay."
"It don't seem right. In front of these kids and all. I think we ought to whack her father."
"No one's paying you to think, Elvis. Do what you're supposed to do. I have to do it and you'll wish you had."
Bower opened the utility knife and got out of the car. He held the knife by his leg and walked around front, leaned on the hood just as the Vietnamese girl came up. He said, "Hey, kid, come here a minute." His voice got thick. "Elvis wants to show you something."
(For Pat LoBrutto)
“The Pit” by Joe R. Lansdale
Six months earlier they had captured him. Tonight Harry went into the pit. He and Big George, right after the bull terriers got through tearing the guts out of one another. When that was over, he and George would go down and do the business. The loser would stay there and be fed to the dogs, each of which had been starved for the occasion.
When the dogs finished eating, the loser's head would go up on a pole. Already a dozen poles circled the pit. On each rested a head, or skull, depending on how long it had been exposed to the elements, ambitious pole-climbing ants and hungry birds. And of course how much flesh the terriers ripped off before it was erected.
Twelve poles. Twelve heads.
Tonight a new pole and a new head went up.
Harry looked about at the congregation. All sixty or so of them. They were a sight. Like mad creatures out of Lewis Carroll. Only they didn't have long rabbit ears or tall silly hats. They were just backwoods rednecks, not too unlike himself. With one major difference. They were as loony as waltzing mice.
Or maybe they weren't crazy and he was. Sometimes he felt as if he had stepped into an alternate universe where the old laws of nature and what was right and wrong did not apply. Just like Alice plunging down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
The crowd about the pit had been mumbling and talking, but now they grew silent.
Out into the glow of the neon lamps stepped a man dressed in a black suit and hat. A massive rattlesnake was coiled about his right arm. It was wriggling from shoulder to wrist. About his left wrist a smaller snake was wrapped, a copperhead. The man held a Bible in his right hand. He was called Preacher.
Draping the monstrous rattlesnake around his neck, Preacher let it hang there.
It dangled that way as if drugged. Its tongue would flash out from time to time.
It gave Harry the willies. He hated snakes. They always seemed to be smiling.
Nothing was that fucking funny, not all the time.
Preacher opened his Bible and read:
"Behold, I give unto you the power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing will by any means hurt you."
Preacher paused and looked at the sky. "So God," he said, "we want to thank you for a pretty good potato crop, though you've done better, and we want to thank you for the terriers, even though we had to raise and feed them ourselves, and we want to thank you for sending these outsiders our way, thank you for Harry Joe Stinton and Big George, the nigger."
Preacher paused and looked about the congregation. He lifted the hand with the copperhead in it high above his head. Slowly he lowered it and pointed the snake-filled fist at George. "Three times this here nigger has gone into the pit, and three times he has come out victorious. Couple times against whites, once against another nigger. Some of us think he's cheating.