Moses & Curio & The Blizzard of '93

MOSES AND CURIO AND THE BLIZZARD OF 1993





With the preacher's hand vehemently clawing away evil from his beet-red forehead, the new man Harlan Juneau reached his hands out to God, four lazy rattlesnakes dangling from his gnarled fingers.  He danced a vigorous jig of exultation as the audience behind him clapped in unison to the notes of Missus Judy Dickson's ebullient organ as her fingers worked the worn keys of an old Hammond. 

There were some days when the preacher could roust the crowd in a zealous bounce of rollicking fellowship with just his mere inflections and style.  Today, he had his work cut out for him, so Judy borrowed a page or two from the riotous black church services down in Birmingham that she watched from time to time on public TV.  Nelson Ecchols’ mission was a perilous one, but with her C-Minor provocations, the man of God had a battle-buddy with dynamic musical skills and a great sense of timing her keynotes to punctuate his points succinctly.  It was great theater.  Today, after all, they were introducing a convert from afar to the clannish members of the tiny Alabama mountain congregation.

The devoted clapped all around them.  Handling the theatrical serpents was enough to carry the day.  Harlan Juneau played his part perfectly.  As Juneau basked in the smiling faces, the tall, gaunt but wonderfully well-diaphragmed Brother Ecchols explained aloud to his flock that Harlan's salvation was thorough and thus, a glorious thing.  A gift from merciful Jehovah himself! 

Harlan had been lost, and now he was found!  He was the latest proof-positive of God’s innumerable blessings bestowed on His children daily.  All things were possible if one could only open their hearts to the Lord and lay their problems at the feet of the Christ Jesus.  Glorious was his loving name!

The nefarious serpents- well-fed and kept in a chilled ice chest until just before show time- “Would not harm Harlan!” Nelson Ecchols thundered as Harlan kissed the four snakes dangling from his fingers on their fanged lips, one by one.  One of them slipped him the tongue back.  It sensed a kindred, perhaps.

         Harlan was now a saved man, Ecchols reiterated.  Washed in the blood of the Lamb!  A God-fearing man!  A man of past sins, certainly!  Serious sins, crimes against the Lord and his sacred nation, that shining tower of freedom in the increasingly godless world…the One Nation under God... 

Why of course we are one nation under God.  Proof?  Why, it said it on the money!

What more need be said?  Give it an amen.

He was placed in their midst by the hand of God.  Delivered from the foul temptations of his past now.  Eager to walk anew, freed of his past.  Just a new brother among the simple God-fearing folk of the rolling Alabama hills.  Once, he was a man who walked with evil gladly.  However...by the grace of God, Brother Juneau…he was a man who now saw the light!

And besides!  Who was without sin in their lives?  You?  You?  Me?  No, only one man, of course!  The long forefinger rocketed upward to make the point.

“And who was that man?”  He slapped a hand to his ear and leaned forward to hear the name.

"Jesus!"

“Yes, that man, Christ Jesus our Lord!  Our Savior!  Hallowed be his sweet name…Juuust making sure you folks was listening!” he wagged a finger mockingly as he winked to murmured chuckles.

Of course they were listening, with rapt attention.  Live rattlesnakes were in their presence.

“And when he accepted the word of God and heeded his call for penitence, he was forgiven.  Baptized in the blood of the Lamb, his sordid past has been washed clean in the eyes of God the very instant he accepted Jesus in his heart.  Harlan is a man who came to find God’s love when he needed it most.  And somehow he was delivered into this house of God." Ecchols clasped Juneau on the shoulders…from behind. “And I wish to welcome him into a world that knows fellowship and love.  He is yet another triumph in the fight against the evils that befall so many who do not come to know the Lord.”

The preacher looked dreamily as he saw the adoration for the convert on most of the faces.

It was a triumph, a miracle in fact, given the man in question was baptized a Catholic, a secret kept between the preacher and his fallen cousin.

The words "in prison" had been marked through in the written sermon for the day.  In assuring his flock that their newest member was a penitent and pious man, Ecchols did not wish to taint the man's salvation with labels that society here on Earth, and even his all-forgiven and supposedly "all-forgiving" Christian congregation would subtly shun him for having.  Worst things were left unsaid in his house of the Lord.

Brother Ecchols also did not mention that maybe they should not leave their daughters around him alone for very long.

He probably should have, for God’s sake.

The service concluded in time for a further fellowship in the buffet lines and fish houses sprinkled around the rural areas of Dekalb and Jackson County.  A few of the forty-odd members mingled in the parking lot.  Harlan stashed the snakes in their cages and made a beeline, Bible in hand, out front to stand next to Ecchols as he jawed with his flock in the cold.  Though it was early March, winter’s grip still held the South.

Rocking on his heels, Ecchols stood speaking with Trent Buldew about the Alabama defeat at the hands of LSU several months prior.

“Good to have you among us, Harlan.”  Trent thrust out his hand.  "God bless ya’, brother."  Harlan gave it a two-handed shake.

“I thank ya’.  It sho nuff some kinda’ pretty country up dis way y’all done got up cheer.  It’s pretty high up in dem hills fo’ a bayou boy.”  The accent made Trent smile. 

“Boy now that’s an accent.  Nelson said you was from Louisiana.  What part?” 

“Yeah, I’m from down south Luzanna'.  Come up down der in a lil town name-a Cutoff.  You prolly nevah heard of dat place.  It’s way on down der.  Ain’t near about cold as dis up here neither, naw.  It’s colda’ denna’ hound dog’s nuts in two foota’ snow up in deez hills round nyah.”

Fifty feet away, a flat-topped, burly father of three girls and his plump wife were packing their flock into his Buick.  He worked efficiently, his eyes and ears tuned into the three men completely as he latched seat belts and scolded where needed.  His attention had been focused directly on Harlan from the moment he realized Harlan’s attention lingered a few moments too long on his middle daughter, Tina.  She shucked her coat in before sliding the aisle of the pew, inadvertently thrusting out her new bosom as she wiggled her arms behind her.  The man had an older daughter.  When she had blossomed, there were those stares and the father soldiered through it.  It was a natural thing, but it unnerved him all the same in a way only a father with a daughter at the cusp of womanhood knows. 

Harlan’s gape was different, though.  Intense, fixed in a hollow gaze as if single-mindedly focused on a notion that he did not think was honorable or Christian in the slightest.  The new fellow locked onto her and froze, like a cat that saw a jerky motion in still grass.  Something about the way the chubby man jingled his keys slowly in his pocket and clenched his teeth as he first noticed the pretty blond twelve-year-old struck the man as perverse. 

The father was a reserve deputy for Dekalb County and he knew the look.  Working some jail shifts for extra pay from time to time, Deputy Lamar Briggs knew that look came from the worst area of bad men.

Trent Buldew shook his head. “Naw, I ain’t ever heard of a Cutoff.  I ain’t been down in those parts.  Heck, I ain’t been out from here past Atlanta but once and that was for the amusement park when I was ten.  You from a swamp, huh?  It ain’t all that cold this week but I guess y’all don’t get cold much there.”

Nelson spoke up, “I heard it’s gonna be a lot colder next week.”

Juneau nodded. “Oh idda’ swamp alright.  Ain’t much down der but skeeters and ticks and hungry fish.  And I ain’t been cold but a few times like dis down der.  It gets cold, just not much.”

“Y’all eat alligators a lot?” Trent smiled. “I hear y’all eat them thangs down in them parts.”

“Sometimes.  You gotta’ be legal to catch one, though.  Dey right good eatin' though, ya.”

“Never had it.  Nelson tells me y’all two are cousins some kinda’ way.”

“His mama and my mama are first cousins.  His mama married a boy she met from the air base and he was from up dis way.”

“My daddy was a retired Master Sergeant when he passed.”  Nelson explained.  “His mama, Miss Babbette, asked if he could move up here when he got out of being locked up.  He needed to make a clean break from his past sins.”

“What you do?  If you don’t mind me askin?”

Harlan flushed a bit.  Nelson stared at him, wondering what he would say. 

The father leaned in over the Buick, staring.  He sized Harlan up.  Stocky with a gut.  He thought the food in a Louisiana prison was probably reflective of the state.  Harlan was medium height, his black hair cropped snug to the scalp, heavily oiled down and combed over.  His hairline retreated far from the brow.  The cop figured he was fifty.  No visible tats.  There was a softness in the jowl and around the eyes that the cop always equated with closet sissies.  There was also the hushed voice he used, almost a constant come-hither whisper that sent a shiver up the father’s spine as he looked at his daughter clicking her seat belt.  He noticed Harlan always had Nelson standing between himself and other men but when a wife or other female church member greeted him, he stepped to the fore immediately.  The most disjointed thing Harlan bore physically was the thick glasses.  Prison-issued, with the thick black frames that were all the rage in the Fifties probably.  He had the look of a classic, quietly scheming, sexual deviant.

The way Harlan twitched ever so slightly, his hand rubbing the back of his neck, the cut-away eyes, the deputy knew the lie or half-lie was to follow.

“Well, I was dumb and got mahsef tied up with a woman at a bar.  I used to do a lot of dat drinkin’ and druggin’ and all dat kinda’ idiotic stuff.  I didn’t know da Lord back den, ya’ know?  Well, dis one night, me and this lil ole girl hit it off and we went off into the woods to park and have a smoke.  We were hot and heavy and lo and behold, we got lit up by the police.  Da place she pointed me at was a Lover’s Lane.  It was roundup night, I spoze.  Den it turns out dis here girl was only fourteen and her daddy got connections, you know?  He was a Jew and all dat..." he circled his fingers, assumptive of the ingrained racism, "You know what I’m sayin’?”  He gave the wink and nod.

In the parking lot of the church that celebrated a Jew’s ultimate sacrifice, the Alabama gentiles all nodded back.

Trent’s eyes cut to Nelson and back to Harlan.  “Fourteen? You said a woman in a bar.”

“I knows how it sounds.  But Luzanna is a diffurnt kinda’ place.  I mean, da drinkin’ age ain’t but eighteen down dat way.  And around Nawlins, things can get weird in a heartbeat.  She sho didn’t look jess fo-teen.” 

Didn’t feel it, either, he thought but dared not say aloud. 

“It was dumb but she was in da bar with a buncha' her friends and dey was all drinkin’.  I was in da’ bar drinkin’ with my buddies, too.  How was I spoze to know?  Ain’t a man among us dat thought she wasn’t of age.”  Harlan looked away as if contemplating all the years the drunken choices of his recklessly evil life cost him.

With a shrug and a smile, he nodded his head in affirmation of his “But dem days are behind me.  I done a few years fo’ it.  I don’t plan on goin’ back neither.  I turned over a new leaf and dat leaf done caught a wind and blew me ovah here to Alabama.  If I can stomach being around all you Tide and Tiger fans, I reckon I can make do.  Long as y'all don't take tah cryin' too bad when dem Tigers of mine go to whoopin' you boys next year.”

They all laughed at that.  After all, guys, she was in a bar, right?  Could happen to anyone in a bar.  Or so they had heard.  Dekalb County was dry.

Noting how brash Harlan seemed as he tried to assure men the girl wanted him, the father of three squinted at Harlan Juneau, smirked and went off to eat with his family, seething inside at Ecchols for sugar-coating a family member’s ills.

The next day, he drove to the station in Fort Payne and got on the phone with the Department of Corrections in Baton Rouge.



Bertrand “Grizzly” Fontenot was firmly into Goodfellas when his brother Pete came into his parlor from the kitchen.  Slaving over a Dutch oven frying up some chicken wings lambasted his brow with sweat.

“Man we need us a lil Pesci guy like him to work fo’ us, Baby Brother.” Grizzly laughed as Pesci readied himself to ‘get made’ in front of an ebullient De Niro. “He’s a hard lil bastard.  And he can shine dem shoes, too.”

Pete had already seen the movie and only smiled.  He knew Pesci’s fate.

When the initiation proved to be a ruse for the character’s killing at the hands of vengeful mobsters, Grizzly only shook his head angrily.

“Aw man!  Dey popped him?  Damn, dey always take da good ones down ovah some dumb bullshit.  I mean, hell, he’s an earner and he’s one hard lil bastard, so what da hell?  So what if he popped some asshole for calling him a shoe shiner?  Dat old greaser sumbitch shouldn’t a-fucked with him.  Dumb ass wops and dey thin skin.  I swear.”

“Learn da lesson wherever da lesson is taught, Bertie.” Pete shrugged and plopped his wide self on the couch next to Bertrand, handing him a plate of hot wings and a fresh Turbodog beer.  Grizzly shook his nub leg loose from the artificial lower leg and scratched the stump.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means you’re funny.  Means you’re fast on a trigger a lotta’ times.  Jess like dem wops you sittin’ der cussin’ in dat movie.”

“What?  I’m funny?”  Grizzly chuckled as he imitated Pesci’s wise guy brogue.  “Like, funny what?  Ha, ha, I amuse you?”

“Only when you say, ‘I’ll take Shakespeare fo’ a thousand, Alex.’  Dat shit cracks me up evahtime'.”

“Fuck you.” Grizzly chuckled.

“Fuck you back.” His brother handed him a fistful of napkins.  He belched and turned up a Coors longneck.  Pete motioned with his fingers and Grizzly Fontenot flipped a few buttons on his remote controls to get the volumes cranked up on a stereo and the TV.  It was always assumed they were being recorded.

“I got a rare bit of good news.” Pete mumbled in his ear. “Well, kinda' good.  Depends on one’s perspective, I guess.”

“How about from our perspective?  Please tell me Jowanski’s ass done got hissef hit by a bus.” 

Deputy U.S. Attorney Randall Jowanski recently indicted Bertrand and four others for racketeering and extortion.  It was the third such attempt by a state or federal prosecutor in seven years.

“Not dat good-a news.  I think dat bus done bounced offa' his ass if it did.  Sorry motherfucker.  It’s gonna’ cost us a damn fortune to pay out way outta’ a public indictment like dis one.” Pete sucked a drummette clean. “Damn, dem spicy!” 

Grizzly bit into a wing and shook his head at De Niro as he wept for his dead friend when he found out of Pesci’s death.

“Damn shame der, Bobby ole boy.  Damn shame ‘bout yo boy fo’ sho.” He tipped his beer at the TV in respect.  “Dead homies.”

“I got a call from our guy at Corrections.”  Pete wiped his fingers.

“Somebody gettin’ out?”

“Somebody done got out.  Slipped raht through my fingers, but damn if he didn’t pop back up.”

“Who dat?”

“You ain’t gonna believe it.  Harlan Juneau.”  Another wing’s meat was inhaled in a gulp.

A phenomenon Pete witnessed countless times occurred.  Grizzly’s face seemed to puff up instantly when his ire was aroused sincerely.  The head would seem to balloon up, his face exploding into a bright cardinal red.  He dropped the wing in his hand.

“When dey let him out?”  He spoke in a raging hush, trying to remain calm.  Air whistled through his nostrils with little building squeals of ire.  His jaw clenched.

“About a month ago.  His papers got shuffled around and my guy didn’t catch onto it.  But lo and behold, some hayseed cop out in Cowtipper-Bumfuck, Alabama called in right to our guy’s office and asked fifty questions about him.  Seems dat sorry bastard looked at dat cop’s little girl da wrong way and dat cop called in to see what his sheet was.”

“He done hauled ass to Alabama?  Who gave him da bus fare?  I mean, shit.  How he get gone right from under our noses?  Him of all people.”

“Ain’t sure yet.” Pete devoured another wing. “He got some kin up dat way, apparently.  I don’t know if dey know, but dey kinda’ gotta’ know, right?  Ex-cons don’t do no six years for shopliftin’ a pack-a Juicy Fruit.  He done took up with a preacherman dat some kinda’ kin to him.  He out der being all Jesus-freaky.  He puttin’ on a show for the unsuspecting hayseeds, I guess.  He done actin’ like he done got all his ass-fuckin' leafs turned da hell ovah.  Good cover I bet til dat cop found out.  Harlan wasn’t ever too damn bright to begin with.  I bet he starts gettin’ pulled ovah evah now and again out der with dat cop knowin’ who he is. We both know how dem mountain hicks are about dat stuff.”

“He’s a fuckin’ freaky alright but Jesus ain’t got a damned thing to do with dat shit.  You got details on what his setup is up der?  I want action soon.  He ain’t walkin’ and talkin’ no mo’ then he gotta’.  I’d drive my ass up der tonight and choke his ass out mahsef if I didn’t have dis court shit all dis week.  Goddamn dat Jowanski.  One day, I’ma forego my usual caution and lights-out dat cock-knocker sho’ nuff’.”

“Our guy didn’t know what all was what up der, but he gonna’ check with da parole fella and get an address or whatever he can.  I can’t believe he got out.  I figured he had it too good in da pervert ward to take a parole.”

“I bet he didn’t wanna’.  He gotta’ know he a dead man now.”

“Maybe he’s cool with dat.  I bet he got tired of being da wide receiver on da receiving corps after lights out.  You know a peepee-toucher like him wasn’t no tight end fo’ too long aftah he got to da joint.”

Grizzly Fontenot nodded and took a long sip of his beer.  Sitting it down and rubbing his temples as his head pounded from hypertension.

“Good God I hate thinking about all dat he done to her, Pete.” He sighed and pushed his fingers into his closed eyes.  “I still think about it a lot.  How she suffered…” His voice trailed off.

