“You put that—,” Pearl started to say, but before another word made it past her lips, Bert brought the knife around in a tight arc across his chest and sank half of the thirteen-inch blade into his shoulder, just above the cracked top of the cast. It didn’t seem to bother him much, because he yanked it out and jabbed it in again. And again.
“Bert!” Pearl shouted. “You stop that this instant!”
Bert wasn’t listening. He stabbed himself a fourth time, sinking it awful damn deep this time, then worked that handle around, twisting it into the thin meat of his shoulder like he was digging for clams at the beach. Blood cascaded down the black skin and yellow cast. He kept at it like a man possessed.
We all watched, transfixed, nobody moving until finally Pearl snapped out of it and yelled to Junior, “Stop him! Now!”
Junior brought his left elbow up in a swift jab and smashed it into my nose. I fell back into the bar and sank to the floor, my butt landing painfully on the brass bar. Then there was some sort of scuffle between Bert and Junior, but the only thing I really remember clearly was that at some point Bert was on the floor, like me. He slowly pulled something long, flexible, and bloody from his wounded shoulder and held it triumphantly out for his mother and brother to see. He flicked his wrist, flinging the thing away from him, and Junior promptly ground it into the floor with his boot.
Several long seconds of heavy breathing. I heard Junior say, “Too goddamn much blood. He ain’t gonna make it.”
Quiet for a moment. Then Pearl, “Go get my bag.”
The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back on the bar, and Pearl was saying, “Now you hold still,” as she jabbed something cold into the crook of my right arm, at the soft part at the inside of my arm at the elbow. It was some kind of goddamn needle attached to a long stretch of surgical tubing.
The only thing my fogged brain could think of to say was, “Hey, hey, waitaminute … is that thing sterile?”
Pearl gave me her lopsided smile as the yellow tube grew red, starting at my arm and traveling down into Bert’s arm. He was down beneath me, lying on a table that had been shoved against the bar. He looked unconscious or dead. His shoulder was wrapped with the rags that Fat Ernst used to mop up spilled beer on the bar.
“Wait … wait. We don’t even have the same blood type,” I croaked. Of course, I was just guessing, but it seemed like the smart thing to say.
Pearl smiled at me again, and it was clear that she could care less. “Blood is blood,” she whispered, sliding her finger down my forehead. “It don’t matter when life is leaving.” Her touch on my nose left something warm and slimy behind. After a moment, I realized she was marking me, painting something on my face. “Everything you think you know, all your science, all your books and facts and bullshit, it means nothing. Nothing. There are forces out there, powers beyond what is known, out beyond your pathetic nightmares, little boy.”
She turned to Bert after finishing with me, and dipped her finger into a bowl filled with something black. She left a streak of the liquid straight down his bare chest. On either side of the line, she started drawing weird symbols and shapes, mostly around Bert’s heart. “I can read clouds. I can hear what the wind whispers. I can see in the dark.” She dug around in her bag for a moment, pulled out some kind of metal shaft. It glinted in the gray light and I realized it was a goddamn scalpel.
Without hesitating, she bent back over Bert and started tracing the lines with the scalpel. Blood seeped out, ran down his chest. “I can talk to snakes. To wasps. To cockroaches. To worms,” Pearl said proudly. “And I can control blood. Hell, I brought Junior back three times now.” She looked across me to Junior, standing on the other side of the bar. “‘Member that truck? Thought you’d never wake up. Good thing that driver was a big pig of a man, held a lot of blood in all that fat.”
My blood continued to drain down the tube, into Bert.
Pearl started chanting something in her hissing, garbled voice as she cut into Bert, carving, slicing, permanently etching those strange shapes and symbols into his flesh. It sounded a lot like what she had been singing when I had seen her at the burn barrel in her backyard that night we slaughtered the steer. I’m not dying like this, I thought. Not like this, with my blood slowly being siphoned out of me like some asshole sucking gas out of a car’s goddamn gas tank.
I tried to raise my right hand but couldn’t. I rolled my head over to the side and found out why. Junior was holding me down against the bar. I couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, nothing. My life kept slipping away, my blood being sucked out of me, down into Bert’s cold, white body. This wasn’t fair. I didn’t want to die. Not like this. “Please stop,” I whispered.
Pearl stopped chanting long enough to say, “Not yet. Not yet.”
“Please don’t,” I said. Cold lethargy settled through my limbs, anchoring my body to the smooth finished wood of the bar. I wished Misty would say something, anything, now; I didn’t care what they did to her. But I couldn’t see where she was. The reality of the situation hit me hard. No one was going to save me. I realized with an absolute certainty that I was going to die; I was going to die, my blood stolen, drop by drop. I had to think fast. But my mind was a blank gray slate. Nothing.
Pearl resumed chanting, cutting away at Bert.
My blood kept sliding away, my unforgiving, betraying heartunknowingly pumping it out of my arm, down the greasy tubing. Something sparked in my mind, fizzled quietly. I blurted out, “I know where the buckle is.”
Silence filled the restaurant.
“Bullshit,” Junior said.
I sensed Pearl watching me, so I said, “I know where it is. I know where Fat Ernst hid it. I watched him.”
“Is that so,” Pearl said quietly.
“He hid it in one of the hamburgers,” I whispered. “I saw him.”
“In the hamburgers?” Pearl asked.
“Yes, I saw it.”
“Well,” Junior said, “thanks for the tip, Archie. We appreciate it.”
I spoke fast, feeling a faint numbness creeping through my body. “Kill me and you’ll never find it.” That got their attention. “It’s not in the fridge. I put the meat somewhere else.”
Pearl grabbed my chin, jerking my head over so I was staring into her melted-wax face. “Where is it?”
I stared her dead in the eye and repeated, “Kill me and you’ll never find it.” Pulling my right arm out of Junior’s grip, I reached over and yanked the needle out.
Pearl looked down at Bert. She reached out and touched his neck, feeling for a pulse. After a moment, she said, “He’s back with us.” She turned her attention back to me and nodded. “He’s alive but just barely. You show us where the buckle is, and we’ll let you go.” She said evenly, “If I find out you’re lying, I’m gonna cut off your dick and choke you with it. Then I’ll feed you to the worms. Understood?”
I nodded. “And if I give you the buckle, you’ll let me and Misty go.”
Junior grinned when I mentioned Misty.
Pearl said, “Of course.”
“Okay. I’ll give it to you. But I’m gonna need gloves, a plank out of the wall over there, your snow shovel, and a shitload of duct tape.”
CHAPTER 31
Junior shouldered his way through the dangling insulation and splintered wall back into the restaurant, stomping across the Cadillac’s hood, carrying what I needed. He pulled me off the bar and held me up as my legs found the strength to stand. I swayed back and forth, dizzy from the loss of blood, feeling empty somehow. I looked up, found Misty watching me carefully from her place in the booth. We locked eyes for a brief instant, but it was enough. Enough for her to wink, slowly, deliberately. Enough to know that she was worried about me, that she was with me.