“Me too, brother.”  He patted his brother on the shoulder and gave him a hug.  Grizzly turned off the movie and tossed the remote control aside.  It was too hilarious for his mood now.  Everything was going downhill for the mobsters anyway.  He thought it hit too close to home.

“Our folks should have gotten him a long time ago.”

“He a tough nut to crack in there.  Dat one ole fella got the stab in him dat one time.  He just missed da sweet spot though.  It happens.  Prison labor is worth exactly what dey pay for it.”

“No, Pete.  It didn't happen den.  But by God, it’s really gonna happen now.  I’ma get his ass.  I made a promise for dat girl’s spirit to sleep sound.  I done told her ovah her grave one night, dat come hell or high water, one day Uncle Bertrand was gonna’ make him pay what he done did.  Now I might lie to a girl evah now and den in a bar, but dat one promise I’ma fuckin’ keep.” 

“We both was der.  And we both make it raht, Bert.  We gonna’ get ‘im.”

“Damned raht we will.  Make the call.”



Curio Phelonie made short work of a stalk of celery with a Ginsu knife and scooped up the slices.  Her man, Moses Holliday, working similarly on loops of Andouille sausage, lifted the lid on the pot of boiling water for her to dump it into the mix.  The celery joined the white onions, green peppers, okra and pre-browned duck, shot by Moses himself on Flechette Bayou behind his home.  Boiling steam laden with scents of herbs and spiced meat wafted through the kitchen.  They worked methodically, partners in the effort at which most folks in south Louisiana are often judged…a good pot of gumbo.

  It was a far relaxing task than the normal job they partnered up to accomplish when directed, killing those who transgressed against a Cajun mobster named Bertrand Fontenot.  It was not as pleasurable as their favorite pastime as partners, which was most everyone’s favorite pastime.  The thought occurred to Moses, soon after the most recent culmination of that pastime, that they had never attempted a decent pot of gumbo.  Stranger still to both of them, neither had ever made a pot, period.

Curio’s New Orleans’ upbringing had only taught her the intricacies of microwaved Chef Boyardee, constant doses of McDonald’s and Popeye’s chicken, and the occasional jaunt to the restaurants around the French Quarter when her mother was more or less lucid and flush with cash after a good night at Big Daddy’s.  Before Curio, Moses, being a man from Texas and not prone to having women to his home where he planned murders, could cook well, but he was not possessed with a knowledge of preparing Cajun cuisine.

They had laid together, tipsy, tooted-up and smoking grass, sexually spent with the TV blaring from the party room.  Too lazy to get up and either change the channel on the satellite or at least mute it, they listened as Justin Wilson sautéed, boiled, drank wine and joked his way through a pot of gumbo with all the folksy pomp and culinary flourish he was well-paid to demonstrate a proper pot of food.  After thirty minutes, they could almost smell sauce and rice swirling in the air of their bedroom.

“Damn, I’m hungry now.” Curio’s belly growled on cue and she giggled. “I swear I smell shrimp.”

Moses eyes were flame-red.  He could smell gumbo over the smell of cannabis smoke and sex as well.  “Let’s make a pot then.  I got a cookbook Pete gave me a long damn time ago.  It’s around here somewheres.  I’m bettin’ it’s a-gotta’ recipe for a pot of gumbo in it somewheres.”

“Mmm.”  She kissed his belly button.  It was an outie, something she thought cute on him.  “That sounds so damn good.  I haven’t had a bowl in forever.”

“You’re stoned, woman.” Moses chuckled. “You had some six days ago when we went over to Lake Charles.”

“Oh yeah.  Duh.”  She laughed and rolled over.  “For a Cajun that’s too long, though.”

“Means a run to town.  You up for it?”  The pair had been awake for nearly thirty hours.  Partying together for no more reason than they could and felt like it.

“You go.  I’m going to take a shower.  My hair is ratty as hell.  It’s time for a trip to see Kyle.  I have got to get this mess trimmed.”

“Okay then.”  He sat up and draped his legs over the edge of the bed.  Locking his fingers together, he stretched his long arms over head and then dropped forward to stretch his back.

“Wow!  I see one!”  Curio rolled over suddenly.  “Hold still!”  He knew what she meant.  Her fingernail scratched meticulously at a spot in the small of his back.  “Shit, I got it.  It’s not that big though.”

One of Curio’s minor pleasures was being constantly vigilant when his bare back was exposed to her.  Moses had been sprayed with shrapnel in Vietnam.  Occasionally tiny flecks of metal would work their way through his scarred skin and fall out.  She thought it was the coolest thing when she found one. 

She presented it on her forefinger.  Just a tiny bit of metal, tinted red.  He barely looked at it.  Weeping metal from his back happened for him enough for it to be blasé, but he still kept a tiny can where he put them when he found them.  Its volume had doubled since she began her quest to discover them.

“Bleeding?”

“Nope.  I just saw it sticking out a bit.  I don’t know why I find that so cool.”

“Me neither.  If you knew how much they hurt goin’ in, you wouldn’t.”

“Poor baby.”  She kissed the spot.  “I think you just tell people that so they don’t know you’re Superman.”

“Huh?”  He rolled back over and laid his head in her lap, looking bemused at her.

“Superman.  Man of steel?  I think you just so hardcore inside you’re made of steel.  You’re so full of iron, you frickin’ ooze that shit.”

“Trust me.  It got in there without my asking.  A lot more of it took Grizzly’s leg off, too.  Coulda’ been my balls it took off just as easy.”

“That,” she groped him gently. “woulda’ been a damn shame."

"Ya’ think?"  He smiled at her.

"Hell yeah.  You got more than most men I’ve known.”   

“Thank you.”  He sat back up and rocked to his feet.  “Or should I say merci beaucoup since I’m about to cook gumbo.”

“Tres bien.  Find that book.  I’m hungry.”

“I know where it is.  I’m on it.” 

Curio stayed in bed as he moved around the house a bit and then left.  She heard the Bronco fire up and leave as he went into town for the makings of something she wanted.  He never thought twice about it.  He probably didn’t really want gumbo and she knew he loathed going into a town for anything except Winston’s and whiskey.  Yet she said she wanted something so he got up and went to get it without even a hint of pause.  Even in his face, no subtle hesitation, no sigh of dammit.

She loved him best in those moments.  Growing up as she did, she learned quid pro quo under the vilest of terms from observing her mother’s daily junkie necessities.  For a junkie, the expense of anything, be it money, time, effort or even emotion required some fulfillment of their needs. 

“Take me and my kid to the doctor?”  “Five dollars and some head, sho nuff.”

“I’m dope-sick bad, man.  I need some hard candy.  You seen Tre?”  “I find him, bebe girl. But it’ll cost you half of it.”

“The school needs some money for Lemarie’s field trip.  I’m a little short?  Can you spot me a ten?”  “Yeah, but ya girl don’t need to see what I’m gettin’ ten dollars worth of.  Let’s take it to the bedroom for a hot minute...”

Only little Lemarie did see.  She saw a lot.  And after Duchess Leblanc was shot to death in front of her, her little daughter used her upbringing to stay alive and ahead of child welfare until she met Moses. 

He required no reciprocity other than her arms around him and her sincere love for him.  Which Curio gave willingly.  He simply did for her. He was not her slave and she was not his. He just wished her happy and did what was needed to make it so.

Without any forethought or consideration of what it may cost him in money, time, effort, or emotion.  Ever.

She dwelled on that the entire time he was gone.  She dwelled on it the entire time she made love to him again when he returned to the bedroom to tease her about not getting up all day.

She dwelled on it the entire time they got stoned and made a scrumptious pot of gumbo together.

When they were deep into a second helping, the damned phone rang.

         Both paused mid-chew and said simply, “Shit.”



         Harlan Juneau zipped up his fly, bouncing on the balls of his feet to cram his gut down in his jeans with a thumb as he did.  He stood alone deep in the nine acres of hardwood behind Nelson Ecchols’ house.  A semi-auto .22 rifle leaned against the rotted tree closest to him.  It was rarely fired but occasionally he plinked a few cans and pretended the targets were some specific district attorneys, guards and fellow inmates.

         As he got himself put back together, he kept looking left and right, his ears keen to the sound of footsteps.  Six years in the pen had taught him vigilance and how to quickly conceal contraband, if nothing else.

         At least once a day since he arrived at Nelson’s house, weather permitting, he retreated for a walk in the winter-crisp woods.  A few times, he built himself a small campfire and made himself a stoop of scrounged rocks to sit on beside the flames.  Compared to the muddy lowland of south Louisiana, the stone heights of the tip of the Appalachians where they petered out southward was delightfully foreign.  He wandered the stark woods for hours after his excursions with the magazine ladies.

         A lucky stop at the bus station in Mobile, Alabama placed him within walking distance of a convenience store.  Wanting only a Mountain Dew and a giant mound of candy bars when he walked in, he instead spotted an adult magazine rack and ravenously scooped up five Barely Legals and two Oui’s.  Carefully hidden in his suitcase, he kept them stashed in a waterproof bag he hung inside the hollow of the rotten tree.

         The sight of so many bubbly country girls around him when he rode with Nelson on errands was maddening to him.  Even while in prison, the girls dominated his mind.  His prized possession inside had been a two-inch square scrap of newsprint he managed to tear from a copy of the Times Picayune he got all to himself in the library once.  He carved out the picture of a teen girl coyly modeling a nightie for JC Pennys.  How it escaped his cell’s inspections for three years, he never knew.  It rode in his wallet from Processing to Mobile, still retaining its lewd worth until the notion of his complete freedom struck him. 

Harlan tossed the worn newsprint picture casually into the trash when he bought the magazines.  He could only imagine what the girl in the faded newsprint had to offer.  Now, he had seven magazines worth of naughty reality.  Extremely slutty close-ups, glistening poses in living color, instead of a random ingénue just smiling for a retail chain.

And no guards to stop him from taking his time sampling each enticing page.

         Shouldering the rifle, he pushed further toward the rear of the property…toward the sound of an unpaved county road.  When he reached it, he propped up in the woods in his usual spot and waited.  At almost exactly ten after three, as it did every school day, a school bus flipped on its lights and dropped a single girl off, not fifty yards from his concealment.  The tall, thin, strawberry blond, with a pair of tight, acid-washed old jeans hugging her terribly beneath the heavy overcoat she wore, bounced from the stairs of the bus and gave the driver her usual smile and wave.  Leaving a trail of dust, the banana wagon was out of sight due to a sharp curve in the road about sixty yards from the stop.

         Silently, he watched the girl, idly rubbing himself, panting without noticing he did so.  There was always a black lab that trotted up from an unseen house down the dirt driveway.  The driveway disappeared into the dense woods surrounding them all.  She loved on her pet for several minutes before taking notice of the cold and walking slowly up the driveway.  The dog brayed as it ran ahead of her, heralding his owner's arrival for any who cared to hear.

         Harlan looked at his watch.

“To school, seven-twenty-five.” He smiled. “Home, three-ten.  Like a Swiss watch.”

In a sweaty fog, he rushed back through the woods and again visited the magazine ladies.  After a more vigorous than usual interlude with them, he headed back to the house, scheming...

         

         “Moses, Harlan Juneau done finally fucked up and got hisself paroled.” Grizzly Fontenot swirled his giant cup of Glenlevit slowly as he leaned against the rail at the aft end of the Algiers ferry.  He stared sadly at the churning wake boiling from the screws of the huge ship.  It was an odd milky-white contrasted to the muddy Mississippi.

         “No shit?” Moses looked briefly at a perplexed Curio and winked at her. “When?”  He lit a cigarette and leaned on the rail next to Grizzly.

         “Few months ago.  January.  February.  Sometime.  I dunno.”

Grizzly was disheveled, swaying on his feet as he stared at the New Orleans skyline as the sun settled behind the West Bank.  Curio could tell he had not showered in a few days.  His long and flowing black hair was dead and oily.  His face bore a four-day beard growth.  “I jess found out about it.  My head ain't been raht since.  I need some closure, I guess.  Dey love dat word now'day.  Closure.  Dey some idiots.  Some books don't close all dat well."

“Got a line on where he is?”  Moses asked softly, looking around for listening ears.  The car-sized diesel motors drowned out their conversation.  There were no people within earshot anyway.

“Alabama.” Grizzly handed him a thick manila envelope. “Dis here should be enough info to get you busy up der.”  Moses handed it off to Curio.  She only looked puzzled but said nothing.  Her eyes looked around for witnesses as the men talked.  It was cold exposed on the aft deck of the ferry.

“Harlan Juneau.” Moses whistled through his teeth. “How long’s it been now?”

“Seven years, three months, sixteen days.”  He downed the scotch and tossed the paper cup into the wake.  “’Bout seven hours, best I recall.  The day itself was a lil hazy.”

Moses nodded and patted him on the back.  “I know.  I remember.  It’s done then.  We’re on it.”

“You two settle it best y’all see fit.”  Grizzly looked at Moses and Curio with a glint of malice in his eyes. "But I want it handled as thorough as you can possibly manage."

“Of course.” Moses scrunched his face up a bit.  Curio could already see his thought process at work. 

“Do I get filled in?” She asked. "Boss?"

“I don’t feel like it raht now, lil cheri.  You got a road trip to Alabama ahead-a y’all.  Dat’s enough fo’ you to know raht now.  Mo will fill you in, I’m sure.  I ain’t up to talkin’ it through raht now.  Shit, I ain’t even fit company to be around raht now.  I'm sorry to be dat way.  Be even ole Fontenot git dem blues ovah some things, mon cheri.”

"Sorry, Griz."  She motioned that she was leaving them alone together and walked away a few yards.

Moses nodded at her and patted his shoulder.

“It’s handled, Griz.  You know it’s handled.  We’ll get that note paid in full as best we can.”

“Merci, Mo.  Thank you.” Bertrand choked back a sniffle. "Now leave me be, old buddy.  I ain't real fit for talkin'."

"Will do.  We'll talk when we get back." Moses took Curio’s hand and walked away to let him hunch over the railing and sob.

They got into the Bronco parked several cars back.  Moses’ face was scowling.

“What’s that about?”  Curio looked into the mirror of the sun visor.  “Shit, he’s busted up badder than I ever seen him.  I didn’t know his ass had it in him to fuckin’ cry.  Who’s the mark?"

Moses watched as his friend and employer stood motionlessly against the rail.  He turned on the radio, loud.  Candlebox was just beginning Far Behind.

“Read the packet.  It’ll probably give you a good idea.”  She opened it and pulled out a few pages.

“Harlan Juneau…”  She murmured and moved her lips as she scanned down a rap sheet and other official documents from which Pete Fontenot had given them to work. 

“Ewww.  A damned nasty ass kiddie fucker!  Damn, he even looks like one.”

“Lemme' see.”  She flashed his picture to Moses.

“He’s put on weight.  I only remember him from the news at the time."

“He’s nasty.” She sulked as she read the prison file Pete managed to get his hands on. Details from his original indictment in the molestation and sodomizing of an unnamed juvenile female made her sick.  “Shit he deserves what we give him and all, but why do they want us on him so bad though?”

“He raped and killed their eleven year old niece is why.” Moses spoke low, still staring forlornly at his hunched-over friend, remembering the past.

“Holy shit!  It don’t say nothing about that in here.”

“He was never charged for that.  That’s probably just prison and parole stuff, ain’t it?”

She flipped around the papers.  “Looks like it.  He just got out after doing six years…” Curio whispered, “for molesting a twelve-year-old girl up in Denham Springs.  Nasty bastard.  How he get close to any of their kin?”  Curio slid the papers into the envelope and crammed in between the seat and console.

“He worked for them as a mule.  Some kinda’ way, he ended up around Lil Ray’s daughter.  A long time after Lil Ray was killed of course.  Cuz’ believe me, Lil Ray woulda’ cut his cock off inside of half-a minute with a rusty hacksaw…shit, with a jagged fingernail if he even thought Harlan Juneau was gettin’ a pee-hard a-thinkin’ about his little Justine.  Ray was a hothead on the best of days.  You woulda’ liked him.  He was a fierce lil’ cock knocker.  But he loved the baby.”

‘How'd it happen?”  She knew about Ray Fontenot from what she was told.  He was the youngest brother of the three and he was captured, tortured and killed by a rival mob faction when the Fontenots were battling for power with rival mob factions in New Orleans in the early 80’s.  Somewhere she heard mention of his daughter but had not paid attention.

“The lil girl just come up missing from a bus stop one day.  She lived with her mama up in New Roads...up there by False River?”  Curio nodded.  He continued. “Just another day, best I recall.” He sighed and shook his head.

“It was close to Thanksgiving break.  Her mama got her up and out by the road for the bus and left for work.  She had just gotten promoted to an assistant, I remember Pete tellin' me.  ‘Course, no one knew nothin' was wrong until her mama came home and the girl wasn’t back from school and hadn't never made it to school.  They looked all over.  Them two and their mama all went ballistic so they called out the outfit to canvass the woods and shit.  Hell, we all looked all over the place.  You shoulda’ seen dat sorry lot of dopemen, racketeers, and half the strippers from Baton Rouge and the French Quarter out there walking around.  Dumb strippers still wearing skirts and heels freezing their asses off walking in the woods around her house.  Half of 'em detoxing from alcohol and the other half dope-sick.  None of 'em dressed for the cold and mud.  Warn’t much help but they damned sure knew they better give it a try."

"I bet.  Massah cracked the whip on 'em."

"Well...you gotta realize a lot of them knew Ray, too.  And all of them worked for Grizzly.  So yeah, they helped look around the woods and all.  Plus the girl was always kinda’ around from time to time. Her mama was a waitress he tied up with."

"Waitress where?  At a titty bar?"  Curio frowned.  She often wondered how many times she may have ended up running afoul of one of the seedier men she caught looking at her with that eager stare when her stripper mother went into another room to test some product and/or pay the bills.

"Nah.  A Steak & Ale.  Stacy was actually an alright girl.  She wasn't a hood, if that's what you're wondering.  Her and Ray weren't never cut out for matrimony but he tried his best to do right by the girl.  Best he could, anyway.  Then of course he ended up dead.  But Pete and Griz made sure her and the girl were helped out.  She was Mama Ruby's only grandkid, so you know she was taken care of.  It hit Mama Ruby real bad when it happened.  It was her only link to her son, you know?  I hate she ain't around to know Harlan got his." 

The Fontenot's beloved mother was recently deceased.  She went to bed one night in September and stayed there until the funeral home came to get here later the next day.

"They find her?"

"About a month later.  It was a Sunday afternoon.  The week of Thanksgiving.  Everybody was out of school.  They had boy scouts and ROTC kids out huntin' and all.  Helicopters, church groups, cops, a whole buncha' folks.  Big doin's.  And that Sunday, she turned up in the big river up by Cat Island Refuge.  Towboat crew saw her hung up in a fallen treetop up that way.  They figured she had been in the water almost the whole time.”

"Oh man."

"It was a bad scene.  Stacy went nuts."

"I know she did.  I couldn't imagine that."

"No one should have to.  It was a long time before they put two and two together.  If that nasty fucker hadn't got himself pinched for messing with another girl up in the same area and got them to looking at his whereabouts around that time, he might have got away with it."

"And they're sure?  It's him?"  Curio looked at the photo of the balding pudgy pervert again, her teeth clenched, crotch tingling at the prospect of meting justice.

"They're sure enough to send us to Alabama.  We’ll try to make sure and find out for sure.”

“Oh fuck yes we are.” Curio looked at her employer’s shoulders heaving slightly as he faced away from them at the rail. “It’ll be my damned pleasure.  Really.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“Shit, if I coulda’ known the job had perks like cutting off some pervert’s balls, I’da signed up a lot time back.” She winced as she thought of the men who would follow her mother home when she was a child.  Duchess, with her perennially paranoid eyes, would spot them occasionally seen lurking around the sidewalks near wherever they were staying.  Often for weeks afterward.  Curio could never know completely if they set their sights on Duchess or her.  Or both.  “You just don’t know how many perverts hang out around strip joints.”

“Most all of ‘em do at some time or another, I expect.” Moses sighed. “We’ll ask him about Justine and cut the truth outta’ his ass if we can.  But only if it’s doable.  But if it ain't him that a-done it to her, I'll still sleep alright.  It's rare to get paid for popping a pervert the likes of him.  Kinda’ like a public service if you ask me."

"Hell yeah." Curio set her jaw and shut down some of the more upsetting memories that the mug shot of the convicted molester brought forth inside her.  She felt slightly queasy.  There were several nights that would never be completely forgotten.

The ferry neared Algiers and slowed.  They watched as Grizzly Fontenot turned and limped on his tipsy artificial leg back to the passenger ramp.  His downcast eyes never left the stamped-metal deck as he limped slowly away. 

Moses sucked his teeth and rubbed the stubble on his face as he saw the pain on his friend’s face.  Again he glanced at the inmate photo of Harlan Juneau.

"Time's up, you sorry bastard." He muttered and cranked up the Bronco as the ferry captain nudged the knees of the boat against the port. "You had more than enough of it after doin’ all them girls like you did."

“Doin’ one girl was more than was needed.” Curio laid her head on his shoulder and hugged up against his arm.  Feeling his raw strength and his firm stance as he seethed inside about the sordid harm the target had inflicted, she readied her wounded spirit for vengeance.



Harlan Juneau dropped the fourth mouse into the fourth cage, smiling at the immediate reaction from the three-foot diamondback.

"Hungry, eh big boy?"  He chuckled and looked at the other three mice milling about the other cages.  Tossing the fifth serpent's mouse inside, he carefully secured the lids and walked up the stairs from the warm basement. 

Harlan's housekeeper, Missus Judy Dickson, stirred a pot of venison stew in the kitchen.  He emerged from the doorway, startling her.  There was a queer way to him that unnerved her.  She was deathly afraid of snakes, faith or not.  Anyone coming from the basement had to have snake all over them.

"Smells good, mon cheri."  He walked over and slowly washed his hands next to her.  She could feel his eyes cutting to her bosom and turned away to find some more pepper.

"I hope so.  Brother Nelson loves him some stew."

Only when you make dat extra special gravy for him, you old bag.  Harlan smiled to himself. 

The preacher and the organist's clandestine affair was poorly hidden.  The only ones who didn't know everyone knew were the lusting pair themselves.  She would park her car around back when she visited at hours of the night when her “housekeeping job” were suspect.  The arrangement worked easily enough when only she and Nelson had the run of his house.  Brother Ecchols was now ministering and testifying to the sick, out of town, on Friday nights since Harlan moved in with him.  If Harlan knew anyone socially beyond the walls of the Macedonia Primitive Pentecostal Church, he could have asked if the socially chaste and eminently upstanding Miss Judy Dickson perhaps had some sick aunt or old friend she played bridge with a lot down in Birmingham or up in Huntsville or Chattanooga on Friday nights as of recent.  He bet he was correct.

Harlan had the place to himself on Friday nights as a result.  The ladies in the magazines came inside from the cold hollow of the tree on Fridays.  Harlan did not have cable TV but there was plenty for him to look at on the networks.  He had especially come to love Friday Night Videos.  Videos had become especially provocative since he went to prison in ‘86.

In the meantime, he had Nelson's public chastity to deal with.  When she came by to straighten up the house and cook, Nelson would immediately retreat to his study to work on sermons and research.  Alone in the kitchen, Harlan could hardly stop himself from picking around at the thick woman wearing the mundane denim skirt and a stack of graying hair piled high in a bun.

"One weekend I'ma make a big pot of jambalaya or gumbo for all y'all.  Mebbe fo’ da church if we can get a good deal on some seafood up dis way."

"I have a hard time with all that hot stuff.  Gives me heartburn."

Her tone subtly said, "I won't touch anything you put your nasty hands on."

Gritting his teeth, he dried his hands with a paper towel.  "I figure I make it tame up in deez parts.  I can always put some hot stuff in mah bowl if'n y'all cain't handle a lil peppah."

She forced a smile. "Well, I'm sure it would go over well around the folks.  We don't get much Cajun food here."

"And dat's a shame.  It's da best."

"I'm sure it is."

Harlan winked at her and walked into the living room.  The home was a decent-sized four bedroom, two bath abode.  Harlan's predecessor sold it to him cheap after taking a position at a larger church in Scottsboro.  Harlan had never married and never had kids.  The home was overkill.

"Mumps got me in the jewels when I was ten.  I can't have kids." was his explanation of that in private to Harlan.  If asked in public, he had forsaken marriage for the Gospel.

He was seated at his desk, which sat behind a couch that faced either a TV perched on a rolling stand or the fireplace, depending on his mood and the weather.  Today, the TV was pushed to the wall.  A flickering fire needed stoking.

"Dey still talkin' ‘bout it snowin’ dis weekend?"  Harlan poked at a smoldering log and tossed a tinder-dry split bough beneath it.

"Yeah.  I guess the bread guys and the milkmen musta' paid the weatherman off to get some spring break money for their kids."  Harlan chuckled and scribbled at a sermon on a legal pad.  "It's March.  We got snow before this late but it don't amount to much.  I hope it don’t, anyway.  Thursday, I'm meeting with the regional director for our churches in Scottsboro and then Friday I've got to meet with some deacons from up at a church in Scottsboro..." He realized such a thing should be kept a secret from his organist, at least for Harlan's mouth's sake, so he whispered, "...about maybe moving over there."

         "A new church?  It biggah?"  Harlan whispered back.  He went along with the ruse.  In his mind, he could see Judy giving the preacher a much more enthusiastic nekkid-show than normal that weekend when she found out he was getting a promotion.

"Two hundred on a regular Sunday.” Nelson smiled and nodded. “They got an outreach agreement with three other churches in Jackson County and a big one over in Fort Payne, so they're very involved in community issues.  I would like to be more involved with the outreach.  Times are very bad, morally speaking.  With Bill Clinton and his ilk getting elected, I expect the permissiveness of the media will only be emboldened that much further.  We have got to make a stand down in our backyard against that filth they call entertainment.  I never thought all that nasty pornography would be pushed into my living room and called art in my time."

"I hear ya’.  It's some rotten, dirty junk, to be sure."  Harlan's mind wandered into the "I Touch Myself" video he watched a lot the past few Friday nights.  No way had he wanted that kind of entertainment banned.

"There's a few men of faith across the area that are starting up a local branch of a Christian men's group.  They wish to form a political action group against that kinda’ filth.  Kind of like Christ's calling for good men of faith to band together against sin.  Promise Keepers is what they're calling it.  I've been doing some checking into it.  It sounds like a great cause."

"Sounds like it."  Harlan could scarcely hear what his cousin was muttering.  He was thinking about another free Friday night.  Now a Thursday as well.

"That meeting is up in Huntsville, so I'm staying overnight with a friend from seminary school."

"You ain't scared 'bout bein' snowed up in der?"

"Nah, my truck’s got four wheel drive.  They always overplay the snow card up in these parts.  I just worry about us getting an ice storm instead of a snow.  We get those a lot up here.  They're bad.  A little bit of ice is far worser than a little bit of snow that melts in a day.  And it’ supposed to get real cold, too.  It’ll take a while to thaw everything out."

"Dinner's about ready, guys.  I'm gonna’ head back to the house."  Judy Dickson called to them from the doorway of the hall, a lidded plastic bowl tucked under her arm and a shawl pulled over her head and shoulders already.  Behind his glasses, Harlan looked at her and smiled as she walked to the front door.  She tried to appear as the old dowager.  He bet his bottom dollar under that bunned-up gray hair and denim skirt, there was a lot of woman to love.  He wanted so badly to push Preacher Ecchols to dish about her doings in the sack but he had to hold his tongue.

"Thank you, Judy.  You be safe." Nelson gave her a platonic wave as she walked out the front door.

“See you Sunday, Nelson.”

Juneau closed the gate to the fireplace as the fresh log snapped as it caught up.

"You reckon ole Judy seein' anybody?  She kinda’ built nice for an old spinster type." He looked back at the Preacher, whose hand froze ever so subtly as he wrote.  Then the Bic continued scratching at the paper.

"I wouldn't know.  Her husband was killed in a car wreck about seven years ago.  She’s a good woman and God knows she does a lot for the people around her.  I imagine she doesn't have a lot of time for herself."

"Maybe I'll ask her to lunch one day."  Harlan chided as he stared at the preacher's back as the Bic scribbled across the yellow tablet.  "You think she would accept if’n I ask her?  Or you think she don't like me all dat much datta’ way?"

"Never any harm in asking, I reckon.  But don't be surprised if she shoots you down.  You might not be her type." 

And don’t you dare or I’ll make sure she ain't your type either, parolee.  He thought as he wrote. 

Harlan was getting to be more trouble than he was worth.  People were asking about him.  Subtle queries, dancing around subjects yet dipping toes into it. 

Of course, he was saved and all, Mister Preacher.  But I was kinda’ wonderin’…

They seemed to say without saying.  Saved, but…from what sin in particular? 

They all asked him without actually asking him.  So far, anyway.  What would he tell them when it was asked overtly?

"Shoot, preacherman."  Harlan couldn't help one more dig at Nelson.  His face was flushed.  "I'ma Cajun.  We evahbody's type."

"I wish you luck.  Be a good man and fetch me a shot of that stew, would ya'?  I'm starving but I'm on a roll over here.  I hate breaking a train of thought when the word of God spills onto the page.  I don’t mind fasting for the word of the Lord," he chuckled. “But I figure I ain’t got to if another faithful servant can help in serving the masses.”

"Yeah, I got it, Bubba.  You want some bread?" 

"Yeah." 

Harlan looked briefly out of the window toward the backwoods behind the house.  Somewhere, the ladies' pages hung in the hollow of a tree.  And he would have them all to himself for the weekend, with a winter wonderland to boot.  He had never seen snow before.

His mind wandered beyond the woods and found a lonely stretch of county road. 

All weekend…



"They're callin' for snow up here!  Yaaay!"  Curio clapped her hands giddily, a broad grin erupting across her pretty face.  "At least four inches.  Maybe more!"

"I'm glad you're so glad about it."  Moses scowled and dropped two heavy suitcases on the floor of their room at the tiny Boaz Inn, in Boaz, Alabama.  "I don't have snow chains, you know."

"What's snow chains?"  She looked at him, still smiling, effervescent as she shimmied in place.

"They are tire chains that help you drive in that white-ass, cold, slick as hell bullshit you're so blindly happy about.  We may need to get outta’ Dodge in a damned hurry.  Trouble with that is, there ain't no hurryin' in a snowstorm. Cops’ll be all over the place.  They'll probably shut down some usual roads they know ice up around here.  And we don't know which roads those might be.  Harlan is living out in the boonies.  It’s a guaranteed those roads will freeze up out that way just because they don't get traveled much.  It sucks.  We oughta’ wait it out and come back when it's a lil clearer."

"I thought Grizzly wanted it A-S-A-P, baby.  It seems awful important to him.  I hated to see him like that on da ferry.  It was sad.  I don't know this guy, but if we can get him and help Grizzly not be so sad, then it's a good thing, right?"

"He'll be sadder if we slide off the road with blood all over us haulin' ass from a capital murder scene, dear.  It's just a job.  Just because it's a personal thing and it's for a sad reason doesn't change our precautions, okay?  We really oughta’ drop it and come back next week, I’ma bettin’."

"C'mon, baby."  Curio slid off her mittens and popped buttons on her pea coat slowly as she backed against the bed.  "Let's at least get a look-around.  I wanna’ see what all they got at that big ass outlet thingee we passed coming here."

"Oh we're gonna' look around.  If for no other reason than to get an idea for if we abort and come back after a while.  It could be the snow is a big no-show.  If we can get him knocked down by this weekend and be gone without a hassle from Mama Nature, we're gonna’ get him and git gone.  That bastard has been on borrowed time long enough.  Justine would be graduating high school this year, if my math is right.  He gonna’ get what he a-denied her.  A serious fuckin education."

"Educate me on a few things, cowboy."  Curio popped the button on her jeans and unzipped the fly.  "I need some serious education myself.  And then maybe some shopping" 

Sliding his shirt off, he dove into bed as she giggled.



"Shit, it's cold!"  Moses hurried into the warm Bronco and stripped off his gloves.  Holding his hands over the heater vents, he winced.  His nose and ears were glowing red from the cold.

Curio put the Bronco in gear and drove down the county road that separated Nelson Ecchols’ church from the properties adjacent to them.

"Ain’t nobody up in the church." He breathed on his hands and fanned them by the vents. “I sure hoped we’d catch him there early.”

"It's Wednesday."

         "Yeah but there ain't much for a preacher to do but get the church ready for the Wednesday night services."

"We headin' over to the house then?"

"Yeah." Moses checked his maps.  "It ain’t too far.  I'm trying to get a feel for the layout around here.  This is some serious back road bullshit up here.  Half of these roads ain't named on the maps and the other half ain't got street signs.  I don’t like it."

"C'mon, coon hound.  Smell 'em up."

"Funny thang about coon huntin' is half the night you chase down some dumb furry critter and the other half of the night and all the next morning you chase down your damned dogs.  And the best you get is a shot at a damned raccoon so the dogs have got somethin’ to chew on and make them happy.  Them’s the dumbest huntin' trips I ever been on.  And I don't wanna’ chase this sumbitch nowhere.  It's too damned cold."

"It is that.  They're sayin' it's gonna snow hard now."  She turned left at his finger-pointed direction.

"Let's see what we can do then." 

They meandered around the roads of rural Sand Mountain until they found the Nelson Ecchols house.  Moses got out and slipped into the woods.  After an hour of watching and shivering, she picked him up.

“It’s too risky with the preacher and his lady both around,” he grumbled.  Random church members and a meter reader had visited the house.  Moses decided it would be better to come back tomorrow when all the churchin' was done.  Thursday, they may have separate chores and that could be exploited perhaps.

Moses watched the church that night.  Harlan was stuck at the hip with Nelson Ecchols and his flock all night.

Thursday morning came and the pair returned just before sunrise.  Again, Moses, dressed for an extended stay in the cold woods if need be, disappeared like a ghost into the woods.  The wind was picking up.  It was much colder. 

Curio had to drive far down the road before she found the entrance to a logging road with an old chain across it.  She backed into the end of it and hunkered over a walkie talkie.

"You read me?"  She asked.  No reply.  After a few tries, she knew she was too far away for reception.  There was nothing she could do but pull out one of the throwaway cellular phones.  There was a solo reception bar on the display.  Calling the number to the one in his pocket, she let it ring a few times and hung up.

Moses slipped through the woods quickly, angling toward the house.  The underbrush was thick with leafless blackberry brambles and masses of honeysuckle vines.  Without the abundance of leaves to help camouflage him, he was forced to move slowly and deliberately.  He followed a deer trail when he found it.  Soon he could hear the distant sound of a car radio and took his bearings. 

A phone vibrated in his pocket.  He paused but it stopped.  Checking the number, he nodded and switched off the walkie talkie.  It was out of range.

Cold and motionless in a thicket of young hickories, head-high rhododendron and massed saw briars twisting skyward up into the trunks of trees, he watched Nelson Ecchols prep his car for a trip as he listened to a gospel channel on the radio.  His eyes surveyed the house. 

Basement with a storm door leading the east side.  Fire burning, in a hearth, not a stove.  At least three bedrooms, he figured.  Standard building, probably thirty or forty years old at least.  A solid house.  Too big for a single preacher but maybe inherited.

At a glance, Ecchols himself posed no problem for Moses.  Middle-aged, tall, thin.  He probably had guns but something in the man's demeanor told Moses he didn't hunt much.  He was handy though.  Moses figured most all country folks were. 

As Moses watched, he was fascinated that the man was not just checking fluids. He was changing out plugs, wires and various filters on an '85 Chevy truck.  In the cold, no less.  He had Moses' respect for that.

About the time the preacher was finishing, Harlan Juneau slinked out the back door.  Moses had a bad angle but caught just a glimpse of the chunky man as he disappeared into the woods.  Harlan was toting a small rifle.  Moses slowly pursued him through the woods.

An hour passed.

Popping a third wad of Double Bubble, Curio read a Mad magazine and leaned back in the seat of the heated Bronco.  The tape deck was blaring the Cranberries.

A Jackson County Sheriff's car passed her, the deputy only briefly eyeballing her as he drove past.  She nonchalantly popped her gum again, but called the cell phone in her lap again.

Moses heard the big Chevy crank up in the distance and idle for a long while as he moved through the woods toward Harlan's last seen direction.  With his .45 in hand, he delicately and slowly moved with an overabundance of caution through the thick brush.  Any man with a rifle in the woods was a force to be respected.

When he closed the distance to where he best figured he could catch Harlan farting around in the woods, he hunkered down, waited, and listened. 

Nothing for an hour.  The woods were still.

He proceeded quietly away from the house, hunting his prey now instead of ambushing it, knowing he was probably close.  Moses was alert, sensing every tic of the forest around him.  In the distance, the Chevy drove away.  He heard the shifting cadence of a four on the floor as it rumbled away into parts unknown.  The wind was picking up all day.  Straight from the north, bringing to the south the cold kiss of Canada that would sit and wait for some moisture from a swirling low-pressure system in the faraway Gulf of Mexico to transform the world into white.

No sooner than he heard the truck drive away, he heard the sound of another vehicle as it crackled on the chert driveway and stopped.  Pissed, he wondered if it was Curio.  The loud squawk of a police radio's loudspeaker answered that.

"Shit."  He looked at the phone.  A missed call.  He dialed it.

Curio answered it on the first ring.  Her voice was barely perceptible.  The reception was virtually non-existent.  There were few cellular towers in rural Alabama in 1993.

"You okay?"

"Yeah.  A cop passed me by headin’ your way."

"He's here then, I think.  The preacher man flew the coop somewhere.  Harlan's out fuckin’ off in the woods somewheres.  I was gonna’ catch him out there.  This sucks."

"What you want me to do?" 

"Sit tight."  He heard the solid thumps of an unmistakable cop-knock on the thick front door.

"Should I move?  He saw me here."

"Nah.  He's probably on patrol.  He sees you sittin' in two places he may wonder about you.  If he comes back and asks, just say your man is scoutin’ turkeys.  That’s public land behind you."

"I'm sittin' then."

"If I blow this place, I'm coming out on the south end, okay?"

"Okay.  You okay?"

"I’m cold and but I’m eager, baby.  I'ma' try to catch him out here alone if this cop will get the hint at the front door and go the hell away."

"Love ya’.  Be careful."

"Ditto that.  I'm out."  He pocketed the phone and waited.  After a few minutes, the cop got in his cruiser.  Moses heard the slam of the car door, relieved.  He took two silent steps in the direction he believed Harlan went. 

Suddenly the cruiser's PA loudspeaker blared.  A Bubba’s twangy voice thundered, "Harlan Juneau!  I know you're home!  Come out of them woods, you sumbitch!  I WANNA’ TALK TO YOU, BOY!"

Moses giggled and holstered his pistol.  Heading stealthily back toward the original vantage point he had, he wondered how much urine Harlan Juneau just sent into the seat of his pants. 



Deputy Lamar Briggs drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his Crown Victoria, grinding his teeth.  Fresh from a disturbance call over in Fyffe which was easily enough to settle, he waited to have the few choice words he had been wanting to have with the pervert who looked at his daughter in a queer way.  The disturbance call ended with him having a chance encounter with Debbie Pardue, mother to two young girls herself and a member of the church.  Harlan gave her the creeps, she whispered to him when the conversation somehow turned to the church's newest member. 

He had looked oddly at her older daughter, the eleven-year-old, a good friend of Lamar’s own daughter.

Did he know why the man had been in prison?  She asked him.  He told her he would find out, knowing the truth already.  Angry, he drove straight to Nelson Ecchols' house.  He passed the preacher on the road.  No Harlan in the passenger seat.  Which meant he was home alone.  Perfect.

"Move your ass, Harlan!"  He bellowed into the PA again.

A few minutes passed.  Harlan Juneau sheepishly appeared from the woods.  Moses saw him appear from the woods without the .22.

"Youze about as subtle as a chain saw, Lamar."  Harlan approached the deputy with a snide grin on his face.  "What can I do for you, suh?"

Lamar blew hot breath in his clenched fist to warm his hands.  Then he punched Harlan hard in the belly.  The pudgy man doubled over, coughing.  Lamar Briggs crouched down to ear level.

"I done some checking on you back in the bayou, boy.  You may be saved in Christ, but you ain't saved from your dick, asshole.  They told me all about you in Louisiana."  He stood up and drove another fist into the small of Harlan's back.  The Cajun collapsed down to all fours.

"I'm a free man and you jess’ made me rich, you pig bastard!"  Harlan choked.  "I'ma’ sue yo’ ass directly.  You cain't do no shit like dis to a man.  You’ done done me wrong, asshole!  Yeah!  I done wrong!"  He hocked and spat as he rose to one knee.  "But I done did my time fo’ it.  I'ma changed man!  You cain’t beat a man for nothin’.  Not even in Alabama, you pig fuckin’ bastard."

"You changed, huh?  I seen how you looked at the girls, you fat faggot.” Briggs sneered. “And it's been noticed by other people." 

He gave Harlan a kick in the crotch from behind.  He hooted and grabbed his tender groin. 

"Now, here's the deal, peckerwood.  You're gonna’ take your sorry kid-rapin' Cajun ass back to whatever swampy shithole that birthed the likes of you.  And I mean sooner rather than later.  I see you here in a month, me and some of my boys are gonna’ drop by here one night in our bed sheets.  And we will make sure you ain't got the equipment to do that no more.  You followin’ me, you nasty bastard?  You really oughta’ take your own life if you can't hold yourself back, you know that?"

"I'll leave, Lamar."  Harlan panted and wheezed on the cold chert, holding his belly with one hand and his crotch with the other.  "I'm gone soon as I can get gone."

"One month.  Less than that if you can’t keep your eyes off of my kids, you hear me?"

"One month.  I got it." He rubbed his sore groin. “You sumbitch.”

"Thank you for your cooperation."  Lamar spat a wad of tobacco juice on Harlan's chest and adjusted his gun belt before sitting in his cruiser.  He backed out in a flurry of wheel-flung chert and disgust.

"Fuck you."  Harlan mumbled and got to his feet.  He knew he got off lightly.

From an unseen vantage point, a low snicker had to be stifled by the sole witness to the assault.

Moses pulled out his knife and his .45.  Slowly, he began working his way toward the house.  Harlan stumbled to the front door and slammed it behind him.

Curio watched as the cop sailed past her, easily doing eighty on a road intended for far less speed.  She dialed the phone.

Another car passed her by going the other way, a spiffy green Mazda 929 with a Pentecostal lady behind the wheel.

Moses moved to the edge of the tree line, nervously eyeballing the open ground he would have to cross to get to the house.  At a crouch, the pistol extended toward the windows, he rushed the house.  Half the distance across the wide-open yard, he heard a car slow and turn into the driveway.  Quickly, he diverted his angle and ran full-speed toward the rear of the house.

"Dammit!"  He flattened against the back wall and listened.

Squinting through her glasses, Judy Dickson caught a good look at a man in black running toward the rear of the house.  She figured she caught Harlan up to no good and smirked.  Nelson's truck was missing but she expected that.  He made a trip like clockwork to the Huddle House in Rainsville to get breakfast on Thursdays.  He was a man of usual habits.  He even made love with a cadence and habitual order of business.

She walked inside with a curt knock. "Harlan?"

"Yeah, Judy!  I'm in the kitchen." He called in a panting voice.

She cocked her head, puzzled.  There was no way he should have made his way to the kitchen that fast.  Shuddering in repulsion, she wondered what she had interrupted outside.

"I brought you some books by.  Nelson said you liked Zane Grey.  There was a ton of them at a thrift store I went to this morning."

         "Merci beaucoup!  I do love dem Zane Grey books."  Harlan emerged from the kitchen, holding his ribs in a pained way.  He was wearing a camouflage field jacket and jeans.  She stared at him for a moment.

"Was you just outside?"

"I was.  Lamar Briggs dropped by for a bit to say hi." He rubbed his belly.

"No I mean just now.  I thought I saw a man running across the backyard when I pulled in.  I figured it was you.  He was..."  She looked Harlan over.  The figure she glimpsed was taller, thinner.  She knew in an instant it could not be him.  No way.

"My Lord!  Harlan!  There's a burglar out there then!  It thought he was you.  He was dressed in black camouflage head to toe.  But it wasn't you.  Couldna’ been!  No way!"

Harlan was shocked.  His mind raced.  What was it Lamar told him?

"I done some checkin' on you...in Louisiana."

Harlan's pains were forgotten in an instant.  It all seemed clear in an instant.  Louisiana knew where he was now.  Louisiana had a reach beyond its borders that could grab him.

"Call 911!"  He ran to Nelson's bedroom to get a gun.

Judy picked up the receiver.  There was no dial tone.  Something in Harlan's panicking reaction set her into panic mode as well.

"It ain't got no dial tone!  Who is it, Harlan?  What have you done?"  She rushed to Nelson's bedroom.  He was trying to unlock a gun safe.  The .22 was left in a closet for him to use as he wished.  The other guns were expensive and always locked away.

"I ain't done nothin!"  Harlan got a key in the lock and pulled out a .357 Magnum revolver.  He checked it and jammed it in his waistband.  Selecting a Remington 1187 pump shotgun, he quickly unscrewed the plug cap and threw the plug aside.  The shotgun would then hold five shells instead of three.  He loaded it with buckshot.  Feeling the shotgun in his hands, he tasted the power of a firearm.  The jig was up for him.  He knew it.  Harlan Juneau added up all of the forces allied against him.  There would be no respite from death.

Harlan turned around slowly and faced her.  A domineering set of his jaw and the glare of a man relishing his sudden, if only fleeting, burst of power sent a chill up her spine.  She started to back out of the bedroom.

"But I 'bout to.  You condescending old bitch!"

"I knew you was just bad news!  Good Lord!  Someone is coming to get you, am I right?"  She fell to her knees and began stammering a prayer. 

"In my gun you can trust raht now, baby doll."  He walked to her, eyes undressing her.  She could see it.  "Glad you knew what was a-comin 'nuff to hit dem der knees fo dis nyah Cajun hot stick."

"You're a demon!  You sicko!  Someone is coming for you, aren't they?!  An angel from the Lord Almighty!"

"Oh I doubt dat, mon cheri." The icy change in Harlan screamed only deviant malevolence to her.  He seemed to stand taller, occupying more space.  Judy could almost swear he seemed to bulk up into some sort of fearsome, inhuman swine before her very eyes.  With a gun in his hand, he was suddenly far removed from the fat, slightly creepy man with glasses and slicked back hair.  A man who had only inspired a shudder of revulsion from those around him.

Now he was malevolent in a way she had never imagined. 

He clutched the shotgun firmly, looking down at her with glazed eyes.  "Ain't no angels I evah known 'cept dem buddin' lil cherubs dat feel like...heaven."  He leered at her now, thumb on the hammer of the pistol.  When he unzipped the fly and his dwarfish manhood flopped out for her to pray upon, she was horrified it had dried blood on it.

With the feel of the .357's muzzle to her forehead, she prayed for her life and did as he commanded.  He finished far too quickly for his liking.  When he was finished, he shot her.

"Sorry about yo’ piece of ass, der, Nelson.  Guess you gotta’ jack off all weekend in dat hotel room of yoze now dat she ain't comin' by no mo’.  Trust me doh, my man."  He tucked himself back in his jeans. "You get used to doin’ dat after a few years without, Cuz."

He was amped up now.  Knowing if an attacker was nearby, it had to be a minion of Grizzly Fontenot's, he breathed heavily and tried to calm himself. 

"Man, I shoulda’ stayed in da pen." He ran around the house, fortifying his position in his mind, but in fact only drawing the curtains.  Eventually he holed up in the kitchen by the back door and aimed at it with the shotgun, his back against a cabinet.

"Come get me, asshole.  If'n I go today, it's been a damn fine one to die after."

His ears listened for a quiet man.  What they heard first was a screaming girl.



Moses heard a woman’s screams, a pause and then a gunshot inside the house as he watched the house.

"In fo' a dime, in fo' a dollar, huh, Harlan?  You sorry fuck.”

Doubting the poor woman had gotten the drop on the ex-con, he dialed the phone.  He was hidden behind an open tin shed fifty yards from the east side of the house.  The connection was scratchy.  He glanced and saw the antenna indicator was only showing a sporadic bar.

"Hello?"

"I was seen.  We're blown.  Get down here.  Be sure you watch the front door.  He spooked out and done shot a woman."

"Holy shit!  On my way."  The connection was lost.

He watched the house, wishing he had his rifle.  The pistol was not suited for plinking Harlan's head off if he dared show his face in a window.

         "Help me!  Please! Help me!  Somebody help me!"

A girl's screaming from the rear of the house sent a shiver down his spine.  Though he had never heard it in such a young voice, he had heard that pitch of pleading several times in grown women.  It was exasperation, tempered with trauma and sudden triumph when they saw a potential for escaping their predicament.  He dared not think how many times he personally quashed those hopes.

He crept around the opposite edge of the shed, barely able to see the rear of the house.  For a mere few seconds, he saw a bloody girl, nude from the waist down, clinging to her crotch with one embarrassed hand and waving weakly with the other.  She was bawling as she staggered for the house.

"Oh my God!"  Moses processed it in an instant.  He began to jump and run to her, but paused one fateful second to decide if he should.  His grip tightened until it was painful on the pistol.  "Harlan. Goddamned you, you sorry sack of shit!" 

The whole time he was creeping around the woods so deliberately and sitting around giggling at a cop tuning Harlan up, Harlan had been at play in the woods. 

To his horror, the girl broke into a desperate run as she exited the edge of the woods and saw the house.  He noticed in that instance how cold his hands were.  The girl had to have been in the woods at least an hour by then, probably more.

She rushed for the back door on her long, scrawny legs, screaming for help all the way.  Moses opened his mouth to yell but realized his appearance would probably scare her away.  It all happened in a few seconds.  He heard the frantic slapping of her hands on the door.  Without thinking, he leapt from his concealment, running full speed to try to arm-tackle her away from the doorway.  He assumed Harlan would be shooting through a door.  It was reckless, but caught in the moment, he did not care about the potentials.

In slow motion, he watched in revulsion as the back door suddenly opened.  The girl blubbered, "Thank you!" loudly once. 

A sudden scream of recognition overtook her words.  It was broken abruptly as she was jerked inside the threshold by a fat arm in a camo field jacket as Moses rounded the edge of the house.  His .45 raised, he hoped for a single, clean shot.  Just one chance to settle the situation before it went any further. 

Grizzly Fontenot’s niece was forgotten.  Moses was out to save a living soul.

The door was swinging closed.  The space was only a scant six inches ajar.  He leveled his weapon at the space, hoping.  For a split second, he saw Harlan's face.  They locked eyes.  His final view inside the kitchen was the girl being backed into that open space, screaming wildly and slapping.  Harlan stiff-armed her into the door, using her as both a ram and a shield.  Her bare buttocks pressed the door shut in Moses' face.  The deadbolt latched.

"Let her go, Harlan!  You sorry bastard!"  Moses yelled in as deep a voice as he could conjure. “You’re done in easy enough without takin’ her down, too!”

A shotgun blast splintered the door dead-center as Moses ducked away.  The girl kept screaming inside.  Moses cursed himself at his overabundance of self-interest.  He flat-figured his split-second’s worth of hesitation to think about his own skin just traded his life for a young girl's.

A motor roared up the sun-bleached asphalt county road in the front of the house.  Another shotgun blast blew through a kitchen window, covering him in glass.

The Bronco screamed down the road, screeching its tires and grinding up the chert-rock driveway.  Moses rushed around to the front of the house, ducking as random pistol shots began erupting through the white siding on the house.  Harlan was tracking his footsteps.  He heard him dragging the girl through the house, randomly shooting a heavy pistol through the walls as he rushed forward to see who was now out front.

Harlan heard the vehicle rolling fast into the driveway and wondered if it was perhaps Nelson or Lamar.  Neither one’s arrival would help him under the circumstances but at least either of them would give his would-be assassin something else to think about.

Curio killed the motor and jumped from the Bronco, her Luger in her hand.  Gunfire boomed from inside the house.  Random sprays of wood and pink insulation erupted from the walls of one side of the house.

"What the fuck?"  Ducking quickly behind the Mazda 929, she aimed her pistol at the front door.  A huge hole blew through the wooden front door.  The unmistakable pockmarks of full-choked buckshot pellets appeared in the Mazda's windshield in front of her. "Son of a bitch!"

She shot back twice through the door instinctively. "Shit!  Who’s shooting!”

Gunfire was not a good thing.  There were no neighbors around the immediate vicinity, but they were around.  She also realized she may have been shooting at Moses.  He might have been inside the house without knowing it.

The shooting stopped.  Despite a fresh breeze whispering through the budding trees, she heard a girl screaming inside.  Her stomach turned. 

The scream was a very young girl's pitch.  And Curio may have just shot her.

"Get the bag!"  Moses yelled at her suddenly from the corner of the house. 

Her eyes wide, she nodded and retreated in a low crawl as another pistol shot blew a tiny hole through the corner of the house where Moses had wisely laid flat after he yelled.  Two more shots from a pistol came through the hole in the door.  One went through both of the Mazda's windshields and shattered the left headlight on the Bronco as she rushed past it.

Moses shook his head at the bad luck, but blindly fired two .45 slugs through the wall to get Harlan’s attention and cover Curio.

Inside, Harlan gripped the flailing girl by a bare foot, firing at sounds.  When the hole opened in the front door, he could see an old Bronco parked behind Lucy Dickson's car.  Suddenly two shots came back at him through the door.  He ducked into a bathroom and looked through the hole in the door.  A small brunette in black was scurrying toward the Bronco.  Dropping the shotgun, he fired the big magnum at her.  It was too far for accuracy, but it got her to retreat.

He was in a jam.  Two assassins.  He knew they were assassins.  And he knew why they were there.

For doin' in a lil girl jess like you... 

He looked at the squirming girl as he gripped her by the twisting leg.  Wondering how much moral mettle his would-be killers had, he pressed the .357 between her eyes.

"Shut it up befo’ you done get us both killt up in nyah!" She screamed again but a menacing thrust of the pistol to her brow silenced the next gasp. "Dey come to kill me, Lil Bit.  Dey’s hitmen out der, girl!  And dey won't give a shit no how about killin' no witnesses.  So you shut the hell up."

Her eyes widened and she whimpered.

"Now cheri," he released her leg, “you jess shut up and you do what Uncle Harlan tell you to.  And if Uncle Harlan get a-loose-a dis, he gone be a lot nicer to you da second time den he was dat fust.  You got it?"  He glared at her.  Pointing the pistol at her bare crotch, he sneered at her. 

"You don't do what I say, Uncle Harlan be a lot mo’ mean to you in dem lil ole snuggly places he liked so much.  He gonna’ die anyhow, so don't think he won't.  You understand?" 

She nodded yes, tears streaming as her lips quivered.  He looked with his eyes at her bare legs.  Her feet were purple from the cold.  Blood seeped from briar cuts all over her young white skin.  It was also smeared around her upper thighs from his assault. 

"You ruint yo'sef gettin' loose like dat.  Uncle Harlan was a-comin' back fo' you, sugar.  Lil thang like you, you jess what Uncle Harlan hopin’ for fo’ a long, long time..."  Motion visible out front through hole in the door caught his eye. 

"Damn.  Dey comin' back.  Now you jess lay on yo’ belly and be real still.  Like Uncle Harlan showed you, raht?"  He heard feet running and fired at the wall toward the sound.

She cried softly and rolled over.  He stared at her, swallowed hard and shuddered. "So soft..." He reached down to touch her. 

Bullets started stitching through the front door.  Unheard bullets.  They took him by surprise.  He defecated abruptly and dove for the ground as splinters and plaster exploded from the front wall all over them.  They both screamed and hugged the floor as best they could.

Curio dragged the duffle bag from the rear of the Bronco, her breathing heavy.  It occurred to her with their breaths visible as fog; they would have to be aware of it.  Quickly, she opened the case in which Moses stored Cletus, his CAR-15 rifle.  She assembled it quickly, got the silencer attached and slapped a twenty-round magazine of Teflon-coated bullets into it.  The bullets were designed to penetrate car metal and body armor.  Cop killer rounds, they were called.  They would do the trick on the wooden house.  Moses ran full speed away from the house.  Harlan fired a few shots at the sound of his plodding boots.

Curio put five .223 rounds through the door.  Covering Moses, she stitched her field of fire horizontally across the width of the house, aiming low to either take out a leg or maybe hit someone flat on the floor. 

"Good luck in there, honey.  Sorry about all this."  She changed magazines and hunkered behind the Bronco.  The phone buzzed in her bra.

"What the hell are we into?"  She muttered into the phone.

"He's got a girl in there.  A kid.  There was a lady that pulled up but I think she’s dead in there."

"Dammit.  Who let him watch their kid?  The dead lady bring her up in there?"

"I think he musta’ snatched her this morning.  I was about to make my move after I heard him shoot that other lady.  That girl, though.  She come a-running half-naked from them woods a-screaming bloody murder.  He's been fucking her out there, Curio.  It's what he does."

"Oh my God!"  Curio seethed and shivered.  Clouds were building as it neared noon.  "We gotta’ go get her!  Right?"  Her eyes moistened as she looked at Moses.

He sucked at the side of his cheek; the words he had to say left a bad taste.  "We gotta’ get him.  We can't get no more involved in this than we are.  This is bad."

"Moses...!"

"Don't!"  She could see him looking at her sternly from behind the shed as he spoke.  Random pistol shots still popped through the wall in both their directions.

"We'll do what we can do but we got us to think about.  That girl was dead the moment he snatched her.  If we can pop him before he does her in, that's great.  But there's gonna’ be a cop called when that girl don't get off the bus.  Hell, there might be a task force a half mile away combing the woods with dogs tracking her right here right now."

"Unless he killed her parents to get her.  We may have time…"

         "You can read all about it in the paper later, goddammit!  In the meantime, it…ain't…our…business.  It sucks, baby.  I know it sucks, trust me, I do.  But we gotta’ get him and get the hell away from this fast, fast, fast."

"Oh man.  It ain't right."  She could not hear the screaming anymore.  "It got quiet in there."

"I need something besides this pistol.  Get that shotgun out.  And get yours too.  Shit, get everything.  He's got a load of guns in there I bet.  I heard at least a shotgun and a bigass pistol.  Who knows what else?" 

Moses watched the suddenly-still house, trying to form some plan to get inside.  He felt bad for the girl.  He would feel worse if he or Curio got shot or arrested after breaching a house with the intent to murder, only to save a corpse.

"I'm on it."  Curio quickly reached in the rear of the Bronco and dragged the street-sweeper pump-action shotgun to her. 

"Baby?"  Moses said.

"I'm here."

"Get that thermite grenade, too."

"You wouldn't use that."

"If she's dead, you're damned right I would.  I'll burn this whole fuckin' place down.  Get out the guns and come to me."



Harlan tossed a crappy wad of Brawny into the kitchen trash bin, muttering to himself.

"Crapped myself.  I done crapped myself in front of her.  Be a damned man!  Harlan, you're a man!  It could happen to anyone..." 

He glared at the girl, who sat at the kitchen hallway with her hands and feet bound with duct tape.  She only looked at the ground, sniffling and softly whimpering.  He pulled up his pants.

She wasn’t looking at him.  But she was laughing! 

He knew she was laughing inside.  They had always laughed at him.  Always! 

And why had they?  Was it his fault he wore glasses and had bad acne at her age?  Was it fair he was pudgy, clueless, and greasy when all of those budding young ladies sprouted tits and suddenly grew long legs to match the muscles and height of the other boys his age?  Attributes of men that nature had failed to give him until after he had graduated?  They always laughed at him and dated those varsity jocks who wedgied him daily and slapped him in the back of the head.  There he was, white, pudgy, no hair on the nuts until he nearly sixteen.  Nothing to offer them.  No money, no game.  His only offer for them was a mean game of chess.

No, it wasn't fair.  But he still suffered their girly snickers and their rolled eyes when he tried to be nice to them.  But now, ole Harlan could give it back to them.  He could get even.  And he had, until she saw him cowering and crying out as bullets crossed through the rooms. 

She heard the squish of the feces in his drawers as he dragged her to the kitchen.  It smelled.  Oh yes, she was laughing just like when he had the runs back in the seventh grade.  He almost made it to the restroom, but the crowded halls as the classes changed out were hard to wade through without being rude.  He just lost a tiny, little squirt in his drawers before he got on the pot.  Of course the little brownish wet spot spread into a circle of horror on the butt of his khakis.  It was noticed two hours later when, that day of all days, he was called to the blackboard to demonstrate a long division problem.  They all laughed.  They all laughed about it all the way until graduation.  Then they laughed when they saw him in the bars in the years after.

She was laughing, too.  That tiny woman outside.  He saw her pretty face clearly for a mere moment before she hid and shot back at him.  All of them were giggling their heads off at him.  Giggling like when Clay Moreau jerked Harlan's pants down leaving Miss Carr's class and everyone got a good long gander at his tiny goober and flabby white ass before he could get his thumbs loose from his backpack straps and get his shorts pulled back up. 

He made several of them stop their laughing at him.  The girl in the hallway certainly was not laughing.  Now, for perhaps the first time ever, Harlan thought being laughed at was far preferable to being shot up by a machine gun.

For a long while, no one shot.  When his paranoia set in, Harlan would prod the girl with the shotgun and get her to screaming.  Harlan sincerely wondered how much of a motivation two assassins would have to save the girl.  Given the depravity of their assumed employer, he figured not much.

Holed up in the bathroom, Harlan wondered constantly how they would come at him.  Sooner or later, they had to come at him.  He was surprised they waited as long as they had.  Apparently, they either had somewhat of a conscience or a healthy respect for his weapons.

He wondered about the windows, the doors.  All were breaching points.  If they were skilled, he assumed they would be, they could get inside without him knowing if he nodded off or something kept him distracted.  He dared not move furniture in front of the windows.  He feared any motion seen would end with that automatic rifle emptying at him.  Bullets in quantity had a way of hitting things eventually.

There would be an assault.  Looking down at the girl, it was apparent to him they would suffer holding off from finishing what they came to do for only so long.  If it was him facing the potential to be arrested in Alabama, the unknown girl’s life was a small price to pay.  Knowing Grizzly Fontenot, he knew they dared not chance his escape and face reporting their failure to their boss.  They would be coming and since they were a pair, he assumed they would divide and conquer him.  He would need time to react.

But what to do to buy time?  Four bedrooms to cover.  One bathroom had no window but the others did.  Five rooms with windows....

What Harlan needed was a guard dog.  Something to get their attention.  Something to give them enough pause, maybe, for him to get a drop on at least one of them. 

Especially if that woman tried sneaking in the window.  All women had universal fears.  Snakes were a big one.

Shushing the girl again, he walked barefoot into the basement to fetch the righteous snakes.



Hours passed.  The temperature dropped further.

At five minutes after three, a black lab named Elroy jogged up to the bus stop a half mile away from his house.  When the yellow bus rolled past him that day and did not stop to drop his friend off as usual, Elroy looked perplexed.  Thinking his clock must be somehow off, he dropped himself to the ground and waited patiently with his sad head resting on its paws. 

There was no one left alive at his house to call him home and tell him waiting for her was pointless.

At some point, the cold wind made the lab get up and lumber slowly back to the house.  Elroy did so by walking a few feet, pausing to look back to the road one more time and repeating the gesture over and over until he made it back to the front porch.  He waited there until the snow fell. 



"It's dumb to sit here.  What if that preacher comes home?  What if a cop comes by looking for that girl?"  Curio fumed at four o'clock.  Moses returned from another recon run around the house.

"I agree.  But you pulled up in the front yard where he can see the Bronco clear as a bell.  I like to think we can get in and get gone with you or me covering the front door, but I cain’t be sure.  We try to slip away, he can pluck us off.  I wish to God I knew what all he was carrying in there."

"He's carrying a raped little girl.  This shit ain't right, Moses.  We should just kick it in.  We done worse against worser fucks before."

"You got an idea how to best do that then, right?  Cuz’ I sure as fuck don’t.  I’m sittin’ here and all I can think is ‘Keep it simple, stupid.’  We can just write her off right now and we can be gone inside of thirty minutes, tops.  I can lob that there thermite in the window and he'll come out soon enough.  He'll have to.  Be easy as hell, then.  One of us on one side, one on the other.  He comes out, we pop him and get gone before the fire department gets wind of it.  If she comes out, good.  If she doesn’t, ‘I’m sorry about your loss ma’am’ will be all I can say about it.  Not that I’ll be here to say it."

"We should do that then." Curio cast her eyes downward.  Even saying the words made her retch.

"You sure about that?" Moses asked.

"No." She whimpered and shook her head.  A tear streaked from her eye and she wiped it away.  "I don't think I can do that."

"I'm not sure I can either.  I wish I could.  I know I should."  He examined the pin on the thermite grenade.  When ignited, it could burn through a metal safe.  No one could even touch it due to the high temperature at which it burned.  "But unless I really got to, I ain't."

"We can wait for dark and creep in."

"It's getting cold.  One way or another we're gonna have to be in there by dark.  I don't fancy holing up in a sleeping bag next to a murder scene with a kidnapped girl in it.  Not a good idea."

"Agreed.  I'm cold as hell already now."

He held her to him.  "We'll let the sun set and we'll go in.  I feel so bad for her.  But it must be done and we have got to get out of here.  God knows how many cars I’ve counted today."

Curio glared at the house, her grip tight on the Luger. "Feel bad for him.  I'm aiming for his dick first.  Nasty fucker."



"Y'all still with me, ain’tcha?" Harlan Juneau squinted through the scope mounted on a Weathersby .270 rifle, aiming through the hole in the front door.  “Let’s make sure you stay that way.”

He sighted in on the left front tire on the Bronco and fired.  It slumped to one side.  He did not shoot Lucy's car.  The shotgun pellets through the glass was deterrent enough, he reckoned.  His attackers had to know he had a good field of fire on the Mazda.  Jumping in it as a getaway car was suicide.  And he may need a suicide run to the car before it was all settled.  Better if it ran when he turned the key.

"Sonofabitch!"  Curio jumped as the rifle cracked and the tire burst. 

"That's a long gun.  That makes three guns."  Moses shook his head in frustration.  "We gotta’ lil while longer until it's good and dark.  Out here, ain't no street lights.  It gets dark in a hurry."

"And cold when the sun goes down."

"That too.  Here."  He tore open a hand warmer pack and handed it to her.  "These get hot in a hurry so be careful." 

They heard the girl scream again.  Every twenty minutes or so they would hear a scream.  At first, the cries sent a wave of fury through them as they thought he was sexually assaulting her again.  In the beginning, he may have been.  Such was the rhythm of her cries. 

It sickened them.  For Curio it was a torture.  Countless times, he had to subdue her lest she fall prey to the ploy.

"It's just a coyote call." Moses had held Curio's forehead to his, stroking her with his hands as she tried to tear away from him and go kick in the door.  "To catch a coyote, you use a call that sounds like a hurt rabbit.  They scream like hell and here comes the ki-yote.  Then you shoot the ki-yote." 

"He's in there fucking her Moses.  I can't just..." She cried.

"You have to and you will.  You kick in the door, he'll shoot you and then he’ll shoot me when I come for you.  Or maybe I throw the fire in there with him and he kills her anyway.  I ain't having it.  He's using her as bait because he knows it'll work.  It is working, too.  We ain't put him down yet because he is using her."

"You just don't understand.  You know me.  You know why…I can feel her...I know what it feels like..."

"I know.  But you dealt with it."

"Not very well.  I kill people for a living now."

"She ain't you.  He ain't doin' it to her.  Listen?  No rhythm.  Ain't no 'Stops!' or 'Please!'  He ain’t a-gruntin’.  Nothing but idle screaming.  Just enough to let us know she's still kickin’ in there.  He’s wonderin’ if she’s deterrent enough for us to not just air that place out down to the foundation and be done with it." 

"Is she?"

"Within reason."

Curio looked at the darkening sky.  The wind was nearly constant. 

And shifting, Moses noticed.



At seven, they cut the power at the meter.  At eight, Moses unscrewed the hinges from the basement door while Curio threw rocks at the back door and roof.  Bullets once again flew from within the house.

Moses eased down the basement stairs by feel.  The gunshots were coming from near the top of the stairs that led from basement up to the kitchen.  He cracked a chemical light stick and sat it down on the stairs.  Immediately, a pistol shot boomed from the kitchen, aimed at him.  The basement door to the kitchen was open.  Moses leapt back up three stairs and twisted like a cat as he dove from the basement.  More shots ripped through the wall, trying to find him.  He rolled across the cold ground as bullets thumped into the dirt around him.  Curio had no idea since she was on the opposite side of the house.

He came to a halt with his roll, Cletus in his hand. "God forgive me!"  He fired three shots in a fan through the wall and made his way toward the rear of the house where Curio was positioned.



Harlan held pistols in both hands, sweating profusely though the house was cooling off when the central heat was cut off.  When the power went out, he placed the girl atop a bed in a spare bedroom with an admonition about the rattlesnake hiding under the bed.

"You stay up here until I come get you.  You hear?  Don't you be a-thinkin about jumpin' out no windah.  Dey shoot you dead and you might jess get bit if'n dey start acting a fool with dem guns and get dem snakes all stirred up."

He fired at the thumping he heard, in the dark, feeling like a fool.  He was sure the muzzle flashes would give him away but dared not light a candle.  The fire in the living room was long cold.  The rooms were dark.

The darkness of the basement changed suddenly.  He realized the door had opened from outside.  A pair of black boots materialized on the stairs and suddenly a light stick illuminated the room in a pale orange glow.  He fired with the .38.  The boots abruptly disappeared in a scrambling flurry.  Tracking the probable path of the man as he climbed out from the cellar, Harlan fired through the wall with the .357.  It was his last six bullets for the big revolver.  They missed.  Dumping the spent shells, he rushed to the pantry and reloaded it with the smaller .38s.  He jammed them both in his pants and grabbed up the shotgun. 

Two shots came through the walls and passed through without incident.  A third went through four walls and clanged off a wrought iron clock hanging in the living room.  It ricocheted back through the wall of the bedroom where the panicking girl lay.

The bullet buried itself in the headboard a few scant inches from her right temple.  Screaming through the duct tape over her mouth, she rolled off the bed without thinking.  The bed sat on high legs and she was unable to brace herself for the fall.  Landing awkwardly on her left arm, it broke at the elbow.  She screamed further as more shots clattered through the house.  Panicking, she tried to roll under the bed before remembering what danger lurked beneath the dark bed frame.

Her arm stung suddenly as she contorted, unable to do much more than scoot likes an inchworm away from the bed.  At first, she was unable to feel the weight of the rattlesnake's head as it worked its mouth on her forearm.  Only when she rolled over slightly and it released to recoil and rattle did she know it struck her.  Shrieking, she could only flinch and roll away wildly as best she could while trussed.  The rattler latched itself on her upper arm and held on until it was sure it had delivered its reflexive defense as thoroughly as it knew how.  Her heart pounding from the fear of being shot, it pumped the venom all that much faster through her as she realized she was bitten. 

Buzzing beneath the bed, the snake watched her as she cried out quietly and contorted pitifully.

She slipped away into death long before the battle between the humans was decided.  When she was finally still, the snake felt the cold creeping in the room so the pit viper made itself home in a coil beneath her bound arms.



Curio sat quietly at the back door, looking in through the giant shotgunned hole in it with a pair of night vision goggles.  She had a sawed-off street-sweeper pressed against the door, patiently waiting for Harlan to come back to the kitchen.  He did not for a long while.  She would catch glimpses, shadows of him really, as he rushed from room to room, never giving her the sure shot she wanted.

Patience was giving way to coldness.  The wind was at her back.  Clad in her thermals and with her balaclava snug on her face, she was still cold.  She dared not move.  Moses told her not to do anything dumb.  Moving when a man was shooting at noises was dumb.  She heard his feet shuffling down the hall toward her finally and steadied herself for the shot that would send them home.

It’s about damned time.  She leaned into the gun.  One in the crotch and a fast one in the face oughta’ do it…Come to mama, asshole!

Harlan could not stand the darkness any longer.  There were candles in the kitchen and the blackened house was too scary a place to defend. 

Walking into the kitchen, he flipped a match alight.  It saved his life.  The night vision goggles amplified ambient light by design.  The sudden flash of the match overwhelmed the receptors in Curio’s goggles.  The flare blinded her. 

She turned her head as her vision blurred, squeezing the trigger on the shotgun.  Most of the pellets missed him clean and splintered a cabinet door in the dining room.  Two pellets grazed by his hip. 

Yelping in terror and pain, he fired three shots with the shotgun.  The fourth time he pulled the trigger, the unmistakable click of a dry fire echoed loudly in the empty kitchen.  No sooner had he thrown the empty gun to the floor, Moses Holliday flew in through the kitchen window.

He rolled over the kitchen sink and thumped to the floor.  Curio raised the goggles to her forehead and looked in through the hole in the door.  Moses jumped to his feet in an instant and drove Harlan backward against the gas stove.  Moses gripped the shocked man's arms and threw a savage knee to Harlan Juneau's groin.  Quickly, he reached down and pulled both of the man's pistols from his waistband.  He threw the .38 across the room and flipped the Bulldog .357 over to grip it by the six-inch barrel.  It was now a dandy club.

Curio tried to get an arm through the hole and unlatch the deadbolt.  Her arm was too short.  "Door!"  She yelled. 

Moses ignored her.  Instead he hit Harlan Juneau across the mouth with the grip of the big Smith and Wesson.  Harlan was stunned but tried to backhand Moses.  He feinted it easily and uppercut him brutally in the chin with the pistol.  Harlan's mouth shed five teeth in a bloody splatter.  He fell to the ground, reaching awkwardly for the bayonet Moses had strapped to his shin.  Moses gave him a kick to the groin instead.  Harlan lay in a heap, flailing wildly.

Moses calmly walked over to the door and unlocked it.

The door opened slowly and Curio Phelonie walked into the kitchen.  She shut the door behind her demurely with the street-sweeper shotgun draped over her shoulder.  She looked down at him and raised her mask from her face.

"Whew!  Buddy, you might be a nasty pervert and you look like opossum that got run over a week ago right now, but I gotta’ hand it to you.  Helluva fight."  She crouched down beside him.  Moses cracked two light sticks.  The room and its inhabitants were bathed in a ghostly green light.  Curio laid her goggles on the stove. “You have no idea how fucked you are right now, you twisted motherfucker.  Really, you don’t.”

Harlan spat blood at her.  She never flinched.  Curio only smiled at him.  “Touché, huh?” She chuckled.

"Where's the girl, you sad fuck?"  Moses pulled the bayonet and stomped down on Harlan's hand.  He isolated a pinkie and in an instant, levered down across it with the thick blade.  The finger bone popped and the pinkie fell aside.  Blood gushed.  Harlan yelled and jammed the nub into his mouth. 

"I take a finger every thirty seconds until I hear you say it."

"Bedroom."  He spat  out two bloody teeth and mumbled.  His words were mushy.

"Watch him."  Moses pulled out a penlight and began opening doors as he worked down the hall.

Curio stood over the man. "I guess you know why we're here and so obviously interested in you, Harlan Juneau.  So I'm asking you some blunt ass questions because sitting around here all day kinda' took my usual flair away.  So.  First.  Did you really kill Justine Fontenot?  You may as well tell me.  You can go to hell with a clean conscience at least."

She cradled the shotgun across her chest and kicked out the spent shell on him.  She lit a few candles she saw on the dining room table and threw the light sticks down the hall as the wicks caught up.  She loved candlelight for intimate occasions.

         Harlan shook his head no.

Curio noticed a pot of tea left on the stove eye.  Someone had boiled up some teabags but never got around to finishing it off with sugar in a pitcher. 

"Strip your pants off, dickhead.  It ain't fair you left a little girl out der in dem cold woods all kinda’ raped with no pants on.  It's plenty cold in here to give you a taste of what that feels like.  He hesitated. 

"Now!"  She pointed the shotgun in his face.  He looked at her malicious face and shucked his pants.  He lay outstretched in his tighty-whities, spitting blood.

Flicking her pink Zippo, she lit the burner under the pot of old tea and turned it up full.  She kicked his pants off to one side.

"Don’t look so shy, baby.  What?  You like to pull it out for all the other little girlies but not lil ole me?"  She asked demurely and frowned with batting eyelashes as if scorned and then barked, "You gonna’ give me a complex if I get to thinking I’m not sexy enough for a man to wanna’ take off his pants for me.  Strip to your bare ass!  You fuckin’ bastard!" 

He gulped and slid down his drawers.  He wadded them in a ball and held his shorts to his pinkie’s nub to staunch the bleeding.

         Curio looked a long time at him.  Finally she laughed and shook her head.  Just as the other girls had always done.

"That's quite a disgrace, homeboy.  No wonder you been chasin' dem young girls so long.  Ain't no girl old enough to know what one is supposed to look like that’s gonna’ be happy to see that lil' grubworm pokin' out from under that gut for ‘em to kiss on.  Hell, that’s embarrassing even after you done fed dem enough beers to make 'em say ‘fuck it why not.’"  Her eyes beheld a new detail and she handed him a candle.  "Hold that down there by it where I can see it.  Must be bad light, cuz your dick sho' don't look right." 

Swallowing hard, Harlan held the flame by his crotch, flinching as the wax dribbled and touched his thigh.

Her eyes fixed on his sparse pubic hair.  Against the whiteness of his gut, there was an unmistakable smear.  Lucy Dickson’s forced blowjob may have cleansed the young girl's blood from his phallus, but the smear was still there in the hair and skin at the base of his penis.

"That’s blood in your pubes?!" She pointed, shuddering with the fresh outpouring of adrenaline and progesterone. “Ain’t it?”

"I dunno.  Don't think so." 

Her wrath was building immediately.  Curio picked up his pants and examined the pockets.  She found a wallet in a back pocket and a pair of girl's panties in a front one.

"Friends" was stenciled on them.  Below the stenciled words, Piglet, Winnie the Poo and Eeyore were hugging it out on the front side.

Curio seethed as she dropped the pants and held up the tiny underwear.  There was blood smeared on it.  She looked closer, holding it in the candlelight.  Dried semen was there.  The rage overwhelmed her utterly.

"Liar!" 

She swung the barrel of the shotgun and cracked it against his ear.  He fell back and rolled over in a fetal position, covering his head.  She turned the gun around and butted him hard in the ribs with it.  "That's her cherry, ain't it!  You fucking bastard!" 

Her own past flew into her mind.  The scum of the earth touching her.  Forced licks of their cocks and quiet admonitions for her to not tell her mother, who was in fact going to finish them off in a back room.  Whether Duchess knew her young daughter was being forced to basically act as a fluffer for her johns, Curio had never known.  She often wondered if her mother would have done anything about it anyway when the needle was dry for a day or two. 

She drove the shotgun butt into him repeatedly, never getting the blow she wanted but doing damage as he cried out.

"No, I think you said earlier?"  She gathered herself back together, panting.  "Really?  No, you said?  You’re stickin’ with that?  Never laid a hand on Justine Fontenot, huh?  You lying piece of scum!  You a nasty fucker!”

“Please, I ain’t done it to dey girl.”

“Grizzly and Pete Fontenot seem to disagree with that idea.  So once again, I’m askin’ you.  Harlan, are you suuure?"  She smiled and motioned for him to think it through.

"I ain't done it.  Dey wrong.  Evah one done been wrong 'bout me all my life..." He suddenly gagged as blood ran down his throat.  He hocked it up and spat it, moaning as he clutched his side. “Dey wanna’ believe I done it cuz’ even dat smartass Pete couldn’t catch who really done it.”

"I admit I ain't known them all dat long and all.  But bein' wrong ain't something they are a whole lot.  Near as I can figure, anyway.  They done sent us up here soon as they done found you was a free man again.  Now why you think they done waited all that time for you?  If they are so wrong, as you say."

"It wasn't me.  I ain't done it.  Dat why y'all here?  You tell dem two dimestore Acadian hoods to go straight to hell and fuck demselves and dey Mama.  I ain't fuck dat girl and I ain't killt her.  Dey done got it in dey head dat I done it.  Well fuck dem, fo’ not thinkin it through.  You kill me, dem cops gonna' know it's dem Fontenots done did it to me."

"C'est la vie.  That's their problem.  Not mine." Curio brushed broken glass aside from the ledge of the sink and leaned against it.  She stood the shotgun up beside her.  "I don't care, really, you know.  That girl they think you killed?  She done been dead a long time.  Whether you did or not, I'm paid to believe you did it." She pulled her Luger from its holster.

         "Hell I'm paid even if I don't think you did it.  It don’t make a shit to me.  You get dead any which way it is and I get a fat wad of hundreds when I get back.  But now, after all this shit you done today, I gotta’ ask.  Is it all about the cash?  I mean, really?  My man says you got a girl missing her drawers somewhere up in here.  You had her all to yourself in dem woods today, aincha'?  Bet that lil grubworm really lifts its head up high and spits when you get some poor thing like her all to yourself.  She was in her fuckin’ Eeyore Underoos!  What the hell, man?  You figure you ain't got enough for a real woman, but hey?  Some poor lil kid?”

“It ain’t like dat.”

“Shut up.  It is like that.  You get a girl like her all to yourself and hey, man…ain't you packing some frickin’ bigass Godzilla dick that day, huh!  You don't know me, but trust me, the thought of you fucking a little girl in some cold woods before she even knows what them parts are made for?  Oh man, it's so much past getting paid cash money right now for me.” She looked away from him and into the past of a girl named Lemarie Leblanc.

“You have no idea." She smiled and shot him in the shinbone.  "Clear, baby!"  She yelled aloud to ward off Moses. "Just a lil’ misfire.  Went off in my hand."  The gun fired into the knee. “Oops again!”

She let Harlan go through his screaming for a minute.  "How about that one you did do time for?  I guess you ain't done dat one either?  You ain’t touched her, huh?  Innocent til proven guilty, huh?  Not in my court of law, you prick.  Where you get dat girl in there from anyway?"

Harlan gulped and cast his eyes downward. "She followed me from the bus stop.  Me and her been flirtin’ a while…"

Curio aimed her Luger at his crotch.  "Which girl?  Justine or the girl in the other room?"

"Huh?  What you mean?"

Rolling her eyes, she kicked him in the gunshot shin.

"Justine Fontenot was taken from a bus stop early one morning!  You talkin' about her or this one?"

"This one!"  The tea began to boil.

"I think you took both of them, baby boy.  Come on, Harlan, you fat piece of shit.  Be a man.  Fess up.  Confession is good for the soul, homey.  Even if you didn't, I'm gonna’ make you say you did with what I'm going to do to you.  I'll make you say you once sucked Hillary Clinton's big black cock for ten cents and a bag of popcorn ten times in a row if I want to.  And I want to, motherfucker.  I really want to.  You can't possibly know how much I want to."

         "I ain't killt dat Fontenot girl and what I done elsewhere ain't none a ya’ fuckin’ coonasses’ business, bitch." He huffed and clenched his leg. "I give a shit what you want to do.  Fuck off."

"What I wanna...?  Harley!  Baby!  Why the animosity?  Ain't I pretty?  I'm sorry I ain't dolled up like I would be normally.  But it's kinda’ been a long day of freezin' my lil tight ass off while you been in here playin' hide the snake at the junior high dance."

"You're being cold ain't no problem of mine.  Y'all can go straight to hell with dem sorry Fontenots.  It hot 'nuff down der.  Even for old whores like you."

"Due time, Harlan.  In due time."  Her eyes flared suddenly at the insult.  "Wait.  Old?  Whore..." Curio laughed, "yeah maybe I'm guilty of that one...Point, Harlan!"  She licked a finger and drew one point in his column in the air.  "But old?  I'm twenty-one, you dipshit.  That's called legal, something you shoulda’ learned the definition of a long time ago."

A frigid breeze blew in through the hole in the door. "Whew! Colder'n a witch's titty out there, ain’t it?  You look a little bit cold."

Curio walked over and got the boiling half-gallon pot of old tea from the stove.  "Oops!"  She spilled a liberal amount on his bare crotch.  His scream was laden with inadvertently spat blood.

"That dried blood’s kinda’ freakin’ me out, honey child.  I’m just concerned for your safety, you see.” More boiling tea spilled on him. “You gotta’ keep the genitals clean, baby.  You don't want no scabies or jock itch on whatever you call that lil tee-tee you got, right?  There’s no tellin’ what kinda’ nastiness that poor lil tramp that just followed you home from the bus stop has, right?  Better safe than sorry." She dripped more on him.

Harlan cried now.  The scalding was unbearable.

"Now, I got a lot more water and a lot of time, asshole." She poured more on his crotch and then worked the spill in a line up his belly.  "In fact, if it snows, I got all the time in the world."  She spoke as she pulled a Post-it note from the refrigerator and read it.

"Preacherman done went outta’ town til Sunday?"  She looked down as Harlan writhed on the floor.  "I guess you thought you was gonna’ party hardy this weekend, huh, Harley?"  She poured a scalding splash on his neck. "Kids ain't party favors, dickhead.  This ain't Thailand here."

"Fuck you!"  He clutched his face and ear as he contorted.

"Fuck me?  I'm too old, right?"  She sneered.  "Oh I forgot, for sick molestin' ass men like you, I believe the expression was 'grass on the field, play ball?'  I've heard that said before.  Only they were talkin' about lil ole me back then.  It kinda’ gave me a complex about perverts, you could say.  Getting fingered by a crackhead when you're an eight year old girl kinda’ tends to give a girl a complex and all."

"Ain't my problem, bitch!  I bet you had it coming!" Summoning his strength, Harlan made his final move.  He intended to strike her and run out the back door for the woods, hoping for the best.

He jumped to his feet.  No sooner than he popped up, she casually shot him in a testicle with the Luger and back down he went.  The rest of the boiled tea poured on the tiny entry wound and she slapped him hard in the nose with the searing bottom of the brass pot, driving the hot metal into his face with all her might.  A hot tea bag plopped on his belly.

"You have got to learn to talk to women, Harlan.  They really need a much nicer talkin' to prior to having to endure a few minutes making you think they're impressed with that odd-looking lil pecker of yours inside them."

Curio stuck the pot under the faucet and filled the pot back up.  In shock, Harlan wheezed and clutched his splattered nut in a pool of quickly cooling blood on the linoleum.

"We ain't done talkin' yet, baby."  Curio slipped the Luger in her holster and pulled out a knife. 

She placed the pot on the burner and stood against the sink, waiting for the steam.  She held her hands as if a shrink pondering a patient, tapping her index fingers together.

"Care to tell me about your mother?  With your issues, I bet she was a real piece of work..."



Moses pushed the door to the master bedroom open.  Judy Dickson lay dead with a pool of blood under her head on the floor beside the bed.  He closed the door before noticing a slight movement under an armoire.

Walking from door to door, he surveyed the house.

He found the young girl dead in a spare room.  Her fixed eyes shone white in the flashlight's glare.  Moses could see she was still half-naked and trussed up with tape.  He looked at her obvious youthfulness, disgusted at the sight.  Dried blood was smeared around her vulva and thighs.

"Goddamn you, Harlan." He wiped his eyes and brow with a clammy hand.  It was a disturbing sight to see, even for a man who had seen it all.  Yet he stared.  His rage built as he heard Curio torturing Harlan.  He let her have a few minutes.  The thoughts he knew she were feeling needed purging.

He stared at her body a long while.  His mind replayed her final sprint to safety a hundred times.  An unconscious fist gripped at his chest as he found himself chastising himself over and over for not making his feet move faster.

Completion and evasion, huh, Mo?  Ain’t no room for compassion.  Not even for a raped child, is it? 

He felt shame as never before.  There was an actual revulsion about the life he traded for the girl’s.  He would live to kill again.  She was only dead and far before her time.  As much as he tried to put the onus on Harlan Juneau, since his modus operandi was to rape and then to kill his victim, Moses Holliday wiped a tear from his eye and knew what Harlan may have begun, Moses should have ended.

"I'm so sorry, lil darlin'." Before he retched, Moses closed the door and stumbled into the bathroom.  When he was done, he walked somberly back toward the kitchen. 

Curio was leaned against the sink.  Harlan lay in a pool of blood, thinned by hot water and spreading slowly across the linoleum floor.  Moses only nodded at her work.  His subtle understanding of her method to the madness was conveyed in his gaze at her.  She read his face before he spoke.

"The girl's dead."  He now had the tiny penlight fastened into a holder he wore on his head. 

Harlan's eyes got big.  "No!  I didn't..." 

Not waiting to hear anymore from him, Curio wailed as she pulled the Luger and fired again at his crotch.  She fired into it until the 9mm's clip emptied.  Without thinking, she pulled the .45 from Moses' hand, breathing hard through her nose in snotty whistles.  Pulling his head up harshly by the scalded ear, Curio put the muzzle in the ear canal and blew Harlan's brains out against the base of the stove.

She handed the gun back to him.  "How?"  She cried and wiped her eyes.

"Dunno.  I didn't see no blood to speak of.  Probably strangled.  She was taped up so she coulda’ choked on her puke.  It happens a lot when people have their mouths taped over."

"I wanna’ see."  Curio walked down the hall, sobbing, her breathing visible as fog in the pale glare of the chemical lights.  She barely made it in the room when she noticed the girl's shirt move.

"Shit!"  She yelled.  "Moses!  She's breathing!  She's breathing!" 

Moses ran down the hall.  Curio was about to roll the girl over.  Her hands lightly touched the girl's shirt before Moses saw the distended arm.  His eyes took quick note of the "breathing" motion under the shirt.  Quick as a whip, he jerked Curio back hard.

"Snake!" 

He yelled and drew his bayonet.  Curio screamed and fell against the chest of drawers to her right.  Moses lifted the girl's shirt back slowly with the bayonet.  A three-foot eastern diamondback lay with its head just beneath her right nipple.  It sluggishly retracted into a coil and lazily flickered its tongue.  The tiny rattles on the young snake barely registered a sound.

Curio was hyperventilating.  She had a sincere phobia of snakes.

"Hold still, partner." Slowly, he nudged the snake with the knife.  He noticed how cold the room was.  It was an advantage.  The snake flinched and slowly extended itself down the length of the dead girl's leg.  He flipped the head aside and brought the heavy blade across it to sever it.  The body flailed as the severed head opened and closed its mouth.

He shook his head as he rolled the body over and noted the two bite marks. "Sorry bastard left her on the floor tied up with bullets flying and a fuckin' rattlesnake in here.  Evil.  Straight up goddamned evil at its nastiest.  Dammit!  Dammit!  Dammit!"  Moses gently pulled the girl's shirt back down.  It did not cover her bare groin.  Embarrassed, he flipped the comforter from the bed over her as a shroud.  "Fuck, I wanna’ go home."  His eyes cut to Curio. 

She shuddered, her pale pallor evident in the flashlight.  She could only stammer incoherently as she stared at the snake.

"It's okay.  He's dead, baby."  She never took notice of him.  She only stared at the serpent’s head as it slowly snapped at thin air.  Moses drove the heel of his boot into it, crushing it.  "Dead, I said.  Okay?"

Her eyes white, Curio shook in place and meekly nodded.

"I'm gonna’ go flip the power back on and have a quick look at the Bronco.  I hope he didn't hit nothin’ we need on it.  I got a spare tire but that hit through the front by the motor could suck."  She did not move.  He grabbed her hand and pulled her to him.  "C'mon, darlin'.  It's just a dead snake."

He opened the door and took a single step into the hallway.  Another three-footer was stretched out, moving casually down the hall toward the kitchen.

"What the fuck!"  He pushed Curio up on the bed.  Her trance seemed to snap.

"What?  Who's out there?"

"Another one."

"Another what?  Dead girl?"

"Snake."  He jumped and crunched down on its head with a boot heel.  Curio had her diving knife out, looking around the room in panicked glances.  The room got dark as Moses left the room.

"Ahhh!  Get back here!  I can't see, Moses!" She screamed in a very high pitch.

"Sit tight.  I'ma look around."

"You get your ass back in here with that goddamned light!  Now, Moses!  Moses!"  A shadow played a trick on her.  "I see one!"  He walked back in, sweeping the floor with the light.

"Where?"  He barked.

"There!"  She pointed.  He found nothing.  "I swear there was one there!"

"Here."  He handed the headlamp to her.  Put this one.  I'm gonna’ turn the power back on."

"Leave the gun!"  He tossed the .45 on the mattress.  She snatched it up, shaking.

"Just sit tight."

He picked up a lightstick and walked back outside.  In the short time since they assaulted the house, a light dusting of snow had fallen. The wind was swirling through the trees.  Moses frowned and flipped the breaker switch on the meter.

The lights flipped on in a few windows.

The reassuring hum of the HVAC unit started.  He looked around for a moment.  The snow seemed light.  Nothing he could not drive in.  Hustling, he walked to the Bronco.  Retrieving a big Mag-Lite from beneath the driver's seat, he rushed through a cursory inspection.  The tire was a total loss.  He cranked up the Bronco and popped the hood.  A pistol bullet went through the headlamp and splintered apparently.  A shard nicked a transmission fluid line.  Another angled downward and neatly imbedded itself in the water pump.  Both were leaking as the motor idled.

"Shit." He quickly jumped in the driver seat and drove around the house.  If the cop came back to have a few more words tomorrow, better to not have an obvious Louisiana plate to call in from the road.

"We're in a pickle, cheri."  Moses walked past her as she stayed planted on the mattress, his heavy Colt quivering in her hands.  He found Judy Dickson's purse and pulled out her keys.

"Where did he get snakes, Moses?"  She stammered as he looked carefully under her bed before she jumped onto him and wrapped her legs like a child around his waist.  "Why the hell has he got snakes just floatin' around a house?”  He carried her in that embrace to the living room.

"Dunno.  He had to have kept them in a pen.  Guess I better look the place over.  We might have to hang here a bit longer.  Christ almighty this sucks."

"Huh?  What did you mean by pickle?"

"The Bronco got hit.  I got some repairs to make or we ain't gettin’ very far out of here."

"Can you make them?  I want to be gone, baby.  I ain't feelin' too good here.  Seriously."

"Not without parts.  He hit the water pump.  Transmission line too, but I can tape that enough to get us away.  I’ll gotta’ be pouring fluid to it all the damn time, but it'll go.  Without the water pump though, we won't get far.  I hate it.  But we gotta’ stay here." He flipped off the heat.

"Shit.  Turn the heat on. It's cold in here."

"Snakes, baby.  You want them wide-eyed and bushy-tailed?  They get cold, they can't move.  With it being cold and then getting heated again, they'll be out and about ricky-tick."

"Fuck that.  Moses.  Let's go anywhere but here.  I don't care if the Bronco fucking explodes.  I can't handle snakes, man." She looked at the covered body.  “I can’t stay here.  We gotta’ go.”

"It'll be ok.”

“Define ok.”

“No one’s come knockin’ on the door and the girl cain’t live far from here.  I bet he killed the parents.”

“God.  This sucks bad, baby.  I wanna’ go.  How many snakes are there?”

“Sit tight.  I'll look around and see if there's a pen.  First I gotta’ get that car outta’ sight. Be right back."  He went out through the front door, wincing at the giant shotgun hole in it.  He pulled the Mazda around beside the Bronco.  The radio in it spoke nonstop of the impending heavy snow predicted for the Deep South. 

He took a long look at the soft dusting falling from the sky.  It didn't look too threatening.

Moses shrugged and went inside.

Boom! 

His .45 fired as he reached the threshold of the living room.  He flinched and inched down the hall nervously.  She stood on the back of a couch, her two shaking hands aiming the pistol at a twisting rattlesnake.  It was bisected by the bullet.

"Good shot."  He said.

Her face was calm, but her voice trembled.  She looked at him in an impatient terror.  "Moses, I want to go home.  I think I just pissed myself."

Moses looked at her and chuckled.  "So you did, baby.  So you did."



He found the snake cages in the basement.  Five cages, all labeled with innocuous names.  Jeremiah.  Mark.  Luke.  Moses.  Job.  Not a single one was occupied.

"Bad news."  He flopped on the couch next to her.  She now held a cup of hot chocolate in a hand and the reloaded Luger in the other.

"There’s a change.”

"Best I figger, we got ourselves two more in here."

She startled, drawing in a shrieking breath. "You go find them, baby.  Now!  Please!"

"I will.  But while I do, I need you to do somethin' for me."

"Please say, 'sit here and watch for snakes.'  That, I can do."

"I need you to hide that big ass hole in the door.  You can see light through it.  It kinda’ looks a might suspicious from the road."

"With what?"

"You're a chick.  Decorate."

         "It's a little late for a Christmas wreath, baby."

"Improvise.  We need camouflage.  And quickly!  With the lights on in here, that's a ginormous flashing red light to any eagle-eyed old biddy or cop passing by."

"Okay. Okay."  She looked nervously around the floor and stepped gingerly from the couch. "Find them damn snakes."

It took him a while but he found the two snakes.



Perhaps it was the abrupt warm up prior to the blizzard that sent the serpents away from their lairs in early March in search of their own kind.  It could have been the constant smell of feeder mice wafting from the house.  As Moses gleefully flipped the heat back on and Curio managed to nail a picture of Jesus on Calvary over the hole in the door, a six-foot rattler stretched itself under a work bench in the basement and decided to have a look-around the place.  The basement was apparently draftier than it cared to tolerate.



At dawn, Moses awoke from a three-hour nap and began walking toward the town of Section.  A kindly old man picked him up just as he reached a place noted on the map as Hancock Crossroads.  He would have liked to been driven straight to a regular parts house.  He was told any of those if they were to be found would be found way over in Rainsville.  The old man did not have time to ride that far.

But, the old man knew a dozen junkyards.  Apparently, he had all the time in the world to drive every back road in the county.  Finally at noon, he found one with a greasy old feller still manning the office.

"Sure thang, buddy.  I got a water pump for a 454 Ford!"  He set about rummaging through cars and after another half hour Moses was riding in the old man's GMC with a miraculous length of transmission line and the water pump. 

Falling snow was nonexistent until they got back to Macedonia.  Big fluffy flakes began drifting down on the white roadsides.  The old man began getting nervous.  Moses used that to get him to let him out at the same crossroad.  He dropped two twenties in the man's seat.

"Saved my life, sir.  I thank ya’."  The man shook his head and handed the money.

"Think of it as my good deed for the day, son.  A charity to a fellow Marine if you like."

"I guess one knows another."  Moses had not mentioned his service and the long thermals he wore hid the tattoos that may have given him away as a Devil Dog.

"Semper Fi.  Now you get on along home, Tex.  Before it sticks you out here with all us Bammers all week.  Gonna’ drop a foot of it tonight I bet.  Around these parts, they won't be ready for what's a-coming."

"They callin' for that much?"

"I don't need some egghead guessin’ out loud on a TV to tell me what's a-coming.  Half of ‘em thinks it’s a new ice age coming and the other half thinks it’s a big nothing to do.  My rheumatism tellin' me this one is gonna’ be a footer at least."

Moses opened the door and nodded.  "I thank you then."

He set off at a brisk clip toward the house.  Snow was falling lightly when he trotted up.  Curio was sitting in the Mazda.  Cletus was resting comfortably next to her.

"It's about time."

"Been a hard time getting these damned things." He dug his toolbox from the Bronco. "Anybody drop by?  Phone calls?"

"A lady called and left a message about the preacher droppin' by to visit her sick aunt."

"Good.  You kept the gloves on, right?" 

“It’s too cold not to.  There ain’t been no cops working around her much either.  I bet that girl’s folks are dead.”

“That’s good.  At least, good for us I mean.”

“I know what you mean.  Good went away for me the second we pulled up here.”

The snow was beginning to fall in heavy flakes.  Moses set to work on the water pump.  The overcast skies began darkening further.  After an hour of wrenching and cursing, he had it mounted.

"I swear it looks like a thunderstorm not a snowstorm." He paused as Curio handed him a flask from the cab of the Bronco.

"It's so pretty."  She looked at the soft white powder falling.  "I wonder how much it takes to be a problem for the roads."

"We're in the South, darlin.  A half-inch of ice will do the trick.  An inch of snow and they'll freak out bad."

She frowned and looked at the snow around them.  Moses had not paid much attention to the rate it was falling as he hunkered over and under the motor.  "Baby, I think we got an inch or two at least.  And it's packin' kinda’ tight." 

Moses looked at his watch.  Three o'clock sharp.  The sky was dark already.  The wind was beginning to blow gale-force nonstop.  "Best we get rollin'.  I don't like the looks of this one damned bit.  Check the radio.  Find the local shitkicker station.  They'll have the best idea about the county roads."  He wrapped duct tape around the transmission line.  There was little time to be worried about that leak.  He wanted to get as far from rural Alabama in a blizzard as he could, given the circumstances.

She fumbled around and got a twangy disk jockey as he announced the Reba McIntyre song, "Fancy."

"What a great song about a whore." She mumbled.  Moses cranked up the Bronco.  Smiling, he bobbed his head in victory.

"Let's see..." He checked the pump. “Looks good.”

Curio hopped from the car to kiss him.  She saw his smile drain into a glare.  He almost threw the wrench he was holding down in anger but only gripped it and shook his head.

"What?"

"I'ma kill me a fuckin' redneck.  That’s what."  Moses seethed.  The bushing around the spindle where the belt spun the water pump was merrily trickling water.  "He sold me a bad one. The gasket’s dry-rotted in there."  He looked at the snow and then at the darkening skies.  Distant thunder rumbled.  Sighing, he looked at Curio. "Baby.  We're gonna’ be stuck a while."

"No shit?  There's snakes in there!"

"There were snakes in there.  Five of them.  And now they're dead."

"You sure?  Five, right?"

"Five snakes.  Five cages, all with names on them.  I think you shot Luke.  I can't be sure though.  They weren't wearing collars.” He chuckled. “Let's get to work.  We got shit to do."

They set about preparing the house for being snowed in.  Wood was dragged in.  Harlan was dragged outside.  The females were laid in the preacher’s bed and covered with a sheet. 

Moses inventoried the food, happy to find a whole shelf of home-canned vegetables and jellies in the basement.  The writing on the jars was undoubtedly the late Miss Dickson’s.

"Country folks can survive!" He hollered as he noted a chest freezer full of venison and pork as well.

Everything he thought he could use in the Bronco was salvaged in a blowing wind.  Ditto Lucy Dickson's car, though all the Mazda yielded was travel toiletries, a few snack crackers, wet wipes and curiously, a cat-o'nine tails hidden in a brown envelope in her purse.

"I hear ya’!"  Curio grinned as Moses threw it to her.

It thundered as it snowed that night, a meteorological rarity.  Lightning crackled as the blizzard erupted in the night.

By dark, the snow was reaching a whiteout.  Moses and Curio kept a fire going, made love and slept sprawled out on the fleece blanket. 

The constant blowing of hot air through the ductwork ended around three that morning when a great portion of the power grid fizzled out.  The couple only curled that much closer as they slept, unaware of the power outage.



The six-foot diamondback, coiled and sleeping in the ductwork after finding an old rat hole chewed through the insulation of the duct, took note of the falling temperature.  It returned to the entry point, slithered rapidly as it could along the water pipes under the house and into the walls.  It finally sensed the heat of the hot water heater and squeezed through a gap in the drain pipe beneath the kitchen sink.  Happy under the warm water heater, it dozed again until the heat began to ebb.  The pilot light was electronically sensitive.  When the power went out, it shut off its gas supply as a safety precaution.

When the snake sensed the water above it was cooling, it went into a panic.  It had a mouse in its gut to digest and needed ample heat to do so.  The heat-seeking pits in its nose saw a new source of heat.  Quickly, it slithered down the cool hall and ran straight under the couch.  Movement alerted it.  It could see a large enemy roll over.  Cautiously, it tasted the air with its tongue.  The scent of spawning and warm blood was in the air.  The scent of mating mammals.  It proceeded cautiously from under the couch.

The fire was dying but it hovered at a near-perfect temperature for it to bask in front of while its gut broke down the mouse a while.  Easily, it slithered between the two inanimate yet warm mammals and climbed up the rock fireplace.  And they all three slept stretched out in front of the dying fire.

All night, the South was caught up in a heavy, windblown snow.  Seventeen inches fell in the area.  The area was frozen in place.  Drifts as high as seven feet piled around the area.  No one went anywhere for a week.

It was the Great Blizzard of 1993.



At dawn, Curio shivered and realized somehow she was exposed and naked in the cold room.  Moses was cocooned in the blanket.  She pulled at it.

"Cover-hoggin' asshole!"  She muttered.  He snorted briefly and flipped her a corner to pull over her without waking up.  She pulled at the corner but he was too tightly wrapped in it.  Angry and cold, she flipped at him with the late Lucy's leather flail.

"Give up some of dat cover, Bogart.  I'm cold."

"Turn the heat up."  He mumbled. "And check the news."

She rolled over and clicked the remote control.  Nothing. 

Bouncing up and down as she shivered, she rushed to check the heater.  It was set to auto.  She clicked it on full-blast.  Nothing.  The dead light switch confirmed the obvious.

"The power's out."

"Shit." He yawned and rolled over to loosen the blanket. "Throw some of that split kindling on the fire and come back down here with me.  Something hard’s poking out under here.  It might be another snake’s head."

"Better not be.” She winked at him. “But hell yeah." She dropped the flail next to him. "You get five licks for stealing the blanket, asshole." 

She looked down at her breasts. “You ain't the only one who got somethin' hard going on!" She giggled.  "It's cold as hell in here!"

"Five licks and I’ll warm them perkies up for you.  Deal."

He locked his hands behind his head and watched her as she shivered, naked, in the freezing room.  With chattering teeth, she grabbed a few thin starter pieces of wood and sat two of them in the iron holder.  The clanging wood on the metal brought forth a sputter from the fireplace.  In the fog of early awakening, she did not register the sound.  When the sputter immediately became a hellish buzz very close to her, both she and Moses sprang into action.

Curio screamed repeatedly in short, almost infantile cries.  Her hands grabbed the poker and she commenced to beating at the hearth as if insane.  The six-foot snake could strike two-thirds of its length and it finally did.  The hearth was so cold it had curled to one side of the cold coal bed.  It struck out with a hiss, recoiled and struck again, its fangs impossibly huge as they sprang frontward when it opened its mouth.  Moses caught it perfectly behind the head, bare-handed, when it struck the second time.  Curio screamed some more, swinging at the twisting body as Moses stood up, naked, with the head gripped in his steely hands.

"Gun!  Knife!  Brick!  Something!"  He yelled, looking around for a weapon.  The heavy, strong snake wrapped itself around his arm and neck, snapping it mouth and hissing, unable to move its head.  Venom spurted from the fang tips as the pressure Moses exerted compressed the venom sacs.  The rattle continued to shake, tucked against his bicep.

Shrieking, Curio ran in demented circles.  She was no help at all.  Moses reached down and jammed the handle of the cat’o'nine tails down the snake's throat when it opened again.  It tried to shake the leather loose.  Finally, he managed to reach his clothes after kicking around the pile of blankets heaped on the couch.  His bayonet was there.  With his spare hand, he drew the blade from the scabbard.  With a single midair slash, he cut the snake's face off between its eyes and the tip of the nose.  Blood gushed.  The fangs and mouth fell at his feet.  Fumbling with the rest of the bleeding head, he walked over to the hearth and held the head over the cold coals.  Finally, he managed to pull his hand back enough to sever the head outright.

Curio, still screaming, her arms waving like wings flapping maniacally, made a break for the front door.  She was still screaming incoherently when she threw open the door and ran into a solid wall of snow that completely sealed up the doorway.  She faceplanted deep into it, leaving a perfect Curio impression straight out of Looney Toons in the packed snow.  Right down to the hardened nipples' two distinct buttons in the snow.

She fell backwards, her front side completely covered in snow.  Wiping snow from her eyes as Moses suddenly laughed, she came back down to reality.  He shook his head as he looked at the solid plug of snow in the doorway.

The reality was they, along with most of the South were snowed in completely, without power.

With a house full of live rattlesnakes and three corpses, apparently.

He walked over to her, gripping the neck to staunch the blood spurt as the headless snake’s heart began to give out.  Dangling the six-foot snake beside him, he shook his head in awe.

"Them pens didn't say nothing about there bein' one named God Almighty on the name plates.  Looka’ the size of him!  He's gotta’ be a wild one.  I mean, he's gotta be!  Ain’t no way they risk pissing off a big one like that in a church house."

"Moses,” Curio breathed slowly, pointing a shaky finger at him.  "You get rid of that damn thing...and you get us out of here in one hour.  Or I'm going to freak the hell out."  Tears ran down her face.

Moses looked around and saw a large vase with artificial flowers crammed in it.  He tossed the flowers aside and fed the snake into it.  Curio stood up and nervously walked to the blanket, shivering more from fear than cold.  He walked into the guest bathroom, peed away the morning wood and washed his hands.    She was wrapped in the blanket when he came out.

"Baby," he flopped down on the fleece, his gesturing hands about to explain their predicament.  She cut him off.

"You're about to say you can't get us out of here, right?  Cuz that so ain’t what wanna’ hear."

"I am.  That's some serious snow out there.  Way worse than I thought we could get.  Up here, there's no road crews or equipment to plow with out in this part of the world.  We’re really stuck in it now."

"Understood.  You said there were no more snakes."

"I was sure I had them all.  Now I'm not so sure.  But, here's what I can do."

"You can dig a tunnel out of here.  That's all you can do." Her voice was flat, almost monotone.

"I can't tunnel anywhere.  Even if I did, there ain’t no driving.  Not for a while."

"Can we stay in a tunnel?  They won't slither into a snow tunnel, will they?  We can make a nice igloo out in the yard a ways.  Eskimos been doing it forever."

         "We ain't Eskimos.  But listen to me.  Here's what I can do.  It's kinda’ what I had in mind anyway even before when that snake came around."

"I can't live in here knowin’ I’m stuck in an icebox full of snakes, Moses."

"Icebox is a good term to think about.  The house is freezing.  Outside of this room when a fire is going, there is zero heat in the house.  If any more snakes are left in here, they're paralyzed or they're dead.  So here's what I'm gonna do.  We seal up this room.  The vent over there.  The hallway door.  Anything one can try to squeeze through.  We go from the bathroom over there, down the hall to the kitchen and back.  That's it.  We seal every other door and we live in here."

"You mean maybe seal me in here with a snake.  That’s what you mean.  No fuckin’ way.  How do you know there ain't a nest under that couch?  Maybe they really took that snake kissing a step further than your average bear.  You know them coonasses ain’t shy about snakes."

"I don't think so, but I'll take the couch in a bedroom if it makes you feel better."  He pulled a cushion away.  "Hot damn, whaddya know?  It's a foldout bed.  We can sleep up off the floor."

Curio rubbed her head.  "I don't care where I sleep.  I need a valium.  A lot of them."

"Let's check around.  Maybe there's something we can use for that."

Curio reached over and picked up her Luger. "You check.  I'm watching for serpents."

Seated with her back to the hearth and the gun in her lap, she sat wrapped in a blanket.



The days passed.  Curio watched for snakes in between eating and nervous, quick rushes to the john.  Moses read from Nelson's stash of biblical literature.

When the pipes froze and burst after the second night, Moses melted snow from the doorway to use for flushing it. 

They ate well and they waited.  Moses eventually tunneled out to the Mazda to listen to the radio.

At night, cuddled by the fire, they slept as much as they could (as much as she dared to, in Curio's case.)

A week later, the snow was thawed enough for Moses to make his way to the Bronco after he noticed occasional traffic on the road.  He changed the flat tire and hoped the water pump would hold up enough to get them to a nearby town that may have a proper part.

They had to burn the house as they left.  It was a morbid task to bring the girl and the lady's frigid bodies outside, but he felt they could not burn them inside and leave a sad situation all that much more perplexing and anguishing to the locals.  He left them in the open parts shed, with a bandana tied to the post.  Harlan Juneau's frozen corpse was dragged back into the hallway, doused with chainsaw gas and lit aflame.  With so many air holes punched in the walls and the basement doors inside and out left open for ventilation, the old wooden house was greatly incinerated before the closest volunteer firefighter units had even heard about the blaze.

It was a further three days before Nelson Ecchols made it back home to find a gaggle of police picking at the cinder pile with his chimney remaining the only part of his home still standing.

Deputy Briggs kept his mouth shut about the phone call he made.

They drove as best he could to the town of Fyffe, where he found a lone auto parts dealer.  The building was closed, but a fellow on a four-wheeler went to the owner's house and amazingly came back with only the keys and instructions detailing where the water pump was on the shelves.  The two men went in, found the part, and locked back up.  Moses handed the guy four hundred dollars for the part and the trouble.  He made sure his benefactor knew to tell the world that the fellow at the junkyard over by Langston was a sorry bastard.

Lying on ice and melting snow, he got the new water pump attached.  Filling the radiator and the gas tank at the first open service station he could find in Albertville, they rolled at forty most of the way home, if they were lucky.



In sunny Aruba a week later, Grizzly Fontenot dropped into the empty sunning chair between his two employees.  They lay in full beach regalia, complete with fruity drinks bearing umbrellas that sweated down their sides in the warm sun.  A samba band started its first set of the early evening as the resort staff began lighting torches.  In front of them the cloudless sun slipped slowly into the Caribbean Sea.

"Dey treatin' y'all okay down here, y'all?"  He slurped down a Kalik and stretched.  Flabby old snowbirds and toned spring breakers from across a frigid North America frolicked in the tropical paradise.

"Just fine.  Mighty sunny and warm.  And appreciated after my balls have been frozen for a week."

Moses tilted his head back to catch the setting sun on his neck.  He had never been so happy to be roasting in a full sun in his life.

"That's for sure."  Curio said.

"I expected y'all may not be too keen on stayin' home when you got back.  It done been a lil cold down our way lately."

Curio sighed behind her sunglasses and took a sip of a Mai Tai.  "I don't ever want to see snow again.  My fascination with that white bullshit is officially dead to me."

"I hope you don't have to go out in it ever again.  For that reason, anyway."  He thanked a passing server as he exchanged the dead soldier for a fresh Kalik. "I trust you handled it in a manner worthy of the crime."

"It was ugly.  Bad ugly.  But I think so."  Moses said.  "He got his in a way I think you could be satisfied with."

"I'm sure.  Whatd'ya mean, bad ugly?  Blowback kinda’ ugly?"

"Not on you.  On us, though."

"Do I need to be worried?"  Grizzly looked over at Curio and then Moses.

"No.  We're still in the game for you.  Nothing legal to worry about, at least no more than usual.  It was just a tough stretch on this one.  There was civilians, you know.  Harlan was up to old tricks up there in no time flat.  It got pretty bad."

Curio rolled over and glared at Grizzly.  "He's trying to politely say we caught up to that fucker after he done shot one poor old Pentecostal lady in the head and after he had just raped a young girl.  He still had her naked in his house, Boss.  He had let rattlesnakes loose all over the damned place and one of them killed her while she was all tied up with duct tape.  Half-naked from the waist down, I might add, with her cherry busted by his sorry fucking ass on the day she ended up dead.  Welcome to the joys of womanhood, little darlin'.  Sometimes it's a real bitch.  I bet her mama didn't mention that could happen when they talked about the birds and bees.  If she was even old enough to have had the talk yet.” She shrugged and frowned. “Yeah, it was fuckin' bad." 

Curio slid her sunglasses up on her brow and sat up to turn and face her employer. "The girl died at some point during the shootout and there wasn't a thing we could do but hear her screamin' bloody murder in the house all day until we finally got up in there that night.  Then we got snowed in with them dead women for a week after that.  In a houseful of goddamned rattlesnakes.  Kinda’ bad-ugly, as he half-assed put it.  I don't think we're gonna’ be right for a while after all that blowback."

"Damn, Moses." Grizzly winced with his fingers rubbing his forehead somberly and looked over at his friend.  "Leave a few details out in a phone call, why doncha’?"

"Less you know, right?"  He sighed and waved it off with a casual flip of the fingers. “The job is done.”

"Who let Harlan Juneau have a girl around him alone?  Dem hillbillies ain't the trustingest lot you evah done met before."

"You'll have to ask Pete.  He tends to look into those sorta’ things.  I don't got a clue and I didn't stay to read the papers.  He snatched her from a bus stop is all we got from him.  He had his way with her and was gonna’ leave her out there where the critters would have their way I guess.  That sound familiar?"

Grizzly slumped forward a bit.  "Yeah, it does."

"And that would be why I didn't tell you.  It doesn't change nothin'.  He paid some of his debt in installments before the debt was finally settled up.  That's all that mattered.  I didn't tell you because I wanted your sense of payback stayin' solid.  And it still should be.  Warn't a damned thing we could do for her without exposing ourselves completely.  I would rather just forget about all that as soon and as thoroughly as I possibly can.  It's done and done quite well considering the circumstances we had to operate in.  He's suffered.  He suffered a lot and then he paid.  If there's any afterlife to speak of, I can say in all likelihood he's not a happy camper in it."

"I sure hope there's a hell for him to burn in."  She said and sighed softly.

Curio and Moses both took long pulls of their fruity drinks.  Both wished for a more honest liquor.  Straight-up hard liquor that seared the pain into their guts instead of something juicy, relaxing and festive served with both the jaunty umbrellas and the broad white smiles of the colonial-dressed staff at the resort.

"Well, for what it's worth.  Pete and I thank y'all.  It's been a tough stretch since it all happened.  I'm glad he's settled up.  You laid Justine to rest.  I went to her grave before I flew down here and told her so."

"Normally I say my pleasure, boss."  Curio said. "This time," she lay back on the chair and tucked her legs under her butt, "not so much."

"Amen."  Moses tossed the fruity drink out across the white sand.  He stood up.  "Rest in peace, little girl." 

He started up the path to the room.  Curio watched him stick his hands in his pockets as he walked.  She handed her drink off to Grizzly.  "Alcohol abuse, right?"  She slipped her feet into sandals awkwardly and followed Moses.

"Oh!  And Boss?"  She paused.

"Yeah, cheri?"

"Try to give us a while to drink this one off if you can?  Si vous plait?"

"Oui, mon cheri.  Merci again for handling it for me."  Grizzly looked her in the eye.  "I'm sure you had a few demons let loose when y'all got a hold of him."

Curio smiled in the broad, toothy way Grizzly Fontenot liked to privately call her "death mask." 

"Aside from all the other unpleasantness, it was more fun than Disney World, baby.  You get any more perverts under your skin, you know who to call.  Just not too soon, alright?  My mojo is a little lackin’.  That shit was sad.  He’s broke up about it more than he’ll admit."

"Deal.  Go hug yo' boy up der.  He’s lookin' shook up, I know.  I seen him get dataway a time or two.  Most times, he only had the bottle.  At least dis time he gots you, too."

"Well, I ain’t much better, but we'll be okay.  Bon temps until next time!"  She blew him a kiss, waved her fingers coyly and walked up the path.

Halfway up the trail she nodded at a pair of giggling tweens, probably wearing their first two-pieces on a family vacation.  They were running in their bubbly, giggly, girlie manner down the wooden pathway from the tiki bar to the beach's sitting area.  Curio stood aside as they said, "Excuse us!" and passed her, clutching their virgin strawberry daiquiris as if they were First Place trophies.  One of the tarts gave her friend a laughing booty shake in retort to a whispered remark from the other.  The girls whooped and strutted down the path and out of sight.

"Watch out for strangers, girls.  Please."  Curio muttered to herself and walked up the path to catch up with Moses.  He stood at the top of the pathway, staring at the same pair of girls.

He took her hand as she shuffled up the stairs.  Curio kissed his cheek and leaned against him for a moment.

"This job ain't fun no more." She sighed and looked at him. “I’ve never felt bad about one until now.  That ain’t too cool.”

Moses shrugged subtly and led her toward their room.  "Ain't supposed to be and never was, baby.  Be glad you made it alive long enough to know that.”  Throwing his arm around her shoulder, he said, “It’s either gets better or worse.  There ain’t no cool to it.”





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